Fallon is giving his meditation thing a second try. Breslin is either building the incident room from the ground up or else punishing us for keeping him waiting. While I’ve got my phone out: ‘One sec,’ I say, swiping the screen and moving away from Steve.

The afternoon edition of the Courier is out. Creepy Crowley has gone to town.

The front page yells, ‘POLICE BAFFLED BY BRUTAL MURDER’. Underneath are two photos. Aislinn, the recent version, wearing a tight orange dress and sparkly eyeshadow and laughing – looks like a Christmas-party shot that Crowley pulled off someone’s Facebook. The other one is me, ducking out from under the crime-scene tape, looking my finest: eyebags, hair coming down, fists coming up, and my mouth opening in a snarl that would scare a Rottweiler.

My jaw is clamped so tight it hurts. I scroll down, but the text is just titillation, glurge and outrage – stunning young woman, prime of life, details of her injuries not yet released; quote from a local about how Aislinn went to the shops for him when the footpaths were icy, quote from a local who isn’t going to feel safe in her own home until we do our jobs and get this b****** off the streets; a snide little dig about ‘Detective Antoinette Conway, who led the investigation into the still-unsolved murder of Michael Murnane in Ballymun last September’, to make it clear that I’m incompetent and/or don’t give a shite about working-class victims. Down the sidebar: Parents Panic over Playground Pervert, plus a splatter of snottiness at the County Council, who should apparently do something about the shite weather, and some celebrity gushing about quinoa and what a normal life her kids lead.

‘What?’ Steve asks.

I manage to unclamp my jaw. ‘Nothing.’

‘No. What?’

It’s not like I can keep him away from newspapers forever, and hiding it would look like I’m upset that I’m a hound in the photo, about which I don’t give one fun-size fuck. ‘Here,’ I say, and pass him the phone.

His eyebrows go up. ‘Ah, Jaysus.’ A second later: ‘Whoa. Jaysus.’

‘No shit,’ I say.