John Harvey

Version 1.0

Copyright © John Harvey 2005

ISBN 9780099466239 (from Jan 2007)

ISBN 0 09 946623 6

 

For Graham

Good friend and sound adviser for more than twenty years

 

 

 

Don't come round reminding me again How brittle bone is

Billy Bragg: 'Valentine's Day is Over'

 

By your late thirties the ground has begun to grow hard.

It grows harder and harder until the day that it admits you.

Thomas McGuane: Nobody's Angel

 

 

 

The first girl dead, there wasn't any choice.

Her friend — her sister, or was that all part of the pretence? — standing in the corner of the room, naked, one arm across her breasts.

Wanting to know what she'd seen but knowing. Reading it in her eyes. The thin stream of urine that ran down her leg.

'Oh, Christ!' he'd said.

Then someone: 'I'll take care of it'.

And when he looked again she wasn't there. Neither of them were there.

1

Maddy Birch would never see thirty again. Nor forty either. Stepping back from the mirror, she scowled at the wrinkles that were beginning to show at the edges of her mouth and the corners of her eyes; the grey infiltrating her otherwise dark brown, almost chestnut hair. Next birthday she would be forty-four. Forty-four and a detective sergeant attached to S07, Serious and Organised Crime. A few hundred in the bank and a mortgaged flat in the part of Upper Holloway that north London estate agents got away with calling Highgate Borders. Not a lot to show for half a lifetime on the force. Wrinkles aside.

Slipping a scarlet band from her pocket, she pulled her hair sharply back and twisted the band into place. Taking a step away, she glanced quickly down at her boots and the front of her jeans, secured the Velcro straps of her bulletproof vest, gave the pony-tail a final tug and walked back into the main room.

To accommodate all the personnel involved, the ring had been held in the hall of an abandoned school, Detective Superintendent George Mallory, in charge of the operation, addressing the troops from the small stage on which head teachers since Victorian times had, each autumn, admonished generations of small children to plough the fields and scatter. The fields, that would be, of Green Lanes and Finsbury Park.

Climbing frames, worn and filmed with grey dust, were still attached to the walls. New flip charts, freshly marked in bright colours, stood at either side of a now blank screen. Officers from the Tactical Firearms Unit, S019, stood in clusters of three or four, heads down, or sat at trestle tables, mostly silent, with Maddy's new colleagues from Serious Crime. She had been with her particular unit three weeks and two days.

Moving alongside Maddy, Paul Draper gestured towards the watch on his wrist. Ten minutes shy of half five. 'Waiting. Worst bloody time.'

Maddy nodded.

Draper was a young DC who'd moved down from Manchester a month before, a wife and kid and still not twenty-five; he and Maddy had reported for duty at Hendon on the same day.

'Why the hell can't we get on with it?'

Maddy nodded again.

The hall was thick with the smell of sweat and aftershave and the oil that clung to recently cleaned 9mm Brownings, Glock semi-automatic pistols, Heckler and Koch MP5 carbines. Though she'd taken the firearms training course at Lippetts Hill, Maddy herself, like roughly half the officers present, was unarmed.

'All this for one bloke,' Draper said.

This time Maddy didn't even bother to nod. She could sense the fear coming off Draper's body, read it in his eyes.

From his position near the door, the superintendent cast an eye across the hall, then spoke to Maurice Repton, his DCI.

Repton smiled and checked his watch. 'All right, gentlemen,' he said. 'And ladies. Let's nail the bastard.'

Outside, the light was just beginning to clear.

* * *

Maddy found herself sitting across from Draper inside the Transit, their knees almost touching. To her right sat an officer from S019, ginger moustache curling round his reddish mouth; whenever she looked away, Maddy could feel his eyes following her. When the van went too fast over a speed bump and he jolted against her, his hand, for an instant, rested on her thigh. 'Sorry,' he said and grinned.

Maddy stared straight ahead and for several minutes closed her eyes, willing the image of their target to reappear as it had on the screen. James William Grant. Born Hainault, Essex, October twentieth, 1952. A week then, Maddy thought, off his fifty-second birthday. Birthdays were on her mind.

Armed robbery, money laundering, drug dealing, extortion, conspiracy to murder, more than a dozen arrests and only one conviction: Grant had been a target for years. Phone taps, surveillance, the meticulous unravelling of his financial dealings, here and abroad. The closer they got, the more likely it was that Grant would catch wind and flee somewhere the extradition laws rendered him virtually untouchable.

'It's time we took this one down,' Mallory had said at the end of his briefing. 'Way past time.'

Five years before, an associate of Grant's, ambitious enough to try and freelance some Colombian cocaine conveniently mislaid between Amsterdam and the Sussex coast, had been shot dead at the traffic lights midway along Pentonville Road, smack in the middle of the London rush hour. After a trial lasting seven weeks and costing three-quarters of a million pounds, one of Grant's lieutenants had eventually been convicted of the killing, while Grant himself had slipped away scot-free.

'What d'you think?' Paul Draper asked, leaning forward. 'You think he'll be there? Grant?'

Maddy shrugged.

'He fuckin' better be,' the Firearms officer said, touching the barrel of his carbine much as earlier he had touched Maddy's leg. 'Feather in our fuckin' cap, landing a bastard like him.' He grinned. 'All I hope is he don't bottle out and give it up, come walking out with his hands behind his fuckin' head.'

As the Transit veered left off Liverpool Road, someone towards the rear of the van started humming tunelessly; heads turned sharply in his direction and he ceased as abruptly as he'd begun. Sweat gathered in the palms of Maddy's hands.

'There pretty soon,' Draper said to nobody in particular. 'Got to be.'

Conscious that the man next to her was staring more openly, Maddy turned to face him. 'What?' she said. 'What?'

The man looked away.

Once, after a successful operation in Lincoln, her old patch, a good result, she and this officer who'd been eyeing her all evening had ended up with a quick grope and cuddle in a doorway. His hand on her breast. Her hand between his legs. What in God's name had made her think about that now?

'We're getting close,' the driver said over his shoulder.

One side of York Way was derelict, half-hidden behind blackened walls and wire fencing; on the other, old warehouses and small factories were in the process of being converted into loft apartments. Underground parking, twenty-four-hour portering, fifteen-year-old prostitutes with festering sores down their legs and arms a convenient ten-minute stroll away.

From the front the building seemed little changed, a high-arched wooden door held fast with double padlock and chain, its paintwork blistered and chipped. Small windows whose cobwebbed glass was barred across. Maddy knew from the briefing that the guts of the place had already been torn out and restoration was well in hand. A light showed dimly behind one of the windows on the upper floor.

Either side of her, armed officers in black overalls, the single word 'Police' picked out in white at the front of their vests, were moving silently into position.

No sweat in her palms now and her throat was dry.

* * *

'You bastard!' Laughing.

'What?'

'You know.'

'No. What?'

Wary, Vicki walked over to where Grant was stretched out on the bed, cotton sheet folded back below his waist. For a man of his years, she thought, and not for the first time, he was in good shape. Trim. Lithe. He worked out. And when he'd grabbed her just now, fingers tightening about her wrist, it had been like being locked into a vice.

'C'm'ere a minute,' he said. 'Come on.' A smile snaking across his face. 'Not gonna do anythin', am I? So soon after the last time. My age.'

She knew he was lying, of course, but complied. Vicki standing there in a tight white T-shirt and silver thong, the T-shirt finishing well above the platinum ring in her navel. What else was it about but this?

When she'd first met him, a month or so before, it had been at the Motor Show, Birmingham. Vicki not wearing a whole lot more than she was now, truth be told, a couple of hundred quid a day to draw attention to the virtues of a 3.2 litre direct-injection diesel engine, climate control and all-leather interior.

He'd practically bought the vehicle out from under her and later screwed her on the back seat in a lay-by off the A6. 'Christen the upholstery,' he'd said with a wink, tucking a couple of fifty-pound notes down inside her dress. She'd balled them up and thrown them back in his face. He'd paid more attention to her after that.

'I've got this place in London,' he'd said. 'Why don't . you come and stay for a bit.'

'A bit of what?'

The first time he'd seen her naked it had stopped him in his tracks: he'd had more beautiful women before but none with buttocks so round and tight and high.

'Jesus!' he'd said.

'What?'

'You've got a gorgeous arse.'

She'd laughed. 'Just don't think you're getting any of it, that's all.'

'We'll see about that,' he'd said.

Fingers resting lightly just below her hips, he'd planted a careful kiss in the small of her back. 'Who was it?' he'd said, hands sliding down. 'Pushed in his thumb and pulled out a plum? Little Jack Horner? Little Tommy Tucker?'

After that he took her face down on the polished wood floor, bruises on her knees and breasts that smelt of linseed oil.

'Will, don't,' she said now, shaking herself free. 'Not now. I have to go and pee.'

'What's wrong with here?' Pointing at his chest.

'Over you, you mean?'

'Why not? Wouldn't be the first time.'

'You're disgusting.'

'You don't know the half of it.' He reached for her but she skipped away.

'Don't be long,' he said, leaning back against the pillows and watching her as she walked towards the door.

* * *

There was access from a courtyard at the rear, stairs leading past three balconies to the upper floor. The loft apartment where Grant lived was entered through double doors, a single emergency exit leading to a fire escape at the furthest end.

Draper close behind her, Maddy turned a corner into the courtyard and flattened herself against the wall. Weapons angled upwards, armed officers were in position at the corners of the square, others scurrying towards the first and second balconies, and she waited for the signal to proceed. When it came, moments later, she sprinted for the stairs.

The walls were exposed brick, furnishings tasteful and sparse. Shifting his position, Grant poured himself another glass of wine. Dusty was still in the CD player and he clicked the remote.

'Why do you listen to that old stuff?' Vicki asked from the far end of the room.

'Greatest white soul singer ever was,' Grant said.

'History,' Vicki replied, approaching.

Grant grinned. 'Like me, you mean?'

'If you like.'

One knee on the bed, she ran her fingers through the greying hairs on his chest and, reaching up, he kissed her on the mouth.

* * *

At the head of the stairs, Maddy waited, catching her breath, Draper on the landing below. The outer door to Grant's apartment was in clear sight. Mallory appeared level with Draper and then went on past. There was armament everywhere.

'After a little glory?' the superintendent whispered in Maddy's ear.

'No, sir.'

He smiled and Maddy could smell the mint and garlic on his breath. 'Second fiddle this time, Birch. Sweeping up the odds and ends.'

'Yes, sir.'

'You and your pal Draper. Down a floor. Just in case.'

Mallory moved on towards the door, Repton at his back, two officers wielding sledgehammers in their wake.

* * *

Volume high, the interior of the loft pulsated with sound: French horn, strings, piano, and then the voice. Unmistakable.

Vicki reached down and touched Grant's face, straddling him. Arching his back, eyes closed, Grant found her nipples with his fingertips.

Dusty swooped and soared and swooped again.

At the first crash, Grant swung Vicki on to her side and sprang clear, one hand clawing at a pair of chinos alongside the bed, the other reaching past Vicki's head.

The outer door splintered inwards off its hinges.

Fear flooded Vicki's face and she began to scream.

The pistol was tight in Grant's grasp as he turned away.

From the landing below, Maddy heard music, shouts, feet moving fast across bare boards, the slamming of doors.

'What the fuck?' Draper said.

'Move,' Maddy said, pushing him aside. 'Now.'

Positioned on the balcony opposite, one of the police marksmen had Grant in his sights for several seconds, a clear shot through plate glass as he raced down the emergency stairs, but without the order to fire the moment passed and Grant was lost to sight.

'In here,' Maddy said, kicking open the door and ducking low.

Draper followed, swerving left.

Maddy could feel the blood jolting through her veins, her heart pumping fast against her ribs. The room they were in ran the length of the building, iron supports strategically placed floor to ceiling. Some of the floorboards been removed prior to being replaced. Building mat-Is were stacked against the back wall, work begun and then abandoned. Low-level light seeped through windows smeared with grease and dust.

Maddy reached for the switch to her left with no result.

Voices from the stairs, urgent and loud, descending; more shouts, muffled, from the courtyard outside.

'Come on,' Draper said. 'Let's go.'

Maddy was almost through the door when she stopped, alerted by the smallest of sounds. She swung back into the room as Grant eased open the door at the far end and stepped through. Bare-chested, barefoot, pistol held down at his side.

Maddy's voice wedged, immovable, in her throat.

'Police!' Draper shouted. 'Put your weapon on the ground now.'

She would wonder afterwards if Grant had truly smiled as he raised his gun and fired.

Draper collapsed back through the doorway, clutching his neck. Instinctively, Maddy turned towards him and, as she did so, Grant ran forward, jumping through a gap in the boards to the floor below. With barely a moment's hesitation she raced after him; when she braced herself, legs hanging through a gap a metre wide, the boards on either side gave way and she was down.

Grant had landed badly, twisting his ankle, and was scrabbling, crab-like, across the floor, seeking the pistol that had been jarred from his grasp. A 9mm Beretta, hard up against the wall. As he pushed himself up and hopped towards it, Maddy launched herself at him, one hand seizing his ankle and bringing him down. Flailing, his hand struck the squared-off butt of the pistol and sent it spinning beyond reach.

'Bitch!'

He kicked out at her and she stumbled back.

'Fucking bitch!'

Grant was on his feet and moving towards her. No smiling now.

Maddy heard movement behind and then the sound of a weapon being discharged close to her ear. Once and then once again. As she watched, Grant skidded backwards, then crumpled to his knees, his face all but disappeared in a welter of blood.

'Textbook,' Mallory said softly. 'Head and heart.'

Maddy's skin was cold; her body shook.

'You or him, of course. Didn't give me any choice.'

Vomit caught in the back of Maddy's throat. Her eyes fastened on Grant's pistol, still some metres away across the floor.

The superintendent bent low towards the body. Ambulance, I dare say. Not that it'll do a scrap of good. He's bleeding out.'

When he stood up, a second weapon, a .22 Derringer, was close by Grant's inturned leg, small enough to hide inside a fist. Now you see it, now you don't. No matter how many times Maddy would run it through in her mind, she would never be sure.

'Trouser pocket,' Mallory was saying conversationally. 'Small of the back.' He shrugged. 'There'll be an inquiry, routine.' His hand on her shoulder was light, almost no pressure at all. 'You'll be a good witness, I know.'

Armed officers were standing at both doors, weapons angled towards the ground.

2

Maddy stood on the cobbled stones outside, drivers slowing down to gawk through misted windows as they passed. The rain fell in thin, seamless lines, giving the road a dull sheen. She didn't smoke, never really had, but there seemed to be a cigarette in her hand.

Without her hearing him approach, Mallory was at her side.

'You okay?'

'Yes, I think so.'

'Holding up, that's good, that's good.'

Maddy opened her fingers and watched the cigarette fall to the ground.

'You'll be coming with us for a drink. Later. A wee celebration.'

'I don't know.'

'It's expected.' His fingers grazed her arm. 'No need to stay long. Show your face. That's all.'

She stared at him, not knowing what to say. The hair on his head was iron grey, matted down by the rain.

'That's settled then.' With a brief smile, he turned and walked away.

Behind them, the business of recording and cleaning up went on. Grant's girlfriend was sitting in the back seat of a police car with one of the officers, someone's topcoat round her shoulders, tea from a thermos in both hands. An ambulance stood waiting to take Grant's body to the mortuary, once the preliminary examinations had been carried out. Paul Draper was in one of the intensive care wards at UCH, fighting for his life. A celebration, Maddy thought…

* * *

The club was on Gray's Inn Road, the far side of King's Cross, the function room on the first floor. A shield bearing the coat of arms of St David was on the wall above the long bar, Van Morrison and Rod Stewart rasping alternately through the speakers at either end, barely holding their own against the noise. Forty or fifty people and, for the next hour or so, free booze.

Two of the snooker tables had been covered over and were already crowded with discarded glasses, large and small. At the third table Maurice Repton stood repetitiously chalking his cue, watching as the young Asian DC he was playing potted the last red and lined up the pink. He saw Maddy glance in his direction and acknowledged her with a nod.

'Buy you a drink?' The SO19 officer from the Transit, ginger moustache, was alongside her, smiling hopefully.

'I thought the boss had put his card behind the bar.'

'So he has. Stupid really, something to say.'

Maddy said nothing and hoped he'd go away.

'Graeme Loftus,' he said, holding out his hand.

'Maddy Birch.'

Loftus made a signal towards the barman and pushed an empty pint glass in his direction.

'You?'

Maddy shook her head.

'In the thick of it, what I hear.'

'You could say that.'

'Lucky bastard.'

'You think so?'

Loftus lifted his fresh pint, spilling beer down the back of his hand. 'Never got a look-in where we were.'

'Ask Paul Draper where he'd rather've been,' Maddy said. 'Ask his wife.'

'Paul…? Oh, yes, him. Poor sod. Still hanging on, isn't he?'

'Last I heard.'

'Look,' Loftus said, 'when we're through here, you wouldn't fancy…'

'No,' Maddy said.

'Okay, suit yourself.' There was an edge to Loftus's voice as he turned and shouldered his way back into the fray.

Standing a little apart, George Mallory seemed to be warming up to make a speech, his voice, now and again, sawing through the general cacophony of sound.

Whenever Maddy closed her eyes, she saw Grant's head imploding like a bloodied rose. She drained her glass and headed for the stairs.

Repton was just exiting the Gents, still zipping up his fly.

'Not going?'

'No,' she lied.

'Good. Come and have a drink with me.' Taking her by the elbow, he steered her back towards the bar.' What'll it be?'

'Tonic water'll be fine.'

'Gin and tonic for the lady,' Repton called. 'Scotch for me.'

Maddy knew better than to protest.

Five or so years younger than Mallory, slightly built, Repton was wearing a grey suit with a faint stripe, a dark blue tie with silver fleur-de-lis. His fingernails looked to have been trimmed and buffed. Dapper, was that the word? Once upon a time it probably was.

Repton downed his whisky at a single swallow. 'There,' he said, 'that's my bit for race relations. Letting one of our brown-skinned brethren get the better of me, eighty-seven points to thirteen.' He winked. 'Hubris. The Atkins diet of the soul. And you. No after-effects from this morning, I see. Still looking like the proverbial million, give or take.'

Maddy had deliberately chosen a green cord skirt that was full and finished well below the knee, a loose cotton top the colour of cold porridge, American Tan tights and shoes with a low heel. 'I look like shit,' she said.

'Young Loftus didn't seem to think so. Practically coming in his pants just standing next to you.'

Colour flared in Maddy's cheeks.

'Sorry,' Repton said. 'Nothing out of line, I trust. Not going to haul me up before some board or other? Sexual fucking harassment.' He winked again. 'Load of bollocks, don't you think? Empirically speaking.'

'I've heard worse, sir,' Maddy said.

'I'm pleased to hear it.'

Maddy sipped her drink.

'Oh, oh,' Repton said, nudging her arm. 'Here comes George's speech.' He gave her flesh a generous squeeze. 'Mentioned in dispatches, I'd not be surprised.'

* * *

She left as soon as she possibly could, pulling the need-the-Ladies trick and grabbing her coat from the pile in the cloakroom below; a brisk stride to King's Cross and then the Northern Line to Archway. She could walk from there in ten minutes or less.

When she'd first transferred down from Lincoln, three years ago now, she'd stayed in a hostel: forever taking other women's hair out of the bath; listening to their war stories in the corridors, Saturday nights when they'd been out on the pull; cleaning them up after they'd been sick in the sink, wiping their sorry faces and listening to their woes. Everyone's favourite auntie.

As soon as she could she'd moved out, rented a room and looked around for something to buy, something she could afford. She'd been lucky to get the flat when she did, prices about to take a hike and families with young kids starting to colonise what had previously been the province of single mums on social security, economic migrants, labourers sharing three to a room and old jossers who'd been there long enough to remember the Blitz.

Compared to what she'd had in Lincoln, a new-build maisonette just a bus ride from the city centre, it wasn't much. Three rooms and a bathroom on the ground floor, the kitchen no bigger than a cupboard; French windows leading out to the strip of garden she shared with the people upstairs. Whoever had lived there before had had a love affair with red paint; when she woke up in the mornings it vibrated behind her eyes.

Gradually, when her shifts didn't leave her too knackered, she brought the place into line, made it feel more her own. Two lots of undercoat in both bedroom and living room and then a quiet pale green on top. Doing the same to the kitchen would have meant taking down too many shelves and she resorted to covering as much as she could with postcards and old photographs. Those sunflowers in garish reproduction; the village outside Louth where her parents used to live.

Coming in this evening she threw her coat down on the bed, kicked off her shoes, and wandered into the living room, flicking through the TV channels before switching off again. She'd missed the news.

She thought she'd make a cup of tea.

Waiting for the kettle to boil, she phoned the hospital where they'd taken Paul Draper.

'Are you a relative?'

'A colleague. I was with him when…'

'I'm sorry. We can only pass on information to the immediate family.'

What the hell did that mean? Maddy wondered. Did it mean he was still in the middle of some bloody operation? Did it mean he was dead?

She took her tea back into the living room and, without switching on the light, sat, legs curled up beneath her, on the settee she'd bought from an auction room near the Angel.

The look on Graeme Loftus's face came back to her, the scarcely veiled anger in his voice when she'd turned him down; Maurice Repton's fingers hard and quick against her arm. Was there ever a situation, she thought, when men, most men, didn't feel it their right to test the waters, chat the chat, rub up against you like a dog sniffing for a bitch on heat.

Tired, she closed her eyes and when she did so she saw Grant in the converted warehouse, scrambling to his feet.

'Fucking bitch!'

As he moves towards her, his hands… what are his hands doing?… the left one reaching out towards her, fingers spread, the right… where is the right?… is it curving low, low and out of sight, reaching for something perhaps…?

The gun in Mallory's hand fires twice, the barest of intervals between, and when she opens her eyes again, Grant is no more.

The pistol on the floor. A Derringer, no bigger than the span of a man's hand: a weapon that, once upon a time, was only seen in Western movies on rainy Sunday afternoons, emerging from the sleeve of some two-bit gambler caught dealing from a crooked deck.

Now you see it, now you don't.

Maddy shivered.

Her tea was cold.

Setting it down, she glanced towards the French windows and, for an instant, behind the faint reflection of her own face, something moved.

Maddy froze.

Two seconds, maybe four, no more. Swift to her feet, she turned the key in the door, slipped back both bolts and stepped outside. Leaves from next door's fruitless pear tree were sprinkled on the grass. Shrubs and faded flowers in the borders to each side. At the garden end a thick mesh of buddleia, interspersed with holly, stood head high and dark, enough of a breeze to turn the spear-shaped leaves.

