I say, ‘This is only a preliminary interview. I’m not looking for a confession; we can push for that once we’ve got forensics, post-mortem results, all the good stuff to throw at him.’ And once me and Steve have done enough private digging to know what we’re dealing with here. ‘Right now I’m just looking to put the outlines in place. What Rory’s like, what the relationship was like, his take on Aislinn, his story on last night. I want to know if he’ll admit to talking to anyone between eight last night and five this morning; if our guy didn’t call this in himself, he told someone who did, and we need that someone. I want his coat and his gloves – the techs got black wool fibres off the body, and they say our guy probably wore non-shedding gloves, which matches what Rory’s got in there; so if we can convince him to hand them over for testing and save us fucking around with a warrant, I’ll be a very happy camper. In a perfect world he’d let us go through his gaff and take any other coats and gloves we find, but I don’t want to get him uptight today, so if that doesn’t come easy, we’ll leave it and go the warrant route. OK?’

Breslin considers that. ‘Mm,’ he says. ‘OK; that’s one way to work it. The other way would be to try and knock this sucker on the head as fast as we can. I’m not saying I have any problem with being assigned to this case – that’s fine, happy to help out. I’m just saying I’ve put my other cases on hold to be here, and there’s a limit to how much time I want to put into a bog-standard domestic. I’m sure you guys feel the same. Am I right?’

I mainly feel he should shut his trap and do what the lead D tells him, but I catch the pop-eyed panic on Steve’s face. It makes me want to laugh, which takes me off the boil. ‘That’s a point,’ I say, pleasantly. ‘Let’s do this: for now, we’ll take it slow, like I was saying. As soon as I think we can afford to ramp it up, I promise I’ll give the word. Fair enough?’

Breslin doesn’t look pleased, but after a moment he shrugs. ‘Suit yourselves. In that case, can we get started while there’s still some of the shift left?’ And, when I straighten up off the table: ‘You might want to do something about that first, Detective. Unless it’s part of your cunning plan.’