I knew from experience that backup wouldn’t sprint to my aid. They’d shuffle, inch by inch through the empty house, knowing the backdoor was covered. You’d have to be an idiot to run blindly down the hallway. You might get axed by a strung-out de facto or knifed by a nervous hooker.

The suspect leaned his forehead on the tip of the barrel. In the flesh, he looked twenty years younger than the man I’d briefly studied in photos. The camera didn’t love him.

A patent blue flannelette shirt had large patches of wet mud covering one side of his narrow chest and left hip. Knees were digging into the puddle. His hands and arms shook, loose sleeves slipping down his forearm to his bent elbows.

That was when time slowed unbearably.

I’d been briefed before the raid and knew we weren’t dealing with a genius. The man shivering below me wasn’t a kingpin of the gene pool but you’d have to be truly idiotic to think a cop would shoot you to stop you shooting yourself. Sure, there’s a legal loophole—the fact that it’s illegal for you to kill yourself but I can do it for you if the circumstances are right—but that doesn’t hold in a real situation.

There was one other option.

“I could wing you,” I said, my voice trailing off and doing the lie a terrible disservice.

“From there?” he taunted, calling my bluff. “Before I could pull the trigger? Don’t be ridiculous.”

My expression must have conveyed my frustration and powerlessness.

The grey afternoon seemed to watch us, becoming oddly silent as the stalemate continued. Beyond the crooked fence, dry leaves skipped along the narrow laneway as a random gust blew forcefully through the neighbourhood on its way east. It felt like a god had been watching our suspenseful confrontation, holding its breath too long, and was suddenly forced to exhale. The roses leaned toward deep green leaves shaking wildly in the shadowed, unkempt garden.

“You are so close.” He grinned. “So f**king close.” “Like I said: I can wing you.”

Flashing a mocking smile at me, he looked disappointed. I’d failed to understand a more complex meaning. Confused enough to falter, the gun went limp in my hand but I managed to keep it pointed at him.

“He’s gotta die.” A tinge of sadness tainted his smile. “I can’t handle it. You’ll understand soon.”

“Who has to die?”

“Him: me?” He laughed, confused. “Who can tell anymore?”

He collapsed slightly and brought the gun down, catching his chin with it and propping his weary head up. “I wasn’t there when he did it,” he explained before suddenly changing his mind. “But I kind of was, you know?

I kind of watched.”

I just thought he was bat-shit crazy.

“You don’t know anything while they’re in control,”he explained in a perfectly level voice, “but you piece it together and then one day you accept it, and you know it was your hands that did it. Maybe not your mind, but your hands.”

He suddenly looked mortified as though he’d exposed a painful, repressed truth.

“You’re a Christian,” I suddenly guessed, no idea if I was right.

Even I thought it sounded like I was clutching at straws.

“Sure,” he said, immediately understanding my strategy and nodding as his chin pivoted on the gun barrel.

“You’ll go to hell,” I said.

This did appear to have an effect. Considering it, he swallowed hard and sombrely nodded in agreement.

“But it’ll be a different part of hell. I won’t have to stay with him. I won’t have to see him again.”

“What the f**k are you talking about? Are you saying there was someone else involved?”

Then the pathetic creature flopped, his elbows becoming too heavy, and his knees began to buckle. It set a time limit on the outcome of our conflict: he’d have to decide to either use the gun or drop it.

“You’ll know,” he said adamantly. ‘They’re close to you.” He frowned at the mud. “No, that’s not right. You’re getting closer to one of them. You’re a long way away right now but something will happen soon, and then you’ll be right on them—right on top of them.”

He laughed as though he’d stumbled onto a private joke— the way you amuse yourself sometimes by being cleverer than you’d intended—accidentally hilarious.

“What the f**k are you talking about, man?” I asked, feeling I’d lost the thread of the conversation. “If there’s someone else involved, and you pull that trigger before telling me, you better hope there’s no hell because I’m betting they’ll be reserving a f**ked-up little corner for you.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, staring at me, suddenly looking more lucid. “He dies with me. He doesn’t want you.”

I was surprised to feel fear. It was alien to me, and the acknowledgment of it fuelled more anxiety, turning the screws with a self-perpetuating tension.

“Who doesn’t want me?” I yelled, surprised by the volume of my voice.

With a sharp intake of air, his eyes grew wide and he seemed pleased. “He’s afraid of you.”

I frowned at him, too puzzled to find the right question.

After so many stretched seconds, the final moment seemed to overflow with data. The eyes that flicked up to meet mine had suddenly turned from docile to dangerous and the gun barrel had flipped.

The first shot I fired made it obvious I wouldn’t require a second bullet. It couldn’t have been more centred. His head suddenly tilted back robotically and light leaves behind him shook.

Disappointed, I watched his puckered dome flop forward into the mud. I wanted to know what he’d meant but I was too well trained to hold fire. Stuck in that position, his head worshipped the slush, hands either side with the tops wedged in, balancing his kneeling form.