NEIL WHITE

Lost Souls

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Neil White 2008

Neil White asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9781847560186

Ebook Edition © 2008 ISBN: 9780007328987

Version: 2018-07-25

Dedication

To Alison

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-one

Chapter Thirty-two

Chapter Thirty-three

Chapter Thirty-four

Chapter Thirty-five

Chapter Thirty-six

Chapter Thirty-seven

Chapter Thirty-eight

Chapter Thirty-nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-one

Chapter Forty-two

Chapter Forty-three

Chapter Forty-four

Chapter Forty-five

Chapter Forty-six

Chapter Forty-seven

Chapter Forty-eight

Chapter Forty-nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-one

Chapter Fifty-two

Chapter Fifty-three

Chapter Fifty-four

Chapter Fifty-five

Chapter Fifty-six

Chapter Fifty-seven

Chapter Fifty-eight

Chapter Fifty-nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-one

Chapter Sixty-two

Chapter Sixty-three

Chapter Sixty-four

Chapter Sixty-five

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Works

About the Publisher

Chapter One

The old man turned away and closed his eyes, clamped his hands over his ears, but the images were still there, searing, sickening. He tried to shut them out, screwed up his eyes and started to pace. It was no good. He ended up where he started each time, next to her.

She was tied to a chair, her arms behind her back, her wrists strapped tightly to the thin spindles. Blood covered her face and painted her shirt in splatter patterns. He looked at his hands. They were sticky with her blood.

He closed his eyes again, but the sounds were harder to shut out. Wherever he paced, whenever he couldn’t see her, the noises were still there, like echoes, constant reminders.

He stopped to take some deep breaths. The woman he wanted to remember was the one he had known in life. She had been fun, vibrant, a face full of smiles. That was the image he wanted to keep, not the one in this room, her face a grotesque mask, nothing left of the person he’d known.

He couldn’t shake the image away. He had seen her face in life; and now he had seen it in death. And it was worse than that, because he had seen her die, her eyes wide open, in pain, in fear, the knife getting closer. She had known what lay ahead of her.

He started to walk around the room faster, tears running down his face. He clenched and unclenched his fingers, looked up and then covered his ears as he walked, as he tried to stifle the sounds that once again crashed through his head. He had heard her last word, forced out through clenched teeth. It had come out as a guttural moan, but he had known what it was. It was no. She had tried to say no.

He took a deep breath and stopped pacing. He turned to look at her. She was still the same. He put his head back and sobbed, and then he sank to his knees.

He stayed like that, rocking slightly as he sniffed back the last of his tears.

After a few minutes he stood up and slowly walked over to the chair. He put his hand on the woman’s cheek and gently stroked it, her skin soft under his fingers. But she felt cold. He leaned forward and kissed her on the top of her head.

‘I’m sorry, so very sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I tried to warn you. I really tried.’

The old man stepped away and looked down at his feet. He could feel the tears trickle down his cheeks, his skin parchment-thin, and as he touched them the blood washed away from his fingertips. He muttered a few words to himself, a private prayer, before reaching for the telephone.

‘Police please.’

He waited to be put through, and when he heard the voice at the other end of the line, he calmly said, ‘My name is Eric Randle, and I want to report a murder.’

Chapter Two

North or south, murders are the same.

DC Laura McGanity blew into her frozen hands and, just for a moment, dreamt of London. Two weeks earlier it had been her home, but already that seemed like a lifetime ago. She had only moved to Lancashire, a mere two hundred miles from the capital, but it felt like a foreign country as the frigid air blew in from the hills that surrounded the town. She paced along the yellow crime-scene tape and it snapped loudly as it blew in the early-morning wind. She shivered and wrapped her scarf tighter round herself.

It wasn’t just the weather that felt alien. It was the quietness. She was standing by an open-plan lawn in a neat suburban cul-de-sac, with the hills of the West Pennine Moors as a backdrop, painted silver as the rising sun caught the dew-coated grass, just the snap of the crime-scene tape to break her concentration. She missed the London lights, the buzz, even the noise. In comparison, Blackley was like a constant hush.

Laura had been brought up in the south and trained by the Met, but love had brought her north. She had arrived in a small town, concrete and graffiti replaced by moorland grasses and dry-stone walls. She knew she couldn’t afford a mistake. Her transfer north had been a risk, and she didn’t want to destroy her new career so soon. She had seen the looks in the eyes of the other officers in the station. Wariness. Suspicion. She was the girl from the big city, come to tell them their jobs.

She had to be alert now, because there was no time for distraction. With any murder the first twenty-four hours were the most important. After that, evidence on the killer could be lost. Fingernails got scrubbed, hair got cut, cars got burnt out.

She looked up just as Pete Dawson, the other detective at the scene, approached her. He was holding two steaming mugs of coffee.

‘You look like you need one of these,’ he said.

It seemed to Laura like he barked the words at her, the staccato speech patterns all new, the vowel sounds short and blunt. The London rhythm she was used to had more swagger, more bounce.

She smiled her thanks, and as she wrapped her hands around the mug she asked, ‘Where did you get them?’

He nodded over towards a house on the other side of the road, where Laura could just make out fingers on the edge of the net curtain, the light inside switched off so no one could tell that anyone was watching. ‘She’s been twitching those for half an hour now. I think she’s hoping for an update if she gives us drinks.’

‘Did you tell her anything?’

Pete shook his head. ‘I’m holding out for a fry-up. But be careful. These old mill girls can lip-read.’ When Laura looked at him, confused, he added, ‘So they could still talk over the noise of the machines.’

Laura smiled. She liked Pete. He was one of those necessary cops. Precise minds are great—those who can dissect complex frauds or see leads in cases that look like dead-ends—but sometimes you just need someone to kick down a door, or find a quick way to prise information out of someone. Laura reckoned Pete knew many quick ways. He looked one wrong word from hurting someone, all crew-cut, scowl and scruffy denims. He was normally with the drugs squad, more used to throwing dealers against walls than loitering around murder scenes.

She took a sip of the coffee and sighed. It was hot and strong, and she raised it in thanks to the parted curtains on the other side of the street.

‘You look like you expected more,’ Dawson said, nodding towards the crime-scene tape. ‘Not used to the quiet life yet?’

A week before, Laura might have thought he was having a dig, but she knew him better now. Pete’s smile softened his words and his eyes changed. They became brighter, warmer, and she sensed mischief in them.

But he was right, Laura had expected more activity, the usual commotion of lawns being combed by uniformed officers, or a squad of detectives knocking on doors. Today there was none of that. The body had been taken away, but the first two cops on the scene were still there, an ashen-faced probationer and a police officer not far off retirement. Scenes of Crime officers were inside, their white paper suits visible through the front window, but out in the street Laura felt like she was on sentry duty.

‘It doesn’t seem like the quiet life,’ she replied. ‘I moved north for a better life, and I get this,’ she nodded towards the house, ‘and in the middle of the abductions. It seems pretty dangerous around here.’

Pete shrugged. ‘It’s not always like this. Once we catch the bastard who has been taking those kids all summer, we’ll get more people to work cases like this.’

Laura looked back towards the house. ‘And are we any nearer to catching him?’

‘Every time there’s another one, we’re waiting for the mistake, the breakthrough.’ He shook his head. ‘He hasn’t made one yet.’

The abductions had been the big story in Blackley over the summer. The first one only rippled the nationals—everyone thought it was a runaway—but the next one confirmed a pattern and the media all came to town.

Children had been going missing all summer, snatched in the street. They disappeared for a week, sometimes longer. When they were found, they seemed unharmed, but there were things the eyes couldn’t see.

There had been seven of them so far, all boys: latchkey kids, early teens, cocky and street-sure. But that was a mask, protection from what they missed at home: love, security, attention. They came back with the mask slipped, and they seemed confused, frightened, days lost with no idea about where they’d been or what had happened to them. They’d thought they owned the streets, but now they realised how vulnerable they were, and that the world could be much crueller than they’d imagined.

They were found stumbling around, confused, lost, like they had just woken up. They were clothed, with no marks or injuries. They had to be examined intimately, just to check for a sexual motive, but there’d been nothing so far. They were sent home, back to the arms of their parents. The boys were all hugged a lot closer after that.

The eighth child was out there now, Connor Crabtree, with whoever was taking Blackley’s children. He had last been seen cadging cigarettes in a small car park behind a corner shop, accosting strangers as they went to buy milk or something. That had been six days ago, and no one had seen or heard of him since. The press were on standby, waiting for the inevitable return, something to report; the nation was gripped by the story. The press had even given the kidnapper a name: the Summer Snatcher.

Laura didn’t like the name—it sounded corny, no imagination—but she knew that it helped to keep the story in the news. It was more than just a story in Blackley, though. Everyone knew there would be more. Most parents had stopped their children going out, and the streets seemed quieter once it went dark. But the children being taken were the ones of parents who hadn’t listened, whose lives were too difficult to make room for their children.

There weren’t many clues. There were fibres on the boys, just tiny strands of cloth, from a blanket or something similar, but until they got the source they couldn’t get the match. The first two children had dust on their clothes when they were found, small specks of concrete and traces of asbestos, but nothing specific. The police in Blackley were following leads, just to be visible, but everyone knew they were waiting for the return of Connor Crabtree, hoping it would bring fresh evidence.

Laura shuddered as she thought about her own son, Bobby. Four years old, in a strange town and a long way from his real father. She blinked, felt her eyes itch, took a deep breath. It wasn’t meant to have turned out like this, but Bobby’s father had decided a long time ago that Laura wasn’t going to be the last woman he slept with. He’d left, and Laura had struggled on her own for a while, but when she had fallen in love again she was able to give Bobby a family life once more. But it was hard. She needed to be with Bobby in the mornings. She missed seeing his sleepy face, and she wanted to know that he needed her.

‘What’s your theory about the abductions?’ Laura asked.

Pete considered for a moment, his face thoughtful, his hands jammed into his pockets. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Could be a woman. You know, the kids are looked after and then given up again, some nurturing instinct satisfied.’ He smiled. ‘Not that they’d ever ask me anyway.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve spoken my mind too often.’

‘What do you think about this?’ she asked, nodding towards the murder scene.

He exhaled. ‘I don’t know. Some nutcase is the obvious guess, but there is one thing.’

‘Go on.’

‘The victim knew the killer. There was no break-in, no sign of a struggle anywhere else in the house. No one reported it until the old guy made the call.’

Laura knew there was some sense in what Pete said. This was no domestic or a burglary gone wrong. It was a sadistic execution. A young woman, Jess Goldie, small and frail, barely twenty-five years old, had been strapped to a chair and strangled with a cord. There were no signs of a fight, no evidence of sexual assault. There was just a chair in the middle of the room, a dining-room chair with strong wooden legs, and she was strapped into it, her wrists tightly bound with thin nylon rope.

But that wasn’t what had struck Laura when she first went into the house. It was something else, the sight that had caused the young probationary officer to spend the next hour sitting outside, gulping lungfuls of fresh air in between dry-heaving.

Whoever had killed this young woman had ripped out her tongue and gouged out her eyes.

Laura had methodically examined the scene. She was at work, a detective, so the shock stayed away, her mind too busy to process emotion. It would come to her later, she knew that, maybe when she was in bed or taking a bath, alone and vulnerable.

There was nothing to suggest a struggle, no defensive wounds to the hands, no ripped clothing. But then Laura spotted the marks ringed around the woman’s neck, as if the cord had been pulled many times over. It hadn’t been a quick kill. It had been dragged out, made to last.

She turned to Pete. ‘What did you make of the old boy who called it in?’

Pete stroked his cheeks thoughtfully. ‘Eric Randle? Hard to say. He didn’t look the sort, if there is such a thing, and the only blood on him looked like contact blood. No splashes or spray. But it’s all too neat for me.’

Laura was about to ask something else when she heard a car drive into the cul-de-sac. It pulled up in front of the house, and she watched as a small man in a sharp suit climbed out.

‘Oh great,’ Pete muttered. ‘Now it’s all going to turn to shit. Egan’s here.’

‘Egan?’

‘DI Egan,’ said Pete, his voice low and quiet. ‘Dermot Egan. We call him Dermot Ego. You’ll soon find out why.’

As she watched the figure walk towards the house, Laura sensed that he was right.

Chapter Three

Sam Nixon parked his car and looked out of the windscreen. He used to like sunrise—it made even Blackley look pretty—but the view had lost its charm years ago.

Sam’s office was in the middle of a line of Victorian bay fronts, with stone pillars in each doorway and gold-leaf letters on the windows, legacies of Blackley’s cotton-producing heyday. The town used to rumble with the sounds of clogs and mills, and the mill-owners’ money would end up in the pockets of the lawyers and accountants who spread themselves along this street. Blackley’s life as a Lancashire cotton town had ended a couple of decades earlier, but it was marked by its past like an old soldier by his tattoos.

Sam could see the canal that flowed past the end of the street. The towpath was overgrown with long Pennine grasses, and ripples in the water twinkled like starbursts as they caught the early-morning sun. The old wharf buildings were still there, three-storey stone blocks with large wooden canopies painted robin’s-egg blue that hung over the water, but they were converted into offices now. The sounds of a new day filled the car, the whistles of the morning birds as they swooped from roof to roof, the rustle of leaves and litter as they blew along the towpath. It was heritage Lancashire, lost industry repackaged as character.

But it was the only bright spot. The factories and mill buildings further along the canal were empty, stripped of their pipes and cables by thieves who traded them in for scrap, left to rot with broken windows and paint-splattered walls. Those that were bulldozed away were replaced by housing estates and retail parks.

Blackley was in a valley. A viaduct carried the railway between the hills, high millstone arches that cast shadows and echoed with the sound of the trains that rumbled towards the coast. Redbrick terraced streets ran up the hills around the town centre, steep and tight, the lines broken only by the domes and minarets of the local mosques, the luscious greens and coppers bright dots of colour in a drab Victorian grid.

Beyond those, Sam could see a cluster of tower blocks that overlooked the town centre, bruises of the sixties, dingy and grey, where the lifts reeked of piss and worse, and the landings were scattered with syringes. They had views to the edges of town, but everything looked bleak and wet from up there, whatever the weather.

Sam closed his eyes and sighed. He was a criminal lawyer in Blackley’s largest firm, Parsons & Co. As soon as he hit the office his day would be taken up by dead-beats, drunks, junkies and lowlifes, a daily trudge through the town’s debris. Criminal law was budget law, the most work for the least reward, so he had to put in long hours to keep the firm afloat. He started early and finished late, his day spent fighting hopeless causes in hostile courts, and most evenings wrecked by call-outs to the police station.

He used to enjoy it, the dirt, the grime. A legal service. A social service. Sometimes both, with a touch of court theatre, just the right phrase or the right question, maybe just a look, could mean guilty or not guilty, jail or no jail.

But then the job had worn him down. He had two children he hardly saw, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had hugged his wife.

And he was sleeping badly. He was staying up too late, and when he did finally fall asleep he woke up scared, bad dreams making the day start too soon. They were always the same: he was running through doorways, dark, endless, one after another, someone crying far away. Then he would be falling. He woke the same way each time: a jolt in bed and then bolt upright, drenched in sweat, his heart beating fast.

He opened his eyes and sighed. He rubbed his cheeks, tried to wake himself up. He couldn’t put it off any longer: he had to start the day.

His head was down as he walked towards his office and fumbled for the key. He had to put his briefcase down to search his pockets, and that’s when he saw him.

On the other side of the street was a man, stooped, old and shabbily dressed, his clothes hanging loose from his body. His hands were clutched to his sides as if he were stood to attention, and his eyes were fixed in a stare, unblinking, unwavering.

