I didn’t breathe. I kept one eye on him and lifted a hand to catch Richie’s attention. When his head turned towards me, I pointed out the window and beckoned.

Richie crouched low and slid across the floor to the other side of my window like he was weightless. As he pressed his back against the wall, I saw his hand go to the butt of his gun.

Our man came down the road slowly, placing his feet carefully, his head turning to every tiny sound. There was nothing in his hands, no night-vision gear on his face; just him. In the gardens, the small glowing animals uncurled and bounded away from his approach. Radiant against that web of metal and concrete, he looked like the last man left on earth.

When he was one house away I put the goggles down, and that tall shining figure flicked to a huddle of black, trouble sliding down the night to land on your doorstep. I signaled to Richie and backed away from the window-hole, into the shadows. Richie eased himself into the far corner opposite me; for a moment I heard his fast breathing, till he caught it and stilled it. The first weight of our man’s hand on the metal bar sent a shiver vibrating all through the scaffolding, circling the house like a dark shimmer.

It grew as he climbed, a low thrumming like the pulse of a drum, and then it faded to silence. His head and shoulders appeared in the window, darker against dark. I saw his face turn to the corners, but the room was wide and the shadows hid us.

He swung in through the window with an ease that said he had done it a thousand times. The second his feet hit the floor and his body turned towards his lookout window, I came out of my corner and slammed into him from behind. He let out a hoarse shot of breath and staggered forward across the floor; I got an elbow around his neck, twisted his arm high behind his back with the other hand and slammed him up against a wall. The air went out of him in one sharp grunt. When his eyes opened, he was looking at Richie’s gun.

I said, “Police. Don’t move.”

Every muscle in his body was rigid; he felt like he was made of steel rods. I said, and my voice sounded cool and clipped and like someone else’s, “I’m going to handcuff you for everyone’s safety. Do you have anything on you that we should know about?”

He didn’t seem to hear me. I eased my hands off him, watching; he didn’t move, didn’t even flinch when I wrenched his wrists behind him and snapped the cuffs tight. Richie patted him down, fast and hard, tossing what he found into a small pile on the floor: a torch, a packet of tissues, a roll of mints. Wherever he had hidden his car, he had left his ID and his money and his keys with it. He had been traveling light, making sure there was nothing to give him away with even a clink.