Maddy stood quite still.

Other than the sounds of the city shifting about her nothing stirred.

Her heart slowed to a normal beat.

That's all it had been, then, only something moving in the wind.

Back inside, she locked the door, drew the curtains, went carefully to bed.

3

The office of the assistant commissioner in charge of the Specialist Crime Directorate was on the seventh floor: along with a number of other units, S07 came within his overall command. Just about the only things above him, ran the tale, were God and all his angels. Maddy hoped they were on her side.

She gave her name to the civilian clerk in the outer office and declined the invitation to take a seat. When the clerk gave her the once-over she pretended not to notice. Ten minutes she'd spent that morning, polishing the black boots she was wearing with her navy blue trouser suit, bought a year and more ago at M & S and already showing some signs of wear.

A buzzer sounded on the clerk's desk.

'You can go through.'

Maddy knocked, took a breath, and entered. Lean, bespectacled, nicely balding, Assistant Commissioner Harkin smiled from behind his desk. Tie knotted neatly and clipped, he was in shirtsleeves, cuffs turned back. Younger than quite a few of the officers below him, Mallory included, he was not so many years older than Maddy herself.

'Detective Sergeant. Maddy. You'd rather sit or stand?'

'Stand, sir, if that's all right.'

'Of course, whatever you're comfortable with. I'm sure this won't take long.'

The room was airless but not unpleasant, a faint background odour of antiseptic and flowers. Anonymous paintings on the walls. A water carafe and glasses on a narrow table to one side. It reminded Maddy of the lounge at Gatwick Airport, the one time she'd been bumped up to business class.

Harkin tapped papers on his desk. 'You've not been in the unit long.'

'No, sir.'

'Settling down?'

'Yes, sir. I think so.'

'Yesterday,' he said. 'First thing that has to be made clear, the manner in which you acquitted yourself, first rate. Absolutely first rate.' He beamed as though he had been praising himself. 'Everything I've heard, the Detective Superintendent's report — well, you heard him last night, of course, extolling your virtues at great length — it all points to a good job well done. Initiative. Steady head. Guts. Above all, guts. Going up against an armed man. Commendation material, I'd not be surprised.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'Do you no harm when it comes to promotion. None at all. You've taken the inspector's examination, I dare say?'

'Twice, sir.'

'Hmm. Well, qualities will out. Eventually. Your kind of quality. In the field.' He coughed into the back of his hand. 'There'll be an inquiry, of course. Fatal shooting. Officers from another force. Standard procedure.'

'Yes, sir, I understand.'

'And you've no concerns, I take it?'

'Concerns, sir?'

'Regarding the inquiry. Sequence of events and so on.'

'Sir?'

'No doubt in your mind as to how it all played out?'

Maddy could feel the sweat prickling beneath her arms. 'No, sir.'

Harkin nodded and glanced towards the window as if something outside had suddenly claimed his interest. 'Detective Superintendent Mallory's actions, appropriate, you'd say, to the situation?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Good. Excellent.'

Once she'd noticed a slight tic in the assistant commissioner's left eye, Maddy was finding it difficult not to stare; she looked at the floor instead.

'You, personally,' Harkin said. 'Incidents like these, violent death, sometimes takes a little while for them to settle in the mind.'

'Yes, sir, I'm sure.'

'If there's any help you feel that we can offer… a little personal time, maybe. A chat with someone versed in these things, someone professional…'

'A psychiatrist, sir?'

'That sort of thing.'

'I don't think there's any need. Really. I'm fine.'

'Yes, yes. I'm sure you are.' Harkin rearranged papers on his desk. 'If there's nothing else then…'

'DC Draper, sir, I was wondering if there was any news?'

'Ah.' Harkin removed his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb. 'A shame about DC Draper. Great shame.'

* * *

One of the first things Paul Draper had done, he and Maddy chatting together on their first day in the squad, was to show her a photograph of his wife and kid. Alice and Ben. On holiday somewhere in the north-west. Blackpool. Morecambe. A faint suggestion of sea on the horizon. Alice in a two-piece swimsuit, not a bikini exactly, her figure not yet back to what it once had been, Ben in a little all-in-one on her knee. Alice having to narrow her eyes slightly against the light, but smiling nonetheless, her skin pale, as if unused to the sun.

'You must come round,' he'd said. 'We'll get a takeaway, eat in. Alice'd be chuffed with the company.'

Maddy never had.

Now she sat awkwardly on the edge of a chair. Alice slumped back on the two-seater settee opposite, the child fretting at her breast. Cups of tea on the table, half-cold. Biscuits, some broken fragments of rusk. There'd been photographers outside, a few; one reporter, insistent, from the local whatever-it-was, Journal or Gazette.

'Alice…'

At the sound of Maddy's voice, tears appeared again on Alice Draper's face. How could she not cry? Maddy thought. Twenty-three and a wee boy of no more than six or seven months and then this…

Maddy forced herself to her feet. Through the partly drawn curtains she could see the flats opposite, identical to the one in which she was standing; balcony upon balcony busy with tubs of flowers, rusting bicycles, washing twisting in the late-afternoon breeze. The dark already falling into place.

'It's not bad,' Draper had said. 'Not bad at all. Ex-council, couldn't afford it else. But okay. You wait till you see.'

He looked a little like that guitarist, Maddy had thought, the one who used to play with Morrissey.

Alice had said very little. Before being finally pronounced dead, her young husband had said nothing at all. Flowers from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner lay by the sink, waiting to be put in water. I'll do it before I go, Maddy thought. Wash these cups, make a fresh pot of tea. See if I can't persuade Alice to eat something, a sandwich at least.

While she was waiting for the kettle to boil, Alice switched on the television news.

'Alice,' Maddy said, 'are you sure this is a good idea?'

Colours unnaturally bright, Paul Draper's face flickered for a moment on the screen, then disappeared.

'Alice…'

Seated behind a bank of microphones, the Assistant Commissioner looked sombre yet purposeful.

'From all the information available to me, I have no doubt that the operation was carefully and professionally planned and executed with a high level of competence that does credit to all the officers involved. With regard to the tragic death of a young detective constable…'

Regardless of Alice's wishes, Maddy leaned forward and switched off the set.

Ben was wriggling in his mother's lap, whimpering against her chest.

'Alice, Alice. I think you might be holding him too tight. Do you want me to take him for a minute? Here. That's it. Just while you drink your tea.'

The baby's pale eyes looked at her in wonder when she lifted him towards her and Maddy felt something kick, hard, against the hollow of her insides. When Alice picked up the cup it slipped between her fingers, spilling tea across the table and the floor.

'Never mind,' Maddy said. 'I'll clean it up.'

Alice looked back at her blankly. 'Paul,' she said. 'Paul, Paul.'

* * *

'Poor cow.' Vanessa Taylor broke off a piece of chapatti and used it to wipe up what remained of the chicken massala. 'What kind of life's she got now?'

A good year they'd been doing this, Maddy and Vanessa, meeting up every week or so, when shifts allowed, a drink or two first and then a curry. A good goss and a natter. Bit of a bitching session, sometimes. Rules and regs. Pay. All that dyke or station-bike innuendo that was supposed to have been knocked on the head once and for all.

At twenty-nine, Vanessa was not only younger than Maddy but shorter and broader too, a figure on her and she didn't care who knew it. Before joining the force, she tried secretarial, then nursing, but not for long. Glorified bloody chambermaids, that's all you were. More blood and piss than the pubs in Kentish Town, which was where she was currently stationed. Three years as a uniformed constable and she still wasn't certain she'd stick with it.

Maddy had met her on a training course soon after moving down to London: 'Integrating Police Work with the Ethnic Community'. Vanessa sizing up the Asian community worker who was leading the afternoon session. 'Wouldn't mind integrating with that,' she'd winked. 'Given half the chance.' It turned out Vanessa lived no more than a few streets away from Maddy herself, Upper Holloway.

This evening, eyeing up one of the waiters whenever he passed their table, Vanessa reminded Maddy of that first occasion and asked her had she ever, you know, been with anyone Indian, Pakistani?

Maddy said she didn't think she had.

'I had this lad once…' Vanessa said, lowering her voice as she leaned forward. 'Student nurse at the hospital. Great big eyes.'

'Just the eyes?'

'Stop.' Laughing. 'Lovely-looking he was, beautiful skin.'

'You'll be telling me next you had him in the storeroom cupboard amongst the bandages and bedpans.'

'Better than that. Upstairs, on one of the empty beds. Ward was temporarily closed down because of the cuts.' Her face was flushed but it was probably due to the curry.

'What happened?' Maddy said.

'What d'you mean what happened?' Vanessa laughed again, louder than before. 'Too long ago to remember? Draw you a diagram if you like.'

'Not that, you idiot. I mean what happened to the bloke?'

'Oh, him. I dunno. Next week he'd moved on to Obstetrics. Good, though. Top Ten, I'd say.' She grinned. 'How about you? Top ten shags of all time.'

Maddy looked warily round, prepared to be embarrassed. 'Don't joke. I'd be scraping the barrel to come up with five or six.'

'You're kidding.'

'You should try getting married before you're twenty-one. Trims your sails a bit, I'm telling you.'

Vanessa crossed her knife and fork across her plate. 'You never were? Married that young?'

'Wasn't I?'

'How come you never said?'

'I don't know. Don't much like talking about it, I suppose.'

'Well, who was he? At least tell us that. What was his name?'

'Terry, his name was Terry. Okay? Satisfied? He was this bloke, older, a bit older, and I was just a kid, still living at home, and I thought he was God's gift. Now let's just leave it, right?'

'Right.' Vanessa shrugged and ordered two more bottles of Kingfisher. No point in pushing it further, she could see that. Not unless she fancied trolling along to the karaoke session in the pub later on her own.

'I keep thinking,' Maddy said a few minutes later, 'that poor little lad, Paul Draper's boy, growing up without a dad.'

'She'll find someone else, won't she? If she's any gumption. Kid'll not remember.'

Maddy shook her head. 'You really think it's that simple?'

'Yes. If you want it to be.'

'Sometimes I wonder,' Maddy said, 'if you know you're even born.'

'Fuck off,' Vanessa said, laughing. 'And pass us over that aubergine thingy if you're done with it.'

* * *

Shortly after midnight, the two women emerged from the raucous glitter of a late-night extension and set off, arm in arm, along the Holloway Road. Vanessa had talked Maddy into a duet version of 'Dancing Queen' which had been fine until Maddy had lost it two-thirds of the way through and faltered to a halt.

'What got into you?' Vanessa asked. 'We were going great.'

'I don't know. Suddenly realised what I was doing, I suppose. Up there in front of everyone. Looking a right prat.'

'Come on,' Vanessa said, 'I'll walk you to the end of your street.'

'You're sure? No need.'

'No, do me good. Walk off some of that beer. Nothing worse'n waking up of a morning, feeling bloated.' She laughed. 'Less it's not waking up at all.'

'Not funny, Nessa.'

'Sorry.' Vanessa gave her arm a squeeze. 'Really got to you, hasn't it? What happened.'

'Last night,' Maddy said, 'when I got home, getting ready for bed, I saw these specks of mascara here, alongside my eye. Except it wasn't mascara, it was blood.'

Vanessa didn't say anything else until they reached the corner of Maddy's road. 'Take care,' she said, giving Maddy's arm a squeeze. 'Get some sleep, eh? Try not to think about it too much. And give me a call tomorrow.'

'Okay,' Maddy said, 'if I can. You take care too.'

Maddy watched for a moment as Vanessa quickened her pace, and then turned towards home. The click of her low heels on the pavement as she walked. Here and there, lights faint behind drawn curtains or lowered blinds. Of course, what had happened had got her rattled. Grant, Draper. It stood to reason. Only now that wasn't all. Her key stiffened for a moment in the lock, then turned. She knew she should never have said anything to Vanessa about being married, about Terry, fetching all that up from where it lay buried, started herself thinking about him after all this time. Terry. All abs and promises. She allowed herself a rueful smile. North Wales, the last she'd heard from him. Married again and good luck to the pair of them.

Maddy poured the last of the orange juice into a glass and carried it into the living room. No way that would have been him, skulking mid-week round a North London boozer, staring at her from the back of the crowd. His face stopping her in her tracks, mid-chorus. Everyone clapping, laughing. 'Dancing Queen'. Just someone who looked a bit like him, that was all.

The curtains were drawn fast across the French windows to the garden, shutting out the night. The glass was cold in her hand. She sat there until her legs began to numb, willing her eyes to close, her mind to still.

4

At first, Elder had wondered if he would ever get used to the weather in this part of Cornwall. Mostly, like a delinquent five-year-old, it was unable to make up its mind five minutes at a time. Sunshine followed by fierce lashings of near-horizontal rain and then sunshine again, and through it all, sun and rain, the near-inevitable wind. 'Keeps you on your toes,' the locals said when he complained. When they said anything at all.

Then, one late, dark afternoon towards the end of October, he realised there'd been three days solid in which the fog had rolled in off the Atlantic, met and mingled with the mist veiling down off the hills, and never lifted, pressing down an immovable grey, and through it the rain had continued to fall, harsh and unyielding, and he had barely noticed.

Sitting in the deep corner of the kitchen, illuminated by a single bulb, he had read steadily - Priestley currently, a threadbare edition of The Good Companions — rising occasionally to make tea or switch on the radio for the sound of a voice other than his own. Sometimes, setting Priestley aside, he closed his eyes and listened to one of the few pieces of music he possessed, a cassette of some

string quartets he had picked up at the local village bring-and-buy. Local meant a good two miles across fields by hedge and stile.

He had moved home twice since early summer, when the owner of the place he'd rented for close on two years had decided to put it up for sale. First, and briefly, he took a third-floor flat in a tall Victorian house in Penzance, with views across the harbour towards St Michael's Mount. It was not a success. Small, scarcely metropolitan, Penzance was yet enough of a town to remind him of what he'd willingly left behind: Lincoln, Leeds, Mansfield, Nottingham. After that, he had gone back across the peninsula to where he was now, a former farm labourer's cottage between moor and sea.

The downstairs was warmed by an oil-fired stove, which heated the water when it had a mind, and on which Elder gradually retaught himself to cook. Nothing spectacular: stews, casseroles, pasta, fish. What was the point of living so close to the sea if you didn't eat fish? Mackerel, red mullet, megrim, sea bass, lemon sole, occasionally shark. His favourite, mackerel, was, providentially, the cheapest by far.

The walls of the room in which Elder slept were bare stone save for one section on which plaster had been unevenly slapped. A second, smaller room held clothes he now rarely wore, boxes and bags, dribs and drabs of a life he scarcely chose to recognise. At some stage a bathroom had been added to the rear: the toilet seat rocked precariously when touched, the fitments bought cheaply at second- or third-hand; the bath itself, below its wide old-fashioned taps, was ringed with generations of overlapping reddish stains.

A short distance along a narrow lane was the farm to which the cottage had formerly belonged, now dilapidated and abandoned. Sacking at the windows, rough hasps and padlocks at the doors. Some story Elder had part-overheard, a family feud that had turned son against father, father against son. Other farmers pastured their cattle on the fields, paying dues. Stray walkers aside, Elder scarce saw a soul from one week's end to the next.

It suited him down to the ground.

Three years now since his marriage to Joanne had imploded and he had retired from the Nottinghamshire Force, off with his tail between his legs, almost as far west as it was possible to go. More than a year since his daughter Katherine had been abducted by Adam Keach. Abducted, raped and almost killed. Katherine, sixteen.

What happened to her, Frank, it's your fault. You nearly killed her. You. Not him.

Joanne's words.

Because you had to get involved, you couldn't let things be. You always knew better than anybody else, that's why.

Of course, he had dreams.

But none so bad as Katherine's.

You'll get over this, Frank. You'll come to terms, find a way. But Katherine, she never will.

In the spring, before the trial, she had come to visit him, Katherine. They had talked, walked, sat drinking wine. In the night, he had been woken by her screams.

'These dreams,' she'd said, 'they will go, won't they? I mean, with time.'

'Yes,' Elder had replied. 'Yes, I'm sure they will.'

He had lied.

Wanting to protect her, he'd lied.

Now she refused to speak to him, broke the connection at the sound of his voice. Changed the number of her mobile. Didn't, wouldn't write.

Your fault, Frank…

Well, of course, in a way it was true.

Adam Keach had killed another girl, a young woman, Emma Harrison, only weeks before taking Katherine. Elder had been back working for the Major Crime Unit at the time, a civilian consultant attached to the investigation. Found fit to stand trial and hoping for a lighter sentence, Keach had pleaded guilty and Elder had breathed relief. It saved Katherine from going into the dock and giving evidence, being cross-examined.

In the matter of abduction and serious sexual assault, the judge handed down ten years. For the murder of Emma Harrison, life.

'Life doesn't mean life though, does it?' Katherine had said. 'Not any more.'

It was just about the last conversation they had had.

The Notts. Force had contacted him since about another case in which they considered Elder's experience and expertise might be of use.

'After Keach,' Elder had said, 'I'd've thought you'd've had all the help out of me you'd want.'

'Don't come down so hard on yourself, Frank,' the senior officer had replied. 'You're the one as caught him. Brought him in. Saved your lass's life.'

Elder had been polite but firm. Retirement suited him fine.

'You'll go crazy down there, Frank. End up topping yourself, like as not.'

Elder had thanked him for the thought and set down the phone.

* * *

The day had begun with a faint mist across the hills and then a soft rain that scarcely seemed to dampen the ground. By noon it was bright and clear, with only a scattering of off-white clouds strung out across the sky to the west. Elder stuffed his book down into one pocket of his waterproof coat, an apple and a wedge of cheese into the other, and set out towards the coast path at River Cove, just short of Towednack Head. For thirty minutes or so he sat on a boulder opposite Seal Island, eating his bit of lunch and alternately reading or gazing out at the water tumbling up, then falling back. Usually there were seals, stretched out on the rocks or swimming near the shore, rounded heads fast disappearing as they dived for fish, but not today.

Walking back he noticed the bracken facing up the moor had turned an almost uniform rusted brown, patched through here and there with yellow-flowering gorse. Late autumn and the nights drawing ever closer in.

He had only time to pull off his coat and unlace his boots before the phone startled him.

'Hello?'

'Frank?'

'Yes.'

'It's Joanne.'

He knew: you didn't live with someone for twenty years without recognising each turn and intonation of her voice, even the breath drawn before speaking, the weight of a pause.

'What's wrong?' Elder said.

'Does it have to be something wrong?'

'Probably.'

The breath there, head turning aside. A glass of wine? A cigarette?

'It's Katherine,' Joanne said.

Of course it was. The adrenalin had started to pulse in his veins. 'What about her?' he said.

'It's difficult.'

'Just tell me.'

Another pause. Longer.

'I'm worried. Worried about her. The way she's been behaving lately.'

'Behaving? How? What do you mean?'

'Oh, staying out late, getting drunk. Not coming home till three or four in the morning. Not coming home at all.'

'You've spoken to her?'

'Frank, she's seventeen…'

'I know how old she is.'

'I say anything, she tells me to mind my own business.'

'And Martyn?'

'Martyn's got nothing to do with this.'

Elder sighed. 'She won't talk to me, you know that.'

'She's your daughter, Frank.'

As if he'd forgotten.

'When she stays out,' Elder said, 'd'you know where?'

'She's seeing someone, I know that. I think sometimes she stays there.'

'You think?'

'Frank, I just don't know.'

He sighed again. 'All right, I'll come up. Tomorrow. The day after. I'll get the train.'

'Thank you, Frank.'

She's your daughter.

He set down the receiver, walked to the window and stared out. Mist plaiting itself between blackened filaments of hedge. The coming dark. Images of what Adam Keach had done to Katherine kept forcing themselves under the edges of his mind and he struggled to will them away.

When she had been seven, possibly eight, one of the last times she let him walk her all the way to school, right up to the gates - London it would have been, Shepherd's Bush, green school cardigan, grey pleated skirt, green tights, black shoes he'd shined the night before, book bag in her hand - he'd ducked his head towards her and she'd thrown up an arm — 'Don't kiss me now!' — and run towards her friends. Shutting him out.

Not coming home till three or four in the morning. Not coming home at all.

Seventeen.

Stupid, he felt, standing there. Stupid, helpless and old.

The bottle of Jameson's was in the drawer.

It wouldn't help, he knew that, but what else was he supposed to do?

5

The official inquiry into the shootings of William Grant and Paul Draper was opened within two weeks of the incidents taking place. The Police Complaints Authority, which routinely managed such matters, asked Detective Superintendent Trevor Ashley from the Hertfordshire Force to conduct the investigation, and as his number two, Ashley chose a newly promoted chief inspector, Linda Mills. Chalk and cheese. Ashley wore muted tweed jackets with leather patches on the arms and affected a voice that was slower and more up-country than his home, less than forty minutes' drive north from London, warranted. Mills had the lean and driven look of someone who began the day with a bracing shower and an energetic fifteen or twenty lengths in the pool.

Assisted by three other officers and two civilian clerks, Ashley and Mills were allocated a Portakabin in the car park as their base, together with a pair of interview rooms in the main building. One of the first officers called in for questioning was Maddy herself.

Taking his time, the superintendent took her through her written deposition, step by step, stage by stage, Mills watching her closely, not aggressively, occasionally making a neatly written note. Maddy wearing the same blue suit: weddings, interviews and funerals.

'Since making this statement…' Ashley said. 'When was it? The morning after the incident? You've had no further thoughts? There's nothing you'd like to add?'

'No, sir. I don't think so.'

'Sometimes, you know, on reflection…'

'Thank you, sir, but no.'

'Good, good.' With a glance towards his number two, Ashley settled back in his chair.

Linda Mills took her time. 'PC Draper and yourself, if I understand rightly, you were among the first officers to arrive at the entrance to Grant's flat?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'And this was by design?'

'I'm sorry, I…'

'Part of the plan outlined at the briefing that you and PC Draper…'

'No. Not exactly.'

'It was what, then? Accident? Chance?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'Which?'

Maddy hesitated. 'Chance, I suppose.'

The chief inspector glanced down at the papers in front of her. 'Not entirely.'

'I'm sorry, I don't quite…'

'According to your statement it was Superintendent Mallory who ordered you to move back down the stairs.'

'Yes. Yes, that's correct.'

Mills looked at her full on. 'Why, in your estimation, did he do that?'

