Deacon dips a painted nail in the blood. ‘I put a full clip into her,’ she says, staring at her fingertip.

‘I carried a survivor out of a bomb crater once, and saw another guy killed by a bee sting. You never know.’

‘Jesus Christ, McEvoy,’ says Deacon, snapped out of it by my dime-store philosophising. ‘Bee sting? You on some kind of drugs? Any more crap about bees and I will put a slug into you.’

This is the Ronelle I am comfortable with.

The blood trail meanders across the street, along the kerb for a couple of gouts, then down a basement stairwell.

Deacon snatches her gun from my hand. ‘What do you think, Hawkeye? She at the bottom of the stairwell? Or maybe all that blood is from some guy with a bee sting.’

I am comfortable with this Ronelle; that’s not the same thing as happy.

A street sweeper trundles around the corner from Cruz Avenue, its twin revolving brushes scraping the surface of last night’s leftovers. We watch the bristles turn red as the sweeper ploughs heedlessly through Goran’s tracks. The driver’s forehead smudges the glass and he looks like he would need a defibrillator to get him noticing anything.

‘Christ,’ says Deacon, and I notice the blood on her bare legs.

We splash through the street sweeper’s backwash to the stairwell. Deacon swings herself around a lamppost, her coat balloons and I realise she has underwear and a shoulder holster on under there and nothing more.

Something occurs to me. ‘Careful, Detective.’

Too late. A bullet punches into the lamppost, sending a church bell bong along its shaft.

I pull Deacon away from the stairwell. ‘Did you bother to disarm your partner?’

‘She was dead. Why disarm her?’

Detective Deacon is the kind of person who would argue with St Peter.

‘Obviously she is not as dead as you thought.’

Deacon gets a two-handed grip on her automatic. ‘This is good. If I can take her alive, she can put me in the clear. Ish. The trunk bit could take some explaining.’

‘Call it in, then.’

‘With what? The spy radio in my panties?’

A mailman runs past us shouting into his radio, effectively doing the calling in for us. We have about three minutes before this place is swarming with police.

I lie on my stomach, wiggling my fingers at Deacon. ‘Gimme the Cobra.’

Deacon looks at me as though I’m asking her to donate a kidney. ‘Give you the what?’

‘You’ve read my file, Ronelle. This is what I do.’

Deacon slaps the gun against my chest like it’s a subpoena.

‘Make sure you shoot the right cop.’

I don’t respond. All this wisecracking is more exhausting than the gunplay.