Richie let out a snort of laughter. I said, “What’s funny there?”

“Nothing. Just … I figured something a bit more posh. A teacher at a private school, like; geography, maybe. Now that you say it, though, it makes sense.”

“Should I take that as a compliment?”

Richie didn’t answer. He shoved another Hobnob in his mouth and rubbed crumbs off his fingers, but I could feel him thinking. After a while he said, “What you said at the scene the other day: how you don’t get killed unless you go looking for it. Bad things mostly happen to bad people. That’s a luxury, thinking that. D’you know what I mean?”

I pushed away the nudge of something more painful than irritation. “Can’t say I do, old son. In my experience—and I don’t want to rub this in your face, but I’ve had more of that than you have—what you get out of life is mostly what you planted. Not always, no, but mostly. If you think you’re a success, you will be a success; if you think you deserve nothing but crap, you’ll get nothing but crap. Your inner reality shapes your outer one, every day of your life. Do you follow me?”

Richie watched the warm yellow lights of the kitchen below us. He said, “I don’t know what my dad does; he wasn’t around.” He said it matter-
of-factly, like it was something he had had to say too many times before. “I grew up in the flats—probably you knew that already. I saw loads of bad stuff happen to people who never asked for it. Loads.”

I said, “And here you are. A detective on a top squad, doing the job you always wanted, working the biggest case of the year and damn close to a solve. Wherever you come from, that counts as success. I think you’re proving my point here.”

Richie didn’t turn his head. “I’d say Pat Spain thought the same way as you.”

“Maybe he did. So?”

“So he still lost his job. Worked his arse off, thought positive, did everything right, ended up on the dole. How did he plant that?”

“That was unfair as all hell, and I’ll be the first to say it shouldn’t have happened. But come on: there’s a recession on. Exceptional circumstances.”

Richie shook his head. “Sometimes bad things just happen,” he said.

The sky was rich with stars; it had been years since I had seen so many. Behind us, the sound of the sea and the sound of wind sweeping the long grass fused into one long soothing caress down the back of the night. I said, “You can’t think that way. Whether it’s true or not. You have to believe that somewhere along the way, somehow, most people get what they deserve.”

“Or … ?”

“Or how do you get up in the morning? Believing in cause and effect isn’t a luxury. It’s an essential, like calcium, or iron: you can go without it for a while, but in the end you’ll start eating yourself up from inside. You’re right: every now and then, life isn’t fair. That’s where we come in. That’s what we’re for. We get in there and we fix it.”