Maddy took her time; her head was starting to buzz. 'I think he was concerned for our safety.'

'And that was the only reason?'

'I believe he wanted us to cover any possible escape.'

'Even though you were still unarmed?'

'There were armed officers on the stairs. Everywhere.'

'With orders to fire if necessary?'

'I assume so, yes.'

'And yet, in the event, it was Superintendent Mallory who did the actual firing.'

Maddy hesitated slightly, without knowing why. 'Yes, ma'am.'

'And the reason Superintendent Mallory discharged his weapon when he did?'

'As I've said in my report —'

'The reason was?'

'In my report, it's —'

'The reason, sergeant?'

'My colleague had already been shot. Grant had shot him.'

'And the superintendent knew this?'

'I assume so, yes.'

Mills sighed and sat back. Though it wasn't especially hot in the room, a slick line of sweat was making its way slowly down Maddy's back. Her hands were sticking to the sides of the chair. Superintendent Ashley slid one of the papers round at an angle. 'According to this diagram, the weapon Grant had used to shoot DC Draper was out of his reach here when Superintendent Mallory entered the room.'

'Yes. That's right. But he had another weapon.'

'Grant was carrying a second gun.'

'Yes.'

'That would be the Derringer .22?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And where was he carrying this back-up gun?'

Maddy faltered. 'I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure.'

'But you did see it? The second gun?'

Christ! Why was this so difficult? 'Not at first, no.'

'How do you explain that?'

'He was carrying it out of sight. Concealed.'

'But I thought he had just jumped out of bed naked,' Mills said, taking over. 'Next to naked.'

'He was wearing trousers.'

'Trousers?'

'Yes.'

'Just trousers?'

'Yes.'

'So where was the gun?'

Maddy could feel the sweat now beneath her arms. 'I don't know. In the waistband, possibly. At the back. In one of the pockets. I'm sorry, I just don't know.'

Mills and Ashley exchanged a look.

'So,' Ashley said, 'just to be clear, you did see Grant reaching for the second gun?'

'I saw him reaching down, yes.'

'Reaching down?'

'Yes.'

'Reaching for the Derringer?'

'I assume so, yes.'

'And you felt under threat?'

'Of course.'

'From Grant?'

'Yes.'

'Because you saw the weapon in his hand?'

'I'd just seen him shoot PC Draper. I thought he would kill me if he could.'

'So Superintendent Mallory's action was entirely justified? In your eyes?'

'Yes.'

'Even though,' Mills said, her voice sharper than before, 'you never saw the weapon in Grant's hand?'

'I saw it on the floor, beside him when he fell.'

'But not actually in his hand?'

Maddy hesitated, longer this time. 'No, ma'am, not actually in his hand.'

Linda Mills closed her eyes. Trevor Ashley smiled.

'Good,' Ashley said. 'That's all, I think, for now. Thank you, sergeant, for your time.'

Maddy felt slightly giddy as she stood.

'I should try and avoid discussing this with your colleagues,' Mills said. 'In all probability we will want to talk to you again.'

Back outside, Maddy could smell the perspiration rising off her in waves.

* * *

Maurice Repton intercepted her in the corridor downstairs, hair carefully, neatly brushed, giving off a faint smell of cologne.

'How did it go in there, anyway?' Repton asked. 'The interview. Rubber truncheons and thumbscrews?'

Maddy managed a smile. 'No, sir. Nothing like that.'

'Nothing tricky?'

'No, sir, not really.'

'No awkward questions? About the shooting?'

Maddy shook her head.

'Give you a tough time, did she?'

'Sir?'

'The Mills woman. Always come down hardest on their own kind.'

'Not too bad, sir.'

'She'll have Ashley's job while he still thinks pension is just a seven-letter word on Countdown, poor sod. Assistant Chief Constable in ten years. Equal opportunities advertisement, pictures in the press.' He took a small step back, sardonic grin in place. 'Shame she's not blessed with a touch of the tar-brush, be ACC already.'

When Maddy reached the main door, she stood fully five minutes, breathing in what air she could.

6

The onset of winter always affected Maddy Birch badly, the end of summer time only days away: the putting back of the clocks rocking her body in the same hormonal way as her monthly periods, sending her in search of Nurofen and curling her up beneath the quilt with a hot-water bottle held fast against her stomach.

Hurrying home on newly dark nights like tonight, the wind funnelling along the warren of streets between Holloway Road and Hornsey Rise, even the scarf tucked down inside her coat didn't succeed in keeping out the chill. If she could have afforded to keep the heating on in her flat throughout the day, she would. Anything to avoid opening the door into the same cold ground-floor rooms that, now November was nigh, smelt forever damp.

The first thing she usually did, even before taking off her coat, was set a match to the gas fire in the hearth; then she would fill the kettle and press down the switch, a mug of tea to warm her hands. If it were really cold, hot buttered toast. What she'd be like come February didn't bear thinking about.

'It can't be as bad down here as where you come from,' Vanessa had said once when Maddy had complained. 'Bloody Lincolnshire! Wind blows straight across from Siberia up there. Hear the wolves howling in the bloody night.'

On this particular night, however, there were things on Maddy's mind other than the wind: DCI Repton waiting to ask her about her session with the inquiry team, his concern all but shielded behind his bigotry, real or assumed; the superintendent's So, just to be clear, you did see Grant reaching for the second gun? - casual enough to be, almost, an afterthought. In all probability we will want to talk to you again.

Maddy pushed open the narrow gate and lifted her keys from her bag; someone had used her small square of front garden as a dumping ground for a half-empty tray of chips and mushy peas.

Stepping into her flat, in the instant between pushing back the door and switching on the light, Maddy froze, a wave of cold like electricity along the backs of her legs and arms. For that moment, her heart seemed to stop.

The doors to the living room and bathroom, both leading off the hall, stood wide open and at that time of the year she always kept them closed.

'Hello?'

Her voice sounded strange, unnaturally thin.

There was time to step back outside, relock the door, but what then?

Instead she went quickly forward into the living room, flicking on the light.

Nothing stirred, nothing moved.

Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen the same.

Maddy's breathing steadied, the adrenalin ceased to flow through her veins. What little she possessed of value was still there. A glass sat on the draining board, one she seldom if ever used. The bolt across the top of the French windows was unfastened and when she put pressure on the curved handle it sprang open, unlocked. There were slight circular marks on the outside she couldn't remember seeing there before.

The skin prickled along her arms.

After locking the windows correctly, she went through each room carefully again. Her watch said ten past eight and she was due to meet Vanessa at nine. Maddy was on the point of phoning to cancel, had the telephone in her hand, when she changed her mind.

* * *

Their favourite curry house, on Kentish Town Road, had undergone a makeover, stripping out the flock wallpaper and remarketing itself as hyper-cool, so that it now resembled an expensive canteen with discreet lighting and Egyptian cotton napkins in pale lavender. This place, in the hinterland between Tufnell Park and Archway, was more their kind of thing, bog standard, nothing fancy, fine until after pub closing time, when the atmosphere would become edgily raucous and poppadoms were liable to be sent skimming like frisbees through the gaseous air.

'Nothing was stolen, right?' Vanessa said. 'Missing?'

Maddy shook her head.

'But things had been moved around, you said? Disturbed?'

'One or two. I think so. I'm not sure.'

'And the doors out into the garden, you couldn't have left them unlocked?'

'No.'

'You're positive?'

'Yes. No. I mean, I'm always careful about things like that. But, no, I can't swear to it, no.'

Vanessa angled her head to one side. 'You're not getting weird on me, are you? Freaking out?'

'It's all very well for you,' Maddy said. 'Taking the piss.'

'I'm not,' Vanessa said. 'Here, have a piece of my chicken tikka. Cheer yourself up.'

'It's not funny.' Maddy surprised herself with the force of her voice. 'It's not some bloody joke.'

'Then report it,' Vanessa said.

'There's no point.'

'Why not?'

'Because whoever I reported it to, their reaction would be just like yours.'

'I'm sorry.'

'It's okay.' Forcing a smile, Maddy took some of Vanessa's chicken tikka anyway. 'It's just with this other business as well, the inquiry. They had me in this afternoon.'

'How was it?'

'Like I was in the dock for something I didn't know I'd done.'

'Bastards.'

'Doing their job, I suppose.'

'That it now, though?'

Maddy shook her head. 'More than likely want to talk to me again.'

They were on to the coffee — almost certainly instant, but it did come with After Eights — when Maddy said, 'That other night, the karaoke, remember? When it all went wrong. There was something I didn't tell you.'

Vanessa stopped stirring her two sugars. 'Go on.'

'I thought I saw someone I knew.'

'In the pub?'

'Yes. Standing near the back, watching.'

'Who?'

'My ex-husband, Terry.'

'And was it?'

'No, I don't think so. Someone who looked like him, that's all. Far as I know Terry's in North Wales and good riddance.'

Vanessa smiled. 'You've not forgiven him then?'

'What for?'

'I don't know, do I? Last time I asked about him, you practically jumped down my throat.'

'I'm sorry.'

Vanessa shrugged. 'Your business, not mine.'

'It's not that, it's just… you know…'

'Not still nursing a crush for him, are you?'

'Christ, no!'

'Then what's the big mystery?'

'There's no mystery.'

'You just don't want to confide in your best friend, that's all.'

Maddy laughed. 'You don't give up, do you?'

'Not usually, no.'

'All right, but I'm going to need a drink.'

'Here, or the pub?'

'The pub.'

Vanessa turned around and signalled to the young waiter who was leaning back against the wall, texting someone on his mobile, to bring them the bill.

* * *

It was quite dark outside, a few people walking by, cars, the occasional bus. The pub was quiet, mostly regulars, one pool table, a television above the bar. They took their drinks to a quiet corner near the window. When Maddy started telling her story, she thought how mundane it sounded, how everyday.

Terry had been working just up the street from where she'd been living with her parents when she first met him, a builder, plasterer to be more exact, most of the houses in that part of Stevenage being renovated, made good. Maddy had taken a shine right off. Cheeky bugger, Terry, but not as bad as some of them, not crude. Nice body without his shirt, she'd noticed that. Nice hands, considering the work he did, not too rough.

After a week of hints and innuendo, he'd come out with it, asked her to meet him for a drink Friday night and she'd thought yes, why not? She'd been working in London then, Capital Radio, in reception, taking the train in every day to King's Cross, then the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square. Exciting at first, all that buzz and noise.

They'd gone on holiday together, that first summer, Majorca, and he'd proposed, not down on one knee but as good as, rolling around on the sand outside their hotel, six days' half board. She'd thought it was the drink talking, that he'd try to pass it off next day as some kind of a joke, but that wasn't the way of it at all. Three months later there they were outside the registry office, Maddy in a nice little suit from Next, new shoes that were killing her, the look on her mum's face sour enough to turn milk. Whatever expectations she'd been nurturing about a future son-in-law it was clear Terry didn't live up to them.

What she did say: 'You watch out, my girl, he'll have you pregnant this side of Christmas and where's your independence then? Where's your bloody life?'

It hadn't worked out like that, but not for lack of trying.

Maddy had thought the problem might lie with Terry, but it turned out it was with her. Terry had one kid already, a boy, four years old, living in Milton Keynes with his mother, a part-time hair stylist called Bethan. Maddy found out quite by chance.

It turned out that when she'd thought Terry was away working on some housing project in Northampton, he was in a two-bed flat in Milton Keynes with Bethan and the boy, playing happy families.

'None of your fucking business, is it?' Terry said when she confronted him.

Maddy told him he had to choose, her or Bethan, and he began packing his bag.

'What the hell did you marry me for?' Maddy asked.

'Fuck knows!'

When she said she wanted a divorce he said fine.

When she got home from work that evening he'd gone. She'd not been married much more than two years and, in retrospect, she was amazed it had held together that long.

'Was that when you joined the police?' Vanessa asked, as Maddy reached for her glass.

Maddy nodded. 'I was bored, wanted to get away. The look on my mum's face whenever I came in, a mixture of pity and I-told-you-so.' She laughed. 'We'd been to Lincoln a few times, when we were up in Skegness on holiday, driven over to look at the cathedral, mooch around. I thought it was a nice enough place.' She laughed again. 'At least it wasn't Stevenage.'

'What made you leave Lincoln and come down here, to the Met?'

'Bored again, I suppose.'

'And now this Grant business, the inquiry. It's getting you all stressed out. No wonder you're seeing things.'

'Thank you, doctor.'

'I used to be a nurse, you know.'

'I know.'

'You know what you ought to do,' Vanessa said. 'The perfect solution.'

'Go back to Lincolnshire?'

'Nothing that extreme. Take up yoga instead.'

'Me? Yoga? You're joking.'

'I don't see why.'

'Can you see me sitting cross-legged in some draughty room like a Buddha in tights?'

'It's not like that. That's meditation if it's anything. Yoga's brilliant. Helps you relax. And it's really good exercise.' She grinned. 'Look at me.'

'I don't know.'

'Go on. There's a new class just started. Where I go, that community centre by Crouch Hill. Introduction to Yoga. Give it a try.'

'I'll see. No promises, mind.'

'Okay. Now drink up and I'll walk you home. Make sure there's no bogeymen under the bed.'

* * *

The first evening Maddy went along she almost packed it in during the warm-up. All these women — they were all women — taking it in turns to stand with their back to the wall with one leg outstretched and raised as high as possible, their partner holding it by the ankle. One or two actually got their legs high enough to rest their feet on their partners' shoulders, while it was all Maddy could do to manage forty-five degrees for seconds at a time.

It didn't seem to get any easier. Reaching the required position was difficult enough — Dog Head Down or The Pose of the Child - but holding it was even harder. Maddy was acutely conscious of her muscles stretching, legs and arms quivering, the instructor bending over her from time to time and moving her gently but firmly into position. 'That's it, Maddy. Wider, wider. Wider still.'

When it was over she limped home and into a hot bath and vowed never to return. But she did. The next Wednesday and the next and the Wednesday after that. By then it had even stopped hurting.

7

Miracle of miracles, his connection pulled into Nottingham station no more than twenty minutes late. The young taxi-driver chatted amiably as he drove, apologising for the detour necessitated by the tram tracks along Canal Street and up Maid Marian Way. 'Testing 'em, know what I mean? Putting 'em down, pulling 'em up, putting 'em down. Trams they got goin' round, five mile an hour you're lucky. First ones 'posed to be startin' next year. Same they said last year, innit?'

The house was in the Park, a large and rambling private estate near the castle. Victorian mansions originally built for those who had profited from mining and manufacturing, the sweat and labour of others. Now it was barristers and retired CEOs, new heroes of IT and dot.com.

Martyn Miles had made his money from women's fashion and a chain of hair and beauty salons, in one of which Elder's wife, Joanne, had been working when her affair with Miles began.

Miles had bought a tranche of land near the northern edge of the estate, carved out of some burgher's tennis courts and grounds, and commissioned an architect friend to design something modern yet self-effacing, a curve of concrete frontage borrowed from Frank Lloyd Wright and the New York Guggenheim. The emphasis inside was on space and light, everything arranged around a living room of double height, separated from the stone patio and garden by a wall of glass.

When her marriage to Elder had broken down, Miles had moved Joanne in. Since then, things between them had been rocky: the last Elder had heard, Miles, having moved out and magnanimously left Joanne with the keys, had thought better of it and moved back in. But things might have changed again.

Joanne's Freelander was parked outside. No sign of whatever Martyn might have currently been driving, but there he was, stretched out on the sofa, legs crossed at the ankles, pale blue linen shirt toning in with the blue-grey of the room.

'Hello, Frank.' He swung his legs round slowly and smiled. Something colourless with tonic sat within reach on the floor. 'Just holding the fort till you arrived.'

Elder said nothing. Brittle, anonymous jazz played faint through speakers unseen.

Joanne stood close against the glass, smoking a cigarette.

Opening the front door to him, she had turned her head from the kiss Elder had aimed, maladroitly, at her cheek.

'Can I get you anything, Frank?' she said now.

He shook his head.

She was wearing a silver-grey metallic dress that shivered when she moved. Make-up, even expertly applied, hadn't been able to disguise the dark skin heavy below the eyes.

'It's a good thing you came, Frank,' Miles said. 'A good thing. Get this sorted before it goes too far.'

How far was that? Elder wondered.

'These past weeks,' Miles said, 'she's been out of control. Running wild.'

'Don't exaggerate,' Joanne said.

'You wouldn't know, Frank,' Miles continued, ignoring her. 'No way you could, not living where you do. But she's been doing just as she likes, out all hours. Seventeen, I know, Frank, a young woman, but even so. Rolled up here drunk more than a few times, smelling like I-don't-know-what, some poor sod of a taxi-driver outside waiting to get paid. I've tried talking to her but she won't listen. And, besides, you might not think it's my place.'

'All that happens,' Joanne said, 'you end up losing your temper.'

'Sometimes she's enough to make a saint lose his temper.'

'You would know.'

'Okay, okay.' Miles raised both hands in resignation. 'I'll off out and get a drink, let you two talk amongst yourselves. Good to see you, Frank.'

Elder nodded.

Whistling softly, Martyn Miles slipped his feet into a pair of soft leather shoes, pulled on his leather coat, expensive and black, and left the room. Neither of them spoke until they heard the front door close.

'Sit down, Frank. Are you sure you won't have a drink? I'm having one.'

'Okay, a small Scotch'll be fine.'

'I'll see what there is.'

'Anything.'

She poured herself a large white wine, Elder a more-than-decent measure of good malt.

'She's not here, then?' Elder said. 'Katherine?'

'She came in an hour ago, changed her clothes and went out again.'

'She knew I was going to be here?'

'I told her.'

'And you don't know where she went?'

Joanne shook her head.

Elder sipped his Scotch. 'You said she was seeing someone.'

'Rob Summers.'

'Someone she knew from school, or…?'

'He's not a boy, Frank. In his twenties, maybe more.'

'You've met him, then?'

'Not met exactly.'

'And the two of them, it's serious?'

'If it was, it wouldn't be so bad. It's more casual than that, as far as I can tell. His whim, I dare say. When she's not with him, she's hanging round with all manner of riff-raff. Punks and Goths and God knows what. The kind you see lolling around the Old Market Square.'

'Jesus,' Elder said.

'I am worried about her, Frank. You know, drugs and everything.'

'She's got a level head on her.'

'You think so?'

Elder got up and paced from wall to wall. 'That psychiatrist she was seeing…'

'Psychotherapist.'

'You haven't talked to her, I suppose?'

'Katherine stopped going to her a good few months ago.'

Elder stopped close to where she was sitting on the settee. 'It's a mess, isn't it? A fucking mess.'

Reaching up, she took hold of his hand and, for a moment, until he pulled it away, rested her head against his arm.

* * *

Elder spent the night in one of the small hotels out on the Mansfield Road, took one look at the breakfast and opted instead for a brisk walk into the city centre, a coffee sitting hunched up against the window in Caffe Nero, scanning the front page of the paper someone had left behind.

The Old Market Square had been titivated since Elder had seen it last. The grassed areas towards the Beastmarket end had been landscaped and some of the old benches had been replaced. Katherine was sitting between two men of indeterminate age, bearded, shaggy-haired and scruffily dressed, cans of cheap lager in their hands. It was not yet ten in the morning.

A girl in a beaded halter top and skintight jeans, her face festooned with studs and rings, sat cross-legged on the ground.

A third man with a blond pony-tail, wearing jeans and a stained Stone Roses sweatshirt, stood with one foot balanced on the end of the bench, watching Elder as he approached.

Elder stopped a short distance away.

'Kate…'

Not looking up, Katherine continued, carefully, to roll a cigarette.

'Katherine, we have to talk.'

'Sod off,' one of the seated men said.

Katherine brought the roll-up to her mouth and licked along the edge; pulling clear a few stray strands of tobacco, she took a disposable lighter from her pocket and lit the cigarette, drawing the smoke down into her lungs. One more drag and she passed it to the man on her left.

'Katherine,' Elder said again, his voice raised and impatient.

'Leave me alone.'

'I can't.'

Elder moved closer and the pony-tailed man swung his foot down from the bench and stood in his way.

'He's police,' one of the men on the bench said. 'Fuckin' law.'

'Not any more,' Katherine said.

'Who is he then?'

'My father. He thinks he's my father.'

'Katherine

'She doesn't want to talk to you,' the pony-tailed man said. 'Can't you see?'

'Get out of the way,' Elder said.

The man grinned and stood his ground. 'Make me.'

Fists clenched tight at his sides, Elder wanted to take a swing at the sneering face and punch it as hard as he could. Instead, with one last glance at Katherine, he walked away to the sound of their jeers.

* * *

What the fuck, Elder thought, as he crossed South Parade and on to Wheeler Gate, what the fuck am I doing here? What's the point of all this? A waste of fucking time. He was no more than a stone's throw from the railway station before he stopped and turned around.

For the next two hours, he stood in shop doorways, sat on the stone steps in front of the Council House, shared a desultory conversation with the Post seller near the corner of King Street and Long Row. He bought a sandwich and a cup of coffee in Pret A Manger and sipped the coffee slowly through the lid.

The way Katherine was sitting now, arms tight across her chest and wearing only a thin sweater, he thought she must be cold. Perhaps if he bought coffee for her, some hot tea or soup… but he did neither, continued instead to watch and wait, knowing that she didn't want him anywhere near but unable now to drag himself away.

He remembered her as a young girl, a child, tears flooding her eyes, screaming 'I hate you!' at the top of her lungs and then, moments later, allowing him to fold her inside his arms and kiss the top of her head, the warmth of her hair.

As the bells chimed the quarter hour, a man crossed towards where Katherine was sitting.

Instinct prickled the skin on Elder's wrists and the backs of his hands.

He was not a big man, around five seven, slightly built, denim jacket, jeans, check shirt, basketball boots, fair hair flopping forward over his face. He spoke to several of the small group gathered round the bench, stepping back a pace or so to talk to the pony-tailed man, who had wandered off earlier and then returned. Katherine he ignored, but Elder had noticed the way she had become more alert at his approach, her back more upright, fingers combing through the rough shag of unkempt hair.

Five minutes, more, and as if noticing her for the first time, he offered Katherine a cigarette and lit it from his own. Another few minutes and she was standing at his side, both of them talking now, quite animatedly. Three buses went past in slow convoy, hiding them temporarily from Elder's view, and when he saw them again they were walking towards the fountains, passing in between, his hand coming to rest across the top of her shoulders as they moved past one of the stone lions guarding the Council House before turning right into Exchange Arcade.

Elder picked them up again as they emerged.

