I swivel my chair back around to face Steve.

He says, ‘Maybe whoever ran the search isn’t on shift. Or . . .’ He does some noncommittal thing with his head.

‘Or maybe he wouldn’t give me the steam off his piss if I was dying of thirst. I know.’ I hate when Steve gets tactful. ‘Or else it was a personal one, on the QT.’

It happens, a lot. You don’t like the cut of the young fella your daughter brought home, or the couple who viewed your rental flat: you run them through the computer, see if anything pops up. We’ve all done it – my ma wasn’t happy about her new neighbour, who did turn out to be a smackhead but at least not a dealer, and he moved out a few weeks later anyway, believe me – and anyone who gets outraged over it needs to get out more, but the fact is it’s illegal. If someone’s cousin was thinking of hiring Aislinn, or if someone’s parents were thinking of asking the nice young lady next door to mind their spare key, all it would take is thirty seconds on the computer; just doing a harmless favour, no reason anyone should ever know. Now that she’s a murder victim, though, anyone who’s been running illegal checks on her is gonna get a bollocking from the gaffer and lose a couple of days’ holiday, minimum. No wonder no one’s jumping to put his hand up.

Steve says, lower, ‘Or else it was on the QT, but it wasn’t personal. That would fit with the gang thing. Say someone from Organised Crime wants to check her out without his squad knowing about it, for whatever reason, so he gets a mate in Murder to do it for him . . .’

I have trouble seeing a way that one could be harmless. The room feels tricky, twisted: corners warping out of shape, shadows flexing. I say, ‘And the mate’s never gonna tell us about it.’

Steve says, even lower, ‘I know a fella in Computer Crime. He should be able to find out what computer the request came from.’

‘What computer. Not who was using it. If we had individual logins, instead of this one-squad-one-password shite—’

‘You want me to get onto him anyway?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Not yet.’ Everyone’s gone back to their conversations or their paperwork; no one is even looking at us. All the same, I wish I’d kept my big mouth shut.