‘Otherwise, a mess like this, a card could sit for days without getting noticed. No way to narrow it down.’ Conway let the seagull drop back into place, stepped back to take in the whole board again. ‘Your woman McKenna can yap on about safety valves all she wants. Me, I think this is fucked up.’

Hard to argue with that. I said, ‘We’re gonna have to check the lot.’

I saw her think it: ditch me with the scut work, go do the good stuff herself. She was the boss.

She said, ‘Quickest way would be to take them down as we go. That way we can’t miss any.’

‘We’ll never get them back right. You OK with the girls knowing we’ve been through them?’

‘Fuck’s sake,’ said Conway. ‘The whole case was like this. Fiddly pain-in-the-hole walking-on-eggshells bullshit. Better leave them where they are. You start from that side, I’ll take this one.’

It took us the guts of half an hour. We didn’t talk – lose your place in that tornado, you’d be banjaxed – but we worked well together, all the same. You can tell. The rhythms match up; the other person doesn’t start to annoy you just by existing. I’d been all ready to put in the work, make sure this went smooth as butter – straight back to Cold Cases for me, if I held Conway up or mouth-breathed into her ear – but there was no need. It was easy; effortless. Another surge of that lifting feeling I’d got on the stairs: your day, your luck, catch it if you can.

By the time we were finishing up, the good had gone out of that. I’d a taste in my mouth and a turn in my stomach like gone-off cider, fizzy and strong and wrong. Not because it was such bad stuff up there, it wasn’t; they were right, Conway and McKenna in their different ways, we were a long way from my old school. Someone had done a bit of shoplifting (box off a mascara, I stole this + I’m not sorry!!); someone was well pissed off with someone else (photo of a laxative packet, I wish I could put this in your stupid herbal tea). Nothing worse than that. A lot of it was sweet, even. A little young fella from the grin down, squeezing a worn-to-bits teddy: I miss my bear!! But this smile is worth it. Six bits of different-coloured ribbon twisted together in a tight knot, each trailing end sealed to the card with thumbprinted wax: Friends forever. Some was dead creative; art, near enough, better than you see in some galleries. One card was cut out in the shape of a window-frame full of snowflakes – fine as lace, must have taken hours; scraps of a girl’s face behind the frame, too snowed over to recognise, screaming. Tiny letters cut out of the edge: You all think you see the whole of me.

That there was what was giving me the off-cider feel. That gold air transparent enough to drink, those clear faces, that happy flood of chatter: I had liked all that. Loved it. And underneath it all, hidden away tight: this. Not just one messed-up exception, not just a handful. All of them.