Sam felt uneasy. The courtroom usually protected him, shrouded in respect and court rules, but defence lawyers pissed people off. Victims, witnesses, sometimes just the moral majority. He felt himself grow nervous, checked his pocket for his phone, ready to call the police if a knife appeared. But the old man just stared at Sam, his face expressionless.

Sam eventually found his key. He took one last look into the street. The old man hadn’t moved. He was still watching him.

Sam made a mental note of the time and turned to go inside.

Chapter Four

As Egan walked towards them, Laura could sense his self-importance. He was jogger-trim, his nose tight and hooked, his hair bottle-dark and cut just too neatly, not a strand out of place. His white shirt was bright and crisp, to emphasise his suntan, she guessed, which seemed more salon than sunshine.

Pete smiled. ‘He’s going to be pissed off about this.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the last time I saw him he was at one of the press conferences for the abducted children, preening himself. There isn’t much airtime in this case, and he’ll want to get in and out quickly. He won’t give up a place on the podium for what might be just a bad domestic.’

Laura looked at Pete. ‘If he’s involved in the abduction cases, why doesn’t he stick with those?’

Pete looked at Laura and said under his breath, ‘I suspect it wasn’t his choice.’

DI Egan looked around as he took in the scene. He almost stepped on Laura’s toes before he noticed her. She saw his quick appraisal, eyes all over her body, ending at her bare ring-finger. Lesbian or prey, in his eyes she could see that she was either one or the other.

He spent too long looking at the identification she had hanging around her neck and then asked, ‘So what do we have, Laura?’ He looked away before she had a chance to answer, so she ended up talking to the back of his head.

‘Deceased is called Jess Goldie. It looks like she died from strangulation, sir, but it wasn’t quick,’ she said, trying to hide the fatigue in her voice. The early start was catching up on her.

Egan started to show interest. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I saw her neck before the doctor arrived, and there were a lot of marks, as if she had been strangled over and over.’

‘What, you mean sex games? You know, strangle, release, strangle, release?’

Laura thought she saw a twinkle of excitement in his eyes. ‘Can’t say I do,’ she replied, weary of cops who saw the quick thrill in everything. ‘She died in her clothes. If it was kinky, it was shy kinky.’

Egan pursed his lips and looked away.

‘And there was something else.’

Egan turned back, his eyebrows raised. ‘Go on.’

Laura glanced at Pete. ‘She’s missing her eyes and tongue.’

‘What do you mean, “missing her eyes and tongue”?’

‘It means that she hasn’t fucking got them any more,’ said Pete, his voice rich with sarcasm. ‘What do you think it means, that she left them on top of the fridge or something?’

Egan spun around, eyes angry, so Laura interrupted. ‘She was tied to a chair, and her eyes and tongue have been cut out.’

Egan continued to stare at Pete, who just stared back. Eventually Egan turned away. He sighed and then began to chew at his lip. Laura sensed that he had just seen this investigation stretching a long way into the future.

‘I bet you could do without this,’ said Pete to Egan, as he raised his eyebrows at Laura. ‘On top of the abductions, I mean.’

Egan’s top lip twitched.

Laura looked down and tried not to smirk. She had quickly figured out that Egan’s eyes were on the career ladder. She had seen his type before: delegate everything and then take all the credit. Look pert and enthusiastic in strategy meetings and then ditch the work onto others. She could guess why Pete hadn’t climbed very far.

‘Is it drugs?’ asked Egan, looking around, trying to change the subject. ‘Some kind of revenge attack?’

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Laura said. She was new to Blackley, but she knew enough to know that this wasn’t a drug neighbourhood. It was full of new-build town-houses, all shiny red bricks, narrow paths and neat double glazing, brightened up with cottage fascias and potted plants. It was a first-time-buyer estate. Drug dealers don’t bother with the housing ladder; they stay low until they can move really high. ‘I checked with intel half an hour ago, and she’s not on our radar. Just a nice, quiet girl, so the neighbours say.’

‘How was she discovered?’

Laura and Pete exchanged glances before Laura replied, ‘The call came around four this morning. Some old boy, Eric Randle, said he went round to check on her. He found her tied to a chair, dead.’

‘Went round to check, at four in the morning?’

‘That’s what I thought.’ Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘Said he’d had a dream.’

Egan smiled, almost in relief. ‘This sounds like a quick one.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ she said. ‘I saw the body, and I saw him, and he doesn’t seem a likely. But he doesn’t have an alibi.’ Laura thought back to the meeting she’d had with the old man. He hadn’t spoken much, seemed in shock.

‘So is he suspect or witness?’ asked Egan, watching her carefully.

‘Suspect. Everyone is, this early into it.’

‘So did you arrest him?’

Laura noticed the tone of Egan’s voice, slow and deliberate, making sure it had been her decision. He would stand by her only if it looked like she had got it right.

She paused for a moment, thought about what they had in the way of evidence. The old man had been visibly upset, but Laura had checked him out for wounds or scratch marks. Nothing. His clothes had been seized, to check for blood-spray, and he’d agreed to a DNA swab, for elimination purposes she’d told him, along with his fingernail clippings, but nothing in her instincts told her that he was the killer.

‘No,’ she said, after a moment. ‘He’s of interest, but no more than that.’

Egan nodded, a thin smile on his lips, and then headed up the path towards the front door.

‘Crime scenes are still in there,’ she shouted.

Egan stopped, looked back at her. Laura thought he appeared irritated, as if she had somehow insulted him. Before he had a chance to speak, a uniformed officer appeared at her shoulder.

‘We’ve got a neighbour who says she heard something last night.’

Egan looked over and then moved back down the path towards them.

‘Who is it?’

The uniform pointed behind him to a house a few doors away, at the edge of the cul-de-sac. On the doorstep stood a woman in her fifties, wrapped in a quilted dressing gown, her hair messy and eyes bright with fear.

‘What’s she got?’ Egan barked the questions, sounding impatient.

‘She says she heard a car leave very late, well after midnight. It had been parked at the entrance to the cul-de-sac. A nice car, Audi TT, navy blue. When it left, it screeched away.’

‘Did she get the number?’

The uniform held up a scrap of paper. ‘Not last night. But she remembered it this morning when she saw the police arrive because it was one of those personal ones.’

Egan looked down at the piece of paper and grinned. ‘We need to do a vehicle check on this.’

The uniform smiled. Already done it.’

Egan pursed his lips a couple of times, like a nervous tic, and then asked, ‘Who’s the keeper?’

‘Someone called Luke King.’

‘Is he known to us?’

‘His father is.’

‘Go on.’ Egan was sounding impatient again.

‘He’s Jimmy King.’

Egan looked like he’d been slapped.

‘Who is he?’ Laura whispered to Pete.

Pete sighed. ‘Some would say a local businessman, one of the most successful in Lancashire.’

‘And what would others say?’

‘The most ruthless and sadistic person they have ever come across.’

She was going to ask Pete something else when she noticed that Egan had started to pace. She sensed that if Egan was about to feel the strain, she was about to get even busier.

Chapter Five

It was over an hour before anyone else showed up at Sam’s office. It was the same most mornings, quiet until just after eight. He preferred it that way normally, away from the office chatter, but it was different this morning. He was edgy, troubled by the old man outside the office. Every time he looked out of the window, he was there, staring up, watching him work.

And Sam was trying to work. The early-morning office time was important. Being a criminal lawyer could be a full day. All-day courts and all-night police stations, with clients and witnesses to see in between. Sam had a diary full of appointments, although he knew most of those wouldn’t attend. They’d turn up instead on their trial dates, expecting him to defend them when they hadn’t even bothered to tell him their story.

So the early morning was when Sam caught up, the office fresh with the smell of furniture polish after the attentions of the dawn cleaner. He briefed counsel, compiled witness statements from a jumble of notes, or dictated the stream of correspondence demanded by the Legal Services Commission.

The younger lawyers did it differently. They went for visible overtime, working late into the evening, hoping to be noticed. But it made no difference. Only one thing mattered, and that was the figures. How much money was made. No one asked when it was made.

At Parsons & Co, whatever problem needed sorting, there was always a lawyer willing to bill you for it. Crime had always been Sam’s thing, but when Harry Parsons had started out, he’d done everything from divorces to fighting evictions. As the firm grew, it sprouted departments. The criminal department was the most precarious, because the work was so unpredictable. Police budget cuts could lead to fewer arrests, or if a lawyer upset one of the bigger criminal families the department would find itself with fewer clients. The claims department was the money-spinner. It used to help people who called into the office, victims of real accidents. Now it just handled referrals from those claims farmers who advertised on television, the promise of free money slotted in between debt-firm commercials, and now the lawyers settled claims for people they never met.

Harry Parsons himself still worked in the office, but he didn’t venture out much, working instead from a room along a dark corridor of worn carpet and faded paint. A local legend, he’d built up the practice from virtually nothing, but he ran it now from a distance, trusting the departments to deal with the day-to-day domestics. Everyone else was jostling for position: the old man was due to retire in a couple of years, and they were all hoping for a share when he went.

They didn’t have the ace card that Sam held, though: he had married Harry’s daughter, Helena, and given him two grandchildren. As far as Sam was concerned, he was at the head of the queue.

Sam was looking out of the window when he heard the other lawyers and clerks begin to trickle in. They gathered in a room along the corridor and drank coffee, exchanged insults. Sam would wander in when he finished what he was doing. He was on his third cup of coffee and he could already feel his heart thundering, but he needed the kick. He had a morning in court to get through and the broken sleep was getting to him. He looked round when he heard a knock on the door. It was Alison Hill, the newly qualified lawyer in the firm, spending some time in crime until she decided what she wanted to do with her career. She would move on, he had seen the ambition in her eyes, but until then Sam liked seeing her around the office. She wore her hair back in a ponytail, clasped by a black clip, and her blonde locks gleamed. Whenever they met, Sam automatically toyed with his wedding ring, felt himself smile too much. She was tall and elegant, with a bright and easy smile, her green eyes deep and warm.

He nodded towards the window. ‘Do you know him?’

Alison walked over and looked into the street. Sam could smell her perfume, something light and floral.

She shook her head. ‘Never seen him before. Why, is he bothering you?’

He shrugged it off, but as Alison turned away from the window, Sam noticed she had a file in her hand.

‘Everything okay?’ he asked.

Alison looked down, almost as if she had forgotten she was holding it. ‘I’ve got this today, for trial,’ she said.

‘What is it?’

‘Johnny Jones, for assault.’

‘What’s the problem?’

She looked awkward for a moment, and then said, ‘He seems guilty. I’ve looked at every angle and I can’t see a way out. He attacked the karaoke man because he missed his turn. Half the pub saw him do it, and it’s on CCTV.’

‘Sounds like a classy place.’

She grimaced. ‘It reads like the worst night of your life.’

Sam smiled, found himself playing the elder statesman. ‘Don’t worry about Johnny Jones. He’ll be convicted, guaranteed, but he won’t listen to your advice. He’ll want an acquittal out of pity, but he won’t get one. Just call it character-building.’

‘How come? It’s a complete no-hoper.’

‘Would you rather lose a no-hoper or a dead-cert winner?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Nothing you can do will get him an acquittal,’ Sam continued, ‘and the prosecution will give him a hard time for having the trial. He will get the verdict he deserves, and maybe even get the sentence he deserves. But’, Sam raised his eyebrows at her, ‘if you mess up a dead-cert winner, when you have made promises you thought you could keep, you’ll see your client’s eyes every night when you go to sleep, that look in his eyes as he gets taken down the steps. Fear, anger, confusion. Trust me, that’s worse.’

Alison sighed and then smiled. ‘Thanks, Sam.’

‘Any time.’ As she went to leave, Sam said to her, ‘Don’t forget the magic words, when you get to your feet.’

She looked confused. ‘Magic words?’

‘“Client’s instructions.” When you are asked if the “not guilty” plea stands, just say that those are your client’s instructions. It just gives a hint that you don’t believe in what you are doing.’

‘Why should I do that? It won’t help Johnny Jones.’

‘Forget about your client. You’re the one who matters, and for your sake the court needs to know which one of you is the idiot. There is only one thing worse than a lawyer making a hopeless application, and that’s a lawyer not knowing it is hopeless.’

‘Bang on the table, you mean?’

Sam grinned. He remembered that from law school, the old adage that if you are strong on the law, argue the law, and if you are strong on the facts, argue the facts. If you are strong on neither, bang on the table.

‘Bang it hard,’ said Sam. ‘Take every point, regardless of how pointless, just so that the punter thinks you’re a fighter. He won’t know you’re talking nonsense, but if you fight the case he will think you’re the best young lawyer in Blackley.’

Alison nodded, looking more relaxed now. ‘Okay.’

‘Remember, you’re Harry’s golden girl.’

She blushed, although they both knew that there was some truth in that. Helena, Sam’s wife, had once been a lawyer at Parsons, but had given it up when she’d had children. It seemed like Harry saw Alison as Helena’s replacement.

Sam looked back out of the window. The old man was still there.

‘If I get killed today, remember his face.’

‘Can I have your office?’

‘Get out.’

She was laughing as she went.

When he was alone in the room again, Sam watched the street life. The pavement was getting busy with lawyers from other firms, big egos in a forgotten Lancashire town. They barely noticed the drunks who congregated at the end of the street and shared cheap cigarettes and stolen sherry.

He watched the lawyers walk by for a while, waved at the ones who looked up. When he looked beyond them, he noticed that the old man had gone. He checked his watch and then stepped away from the window. He made a note of the time. Like most lawyers, he lived his life in six-minute segments.

Chapter Six

I watched Bobby as he watched television. Parenting was all new to me, but I loved Laura McGanity, and she and Bobby came as a pair.

Ambition had taken me to London a few years earlier, and I had fulfilled that, carved out a small niche in the crime circuit: Jack Garrett, crime reporter. It had come at a price, though, most nights lost chasing down drug raids or shootings, or writing exclusives on scams and gangsters, losing sleep as I waited for the door to crash in.

But then my father was killed a year ago. We had grown apart before that; we were like strangers when I went south, but since his death I had needed to come home to Lancashire. I didn’t know why, couldn’t work it out. Maybe it was as simple as guilt, trying to make up for the years when I had been away, chasing excitement, chasing dreams. Whatever the reason, I was back in Turners Fold, the small Lancashire cotton town where I grew up, all tight alleys and millstone grit; the town I had worked so hard to escape from.

It was harder for Laura, though. We’d met on a case -she was one of the detectives, while I was the reporter prying for a story. She was London to her boots, at home in the noise, the movement, the youngest daughter of a City accountant. I had given up a lot to move up north: my social whirl, my contacts, my new life in the city. But Laura had given up everything familiar.

I sat down next to Bobby. His eyes stayed fixed on the television—SpongeBob SquarePants— and I wondered how the move would affect him. Laura had divorced Geoff, Bobby’s father, not long before we got together and contact had been sporadic at first. As soon as I’d arrived on the scene, things had miraculously improved. But now I had dragged Bobby two hundred miles north, away from the urban clutter of his toddler years and into the open spaces of Lancashire moorland. We had settled in an old stone cottage, with a slate roof and windows like peepholes. At night the cottage seemed to sink into the hillside, the lights from within like cat’s eyes flashing in the dark.

I looked towards the window. I could see old redbrick mill chimneys in the town below us, the lines of terraces like slash marks in the hills. The town-centre streets were still cobbled in places, the edges worn smooth by the Lancashire rain. I’d forgotten about the rain. It was the reason for the cotton industry, the moist air good for working with cloth, but the cotton had gone now, leaving damp streets, dark and foreboding against slate-grey skies. Between the town and us was a rich green hillside, broken by dry-stone walls and clusters of trees. This was the Lancashire that people didn’t expect, the rolling open spaces. Only the brooding shadow of Pendle Hill at the other end of the valley broke the mood.

