Richie had demolished half the sandwiches and was rolling a piece of tinfoil into a ball between his palms. He said, “Can I ask something?”

He practically raised his hand. It made me feel like I was sprouting gray hair and bifocals all over. I said, hearing the stuffy note in my voice, “You don’t need to ask my permission, Richie. That’s part of my job, answering any questions you’ve got.”

“Right,” Richie said. “Then I was wondering how come we’re here.”

“On this earth?”

He didn’t know whether he was supposed to laugh. “No, I mean … Like, here. Doing the stakeout.”

“You’d rather be at home in bed?”

“No! I’m grand where I am; nowhere I’d rather be. I only wondered. Just … it doesn’t make any difference who’s here, does it? If our fella shows, he shows; anyone can bring him in. I would’ve expected you to … I don’t know. Delegate.”

I said, “It probably won’t make any difference to the arrest, no. But it might make a difference to what comes next. If you’re the one who puts the cuffs on your guy, it gets the relationship off on the right foot: shows him who’s his daddy now, straight from the off. In an ideal world, I’d always be the one who made the collar.”

“You’re not, but. Not every time.”

“I’m not magic, my friend. I can’t be everywhere. Sometimes I have to give someone else a chance.”

Richie said, “Not this time, but. No one else’s getting a look-in on this one till we both get tired enough that we fall over. Amn’t I right?”

The grin in his voice felt good, the solid taking it for granted that we were in this together. “Right,” I said. “And I’ve got enough caffeine tabs to last us a while.”

“Is it because it’s kids?”

The grin had faded. “No,” I said. “If it were just the kids, then it’d be no big deal to let some floater take our guy down. But I want to be the one who gets the man who killed Pat Spain.”

Richie waited, watching me. When I left it there, he said, “How come?”

Maybe it was my cracking knees and the stiffness in my neck as I had pulled myself up the scaffolding, the dragging sense that I was moving towards old and tired; maybe that was what made me all of a sudden want to know what the other lads talk about, into the long tedious nights, that brings them into the squad room the next day walking in step, making shared decisions with just a tilt of the head or a lift of an eyebrow. Maybe it was those moments, over the past couple of days, when I had caught myself feeling like I wasn’t just showing a rookie the ropes; when it had felt like Richie and I were working together, side by side. Maybe it was that treacherous sea smell, eroding all my why-nots to shifting sand. Maybe it was just fatigue. “Tell me this,” I said. “What do you think would have happened if our guy had been just a little better at what he did? Cleaned up this place before he went hunting, got rid of his footprints, left the weapons on the scene?”