I knew Conway, to see anyway, before she was famous. Back in training college, she was two years behind me. Tall girl, hair scraped back hard. Built like a runner, long limbs, long muscles. Chin always high, shoulders always back. A lot of guys buzzed round Conway, her first week: just trying to help her settle in, nice to be friendly, nice to be nice, just coincidence that the girls who didn’t look the same didn’t get the same. Whatever she said to the boys, after the first week they stopped giving her come-ons. They gave her shite instead.

Two years behind me, in training. Got out of uniform one year behind. Made Murder the same time I made Cold Cases.

Cold Cases is good. Very bleeding good for a guy like me: working-class Dub, first in my family to go for a Leaving Cert instead of an apprenticeship. I was out of uniform by twenty-six, out of the General Detective Unit and into Vice by twenty-eight – Holly’s da put in a word for me there. Into Cold Cases the week I turned thirty, hoping there was no word put in, scared there was. I’m thirty-two now. Time to keep moving on up.

Cold Cases is good. Murder is better.

Holly’s da can’t put in a word for me there, even if I wanted one. The Murder gaffer hates his guts. He’s not fond of mine, either.

That case when Holly was my witness: I took the collar. I gave the caution, I clicked the handcuffs, I signed my name on the arrest report. I was just a floater, should have handed over anything worthwhile that came my way; should have been back in the incident room, like a good boy, typing seen-nothing statements. I took the collar anyway. I had earned it.

Another thing about me: I know my shot when I see it.

That collar, along with the nudge off Frank Mackey, got me out of the General Unit. That collar got me my chance at Cold Cases. That collar locked me out of Murder.

I heard the click, with the click of the handcuffs. You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, and I knew that was me on Murder’s shit list for the foreseeable. But handing over the collar would have put me on the dead-end list, staring down the barrel of decades typing up other people’s seen-nothing statements. Anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence. Click.

You see your shot, you take it. I was sure that lock would open again, somewhere down the line.

Seven years on, and the truth was starting to hit.