Lucy nods, for whatever that’s worth. She’s not looking at either of us. We leave her staring at nothing, surrounded by the ashy leftovers of last night.

Daytime’s kicked in properly while we were up there. Rathmines is buzzing: students hunting hangover cures, couples making sure the world can see how in love they are, families who are going to enjoy their family time if it kills them all. One look at it drops us both into the morning-after vortex, when your body suddenly realises you’ve been up all night and shuts down the engine, turning you floppy with fatigue.

‘Coffee,’ Steve says. ‘Jesus, I need coffee.’

‘Wimp.’

‘Me? If you shut your eyes, you’ll fall over asleep. Do it. I dare you.’

‘Fuck off.’

‘Coffee. And food.’

I hate wasting my time eating on the job, I can’t wait for them to come up with some nutrition pill I can pop twice a day, but till then me and Steve both need food and plenty of it. ‘Your turn to buy,’ I say. ‘Find somewhere they serve coffee by the litre.’

Steve does it right: skips the shiny hip chai-and-cronut cafés, picks the smallest, scuzziest corner shop, and comes out with massive medical-grade coffees and breakfast rolls stuffed with enough sausages and egg and rashers to see us through most of the day. We take them to a little park off a side street; it’s too cold for that, with a nasty edge to the air like it’s just waiting for the right moment to dump sleet down the backs of our necks, but getting out of the car means at least no one can give us hassle over the radio, and we need to have a conversation that doesn’t belong in a coffee shop.

The park looks just adorable, all curly wrought-iron benches and neatly clipped hedges and flowerbeds waiting for spring, till you look again: used condom twisted in the hedge, blue plastic bag hanging off a railing with something sticking out that I don’t like the look of. The place has a nightlife. In sunshine it would be jammed, but the weather is keeping people wary. On one bench a guy in a Tesco uniform is having a smoke, whipping his head around after each puff like he’s checking no one’s seen him, and a kid is circling grimly on a scooter while his mother bobs a whining buggy and swipes at her phone. The kid is wearing a hat that looks like some kind of dinosaur eating his head.

We find a bench that doesn’t smell like anyone’s pissed on it recently. I turn up my coat collar and get half my coffee down me in one swig. ‘You were right. Talking to Lucy, that was worth doing.’

‘I think so, yeah. It could still be Rory Fallon—’

I give Steve the eyeball. ‘It is. Almost definitely, it is.’

Steve wavers his head noncommittally. He’s unfolding paper napkins to spread over the front of his overcoat – these are attack sandwiches, and Steve takes his work clothes very seriously. ‘Maybe. But the rest of that stuff’s worth knowing, either way.’