I checked my watch. Bobby had to be at school in half an hour. It was my turn today, Laura had been snatched away by a murder in Blackley, the next town along.

I felt my fingers drum the table. Was there a story in it? I needed something, because a child was still missing. They usually stayed away for a week, sometimes longer. Connor Crabtree had been gone for six days, and the nationals in town were all on countdown. It made it harder for me. I was just a freelancer, trying to sell stories to newspapers who had their own people at the scene, like I was a dog at the dinner table, waiting for scraps. I did best when the press weren’t there and I could get the early quotes.

I had sold a few stories though, small articles on the people affected by the abductions, and on the town itself, but they were just padding. Now Laura was at a murder scene and I was at home, doing the school run.

‘Are we going to school soon, Jack?’ asked Bobby, his voice quiet, almost a whisper.

I looked around, the sound bringing me back. I checked my watch. ‘Ten minutes,’ I said.

There was a pause, and then Bobby asked, ‘How long is ten minutes?’

I sighed, still not sure how to answer these questions. I’d had no training for this. It had been okay when I was just Mummy’s boyfriend who sometimes stayed over, but this was different. Now we shared the same house, vied for attention from the same woman.

‘A Postman Pat story,’ I said. He looked happy at that and turned back to the television.

As I watched him, I realised that this wasn’t a game any more. Bobby wasn’t just the noise in the house. He had to be nurtured, cared for.

I was about to stand up, to finish getting ready, when Bobby said, ‘Where’s Mummy?’

I stopped, thought about that. As always with children, a version of the truth was best. ‘You know she’s a police lady,’ I said, my voice soft.

Bobby nodded.

‘Well, sometimes police ladies have to go and help people. That’s where she is, helping someone.’

Bobby turned to look at me again. He didn’t look convinced, and already I sensed that his parents’ divorce had toughened him up too much for a boy of four. I found myself smiling, though. I could see so much of Laura in him. From the flickers of dimples to his mop of dark hair, stuck up around his crown, and the twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

I winked at him and ruffled his hair. This needed to work, I thought to myself, as much for Bobby as anyone else.

But then I remembered Laura, how she had looked this morning as she threw on her clothes in silhouette, the smell of her warm in my bed, the soft brush of her lips as she’d kissed me goodbye. No, I needed it to work for me, not just for Bobby.

As I thought about Laura, I realised that I needed to start looking for some more work. I’d built up crime contacts in London, people who would look at the stories I was selling, loose tongues in the police stations and hospitals. I was back at the start again, building up an address book, looking out for the angle the local papers might not report. The abductions would end eventually, but we had a mortgage to pay until then. Laura was at a murder. And where there is a murder, there is always a story.

I picked up my phone and dialled her number. After a few rings I heard her voice.

‘I can’t talk about the case,’ she said quickly.

I laughed. ‘Maybe I was calling to hear your voice.’

‘You heard it this morning.’

‘I’m a reporter, Laura. I’ve got to report, and I’ve got a source on the inside.’

‘Sorry, Jack, that ended when you saw me naked. It’s a rule of mine.’

I whistled. ‘Quite a price, but worth every penny.’

I heard a soft giggle, but when she asked about Bobby I knew that I’d had my final answer on the subject.

‘He’s fine,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. The school is new to all the kids. Bobby will be no different.’

‘What are you doing today?’

‘I don’t know. I might have a creep around Blackley, see what I can find. Apparently there’s been a murder.’

‘Jack!’

I laughed. ‘If you won’t tell me anything, I’ll just have to find out myself

‘How long will you be out?’

I sensed the worry in her voice. Bobby needed collecting from school.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be back.’

I sensed her relax. ‘Okay, thanks, Jack,’ she said. There was a pause, and then, ‘I’m sorry about all this.’

‘I knew you didn’t do nine-to-five when we met,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s good for me. I’ve gone straight to the school run and skipped the dirty nappies.’

She laughed. ‘I love you, Jack.’

‘I’ve always loved you,’ I replied, and then the phone went dead.

I looked down at Bobby, who had been watching me as I spoke. I nudged him lightly on the arm. ‘Come on, soldier. Let’s get you to school.’

And the glow I felt when he smiled at me took me by surprise.

Laura had gone to a quiet corner of the police canteen to answer her phone, but when she ended the call she turned round to see a grinning Pete holding two mugs of coffee. He was keeping her caffeine levels high.

‘That was beautiful,’ he said. ‘I feel all warm inside.’

Laura blushed and grabbed a cup from him. The canteen was small and busy, the tables filled by the extra uniforms, the footsoldiers, drafted in to help with the murder inquiry. The abductions were still the main focus though. There were posters on every wall and on the door, glossy blow-ups of a small business card, a simple image of large hands over a small head, protective, caring. One had been found in the pocket of each abducted child. The press knew about them but had agreed not to report them. In return they got daily updates. Every police officer in Blackley knew about them too, and had been told to keep a lookout. Every time someone was searched, their wallet and pockets were checked. If someone was brought into custody, their property was double-checked.

‘C’mon,’ Pete said. ‘Leave the bacon for these boys. Egan is about to address his generals.’

It felt quiet in the Incident Room when they walked in. Egan had pulled in a few more muscleheads from the proactive team, those officers who liked patrolling the alleys, watching the active criminals; burglars and dealers would be getting an easier time for the next few days. They found some seats at the back of the room, and as Laura sat back in her chair she looked around.

The police station was showing its age. The walls had been painted many times over, the current version of cream uneven and flaking, with large radiators beneath sash windows. The ceiling was high so everything below it looked jumbled, untidy, just a clutter of desks and paper. There was talk of a new station being built on the edge of town, but that was years away yet.

Egan paced at the front of the room and stroked his chin. He looked tense. He had watched Laura and Pete walk in, the last ones to arrive.

Egan turned to address the room, announced his presence with a cough and started with a summary of the case so far: how Jess’s body had been found, the usual list of inquiries. Boyfriends. Money. Stalker. He was a flipchart cop. He had done all the leadership stuff, put pictures of the dead woman on the wall, jotted down suspects and ideas. The others in the room had short attention spans, and Laura could sense their restlessness, as if they knew they wouldn’t get the resources to do the job properly. They had to get lucky, and quickly.

And it might take luck, because crime scenes had already reported back and the forensic sweep was looking slim. There were DNA tests to run, fingerprints to compare, but, for a bloody murder scene like that, nothing stood out yet. No bloody handprints on the walls or the doors, or any footwear marks on the floor. The evidence might be there once everything was looked at, but nothing instant had shown up.

Egan paused to look at Laura. ‘You spoke with the old man. How was he?’

‘Tired and emotional, I suppose. I told him I would call on him later to get a statement. Neighbours confirmed that he was banging on the door not long before the call was made, so we didn’t think we had enough to bring him in this morning.’

‘But what did you think?’

‘I don’t know. He was there, he was upset, but other than that, I’m not sure.’

‘Still no alibi?’

Laura shook her head. ‘None. Just that he was at home, dreaming about her.’

Egan looked eager at that. ‘Eric Randle has to be our target suspect. I want to know everything about him by the end of today. Where he worked, who he knows, where he goes. I want someone to keep an eye on his house. See who goes in and who goes out.’ And then he pointed at Laura and Pete. ‘And you two can go get his statement. Once you leave, he might think that’s it.’

Laura and Pete exchanged glances. It seemed mundane after the pressure of the murder scene.

‘What about Luke King?’ asked Pete. ‘He was in the area and left in the middle of the night.’

‘Make some discreet inquiries,’ answered Egan. ‘That’s your job once you’ve finished with Randle.’

Pete seemed unconvinced. ‘How long do we wait if he realises we’re watching him?’ he asked. ‘There may be the deceased’s DNA on him right now. If we wait, it’ll be gone.’

Egan took a deep breath, looked as if he was trying to control himself.

‘I’m aware of that, but he has no idea that we know about him yet. Let’s just keep an eye on him, see what he does.’

Pete didn’t reply. He just clenched his jaw and stared at Egan.

Laura knew what Egan really meant: that if they got it wrong against a powerful family, only a confession would save them from a shift back into uniform, riding the Saturday night van for six months, fighting drunks.

Egan split everyone up into teams of two, gave them all a task, and then broke up the meeting.

As the room had emptied, Laura watched Pete as he walked past Egan.

And what are you going to be doing, Dermot?’

Egan looked him up and down, and then said curtly, ‘Taking responsibility,’ before he turned and walked out of the room.

When he had left, Laura asked, ‘Do you two have a history?’

A smile played on Pete’s lips for a few seconds. ‘Just flashpoints,’ he said.

He sounded calm, but Laura noticed an angry flush on his cheekbones. ‘You know what it’s like with cops,’ he continued. ‘You think you’ve got trust, but as soon as the shit hits the fan, cops like Egan point the finger like they’ve just seen the end of the fucking rainbow.’ He nodded towards the door. ‘C’mon, I’ll tell you about it another time.’

Laura made a mental note to find out one day. The day was getting long enough without having to spend it dodging bruised egos.

‘But what if he’s right about Luke King?’ she said. ‘Maybe Eric Randle should come first.’

‘Yeah, if he’s right he’ll take his applause. But if he’s wrong he’ll make sure we cop the flack. Just me and the new girl.’

They were turning to walk out of the room together when someone shouted from the back of the room, ‘What’s the old boy’s name again? The one who called it in?’

Laura turned around. Yusuf, a young Asian officer with a soul patch on his chin and thin-rimmed glasses, was sitting in front of a computer screen. ‘Eric Randle,’ she shouted back.

‘In his sixties? Scruffy? Lives on the Ashcroft estate?’

Laura nodded.

‘I might be wrong,’ he continued, looking up now, ‘but I think his name came up in the abduction cases, when the children first started disappearing.’

Laura snapped a look back at Pete. They raised their eyebrows at the same time. This was about to get very interesting.

Chapter Seven

Eric Randle lived in a pebble-dashed semi on the Ashcroft estate, a collection of local-authority cul-de-sacs and high privet hedges. It wasn’t Laura’s first visit—she had been given a tour of the Blackley trouble spots on her first day—but this was her first incursion as part of a case.

Pete seemed like he knew it well, and as they did the circuit of the estate Laura started to understand why. The neighbourhood grocer had a red neon sign, but it was cracked and dirty, the windows protected by metal grilles during the day and shutters after it closed. Young girls walked the streets, but they weren’t the carefree teenagers they should have been, with college books tucked under their arms or heading into town to work in chain-stores on a Saturday. These girls pushed prams, their hair pulled back tightly as their fingers glittered with cheap gold, a ring for each finger, the gleam broken only by the orange glow of a cigarette as the smoke swirled around the next generation in the pushchair beneath. Laura didn’t see many smiles, and as Pete drove on she sensed the hostile recognition in their look. They were the police. They were trouble.

‘Seems a strange range of suspects,’ she said.

Pete looked over from his driving. ‘Huh?’

Laura pointed outside the car. ‘The son of a local hotshot or this. I’m getting a feeling already which way it’s going to go.’

‘The kids are ruining this place,’ he said. ‘It used to be okay, twenty years ago.’ He looked over at her. ‘But do you know what? There are some good people here. The older ones, the ones who didn’t have the savings to get out when it turned to shit, scared to go out, scared to stay in.’

Laura had seen these waste estates in London, but they seemed different there. In London they were more like spots of squalor in a vibrant whole, just part of the London jumble. She had been in the north long enough to know that the affluent areas were usually out of sight, often over a hill or two.

But it wasn’t just the housing that gave the estate away for what it was. It was the desolate looks in people’s eyes, the hopelessness, the cold northern winds etched into their pale complexions, the hunched shoulders, their hands pink and raw.

‘Do you know what the worst thing is?’ Pete said. ‘There are some decent kids too, whose parents do their best, but they just get swept up by the rest of the shit and end up with needles in their arms or a pocket full of rocks. By then it’s too late. Just debris, that’s all they are round here.’

Laura looked back out of the window and realised that Pete had described the real poverty she could see. It wasn’t about money or housing. It was about hope. Every face she looked into seemed to hold an acceptance that this was it, this was as good as it was ever going to get. It was no wonder they took shortcuts.

‘Here we go,’ said Pete, and he swung the car into a street of semi-detached houses.

Laura looked at the line of net curtains, at the long, unkempt grass, at the discarded plastic toys on the lawns. There was a dismantled car in one garden, engine parts leaking oil onto the path.

As they got nearer the top of the road, Pete curled his mouth into a snarl.

‘The bastard,’ he said, his teeth gritted. He banged the steering wheel. ‘He’s given us the wrong address.’

Laura peered through the windscreen as she felt her stomach turn over. She thought of the dishevelled old man from the murder scene, upset and scared. Could she have got it so wrong?

As the car came to a stop, she saw that the house was boarded up, covered with graffiti. There was a large splash of white on one corner of the board over the main window where someone had thrown a tin of paint.

‘But I called it in and he checked out,’ she said, her voice suddenly heavy with fatigue. It was still too early for the day to seem so long.

Pete was quiet for a while, but then he started to climb out of the car. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I could have stopped him too, but I didn’t. We’ll take the shit two-handed.’ He nodded towards the house. ‘We might as well take a look now we’re here.’

They walked up the short path together. It was cracked and chipped along the edges. There was also a splash of paint on the floor, obviously where the tin had landed. Pete went to the front door and kicked it.

‘Pretty solid,’ he said.

Laura grabbed his arm. Eric wasn’t enough of a suspect yet to arrest him, Egan had decided that, so she knew it was too early to go in uninvited. ‘Don’t. Let’s just take a look around.’

‘But he’s not living here.’

‘Someone does.’

When Pete looked at her quizzically, she pointed downwards. ‘Look at the lawn.’

He looked at the small patch of green in front of the house, puzzled. It was a neat square with a line of soil around it.

‘It’s been cut,’ Laura said, ‘and there are no weeds in that border. If he doesn’t live here, he must have good neighbours, because someone is looking after it.’

Pete smiled. ‘If you keep on bringing these clever city ways with you, you’ll be my boss soon.’

‘Let’s try round the back, see what we can see.’

Pete followed her as she went, and Laura sensed curtains twitch in the houses across the road. No one came out to speak to them. No coffees around here.

The back garden was similar to the front. Just a small lawn surrounded by empty flowerbeds, maybe only fifteen yards long. The windows at the back were boarded up as well, but they were free of graffiti. Laura looked round when she heard a noise, and she saw Pete had his head in the wheelie bin at the side of the house.

‘Anything unusual?’

He let the lid bang shut. ‘It’s empty.’ He rubbed his hands together as if to get dirt off them. ‘Let’s go. He’s not here.’

Laura looked around. She wasn’t so sure.

‘C’mon,’ Pete said. ‘I’m going to find him. I want to know why he gave you a fake address. That must put him higher up the list.’

Laura was about to say something, when Pete turned to go. She decided that she was too new to object. Instead, she agreed with him. ‘I think he was already at the top.’

The boy looked peaceful. His eyes were closed, his breaths soft and light, blond hair splayed out on the soft cotton pillow. The light came from an old paraffin lamp, the flame making the shadows pull in and out and his skin glow and shimmer.

He stood over him, listened to his breathing. It sounded regular. He went to stroke the boy’s cheek, but he stopped himself. The boy wouldn’t be with him for much longer. He didn’t want to leave traces. But as he looked down and saw the warm velvet of his skin, innocent and pure, he knew he couldn’t stop himself. He held his hand over the boy’s mouth, felt his warm breath, and then he lowered his hand, felt the boy’s lips on his palm, felt the breaths get hotter.

He closed his eyes for a moment, relished it, let out a groan of pleasure as his palm became warm. Then he pressed more firmly. He opened his eyes so that he could watch the boy’s chest rise. He gave a small gasp as the tiny chest stayed there, as the boy waited to take a breath, for the air to return.

