Scorch twiddled his pen meditatively, watching the light move on the surface. “So no one would spot you,” he repeated. “Because no one knew the two of you were an item. Isn’t that what you said?”

“That’s right.”

“All this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Any particular reason for it?”

“Rosie’s father didn’t like me. He hit the roof when he first found out we were going out-that’s why we’d been keeping the relationship under wraps ever since. If we’d told him I wanted to take his little girl off to London, there would’ve been holy war. I figured it’d be easier to get forgiveness than permission.”

“Some things never change,” Scorch said, a little sourly. “Why didn’t he like you?”

“Because he’s got no taste,” I said, grinning. “How could anyone not love this face?”

He didn’t grin back. “Seriously.”

“You’d have to ask him. He didn’t share his thought process with me.”

“I will. Anyone else know what the two of you were planning?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. As far as I know, Rosie didn’t either.” Mandy was all mine. Scorcher could talk to her himself, and good luck to him; I would have enjoyed watching that one.

Scorcher looked over his notes, taking his time and sipping his pint. “Right,” he said eventually, clicking his fancy pen shut. “That should just about do it, for now.”

“See what your super thinks,” I said. There wasn’t a chance in hell he would talk to his super, but if I backed off too easily he would start wondering what kind of Plan B I had up my sleeve. “That lot might give him the warm fuzzies about a bit of collaboration.”

Scorch met my eyes, and for just half a second too long he didn’t blink. He was thinking what I had realized the instant I heard about that suitcase. The obvious suspect was the guy on the spot with motive and opportunity and not a sliver of an alibi, the guy waiting to meet Rosie Daly, the guy she had quite possibly been going to dump that night; the guy claiming, swear to God, Officer, that she never showed up.

Neither of us was about to be the first to put that on the table. “I’ll do my best,” Scorcher said. He tucked his notebook into his suit pocket. He wasn’t looking at me. “Thanks for that, Frank. I might need you to go over it with me again, at some stage.”

“No problem,” I said. “You know where to find me.”

He finished his pint in a long swallow. “And remember what I said to you. Think positive. Turn it around.”

“Scorch,” I said. “That mess your mates just hauled off used to be my girl. I thought she was across the water, living it up, happy as Larry. Forgive me if I’m having a hard time seeing the upside here.”

Scorcher sighed. “OK,” he said. “Fair enough. You want me to paint you a picture?”

“I can’t think of anything I’d love more.”

“You’ve got a good rep on the job, Frank, a great rep, except for one little thing: the word on the street is that you’ve got a tendency to fly solo. To-how will I put this?-to prioritize the rule book a tiny bit less than you should. That suitcase is exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about. And the brass like team players a whole lot better than flying aces. Mavericks are only cute when they’re Mel Gibson. If you handle yourself right during an investigation like this one, where you’re obviously under a lot of strain, if you show everyone that you can take a seat on the bench for the good of the team, then your stock could go up big-time. Think long term. Do you follow me?”

I gave him a big wide smile, so I wouldn’t punch him. “That’s one serious plate of mixed cliché salad, Scorcher. You’ll have to give me a while to digest it all.”

He eyed me for a moment; when he couldn’t read anything off my face, he shrugged. “Whatever. Just a word to the wise.” He stood up and settled the lapels of his jacket. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, making it sound just the subtlest shade like a warning, and then he picked up his poncified briefcase and strode out.

I had no intention of moving anytime soon. I already knew I was taking the rest of the weekend off. One reason was Scorcher. He and his Murder mates were going to spend the next couple of days bouncing around Faithful Place like a pack of Jack Russells on speed, snuffling in corners and poking their noses into people’s delicate zones and generally pissing everyone off. I needed to make it clear to the Place that I was nothing to do with them.

The second reason was Scorch again, just from a different angle. He appeared to be a teensy bit wary where I was concerned, and keeping out of his hair for twenty-four hours would go a long way towards keeping him out of mine. When you look at someone you knew when you were young, you always see the person you first met, and Scorch was still seeing a hair-trigger kid who did things fast or not at all. It wouldn’t occur to him that, while he was getting better at wrangling his ego, I might have been getting better at patience. If you want to hunt like a good little panting puppy dog, shooting off on the trail the second you’re let off the leash, you work Murder. If you want Undercover, and I always did, you learn to hunt the way big cats do: set up your ambush, stay low to the ground and move closer by hidden inches, for as long as it takes.

The third reason was presumably fuming in Dalkey, in a full-on strop with me. Sometime very soon I needed to deal with both her and, God help us all, Olivia, but a man has his limits. I don’t get drunk, but after the day I’d had, I felt I had every right to spend the evening discovering just how paralytic I could get before I fell over. I caught the barman’s eye and said, “I’ll have another.”

The pub had emptied out, probably in response to Scorcher. The barman wiped glasses and examined me across the counter, taking his time. After a while he nodded towards the door. “Friend of yours?”

I said, “That’s not the word I’d use.”

“Haven’t seen you in before.”

“Probably not.”

“You anything to the Mackeys up on Faithful Place?”

The eyes. “Long story,” I said.

“Ah,” the barman said, like he understood everything there was to know about me, “we’ve all got one of those,” and he slid a glass under the tap with a neat flourish.

The last time Rosie Daly and I touched was on a Friday, nine days before Zero Hour. Town was crisp and cold and packed that evening, all the Christmas lights on and the shoppers hurrying and the street hawkers selling wrapping paper five for a pound. I wasn’t a huge fan of Christmas in general-my ma’s crazy always hit its impressive annual peak at Christmas dinner, so did my da’s drinking, something always wound up broken and at least one person always wound up in tears-but that year it all felt unreal and glassy, right on the edge between enchanting and sinister: the shiny-haired private-school girls singing “Joy to the World” for charity were just a little too clean and blank-faced, the kids pressing their noses up against Switzer’s windows to stare at the fairy-tale scenes looked just a little too drugged on all that color and rhythm. I kept a hand in the pocket of my army parka as I headed through the crowds; that day of all days, the last thing I wanted was to get robbed.

Rosie and I always met in O’Neill’s on Pearse Street-it was a Trinity student pub, which meant the wanker count was a little high, but we didn’t stick out and there was no chance of running into anyone we knew. The Dalys thought Rosie was out with the girls; my family didn’t give a damn where I was. O’Neill’s is big, it was filling up fast and billowing with warmth and smoke and laughter, but I picked out Rosie right away by that burst of copper hair: leaning on the bar, saying something to make the barman grin. By the time she paid for our pints I had found us a table in a nice private corner.

“Little tosser,” she said, putting the pints on the table and nodding backwards at a clump of snickering students up at the bar. “Tried to look down my top when I leaned over.”