No Breslin, but his overcoat is hanging over the back of his chair. He’s probably still sorting out the incident room and bitching to himself about being ordered around by the likes of me. I’m not worried: Breslin’s been at this game too long to get snotty when it’s not useful to him.

A few people glance up when me and Steve come in, then go back to whatever they’re doing. No one says howya. Neither do we. We head for our desks and the floaters. When I’m in the squad room I stride, fast and hard, to smack down the instinct to tiptoe along in case someone sticks a foot in front of me. No one has yet, but it feels like a matter of time.

‘Hey,’ I say to the floaters, who’ve straightened up and put on their alert faces. They’re both around our age: a gym rat already starting to go bald in front, and a fat blond guy trying for a tache that isn’t working out. ‘Conway, and this is Moran. Got something for us?’

‘Stanton,’ says the gym rat, doing a fake salute.

‘Deasy,’ says the fat one. ‘Yeah: we brought in your man Rory Fallon a few minutes ago.’

‘Poor bastard,’ says Roche from his corner, which reeks of aftershave and sticky keyboard. Roche is a big no-necker who went into this gig because the only way he can get a stiffy is by bullying people into tears, but he’s no fool: he knows exactly when to keep that instinct chained up and when to let it out for a run, and he gets results. ‘Will I tell him to go ahead and cut off his own balls, save himself some time and hassle?’

‘It’s not my fault my solve rate’s higher than yours, Roche,’ I tell him. ‘It’s because you’re a retard. Learn to live with it.’

The floaters look startled and try to hide it. Roche shoots me a bull-stare that I don’t bother noticing. ‘What’s the story on Fallon?’ I ask, dumping my satchel on my chair.

‘Twenty-nine, owns a bookshop in Ranelagh,’ says the fat guy. ‘Lives above the shop.’

‘With anyone?’

‘Nah. On his ownio.’

Which is a pisser: a flatmate would have been not only a nice witness to have, but also an obvious candidate for the guy who called it in. Steve asks, ‘Anything happen that we should know about, while you were sitting on his house?’

They look at each other, shake their heads. ‘Not a lot,’ says the gym rat. ‘He opened the front curtains around ten, in his pyjamas. No other visible movement. By the time we picked him up, he’d got dressed, but no shoes, so it didn’t look like he was planning on heading out.’

‘He’d had breakfast,’ says the fat guy. ‘Coffee and a fry-up, by the smell.’

Steve catches my eye. A guy punches his girlfriend to death, goes home and snuggles into his pyjamas for a nice bit of kip, gets up in the morning and stuffs his face with egg and sausage. It could happen; Fallon could have been dazed into autopilot, or a psychopath, or setting up his defence. Or.