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She knew something wasn’t kosher, but she couldn’t push it any further in the face of Steve’s stonewalling. And Steve, as soon as she was out of earshot again, gave up the unequal struggle. He sat down opposite me, giving me a venomous look.

‘How long ago did you talk to Kenny?’ I asked him, feeling in no mood for small talk.

‘You mean before your brother killed him?’ Steve shot back, his voice sinking to the lower limit of audibility.

‘I just mean how long ago, Steve. Give me straight answers and you’ll get me out of your life a lot faster.

‘Months ago. A year, almost. We don’t talk.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Why do you think?’ Steve’s tone was sharp.

‘Because you’re trying to become a lawyer, and everyone else in your family is a petty crook with a rap sheet as long as a nun’s nightie?’

‘There you go.’

‘But you knew who Kenny was shacking up with, right? Up until a couple of years back? The big love of his life, until she left him for a builder’s merchant with a moped?’

‘Anita Yeats.’ Steve spat out the name as though it was something poisonous that he’d almost swallowed.

‘Exactly. How did that happen, Steve? How did the star-crossed lovers meet up again so far from home?’

‘How the fuck should I know, Castor? And why the fuck should I care? Kenny always had a thing about her. I wouldn’t have put it past him to go looking for her. Or pay someone else to. He couldn’t be made to see sense on that subject. Anita Yeats was a frigging bike, and he talked about her like she was the Blessed Virgin.

‘Couldn’t be made to see sense?’ I echoed. ‘Did you try? Was that something you talked about a lot?’

Steve rolled his eyes, shrugged in exasperation. ‘We didn’t talk about anything a lot!’ he said. ‘He was two hundred miles away, Castor, and we didn’t have a blind bastard thing in common to start with. If we talked once a year, it was all we did.’

‘But you had strong opinions about Anita, obviously,’ I observed. ‘You didn’t think your brother should be taking up with her.

"Steve shook his head. ‘Not just Kenny,’ he said. ‘Anyone. Fucking psycho-bitch from Hell! You know what she did to him with that bit of steel. And anyway she wasn’t worth picking up off the street. She was a scissor-reflex slut, like all the women in her family. Getting herself knocked up before she was twenty, then carting the kid around with her from pillar to post while she was looking for another shag!’

Steve’s face twisted with distaste.