‘I remember a dinner I had with Gemma once,’ he said. His voice was still small, distressed. ‘It was for one of our anniversaries. I turned up late as usual. I was right in the middle of a case. I guess I was a mess, but I never saw it then. Anyway, I remember she left me at the restaurant because we got into an argument, but before she did, she said, “You’re a good man, Colm. There are lots of days when I loathe you, but you do the right things for the right reasons, and that’s more than a lot of people do.” She was talking about how the work would consume me. I didn’t think about it at the time – didn’t even consider it, really – but that was the moment.’ He sniffed, looked up at me. ‘That was the moment I should have walked away from the Met. All the shit I put her through, all the times I wasn’t there for her or the kids, and she still managed to tell me that. That was my exit, I can see that now. That was the universe I should be in. But I’m not. I stayed because I think, as weird as it sounds, my life at the Met made more sense than my life at home. I didn’t know how to handle teenagers, but I knew how to run a murder investigation.’

And that was why, when he was fired, when the central pillar of his life collapsed, when he ended up entirely alone, with no family and no work colleagues left to hear his cry for help, he had to start again as someone else. He’d had an idealistic notion of disappearing and becoming someone better, but the reality had long proved to be different. It was playing out in front of us tonight. I aided him in getting to this point, perjuring myself in front of the police in order to help him stay hidden, because I suppose, for a time, that same idealism had captivated me. I’d seen at first hand what he’d become and I wanted a better life for him, and I didn’t see how it could be any worse than it was. But this – this room, this wall full of paperwork, this concealed existence that meant even his walking outside to the car in the morning was a risk to us both – this was the reality of the life he’d chosen.

‘You did what you thought was best,’ I said.

‘Did I?’

His gaze was still on Leanne. She’d been gone over seven years now. Neither of us moved for a long time and then he looked up and I could see he’d finally given in, the control gone, the attempt to seem impassive: tears filled his eyes.