THE TWO JUDGES sat on an enclosed veranda. The apartment at the end of the peninsula looked over the West River to a row of ugly factories on the Chinese side. This was the less fashionable side of Penha Hill, although when Judge Luis Oliviera moved to the apartment sixteen years earlier the all-night ferries from Hong Kong would dock at the wharf below. The view then had a certain charm. There were no factories across the river in those days, and no need for the security bars welded across his windows. Now all Macau’s manufacturing had moved across the border and he had to protect himself from the city’s only remaining industry – gambling and its criminal baggage. Civil servants in the higher echelons occupied mansions on the other side of the hill, which enjoyed the quieter view over the Pearl River. Quieter, until the recent massacre of the bay.

On this Tuesday Luis had invited his colleague Henriqué Gomes to lunch. They looked out through the bars.