He pressed harder, just a few more seconds, felt the rush as the boy’s face started to go red. He swallowed, felt his own breaths come faster. He could choose. It was entirely up to him. Life or death.

He smiled to himself, almost in congratulation. He chose life.

He moved his hand away and the boy’s chest sank. The boy let out a long sigh, and his breathing returned to normal.

He put his cheek near to the boy’s, felt the warmth on his own. He sat back and began to laugh, excited. He held up his hands, turned them in the light from the lamp. Healing hands, he thought, laughing louder. Healing hands.

He turned towards the television. It was the morning news that interested him. The old portable television was plugged into a car battery, a long coaxial cable leading out of the room. It threw blue flickers around the dirty walls, making the colour of the boy’s face shift and move.

The boy was on a bed by a wall, an old camp bed, a collection of sheets and blankets over him at night. There was a book next to it, The Little Prince. He read from it sometimes. The boy had been looked after, and he would be going home soon.

The news started on the hour. The boy had been the lead story for the last week. It was slipping down the news now, often just a tail-end reminder. The parents had done what they could to keep the press interested, but with no news there was nothing to report. The police had done what they always did, released information slowly, repackaged old leads as new ones, just to keep the story alive.

He settled back in his chair. His breathing slowed down, his body became still. He sensed the shadows in the room settle around him, like a cloak around his shoulders, dark and comforting. As the news came on, he closed his eyes and waited.

The boy was the third story in. The parents wept some more. They loved him, they realised that now. But what about when he had taken him? He was just hanging around the streets, close to midnight. Cider and cigarettes. Bikes and skateboards. Not at home. Not safe.

He smiled as the parents pleaded to the camera, felt himself become aroused. They were searching the streets, doing their own door to door. Oh, he liked that. They desperately wanted him back. And he could do that. He could make it better. He sat forward. He wanted to see their eyes, wanted to know that it would be different when the boy went home.

He sighed with pleasure. He had seen it, the pain, the longing, the apology in their eyes. They knew now how much being without him had hurt them.

He looked towards the boy.

‘I’ll make you rich, Connor,’ he whispered, a tear forming in his eye. He leaned forward, so that his mouth was by the boy’s face. He spoke softly, tenderly. ‘Richer than you’ve ever been before. Not money,’ he said quietly. ‘You won’t need that. There are greater riches in the world than that.’

He looked back towards the television.

‘Just one more day,’ he whispered. ‘Just one more day.’

Chapter Eight

I made it to the morning briefing on the abductions, held early to give the evening editions and lunchtime television a chance to get their reports ready. There was nothing much that was new so I headed to the Magistrates’ Court, next to the police station.

Going to court had been my fall-back in London. If in doubt, go to court, because there was always something to write about. My career had started by writing court reports, when I had worked on one of the local papers based in Turners Fold. All the crime from Turners Fold ended up in the Blackley court—it was the biggest local town—so I knew my way around the courthouse, an old Victorian building, with pillars by the doors and high ceilings that wrecked the acoustics. The magistrates sat high and lofty, looked down on the lawyers perched on old wooden pews, and at the defendants perched high in the dock.

The regular court reporter, Andy Bell, a haggard old smoker with long, grey hair and patched-up trousers, had been hostile at first. He had put the years in, on Fleet Street in his younger days, and, like me, he had returned to his northern roots. But he had mellowed over the last few days. He remembered me from before I moved to London, and he soon realised that we wanted different things. I wanted the angles on Blackley life, the background stories. He just wanted the day-to-day knocks.

It was the internet thieves Andy hated, the ones who scoured the web for his stories when cases first hit the courtroom and then just arrived for the sentence hearings. I didn’t do that. He had earned the right to those stories. And anyway, he knew the tricks. If he had a story that he knew would interest the nationals, he would get the local paper to hold it back from the website until after the London deadlines. By then his story would be in London and in print before the internet hyenas knew anything about it.

It was one of those stop-start days, the cells quiet, and I was filling in the gaps by drinking coffee with Sam Nixon, one of the defence lawyers.

Nixon was one of the main players in the courtroom. Tall and dapper, he looked every inch the lawyer. Single-breasted Aquascutum suit, neat and sharp, and Thomas Pink shirt, he shone success when surrounded by failure. The courthouse attracted showmen, those who strutted and boasted, promising clients acquittals they couldn’t deliver, but Sam was different. His accent didn’t have the polish of his looks, he spoke direct and bluntly and the magistrates liked him for it. If Sam Nixon said it had happened, then it had. The earth is flat? According to Mr Nixon it is, and that’s enough.

I was talking football with Nixon and watching the movement from the court corridor, the town’s drama. Young men in tracksuits slouched on hard plastic seats, there to see friends, to socialise, part of their scene. Bad skin. Bad teeth. Bad lives. The older ones sat back and looked bored. The first-timers wore suits and stared at the floor, picking at their nails.

A prosecutor loitered nearby, but he wasn’t saying much, more interested in Sam’s football tales than his caseload. He was a good lawyer—I had been around enough prosecutors to know that most of them are—but the machinery of the civil service knocked the fight out of them, so that being able to forget about work became the best part of the job.

I turned around at the sound of laughter from a corridor that ran from one of the back courts. A man bounced into the foyer, his arms swinging defiantly, his grin showing off brown teeth and a complexion that looked like he had hovered over too many joints, his skin tarred and lined. He turned in a circle, his chest out, his arms in a come-on pose, and said to Sam, ‘She’s a fucking star, that one,’ before strutting past the glass ushers’ kiosk and out of the main door.

The ‘fucking star’ emerged from the same corridor, a tired look in her eyes. I had met her before but I couldn’t remember her name. She was one of Sam’s assistants, pretty and blonde and tall, with her hair tied back into a ponytail that swished against the black suit cut tight to her body, her skirt just above her knees. She had the figure to carry it, and I sensed the mob of track-suits a few yards away turn to gape.

Sam Nixon nodded towards her. ‘Have you met Alison Hill, one of the lawyers at Parsons?’

I smiled and held out my hand. ‘I’ve seen you around.’ When Alison shook, she smiled back at me, her eyes warm.

‘Nice to meet you,’ she said. I sensed the confidence that comes from good education and good looks.

I nodded towards the exit doors. ‘Looks like someone was happy.’

Alison looked that way briefly, and then she said, ‘I lost.’

I thought back to the client as he’d bounced through the court foyer. He looked like he had spent his life being beaten by the system, every loss carved into the anger lines around his eyes. He had lost again but at least he had stood up to it.

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I said. When she didn’t respond, I asked her, ‘Was justice done?’

‘Not yet,’ interrupted Sam, and he looked solemn.

Alison looked puzzled.

‘The bill,’ said Sam, and then he began to grin. ‘The job’s not done until we get paid. Then there’s justice.’

As Alison rolled her eyes, my eyes caught someone looking at Sam.

He was in the middle of a pack of drinkers. They all looked haggard and tired, their faces much older than their years, red and puffy, their eyes unfocused. Their clothes hung loose and stained, their movements were slow and deliberate.

I guessed that whoever it was, he wasn’t pleased with Sam’s last effort for him. His eyes were red like all the rest, drunk even that early in the morning, but the focus was sharp and clear. Despite the drink, his stare was hard and direct.

I looked at Sam, who acted like he hadn’t noticed him. He was talking to Alison.

I was about to say something when Sam reached down for his phone. When he looked at his screen, he seemed concerned for a moment and then held it up. ‘I’ve got a message to go and see Harry.’

Alison winced. ‘So I can have your office after all.’

Sam laughed, but I could tell from the look in his eye that there was some truth in that. I knew of Harry Parsons’ reputation, the curse of the local police, and I had heard that he was as ruthless with his staff.

As Sam left, I watched the drunk follow him with his eyes, the glare ever-present.

I turned to the prosecutor, a tall man in a shiny suit, with flashes of grey at his temples, badger-style, and frayed tips on his shirt collars. I didn’t know if he earned less or just cared less, but he seemed a fashion rail away from Sam Nixon. ‘Who’s that?’ I asked, as I nodded towards the man in the corridor.

The prosecutor looked for a moment, chewed his lip as he thought of a name, and then said, ‘Terry McKay. He’s here most weeks. Drunk, usually.’ He checked his watch. ‘They’ll have to call his case soon. If it gets adjourned over lunch, we won’t see him again.’

I smiled. Terry McKay. I made a note of the name and went back into court.

Laura sensed Pete’s anger as they arrived back at the station. He was gunning for Eric Randle now. She wasn’t sure that they had got it wrong, but it had turned Pete silent and brooding. The echoes of their footsteps were the only sounds as they walked along an old tiled corridor heading to the Incident Room. As they got there, Pete spoke in a whisper, an angry hiss. ‘Egan will love this,’ he said.

There were a few officers in the Incident Room, sifting through information brought in by those cops knocking on doors. As they walked in, someone shouted out, ‘Did you get Randle?’ and Laura saw all the faces in the room turn to look at them.

Pete threw his coat onto a desk. ‘Randle’s house is boarded up. He wasn’t there.’

All the faces looked back to their screens, glad they weren’t the ones who had to break the news to Egan. Some whistled, some smirked.

Pete stayed by his desk and rummaged around in his drawers for something. Laura sensed that it was just to make himself look busy, so she walked on and headed for Yusuf, the officer who had recognised Randle’s name earlier.

As she approached, he smiled, almost bashful. He seemed too timid to be a cop, the antithesis of Pete Dawson, but as she heard Pete cursing at the other end of the room she realised that it was no bad thing.

‘You said Eric Randle’s name came up in the abduction cases,’ she began. ‘How come?’

Yusuf sat back and nodded, pushed his glasses up on his nose. ‘His name comes up a lot,’ he said. ‘Whenever something happens, a murder or something like that, he calls in with information, reckons he is some kind of psychic. He’s done the same with the abductions.’

‘Psychic?’

Yusuf nodded again. ‘He told us to look near the railway.’

‘Is that it?’

‘He was warned off, so his calls stopped, but when I show you this, you’ll see why.’ He reached over to a binder and passed it to Laura. ‘I did some digging around after you went to see him.’

‘Were you on the abduction cases?’

Yusuf nodded. ‘Logging calls, making lists of suspects, trying to cross-reference them. Speaking to the families, just listening out for something.’

‘But there wasn’t much to hear?’

He shook his head. ‘No common theme, except that the kids were from bad families.’

Laura took hold of the binder, and as she flicked through the papers she saw that it contained intelligence reports, all hole-punched and inserted precisely.

‘I’ve put them in chronological order,’ he said.

Laura’s eyes twinkled with amusement. She’d already guessed that he probably had.

‘If you want me to get anything else for you, just ask,’ Yusuf continued, and then he blushed as she smiled back.

‘Thanks. I’d like that.’ She was about to walk away when she thought of something. ‘What are you doing on this case?’ she asked.

‘Calling friends of the victim,’ he said. ‘I break the news, and when they calm down I ask about her other friends, ex-boyfriends, new boyfriends, that kind of thing. Each call leads to another person, and I research every name I come across.’

‘Any other suspects?’

Yusuf shook his head. ‘Not yet. She led a quiet life. Not many boyfriends, and no one on the scene at the moment, although her friends think there may have been someone getting close to her.’

‘Did any know Eric Randle?’

‘I didn’t ask specifically, but a few mentioned that she was a member of a club, used to meet every week, but no one knew much about it, as if she was embarrassed to talk about it.’

Laura picked up the file and nodded her thanks. Back at her desk, she started to read.

The first item was an intelligence report from the eighties. It was a warning that Eric Randle was a problem caller, that he would call the police with information, often about murders or missing children, not always local. He was warned off a few times because he got in the way, turned up at crime scenes, but over time he was regarded as a harmless nuisance and left alone.

Laura leafed through a number of incident logs, created when Eric Randle called the police to provide information. They sounded vague, usually just some idea that someone was in danger. Most had ended with a quiet warning not to meddle.

She looked up when she sensed Egan enter the room. She could hear Pete still sounding off about Randle. Egan didn’t say anything. He just listened, and then began to walk around the room asking if anyone had found anything new.

Laura looked back at the folder, and then she saw something that made her forget all about Egan.

Eric Randle had briefly been a suspect in a couple of prostitute murders around fifteen years earlier. Two girls had gone missing from their usual beat, last seen getting into a dark-coloured saloon. They were found on some waste-ground near to the motorway, both stabbed and mutilated. The killer didn’t strike again, certainly not in Blackley, and the police thought that the attacker was maybe part of the travelling crowd. But they started to look at Eric Randle because he had called the police and told them things that they hadn’t released to the press. He would have been arrested, but he didn’t fit the profile. He was too old and had no criminal history.

The killer was still at large.

Laura put the file down and thought about that. Profiling was big back then—the Cracker years—and maybe too much weight was attached to it. Profiles never caught anyone. They just eliminated people, and sometimes they were wrong. She made a note to find the file for that case.

Then the next part of the file made her jolt, just as Egan started to walk over to her desk. She put her head down and began to read, just to make sure she had seen it right. She had. A different case, a different time.

She put the folder down and sat back, thinking hard about what she had just read. Five years ago, Eric Randle had been charged with murder.

Chapter Nine

The light around Harry’s doorframe glowed along the dark corridor. Sam tapped lightly and went in.

He saw Harry sitting behind his large mahogany desk. It gleamed, dominating the room with its leather top and ornately carved legs. The room was decorated like a Victorian parlour, the wallpaper gold with burgundy stripes, broken up by caricatures of famous judges and paintings of the Lancashire countryside.

Harry stood up when Sam entered, his shock of curly white hair sticking up from his head, his face deeply tanned, the frequent visits to his Spanish villa making him look weathered and kind. It was a disguise. Sam knew Harry was ruthless, determined and cold in all things. He dressed smartly for someone of his age, though. He was a couple of years over sixty, and he wore dark three-pieces, his stomach only just bulging the buttons, with hand-made shirts framing bright silk ties, a flourish above his waistcoat. And he always wore brogues.

Sam had followed him into brogues, but not the three-pieces. Sam went for single-breasted suits, dark and simple. His hair was shorter than Harry’s, cut down to a number two, his way of hiding the shrinking hairline and the flashes of grey appearing at the sides. Sam’s early-morning walks kept the weight off, but the job gave him blood pressure that scared his doctor.

‘Hello, Sam, good to see you.’ Harry smiled, but it was quick, functional, lacking in warmth. His voice was nasal, almost a whine. It could wear a court down to his way of thinking pretty quickly.

Sam smiled back, a quick nod. ‘Mr Parsons.’ It was only ‘Harry’ at home, never at work.

There were two other people in the room. Sam recognised one straightaway. Jimmy King. They had met a few times, at family events, but it was his reputation that marked him out, ruthless and rich, the first producing the latter. He was dressed in black pinstripes, his hair swept back and dark. Sam wasn’t convinced it was natural. When Jimmy smiled his teeth looked bright, too clean.

The other man was much younger, and looked quiet and nervous.

Sam knew Jimmy was a childhood friend of Harry’s. He’d heard the story too many times, how they had both grown up in the same children’s home, a dusty old Victorian building, forgotten by their parents, beaten by their carers. They had grown up tough, and so Harry and Jimmy had made a pact, and that was never to be beaten, to always look after the other, and to show everyone that they could rise to the very top despite their poor start.

Harry had gone to university to study law, his first exposure to the middle classes. He scraped his way through on student grants and part-time jobs, and then returned to Blackley with a new accent and a dream of his own practice. Jimmy had gone too, but he found his studies hard. He realised something else, though: that there was money in property, and students needed property. So he dropped out of university, borrowed money and bought a house. He filled it with students, crammed in like inmates, and when the rent started coming in he bought another. When Jimmy returned to Blackley he had ten houses and a desire to buy up the town that had treated him so badly.