At the foot of Victoria Street, the man reached for her hand and she pulled it away. Down through Hockley not touching, side by side. Coffee shops, bars, hairdressers, retro clothing, Indian restaurants. Goose Gate into Gedling. Waiting for a gap in the traffic on Carlton Road, his arm went round her shoulders again and she did nothing to resist.

Now they were in Sneinton, short rows of narrow streets, terraced houses, back-to-backs, some with brightly painted front doors and patterned blinds, others with makeshift curtains at the windows, broken glass. The house they stopped outside was midway along, a fading 'Not in My Name' poster alongside one more recent, 'War Criminal!' writ large above a photograph of George W Bush.

A cat, ginger and white with a white-tipped tail, jumped up on to the window ledge and rubbed its head against Katherine's arm as she stood waiting for the man to unlock the door. Running between their legs, the animal followed them into the house and the door closed behind them. Though it was yet the middle of the day, he glimpsed Katherine for a moment, standing at the downstairs window, before she pulled the curtains closed. Whether she saw him or not, he did not know.

8

He stood there for five minutes, ten, fifteen. My father. He thinks he's my father. There was still time to walk away. Elder walked, instead, across the street and, seeing no bell, knocked on the door.

The music playing as the door opened was loud, rhythmic and fast, nothing he recognised.

'Yes?'

'Rob Summers?'

'Depends.'

'On what?'

Summers smiled. The check on his shirt was mostly shades of green and grey; his eyes a pale, watery blue.

Elder looked past him into the narrow hall. Coats hung, bunched, along one wall; a strip of carpet, worn but clean, along the floor.

'Police, right?' Summers said. 'You're not selling something, not religious. You must be the police.'

'Not exactly.'

A smile of understanding passed across Summers's face and, relaxing his shoulders, he leaned sideways against the wall. 'Katie,' he said, putting a little singsong into his voice. 'Your old man's here.'

After a moment, Katherine appeared at the end of the hall, waited long enough to recognise her father's face, then turned away.

'I suppose you'd better come in,' Summers said.

The room was small and dimly lit, a small settee and two unmatched armchairs taking up much of the space. Shelves either side of the empty fireplace were filled with books, videos and DVDs, crammed in this way and that. More books and magazines lay in piles upon the floor. In one corner was a small TV, video recorder alongside, DVD player on top. More shelving stretched along the back wall, what had to be several hundred vinyl albums below the different elements of the stereo system, CDs in profusion above.

The smell of dope hung, faint but sweet, upon the air.

Summers lowered himself into one of the chairs and motioned for Elder to do the same. The bass beat from the speakers was repetitive and insistent.

'Get you anything?' Summers asked. 'Coffee, anything?'

'You think you could turn the music down a little?'

'Sure.' Summers pressed the remote on the arm of his chair.

'I want to talk to Katherine,' Elder said.

'That's up to her.'

'I've come a long way.'

'Cornwall, isn't it?'

'Yes,' Elder said, surprised that he knew, that she had bothered to tell him.

'Your choice, wasn't it?'

'Look.' Elder leaned forward. 'You can see the state she's in.'

'State?'

'You know what I mean.'

'I'm not sure I do.'

'Those people in the Square…'

'What about them?'

Elder shook his head.

'They look out for her,' Summers said. 'Leave her alone.'

'And you?'

Summers pushed himself up from his chair. 'Back in a minute, okay? I'll see what she says.'

Alone in the room, Elder looked around. White Stripes. Four Tet. The People's Music. Diane di Prima. Ginsberg. Dylan. Drop City. Neil Young. Several copies of the same pale green booklet on top of a stack of magazines. Scar: Poems by Rob Summers. Elder lifted one clear and flicked through the pages.

 

the snap of his cuff

a blade's edge

brilliant threads

vermilion wings

 

sweat coils

slow and sure

violet rope

around your neck

 

face blinded

I brace my back

against a sudden

blaze of light

 

'You read poetry?' Summers said, coming back into the room.

Elder let the booklet fall closed on his lap. 'No, not really.'

Summers sat back down.

'You write a lot?' Elder asked.

'A lot?' Summers smiled. 'I don't know about that. But yes, when I can. Poetry mostly. The occasional short story.'

'And you can earn a living doing that?'

'I wish.'

'What do you do?'

Summers smiled again. He smiled a lot. 'Teach, what else? Class at the university. Adult Ed. Bits and pieces here and there.'

'I do want to talk to Katherine,' Elder said. 'Then I'll

go.'

'She knows you're here. It's up to her.'

'If you asked her,' Elder said.

Smiling, Summers shook his head. 'That's not the way it works.'

'Rob,' Katherine said from the doorway, 'it's all right.' How long she had been standing there, Elder wasn't sure.

'You want me to stay?' Summers asked her.

'No, it's all right.' Her face was pale, tiredness darkening her eyes.

Summers touched Katherine lightly as he went past.

Elder waited for her to come and sit down, but instead she walked to the window and opened the curtains enough to be able to look out. The music came to an end, and voices could be heard, faint and indistinct, through the neighbouring wall. In the kitchen, Rob Summers was washing pots, putting them away.

'I'm sorry,' Elder said finally.

'What for?' He had to strain to make out the words.

'Whatever I've done to make you this upset. Angry.'

When she turned to look at him there were tears he hadn't anticipated on her face.

'I don't know what you expect from me,' Elder said. 'I don't know what you expect me to do.'

'Nothing.'

'You're hurting yourself, you must realise that.'

Slowly, Katherine shook her head. 'You saved me. From Keach. After he did all that stuff to me. He was going to kill me and you saved me.'

'Yes.'

'And now you wish you hadn't.'

'That's ridiculous.'

'Is it?'

'Yes.'

'You don't like me like this.'

Elder paused. 'No. No, of course I don't.'

'You want me to be like I was before.'

'Yes.'

She slid her hands across her face. 'Dad, I'm never going to be like I was before.'

How long he sat there he wasn't sure. Summers didn't reappear. Katherine left the room and then returned and the next thing he was standing beside her at the front door.

'You'll be careful,' he said.

'Yes, of course.' A smile fading in her eyes, she seemed young again, young and old beyond her years. You're seventeen, he wanted to say. Seventeen. What are you going to do with your life?

'If… if I need to get in touch?'

'Call me at Mum's.'

'Not here?'

'Bye, Dad.' Fleetingly, she kissed him on the cheek. Her hand touched his. She stepped back into the house and closed the door. A moment later, maybe two, the curtains were pulled back fast across.

* * *

Beyond Plymouth the train slowed its pace, stopping every twenty minutes or so at this small town or that. Countless times, Elder picked up his book only to set it back down. Staring out of the window into the passing dark, there was only his own face staring back. Six miniatures of Scotch lined up, empty, on the table before him: the slow but steady application of alcohol to the wound, the plastering over of helplessness and guilt. Should he have stayed? With a sweep of his hand, he sent the bottles flying, ricocheting from seat to empty seat and skittering along the floor. The few people still in the carriage tightened their faces and made themselves as small as they could.

By the time the train drew, finally, into Penzance, there were no more than a dozen or so passengers left. From the platform he could hear the sea, the waves splashing up against the concrete wall.

The taxi-driver bridled when Elder told him the address. 'It's gonna cost 'e. Hole through my exhaust goin' down that lane, had that happen before.'

Ignoring him, Elder slumped into the back.

Come morning, he knew, his head would feel like a heavy ball that had been bounced too many times. The cottage was a darkened shell. He gave the taxi-driver five pounds over the odds and stood watching him drive away, red tail lights visible between the dark outlines of bracken and stone that lined the lane and then not visible at all. Inside, he drank water, swallowed two aspirin and went to bed.

* * *

Rain, hard against the windows, woke him at three; by five he was sitting in the kitchen below, leafing through a week-old issue of the Cornishman and drinking tea. When eventually he stepped outside, purple light was already bruising the crest of the moor and all he could see was Katherine's face.

But within an hour the rain had dispersed and there was freshness in the air. In a short while, he would set off on a walk, possibly along the Tinner's Way, past Mulva Quoit to Chun Castle and beyond, allow his head the chance to clear. Later, he might take the car into town, spend some time in the gym; stock up on food, call in at the library, see about, perhaps, signing on for that woodworking course he'd been thinking of. Settle back into a routine. So far away, it was almost possible to forget the rest of the world existed.

Family. Friends. Responsibilities.

9

Maddy Birch's body was found near Crouch Hill, at the bottom of a steep path leading down to the disused railway line. A woman walking her dog, early morning, saw something flesh-coloured sticking up from between the leaves. Her 999 call was classified immediate and a patrol car arrived minutes later, driving in along the narrow lane leading past the adventure playground and children's nursery towards the community centre at the furthest end.

The body had fallen or been thrown some forty feet down the muddied bank into a tangle of blackberry bush and bracken.

The first officers at the scene called for reinforcements and began moving back the small scattering of spectators which had already started to gather. Soon the area would be secured and properly cordoned off by officers from Forensic Science Services, the body shielded by a canopy until the medical examiner had finished his preliminary investigation. Diagrams would be drawn, the scene examined in scrupulous detail, numerous Polaroids taken, measurements noted down: the whole operation captured on video.

The first two detectives from SCD1, Homicide, arrived some twenty minutes later. Lee Furness and Paul Denison, both DCs, showed their ID and spoke briefly to the uniformed officers before pulling on protective clothing. Not wanting to obliterate anything Forensics might find on the path, they scrambled down through the bracken some twenty metres further along.

Losing his footing midway, Furness cursed as dark mud smeared the leg of his overalls.

Denison reached the bottom first.

'Jesus,' he said and crossed himself instinctively. The dead woman's eyes were open and he wished that they were closed. Curly-haired and round of face, at twenty-seven Denison was the youngest in the team, younger than Furness by a full year.

The woman's skin was the colour of day-old putty, save where it had been sliced and torn.

Careful not to contaminate the scene, Furness, wearing a pair of latex gloves, prised a pair of white cotton knickers from the brambles on which they had snagged, dropped them down into a plastic evidence bag and sealed it along the top.

When they looked up, their DS, Mike Ramsden, had just arrived and was standing at the top of the bank, looking down. Burly, broad-shouldered, tall, wearing a scuffed leather jacket and tan chinos, tie loose at his neck, Ramsden epitomised the public's image, post-TV, of what a police detective should be.

'Boss here?' Ramsden called.

'Not yet,' Denison said.

'Forensics?'

'On their way.'

'Time for you two to get it sorted,' Ramsden said. 'Make a name for yourselves. Just don't go trampling over everything.'

His breath hung visible on the morning air.

* * *

Karen Shields, promoted to Detective Chief Inspector some twelve months before, was on her way to Hendon and a weekly meeting at Homicide West when the call came through. Over an excess of instant coffee and without too much rancour, she and other senior officers would review progress in the various investigations underway, pool information, prioritise.

The murder of an Afghan shopkeeper at Stroud Green, attacked by a gang of youths armed with blades and iron bars, beaten and left for dead, was foundering amidst a welter of denial, false alibis and barefaced lies. The two fourteen-year-olds they were certain had been responsible for setting fire to an eighty-six-year-old woman after breaking into her flat, had been arrested and then grudgingly released for lack of evidence. The week before, a family in Wembley, a mother and three children under ten, had been found bludgeoned to death, two of the children in their beds, one on the stairs, the mother in the garden as she tried to raise the alarm. The father had hanged himself from the top of a brightly coloured climbing frame in the kids' playground of the local park.

And then there were the young black men: investigations undertaken with DCC4, Racial and Violent Crimes. One man shot dead as he sat drinking coffee at a pavement cafe in Camden Town; another, possibly as a reprisal, gunned down as he came up the steps from Willesden Green station; a third, no more than seventeen, knifed outside the bowling alley in Finsbury Park. On and on.

Karen knew the figures: the murder rate in England and Wales for the previous year was the highest ever, with shooting-related deaths up by some thirty-two per cent. The highest overall recorded crime rate was in Nottinghamshire, though violent crime, per head of the population, was more prevalent in London, with men under the age of twenty-six the most frequent victims. Gun crime aside, the biggest increases were in stranger violence, harassment and rape. And despite the growing prevalence of guns on the streets, the most popular murder weapon by far was still some form of sharp implement. Knife. Machete. Razor. Sharpened spade.

She thought of this as, having turned her car around, she fought it back through the rush-hour traffic; single men in suits steering one-handed as they smoked cigarette after cigarette and snapped, illegally, into their mobile phones; smart young mums ferrying their children to school in SUVs.

'When you goin' to settle down, girl?' her grandmother had asked when she made her last visit home. 'Have some babies of your own?'

Home was Spanish Town in Jamaica, the progeny of sisters and cousins swarming round her like an accusation.

'Girl, you not gettin' any younger.' As if, not so many months off thirty-nine, she needed reminding.

At Crouch End Broadway, Karen steered wide past a car hesitating at the pedestrian lights, slid into the left-hand lane and accelerated up the hill. Incongruous, a giant totem pole outside the playground signalled the entrance to the lane, and she slowed almost to a halt before pulling in behind Mike Ramsden's Sierra.

A quick glance in the rear-view mirror, a hand pushed up through her tousled, short-cut hair; by rights her lipstick could do with replenishing, but for now it would have to do. She was wearing a dark brown trouser suit and boots with a solid heel that brought her as close as damn it to six foot. Well, five ten. Her don't-mess-with-me look, as she liked to think.

Removing his hands from his pockets, Ramsden walked towards her. Down below, she could see Forensics already at work, shielding the body from sight.

'What have we got?' Karen said.

Ramsden coughed into the back of his hand. 'White female, thirty-five to forty-five, multiple stab wounds; dead some little time. Last night at a guess.'

'ME not here yet?'

'Stuck in traffic'

'Tell me about it.' Karen moved closer to the edge and looked down. 'That where it happened?'

'My guess, she was attacked somewhere up here and then pushed.'

Karen looked along the area to their left that had now been cordoned off, the muddied slope leading steeply down.

'Marks you can see,' Ramsden said. 'That and the angle of the body.' He shrugged. 'Maybe he finished her off down there, who knows?'

'Any ID yet?'

'Not so far.'

'No one similar reported missing?'

'Early days.'

Karen sighed and patted her coat pocket, hoping for a mint; since she'd stopped smoking on New Year's Day, she'd been committing dental suicide.

'Any idea yet what she was doing here?'

Ramsden told her so far they'd found a grey sports bra and matching vest, the vest dark with mud and what was almost certainly blood. A pair of grey jogging pants had lain nearby. One blue-and-white Puma running shoe had been discovered close to the body, the other amongst the trees at the far side of the old railway track, where presumably it had been hurled.

'Out running,' Karen said. 'Chances are she'll live close.'

Earlier in the year a woman had been attacked and killed while jogging in east London, Hackney. Stabbed. The investigation was still ongoing.

Karen glanced round at the flats that ranged below. At the end of the lane, she knew, a path led down to a crescent of Victorian houses and the sprawl of another low-rise council estate at the far side of Hornsey Road. Before being assigned to SCDl, she'd run a missing-person investigation here, a three-year-old boy who'd gone missing from the nursery and been found forty-eight hours later, safe but cold, asleep in someone's garden shed.

'Who found the body?'

Ramsden pointed towards a thirtyish woman in a yellow Puffa jacket, standing with two others of similar age. All with cigarettes on the go.

'Who talked to her?'

'Furness and Denison.'

'Talk to her again.'

'But…'

'Again, Mike. Do it yourself. I'm going down to take a look.'

Her protective clothing was in the boot of the car. Changed, she made her way carefully down, not wanting to make a fool of herself by slipping. The DI in charge of the Forensic team was someone she'd worked with before.

Inside the canopy, Karen bent towards the body. Some of the cuts looked superficial, others, she guessed, ran deep. There was bruising to the neck and face, another bruise - the result of a kick? - above the pelvis on the left-hand side. A fine spray of dried blood speckled the inner thigh, and something silver and crystalline trailed, snail-like, across the curve of her stomach.

Sexual assault?

Until the post-mortem there was no way to know for sure.

She stepped back outside and turned in a slow circle, trying to get a sense of what had happened, taking her time.

Ramsden was on his way towards her, having taken the long way round.

'The woman,' Ramsden said. 'Nothing she didn't say first time round.' He took a stick of chewing gum from his top pocket, removed the wrapping and put it in his mouth.

Karen held out her hand.

'Sorry,' Ramsden said. 'Last one.'

She didn't know whether to believe him or not.

'She recognise the victim?' Karen asked.

'Not from what she saw.'

'Get her to look at one of the Polaroids. Good chance, if they both use this place a lot, she'll have seen her before.'

But now Denison was shouting something from above, altar-boy face shining and a canvas sports bag held high in one gloved hand.

'Lucky bollocks,' Ramsden said, half beneath his breath. 'Fall in shit and he'd come up with a five-pound note.'

They climbed back up.

'It was there,' Denison said, pointing. 'Community centre. Pushed down below the steps by the door.'

'You've checked inside?' Karen asked.

Denison shook his head. 'Just a quick look. Sweatshirt. Towel. Socks.'

'Then we don't know it's hers,' Ramsden said.

'Let's see,' Karen said, reaching into the bag with gloved hands.

The wallet was safe in an inner pocket, square and dark, the leather soft with use. She lifted it out and let it fall open in her hand.

'Oh, shit,' she said softly. 'Shit, shit, shit.'

'What?' Ramsden said.

Karen held out towards him the warrant card with its small square photograph: Maddy Birch, Detective Sergeant, CID.

'She's one of ours.'

10

The press conference was packed to the gills. Television cameras, tape recorders, a smattering of old-fashioned spiral-bound notebooks, ballpoints at the ready. On the raised platform, a technician made a last-minute check of the microphones. The noise in the hall ebbed, and flowed. Out front, a Press and Public Relations officer had a quick word with the reporter from Sky News. Bar a terrorist attack or a celebrity scandal, the timing should guarantee blanket coverage on all the terrestrial channels, plus satellite and cable. BBC Radio was taking a live feed into its five o'clock news. A curtain twitched to one side, a door opened and, stern-faced, they shuffled in.

The platform was rich in seniority and rank. Assistant Commissioner Harkin took centre stage, to his right the Detective Chief Superintendent in command of Homicide West. Seated at the far left, Karen Shields was the only woman, the only black face amongst all those sober-faced and sombre-suited white men.

Arguments that she'd be better occupied elsewhere had been brushed aside: Public Relations liked to get her on camera as often as they could.

In her absence, Lee Furness was busy liaising with Forensics and overseeing the local area inquiries, while Mike Ramsden had travelled north to interview Maddy Birch's mother. Alan Sheridan, her office manager, was accessing the Sex Offenders Register, searching through computerised records of similar crimes. Only Paul Denison was temporarily idle, twiddling his thumbs in the car park waiting for Karen while she was stuck, unhappily, behind a microphone.

Bald head shining a little in the lights, the Assistant Commissioner began his statement: 'We are, all of us, shocked and saddened by the death of a colleague in this tragic and senseless way.' Using his notes sparingly, he spoke of Maddy Birch as a resourceful and dedicated officer who had shown extreme bravery only recently in going up against an armed and dangerous criminal when she herself was unarmed. 'All of us within the Metropolitan Police Service,' he concluded, 'have a grim determination to bring Maddy's killer or killers to justice as soon as possible.'

Flash bulbs popped.

Harkin gave brief details of the circumstances of Maddy's death and went on to give assurances that the Homicide officers leading the investigation would be able to call on the support, as necessary, of other Operational Crime Units, as well as the facilities of the National Crime Intelligence Service. Karen, finally, was introduced as one of the officers who were, as he put it, dealing with the minute-by-minute, the day-to-day, the real nitty-gritty. No one, least of all Karen, had warned him that, because of its possible links to slavery, it might no longer be politically correct to say nitty-gritty.

The first question was hurled almost before Harkin had finished speaking: was it true that Maddy Birch had been sexually assaulted prior to her death?

'Until the post-mortem has been carried out by the Home Office pathologist,' he said, 'any such assumptions are purely speculation.' It was an answer guaranteed to increase such speculation tenfold.

Numerous questions followed about the exact nature of the attack, most of which were either deflected or referred back to the initial statement.

'Given the similarity of circumstances,' asked the reporter from CNN, 'do the police think there is a connection between this murder and that of the woman killed while out jogging in Hackney in February?'

They'd been expecting that one.

'Be assured,' Harkin responded, 'there will be the closest contact with officers conducting that investigation.'

He did think, then, there was a connection?

'As I say, we are exploring that avenue alongside several others.'

'Nobody has yet been charged with the Victoria Park murder, is that correct?'

That was correct.

'And all three men arrested in connection with the murder have since been released?'

That was so.

Harkin sighed. 'If we could concentrate our attentions on the tragic death of Detective Sergeant Birch…'

But the crime correspondent of the Guardian was already on his feet. 'The assistant commissioner alluded to the police operation in which Detective Sergeant Birch was involved, and which resulted in the death of a fellow officer and the fatal shooting by the police of William Grant - I wonder, can he tell us what progress is being made in the inquiry into those events presently being carried out by the Hertfordshire Force?'

'I'm afraid I don't see that has any relevance here.'

'But the inquiry is still ongoing?'

'You have my answer.' Harkin's face was set in stone.

'I think,' the Public Relations officer began, 'if there are no further questions…'

'I have a question for Detective Chief Inspector Shields.' Eyes turned towards the Home Affairs correspondent from the BBC. 'As a woman officer, does this case have a special resonance for you?'

Fuck, Karen said inside her head.

Twenty cameras flashed in her direction.

'As a police officer,' Karen said, 'all cases of this seriousness, especially where the deaths of fellow officers are involved, resonate equally.'

Off to one side, the PR officer nearly wet himself with joy.

'Gentlemen,' said Assistant Commissioner Harkin, rising to his feet. 'Ladies. Thank you for your time.'

* * *

Seeing Karen Shields approach across the car park in his rear-view mirror, Denison turned the key in the ignition.

'How did it go, ma'am?'

Karen slammed the car door closed. 'Stop ma'aming me and drive the fucking car.'

Not too well, then, Denison thought.

Karen buckled herself in and stared straight ahead. Hendon to Kentish Town, half an hour if they were lucky, three-quarters if not.

Vanessa's commanding officer was waiting for them in reception. 'PC Taylor's in my office. You can talk to her there.'

'Thank you.'

Vanessa jumped to her feet when the door opened. She was wearing her police uniform, the top button of her tunic fastened tight at her neck; there was a slight but unmistakable smell of perspiration in the room.

