Breslin lets the exasperation go up a notch. ‘Open about what? There’s nothing else here, Moran. There’s our boy Fallon, there’s a shitload of circumstantial evidence all pointing straight at him, and that’s it. What are you being open-minded about? Aliens? The CIA?’

Steve pulls his arse up onto the rickety table, getting comfortable for the chats. I leave him to it. ‘Here’s the only thing,’ he says. ‘How’d the actual killing play out?’

‘What are you talking about? He punched her. She hit her head. She died. That’s how it played out.’

Steve thinks that over, brow furrowed – bit slow on the uptake, us skangers. ‘Why, but?’ he asks.

Breslin’s head goes back and he bares his teeth at the ceiling, halfway between a smile and a grimace. ‘Moran. Moran. Do I look like Poirot to you?’

‘Huh? . . . Not a lot.’

‘No. Because this isn’t Saturday evening in front of the telly with a nice cup of tea and a digestive biscuit, and so I don’t care about motive. I don’t. And neither should you. You ought to know that by now.’

Steve scratches at his nose. ‘You’re probably right, man. I’d say you are. It’s just I’m not seeing it. I like being able to see things in my head, know what I mean? Picture them, like.’ He frames his hands in front of his eyes, to make sure Breslin gets the concept of picturing something.

Breslin takes a deep breath and blows it out slowly, so we can see how much he’s putting into keeping his temper with us. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘OK. Let’s go ahead and spend some time picturing it.’

‘Thanks,’ Steve says, giving him a humble smile. ‘I appreciate that.’

‘Rory shows up with his shitty Tesco bouquet. Aislinn, who clearly wasn’t the shitty Tesco type, isn’t happy. She gets snotty. Rory’s not having that – he’s been blowing his budget and rearranging his schedule and racing around Stoneybatter in the rain to make her happy, but that’s not good enough for Princess Special? He pulls out a Jane Austen quote about high-maintenance bitches, or prick-teases, or whatever literary types call girls like that. Aislinn slaps him down hard: she tells him exactly why he’s not good enough for her, including why she hasn’t let him into her knickers and why after this she never will. She goes one put-down too far, and bam.’ Breslin mimes a little punch, not bothering to put much into it. ‘And here we all are. Can you picture that OK? Yeah?’

‘That’d work, all right.’ Steve nods, picturing away. ‘Only you’d think the bouquet would get a bit messed up, like, in all the action. He’d drop it, or something. We didn’t find any petals on the floor.’