I say, to Steve, ‘So thick gloves, probably. Meaning he might not have wrecked his hand, at least not enough to be visible.’

‘Meaning you’ve picked up your suspect,’ Sophie says. ‘And his hands are fine.’

‘Yeah. The dinner-date guy.’

‘Did you get whatever gloves he was wearing last night? Because if your killer wore gloves, he’s got the vic’s blood all over the right-hand one. Even if he cleaned it. That shit sticks around.’

‘Today he’s wearing grey nylon ones. They look clean, but we’ll get them down to you for testing, and if we get a search warrant we’ll send you any others out of his place, but I bet we’re out of luck there too. He probably dumped last night’s ones on his way home.’ I’ve got one eye on Fallon. He’s given up trying to get a handle on his surroundings and is sitting still, gazing down at his hands and taking deep breaths. He looks like he might be doing some kind of meditation thing. I give the glass a quick smack, put a stop to that shite. ‘Anything else we should know, before we start in on him?’

Sophie blows out an exasperated breath. ‘Not a lot. Most of this morning was a waste of our fucking time. The only solid thing we’ve got is three black wool fibres off the vic’s dress: two on the left side of the chest, one on the left side of the skirt. They don’t match anything she was wearing, obviously, and she doesn’t have a black coat, so it’s not like she popped out to the shops for something and got transfer from that. She could’ve thrown on a jumper to protect the dress while she was cooking, but we checked the bedroom and no black jumpers or cardigans.’ She’s keeping her voice down; someone is outside Aislinn’s place, maybe just the kids, maybe reporters. ‘So I’m thinking the fibres are transfer off your guy, from when he hugged her hello or grabbed her or whatever. Check if he owns a black wool coat.’

‘He came in wearing one.’ I glance at Steve, who shrugs: every other guy in Dublin owns a black wool overcoat. ‘We’ll send it over to you. Nice one, Sophie. Thanks.’

‘No problem. I’m going to head; there’s some baby reporter hanging over the tape trying to listen in. You want me to tell him we suspect ninja assassins?’

‘Go on, make his day. Talk soon.’

‘Hang on,’ Steve says, leaning in over the phone. ‘Hiya; it’s Moran. Can you process the bedroom? And the bathroom?’

‘Wow, brilliant idea. What did you think we were going to do with them? Spray-paint them?’

‘I mean places that probably wouldn’t have been touched last night, but might have been last time the vic had a fella staying over. The headboard, inside the bedside table, the underside of the toilet seat. And can you do the mattress for body fluids?’

‘Huh,’ Sophie says. ‘You looking at exes?’