Awkwardly, Vanessa held out her hand and then, before Karen could respond, let it fall by her side.

Sitting, Karen introduced Denison and herself.

'Maddy Birch,' Karen said, 'you knew her. You've got some information, I believe.'

'Yes. As soon as I heard what had happened — I'm sorry, I still can't believe it — as soon as I heard, I went to my inspector here and asked to be put in touch.'

Karen nodded. 'I'd like to record this conversation. I take it you've no objection?'

'No, of course not.'

Denison placed the pocket recorder on the desk between them and switched it on.

'Very well, then, in your own time.'

Vanessa told them about Maddy's growing fears that she had been watched and followed; her feeling that someone had been inside her flat.

'She didn't report any of this?'

'No.'

'Do you know why?'

Vanessa wriggled a little in her seat. 'It wasn't as if she had any proof. I think she was worried she might not be believed. That people might think she was, you know, imagining things.'

'And you? What did you think?'

'Did I believe her?'

'Yes.'

'Not at first. Not if I'm to be honest, no. Ever since the Grant business, that young officer getting killed, it had really shaken her up. You could tell. I thought maybe it was a reaction to that. Nervous, you know. But then, when she said someone had broken into her flat, I believed her then.'

'And she didn't have any idea who this person - if it was one person - might have been?'

'No, not really'

'You don't seem sure.'

Vanessa fidgeted with her hair. 'Well, there was this one time we were in the pub and Maddy thought she saw someone she knew. Her ex.'

'Ex-husband, lover, what?'

'Husband. Terry.'

'And how did she react?'

'She didn't say anything at first, not to me. But you could tell, yes, she was surprised. Thinking she'd seen him.'

'They weren't in touch?'

'No. Not at all. Quite a while, at least. He'd moved away. North Wales, I think she said.'

'And when she saw him, her reaction, was it just surprise?'

Vanessa took her time, wanting to be clear. 'No. I think it was more than that. More as if she was afraid, you know?'

Mugs of tea sat on a metal tray, untouched. Paper squares of sugar and plastic spoons. Karen noticed the low background hum from the central heating for the first time. Mike Ramsden was up in Lincolnshire talking to Maddy's mother. Where was it? Louth? Surname Birch, she remembered. Maddy must have resumed her own name after the divorce.

'When she told you about her flat being broken into, she didn't say she thought it might have been him? Terry?'

'No. And by then she was saying it probably hadn't been him at all. Just someone who looked a bit like him, that's all.'

'Enough like him to make her afraid.'

'Yes. Yes, I suppose so.'

Karen could feel her nerve ends tightening, a scenario beginning to play out in her mind, and had to will herself not to let it race too far ahead.

'That night, after the pub, you didn't notice anyone hanging around, acting suspiciously at all? Anyone who might have been him?'

'No. I've been thinking about it, but no.' Vanessa looked bereft, on the verge of tears.

'Here.' Karen tore open two packets of sugar and emptied them into one of the mugs of tea. 'Drink some of that.'

'Do I have to?' Vanessa smiling despite everything.

'God, no.' Leaning forward, she switched off the tape. 'Where's the nearest pub?'

'End of the street.'

'How long will it take you to get out of that uniform?'

Pocketing the recorder, Karen got to her feet. 'Paul, get through to the office, have somebody check on Maddy Birch's file. Her married name might be somewhere there and I missed it. And see if you can raise Mike, tell him to give me a call.'

* * *

Karen bought a vodka and orange for Vanessa, Coke with ice and lemon for herself, tonic water for Denison.

'Paul here's not old enough to drink, anyway,' she said.

Denison blushed.

When Vanessa asked how the investigation was going, Karen shrugged and shook her head. 'Ask me in a couple of days.'

The television over the bar seemed to be showing a rerun of some soccer game or other; at least it wasn't the news. At the far end of the room a number of gaudy machines were vying with one another for the most annoying electronic jingle. Most of the tables were taken by solitary drinkers, men nursing pints of whatever bitter was on special offer.

'You liked her, didn't you? Maddy.'

'She was great. A laugh, you know. But not silly, like some. Sensible. And straight, no side to her, you know what I mean? Said what she felt. She…' Vanessa's face wobbled and she fumbled for a tissue in her bag. 'It was all getting to her, you know? That's why…' She gulped air and brought her hands to her mouth. 'That's why I suggested yoga. I thought it would help, make her less stressed out.' She was unable now to hold back the tears. 'That bloody place. If it hadn't been for me, she'd never have gone. Never have been there. Never have got herself bloody killed.'

Karen leaned closer and put her arm around the other woman's shoulders.

Denison looked more embarrassed than usual.

'Listen,' Karen said. 'Vanessa. If she was right, if someone was following her, intending to do her harm, it would have happened anyway. And if it was something else, pure chance, there's nothing you or anyone else could have done. Okay?'

'Yes. Yes, I suppose so.'

'Good.'

Vanessa blew her nose loudly.

'Here,' Karen said. 'Drink up.'

At which moment Karen's mobile started to ring and she stepped out on to the street.

Mike Ramsden's voice was indistinct.

'Is this a crap line or are you whispering?'

'It's a crap line.'

'Listen, Mike. I want to know the name of Maddy Birch's ex. Address too, if you can get one. Anything else about him. How things were between them. Threats. Animosity. Anything. All right?'

'Do what I can.'

'Okay, soon as you get a name, call me back.'

Karen broke the connection.

* * *

In the hallway of the small terraced house in Louth, Mike Ramsden slipped his phone back down into his pocket and looked for a moment at the photograph, framed and hanging on the wall, of a young Maddy Birch at her passing-out parade. Behind him, in the living room, there were more photographs, a scrapbook full to overflowing, open on the low table beside Carol Birch's chair. For the best part of an hour he had been sitting opposite her, balancing an empty cup and saucer in the palm of one hand, pretending to listen. 'I only moved up here to be near her and then she up and moved to London.'

Ramsden sighed and turned back into the room. 'What about boyfriends?' Karen was asking Vanessa. 'Good-looking woman, not old, there must have been someone?'

'I don't think so. No one special. I mean, if we were out, blokes would try it on, you know, giving her the chat, but she didn't seem interested. It was more like, if anything was going to happen, she wanted it to be more than just a one-night stand, you know?'

Karen knew: only too well.

'So, no one at all?'

'Oh, one guy maybe. This roofer she met.'

'Roofer?'

'Yes, you know.' Vanessa gestured vaguely upwards. 'One of those blokes always up scaffolding, doing a lot of shouting, replacing tiles. Steve was his name. Steve Kennet.'

'How long ago was this?'

'Few months back, maybe more.'

'And this was serious?'

'Not really.'

'You know where he lives, this Steve?'

Vanessa shook her head. 'Archway somewhere.'

Karen made a note of the name; if it came to it, he shouldn't be all that difficult to find.

Less than ten minutes later Ramsden rang her back. 'Name's Patrick. Terence Patrick. I've got an address in Prestatyn: 15 Sea View Terrace.'

'Current?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Shouldn't be too hard to check. Listen, Mike, if I don't get back to you inside the hour, I want you to meet me there tomorrow morning. Prestatyn. Eight. Eight thirty. I'll catch an early flight to Liverpool or Manchester and drive over.'

'And how am I supposed to get there from the wilds of fucking Lincolnshire?'

'Leave early.'

Karen pressed 'disconnect' and looked at her watch. She needed to get back to the office, make some calls. She thought they'd got as much out of Vanessa Taylor as they were going to get for now. They could always talk to her again. She was thinking about Terry Patrick, how he might have heard the news of his ex-wife's death. If and when and what he'd felt. If he hadn't known already.

Thinking about Maddy's mother, trying to imagine how you began to come to terms with what had happened. If you ever did. Children were supposed to outlive their parents, wasn't that the way it was supposed to be?

11

Whoever had named Sea View Terrace was either possessed of an ironic sense of humour or a very tall ladder. It wasn't even a terrace any more, but a street of seventies semi-detacheds, each with its own garage, right or left. The pebble-dash frontage of number 15, once white, was now a sour, yellowing cream. Wooden planks and sundry pieces of scaffolding littered the front yard. The garage door was partly open.

Karen drove slowly past in the hire car she'd picked up at the airport, reversed into a three-point turn and stopped several doors down. Mike Ramsden's Ford Sierra, showing every sign of having battered along a succession of minor roads in heavy rain, was parked further along on the opposite side, Ramsden catnapping behind the wheel.

Karen got out of the car, wearing a sort of faded green today, almost certainly a mistake, popped a mint into her mouth and turned up the collar of her coat; the rain had dwindled to a steady drizzle, grey out of a grey sky.

She rapped the keys against the Sierra's window and Ramsden was instantly awake. Several lidded coffee cups and an empty Burger King box were on the passenger seat alongside him, an orange juice carton on the floor.

'I thought you said eight?' he said, winding down the window. 'Eight thirty?'

'I did.'

Ramsden looked at his watch and grunted. It was coming round to twenty past the hour.

'What time did you get here?' Karen asked.

''Round seven.'

Karen nodded in the direction of the house. 'Anything happening?'

'Patrick's been in and out the garage a couple of times, fiddling with stuff in his van. Had on his white overalls second time, off to work soon I don't doubt.'

'Anyone else around?'

'Face at the window. Wife, girlfriend, someone.'

'Well,' Karen said, 'let's go and introduce ourselves.'

The woman who came to the door was plumpish, shortish, a smoker's mouth and mid-length straw-coloured hair, breasts that, underneath a pale cotton top, seemed to have a life of their own.

'Mrs Patrick…?'

Her glance moved from one face to the other and back again. 'Sorry, I'm afraid I don't have time…'

But Karen was holding up her warrant card. 'We're police officers,' she said.

The woman looked past them to the empty street outside. 'Terry,' she called over her shoulder. Then, stepping back into the hallway, 'You'd best come in.'

The central heating was turned up high. A radio was playing in another room, the cajoling voice of some near-desperate DJ. Terry Patrick appeared at the end of the hall. His fair, almost sandy hair was in need of a comb, dried patches of plaster and specks of old paint clung to his overalls and the work boots on his feet. Fifty, Karen thought, if he was a day. Around the same height as herself. One of those men who become more wiry with age, rather than gaining weight.

'What's all this then?'

But from his eyes he already knew.

'It's about Maddy, isn't it?'

'Just a few things,' Karen said. 'Routine, really.'

'Come on through,' he said. And then, 'Tina, get kettle on, will you?'

The sigh was practised, automatic. 'Tea?'

'If there's any chance of coffee?' Karen said.

'It'll be instant.'

'That's fine,' Karen said.

'That'll be for the both of you, then?'

Ramsden nodded.

'Suit yourselves.'

The living room was overburdened by furniture and dark. Wherever the radio was playing it wasn't here. The kitchen, probably. Karen could just recognise the Delfonics' 'Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time?' Going back.

'Sit yourselves down,' Patrick said.

Karen sat at one end of a settee that had seen better days, Ramsden on a high-backed chair near the window. Patrick settled himself into what was obviously his chair, creased leather opposite a large-screen TV.

'It must have come as a shock,' Karen said, 'what happened.'

'Course it bloody did. All over the news, like. Couldn't believe it at first.' He made a small derisive sound, somewhere between a snort and a laugh. 'What they say, isn't it? When something happens. Couldn't believe it. But it's true. Someone gets, you know, killed — accident, whatever — you never expect it to be someone you know.'

Leaning back, he lifted his feet on to a low wooden table that seemed to have been put there for the purpose. Keeping his boots off the shag carpet.

'Poor silly cow,' he said. 'Out jogging, that's what they said.' He shook his head. 'London. Late at night, some park or other. You'd've thought she'd have known better.'

Coffee and tea were carried in on a metal tray, sugar still in its packet, a solitary spoon.

'Thanks, Tina, love.'

Patrick's hands, Karen thought, watching him stir two sugars into his tea, were broad across the knuckles, lightly etched with paint.

'Maddy,' Karen said. 'When did you last see her?'

Patrick smiled a quick, lopsided smile and, for the first time, Karen caught a sense of how he might have been an attractive man, fifteen or more years before.

'Been thinking about that, haven't I? Tina asked me same thing. Eighty-six, it must have been. The divorce. Year after it all, you know, went pear-shaped.' He picked a small circle of paint from the leg of his overalls and flicked it towards the empty fireplace. 'Seventeen years.'

His wife was still standing in the doorway, watching him, her face impossible to read.

'You've not seen her in all that time?' Karen said.

'Not the once.'

'But you'd kept in touch?'

'Not really, no. Her folks, they were always pretty decent, sent a card at Christmas, that kind of thing. Leastways, till her father died. Four or five years back now, that'd be. Maybe more.'

'And you didn't see Maddy, no communication, nothing?'

'I said, didn't I?'

'Mr Patrick, you're sure?'

'Tell them, Terry,' his wife said. 'For Christ's sake, tell them.' Stepping back into the hall, she closed the door slowly but firmly behind her.

Patrick picked up his mug, held it in both hands for a moment without drinking, then set it back down.

'Seven or eight years back…'

'Which?'

'Seven, seven. Me and Tina, we were going through a bad patch. It happens. Things get out of hand, slip gear.' He looked quickly across at Ramsden, as if for affirmation. 'I moved out for a while, bunked up with a pal. After a bit, I got in touch with Maddy. Tried to. I don't know, I suppose I had this daft idea we might get back together. Got her address and that from her mum. Phoned and it was like talking to the speaking bloody clock. Just didn't want to know, did she? I wrote a few times after that, asking, you know, couldn't we meet? Stupid, really. Plain bloody stupid. She never replied, of course, not a bloody word.' He lifted his head and gave a sour little smile. 'Tina and I, we got things sorted.' He shrugged. 'Maybe it's not perfect, but then you tell me, what is?'

The radio, already indistinct, was lost to the sound of a vacuum cleaner, as it banged against the skirting board in the hall.

'This was all seven years ago,' Karen said.

Patrick nodded.

'And there was no contact between you after that?'

A shake of the head.

'Nothing. You'd not spoken, set eyes on her?'

'No, I said.'

'How about October?'

'Sorry?'

'October of this year.'

Patrick leaned forward, leaned back, looked towards the door. The vacuuming stopped, then started up again. Karen watched as, fingers spread, his hands pushed hard along the tops of his thighs. His voice when he spoke was choked, deliberately low.

'It was an accident, right? No. Coincidence. That's it, coincidence. I'd been down there on a job, London. Well, the money's good, better than you can expect up here and you can always doss down a couple of nights in the van. Anyway, this night, after working, right, we go out for a few beers, just the three of us, me and these two other blokes, one pub and then another and all of a sudden there she is, her and this other bird, up on stage singing some bloody song.' Patrick wiped the back of his hand across his mouth before carrying on. 'Couldn't believe it. Just stood and fucking stared. "What's up?" one of these blokes said. "Fancy it, do you?" I wanted to thump him, didn't I? Bury my fist in his fucking face. Just turned round and left instead. Couldn't wait to get out of there. Walked for fucking miles, must have done. Fucking miles. Don't ask me why.' Another glance towards the door. 'I don't want her to know.'

Karen waited, watching his face, the spots of anger slow to fade from his cheeks.

'Why didn't you wait, go and talk to her, say hello?'

'I don't know.'

'All the effort you'd made before ...'

'I know, I know. It was just — I don't know — the surprise, I suppose. The shock. Pathetic, isn't it? And now …' He looked into Karen's face. 'You don't know who it was? Who killed her?'

'Not yet,' Karen said. 'Not for definite.'

His eyes were a pale greeny-grey and they scarcely wavered under her gaze.

'The bastard,' Patrick said. 'Hanging's not good enough for him, whoever he is.'

'Where were you two nights ago?' Karen asked, much as she might have asked for a refill for her coffee.

Patrick blinked. 'Here, why?' And then, 'Oh, yes, of course. I suppose you have to ask.'

'Here at home with your wife?' Karen said.

'More or less. Knocked off work around four thirty, five. New development the other side of town, been there a couple of weeks now, plastering, helping out. Anyway, left there, stopped off at the bookie's, quick pint across the street from there, back here no later than seven. Bit of supper, watched the box. Don't ask me what. Early night. Tina, she likes to read a bit in bed but not me. Spark out before eleven, I shouldn't wonder.'

'Apart from your wife,' Ramsden said, speaking for the first time, 'there are people who'd back this up?'

'I dare say, yes. Bookmaker's for certain, one or two in the pub.'

'You can give us the details?'

'Yes, of course.'

Ten minutes later, they were back out in the street, standing alongside Mike Ramsden's car, Ramsden smoking a rare cigarette and Karen standing close enough to inhale the smoke.

'What do you think?' he asked.

'When he started talking about her, the way she ignored him when he tried to get in touch, you could see the veins standing out in his wrists.'

Ramsden nodded. 'You think he's telling the truth?'

'Here and there.'

'You want me to check out some of these names?'

'Do that. I think I'll wait around till he's gone off to work, go back and have a word with the wife.'

'None too crazy about the idea of him and Maddy, is she?'

'Maybe she's got good reason.'

'My missus thought I had the hots for somebody else, she'd help pack my bag, give me her blessing.'

Karen laughed. 'Mike, there's exceptions to everything.'

* * *

'He hit me once,' Tina said. 'Few years ago now. I can't even remember what over, most likely nothing, nothing important, but I can remember it happening. Crack, hard round the side of the face. Somewhere between a punch and a slap. This come up all black, didn't it? Black, purple, yellow.'

'What did you do?' Karen said.

They were sitting at a small table in the kitchen, more Nescafe, the radio turned low. Karen knew there was some reason, other than taste, she shouldn't be drinking anything made by Nestle, something to do with children in Africa, babies, but she couldn't remember exactly what.

Tina shook a cigarette out from the pack and picked up a disposable lighter.

'I waited, didn't I? Waited till I was doing the ironing. Oh, not when it was hot. Just, you know, handy. Caught him one on the back of his hand while he was sitting where you are now, reading the paper. Hollerin' and screamin' something dreadful, wasn't he? Swelled up like half-pound of sausage; couldn't work for a week. Lay that hand on me again, I told him, and I'll take the bread knife to it when you're asleep.'

'He didn't try and get you back?'

Tina laughed. 'Too busy sitting there feeling sorry for himself, wasn't he? "What the hell you have to do that for?" over and over.'

'He has got a temper, though.'

'Two of us, that is.'

'He said you went through a bad patch some years ago, came close to breaking up.'

'God! Confession time in there, was it? Some kind of therapy session.'

Karen smiled. 'Maybe.'

'He'd been seeing this woman, hadn't he? Some slag he'd met, God knows where. Pathetic. I told him if that was what he wanted he could piss off and get on with it. Soon come back with his tail between his legs, didn't he? Begging me to take him back.'

'And you did.'

Lifting a hand, Tina pushed her hair back off her face. 'Look at me, not exactly going to be mistaken for Miss Prestatyn, am I? Just some dumpy little tart with a fat arse and half a brain. Learn to take what you can get. And besides, he's not so bad, earns good money most of the time and not mean with it, like some.' She drew hard on her cigarette. 'You could do worse, believe me. A lot worse. I know.'

Karen sipped at the lukewarm coffee to the faint strains of 'Rocket Man'.

'Ooh, I love this,' Tina said, reaching towards the radio. 'You mind if I turn it up?'

Karen always thought listening to Elton John was like a quick fuck in the dark, okay till you turned on the light.

'Were you here,' Karen asked, 'when he heard about his ex-wife, what had happened?'

'Both watching the news, weren't we? Half-watching, anyway. All of a sudden Terry's shouting out 'cause he's heard her name and then there's this picture of her on the screen. Someone saying how she'd been murdered. Terry, he sort of froze. Stunned, like. As if he couldn't believe it. Ages before I could get him to say a word. Really got to him, you know.' She stubbed out her cigarette. 'Made me think twice about going out at night, even round here, on your own. Always some bastard man, out there, waiting for you.'

She turned the radio back down.

'He wrote to her, you know. Maddy. More than a few times. I'm not supposed to know. Found one of the letters in his coat pocket. Steamed it open. All this bollocks about how she was the love of his life and that. Burned it, didn't I? Tore it into little pieces and set fucking light to it. Never said anything, soft sod must've thought he'd posted it.'

She lit another cigarette.

'Maybe she was, you know? Love of his life? Least someone thought that of her, eh?'

12

Elder had finished J. B. Priestley and gone back to Patrick O'Brian. Each morning he listened to the coastal reports on Radio Cornwall: NCI St Ives, NCI Gwennap Head, NCI Bass Point. One blustery day, returning from a tramp across the fields, a beast lay dead in the otherwise deserted farmyard along the lane, legs poking stiff from either side of its distended belly, plastic sheet flapping loose about its head. When he went out again towards dusk, it had disappeared, leaving just the trail through the mud where it had been dragged.

Since returning from Nottingham, he had phoned Joanne with some regularity and asked after Katherine; every few days at first, then less often. Sometimes his daughter was there, sometimes not. She seems to have settled down, Joanne assured him. Stays home more. She's even talking about going to college, finishing her AS exams. Whoever Katherine was talking to, it wasn't him.

Elder sent her a letter, drafted carefully beforehand, trying to explain how he felt, how he felt about her. Not expecting a reply, he still checked the postbox each day, still felt the same twinge of hurt. He thought of going up again to see her, but rationalised it would only serve to make things worse. Katherine might have settled down, as Joanne had suggested, but he had not.

With the winds lashing more and more fiercely in from the Atlantic, Elder ordered another load of logs and stacked them in the lean-to at the side of the cottage, splitting some with an axe for kindling. The bottle of Jameson's in the kitchen went down a little more each evening, slow but steady.

And then, on the first day of December, a Monday, he opened a three-day-old paper and read the news: the body of a police officer had been found near a disused railway line in north London, sexually assaulted and left for dead. As soon as he saw the name, he knew who she was.

* * *

It had been sixteen years. Elder had been based in Lincoln, CID, established, not so many months off forty. The big four-O. Katherine was barely two, a toddler, agile enough at night to infiltrate herself between Joanne and himself in their bed. He had noticed Maddy Birch around the station, the odd word exchanged in passing, nodded greetings in the canteen: enough to notice the colour of her eyes, the same shade as Joanne's, the absence of rings on her left hand. Late twenties, he supposed, maybe younger still.

