The newcomers were fully visibly now, pram in front of the woman, and a girl, younger than the boy, struggling to keep up. As they walked slowly towards the outer door of the flats, the woman began searching in her handbag. Keys, Lance decided. His wife had never been able to find hers once she’d put them in her handbag, either. The man said something and the boy stepped forwards, trying to take hold of the pram. The man got there first, using his longer stride and height to take control. The look on the boy’s face was thunder.

Lance sat up to get a better look at them. The woman pulled a set of keys from her bag with a relieved half-smile. By then the man was laughing and ruffling the boy’s hair. The male was good-looking. Tall. And he was making an effort. A first-date kind of effort, Lance thought. Not a ‘just bumped into your neighbour’ kind of effort, or an ‘aren’t you a friend of …’ kind of effort. The wide grin was way too much for people who knew each other well.

Then they were at the door. The woman opened up, pushing the pram through, the girl following, but the boy stood in the doorway, something approaching a scowl on his face. Sirens disrupted the quiet evening at a distance and the man looked away into the distance at their source, just as Lance did. He wondered what he was doing there, if he was missing the real story, sat in his own little world, having convinced himself yet again to follow his gut.

The sirens got closer and still the boy didn’t cede the entranceway to the man. They were involved in quite a discussion and the boy’s face was sombre, questioning. The man’s smile held fast.

The siren grew closer and louder, but Lance told himself not to look away. He got the clear impression that the boy wasn’t happy. Then it broke. The boy smiled again, the man was allowed to pass into the building and the reflections from the streetlights drew a reflected curtain over the action happening behind the glass.

Opening a packet of crisps, Lance contemplated his life. Since teaming up with Luc Callanach, things had become both more exciting and more painful – and teaming up was a vast overstatement of his own importance – but it felt good to be doing real work again. His younger days as an investigative journalist had got him in no end of scrapes and he’d loved them all. His now ex-wife hadn’t shared his enthusiasm, nor been keen on the amount of time he’d spent travelling. So he’d compromised and settled down. Or maybe he’d just settled. Got lazy, to be brutally honest with himself. Now Callanach was out of the loop and Lance was stuck chasing hunches instead of cold, hard facts.