It was overheated and buzzing, floaters taking calls, updating the whiteboard, drinking coffee and laughing at a dirty joke and having some kind of debate about blood-spatter patterns. All the energy made me dizzy. I picked my way through it feeling like my legs might go at any second.

Richie was at his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, messing around with report sheets and not seeing them. I threw my sodden coat over the back of my chair, leaned over to him and said quietly, “We’re going to collect a few pieces of paper each and leave the room, like we’re in a hurry, but without making a big deal of it. Let’s go.”

He stared for a second. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked like shit. Then he nodded, picked up a handful of reports and pushed back his chair.

There’s an interview room, down at the far end of the top-floor corridor, that we never use unless we have to. The heating doesn’t work—even in the heart of summer the room feels chilled, subterranean—and something wrong with the wiring means that the strip lights give off a raw, eye-splitting blaze and burn out every week or two. We went there.

Richie closed the door behind us. He stayed beside it, sheaf of pointless paper hanging forgotten from one hand, eyes skittery as a corner boy’s. That was what he looked like: some malnourished scumbag hunched against a graffitied wall, standing lookout for small-time dealers in exchange for a fix. I had been beginning to think of this man as my partner. His skinny shoulder braced against mine had begun to feel like something that belonged. The feeling had been a good one, a warm one. Both of us made me sick.

I took the evidence bag out of my pocket and put it down on the table.

Richie bit down on both his lips, but he didn’t flinch or startle. The last scatter of hope blew out of me. He had been expecting this.

The silence went on forever. Probably Richie thought I was using it to bear down on him, the way I would have with a suspect. I felt as if the air of the room had turned crystalline, brittle, and when I spoke it would shatter into a million razor-edged shards and rain down on our heads, slice us both to rags.

Finally I said, “A woman handed it in this morning. The description matches my sister.”

That hit Richie. His head snapped up and he stared at me, sick-faced and forgetting to breathe. I said, “I’d like to know how the fuck she got her hands on this.”

“Your sister?”

“The woman you saw waiting for me outside here, on Tuesday night.”

“I didn’t know she was your sister. You never said.”

“And I didn’t know it was any of your business. How did she get hold of this?”

Richie slumped back against the door and ran a hand across his mouth. “She showed up at my gaff,” he said, without looking at me. “Last night.”