One evening, late, a leaving do for someone in Traffic neither of them really knew, they bumped up against each other in the crush at the bar, her hand resting for a moment on his arm as she steadied herself, the second time surely no mistake. When he'd smiled what was intended as an inviting smile, she'd looked away. Which of them had contrived that they leave together, he was never sure; maybe neither, maybe both. The cobbles on the street outside were slippery and wet, the street narrow and steep. Only natural to reach out a hand, steady her against a fall. Above and behind, lights picked out the west front of the cathedral, the stonework of the castle opposite. His fingers touched her cheek and neck. The doorway into which they half-stumbled, half-stepped was barely deep enough to hold them both. His mouth found hers, her mouth found his. She said his name. Clumsily unbuttoning her coat, his hand closed on her breast. She fumbled with the front of his clothes, gave up, gripped hard instead. The flesh of her neck was warm and soft and when he kissed her there, low in the dip between muscle and bone, she moaned and squeezed tighter and he came, standing there, came against her hand.

Oh, Christ!

She kissed him near the side of his mouth and, after a moment, when she stepped away, there was light enough to see the rueful smile upon her face.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

'Don't be.' Her finger to his lips. And then, 'Come on, let's walk,' linking her arm through his.

At the foot of the hill, they went their separate ways, she a short walk to the place she'd recently bought, he in a taxi to the home where wife and child would doubtless be sleeping, somehow managing to take up, between them, most of the bed.

The central heating had switched itself off automatically and, still wearing his coat, he sat in the kitchen with a glass of Scotch in both hands, taking his mind as slowly as he could through what had happened, moments that were already uncertain, half-imagined.

Neither of them spoke of it again; nothing else happened.

It was the only time, in all the years of his marriage, that Elder had strayed.

Yet he found himself from time to time remembering, images appearing from nowhere, a kaleidoscope of touch and warmth and breath.

And now she was dead.

He read the report again.

Maddy had been at a yoga class that evening and had left alone; it was assumed she'd been attacked shortly afterwards. As yet the police were uncertain as to the exact sequence of events. What was certain was that at some point after finishing her class, getting changed and leaving the centre, Maddy Birch had been attacked, most probably raped, beaten, cut and left for dead.

* * *

Elder knew that Robert Framlingham was now based with the Murder Review Unit at Trenchard House; not so many months ago he had been in touch, eager to persuade Elder to join his team of recently retired detectives who were being increasingly used to re-examine cold cases or review investigations that had stalled. As he had with the earlier approach from Nottinghamshire, Elder had politely yet firmly declined.

Framlingham's voice, as ever, was rich and full, unlike the man himself, who was whippet thin and tall enough to make Elder crane his neck when they ever met.

'Frank, changed your mind, I'll be bound.'

'Afraid not,' Elder said.

Framlingham chuckled. 'Well, if it's about a loan…'

'Don't worry, not that.'

'Then shoot.'

'The DS who was murdered at Crouch Hill, Maddy Birch…'

'Not idle curiosity…'

'Not really. I knew her. I mean, we worked together. A while back. Lincolnshire.'

'Personal, then?'

'If you like.'

'What's your interest, Frank? I mean, exactly?'

'I'm not sure. Just wondering who was handling the investigation, how it was going?'

'Not my department, Frank. Not yet. Nothing breaks, they'll bring us in soon enough.'

'There's no one I could talk to, just informally?'

Framlingham seemed to hesitate. 'Let me have your number again, Frank, I'll get back to you.'

When he did, Elder was raking out the ash from the wood-burning stove, prior to setting it for the evening. Not quite dark, the light towards the sea was rimmed with pinkish red. The temperature seemed to have dropped some five degrees.

'I've spoken to the head of the Murder Squad,' Framlingham said. 'Explained the situation. He gave me the name of one of his DCIs. Shields. Karen Shields. Mean anything to you?'

'Can't say that it does.'

'Bumped up to chief inspector a year or so back. Usual bleating by a few, positive discrimination, you know how it goes.'

'You mean because she's a woman?'

'Because she's black.'

'I see.'

'You don't have a problem with that, Frank?'

'God, no.'

'Good.'

'Just as long as she's doing the job.'

'She is.'

'You think it would be okay for me to give her a call?'

'You could try. Say you've had a word with me first, if you think it'll help. If she thinks you might have something useful to throw into the pot, background, that sort of thing, she might be willing to talk.'

'It was a long time ago, Robert.'

'Well, you'll know best. But here's her office number anyhow.'

Elder found a pen and wrote it on the back of his hand.

'And Frank…'

'Yes?'

'You know what I'm going to say, don't you? Any time you do change your mind…'

'Thanks for the number, Robert,' Elder said.

* * *

Karen could feel things slipping irrevocably away.

What Vanessa had told them about Maddy's fears that she was being spied upon suggested strongly that her attacker was someone who knew her, knew her well. And Terry Patrick had seemed the obvious candidate. But Patrick's alibis for the night in question had proved near-perfect. Tina aside, five other witnesses were prepared to swear he was in North Wales and not in London.

Stone wall: try again.

So far Forensics had given them little or nothing. No skin beneath the victim's fingernails from where Maddy had sought to fight off her attacker, no saliva, no semen; what resembled a snail's slow trail across her body had proved to be exactly that. The only blood was Maddy's own. All the indications were that she had been raped, penetration had certainly taken place; a condom had presumably been used though one had not had been found, discarded, at or near the scene. Shoe prints and boot prints were too confused, too partial to be of any direct use. Of any possible weapon there was no sign.

The other members of Maddy's yoga class had all been interviewed; Maddy had chatted to one or two of the class before the session started, a few more once it was over, nothing consequential. She had been among the last to leave. The cafe in the centre had closed at seven and there had been few other people still on the premises, all of them tracked down and spoken to. Occupants of the properties backing on to the centre had been canvassed; appeals made for anyone who might have been using the lane or the old railway line as a cut-through or to walk their dogs to come forward.

The caretaker remembered seeing someone, almost certainly Maddy, heading off along the lane towards Crouch Hill, the opposite direction to the one she would have taken if she were going directly home. But then Crouch Hill would have quickly led her down to the Broadway and bars, restaurants and cafes aplenty, where she could either have been meeting someone by arrangement or meaning to have supper or a drink alone. Except that none of the waiters or bar staff recognised Maddy as having been amongst their customers that evening.

So had she been attacked almost immediately after leaving the centre — risky, with others still presumably within earshot — or had she, indeed, walked down to the Broadway and later returned by the same route? And was her attacker some stalker, as yet unknown, someone waiting for her, out there amongst the shadows, waiting for his chance? Or had it been a random act, Maddy's misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Too many questions still unanswered.

'Phone, ma'am,' said one of the office staff, interrupting her train of thought. 'For you.'

'Who is it?'

'A Frank Elder? He's called several times before. Something about Maddy Birch, apparently.'

Karen sighed. It was way past seven already. Staff pulling in overtime. What she wanted was to go home, open a bottle of red and drink the first glass while she soaked in a hot bath.

'Okay.'

Karen perched on the end of a desk, one foot resting on the seat of a chair. Across the room she could see Lee Furness slowly scrolling down through a list of names on the computer.

'Hello, this is DCI Shields.'

'Frank Elder.'

'I believe you've got some information about Maddy Birch.'

'Not information exactly.'

'What then?'

'I worked with her. Maddy. In Lincolnshire.'

'How long ago?'

A pause. 'Eighty-seven, eighty-eight.'

'And you were what? Close? Close colleagues? What?'

'Close, I don't know. Not really. We worked together, that's all. I was just wondering how things were going. The investigation.'

'How things are going? What do you think this is? Crimewatch?'

'I'm sorry, I was given your name…'

'Look, maybe you should talk to the press office. If anyone. Just hold on and I'll get you transferred.'

'No, it's okay. It doesn't matter. I'm sorry to have taken your time.'

Karen heard a click as the phone was replaced.

Just about the last thing she needed, some old geezer with too much time on his hands.

13

'Bloody shame,' Linda Mills had said, when she heard of Maddy's death.

'Shocking,' Trevor Ashley agreed.

'Now we'll never get the chance to talk to her again.'

Ashley looked at her sharply, but kept his counsel.

Things moved slowly on. It was the second week of December, some eight weeks since the inquiry into the Grant shooting had opened, three, give or take, since Maddy Birch's body had been found off Crouch Hill.

Despite the often open hostility of many of those who were interviewed, the inquiry had kept, doggedly, to the rails. Linda, frustrated by their lack of progress, had become grimmer and more short-tempered even as her superior seemed to become more avuncular and benign. But for all of their probing, questioning, reconstruction, after almost two months there was no proof of any wrongdoing, no reprimand, no charge.

That Grant was a major villain was beyond doubt, the presumption that he was close to fleeing the country well-founded, as was the supposition that he would be armed. The logistics of the raid itself left something to be desired and a recommendation to review planning procedures would be attached as a codicil to the final report. At base, however, the facts spoke for themselves: Grant had fatally wounded one officer and if Mallory had not acted as he had there was every reason to believe he would have killed another.

End of story.

Wrap it up, dot the i's and cross the t's, sign your name and leave.

Honour satisfied and justice seen to be done.

When it came down to it, whatever her lingering doubts, Linda Mills would be glad to shake the dust of London off her feet. Ashley had warned her what it would be like, that she would feel isolated and embattled and regarded as the enemy, and he'd been right. The experience, though, had been something she wanted, something to add to her profile, broaden her CV.

'I owe you both a vote of thanks,' the Assistant Commissioner said in his office. 'A difficult task professionally executed.'

'I owe you a slap-up dinner,' Ashley said later, broad grin on his face. 'Prawn cocktail, steak and chips, black forest gateau, the whole bit.'

'You owe me,' Linda told him, 'a sight more than that.'

* * *

The day after the final report had been delivered to the printer, the day before the bound copy was delivered to the Assistant Commissioner, she had been sitting on the low steps outside the Portakabin that had remained their temporary home, smoking a longed-for cigarette.

She had scarcely heard Mallory as he crossed the car park, light of foot, only glancing up at the last moment and dropping her cigarette hastily down, like a fourth-former caught behind the legendary bike sheds.

'Don't worry,' Mallory said. 'Your secret's safe with me.'

As she stood up, Linda squashed the smouldering butt beneath her foot.

'We're all guilty of something, big or small,' Mallory said. 'Wouldn't be human, else.' The smile lingered in his eyes. 'Here,' he said, taking a packet of Benson & Hedges from the side pocket of his blazer. Blue blazer and brown trousers. Highly polished shoes. 'Have one of mine.'

'No, thank you, sir.'

Mallory shrugged and produced a lighter. 'I was hoping I might bump into you,' he said, the smoke drifting towards Linda's face.

'Sir?'

'Before you shut up shop and turn tail for Hatfield…'

'Hertford, sir. It's Hertford, actually.'

'Hertford, Hatfield, Hitchin - all the same. Penny-ante little market towns with scarce a pot to piss in. Low-grade drug dealing and a handful of public-order offences of a weekend the best you can hope for.'

Linda nodded noncommittally.

'Always the worry,' Mallory said, 'let one of your kind out of the box and you never know which way they'll jump. Chancy that. Like letting off a firework in the middle of the bonfire, Guy Fawkes Night. Any bloody thing could happen.' Almost imperceptibly, he moved closer towards her. 'Someone could even get burned.'

For a moment, maybe more, his eyes bore into her, before, with a deft smile, he stepped away.

'But you now,' he said, 'no need to worry by all accounts'. Everything by the rules. Light the blue touch-paper and stand well clear.'

'You've seen the report,' Linda said, challenging.

'Place like this, difficult to keep things under wraps.'

'But you have seen it. A copy at least.'

'You think so?'

She knew it. He'd read it, relished and relaxed. Exonerated in Times New Roman, double spaced. Her signature at the bottom.

'You may think,' Mallory said, 'I owe you a favour.'

'Not at all, sir. We did our job, that's all. Just like you said. And I was only the junior officer, after all.'

'Junior, maybe, but always pushing hardest, eager for the truth. Gave poor Maddy Birch a rough ride, from what I hear. Had her up against the ropes. To mix a metaphor or two. Still, no gain having your card marked by a fool and you're no fool.'

A wink and a smile and he was on his way, leaving Linda wondering if there wasn't something crucial that they'd missed.

* * *

'Cocky bastard,' Ashley said when she told him. 'Not enough to be ahead of the game, he has to let you know.'

'Why me, though? Why not you? You're in charge.'

Ashley laughed. 'Mallory's way of thinking, not worth getting out of bed to put one over on old jossers like me. But you. You're sharp, bright, on the way up. A woman, too. If he can intimidate you a little, then he will.'

'I don't see what he stands to gain.'

'Right now? Aside from pumping up his vanity? Control. Leverage, some time in the future. Who knows?'

She looked at him keenly. 'You think we've let him get away with something, don't you?'

Ashley shrugged. 'This time, I honestly don't know. But I did my time in the Met, before opting for a quieter life. Coppers like Mallory, old school, they've been getting away with stuff for years. Big, small, more often than not just to prove they can. It's what gives them a buzz.'

Thinking about the way Mallory had materialised almost silently alongside her and the sly superiority of his smile, Linda shuddered as if someone had just stepped close to the corners of her grave.

14

It bit into him, like a tick that had infiltrated beneath his skin. No matter where he went, what he did. The routines with which he'd bolstered up his life since moving west no longer seemed enough. Each day he made a point of listening to the radio, scouring the papers for news.

On page 2 of the Telegraph, mid-December, something caught his eye: the investigation into two deaths in a police raid carried out a little over two months before. The paper's crime correspondent, claiming to have seen a leaked copy of the report, forecast a positive outcome to the official inquiry carried out by Superintendent Trevor Ashley and officers from the Hertfordshire Force.

Alongside, two columns wide, there was a photograph of a smiling Detective Superintendent George Mallory, taken outside the Old Bailey, his DCI, Maurice Repton, standing several paces behind, almost squeezed out of the frame. At the time, we were reminded, Mallory's commanding officer had been quick to attest to the professionalism with which the raid had been planned and carried out. A further paragraph referred to the tragic death of Detective Constable Paul Draper, a small head-and-shoulders shot rendering him almost impossibly young. If it had not been for Superintendent Mallory's quick thinking and resolute action, more lives might have been lost. Nothing about Draper's young widow and child.

Two pages on, a single paragraph near the foot of the page attested to the fact that the investigation into the death of Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch was still ongoing and that no arrests had so far been made.

Let it alone, Frank, he told himself. Let it be.

After yet another restless night he rose early, made coffee, walked down to the coast path to clear his head, rang Robert Framlingham and caught the London train.

* * *

Paddington station was thick with travellers, the natural hubbub and bustle overlaid with the saccharine wail of poorly amplified voices wishing them all a merry little Christmas. As Elder crossed the forecourt, a Big Issue seller with tinsel in his hair and two extravagant sprigs of mistletoe tied either side of his head like horns, lurched towards him, puckering up rouged lips.

The Underground platform was dangerously crowded — delays on the District, Circle and Bakerloo — and, when it arrived, the first train was near impossible to board. At Oxford Circus there was a five-minute queue to get out of the station.

In daylight, the skeletal snowflakes and reindeer that hung high above the street looked ugly and incomplete. Shop windows burgeoned with tawdry and expensive imprecations to buy, and Elder, hating it, hating every bit of it, felt nonetheless guilty he had neither bought a present for Katherine nor thought of one; had, in fact, bought nothing for anyone.

The restaurant was on one of the narrow streets that ran between Regent Street and Great Portland Street, home, for the most part, to small clothing wholesalers, their windows sprayed with fake snow. A sign on the door wished Elder Merry Christmas in Italian and inside red and green streamers looped cheerily along the walls.

Framlingham was already seated at a corner table, tucking into an antipasto of tuna and fagiolini. He was wearing a tweed suit that reminded Elder of damp heather, a cream shirt and a mustard tie.

Levering his tall frame out of his chair, the Chief Superintendent held out his hand. 'Frank, how long?'

'Seven years, eight?'

'And since you and I were the scourge of every bully-boy and malefactor in Shepherd's Bush?'

Elder smiled. 'Thirteen or so.'

A waiter took his coat and pulled out his chair.

When Elder had first moved down to London with Joanne, Robert Framlingham had been his immediate superior. Now, after one or two high-profile successes, his standing, as head of the Murder Review Unit, was growing. He had a house in Chiswick that he'd had the foresight to buy against the boom, and a cottage in Dorset, near the coast. Sailing was his passion.

There was a wife whom Elder had met no more than once or twice; three children, the youngest still at university, the others out in the world, paying back, no doubt, their student loans.

'You and Joanne,' Framlingham said once they'd settled. 'I was sorry to hear things didn't work out.'

Elder shrugged.

'Still see much of her?'

'Not a lot.'

'And the girl — Katherine, is it? — Frank, that was a terrible business. Nothing worse.' He broke off a piece of bread and wiped it round his plate. 'Coping, is she?'

'I'm not sure.'

'And you?'

Elder said nothing.

Framlingham leaned forward. 'All this kowtowing to civilised values and decency is all very well, but, cases like that, left to me, the bastard would've been given a taste of his own medicine and then sent for the long drop off some nice corded rope.'

The waiter, a sprig of holly pinned to his red waistcoat, had reappeared, smiling, at the table.

Oil ran down between Framlingham's fingers. 'Calves' liver's good, Frank. Sage and butter, nice and simple.'

Elder nodded, looked quickly down the menu and plumped for lamb cutlets with rosemary, saute potatoes and spinach.

'You'll have some wine, Frank? Red or white?'

'Red?'

Framlingham ordered a bottle of Da Luca Primitivo and some mineral water and for ten or so minutes they allowed themselves to gossip about half-remembered colleagues. Framlingham's liver leaked blood, pink across the plate.

'What I have to wonder, Frank, this current business, Maddy Birch, why it matters so much? To you, I mean.'

'I've told you, we worked together.'

'Come on, Frank, it's got to be more than that.'

Elder shook his head. 'I knew her, liked her. That was all.'

Framlingham poured more wine. 'More than fifteen years ago. Around the time Katherine was born, a little after? You were tupping her, Frank, no great disgrace. Times like that, it happens. Feeling a little trapped, I shouldn't wonder. You looked around and there she was. Young, available I dare say.'

'It wasn't like that.'

Framlingham laughed. 'For Christ's sake, Frank, spare us the holier-than-thou. We've all been there. If we're lucky seen it slip between the sheets and out of sight, no one any the wiser.'

Elder bit into a piece of lamb. Well done was what he'd asked for and well done was what he'd got.

'Admit it, Frank. You had her. Once, twice, half a hundred times. That doesn't matter.'

'No.'

Framlingham read the seriousness in his face.

'It's worse then. You didn't have her, Frank. Just wanted to. Fancied her and most likely she fancied you. But somehow you let her get stuck inside your head. She was the one you pictured when you were screwing your wife or jerking off in the shower.'

Elder reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. 'She's dead and I want to know why. I want whoever was responsible to be caught. Is that so wrong?'

'No, it's not wrong. Not at all. It's more than that, though, Frank. More than wanting.'

'What do you mean?'

Framlingham smiled. 'Come on, Frank, you've not come all this way for a fair-to-middling lunch and a few questions asked and maybe answered. You might not want to sign back on full-time, but you'd not mind a bite at this. Am I right?'

'I suppose so.'

'Is that a yes?'

'All right. Yes.'

Framlingham steepled his fingers. 'This investigation, Homicide gave it everything. Overtime, technical support staff, everything. Maddy Birch, she was one of ours, after all. Then, when there was no early breakthrough, things were scaled down. You know the way it goes. Normally, by now, some of my lot would be moving in, putting the whole thing under review. Starting from scratch if needs be.'

'And that's not happening?'

Framlingham set down his glass. 'We're having to tread careful, Frank, this one, with Shields in charge.'

'I don't understand.'

'Come on, Frank. A woman officer and black. If we're seen elbowing her aside…'

'That's ridiculous.'

'Politics, Frank, that's what it is. Perception. That's what matters. I doubt she'd play the race card herself, Shields, but there's others who would.' He sighed. 'It's a quagmire, Frank. A bloody mess. On the one hand we're instigating anti-racist policies left, right and centre, practically dragging ethnic minorities off the streets and begging them into uniform, and at the same time, we'll spend half a million pounds to prove some member of the Black Police Association has been fiddling his expenses. It beggars bloody belief.'

Reaching out, he poured the last of the wine.

'We'll get there, Frank. Just a little more patience, that's all.'

Elder sat back in his chair.

Glancing at the bill the waiter had quietly left, Framlingham took out one of his credit cards and dropped it down. 'Go home, Frank, relax. It's nearly Christmas. I'll be in touch.'

15

Karen Shields began her day at five thirty-five with a sore throat, a thick head and a brace of Paracetamol. Just what she needed, going down with some bug the morning she had to explain to her superior why it was that after almost four weeks, not only had no arrests been made, the only serious suspect they'd had had come up pure as the driven snow. She could already see the look on her boss's face as he offered her a Kleenex for her cold and shuffled her aside.

Not only was Maddy's ex-husband Terry no longer a viable suspect, but any link with the Hackney murder now seemed more tenuous than before. A second attack, not fatal, but similar, had been carried out on a woman jogging in parkland no more than two miles away from the first incident, and two men had been arrested for both crimes and were being questioned. No links with Maddy's death had yet come to light.

In the kitchen Karen made coffee in a stove-top pot and slipped bread into the toaster. Everyone who'd been close to Maddy Birch in any way in recent years, from a cousin who lived in Esher to the roofer she'd haphazardly dated over a four-month period, had been interviewed, in some cases twice, and, where necessary, alibis had been checked.

'One thing you'd have to say about her,' Karen's sergeant, Mike Ramsden, had observed. 'She had a taste for blokes who worked with their hands.'

'Liked a bit of rough,' Lee Furness had said, the look on Karen's face, remembering how Maddy had been found, stopping him like a slap.

It nagged at her regardless: the possibility that the killer had been someone with whom Maddy had been involved, someone of whose identity they were still unaware.

She had gone back to Maddy's friend Vanessa, probing for some forgotten reference, some forgotten chance remark; she'd talked to other officers with whom Maddy had shared the occasional confidence and come up blank. Every square inch of where Maddy had lived had been pored over, every name jotted down, every number traced.

Nothing. No one.

Karen spread butter on her toast.

Could there have been someone nevertheless?

Someone who, as Maddy had feared, had taken to following her, watching her, slipping, unseen, into the security of her home.