Harry and Jimmy had remained close, inseparable. Harry had even invited Jimmy to Sam’s wedding, but business commitments had kept him away. Jimmy had sent his apologies and a crystal bowl. It was still in a cupboard somewhere.

Sam could tell that this was more than a social occasion. Something big was happening. He could see it in the way Jimmy and Harry exchanged glances, knowing and wary.

Jimmy King moved towards Sam, his hand outstretched, a disarming smile telling Sam that Jimmy was in charge. ‘How is the beautiful Helena?’ he boomed, his Lancashire accent strong, although Sam knew it varied, depending on the audience.

Sam wanted to say, ‘Drunk most of the time’, but he resisted. Instead, he smiled and shook hands, felt King’s other hand wrap around his. Sam could feel the control in the man’s grip, like a statement of intent, so he shook back hard, tried to feel the crackle of his fingers. King’s smile flickered for a moment and he gripped back. Sam felt Jimmy’s rings press against his own hand, the gold bands thick and bold. Sam had won the first skirmish.

‘Good morning, Mr King,’ Sam said simply.

Jimmy King regained his smile and patted Sam lightly on the back. ‘Jimmy. Call me Jimmy.’

Sam nodded politely. He sat down and crossed his legs, tried to figure out the reason for the meeting. He knew one thing: he didn’t trust Jimmy King. Despite being Harry’s friend, Sam knew of Jimmy’s reputation, and he saw how the rest of the staff became jumpy whenever Jimmy called into the office.

In the eighties, Blackley had tried to sweep away its past by clearing the slum terraces. Many stood empty, boarded up and derelict. They were sold off at a bargain price; Jimmy King had bought streets of them. He renovated them and rented them out, and was credited with saving communities. Those he couldn’t save were bulldozed and sold to developers.

No one mentioned how he treated his tenants. The houses were damp and cold, created health problems, asthma and respiratory illnesses. Some tenants tried to take a stand and threatened court action. The visits from Jimmy’s men came in the night, when Jimmy was somewhere visible. Not many complained for long.

Sam didn’t see a landlord rescuing communities in Jimmy. He knew Jimmy’s background, but Sam’s wasn’t so different. The law had been Sam’s way of escaping a derelict council estate: his edges were still rough, his accent strong, maybe his eyes lit by a little more fire than most lawyers. Sam had met the Jimmy Kings of the world many times over, and he saw just another gangster, ruthless and selfish, who used the ordinary people of the town for his own ends.

Sam looked at Harry, who seemed impassive. That was always Harry’s way. He would sit and stare, let people talk, so that he made them nervous and they talked when they should really stay quiet.

‘A girl was murdered last night,’ said Harry eventually, ‘on the Daisy Meadow estate.’

Jimmy King sat down and nodded in sympathy.

‘It turns out that a car belonging to Jimmy’s son Luke was near the scene,’ Harry continued, ‘so it will help the police concentrate their efforts better if they can eliminate him from the inquiry.’

Sam looked past Jimmy and at the nervous-looking young man. He had a vague recollection of an awkward teenager at Harry’s fiftieth birthday party, who’d sat in a corner all evening and watched the girls dance. Adulthood hadn’t changed him too much. He was in his mid twenties, his face pale, his eyes heavy under a small blond flick. He was wearing a suit that he couldn’t fill, the shoulder pads hanging slack over his lanky frame. He looked at Sam once and then quickly looked away, twitchy. His cheeks looked raw from a shave he hadn’t needed.

Sam turned back to Harry. There was a look in his eyes Sam hadn’t seen before. Harry Parsons was never nervous. Not ever. But he was now.

‘Just elimination?’ asked Sam, watching Jimmy King.

Jimmy smiled. His son just looked at a spot on the floor.

‘What else?’ said Harry, trying to drive the conversation. ‘We want to be discreet.’

‘Who’s in charge of the investigation?’

Sam thought he saw Harry’s mouth curl slightly.

‘DI Egan.’

Sam realised now why Harry might be nervous. Sam had dealt with Egan a few times, and the DI’s big problem was that he wasn’t nearly as clever as he thought he was. The son of Jimmy King might get him a press conference, make him a hero with the officers who wondered quietly where Jimmy King’s money really came from. Sam looked at Luke again. Egan would sacrifice anyone for exposure, and Jimmy King’s son was small bait.

‘You haven’t been arrested,’ said Sam. ‘If you’re just a witness, make him come to you.’

He said it like a challenge, and watched Jimmy shift in his seat. Luke still looked at the floor.

‘Civic duty,’ said Harry, ‘and Jimmy doesn’t want his goodwill turned into a media circus.’

Sam noticed a quick exchange of looks. It felt like there was something he was missing.

‘How do you know all of this?’ asked Sam, curious.

Jimmy’s eyes narrowed. ‘Let’s just say that I know people who know people.’ He turned his charm back on, flashed his teeth at Sam. ‘It’s important that this stays quiet. If Luke’s involvement becomes public, everyone will know about it, and he will never live it down.’

‘What involvement?’ asked Sam.

Jimmy paused for a moment, uncertain. ‘What do you mean?’

Sam glanced at Harry. He was still staring, letting him talk.

‘Mr Parsons said “elimination”’,’ said Sam. ‘You said “involvement”’.’

Jimmy King twiddled with a ring on his little finger, a cluster of tiny diamonds glinting. ‘Semantics, Sam.’

‘Semantics convict people.’

Jimmy smiled, but Sam could see that the warmth had gone. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘If I agree to do this, the only people who go are Luke and myself

Jimmy was quiet again, flashing looks at Harry, waiting for guidance. Harry exhaled and then nodded.

‘Wait downstairs,’ said Harry to Jimmy. ‘Ask reception to let you wait in a side room. I’ll just have a talk with Sam first.’

When Jimmy stood up, he looked at Sam and then said quietly, ‘I give my lawyers some leeway because a rude lawyer is often a good lawyer. But I’ll warn you now, if I find out that you are just plain rude, you have made an enemy, whoever your wife is.’ He smiled thinly, his stare hard and direct. ‘I wouldn’t recommend that as an option.’

Sam didn’t say anything as Jimmy left the room.

Harry turned to Sam. ‘What are you playing at?’ He looked angry, his brow furrowed.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Sam.

‘You were rude to an old friend of mine. He has been good to this firm, and good to Helena. I expected better.’

‘If I deal with a client, I am in charge. That’s the rule. You taught me it, Harry. If Jimmy King hangs around, he will want to run the case his way.’

‘There isn’t going to be a case.’

‘The parents are always best left out. That’s the right way, isn’t it?’

Harry was quiet. He knew that was his motto. Control. It was all about control. The lawyer had to be in charge, because the line between lawyer and criminal can be a thin one. If the criminal is in charge, he can pull the lawyer over the line with him. No client is worth your career. That had been Harry’s mantra throughout Sam’s training. Don’t run errands, don’t pass on messages, don’t take anything to them. Stay professional and distant.

And parents were the worst of all, because they controlled the client as well. It didn’t matter how old they were, children didn’t tell the truth in front of their parents.

Harry turned away to look out of the window. ‘At least be polite. For your own sake.’

Sam nodded and then turned to leave the room.

Chapter Ten

Blackley police station was next to the court, so Sam had to run the gauntlet of courthouse drunks and crooks to get there, Luke King tucked in behind him. Sam tried to make conversation, asked him what he did with his life, but Luke didn’t answer.

Sam shrugged and gave up. He had just to advise him, not like him. And the day was getting weird. The old man had been outside the office again, staring at him as he left. If he was still there later, Sam would call the police.

They reached the entrance to the police station. It was an old stone building, with roman window arches and block-effect stone on the corners. Steps went up to double-glazed doors and a bright sign, the old wooden doors and blue lamp long gone. Reinforced glass windows lined the building at pavement level, a faint glow giving the only hint that anyone occupied the rooms below. They were the cells, a line of damp, tiled rooms, with an aluminium toilet and a PVC mattress for furniture.

As they were about to climb the steps, Sam turned to Luke. ‘Are you okay about this? We don’t have to do it.’

Luke didn’t respond.

‘It’s your call, not your father’s. If there’s something you want to keep from the police, then leave.’

Luke looked towards the police station, and then back towards Sam’s office. He saw the group of drunks outside the court.

He turned back towards Sam, and Sam sensed more determination than before. Luke seemed suddenly confident, his eyes less scared.

‘There’s something you ought to know,’ he said.

Sam smiled and shook his head. ‘You’re here as a witness. I’m not going to change anything you’re going to say. I’m here just in case the police think that you’re more than that.’

He shook his head. ‘No, you’ve got to know this.’ He moved closer to Sam and grabbed his wrist. Sam could smell the office coffee on his breath, could see the gloss of sweat on his top lip.

‘I did it.’

I watched Sam Nixon walk by, and I was curious.

I was on the steps of the court, just passing the time between cases, when I saw him, the brightness of his shirt loud in the shadows beneath the old grey buildings. Then I noticed the young man walking alongside him, nervous in a grey suit, the pads hanging off his skinny shoulders. Sam was walking quickly and the young man was struggling to keep up.

As they walked past, I saw Sam glance at me and then walk on. The police station was next door to the court, and I watched them slow down as they got near to the steps.

I was interested. Not many people go to the police station in a suit, and I knew that solicitors didn’t go to the police station as much as they used to do. Police-station runners do most of it now, cheaper versions of the real thing.

I had read the reports, that for lawyers crime no longer pays. It is all about volume, so police-station runners handle most of the police-station work, giving the lawyers the time to go to court. The runners only have one choice to make: whether to advise clients to answer questions or stay silent. The suits are cheaper, shinier, the faces younger, but they are prepared to put in the hours, and they are all billable hours.

‘Look at the cunt.’

I whirled around. It was the drunk from before, Terry McKay.

‘Who?’ I asked. ‘Sam Nixon?’ As a journalist I had learned a long time ago that it was good to listen to anyone who was prepared to talk.

Terry swayed on the steps, and turned to me slowly, his eyelids barely open.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘I’m the person you’re talking to,’ I said, ‘so tell me, who’s the cunt?’

Terry turned back to the street.

‘Him,’ he said. ‘With fucking Nixon. Cunt. And Parsons.’ His head bobbed as he talked.

I nodded towards Sam and the young man in the suit, who were now by the bottom of the police-station steps.

‘Who is he?’

Terry turned to face me. I saw that his denim jacket was covered in stains, and the sides of his shoes were splitting where his feet were forcing their way out.

‘Don’t you fucking know, arsehole?’ He launched spittle onto his chin when he said this, as his head bobbed and shook.

I grinned. Drunks like him didn’t bother me. He wanted to talk. The booze had just made him forget how. ‘You tell me, arsehole,’ I said.

Terry stared at me, in that way that drunks always do, concentrating too hard. He swayed and his feet shuffled slightly on the steps as he tried to steady himself.

‘Fucking King’s boy.’ He said it with a snarl. ‘That cunt owes me.’

‘King?’

Terry turned back, his teeth bared in anger. ‘Aye, fucking King. Jimmy King, whatever, bullshit fucker.’ He clenched his fist, looked like he was going to punch something. ‘He owes me, fucking owes me.’

I became alert. I knew of Jimmy King. Local businessman with a bad reputation turned into a pillar of society. Respectable. And his son was being escorted to the police station. Now, there was a story.

‘What’s his name? The son?’

Terry grinned at me. ‘Luke,’ he said slowly, relishing the sound. ‘Remember that name.’

I smiled at Terry and went for a walk, just to see where they were going.

Sam paused for a moment, surprised, not sure he’d heard Luke right. It sounded cold, like they were just words. ‘Don’t tell me any more.’

Luke shook his head, his eyes wide now, staring into Sam’s. ‘No, you’ve got to know. I did it. I killed the girl. And do you know what? I enjoyed it.’

Sam tried to pull away, but Luke’s grip was surprisingly tight, strong.

‘And do you know what else?’

‘Enough,’ said Sam, his irritation coming out in a hiss. ‘I don’t need to know this. Not yet.’

‘I’m going to do it again.’

Sam gave his wrist a yank and pulled it away.

Luke stepped in closer. ‘I’m going to keep on until someone catches me,’ he said, his mouth curled in a grin. ‘How will that make you sleep?’

Sam was stunned, quiet, not knowing what to say, when Luke walked away from him. He was heading for the steps, then he turned around.

‘C’mon, Mr Nixon. It is Mr Nixon, isn’t it? Not Sam?’ He smiled. ‘Catch up. The police want to speak to me.’

And with that, he stepped up onto the last step and went into the police station.

Sam looked around, back at the drunks outside the courtroom. Terry McKay lifted his hand, gave Sam a nod, but there was little warmth in it.

Sam realised then that he had no option. He had to follow his client into the police station. It’s what he did. That had always been his choice.

Harry and Jimmy stood at the office window and watched Sam walk towards the police station with Luke. When they went out of view, the men didn’t speak. Jimmy tugged at his shirt cuffs and turned away. When he sat down, he crossed his legs and waited for Harry to join him. He watched Harry as he went back to his desk. Jimmy’s head was still but his eyes tracked Harry’s movement.

Harry sat down and swallowed.

‘Can we trust Sam?’ asked Jimmy.

Harry nodded slowly. ‘He came from the gutter, so he knows how far the drop is. He won’t want to go back.’

Jimmy scowled. ‘It’s even further for us, Harry, so you’d better be right, for your own sake.’

Harry didn’t respond. He looked down at his desk and clasped his hands together. He didn’t look up again until Jimmy had left the room.

Chapter Eleven

Laura looked through the glass in the waiting-room door. Egan was behind her.

‘Is that him?’ she asked, nodding towards the lanky kid in the bad suit. He had someone with him. A taller man in a suit. Short hair, flashes of grey around the temples. ‘Jimmy King’s boy?’

Egan nodded. ‘That’d be my guess.’ He sounded terse, his plan to covertly observe Luke King thrown away by the unexpected visit. The boy was either playing a dangerous game, or he was innocent. Egan pointed through the glass. ‘And he’s brought his lawyer. Sam Nixon’s not here to carry his sandwiches.’

‘Is Nixon any good?’

Egan smiled. ‘None of them is good. They’re just different shades of shifty.’

Laura looked back through the glass. She knew that most police officers didn’t like lawyers, but she knew something else as well: that when they got into trouble themselves, drink driving or with expenses fiddles, they always went to the trickiest defence lawyers in town.

As Laura looked through the glass, she put Eric Randle to the back of her mind. He had once been arrested for murder, but not convicted. And the scene in the waiting room now made the whole picture look rather different.

‘Maybe it’s not all bad,’ said Laura. ‘After all, not many witnesses come to see the police with a brief. But why come at all? And how did he know?’

Egan’s lips twitched at that. ‘I don’t know, but if there’s a leak, I’ll find it.’

Laura went to press the button to release the security lock, but stopped when she felt Egan’s hand over hers.

‘Let’s make him sweat for a while first,’ he said. He left his hand there.

Laura pulled her hand away, and she saw that Egan was smiling. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Saved by the bell. As she brought it out, she saw it was a message from Jack. ‘Is Luke King there anything to do with you?’

She shook her head and sighed. He didn’t miss a trick.

Sam felt edgy as he waited in the police station. He sat on an old orange seat, hard plastic bolted to a hard tiled floor, and he shifted about as he tried to get comfortable. A bored desk assistant trapped behind glass took details of driving documents as people brought them in. Sam watched her, just to avoid Luke’s conversation. He had been told too much already.

Sam knew he had to get Luke out of the police station, but Luke didn’t seem interested in that. He hadn’t said anything since the confession. Instead, Luke sat silently, the tapping of his foot on the floor the only noise. It sounded nervous, but whenever Sam looked across, the boy looked calm, almost happy.

