While I wasted time spouting military jargon and making hand signals, Tommy put his elbow through the window of the nearest car and twisted the ignition tumbler with his bayonet. Thirty seconds later we were safe in the ranks of the UN peacekeepers. And you can bet your grandma’s medical insurance that the first thing I did when my heart slowed down was learn how to start a car I don’t have papers for.

Different time, same strategy; I would make my getaway in Deacon’s car, bringing the evidence with me and leaving the detective without a ride.

I take the steps three at a time to the street, and it doesn’t take a genius to spot Deacon’s unmarked cruiser virtually abandoned in the vicinity of the kerb. For a start there’s a Police on Duty card on the dash. Then there’s the fact that I followed this crate around Cloisters on a bicycle not twelve hours since. But the major clue is the trail of blood leading from the popped trunk.

Smear, pool, smear is the pattern. Someone crawled, then rested, then crawled.

Goran’s alive, says Ghost Zeb in a Prince Vultan voice.

A cop leaking outside my apartment. Deacon will have me on death row for this.

I check the trunk to be certain that Goran isn’t in there, but the only thing I find is an In & Out Burger carton run aground on a metal ridge in the congealing crimson lake. No one with that much blood on the outside of their body is crawling very far.

‘What did you do, McEvoy?’

Deacon is beside me, her coat belted tightly at the waist. Pallor shines beneath her dark skin, like a ghost behind a window.

‘Not me,’ I say. ‘I just got here.’

Deacon jams her weapon into my kneecap, and I can see she’s got the hobble word on her mind again.

‘There are people on the street,’ I point out, but she’s beyond caring.

Enough of this.

I grab the gun and twist it clean out of Deacon’s hands. A move every doorman knows well.

‘Oh yeah?’ says the detective, and I glance down to see a small snub-nose tickling my kidney. Her ankle gun. Cobra .32 maybe.

This is insane. I need to eat something and sleep some more. A massage would be nice, and I hear body wraps are good.

It’s just gone sunrise and I’m wrestling a blue on the front porch.

‘You can’t just shoot me, Deacon.’

The detective shrugs. ‘Fuck it, McEvoy. I’m just staying alive until someone kills me.’

I know this fatalism well. There were nights in the Lebanon when death and life held more or less the same appeal.

‘We need to find Goran, Ronelle. It’s the only way out of the tunnel.’