I have the hang of him enough to know when he wants to say something, anyway. I say, ‘What.’

‘Don’t let the gaffer get to you.’

I glance across: Steve is watching me, steady-eyed. ‘You telling me I’m being oversensitive? Seriously?’

‘It’s not the end of the world if he thinks we need to get better with witnesses.’

I whip down a side street at double the speed limit, but Steve knows my driving well enough that he doesn’t tense up. I’m the one gritting my teeth. ‘Yeah, it bloody well is. Oversensitive would be if I cared what Breslin or whoever thinks of our witness technique, which I don’t give a damn about. But if O’Kelly thinks we can’t handle ourselves, then we’re going to keep getting these bullshit nothing cases, and we’re going to keep having some tosser looking over our shoulders. You don’t have a problem with that?’

Steve shrugs. ‘Breslin’s just backup. It’s still our case.’

‘We don’t need backup. We need to be left the fuck alone to do our job.’

‘We will be. Sooner or later.’

‘Yeah? When?’

Steve doesn’t answer that, obviously. I slow down – the Kadett handles like a shopping trolley. Stoneybatter is getting its Sunday morning underway: runners pounding along the footpaths, pissed-off teenagers dragging dogs and brooding over the unfairness of it all, a girl in clubbing gear wandering home with goosebumps on her legs and her shoes in her hand.

I say, ‘I’m not gonna take this much longer.’

Burnout happens. It happens more in the squads like Vice and Drugs, where the same vile shite keeps coming at you every day and nothing you do makes any difference: you burst your bollix making your case and the same girls keep on getting pimped out, just by a new scumbag; the same junkies keep on buying the same gear, just from a new drug lord. You plug one hole, the shite bursts through in a new place and just keeps on pouring. That gets to people. In Murder, if you put someone away, anyone else he would’ve killed stays alive. You’re fighting one killer at a time, instead of the whole worst side of human nature, and you can beat one killer. People last, in Murder. Last their whole careers.

In any squad, people last a lot longer than two years.

My two years have been special. The cases aren’t a problem – I could take back-to-back cannibals and kid-killers, never miss a wink of sleep. Like I said, you can beat one killer. Beating your own squad is a whole other thing.

Steve has the hang of me enough to know when I’m not just blowing off steam. After a second he asks, ‘What would you do instead? Transfer back to Missing Persons?’

‘Nah. Fuck that.’ I don’t go backwards. ‘One of my mates from school, he’s a partner in a security agency. The big stuff, bodyguards for high flyers, international; not nabbing shoplifters at Penney’s. He says, any time I want a job . . .’