Richie didn’t answer. His head was down and he was running a fingernail over the table in tense, invisible geometric patterns—I remembered him doodling on the window of the observation room, like it had been a long, long time ago. After a moment he asked, “So what are you planning on doing? Just hand in that envelope to the evidence room like nothing ever happened, take it from there?”

You, not we. I said, “Even if that was how I roll, I don’t have the option. When Dina got here this morning, I wasn’t in yet. She gave this to Quigley instead.”

Richie stared. He said, like the breath had been punched out of him, “Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah: oh, fuck. Believe me, Quigley’s got no intention of letting this slide. What did I say to you, just a couple of days ago? Quigley would love a chance to throw the pair of us under a bus. Don’t play into his hands.”

He had gone even whiter. Some sadistic part of me, creeping out of its dark storeroom because I had no energy left to keep it locked away, was loving the sight of him. He asked, “What do we do?”

His voice shook. His palms were upturned towards me, like I was the shining hero who could fix this hideous mess, make it all go away. I said, “We don’t do anything. You go home.”

Richie watched me, uncertain, trying to work out what I meant. The cold room had him shivering in his shirtsleeves, but he didn’t seem to notice. I said, “Get your things and go home. Stay there till I tell you to come back in. You can use the time to think about how you’ll justify your actions to the Super, if you want, although I doubt it’ll make much difference.”

“What are you going to do?”

I stood up, leaning my weight on the table like an old man. “That’s not your problem.”

After a moment, Richie asked, “What’ll happen to me?”

It was one small thing to his credit, that this was the first time he had asked. I said, “You’ll be reverted back to uniform. You’ll stay there.”

I was still staring down at my hands planted on the table, but in my peripheral vision I could see him nodding, repetitive meaningless nods, trying to take in everything that that meant. I said, “You were right. We worked well together. We would have made good partners.”

“Yeah,” Richie said. The tide of grief in his voice almost rocked me on my feet. “We would.”

He picked up his sheaf of reports and got up, but he didn’t move towards the door. I didn’t look up. After a minute he said, “I want to apologize. I know that counts for fuck-all, at this stage, but still: I’m really, really sorry. For everything.”

I said, “Go home.”

I kept staring at my hands, till they slipped out of focus and turned into strange white things crouched on the table, deformed and maggoty, waiting to pounce. Finally I heard the door close. The light raked at me from every direction, ricocheted off the envelope’s plastic window to spike at my eyes. I had never been in a room that felt so savagely bright, or so empty.