‘The lads just need to see whether you can take the heat. And this?’ Breslin points at the one-way glass. ‘This is your chance to show them. I know all the silly shite has to have knocked your confidence, but if schoolkid crap can take you to the point where you don’t trust your own judgement enough to charge a slam-dunk like this one, maybe you’d be better off back in blue. Yeah, that sounds harsh’ – lifting a hand like one of us tried to break in, which we didn’t – ‘but it’s what you need to hear.’

I know better than to look at Steve. In the corner of my eye he’s still peacefully swinging his legs and drinking his water, but I can feel him knowing better than to look at me.

Breslin wants us to charge Rory Fallon. He wants it badly. It could be because he’s sick of babysitting the kindergarten case, wants to wind it up and go back to his pal McCann and their PhD-level fancy conspiracies and gang-boss shootings. Could be because he wants to shake himself in front of O’Kelly – It took those two a month to crack their last domestic, with me on board it takes them a day, now give my ego a hand job and put me up for promotion. Could be just that he’s so in the habit of arm-twisting, he can’t get through his day without that buzz. But.

I’ve been taking it for granted that whoever threw me to Crowley did it on the spur of the moment, for kicks, like whoever dropped my phone in my coffee back when I still left it on my desk. It didn’t occur to me, till this moment, that a lot more thought could have gone into it.

Creepy Crowley is whipping this case up into a big one, and someone is egging him on. If I fuck up spectacularly, like for example if I charge Fallon when there’s some great big chunk of exonerating evidence that somehow managed to vanish on its way to my desk, and if the papers somehow happen to get hold of the story, the whole country will explode with it. And there’ll be the excuse the squad’s gagging for: I’ll be gone.

In an interview, this is where I’d be on my feet, stopping the tape – Interview paused at 2.52 p.m., Detectives Conway and Moran leaving the interview room – and getting me and Steve the hell out of there. We need a chat, right now. I watch Breslin blandly and wait to see what comes next.