‘I’ve got no one good in Organised Crime. Do you?’

‘Not really. Sort of.’ I can’t stay sitting any longer, not with this bouncing in front of me. I shove the last bite of breakfast roll into my mouth, ball up the wrapper and toss it over Steve into the bin. ‘Don’t worry about it yet. Right now, we’re just gonna have a nice friendly chat with Rory Fallon. Depending on what comes out of that, we can decide if it’s worth following up this other thing. Meanwhile—’

Something moves in the corner of my eye and I whip around fast, but it’s just the guy in the Tesco uniform, scurrying back to his shelf-stacking now he’s got his fix on board. He flinches and tries to glare, but I point a finger at him and he concentrates on scurrying. When I’m on a case, I get what O’Kelly would probably call jumpy and what I call alert. Not just me; a lot of Ds do. It’s an animal thing: when you’re tracking a top predator, even though you’re not his prey and he’ll probably shit himself when you come face to face, your alert level hits orange and stays there. I’ve been having trouble coming off orange alert lately, even when I’m not working.

I say, ‘Meanwhile, I vote we say fuck-all about this.’

‘To Breslin.’

‘To anyone.’ If this doesn’t pan out, we’re gonna be the squad joke: the idiots who went full-on gangbusters on their by-numbers lovers’ tiff. ‘It’s all hypothetical; no point throwing it out there till we’ve got something solid. For now, all anyone needs to know is Lucy told us about Aislinn’s background, said Rory seemed like a nice guy, end of.’

‘Works for me,’ Steve says, just a little too promptly.

‘No shit,’ I say, realising. ‘That’s why you wanted to keep her far away from work. You cunning little bastard.’

‘Like I said.’ Steve grins and crumples his napkin bib. ‘Not just a pretty face.’

The dinosaur kid has fallen off his scooter and is sitting on the path trying to work up a convincing wail. We dodge around him and we’re heading for the gate, me dialling the floaters to tell them to bring Fallon in, when I catch the plastic bag in the corner of my eye and realise what’s sticking out of it: a dead cat, fur plastered sleek against its skull, lips pulled back to show spiky teeth open wide in a frozen howl of fury.

Chapter 3

The squad room has come alive. The printer is going, someone’s phone is ringing, the blinds are open to try and drag in the half-arsed sunlight; the place smells of half a dozen different lunches, tea, shower gel, sweat, heat and action. O’Gorman is leaning back in his chair with his feet up on his desk, throwing crisps into his mouth and shouting to King about some match; King is reading a statement sheet and saying ‘Yeah’ whenever O’Gorman pauses for breath. Winters and Healy are arguing about some witness who Healy wants to shake up a little and Winters thinks is a waste of time. Quigley is working his way through one of the filing cabinets, wearing a put-out look on his flabby puss and slamming the drawers harder than he needs to; next to the filing cabinet, McCann is hunched over his desk, shuffling paper and flinching at every slam – he looks like he’s got a bastard of a hangover, but the permanent eyebags and five o’clock shadow mean he mostly looks like that anyway. O’Neill has his phone pressed to one ear and a finger stuck in the other. Beside Steve’s and my desks, two guys who have to be our floaters are leaning awkwardly on whatever they can find, trying to look at home and stay out of the way and laugh at one of Roche’s pointless stories, hoping he’ll remember next time he needs someone to do his scut work.