William Fitzgerald is there when they teargas the mayor, just as he was there when they teargassed the mothers, just as he was there when the crowd was only a few dozen people and no one was paying attention. Not in the crowd, mind; well off to the side, an anonymous hunched shadow next to a trashcan, bearing witness, such as it is.

It’s been a lean few years for William Fitzgerald, his secrets worthless, his clients gone; the office is shut and he’s living in an unheated, windowless basement, sleeping on concrete. He’s desperate, and worse, he’s sober, too skint for even the six dollar scotch he prefers. He loathes the openness of this violence, but he is long familiar with the glee and the fear glittering behind the blunt snouts of the gas masks, the safety they think their power and anonymity give them. His fingers twitch with acquisitive fury.

He prowls behind them, a lion after hyenas, remembering faces, conversations, license plates, names. When they slip out in the grey light of morning, legs shaky from a night’s worth of license, he is there, another piece of litter blown against the sidewalk. When they go home, he is there, with his camera and a new little book, piecing together identities. What is hidden is valuable; what is buried must be unearthed.