I’m feeling better already; the coffee zapped my eyelids open like something out of a cartoon. ‘At least we know why Aislinn’s gaff looked like Working Girl Barbie Playhouse. And why Aislinn looked like Dream Date Barbie. The woman hadn’t got a clue; she was putting together who she was meant to be out of magazines.’

Steve says, ‘Someone like that, she’s vulnerable. Really vulnerable.’

‘No shit. Rory could be a full-on psychopath with more red flags than the Chinese embassy, and as long as he wore the right labels and helped her put her coat on, she’d still have invited him over for dinner on Date Three. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do.’

‘Lucy’s not clueless,’ Steve points out. ‘If he was covered in red flags, she’d’ve spotted them.’

‘Speaking of,’ I say. The breakfast roll is good stuff, proper thick rashers, grease and egg yolk going everywhere; I can feel my energy creeping back up. ‘What’d you think of Lucy?’

‘Smart. Scared.’ Steve has finished arranging his bib. He props his coffee cup on the bench and starts peeling back his sandwich wrapper. ‘She’s keeping something back.’

‘She’s keeping back plenty. And that doesn’t make sense. Forget all that hair-splitting crap about old-mates-not-best-mates-no-not-that-kind-of-mates; she cared about Aislinn, a lot. So what the hell? Does she not want the guy caught?’

‘You think she knows more about Aislinn’s married fella than she’s letting on?’

‘I think we’ve only got Lucy’s word for it that this married fella even exists.’ We’re keeping our voices down; Tesco guy and buggy mammy look like they’ve barely noticed we’re here, but you never know. ‘She was dead careful not to give us anything we could disprove, you notice that? No name, no description, no dates, no place where they might’ve met, nothing.’

Steve has his roll opened up across his lap and is carefully decorating it with brown sauce. ‘You figure she made him up on the spot? Why, but?’

I say, ‘She cares way too much whether Rory’s our prime suspect. It’s not just that she wants to know who did this to her mate; she wants to know whether we’re looking at Rory, specifically.’

‘Yeah.’ Steve squirts the last of the brown sauce into his mouth and tosses the packet into a bin by the bench. ‘I couldn’t figure out whether she was hoping it was yes or no, though. She was straight in there giving us Rory’s name, telling us he was due at Aislinn’s last night; but after that . . .’

‘Right. Giving us his name and the appointment was no big deal: she had to know we had that already, or would any minute. And after that, it was all about what a good guy he was, how she never got any kind of threat vibe off him, how happy Aislinn was with him. Could be all true; she could be trying to steer us away from him because she genuinely doesn’t think it’s him, doesn’t want us wasting our time while the real guy gets away. But I’m wondering if her feelings for Rory were as nonexistent as she’s claiming.’