More information, that was what Karen wanted, and she couldn't see where it might come from. If there had been a laptop, or even an email address, they might have found hits on some site or other that would lay open some secret predilection. Cross-dressing, water sports, rubber — it wasn't beyond the edge of possibility that Furness had been right, Maddy had liked an element of pain, loss of control, a bit of rough…

Outside it was still dark, the cars moving evenly along Essex Road behind dipped headlights. Another half-hour or so before the traffic would start to snarl up, north towards Canonbury, south to the Angel.

The roofer, Kennet, when they brought him in, had been politeness itself, due deference in his manner and calluses on his hands. In all the time he'd been seeing Maddy, he doubted if they'd met more than once or twice a week. 'You know how it is,' he'd said, smiling at Karen open-faced. 'Shift work. Overtime.'

Could she imagine him…? She'd been doing the job long enough to be able to imagine anyone doing anything.

She'd allowed the coffee to bubble for too long and in consequence it tasted slightly burned. Opening the fridge she took out some jam for her second piece of toast. Maybe she should be having porridge these mornings? Shredded Wheat? Start snarfing down vitamins and those seeds she kept reading about. Linseed? Sesame?

If Maddy had been right and she was being stalked, Karen realised it need not have been anyone she knew, but could easily have been someone she had come into contact with accidentally and who had become somehow infatuated. Shit, it could have been anyone. Possible suspects on the Sex Offenders Register were still being checked, but with nothing from Forensics to help narrow the field, chances were slim. The same with information from National Records, the Holmes2 computer. Karen certainly wasn't holding her breath.

Six o'clock and she switched on the radio for the news. Another American soldier ambushed in Iraq, a few more Palestinian children killed. With only six more shopping days to Christmas, retailers were cautiously optimistic of a record year. Karen had bought presents for her immediate family in Jamaica, parcelled them up but not actually taken them to the post. They would arrive late, again. Her first few Christmas cards lay on the shelf beside the stereo, as yet unopened. Last year she had managed to sign and send her own just before New Year.

Come and spend Christmas Day with us, said her brother in West Bromwich, her baby sister in Stockwell. The children would love to see you, wrote her other sister from Southend.

She didn't know if she could take so much turkey, so much screaming, so much apparent happiness. Pouring the last of the coffee, she picked up her cup and went back into the bedroom to finish getting dressed.

16

Mindful of the season, and remembering Katherine sitting open to the elements on a city-centre bench, Elder bought her a double-weight wool scarf, long enough to wind round her neck more than once and then tuck snugly down. When she had first visited him in Cornwall, almost two years before, he had pointed out Eagle's Nest, the house where the artist Patrick Heron had lived and which dominated the landscape where Elder had then been staying; now he bought her a slim book with reproductions of the paintings Heron had made of the shrubs and flowers in his granite-bordered garden. He added a box of dark Belgian chocolates and, at the last minute, a pair of blue Polartec gloves, parcelled them up and sent them, along with a card, to Nottingham, first class.

Several days later, uncertain, he bought a card for Joanne, simple, nothing fancy, quickly wrote 'Happy Christmas, Love Frank', sealed it and slipped it into an already crowded postbox.

That was it.

He had cousins somewhere and when he had lived in London and later in Nottingham they had exchanged greetings at Christmas and, sporadically, on birthdays, but since his move west, they had lost touch.

Instead of a turkey, he ordered a prime leg of lamb from the butcher's on Fore Street and, having grown up in the days when most shops had still closed for several days over the holiday, stocked up with vegetables and milk and bread. For some minutes he lingered over a small Christmas pudding before settling for a pack of mince pies and a carton of double cream.

The last weekend before Christmas itself, he drove up-country and watched Plymouth Argyle outmanoeuvre and outplay Notts County by three goals to nil, his first live match in years and watched in a mixture of blinding sunshine and driving rain, County willing and eager but lacking purpose or plan, the phrase 'headless chickens' coming easily to mind.

On Christmas Day, he put the lamb in a slow oven and set out for a walk that would take him almost to the opposite coast, certainly well within sight of St Michael's Mount, before turning back. Forecasts of heavy rain and high winds regardless, he was rewarded with clear skies and no more than a single shower. A long, slow bath and a glass of whiskey on his return and lamb that fell away from the bone at a glance.

Joanne's card, as spare and functional as his own, stood on the kitchen shelf between a large jar of Branston pickle and a bottle of HP sauce. Though he'd willed himself, without success, not to listen for the post van on the lane, persuaded himself, as best he could, there was no likelihood that she would send him anything, the absence of an envelope bearing Katherine's writing, a card with her name, cast a pall, longer and deeper, over each and every day.

* * *

For Elder, as for Karen Shields, the new year started early, a grey Monday at the nub end of December, the north London headquarters of Homicide West.

Elder was in the room when Karen arrived, together with a tall man wearing a Barbour jacket and twill trousers, whom she recognised as Robert Framlingham, head of the Murder Review Unit.

'Karen,' Framlingham said, extending his hand. 'Good to meet you at last.'

So that was the way it was going to be. She was surprised it had taken this long.

Introduced, she shook hands with Elder; his grip was dry and strong and no more lingering than her own.

'The Maddy Birch case,' Framlingham said. 'I've asked Frank here to take a look, see if he can't lend a hand.'

Elder was dressed in a dark suit that had seen somewhat better days, pale blue shirt and inoffensive tie, shoes that, though recently shined, were as creased as the lines around his eyes. Karen wondered how he had got the scar on his face.

'You're shunting me aside,' Karen said.

'Not at all,' Framlingham replied. 'That's not the way we work at all.'

'Oh?'

'No. Frank will sit down with you and your team, review the progress in the investigation so far…'

'Mark my card.'

'Not in any way. What Frank will do, in full consultation with you, is try to point up areas which will open up the inquiry to new ground.'

'But it's still my investigation?'

'You are the lead officer, yes.'

'In charge.'

'Absolutely.'

Bullshit, Karen thought. Bullshit.

'Frank here knew Maddy Birch,' Framlingham said. 'Worked with her in Lincoln.'

Karen looked across at Elder, his face giving nothing away.

'Well,' Framlingham said cheerily, 'the sooner you and Frank sit down and talk the better.'

After raising an imaginary glass, he walked away.

'You want to get some coffee?' Karen asked. 'Talk things through.'

'What I'd like to do,' Elder said, 'is read through the log, the pathologist's report. Familiarise myself with what's been done. Tapes of any interviews. And then I'd like to drive out to where she was killed. Look around. We can talk after that.'

Karen looked at him through narrowed eyes. 'Whatever you say.'

'I'm sorry,' Elder said.

'No. No, you're not.'

* * *

DS Sheridan was the office manager: cheery, somewhat portly, still possessed of a Potteries accent which flourished after standing with the home supporters at the Britannia Stadium, which he did whenever he could, Saturdays Stoke City were at home.

'Call me Sherry, everyone else does.'

Elder explained what he needed and found himself set up with a corner desk, a tape player with headphones, a rackety but still functioning PC, and, until the files began arriving in profusion, plenty of elbow room.

Shutting out the rise and fall of background noise as well as he could, Elder read and listened and read some more, only stopping when his vision blurred and his head began to throb.

Towards the end of the morning, Karen's sergeant, Mike Ramsden, came over and introduced himself, the pair of them discovering a few acquaintances in the Met in common.

'Fancy a bite in the canteen?' Ramsden said.

'Later in the week definitely,' Elder said. 'Right now, I'd better push on.'

Ramsden gave Elder a suit-yourself look and moved away. How to win friends and influence people, Elder thought; second time today. By four thirty, he realised he had read the same page on the screen three times without taking in more than a few words.

* * *

One of Elder's main concerns about coming up to London had been where he would stay and what it would cost; but Framlingham had assured him something would be arranged and, on arrival, had handed him a mobile phone and two sets of keys: one to a no-longer-new maroon Vauxhall Astra and the other to a flat in a small block near the top of Hendon Lane, close by Finchley Central station.

The car ran better than its looks suggested it might; the flat, presumably maintained as a safe house for the Witness Protection Scheme and suchlike, was well equipped, recently cleaned, and totally anonymous. Kitchen, living room, bathroom, bedroom. Roberts radio in the kitchen; TV and VCR in the living room. With the windows closed it was almost possible to shut out the sound of traffic from the nearby North Circular Road. There was butter and a pint of milk in the fridge, a sliced loaf in its wrapping, biscuits, a jar of instant coffee, a packet of PG Tips and some strawberry jam.

Elder walked along past the Tube station to Ballards Lane and bought a hearty chunk of cheddar cheese, a packet of bacon, eggs, oranges and bananas, a bottle of Jameson's and some dark Nicaraguan ground coffee. Not all in the same shop.

When she had stayed with him in Cornwall, Katherine had teased him about the way in which, having drank nothing but tea for years, he had become a real coffee snob. Well, he had reasoned, there were worse things to be snobbish about.

Back at the flat, he spooned coffee into a plain white china jug, and, while it was standing, cracked the seal on the Jameson's and poured himself a small glass. Reading through the files, he could see why Maddy Birch's former husband, Terry Patrick, had looked such an almost irresistible suspect, and he could read Karen Shields's anger and disappointment between the lines. Not only had Patrick seemed picture perfect, he was, after so many hours of effort, the only serious suspect she had.

Cross-checking the records of the Sex Offenders Register and the National Criminal Intelligence Service, the computer had flagged some twenty names, all but three of whom had so far been checked and eliminated. Elder wondered how many of these warranted looking at again.

As for the forensics, he couldn't think of many cases he'd worked on where the evidence had amounted to so little. No blood save for the victim's own. No stray hair, no shred of skin. It was hard to believe: so hard it had to be worth persuading Forensic Services to look again, re-examine the clothes and the body.

And he wanted to talk to — who was it? — sliding his glass to one side, he fumbled through his notes - Vanessa Taylor, Maddy's best friend. Maybe this guy, as well. The roofer. Kensit? Kendrick? Kennet. Came over as so reasonable on the tape, talking about the times Maddy had stood him up at the last moment, evenings cancelled whenever she had been thrown some unexpected overtime. Like a south London boy who'd somewhere picked up a few lessons in gender and the negotiation of personal space. Elder slipped the headphones free. Maybe Kennet had never been that involved, not enough to really care. Maybe he was just a nice bloke. There were still some around.

Stretching, Elder walked to the window. The tail lights of vehicles sparkled and blurred as they moved in slow procession towards Finchley Lane, the Great North Way, the M1. Men and women, mostly men, hurried home from the station, backs bowed, heads bent into the wind. Here and there, umbrellas sprouted; spots of rain against the glass. He should phone Joanne and tell her where he was, let her have this number just in case. In case of what?

Dad, I'm never going to be like I was before.

On impulse, he called Maureen Prior first.

He and Maureen had worked closely together for three years in Nottinghamshire, right up to the time of his retirement, and then again last year, when Katherine had been abducted. As an officer, she was efficient and perceptive; her judgement fair but unyielding. At work, she was intolerant of fools, time-servers, anyone who stepped outside the line. But as a person, as a woman, Elder knew next to nothing about her. She had never divulged anything about her private life and all of the speculation that usually arose round unmarried women officers had simply evaporated away. Elder knew where she lived and nothing more: he had never been invited past the front door.

'I thought you'd turned your back on all that,' Maureen said, when he outlined what he was doing in London.

'So I had.'

'But this was different?'

'Something like that.'

'I'd like to think you'd do the same for me, Frank, if the circumstances were the same.'

'What's that?'

'Saddle up that white horse of yours and ride up out of the west.'

'Bollocks, Maureen.'

She laughed, a low chuckle. 'Hope you'll be all right, Frank. Working with a woman.'

'Shouldn't I be?'

'Depends.'

'I worked with you.'

She laughed again, more open this time. 'That was easy, Frank. You scarcely thought of me as a woman at all.'

Joanne, when he spoke to her, was taciturn, distracted, her mind elsewhere.

'How's Katherine?'

'Oh, you know, much the same.'

'I don't suppose she's there?'

He could hear voices, muffled, Joanne with her hand, he imagined, not quite covering the phone.

'No, Frank, I'm sorry, no.'

Which, in the circumstances, probably meant yes. Joanne currying favour. He didn't push it.

They exchanged a few words about Christmas, Joanne's plans for New Year's Eve, and that was that. As soon as the call was over, suddenly hungry, Elder made himself bacon and eggs, slices of soft white bread buttered and folded over, more coffee. Switching on the radio, he worked his way through the pre-sets: a low rumble from down near the bootstraps which the DJ informed him came from the late, great Johnny Cash; something languidly classical; someone with a faint Scottish accent explaining the intricacies of European Union budgeting; fevered commentary on Coventry versus West Ham; a jolt of violent, acerbic sound, like the contents of an old-fashioned kitchen being demolished around someone playing electric guitar — the thrash metal he'd read about somewhere?

Opting for the orchestral concert, he angled his legs round on the settee. Maddy's killer: had she known him or had she been taken by surprise? Opening the envelope, he looked at the photographs of the wounds. Vicious and deep. Vicious and yet whoever had delivered them had retained a degree of control, of calm; calm enough not to have left any apparent clues, to have taken scrupulous care. Controlled anger: anger and control.

Training, then?

Elder closed his eyes.

Army? SAS?

Under the wash of music, he drifted off.

All that coffee, he thought, waking fifteen minutes later to the sound of the announcer's voice and bright applause, how could I fall asleep?

He tried the TV. On one channel, a disparate group of men and women were clambering their way, laboriously, through the jungle; on another, the same people, or others that looked just like them, were sitting around on settees, not speaking, doing nothing at all. So easy to switch off.

The volume of traffic had eased back. High up where he was, he could see the strange, muted glow thrown up by the city, a false, unchanging day for night. Back down in Cornwall the sky would be close to black and scored through with stars, Cassiopeia, Pegasus, the Plough.

He pictured Maddy walking — running? — though a dark space he had not yet seen, except in photographs. The movement of branches in the wind. Foxes following a trail across back gardens; the cry, unworldly, of cats on heat. Clouds across the moon.

Something moving in the thickets of shrub and bush down by the old railway line.

A voice.

Did he call out?

Maddy. Her name.

Trying to conjure up her face as she turned towards the sound, Elder could only see her eyes picked out green in the shadow of the cathedral light, her mouth broadening into a smile and then closing round his in a kiss.

You didn't have her, Frank. Just wanted to… But somehow you let her get stuck inside your head.

Freeing the cord from the hook around which it had been looped, Elder lowered the blind. Another small whiskey before turning in. The sheets unwelcoming and cold. After catnapping as he had, he thought it would be hard to get to sleep, but not so. A few small shifts of position and the next thing he knew he was stretching awake by habit, the hands on his watch showing six o'clock.

17

Shaded green, the narrow swathe of designated parkland stretched west to east across page 29 in the London A-Z, Highgate towards Stroud Green and beyond. The best approach to the particular section he wanted was unclear from the map and Elder drove into a crescent off the main road and parked between a crowded skip and a long-abandoned Nissan with its windows smashed and the engine half-removed. From there, following a sign, he walked along a narrow alley between houses, bypassing both a discarded fridge and a dismembered supermarket trolley, before finding himself on a track leading to a two-storey wooden building he assumed to be the community centre.

Broadening out, the path led towards a children's ' nursery on the right, a five-a-side pitch and play centre further along; a fence, broken down in several places, separated it from the slope, tangled and overgrown, that angled steeply towards the muddy track below.

Elder stood quite still, tuning out, as best he could, the faint morning discord from the nearby flats, the traffic sounds from either side. Some twenty metres off, a female blackbird scuffled through dry leaves, before flying shrilly away into the far trees. The sky was a watery blue, shaded over, here and there, with grey. Elder could see his breath, off-white, on the air.

She had walked here, Maddy; stopped for a moment, alerted by a sound.

Or, jogging, had she paused and bent forward, hands on hips, catching her breath?

Elder turned through a slow circle: how close, even at night, could someone get without being heard or seen?

In his imagination, he saw a shadow stepping silently out of the dark.

Why didn't Maddy run? And if she did, why, fit and strong as she was, did she not get away?

Because she knew him, surely.

Close. Her breath upon his face. Laughing, as they stumbled out from the doorway on to the cobbled street. Did she take his hand or slip her arm through his?

Carefully, Elder made his way down towards the old railway track, while above him, whistling cheerfully, a man pushed a buggy containing a well-wrapped toddler towards the nursery. Walking briskly, a woman appeared with her dog and then, as quickly, disappeared. From the reports he had read, the diagrams, Maddy had been attacked above and then been pushed or fallen, the last, fatal blows most likely delivered close by where he now stood.

In all probability, her assailant had continued to stab her after she was dead. No weapon found. Remembering the severity and extent of the wounds, Elder saw him wiping the excess of blood off upon the grass, the ground.

How long had it taken?

How long?

Longer, possibly, to have cleared away all telltale traces than to have committed the crime itself.

How long had it been before someone else had come along, stopped perhaps, thinking they had heard something, and looked down, but, seeing nothing, continued on their way?

And the murderer, which way had he gone?

To the east, the track ran on below Crouch Hill and all the way, almost, to Finsbury Park, a myriad of small side roads with easy access leading off on either side; westwards, it opened out on to Shepherd's Hill, adjacent to the main road leading north towards the motorway. A car conveniently parked. Light traffic flow. Maddy's killer could have been tucked up by midnight, leaving her body to the elements, the foxes and the rodents, small insects, crows.

Elder saw again the post-mortem photographs of her face, the wounds, open, not quite scabbed over, to her torso and along the insides of her arms.

Climbing back up, Elder raised the collar of his coat against the freshness of the wind; mud clung to the cuffs of his trousers, the soles of his shoes.

Back in the street where he had parked, a pair of thirteen-year-olds was considering the possibility of liberating the Astra's radio; seeing Elder approaching, they spat thoughtfully at the ground and strolled, hands in pockets, nonchalantly away.

* * *

Off duty, Vanessa was wearing a denim skirt and black woollen tights, calf-length reddish leather boots, a denim jacket over a high-necked purple sweater that seemed to have shrunk in the wash. Her dark hair was curly and closely framed her face; her lipstick, newly applied, was a vivid shade of red.

The cafe where she had suggested meeting was close to the police station in Holmes Road. Most of the tables were taken and the buzz of conversation and occasional hiss of the coffee machine were underscored by music, Middle Eastern, Elder thought, coming from a radio-cassette player on the counter.

Elder made his way to where Vanessa was sitting and introduced himself.

'Managed to pick me out okay, then?' she said with a grin.

Most of the other customers either had small children clamouring round them or were well above pensionable age.

The waiter appeared at Elder's elbow almost as soon as he'd sat down, and he asked for an espresso and a glass of water. Vanessa was tucking into a wedge of sticky straw-coloured pastry and drinking what looked like Coke.

'So what do I call you?' Vanessa asked.

'Frank?'

'No rank or anything?'

'Not any more.'

Vanessa looked at him appraisingly. 'And they've dragged you out of retirement to give a hand?'

'Something like that.'

'Long as the bastard gets caught.'

'Yes.'

'Well, whatever I can do.' Pastry not quite finished, with an air of martyrdom she pushed her plate aside.

'I knew Maddy a little back in Lincoln,' Elder said. 'But that was a long time ago. You can probably give me a better picture of what she was like than anyone.'

'Where do you want me to start?'

'Wherever you like.'

For the next fifteen minutes or so, Vanessa talked and Elder listened, prompting her occasionally, but in the main content to sit and take occasional sips from his espresso.

'Tell me a bit more about this Kennet,' Elder said, when she'd finished. 'Maddy seems to have gone out with him for quite a while.'

'I don't know if there's a lot more to say. I met him a few times, seemed nice enough. Good-looking bloke, I'll give him that. Bit cocky, maybe.' She smiled. 'Not as bad as some.'

'She liked him, though?'

'I suppose so, yes. She'd never have gone with him otherwise.' Vanessa reached over and speared a piece of previously rejected pastry with her fork. 'To be honest, I think it was the sex as much as anything. I don't mean it was so great, not according to Maddy, anyway; nothing earth-shattering, not like Meg Ryan in that film, but, well, she'd not been with anyone in ages and I suppose…' Vanessa laughed. 'Well, I suppose it made a bit of a change. Made her feel good about herself, you know?'

Elder thought he might.

'And, from what you say, it just petered out?'

'In a manner of speaking.' There was a broad grin on Vanessa's face.

'You know how Kennet felt about that?'

'He was fine about it, far as I know. No big scene or anything.' She shrugged. 'I don't think it was such a deal for either of them, not really. Not true love, exactly, you know what I mean?'

Elder signalled the waiter for another espresso. 'These fears of Maddy's, that she was being watched. Spied on. You think they were real?'

Vanessa smiled. 'Or was she just paranoid like the rest of us?'

'If you like.'

'No, I don't think so. Not Maddy. I mean, it might have got a bit exaggerated inside her head, but no, there was something behind it, I'm sure.'

'According to what you said, it all started round about the time of the Grant business.'

'More or less, yes. I suppose it did.'

'This officer who was killed, Draper…'

'Paul, yes.'

'Maddy was there when he was shot, in the same room…'

'Standing right next to him, close as I am to you now.' She leaned in to the table, as if to make her point.

'It must have shaken her up pretty badly.'

'It did, you could tell. Draper's wife and little boy, she was upset about them too. Went round to see them quite a few times.'

'And she didn't talk much about it, other than that? It didn't seem to be preying on her mind?'

'No. Not really, no. Though she did mention it, must have been the last time I saw her, last time we went out together, at least. About the inquiry, you know, into the shooting.'

'What exactly did she say?'

'Just they'd given her a pretty tough time, sounded like. Questions, you know. Maddy thought they were going to have her in again.'

Elder made a mental note to check if that had been the case. He should read the report of the inquiry, certainly, maybe go and talk to the investigating officers.

His espresso arrived, the waiter smiling at Vanessa, making conversation.

Elder eased back his chair and loosened his tie. 'The night Maddy was killed, d'you think she could have been meeting someone?'

Vanessa chewed on a strand of hair that had found its way into the corner of her mouth. 'I don't know who. And besides, why there?'

'Perhaps it was convenient. Possibly, whoever it was, they didn't want to be seen.'

'Married, you mean?'

'Either that or someone she worked with.'

'No,' Vanessa said. 'No way.'

'Why ever not?'

'It's something she was always hot on. God! She slagged me off for it enough times. Messing around on your own doorstep. Only leads to grief, she said. Course …,' looking at Elder now, 'how far that was based on personal experience, I've no idea. But she was dead right anyway.' Vanessa treated Elder to a salacious grin. 'Disaster every time. And besides, if it was serious, she'd have said something. A little hint, something. She wouldn't have kept it to herself.'

