We turn the spare chairs towards his desk and sit. The crisp whirl and click of Steve placing his chair is full up tight with that same fury.

‘Let’s hear it.’

We tell him what happened, while the darkness thickens at the window. We keep it very clear and very cold, no commentary, just fact stacked neatly on top of fact, the way the gaffer likes his reports. He picks up the shitty snow globe and turns it from angle to angle between his fingers, watching the shavings of plastic snow tumble, and listens.

When we’re done he says, still inspecting the snow globe, ‘How much of that can you prove?’

‘Not enough to put him away,’ Steve says. He’s barely holding down the savage edge of sarcasm: Don’t be worrying, it’s all grand. ‘Not even enough for a charge.’

‘That’s not what I asked.’

‘McCann’s connection to the old case is on file,’ I say. The anger’s slicing through my voice, too, and I’m not even trying to hide it. ‘Gary O’Rourke and I can both confirm that Aislinn was trying to track down the story on her father. The affair’s solid: we’ve got forensics and the best mate’s statement, plus McCann admitted it. And we’ve got the best mate’s evidence that Aislinn was only stringing him along. When it comes to Saturday evening, we’ve got nothing but Rory Fallon’s statement about seeing McCann, which is worth bugger-all. McCann’s saying nothing. Breslin says McCann found her dead, but no one’s going to confirm that on record.’

O’Kelly’s eyes flick up to me. ‘Breslin said that.’

‘An hour ago.’

He swivels his chair, with a long low creak, to the window. He could be staring out over the courtyard, at the slope of cobblestones and the proud high-windowed rise of the building opposite, the old solid shapes he has to know by heart; only for the darkness.

Steve says, like it’s punched its way out of him, ‘He rang you Sunday morning. Before you gave us the case.’

One flicker of the gaffer’s eyelids. Except for that, we could think he didn’t hear.

‘We were a gift,’ I say. ‘The perfect stooges. Moran’s a newbie, Conway’s fighting a bad rep. Easy to point them in the wrong direction; if they come up with something you don’t like, easy to twist their arms, make them back off and shut their gobs. Worst comes to worst, easy to smear them bad enough that no one’ll listen to a word they say.’

O’Kelly ought to reef me out of it, for talking to my gaffer like that. He doesn’t even turn. The desk lamp slides gold light down the brass desk plaque saying DET. SUPT. G. O’KELLY.

After a long time he says, ‘Breslin said it was a mate of his.’