Ronan turned, and his face rearranged itself into relief, and he came toward me with his arms half-open.

I noticed, in the flat clinical way my training had switched on, that there was not a mark on him.

He was claiming that a seventy-one-year-old woman had swung a heavy iron poker at his head with enough force that he’d feared for his life.

A man who has genuinely fended off a blow like that shows it — a raised arm, a scrape, a torn cuff, the small disarray of someone who has actually been in a fight.

Ronan had none of it.

His shirt was tucked.