In the Castle grounds the streetlamps are still on, but the city is lightening, barely, into something sort of like morning. It’s not raining – which is good: somewhere across the river there could be shoeprints waiting for us, or cigarette butts with DNA on them – but it’s freezing and damp, a fine haze haloing the lamps, the kind of damp that soaks in and settles till you feel like your bones are colder than the air around you. The early cafés are opening; the air smells of frying sausages and bus fumes. ‘You need to stop for coffee?’ I ask Steve.

He’s wrapping his scarf tighter. ‘Jaysus, no. The faster we get down there . . .’

He doesn’t finish, doesn’t have to. The faster we get to the scene, the more time we have before teacher’s best boy pops up to show us poor thick eejits how it’s done. I’m not even sure why I care, at this point, but it’s some kind of comfort to know Steve does too. We both have long legs, we both walk fast, and we concentrate on walking.

We’re headed for the car pool. It would be quicker to take my car or Steve’s, but you don’t do that, ever. Some neighbourhoods don’t like cops, and anyone who bottles my Audi TT is gonna lose a limb. And there are cases – you can never tell what ones in advance, not for definite – where driving up in your own car would mean giving a gang of lunatic thugs your home address. Next thing you know, your cat’s been tied to a brick, set on fire and thrown through your window.

I mostly drive. I’m a better driver than Steve, and a way worse passenger; me driving gets us both where we’re going in a much happier mood. In the car pool, I pick out the keys to a scraped-up white Opel Kadett. Stoneybatter is old Dublin, working class and never-worked class, mixed with handfuls of yuppies and artists who bought there during the boom because it was so wonderfully authentic, meaning because they couldn’t afford anywhere fancier. Sometimes you want a car that’s going to turn heads. Not this time.

‘Ah, shite,’ I say, swinging out of the garage and turning up the heat in the car. ‘I can’t ring Breslin now. Gotta drive.’

That gets Steve grinning. ‘Hate that. And I’ve got to read the call sheet. No point us arriving on the scene without a clue.’

I floor it through a yellow light, pull the call sheet out of my pocket and toss it to him. ‘Go on. Let’s hear the good news.’

He scans. ‘Call came in to Stoneybatter station at six minutes past five. Caller was a male, wouldn’t give his name. Private number.’ Meaning an amateur, if he thinks that’ll do him any good. The network will have that number for us within hours. ‘He said there was a woman injured at Number 26 Viking Gardens. The station officer asked what kind of injury, he said she’d fallen and hit her head. The station officer asked was she breathing; he said he didn’t know, but she looked bad. The uniform started telling him how to check her vitals, but he said, “Get an ambulance down there, fast,” and hung up.’