He sat them both down but didn’t offer them a drink, eschewing the charade of disingenuously genial host. No games; or at least, no easy ones. There was a deep sincerity about him, though it was not to be confused with solicitousness or empathy. It was the kind of sincerity with which a judge addressed the dock once the black cap had been placed on his head.

If Callahan told you he meant you harm, you would worry. That kind of sincerity.

‘You’re here about Jai McDiarmid,’ he said, soon as they had taken their seats. He was trying to steal Catherine’s thunder again, skipping past the formalities of pretending he had no idea what the police might possibly want to talk to him about. It was probably intended to surprise her, but Catherine took it as a vindication of her own strategy: he wanted them out of the place as quickly as he could.

‘Why would we want to talk to you about that?’ she replied, reciprocating his gambit by being the one pretending to be surprised.

‘You don’t, specifically. You want to talk to Gary. Jai was carrying on with Gary’s girlfriend behind his back. I’ll get him for you. He’s upstairs in the office.’

Callahan addressed her with no edge, no irritation or sarcasm. He spoke as though he had nothing whatsoever to fear from this investigation because it simply didn’t concern him. He gave off no hint of grudge or even the weariness that some men of his ilk displayed at enduring this mandatory occupational inconvenience.

He summoned a waitress with the subtlest of nods. The girl must have been in eyeshot the whole time, Callahan having seated himself in sight of the open door to the bar. The glass expanse of the dining area proper was a further remove from the private room, which occupied a space to the rear of the original property. There was even one of the little windows Catherine remembered from her childhood, though the tie-back curtains had long since been replaced with a trendy vertical blind. Callahan spoke softly to the girl and she walked away again, smartly but unhurried.

‘Did you know him?’ Catherine enquired.

Callahan nodded, eyes wide with that sincerity but unreadable as to whether he’d sincerely hated McDiarmid or sincerely wanted him dead. He wasn’t going to volunteer anything else.

‘What did you think of him? Did you have dealings? Cross swords?’

‘I didn’t know him personally. I knew what kind of man he was. I knew some of what he had done, and what he was said to have done.’

That was about as expansive as he was going to get, Catherine assumed. Even when he did offer a few words, they were unfailingly neutral, like his statements had already been lawyered before they came out of his mouth.