Sam had told him only one thing: say nothing.

Sam turned around sharply when he heard the door open. It was DI Egan. He looked as he always did, quietly confident. There was an officer behind him he hadn’t met before. A woman, tall, attractive, with shoulder-length dark hair and dimples. Sam hoped that she might discourage Egan from playing games.

Egan strode towards Luke, businesslike, trying to cut Sam out. Sam stepped in front of him.

‘Good morning, Mr Egan.’ Sam drew himself up to his full six feet so that he looked down on Egan. He sensed the other cop standing back.

‘Mr Nixon, it is so good of your client to come down and help us.’ Egan said it with his top lip curled, as if Sam had just pissed on his shoes. ‘We need to eliminate him from an inquiry.’

Sam sensed the unspoken words: Why does he need a lawyer if he’s innocent?

‘Which inquiry?’

‘That doesn’t involve you at this stage. Mr King isn’t under arrest.’

Sam turned round to look at Luke, just to gauge his mood. Luke’s eyes betrayed no emotion. They were cold, precise.

‘If you want to leave, you can,’ Sam said to him. It was a cue, but Sam wasn’t sure that Luke understood it: leave now, while you still have the chance.

‘You do know why your client is here, don’t you?’ said Egan from behind Sam, sounding hostile.

Sam turned back around. ‘You tell me all about it.’

Egan sighed, already tired of the game. ‘We would have come for him anyway. We think young Mr King might have some information in relation to a murder investigation. We were hoping he would help us, so we can eliminate him from our inquiry.’

Sam leaned into Egan, as if to whisper. Egan leaned in too, couldn’t stop himself. Sam spoke quietly, almost a hiss, his eyes wide in mock-excitement. ‘Did you say a murder?’

Sam saw the female officer’s mouth flick upwards in a smile, but she stopped herself when Egan stepped back, his anger flushing its way up his cheeks.

‘Don’t try to be funny, Mr Nixon.’

‘There is nothing funny about being linked with a murder,’ said Sam. ‘Unless you can assure me that my client is not under suspicion, he does not want to speak to you.’

Egan breathed through his nose, his lips twitching, saying nothing. Laura intervened.

‘We’ve received information that your client was nearby,’ she said, and she flashed a quick smile at Luke, disarming, friendly. ‘He might have seen something that could help us. He could be a vital witness.’

Smart answer, thought Sam. Egan looked angry, like he had lost some ground.

‘Hello,’ said Sam to Laura. ‘Have we met?’ He asked because he knew it would annoy Egan.

Laura was trying to look stern as they exchanged details. Sam caught an accent, south of England.

‘I’ve spoken with my client and he has nothing to say.’

‘Except when it comes out of your mouth,’ said Egan, looking at Luke. ‘So why is he here, in his best suit?’

‘Because if he hadn’t come, you would have hauled him out of bed in his pyjamas, probably with a photographer on your tail, just to get your perma-tan on TV.’

Laura looked down, smirking.

‘Look, Inspector,’ Sam continued, trying to sound reasonable, ‘Mr King has nothing he wants to say to you. If you want to make him, you have to depose him at court. But for that you need to charge someone else, so if you want to hear what he has to say, either arrest him or someone else.’

Sam turned around and took hold of Luke’s arm to escort him out of the station. He tried to move quickly, but Egan was quicker, moving fast, gripping Luke’s other arm.

‘Luke King, I am arresting you for murder.’

Sam was shocked. He could tell from the look in Laura McGanity’s eyes that she was too. That was good. It meant that Egan had acted off the cuff. It meant that there wasn’t any evidence against King yet. The custody clock would tick away, and it would put pressure on the police. This was a high-profile arrest, and Dermot Egan had made it without any evidence.

If they had done nothing, Egan could have watched Luke at leisure, covertly. Now he had shown his hand, moved too quickly.

Luke looked the calmest of all of them, almost serene.

Sam stood to one side as Egan cautioned Luke, giving him the usual ‘right to remain silent’ bull. You can say nothing, but if you do, the prosecution will use it against you. Didn’t seem like much of a right to Sam.

As Luke was led away, Sam looked down at his hands. Killer’s hands. Then he looked at Luke’s face.

Luke was smiling.

I moved away from the door of the police station. Laura had kept her back to me, but I could tell that Luke King had been arrested.

And I knew that Laura was dealing with the murder investigation. I smiled to myself. Now that Jimmy King’s son had been arrested, the story had just got better.

As I walked back towards the court, I saw Terry McKay again. He was sitting on the court steps, receiving a green bottle from one of the others swaying near him. He barely looked up as I stood over him.

‘Where does King live?’ I asked.

His eyes focused on me slowly. He shut one eye as if the sun had blinded him, but it was almost certainly the sherry that had made his pupils sluggish.

‘Who wants to know?’

I grinned at him. ‘I do.’

He looked me up and down, and then laughed to himself. His friends stepped back and looked at me strangely, as if I was from another world. And I suppose I was in a way. They lived their lives in a haze as they stumbled from one bottle to the next, never really taking part in society. They regarded me as an intruder, a reminder of the life they had stopped living when the drink took full hold.

He waved me away and lifted the bottle to his mouth.

I thought our dialogue had ended, and I had turned to walk away, when he slurred at me, ‘Some big fucking house past Whitwell. On the road to fucking nowhere.’

I reached into my pocket and floated a twenty down. I had a sense that we might speak again, so it seemed like dialogue in the bank.

‘Get drunk on some decent stuff,’ I said. ‘No more of that shit.’

Terry didn’t look at me. Neither did any of his friends. They were looking at the note, and it was as if all they could see was their next bottle floating towards the pavement.

Chapter Twelve

‘How did Egan handle the interview?’

Laura turned to look at Pete. It was the first thing he had said since they’d left the station.

They were heading out to Luke King’s house, where he lived with his parents in a palatial new-build many miles from Blackley They were heading north and were driving along single-track country lanes, over pack-horse bridges, twisting between long hedgerows, the fields dotted by trees and painted in that brighter green which seemed so much more like summer, broken only by the white dots of sheep.

‘Egan was like I expected,’ said Laura.

Pete laughed. ‘Like an arsehole then.’

Laura looked out of the window and smiled. ‘Your words, not mine.’

‘Any hissy fits from the defence?’

Laura thought back to the interview. It had been like a long fight, starting from when Egan tried to get the defence lawyer to sit in a corner, well away from his client. From then on the defence hadn’t co-operated. It was a tricky balance, Laura knew that, the need to throw the defence off-kilter, to try and get a confession, but without turning it into bullying. If it went too far, the confession could be kept away from the jury. Murderers had walked free because of that.

‘One or two,’ she said. ‘Maybe when Egan gets one of his confessions thrown out of court, he’ll do things differently.’

Laura turned to look out of the side window. She had taken a gamble in coming up to the King house. The interview with Luke King had ended when a superintendent interrupted and asked to discuss tactics with Egan. Laura had guessed from Egan’s face that someone with influence had placed a call, that the tactics were more about getting King out than keeping him in.

For all the things about Egan she didn’t like, Laura thought he was right to be suspicious about Luke King. And arresting him would get DNA samples from him, from his hair, his fingernails. Anything else was best to look for while he was still locked up. This was a murder investigation, and Jess Goldie deserved more than favours called in from the golf-club bar. Maybe the inside of the car had blood smeared on the steering wheel or on the seat, or his clothes contained traces of her blood or hair.

Laura had needed Egan’s consent to search the house, and he was the only inspector she was prepared to ask. He had nodded quickly, hoping that she would find something to justify his decision to make the arrest. Laura had been ready to go on her own, but she sensed that it would be a no-loser for Pete: he would either play a part in Egan’s downfall or he would find something useful. Either way, he would get to raise a glass.

‘How was Egan with you?’ Pete asked, back to his favourite subject.

‘Familiar,’ she said, but she sensed that Pete guessed it anyway.

‘That’d be about right,’ he replied, still staring straight ahead. ‘He tries it on with everyone, especially new meat like you.’

‘You know how to make a girl feel special,’ she said jokingly, but Pete didn’t laugh.

Laura watched him for a while as he just stared straight ahead. ‘What’s the thing between you two?’ she asked.

Pete didn’t react at first, and Laura started to wonder whether he had heard her, but then he sighed and replied, ‘We started as cops at the same time. I ended up on the Support Unit before he did, so by the time he arrived I’d learned a few tricks of the trade.’

Laura raised her eyebrows at that. She knew about the Support Unit. In jumpsuits and boots, they patrolled Saturday nights, looking to split up fights. Or maybe prolong them. The ‘distraction strike’ was their favourite technique, where an officer under threat could strike the attacker hard, the distraction of the pain making time for an arrest. Best delivered as a hard punch to the nose, it suited those who liked a ruck. As Laura looked at Pete, she guessed that he had fitted in well in the Support Unit.

‘Did you have the van door rule?’ she asked.

He tilted his head, and then started to smile. ‘So they had it in London too?’

Laura looked forward again. ‘I’ve heard of it.’ And she had seen it in action, the rule that if the back doors of the van had to open, the cops didn’t leave the scene until someone was in the van with them, for the handcuffed ride back to the station with plenty of hard braking. The spread of CCTV had stopped much of the fun for the Support Unit, but until they put cameras in the vans, most people would still arrive at the station on the van floor, the victim of one too many emergency stops.

‘What did Egan do that upset you so much?’

‘He didn’t like our methods, so he reported them, and then backed a prisoner up on a complaint.’ Pete glanced at Laura. ‘Maybe he was right, I don’t know, but why didn’t he tell us first?’

‘What happened to you?’

‘I got shoved into Custody for a couple of years. It was only the arrival of civilian jailers that got me out, and by the time I did he had arse-kissed all the way to his pips.’

‘So he’s not the most popular person in the station?’

Pete shook his head. ‘Not below him. Those above him like him, admire him for his courage, all that shit. And let’s face it, he’s only looking up.’

Laura shook her head and looked out of the window. She felt her phone vibrate again. ‘Meet for lunch? J xx ’

Laura sighed. It sounded like a great idea, but she knew it was a no.

She texted back. ‘No can do. Off for drive in country. Make sure Bobby ok from school’

She put her phone back in her pocket and thought about the long nights in she’d shared with Jack in London just a few weeks earlier. As she looked at the countryside flashing by, they seemed like part of a different life.

* * *

I smiled when I got the message. I had expected the police to head out to the house. It was a common formula: have an interview to set up the lies, and then search the house to disprove them.

I had parked half a mile from the house. I’d asked at a local garage for the exact location of Jimmy King’s house, showed them my press badge and said I was late for an interview. I was still driving my 1973 Triumph Stag, in Calypso Red. It had been my father’s old car, washed and treasured by him every Sunday until his death. I loved the car myself now, it reminded me of sunny weekends watching Dad polish it, but I knew that Laura would recognise it in a flash if I parked it too close to the house.

I was sitting in a tree, fifty yards from the house and across a secluded lane. I was looking down into the garden, a long green lawn, striped, with colourful borders all around. Pink, blues, violets. They looked well-maintained, and at the end of the garden were trees, willow and pine, although they were still small, some years to go before they created the country-garden look they were trying to achieve. The house itself stood out against the old stone cottages dotted around the valley. The bricks were fresh and new, with white pillars against the church-style front door and two large gables at the front, so that the house was H-shaped, grand and imposing. I guessed that the grilles on the gate were so people could see in, rather than the Kings see out.

All I had to do now was wait.

Chapter Thirteen

The boy was still asleep, the television off now, just the flicker of the oil-lamp for company.

He leaned forward, watched the rise and fall of his chest, the slight movement of his lips as he breathed. He looked angelic, young and untroubled, a long way from the problems at home. In that light, unaware of his surroundings, he was just another young boy.

He scuffed his feet on the floor, the noise of his soles in the dust loud, as if the surroundings weren’t used to sound. The walls were thick with cobwebs, the ones above the oil-lamp dancing in the heat of the flame, grey flicks as they waved in the half-light.

He stood up and stretched. He knew he couldn’t stay there all day. He knew the boy would be all right. There was still enough sedative in him to keep him quiet until the next morning. Just one more night and then it would all be better.

He leaned over the boy, watched his face for a moment. His hand reached down and moved the boy’s hair to one side, as if to keep it out of his eyes. He smiled, almost paternal, and then leaned forward to kiss him on the forehead. His lips touched softly, just a light brush.

He would be back, to make things right.

‘I always knew there was money in property,’ said Pete.

Laura looked up, and through the windscreen she saw what he meant.

They were approaching a pair of high steel gates sitting between brick pillars, the central point of long brick walls that surrounded a house she could see at the top of a sweeping gravel drive.

The house stood out as a blemish in a quiet green valley, Laura thought. It was too new for the setting, the ivy planted around the base of the walls not up to the ground-floor windows, so that the brickwork still gleamed. Maybe in a hundred years or so, when the roof had dipped in a few places and the walls had weathered darker, it would look desirable, but Laura thought that it seemed more lottery-win than country-set.

Pete had to bark stern words at the intercom to get the gate to open, but within a couple of minutes his tyres crunched on the gravel and they had parked in front of the large oak double doors at the front of the house. Jimmy King stood on the front doorstep. He was wearing a shirt open at the neck, but the rest of his attire was smart, with crisp pleats in his pinstriped trousers and a deep gleam to his shoes.

‘What are you doing here?’ he barked.

‘Good afternoon, Mr King,’ said Laura, stepping ahead of Pete, guessing that her diplomatic skills would be better than his. ‘We are currently holding your son, Luke, at Blackley police station, and we just need to have a look around.’

‘Do you have a warrant?’

‘Do I need one?’ It was a clichéd question, but it usually worked.

Jimmy King paused for a moment, and then stepped forward to block Laura’s way. ‘Yes, you do,’ he said, before turning around and walking back into the house.

Laura and Pete exchanged looks, and before she could stop him, Pete was bounding up the steps to the front doors, large and imposing, a stone above the entrance engraved with a motto: Strength in Unity. Pete jammed his foot in just as the door was about to close.

Pete grinned. ‘No, we don’t.’ When Jimmy King stepped back, surprised, Pete continued, ‘Your son is under arrest and we have the authority of an inspector to be here, so we can do it with or without your co-operation.’

‘Which inspector?’

Pete shook his head. ‘That doesn’t concern you. So it’s arrest or search. Which do you fancy?’

‘I’ve met bully-boys like you before,’ said Jimmy, his face impassive, his voice cold. ‘You need to remember that it’s only a job, that you’ll want to go home at night and forget about it.’ His look hardened. ‘I don’t forget anything.’

Pete glared at him. ‘And I’ve met plenty like you before,’ he said, and pushed past him and into the house.

Laura shook her head. She admired Pete’s style, but she wondered how many complaints he could fend off and stay in the job.

When they went in, Laura saw how unlike a country house it was. There were no panelled walls or dark corners, no oak beams across the ceilings. Instead, the light almost bounced its way around the house as it streamed through large windows and off the gold stripes on the wallpaper. The stairs went up out of the hall and fanned out to both sides of the house. Laura thought she saw a chaise longue at the top, below a large window that streamed light down into the hall. The rooms on either side of her were carpeted in pristine cream, and flowers adorned every spare piece of surface. It made Laura realise how much she had to do in her own home, with so many boxes still unpacked and none of the rooms in colours she liked.

Laura was pulled back to the reason for the visit by Dawson’s growl.

‘Where’s Luke’s car, the blue Audi?’

Jimmy King stared at them both for a few seconds, and then sat down. ‘I thought this was a search,’ he said, his fingers together, steepled upwards. ‘So find it then.’

‘I’ll show you,’ said a female voice from the top of the stairs.

