We stand in the courtyard, hands in our pockets, shoulders up against the cold. We’re not sure where to go from here; there’s no rule book, no ritual, to tell us what comes after a day like this one. Above us the Murder windows are lit and alert, ready for whatever tonight’s got in store. Somewhere up there O’Kelly and McCann are in an interview room, heads bent close, talking low and steady. Breslin is alone in the observation room, watching through the slow swell and ebb of his breath on the glass, not moving.

Steve says, ‘He was looking after us.’

He means the gaffer, sending us home. ‘I know,’ I say. It’ll be O’Kelly’s name on McCann’s statement sheet, O’Kelly’s name on the book of evidence that goes to the prosecutor. When we walk into the squad room tomorrow, we won’t be hissed out of it. Breslin will hate our guts, as long as he lives. The rest of them will watch O’Kelly, walking out of the building shoulder to shoulder with McCann to take him to booking, and understand.

Steve catches a sudden deep breath, blows it out again. ‘God,’ he says, and there’s a shake in his voice that he doesn’t bother trying to hide. ‘What a day.’

‘Look on the bright side. We’re never gonna have a worse week than this one.’

That pulls a helpless bark of laughter out of him. ‘You never know. We could get lucky: the Commissioner could get coked up and strangle a hooker.’

‘Fuck that. Someone else can work it. Just Quigley’s speed.’

Steve laughs again, but it’s gone fast. ‘The reason we didn’t see it from the start,’ he says, ‘is because we were thinking like cops. Both of us.’

He leaves it hanging there, like a question. He knows. Here I was so sure I was some secret-agent-level closed book, keeping my big plan all to myself. I watch our breath spread and fade on the air.

‘So,’ Steve says, squinting up at a shadow crossing one of the windows. ‘You putting in your papers?’

I can practically see the might-bes, bobbing like marsh lights over the cobblestones, skimming past the high windows, tricky and beckoning. Me in a suit that makes this one look like a binliner, striding through Harrods after some Saudi princess, one eye on her and the other on everything else. Me stretching out my legs in business class, checking exit routes in the hushed corridors of 24-carat hotels, lounging beside blinding blue sea with a cocktail in one hand and the other on the gun in my beach bag. All the might-have-beens, whirling in and out among the bars of the gate, and gone.

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘I hate paperwork.’

I swear Steve’s head falls back with relief. ‘Jaysus,’ he says. ‘I was worried.’

I never saw that one coming. ‘Yeah?’