Steve said it days ago: Breslin is used to being the good guy, any story that gets room in his head has to grow out of that beginning. It’s not just Breslin. All of us Ds know, certain sure, we’re the good guys. Without that to stand on, there isn’t a way through the parts of this job that are dark dripping hell. Breslin the bent cop, McCann the bent cop, those we could picture. There are cops who’ll go that way, always have been; hazard of the job. But a killer cop, one of our own transformed into the thing we spend our lives trying to bring down, that’s different. That wrenches the world inside out. Even me, and I’ve got years’ worth of reasons to know that the police aren’t always good guys: when it was there in front of my face, my eyes weren’t able to see it.

Breslin and McCann at the top of the stairs, muttering about how urgently they needed this case nailed shut: a kid could have seen why. It never came near my mind.

Maybe Breslin really did believe McCann, when he rang out of the night with a story that was just barely plausible, and not just because he needed to be the noble white knight. Maybe he believed it because when the other possibility came into his mind, the only thing his mind could do was spit it out and leap away.

‘Maybe not.’ Steve is staring blankly at the place where Breslin was. ‘Even if we had, it would’ve probably made no difference. It’s not like there’s extra evidence we could’ve got our hands on. We’d be banjaxed anyway.’

It would have made a difference, but. All the ways it would have made all the difference hang in my head, weaving together into one thick dark curtain. I haven’t got a way to put it into words: what might be gone for good behind its slow sway; what these few days might have changed, if only we’d seen.

I say, ‘I’m not done.’ I get my phone out and I start skimming through my contacts.

Steve’s eyes move to me, dark and doubtful. ‘We’re not going to get him. What Breslin said, it sucks but he’s right.’

‘I know.’

He starts to say something else, but I lift a finger: the phone’s ringing. ‘Louis Crowley,’ says Creepy Crowley suspiciously. The background noise sounds like he’s in a pub.

‘Howya,’ I say. ‘Antoinette Conway, Murder squad. I need to talk to you. Like, now. Where are you?’

I throw in a good pinch of suppressed desperation, to get him drooling, and it works. ‘Hmm,’ Crowley says. ‘I’m not sure I have the time.’

‘Come on. You won’t regret it.’