Laura looked up and saw a woman in her late fifties, with bottle-blonde hair swept back into a tight wave. She was wearing a yellow jumper, her shirt collar up, and a string of pearls, like a woman who ached to be accepted for what she would like to be, higher up the social scale than everyone else. It was the unpleasant rise to her smile that gave her away, looking down on Laura like she was trying to sell her lucky heather.

Laura glanced towards the pictures on the wall, dominated by a family portrait: the success story with his society wife and his two perfect boys. Luke King was the youngest, and he looked nervous in the gaze of the lens. The woman at the centre of the picture, sitting on a throne-style chair, was the woman now coming down the stairs towards Laura.

Laura smiled. ‘Thank you.’

Mrs King nodded as she passed and then walked towards the back of the house, through a large kitchen full of the stainless-steel trappings that looked like they cost as much as Laura earned in a year, and then into a brick-built conservatory filled with wicker furniture and pot plants.

As they stepped into the garden, Laura saw someone watching them from the end of the lawn, a tall, dark-haired man, lean and fit in his jeans and T-shirt. But he headed off to a brick workshop tucked away into a corner as soon as he saw them. Laura watched him as he padlocked it and then headed back to where he had just been, pocketing the key as he went.

‘Who’s that?’ asked Laura.

Mrs King followed her gaze and then said, ‘Danut, our gardener and handyman.’

‘Danut?’

‘He’s Romanian.’

‘Has he worked for you for long?’

‘Started at the beginning of the summer.’

As Laura watched Danut, she noticed how he avoided her gaze, how he seemed suddenly engrossed in putting his tools away.

‘He’s a good worker,’ continued Mrs King, seeing that Laura was watching him. ‘Honest, strong, very good with his hands.’ She looked at Laura. ‘Do you want to question him?’

Before Laura could answer, Mrs King waved him over.

‘Danut, come here.’

Danut stayed where he was for a moment, and then began to walk slowly along the lawn. As he got closer, Laura could sense that he was wary of them. When he came to a stop, he looked at Laura and clenched his jaw nervously.

‘These are two police officers,’ Mrs King said, ‘and they would like to…’

‘Where’s Luke’s car, the blue Audi?’ Pete interrupted sharply, cutting out any prompting.

Danut glanced at Mrs King, who nodded, almost imperceptibly.

‘The blue car is for valeting,’ said Danut, his English broken and heavily accented.

‘Where is it, though?’

‘I just say, I took it for valeting this morning. They wax and polish and I collect soon.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Only twelve pounds, and it come out like from showroom.’

‘When did you take it?’ Pete barked.

‘Early. Before nine.’

‘Who asked you to take it?’

Danut looked at Mrs King again before answering. ‘Luke. He asked. He said take it for valeting.’

Mrs King looked at the floor as Laura made notes. Pete stepped away, his face screwed up with frustration. He turned round quickly. ‘Which valeting place?’

Danut shrugged. ‘In town. Small place. I don’t know street.’

Pete stormed off and headed back into the house.

‘Where are you going?’ It was Mrs King, running to catch up. Laura followed.

‘To search your son’s room.’ Pete began to look around him when he reached the hallway, deciding where to go. ‘Are you going to show me where, or do I have to go through every room?’

Laura saw how Mrs King looked dejected for a moment, an instant of weakness that passed in a second, and then she hurried after Pete, catching him as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

‘I’ll show you Luke’s room,’ she said quietly. Laura noticed for the first time that the rims of Mrs King’s eyes were red, as if she had been crying, and she detected a tremor in the woman’s hands.

As she passed through the hallway behind the others, Laura saw that there were no other family pictures on the wall, and as she glanced into the rooms she couldn’t see any in them either. There were some country views, a hillside and a lake in one, an old hunting lodge in another. It seemed like the family didn’t celebrate the ordinary things, the laughs, the unexpected moments. It all seemed too orderly. She could hear Jimmy King hissing into a telephone.

Pete and Laura followed Mrs King up the stairs. As they got to the top, Laura looked out of a large window. She saw Danut staring up at the house.

‘What are we looking for?’ whispered Laura to Pete.

‘Last night’s clothes, if we can find them, and check out the sheets and towels. Bag them and tag them.’

‘Anything else?’

Pete almost smiled. ‘Don’t forget we are missing two eyes and a tongue. They would be useful.’

As Mrs King opened the door to Luke’s room, she stepped to one side.

‘Do you want to keep an eye on us, to make sure you’re happy with what we’re doing?’ asked Pete. It was partly a dig, but Laura wasn’t sure Mrs King got it.

Mrs King shook her head and stepped away, looking at the floor.

‘No, go ahead.’

They walked into a room that seemed to belong more to an adolescent than someone Luke’s age. There were posters on the wall, some rock bands Laura didn’t recognise, with a large television in one corner and a games console underneath, along with game boxes scattered on the floor. Next to the television was a cabinet filled with DVDs. Laura cast a quick eye over the titles, but they seemed mundane. A few slasher movies and Far East martial arts titles, but the rest were recent classics and Simpsons box sets.

They carried on looking, going through drawers and bookcases. There were computer disks and comics, and science fiction figures all around the room. They found diaries, and those were bagged up along with the computer disks. But nothing unusual.

Laura stood by the computer. It was on, a screen-saver showing a series of Star Wars images in a constant loop. She jiggled the mouse and was greeted by the welcome screen, partially obscured by the password box.

She looked over at Pete, who had his hands in a drawer.

‘Anything yet?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing, but maybe he keeps things hidden.’

‘Any sign of girlfriends in here?’

‘Not a thing. No porno, but no photos or love letters. You’d expect one or the other.’

‘Don’t judge everyone by your standards.’

Laura looked out of the window and saw Danut still looking up at her. She stopped for a moment and studied him, trying to work out his interest. He noticed her looking and turned to walk away. As he went, his head was down, his pace slow and deliberate. Laura made a mental note to find out more about him.

She turned around when she heard someone else come into the room. It was Jimmy King, and he had a telephone in his hand and a smirk on his face.

‘It’s your inspector,’ he said.

Laura and Pete exchanged glances before she took hold of the phone. ‘Hello. DC McGanity here.’

‘This is DI Egan.’

Laura pulled a face at Pete.

‘You have to leave the King house now,’ continued Egan.

‘But sir, you gave us consent,’ Laura protested.

‘It’s withdrawn.’

‘What about the things we’ve collected?’

‘Anything incriminating?’ When she didn’t answer immediately, he barked, ‘Leave them,’ and then the phone went silent.

Laura handed the phone back to King, who smiled at her. And she knew what it meant, that he had the power.

Pete almost knocked King into the doorframe when he walked out of the room. King glared at him angrily. Laura smiled now. She knew that the best weapon was patience. If Jimmy King’s time was due, then it would come.

I scanned the grounds with my camera, said a silent thanks for zoom lenses, and I saw why the garden looked so good. As I looked through the lens I watched a young man walk across the garden. He went towards some concrete outbuildings at the end of the lawn. When he got there, he had a look back towards the house and then slipped into a garage-type building, rectangular pale concrete, with green double doors at the front. I got some shots and then turned back to the house.

I was starting to feel stiff when I saw movement by the front of the house. I raised the camera and zoomed in. It was Laura again.

I saw Jimmy King walk with them. It seemed like he was making sure they left quickly.

I took pictures until Laura left, and then I checked my pocket for the number I had jotted down. One call to some old contacts at the local paper had got me Jimmy King’s home number.

A woman answered. She sounded terse.

‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘I’m Jack Garrett, and I’m a reporter. Do you have any comment to make on the arrest of your son?’

There was silence. And then the phone went dead.

I jumped down from the tree and started to walk back to my car, feeling pleased with myself. Even no comment is sometimes worth reporting.

Chapter Fourteen

As Pete swung the car into the police-station yard, he muttered, ‘Today is turning into a fuck-up.’

‘Two suspects,’ sighed Laura. ‘One we can’t find, and the other is about to walk.’

‘Bad management,’ said Pete, and he started to smile. He brought the car to a halt in front of the station and jumped out. ‘C’mon, bring your rags with you.’

Laura followed Pete towards the back entrance of the station, holding two large clear exhibit bags, one containing old valeting rags, the other filled with the tissues used to wipe clean the car interiors. It had taken a few circuits of town to find the car valeters, but then she had seen the Audi parked on the street. The owners of the firm were more than happy to help, although the way some of the valeters melted into the spray mist made her think that not all of them declared their earnings. She didn’t ask any questions. That was a fight for someone else.

Just before she got to the door, ready to swipe her way in, she felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. When she checked the display she saw that it was Jack. That made her nervous. She was on the first day of a murder investigation, and he was calling far more than usual.

‘Hello,’ she snapped.

Pete raised his eyebrows as Laura listened, and he saw how she softened during the call. She was smiling when she snapped her phone shut.

‘Good news?’

‘It was Jack,’ she said. ‘He’s bringing Bobby down to meet me after work.’

Pete winked at her. ‘Maybe the day isn’t turning out that badly.’

They walked to the Incident Room together, and they detected a sombre mood.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Laura.

‘The preliminaries have come in from the post mortem,’ someone said, an eager young detective.

‘Go on.’

‘Jess was tortured. She was alive when she lost her eyes and tongue.’

Laura took a deep breath. ‘So more than just trophies.’

‘Seems that way. They were taken out by something sharp, though, almost surgical. There were nicks on the bone around the eye-socket where the blade scraped it.’

Laura winced. And she guessed that her time with Bobby would be briefer than she’d hoped.

‘She hardly cried out.’

The voice woke Sam up quickly. He must have fallen asleep. He looked around, scared for a moment as he wondered where he was. Then, as it came back to him, he rubbed his eyes.

He was in a cell with Luke, as they waited for Egan to decide what he was going to do. Sam could have waited outside, or even back at his office, but he knew how cops like Egan operated. He knew there were too many casual conversations with prisoners, just little asides, hints that their lawyer might be wrong.

It had been a long wait, though. The paint on the walls, grey and grim, matched the toilet in the corner. He hadn’t used it yet, but that moment might come soon. It was the lack of good light that struck him the most, the windows frosted and small, but it was the smell that Sam knew would linger.

The cells in Blackley police station had a smell all of their own. The police station was over a hundred years old, and the cells felt more like cellars, with little natural light and a position below ground level. A century of damp had seeped into every piece of brickwork, the smell broken by disinfectant and whatever had been left by their occupants, all those weekend drunks, drug addicts sweating their way through withdrawal, old feet. Sam knew it would stay in his clothes and in his hair for days.

‘What did you say?’ asked Sam.

‘She hardly cried out,’ Luke repeated.

Sam stood up and stretched. ‘Don’t say any more.’

‘No, I want to tell you,’ Luke continued. He was obviously enjoying himself.

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ Sam replied, although it wasn’t his conscience that made him say it. There was a corridor full of empty cells, and Egan had marched him past all of them to get to the large one at the end, where there was room for a few prisoners. Sam couldn’t see the microphones, but he knew one of the cells was bugged. It had been done a few years ago, when one of the police-station runners was suspected of smuggling drugs into the cells. At first the police had thought he was just providing a good service, when bringing his clients chocolate or sweets. But they’d soon begun to notice that his clients stopped being as eager to get out. So the police bugged a cell. Not to use in court, just for intelligence gathering. They were in the bugged cell, Sam was pretty sure of that.

Luke smiled and sat back, his head against the white tiles.

‘Oh come on, you do. You must have wondered what it would be like to kill someone.’

Sam turned towards him, his anger starting to surface. ‘I’ve never wondered that, because I have never wanted to kill anyone. But stay quiet in here because if you talk, they might listen.’

Luke whistled, his eyes wide. He looked around. ‘Wouldn’t that be fun.’

His smile shut off at the sound of a key in the lock. It was Egan, his jaw set firm and angry. Sam wondered if someone higher up had told him to release them.

Sam had to squeeze past him to get into the tight corridor. He blinked at the bright light, and then felt himself pulled to one side.

‘The dead girl’s mother is in the waiting area,’ Egan hissed. ‘Maybe you’ll want to look her in the eye on the way out.’

Sam jerked his arm away. ‘I’ll tell her how you can’t catch her killer, Egan,’ he said angrily, and then cursed himself for losing his temper.

Sam didn’t wait for permission from Egan. He started to lead Luke away, but he was angry with himself. He was baiting Egan to make himself feel better. Sam had gone into a police station with someone who’d said he had killed and would kill again. Sam had done what he could to get him out. What kind of person did that make him?

Egan glared at Luke all the time he was being booked out of custody. As they went through the waiting area, Sam saw a woman, sitting at the back, a tissue clenched in her fist, her chin puckered, her eyes red. Luke looked away, but Sam saw her watching them, her eyes getting wide, her mouth opening.

Sam looked away and left the station, with Luke at his shoulder.

I was back in Blackley when Sam Nixon came out with Luke King. The best reporting involves patience, although I could tell that the news was already beginning to spread. There was a reporter from the local paper there too, along with a cameraman and a young woman with a microphone.

I saw Sam mutter ‘shit’ to himself as he came out of the door. He glanced back at the station, but the only way was forward.

I moved forward as the cameraman went towards Sam, who tried to push past, Luke tucked in behind him. The court stragglers spilled onto the pavement and watched the excitement. I thought I heard somebody cheer.

Suddenly Terry McKay appeared in front of Sam. He swayed towards Luke King, his finger in the air, waving in jerky movements.

‘You’re a fucking wanker,’ he sneered, his teeth bared, brown and jagged, spittle landing on Sam’s suit.

Sam tried to move forward, tried to push Terry out of the way, but Terry just pushed back.

‘They catching up with you?’ he continued, shouting now.

Terry turned towards the camera, to make sure he was being filmed, and Sam took the opportunity to slip past him, Luke keeping up with him. The cameraman stepped in front of McKay, leaving him alone on the pavement, confused and angry.

As Sam walked off, he tried to step up the pace, but the cameraman was quicker, blocking his path. Sam realised that he had lost the option of silence, so I watched him as he licked his lips and swallowed. A microphone and my voice recorder were pushed in front of him. He cleared his throat and his cheeks flushed.

‘As you might know, the police have been speaking to my client in relation to a murder that took place last night. My client would just like to say that he is mystified as to why the police wanted to speak to him.’

His voice sounded strong, assured.

‘He knows nothing about the unfortunate woman who was found dead last night, but hopes that Blackley Police find whoever committed this awful act. He hopes sincerely that the police are now able to devote their time to finding the killer, and that they stop trying to achieve quick publicity by pursuing an innocent young man just because he happens to have a well-known father.’ Sam smiled. ‘Thank you. That’s all.’

And with that, he walked away, Luke close behind.

I watched them go, noticing how Luke kept his eyes down, not wanting to meet anyone’s gaze. I thought about Sam and the few conversations I’d had with him. Did I know him well enough to get the inside track?

I checked my watch. I still had some time before I had to collect Bobby. And I wouldn’t know until I asked.

I had some research to do first, though.

Chapter Fifteen

Sam didn’t pause in reception. The seats were full of people ignoring the no-smoking sign, but he couldn’t face seeing any clients. Let the caseworkers speak to them. They spent their days working the files, visiting crime scenes, seeing witnesses, harassing the prosecution. And when the prosecution ignored the letters, they harassed them some more.

Sam wouldn’t ask the Crown Court runners to speak to anyone in the office. They weren’t employed for the daily grind. Harry recruited them for the flash of their legs, nothing more, to brighten the lives of prisoners and take notes in court. The word soon got around the pubs and estates in Blackley that if you wanted to see a pretty girl when you were stuck in a prison cell, you went to Harry Parsons & Co.

When Sam got back to his office, he sank back into his chair and shut his eyes for a moment. It was the old moral question, the one he tried to avoid. How could he defend a killer? The answer was easy: the judicial process would decide how to treat him. It was a cop-out, an excuse, but it was the only thing that helped Sam sleep. When he ever did.

