Below us, the light went on in Emma’s room—our Fiona, keeping things interesting. It turned the curtains a soft translucent pink, lit the silhouettes of little animals prancing across the cloth. Richie nodded down at the window. He said, “We’re not going to fix that.”

That morning in the morgue filled up his voice. “No,” I said. “That can’t be fixed. But at least we can make sure that the right people pay and the right people get a chance to move on. At least we can manage that much. I know we’re not saving the world. But we’re making it better.”

“You believe that?”

His upturned face, white and young in the moonlight: he so badly wanted me to be right. “Yeah,” I said. “I do. Maybe I’m naïve—I’ve been accused of that before, a couple of times—but I believe it. You’ll see what I mean. Wait till we get this guy. Wait till you go home that night and get into bed, knowing he’s behind bars and he’s going to stay there for three life sentences. See if the world you’re in then doesn’t feel like a better place than this one.”

Our Fiona opened Emma’s curtains and gazed out into the garden, a slight dark silhouette against the pink wallpaper. Richie watched her. He said, “I hope.”

The frail web of lights stretched across the estate had started to disintegrate, the bright threads of inhabited streets snapping into blackness. Richie rubbed his gloved hands together, blew into them. Our Fiona moved back and forth through the empty rooms, turning lights on and off, opening and closing curtains. The cold settled into the concrete of the hide, struck through the back of my coat into my spine.

The night went on and on. A handful of times, a noise—a long slither through the undergrowth below us, a burst of scrabbling and scuffling in the house across the road, a shrill wild squeal—had us on our feet and pressed back against walls, ready for action, before our minds understood that we had heard anything. Once the thermal goggles picked out a fox, luminous and poised in the road, head up, something small drooping from its mouth; another time they caught a sinuous streak of light whipping away through the gardens, between bricks and weeds. A few times we were too slow, caught nothing except the last rattle of pebbles, creepers swaying together, a vanishing flicker of white. Each time, it took longer before our heart rates eased to normal and we could sit down again. It was getting late. Our man was close by, tugged two ways and concentrating hard, deciding.

“I forgot,” Richie said suddenly, after one o’clock. “I brought these.” He leaned over to his sports bag and pulled out a set of binoculars in a black plastic case.

“Binoculars?” I held out my hand for them, opened the case to have a look. They looked low-end, and they weren’t from Supplies; the case still had that new-plastic smell. “Did you go out and buy those specially?”