‘To me, too. But even if it was, that doesn’t say he’s innocent.’ Rory’s got his sodden tissue between finger and thumb and he’s looking around for somewhere to put it. He gives up and tucks it in his pocket. I say, ‘He might not have known he’d killed her. He throws the punch, she goes down, but when he checks her pulse or her breathing she’s still alive; so he turns off the cooker to make sure the place won’t burn down around her, and he legs it. He thinks she’s just got a concussion or whatever; he spends the night praying it’s knocked the memory right out of her head. And when he finds out she’s dead, and all of a sudden he’s staring down the barrel of a murder charge, he nearly shits himself.’

‘That’d play,’ Steve says.

‘When I came out of there, I would’ve put money on it. But now . . .’ Rory half-stands up, then sits down again, like standing might not be allowed. I say, ‘You?’

Steve runs a thumbnail along the ribbing of the plastic cup and watches Rory try to stay sitting. ‘The thing is, even if Rory is our guy, that doesn’t mean there’s no secret gangster boyfriend and Breslin’s clean.’ His voice goes down on that. We both glance automatically at the door: nothing. ‘Assume the boyfriend exists, right? Even if he did nothing to Aislinn, he isn’t going to want us sniffing around his business, checking his movements, telling his missus about his bit on the side . . . The second he finds out Aislinn’s dead – if he calls round to her for a quickie late last night, say – he’s going to put in a call to his guy on the inside and tell him to get it sorted, fast.’

‘And the slower we get it sorted,’ I say, ‘the longer we’ve got to find out if there’s something else going on.’ Just saying the words lifts my heart rate.

‘So we stall,’ Steve says.

‘Not stall. Breslin’s right, we don’t need a rep for getting nothing done. We’ll just take it nice and easy. Whatever’s going on here, I don’t want Rory back in till we know every single thing we can get about this case. If we go at him again, I want us going in with enough ammo to blow him away.’

Steve nods. ‘And right now?’

I check my watch: just under an hour till the case meeting. ‘Right now we take him through his story again, see if he’s got anything he wants to tell us, get his coat and gloves, try and convince him to let us go through his flat. Then we send him home and do this case meeting. After that—’

‘After that, we get some fucking sleep. I’m wrecked.’