When I think about the Spain case, from deep inside endless nights, this is the moment I remember. Everything else, every other slip and stumble along the way, could have been redeemed. This is the one I clench tight because of how sharp it slices. Cold still air, a weak ray of sun glowing on the wall outside the window, smell of stale bread and apples.

I knew Richie was lying to me. He had seen something, heard something, fitted a piece into place and caught a glimpse of some brand-new picture. It was my job to keep pushing until he came clean. I understand that; I understood it then, in that low-ceilinged flat with the dust prickling my hands and clogging the air. I understood—or I would have, if I had pulled myself together, through the fatigue and all the other things that are no excuse—that Richie was my responsibility.

I thought he had twigged something that proved once and for all that Conor was our man, and he wanted to nurse the sting to his pride in private for a little while. I thought something had pointed him towards a motive and he wanted to move a few steps further down that road, till he was sure, before he brought me with him. I thought of the other partners on the squad, the ones going strong after longer than most marriages: the deft balance with which they moved around each other; the trust as solid and practical as a coat or a mug, something never talked about because it was always in use.

I said, “Yeah. You could probably do with some more coffee, too; I know I could. Let’s get out of here.”

Richie tossed the last of Conor’s crap onto the sofa, picked up the big evidence bag that held the orange crate and brushed past me, pulling off a glove with his teeth. I heard him heaving the crate up the steps.

Before I switched off the light I took one last look around, scanning every inch for the mysterious thing that had blazed up at him out of nowhere. The flat was silent, sullen, already closing back in on itself and turning deserted again. There was nothing there.

12

Richie made a big effort, on the drive to Broken Harbor: keeping the chat going, telling me some long rueful story about when he was a uniform and had to deal with two ancient brothers beating the shite out of each other for some reason to do with sheep—the brothers were both deaf, their mountainy accents were too thick for Richie, no one had a clue what was going on and the story ended with them joining forces against the city boy and Richie leaving their house with a walking stick jabbing him in the arse. He was clowning it up, trying to keep the conversation on safe ground. I played along: minor uniform fuckups of my own, things a friend and I shouldn’t have got up to in training college, stuff with punch lines. It would have been a good drive, a good laugh, except for the slim shadow lying between us, dimming the windscreen, thickening whenever we left a silence.