‘Lafferty was a thirty-five-year-old father of three with no criminal connections, just a guy in the wrong pub at the wrong time who didn’t know who he was up against when he got into a drunken argument. McGroarty, though, had a younger brother, Charles, who has been known pretty much from birth as Chick. Which is a shame, as Charlie would have been a serendipitous choice of name for a Class A dealer specialising mainly in the eponymous. More significantly, Chick has in recent years mixed business with pleasure sufficiently to have ended up marrying Evelyn Cassidy, youngest sister of Michael, Gerard and, of course, Grant.’

‘Ooh, said the crowd,’ Catherine remarked, making a note. Beano grinned boyishly, appreciative of the pat on the head. She’d task someone to follow up his information later.

‘Now, what do we have on the timeline?’ she asked the room.

‘It’s coming into focus,’ said Laura. ‘Albeit by degrees. I talked to McDiarmid’s girlfriend, Arlene Ross. She was weeping up a storm – “How could this happen, why would anybody want to hurt my Jamie?” – in complete and utter denial about who he was. She was tearing into me for the polis harassing him in the past, telling me he was a legitimate businessman, making money’s not a crime, works all the hours, keeps a close eye on the salon and the taxi firm he owns, blah blah blah. In between bouts of greetin’ her eyes out and reapplying mascara, she gave us the last time she saw him, and his intended destination. He left just after ten, heading for the gym, goes there every day she said, and then to his tanning salon afterwards, which doesn’t normally open until twelve.’

With this, Laura gave a rather girlishly conspiratorial cue to DC Zoe Vernon.

‘I checked with the gym,’ said Zoe, ‘which has a swipe-card system, and according to their log, he’s only been in once in the past month, just under two weeks ago. I spoke to the manageress at the tanning salon, Lisa Bagan, and she told me he put his head around the door most days, but not yesterday. However …’

‘I also spoke to McDiarmid’s ex-wife,’ resumed Laura. ‘Paula Graham, her name is. I reckoned she wouldn’t be playing keeper of the flame. Sure enough, the scales have long since fallen from Paula’s eyes and she was a lot more forthcoming. She said it was true he’d been spending a lot of time at the tanning salon, but only because he was pumping the manageress.’