But what happened when his client said he would do it again? That wasn’t in the script. Sam had the power to stop it. The Law Society rules allowed him to breach client confidentiality if someone’s life was at stake. He rubbed his hands over his face. He knew he couldn’t do it. Luke King wasn’t an ordinary client. And that sickened him.

Sam still had his eyes closed when he heard his door click open. When he opened them, he saw Harry standing there.

Sam wasn’t surprised. Although Harry never came to his office—he called Sam to his—Sam guessed that Luke’s case might make a few things different around here.

‘Something wrong?’ asked Sam.

Harry shook his head. ‘I was just passing when I saw you.’ He tried to look casual, but Harry Parsons didn’t do casual. ‘How did it go with Luke?’

Sam saw Alison looking into the room.

‘He’s still got his liberty, if that’s how we measure these things,’ Sam said.

Harry didn’t answer, so Sam played him at his own game. A few seconds passed before Harry spoke.

‘Tell me what happened.’

Sam sat forward and rubbed his eyes, and then he told Harry all about Egan getting frisky, seeing a big name, a headline.

‘So is he out now?’ Harry asked.

Sam nodded. ‘He’s got to go back, but he knows that Egan will be watching him.’

Harry stayed quiet for a moment, his eyes down, thinking, and then he nodded. ‘Thank you for looking after him,’ he said, and then turned to walk away.

As Harry was about to leave the room, Sam shouted after him. ‘If he is taken in again, I don’t want to act for him.’

Harry turned back round, and Sam noticed that his cheeks were flushed. ‘Why ever not?’

Sam tried to think of a way to answer that sounded reasonable, but there wasn’t one.

‘I just don’t, that’s all.’

Harry was about to respond when there was a light tap on the door. It was Karen, Sam’s secretary. She looked nervous.

‘Excuse me, Mr Parsons,’ she said, her voice quiet. ‘Sam, there’s someone to see you. He’s in reception.’

‘Has he made an appointment?’

She shook her head. ‘He says it’s urgent. He’s been hanging around the office all day.’

Harry turned to walk out. ‘Stick with it, Sam,’ he said quietly, ‘for all our sakes.’

And then he left the room. As he went, Sam saw that Alison was still outside his office, but as Harry passed her, she turned and walked away.

For all our sakes. What the hell did he mean by that? Sam didn’t know, but he was sure he had seen something in Harry’s eyes he hadn’t seen before. Fear.

Chapter Sixteen

The old man had been seated in a room by the time Sam got there. It was one of the older interview rooms, with woodchip and ancient desks, not for the best clients.

Sam was hit by the smell as soon as he walked in. It was as if the old man had slept in his clothes for days, a musty mix of sweat and damp. From the back, Sam saw straggly grey hair over a dirty old grey overcoat, tide-marks along the collar. As he went around the desk, Sam recognised him straightaway. It was the old man who had been staring up at his window that morning.

Sam sat down in front of him.

The old man was in a chair without arms, and he looked vulnerable, scared. His knees were together, his hands over them, and he looked defensive. Under his coat he wore a shirt, but it looked creased, as if he had found his only clean one under a heap of others and made a special effort. There was a film of grey bristles over his cheeks, and his dark-rimmed glasses were held together by tape over the bridge. His eyes had once been bright blue, Sam could tell that much, but now they looked tired, ringed by dark circles.

Sam didn’t try to put him at ease. The old man had been watching him all day, and Sam wanted answers, although he wondered now how the old man had ever made him nervous.

‘Hello, my name is Sam Nixon. How can I help you?’ It came out brusque, unfriendly.

The old man looked surprised. He watched Sam for a moment, and then looked down. Sam realised that he’d just ruined the prepared speech.

‘My name is Eric Randle,’ he said quietly, his voice sounding hoarse, ‘and I have dreams.’

‘We all have dreams,’ Sam snapped back. He looked at his watch. At the moment this was all free of charge.

The old man ran his finger around his collar, and then said, ‘I dream of the future, and it comes true.’

Sam started to twirl his pen between his fingers, a habit he had when he wasn’t sure what to say.

‘I paint them,’ Eric continued. ‘My dreams, I mean.’ He shifted in his seat. Sam didn’t say anything. He just looked at the old man, let him talk.

‘I’ve always painted, since I was a child,’ Eric carried on, leaning forward in his seat, ‘but then I started getting these dreams, strong, vivid, violent dreams.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘I knew they meant something, but I didn’t know what.’ He shrugged. ‘So I started painting them.’ He sat back and smiled, a nervous smile. ‘I paint my dreams, and then they come true.’

Sam tried not to smile with him. ‘What, you influence the future?’ He put his pen down. ‘I saw it in a film once. Richard Burton. Medusa something.’

‘No, no,’ Eric said, his eyes wide now. ‘You don’t understand.’ The old man took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead. ‘These aren’t normal dreams. These wake me up, and I’m crying sometimes. I know I’ve seen something terrible, something that will kill people, but I can’t do anything about it.’

‘What kind of things?’

Eric began to clench his jaw, his eyes distant. ‘Disasters, murders. I’ve seen plane crashes, earthquakes, bombings. And I can’t do anything about it, because I don’t know when it’s going to happen, or where.’ He looked back at Sam, his eyes almost pleading. ‘Sometimes I’m too scared to go back to sleep. So I get up, no matter what time of night it is. I get up and paint my dreams. And then they come true.’ He wiped his eyes. They looked damp, his lip trembling. And I know all the time that I could have stopped it, if I’d just known more.’

Eric looked at Sam expectantly, as if he suddenly thought that Sam might have an answer. But Sam had his mind on something else.

‘Why have you been following me today?’ asked Sam.

Eric sat bolt upright and wiped his eyes, looking more focused. He reached into his coat pocket and produced a roll of paper. ‘I painted this a few months ago,’ he said.

He passed it over, barely rising from his seat; Sam had to lean over the desk to get it.

Sam unrolled it carefully. It wasn’t cheap paper. It felt thick, luxurious, not the glossy white of office paper. It seemed completely at odds with the man’s appearance.

It wasn’t a painting as he expected it. It was more of a collection of jottings, of images. There was no structure, no form, but the images immediately got his interest. Sam could tell the old man had talent. The human figures were drawn with swift lines, almost scribbled, and the colours overran, but the figures had astonishing movement, action.

It was the image in the middle that drew Sam’s attention. It came at him like a shot of adrenaline, recognisable straightaway. It was a woman, petite, young, tied to a chair. There was something hanging from her neck, like a rope, and her chest and face were painted bright red, with crosses over her eyes. Sam hadn’t seen the pictures from the scene of the murder, but he had heard Egan describe it over and over during the interview as he tried to rattle Luke.

Sam looked up at the old man, who smiled, just a nervous flicker of his lips.

Sam looked back at the picture.

There was more in the picture, and when Sam saw his own name scrawled across the top corner he felt his chest tighten. There were two people painted underneath his name, standing in front of a statue, of some old Victorian dignitary on a six-foot plinth. Sam recognised it. It was a statue near the court. The faces of the people in front of the statue were empty, but Sam could tell it was two men from the width of the shoulders and the suits.

Sam sat back and folded his arms. ‘What does this all mean?’

‘I don’t know.’ Eric looked at Sam, his eyes wide. ‘Sometimes I don’t know until afterwards.’

‘Until after what?’ Sam was getting frustrated now.

‘Until after it comes true.’

Sam put the picture down. ‘Mr Randle, this is all very interesting, but I’m a lawyer. I deal with legal problems.’ He gestured towards the picture. ‘I just don’t see how I can help you.’

‘I didn’t come here for advice,’ he said softly. ‘I came here to warn you.’

Sam felt a flutter of nerves. ‘Warn me of what?’

The old man shook his head slowly, sadly. ‘I don’t know. But you’ve been in my dreams all the time lately, and they’re getting stronger. Really strong.’ He rubbed his eyes and his voice came out in a croak. ‘I haven’t slept well in months. I keep hearing things, awful things, people crying, screaming.’ He rubbed his eyes again. ‘And I hear children, but they don’t say much. But I feel their pain, like they are lost and can’t get home.’

Sam wondered what to do. He could ring the police, but then what would he say? An old man had painted a picture and dreamt about him?

But then Sam remembered how he had been waking up every morning lately, bathed in sweat, the same dream making him wake up scared, bolt upright. A dark house. A boy crying. Doors, lots of doors. Falling.

Sam held up his hand.

‘Mr Randle, I don’t…’

‘You’ve got children, Mr Nixon,’ he interrupted. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

Sam felt a burst of anger. This was more than a passing client. He had researched him, looked into his life before he came to the office.

Sam stood up quickly and got ready to march Eric Randle to the door.

‘It’s got a scientific name,’ Eric said as he looked up. ‘Precognition. It’s not just me, you see. There are a lot of people like me. Some people write things down, some of us draw. Some people just forget their dreams, until something happens and they think it has happened before.’ He leaned forward and became animated. ‘Have you ever had a dream that something awful was going to happen, and then, not long after, it does?’

‘I can’t say I have.’ Sam spoke through clenched teeth, one hand already on the door handle.

‘Perhaps you just don’t remember.’

‘And perhaps I just haven’t. Look, Mr Randle, you’ve got to leave. And if you don’t, I’ll make you.’

The old man looked anxious, waiting for a response. Sam didn’t give him one.

Randle stood up, moving more quickly than Sam thought he would. ‘You’re in danger, Mr Nixon,’ he said.

Sam stayed by the door, his eyes blazing now.

‘Keep that,’ Eric said, pointing at the picture. ‘It might mean something soon.’ He started to leave, and then stopped. ‘We have meetings.’

‘Who does?’

‘The people who have these dreams. We meet up and tell each other what we’ve seen.’ He put a leaflet on the desk. It had been done on a home printer, the colours dull on cheap paper. ‘The girl in the painting was in our group.’

Sam looked at the piece of paper again, curled up on the desk. ‘What, the dead girl?’

Eric nodded. ‘Her name was Jess Goldie. She used to write down her dreams. She had seen it coming, we both had, we saw it in a dream, but we hadn’t known it was her.’

‘When did you paint this?’

‘There’s a date on the back.’

Sam walked over to the desk and turned the paper over. The picture was over three months old. Or so the date said. He looked at Randle, who shrugged his shoulders and then set his jaw as he clenched back a tear.

‘She was my friend,’ he said, ‘and I couldn’t stop it.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’

‘I just want you to be careful, Mr Nixon, and promise me that you’ll listen to me if I call you.’

Sam thought about it for a moment, and then he realised that it was a cheap promise, one he could always break if he wanted.

‘Okay,’ said Sam. ‘Promise.’

Eric looked happy with that. Sam watched him as he gathered himself and then shuffled out of the office. When he had gone, Sam felt his forehead. He was sweating. He looked at his hands. They were trembling.

He laughed nervously. The day had turned into a strange one.

Chapter Seventeen

Sam watched Alison as she drank her beer. She licked her lips whenever she took a sip, and ran her fingers through her hair as she laughed at one of Jon Hampson’s anecdotes. Jon was the ex-detective who ran the Crown Court department at Parsons & Co. Some cops just couldn’t let go, as if they missed the dirt when they retired.

Sam looked away. They were snatching a quick drink before heading home. For Sam, it was just a way of putting off the evening round of arguments with Helena, but he wasn’t in the mood for Jon.

Jon Hampson had been a scruffy cop, but his switch to defence work after his retirement the year before had changed him. He was small and round, his face pale, the cheeks marked by broken veins, but he had started to speak in a deep bumble, an affectation that helped him play the part. He peered over his glasses and his suits were now three-pieces, always with a bright handkerchief to match his silk tie.

‘Can we give the war stories a rest?’ pleaded Sam. ‘I’ve come here to get away from work, not revel in it.’

Jon stopped talking and exchanged raised eyebrows with Alison.

‘Is everything okay?’ Alison asked.

Sam looked at her and saw the concern in her eyes. She was young, pretty and funny, just about everything his wife used to be, and he felt bad for snapping.

But the day hadn’t been good. It had started with Eric Randle watching him from the street, ended with a warning, and had a killer in the middle. And Sam knew that he still hadn’t caught up with his paperwork. The day had had too many distractions, and it would get no better when he got home.

Sam held up his hand in apology. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m just tired, that’s all.’ He sighed. ‘I just wonder sometimes about the point of it all.’

Jon didn’t answer at first, just watched as a waitress came over, bringing three more beers but no smile. He looked back at Sam. ‘What? This, now—café culture? Or life itself?’

‘No, no,’ said Sam, banging his bottle on the table. ‘Law. What I do. And what you do. Intruding. What is the point of it all? Of any of it?’ He rubbed his eyes and felt the skin sag under his fingers.

Jon laughed, too many cigarettes turning it into a wheeze. ‘You have had a bad day.’ He looked at Alison. ‘Has he been like this all day?’

Alison started to grin, but Sam shook his head. ‘There isn’t a point, and that is the whole point.’ He moved his beer around on the table, making small circles in the condensation from the bottle. ‘Seriously, why do we kid ourselves? I pretend I’m helping people.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s just bullshit. I help crooks stay free. Nothing more.’

‘Whoa, Sammy boy,’ said Jon, his hands held up in surrender. ‘It’s taken you this long to work it out?’ He winked at Alison. ‘Maybe it’s time for a holiday.’

‘Are you okay?’ repeated Alison, her voice concerned, quiet.

Her hair hung forward as she leaned over the table, her hand out. Sam wanted to take it, just hold it in his fingers, feel her warmth, a woman’s touch.

He looked away as he thought about Helena. She had once been warm like that. Then the drinking had started. Just social at first, a glass of wine with dinner, and then the bottle. He knew it was partly his fault, because he was never there to give her something else to think about. Their lives didn’t feel good. It was all routine and arguments. Sam hid at the office. Helena hid in the bottle.

‘Typical liberal lawyer,’ Jon said, as he warmed to his theme. ‘You came out of law school to change the world, but then you met the crooks and realised that they don’t want change.’

‘That’s a dismal view from an ex-cop,’ said Sam.

Jon waved him away. ‘You enjoy your conscience while you can, because it will wear you out. Me? I’m just out to make money.’

‘Didn’t you care when you were in the police?’ asked Alison, her eyes full of innocence.

Jon snorted. ‘I did thirty years and made no difference. I just helped move the money around. All those wages. Prosecutors, court staff, ushers, forensic scientists…An economy all of its own.’ He tipped his bottle towards Sam. ‘Even those ambulance-chasing bastards are doing the same thing. You know the ones. A firm dealt with a case last year, a bus crash. By the time the claims people had been round the estate, two hundred people had been on that bus. They must have been hanging off the fucking roof. If someone crashes into you, take a picture, because by the time it gets to a claim, the other car will have been full. But the money keeps swirling. Insurance assessors, claims farmers, lawyers. Don’t forget the lawyers. And when the damages cheque arrives, it’s spent. The shops stay busy, the taxes get paid, the country stays afloat.’

Even Sam was smiling now. Jon had that knack. ‘So I’m being patriotic?’

Jon shrugged. ‘You’re in it for the money, for the glory. For this,’ and he waved his hand around, ‘sitting in a pavement bar that can’t decide if it’s in Paris or Blackley, paying more for your beer because the girl who brings it to your table has got bouncy little tits and an arse you want to grab the next time she goes past.’

‘You must have had a conscience once?’ asked Alison.

Jon smiled at that. ‘I watched them all walk free. Rapists, child-killers, robbers. All set free by some clever defence work, and the lawyers were the ones going home in the Mercs. Maybe I just thought it was my turn.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Just take the cheque, Sam.’

Bobby held my hand as I waited outside the police station for Laura.

It felt strange—his fingers were tiny in my palm—but nice, secure.

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