'She seems to have played her cards pretty close to her chest where her ex-husband was concerned.'

'That's different, though, isn't it?'

'Is it?'

'Yes. You know, husbands, wives, someone you're trying to pretend never existed.' Vanessa looked at her watch. 'I'd better go.'

'Okay.' Elder pushed back his chair as she got to her feet. 'If you think of anything else…'

'I'll call you,' Vanessa said.

He remembered the number of his mobile at the third attempt and she wrote it down. She glanced back through the window from the street, red mouth and dark hair, a quick smile and then gone.

Elder sat a few moments longer, collecting his thoughts, before heading towards the station.

18

Karen Shields was less than happy. Ferreting for a lost spoon that morning, she'd discovered a patch of damp the size of two large dinner plates on the wall between the cooker and the sink. Several shades of mottled grey, bubbling out from the plaster like an infection on the lungs. Then, when she'd poured milk from the carton into her coffee, instead of merging, it had floated in sour globules on the surface. And as if to cap it all, someone, using either a coin or a key, had scraped a wavering line along the near side of her car, where it was parked at the kerb outside. All this before eight o'clock.

It only needed the assistant commissioner, of all people, to summon her to his office, which, of course, within fifteen minutes of her arrival, he did. Only to keep her waiting for another five minutes outside. Karen standing there in a blue-black trouser suit, the toes of her boots pinching slightly, one heel starting to rub. If she ever got as much as an hour to herself, there was a pair of red leather Camper boots she was longing to try and bugger the expense.

'Karen. Excellent, excellent.' When Harkin finally ushered her in, he was in one of his annoyingly affable moods, all smiles and cliché. 'Just wanted to check, you know, how things were going?'

Patronising was another word for it. She preferred him when he was in a temper; she found it easier then to respond.

'Yourself and Elder, everything sorting itself out?'

Karen undid the centre button of her jacket and did it up again.

'No friction?'

She thought she'd better say something. 'No, sir. None.'

'You're sure? Because if —'

'To tell the truth, sir, we've hardly noticed he's here.'

'Stepping quietly at first, I expect. Tactful.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Because if there is anything, I expect you to bring it in here. Nip it in the bud before it takes hold.'

Gardeners' bloody Question Time, Karen thought. 'Yes, sir,' she said. 'Though I'm sure there'll be no need.'

She could just see herself running into the AC's office, like some snot-nosed kid, the kind that was always telling tales. Please, sir, Billy Bang's stolen my pencil case. Please, sir, Frank Elder's stolen my murder investigation. Don't even think about it. Anything that wanted sorting out, she'd sort it out herself.

* * *

Mike Ramsden was at his desk, chair hiked back on to its rear legs, using the end of an unravelled paper clip to clean his nails.

'Any sign of him?' Karen asked.

'Who's that?' Ramsden said.

'Mike, don't play silly buggers. I'm not in the mood.'

When are you ever? Ramsden thought. 'Okay, okay,' he said. 'He rang in, left a message. Wants us to get together this afternoon.'

'What time this afternoon?'

Ramsden shrugged his shoulders. 'Didn't say.'

Karen swore and looked at the ceiling. What did Elder think? She was going to sit around cooling her heels till he condescended to grace them with his company?

'Where the hell are Furness and Denison?' she asked.

'Chasing down one of that last set of possibles the computer spewed out. Ealing somewhere. Some poor sod living in a bloody hostel. Waste of time, if you ask me.'

'One of the last. How many does that leave?'

Ramsden leaned across far enough to snag a sheet of paper. 'Two to go. Cricklewood and Dalston.'

'Okay.' She tossed him the keys to her car. 'You can drive. We'll do Cricklewood first.'

* * *

Change at Camden and go back on the Edgware branch to Belsize Park and walk. The hospital was up the hill and then down again at the end of a roughly cobbled lane. Elder remembered these things without being able to recall precisely when he'd been there before or why. Not his part of London, after all.

The pub on the corner was advertising its New Year's Eve party. Tickets in advance, only a few remaining.

Inside the hospital the corridors were broad, the ceilings low, posters warning of the dangers of smoking and obesity hung on the walls, along with artwork, bright and gestural, from a local primary school.

The pathologist was suitably cadaverous, with slender, reedy fingers and bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose; not for the first time, Elder wondered whether we chose our professions or whether, genetically marked, they chose us.

'It's Maddy Birch you're interested in?' He spoke a precise, educated Scots that Elder associated, perhaps wrongly, with Edinburgh.

'It is.'

'You know the body's been released for burial?'

Elder nodded. 'Like I said on the phone, I'm reviewing the investigation. I thought if you could spare me some minutes of your time…'

'Fire away.'

'You didn't find a trace of the attacker anywhere. No stray hairs, no skin, saliva, blood, nothing. That's right?'

'Absolutely.'

'How usual is that?'

'What's usual?'

'In your experience, then.'

'In my experience, it's surprising. Unexpected.'

'And does it suggest anything? About the attacker, I mean?'

'Aside from the fact that he was scrupulous, meticulously careful?'

'Aside from that.'

One of the overhead lights was buzzing slightly; barely diluted, the smell of chemicals permeated the room.

'Anything I say would be purely speculation. If anything, this sort of conjecture is far more your field than mine.'

'Feel free to speculate away.'

'Very well. It might suggest someone who, by instinct or by training, is highly methodical. Who, even though capable of great anger, is, nonetheless, able to exert an unusual degree of self-control.'

'You're thinking of the rape, the nature of the wounds?'

'Indeed.'

'The rape itself, it took place while the victim was still alive?'

'I've no reason to believe otherwise. All the signs of non-consensual intercourse were present — bruising, tearing. No semen, of course. Presumably a condom.'

'And the weapon that killed her?'

'Let's just take a look.' He reached for a set of photographs from a drawer. 'Some of the wounds, here on the arm, for instance, are slash wounds. Quite long, you see, but not so deep. Look at the tail there, indicating the angle of the blow, from above.'

'Tall, then? Whoever this was? Taller than her.'

'It's possible. But far from certain. She could have been falling, have been on her knees, he could have been standing above her. A host of permutations, I'm afraid.'

'And these?' Elder asked, pointing to the torso.

'Stab wounds. Quite different, almost certainly fatal. Both of them deep. And see here, where the opening of the wound is wider than the blade, the knife has been levered forward and back before being withdrawn.'

'What about the knife itself?'

'The blade was single-edged, you can tell from the square termination on the underside of the wound. To achieve this degree of penetration, almost certainly sharp at the tip. I should say a minimum of twenty centimetres in length, a good couple of centimetres across at the widest point.'

'A butcher's knife?'

'That sort of thing.'

Elder looked at the photographs. Extreme anger and control. The ability to switch between the two. Facility, maybe that was a better word. He talked with the pathologist for perhaps ten minutes more, without anything new surfacing.

'Good luck, Mr Elder.' When he bade him goodbye, the pathologist's hand was smooth and cold like porcelain.

On his way back down the hill, Elder stopped outside one of several charity shops and browsed through two boxes of books. Tom Clancy. Jeffrey Archer. Several women called Maeve. No matter, he still had another hundred or so pages of his Patrick O'Brian to go.

19

There was a photograph of Maddy Birch on the wall, staring back at the camera, unsmiling; recent, Elder assumed, lines on her face she'd not have liked, the odd grey hair.

Neither Karen Shields nor Mike Ramsden was on the premises; the message Karen had left was vague, they might be back, they might not.

A detailed map showed where Maddy's body had lain, where her clothing, her possessions had been found. Elder remembered standing there that morning, the relative quiet in the midst of so much inner-city activity and noise; imagined it again as it would have been that night, that evening. Maddy waiting, shifting her sports bag from one shoulder to the other, glancing again at her watch, the hands luminous in the half-dark.

Elder looked at the photographs once more, Polaroids taken at the scene. Maddy's arms were bare. No watch.

DS Sheridan was ensconced behind several hundred megabytes of PC.

'Sherry,' Elder said, 'disturb you for a minute?'

Sheridan pressed 'save', removed his glasses and blinked. 'Go ahead.'

'Her watch. Maddy's watch. Was she wearing one that evening? Do we know?'

Sheridan shook his head. 'Nothing listed as far as I can remember. I can check, but no, I'm pretty certain.'

'How many officers do you know,' Elder said, 'who don't wear a watch?'

'Not to say she wore one off duty.'

'In which case she'd have left it at home. The stuff that was in her flat, where's it all now?'

'As far as I know, everything was packed up and sent to her mother.'

'But there'll be an inventory?'

Sheridan nodded towards the computer. 'On here somewhere.'

'Check it out for me, would you? And maybe you could pass a message to double-check with the mother?'

'Will do.'

'Oh, and Sherry, one other thing. Maddy's arrest record. Anyone who's been inside and recently released. That's been checked, I suppose?'

Sheridan nodded. 'One of the first things we did. Not sure offhand how far back we went, though. I can get you a list.'

'Thanks. Let's make sure we looked at Lincoln as well. Someone she put down for a long stretch, maybe, who might have had reason to feel aggrieved, bear a grudge.'

'Okay.'

'Thanks, Sherry.' Elder rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. Get the wrong side of the office manager, he knew, and you were pushing a boulder uphill from day one.

* * *

Steve Kennet was four storeys up, sitting astride a roof beam atop one of those late-Victorian semi-detached houses that, in Dartmouth Park, fetched upwards of a million and a quarter pounds, a million and a half. Elder shouted upwards, raising his voice above the distortions of a small transistor radio that was dangling from the scaffolding. After several moments of misunderstanding, Kennet came down cheerfully enough, wiping his hands on a piece of towel hanging from his belt.

'How's it going?' Elder asked, nodding back up.

Kennet's smile was honest and open. 'Should've been finished well before Christmas. Would have been if not for the weather. Two blokes I work with've already started on another place up Highgate Hill. Part of the old hospital. Turning it into flats.'

'You don't mind if I ask you a few questions about Maddy?'

'Still got nobody, huh?'

'Not yet.'

Kennet cleared his throat of dust and spat neatly into the side of the road. 'Go ahead.'

Before sitting on the low wall outside the house, Kennet took a slender pouch of tobacco from the back pocket of his jeans, a packet of papers from the top pocket of his plaid shirt. His face and the backs of his hands were streaked with dirt and dust.

Elder sat down alongside him.

On the opposite side of the street, a young au pair went by pushing a small child in a buggy, talking excitedly into her mobile phone in a language Elder didn't understand.

Methodically, Kennet began to roll a cigarette.

'Maddy, how did you meet her?' Elder asked.

'Usual way, in a pub. Holloway. She was there with that pal of hers. Vanessa. To be honest, that's who I was interested in first off. Vanessa. You've met her?'

Elder nodded.

'Then you'll know what I mean.' Kennet wet the edge of the paper with his tongue. 'Up front, I s'pose that's what you'd say. Not shy about coming forward.' When his lighter didn't work first time, he gave it a quick shake. 'I was with a mate. We went over and sat with them. His idea, really. After a bit, my mate drifted off. Vanessa, she was dead lively - she'd had a few, I dare say — whereas Maddy, mostly she was just sitting there, smiling a little, you know, not unfriendly, but not — what could I say? — obvious. What she was after.'

'And you liked that?' Elder said.

Kennet grinned. 'S'pose I did. What bloke wouldn't? End of the evening I got both their numbers, but it was Maddy I called. She seemed surprised, I remember that. Thought I'd made a mistake, got the numbers mixed up.'

'And you went out with her for how long?'

'Few months. Three. Couldn't've been more.' He clicked his lighter again with no response. 'Haven't got a light, have you?'

"Fraid not.'

Kennet crossed the pavement to the car parked at the kerb, unlocked it and reached inside the dash for a box of matches.

'You didn't get on as well as you'd thought,' Elder said.

Kennet dropped the spent match towards the gutter and drew deep on his cigarette. 'No, it wasn't that. We got on fine. Least I thought we did. It was just — oh, I don't know, what would you call it? — circumstances, I suppose. And, to be honest, I think she lost interest. We were supposed to meet a few times and she called up, more or less last-minute, and cancelled. Got so every time the phone rang I knew that's what it was going to be.'

He looked at Elder and then off down the street.

'So you broke it off?' Elder said.

'Yes.'

'You did?'

'Yes.' More emphatically this time.

'Not Maddy?'

'No. Look —'

'It's okay. I'm just trying to get a clear picture of what happened.'

'Why?'

'What do you mean?'

'Why is it so important? Why d'you need to know? I've been through all this before, you know.'

'I know. It's just right now I don't know what's important and what's not.'

'And you think this might be?'

'It's possible, like I say.'

Kennet shook his head in disbelief. 'Glenn Close, right?'

'I'm sorry?'

'Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. Can't stand being dumped. Attacks Michael Douglas with a knife. You think that's me.'

'Michael Douglas?'

'Glenn Close.'

'Is it?'

'Did I go after Maddy with a knife?'

'Did you?'

'No, I did not.'

'Of course not.'

Kennet's roll-up had gone out and he lit it again at the second attempt.

'Do you know if Maddy was seeing anyone else?' Elder asked.

'While she was seeing me, you mean?'

'Then or later.'

'Then I don't think so, later I wouldn't know.'

'You didn't keep in touch?'

Kennet shook his head. 'Clean break. Besides, once I'd said, you know, I thought we should stop seeing one another, she agreed it was for the best. I certainly didn't want to mess her around.'

He got to his feet and glanced towards the roof.

'I really should be getting back to work.'

Elder held out a hand. 'Thanks for your time.'

Kennet's grasp was firm. 'Catch him, right?'

'Right.'

'And hey!'

'Yes?'

'Happy New Year.'

Elder watched as Kennet climbed back up the scaffolding without putting a foot wrong, without missing a beat.

20

The first Friday of the new year, a grey cold day, the sky the colour of ageing slate, ice slick on the surface of untreated roads. Maddy Birch's funeral: Hendon Crematorium, eleven thirty sharp. The flower-beds a picture of turned earth and once-green leaves blackened by frost, spindly rose bushes cut back almost to the root. Maddy's mother sat hunched in the long black car as it followed the coffin around the slow curves of Nether Street and Dollis Road, her sister, whom she'd scarcely seen in twenty years, sitting pinch-faced by her side. Crowded in the car behind, disparate uncles and cousins sat with their hands clenched in their laps. Those who'd thought her mother would want the funeral near the family home in Lincolnshire had been swiftly disabused. 'She'd turned her back on all that,' Mrs Birch had said, 'on us, a long time since.' Blame, at that moment, easier than regret.

Elder had arrived early and stood a little to one side. As befitted the last rites of a fellow officer killed on duty, the police presence was sombre, manifest. Near the entrance, a surveillance team, unobtrusively as possible, videoed the assembled company, in case the hoary myth that murderers were drawn to the last rites of their victims bore any truth. Lawns, sparse and dry, stretched away towards a high boundary hedge and the municipal golf course beyond.

Alighting from the car, Mrs Birch lost her footing and only the outstretched hand of Detective Superintendent Mallory, ever alert, preventing her falling to the ground.

Inside the chapel a CD of uplifting music played, courtesy of Classic FM. Karen Shields, wearing a black trouser suit, hair pulled sternly back, slid, long-legged, into a pew across the aisle from Elder and began leafing through the small hymn book resting behind the seat in front.

The coffin stood in full view: solid, real.

The minister cleared his throat.

Elder was remembering standing at the foot of the cobbled street leading down from Lincoln Cathedral, watching Maddy as she walked away. 'Goodnight, Frank. Take care.' Waiting for her to turn and smile. She never did.

The hymn was mumbled tunelessly, voices falling silent till only the echo of the pre-recorded organ wheezed out the last few lines.

'Let us pray.'

Clad in a black corduroy coat, black skirt, black boots, Vanessa Taylor began to cry and, turning, Karen pushed a tissue into her hand.

Given the occasion, the assistant commissioner was in full dress uniform. He spoke of Maddy as a model officer, a dedicated servant of the public, a brave young woman whose life had cruelly been snuffed out. George Mallory, a pale carnation somewhat incongruous in the buttonhole of his grey wool suit, testified to the honour it had been to have such a resourceful officer as Maddy under his command, if only for so sadly short a time. Referring back to the operation to arrest James Grant, he recalled with pride the moments of extreme danger when she had stood, unflinching, at his side.

Maddy's mother sat, bent forward, at the front, head down.

Vanessa Taylor continued to cry.

The congregation stood reluctantly and laboured through another hymn.

With a slight jerk, the mechanism that would carry the coffin forward clanked to life.

As the coffin passed through the heavy curtains and disappeared from sight, Elder felt Maddy's breath pass, cold, across his face.

* * *

Desperate for a cigarette, Karen Shields stepped between the wreaths and floral tributes which had been spread out on display at the rear of the building. Feeling for the roll of mints at the bottom of her bag, she pulled out with it an old shopping list and two ragged tissues. New Year's Eve just gone. Drink don't drive. She had spent the evening with three old school friends, a tradition stretching back more years than any of them liked to remember. Two of them were married now with growing kids; one, finally out, was living with her female partner in leafy Letchworth Garden City and enjoying the frisson they caused whenever they elected to walk the length of the main street, hand in hand. Karen had got used to turning up and leaving alone.

Seeing Elder standing alone, she walked across to join him.

'I used to think I preferred this to burial,' Karen said. 'Now I'm not so sure.'

'When it comes down to it, I doubt there's much to choose.'

'Soulless though, isn't it?'

Elder didn't see how it could be anything else.

'You went to see Kennet,' Karen said, changing tack.

'That's right.'

'What did you think?'

'Seemed straightforward enough.'

'That's pretty much what Mike said. Besides, his alibi seems to hold up. On holiday in Spain with his girlfriend. Didn't get back till the day Maddy's body was found.' Despite her best efforts, the mint had fragmented between her teeth. 'Sherry said something about a watch?'

Elder nodded. 'Maddy's watch. Yes. Seems to be missing.'

Over Karen's shoulder he could see Mallory and a shorter, sharp-faced man in earnest conversation.

'Who's that? With Mallory?'

'Maurice Repton, his DCI.'

As if realising they were being watched, both men turned their heads and Mallory, smiling, raised a hand in cheery greeting.

'This Grant business Mallory mentioned,' Elder said. 'No mileage in it for us?'

'I don't think so.'

'Might be worth taking another look, just the same. In the absence of anything else.' Seeing Maddy's mother leaning on her sister's arm as she bent towards one of the wreaths, Elder excused himself and walked over to express his regrets.

* * *

Vanessa stubbed out her cigarette beneath the low heel of her shoe and began to walk towards the main gate.. She hadn't reckoned on the service affecting her so badly, embarrassed almost by the fuss she'd made, the way she'd drawn attention to herself. But all the way through she'd been unable to suppress the images of Maddy that had played out across her mind: Maddy laughing, listening, pretending to be shocked by Vanessa's ribaldry, her good humour laced, towards the end, with traces of fear Vanessa had failed to take seriously. You're not getting weird on me, are you? Freaking out? Hearing the car approaching behind her, Vanessa moved closer to the side.

Instead of driving past, the car slowed to a halt.

'Where you heading?' The grey hair on Mallory's head seemed to have been recently brushed or combed.

'Down to the Tube.'

'It's a long walk. Hop in, we'll give you a lift.'

While Vanessa hesitated, the nearside door swung open and Mallory, welcoming, shifted back along the rear seat leaving room.

'All right, thanks.'

'Excellent. Drive on, driver.' Though the carnation had disappeared from his buttonhole, the detective superintendent was still in an expansive mood. More wedding than funeral.

'PC Taylor, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'Vanessa.'

'Yes.'

'You and Maddy, bosom pals.'

'We were good friends, yes.' Tears pricked again at the backs of her eyes.

'Go ahead,' Mallory said. 'Let it out. Bit of genuine emotion. No need to be ashamed.'

'No, it's all right…'

'Maurice, let the lady have a handkerchief, there's a good chap.'

One of the last men in the twenty-first century to actually carry a handkerchief, washed and ironed, Repton swivelled round in the front passenger seat and passed it to Vanessa with a manicured hand.

'Thank you.' Vanessa sniffed and dabbed her eyes.

'See those women weeping and wailing on the news,' Mallory was saying. 'Iran, Iraq. Can't help but wonder sometimes if they haven't got the right idea. Better than keeping it all bottled up inside like the rest of us. Eh, Maurice, what d'you think? Vanessa, eh?'

Vanessa said she wasn't sure. Maurice Repton didn't seem to care.

They were marooned at a junction between a woman struggling to get an Isuzu Trooper into first gear and an articulated lorry on its way to the nearest Asda.

'You were close, you and Maddy,' Mallory said, moving a little closer himself.

'Yes, I think so.'

'No secrets, that sort of thing.'

'Pretty much.'

'Friendship between two women, it's a wonderful thing. Nothing held back. Open, honest. Not like me and Maurice here, cheek by jowl the best part of twenty years and what gets his withers in a turmoil is still a mystery. And just as well.'

The engine of the SUV was flooded and, with the woman watching, several men were trying to push it out of the way.

'That awful business, Grant going down, the boy Draper being killed, she'll have talked about that, I shouldn't wonder.'

'A little, yes, not much.'

'Confided, though.'

'It upset her, yes. What happened to Paul Draper, especially.'

'And Grant? Did she say much about that? The shooting.' For a moment, Mallory's hand was on her knee.

'No, not that I remember.'

'If there was anything —'

'Really, there's not.'

'Of course.' As if he'd suddenly lost interest, Mallory shunted across to his own side of the car and a few moments later they were pulling in at the kerb.

'Your stop,' Repton said, without turning round. 'Hendon Central.'

'Camden Town and change,' Mallory said. 'It is Kentish Town you're stationed?'

'Yes.'

'Marvellous thing, London Underground. Where would we be without it, that's what I want to know?'

'Thanks for the lift,' Vanessa said, pushing open the door.

'Any time,' Mallory said, with a generous wave of the hand. 'Any time.'

Watching as the car eased out into the traffic, pedestrians spilling round her, Vanessa held her hands fast down by her sides, her legs weak and her guts churning, without quite knowing why.

21

If there was one thing guaranteed to make Elder feel he was getting old, it was a pub in Camden on a Saturday night. The tables, square and heavy, were crowded and crammed with empty bottles and glasses, awash with beer and the language of the brag. Not a spare seat anywhere. A scrum, three deep, at the bar. A large television screen showing continuous music videos, nobody listening, nobody watching. Tobacco smoke laced with the instantly recognisable scent of cannabis. Voices raised, loud, above a mixture of reggae and some kind of stripped-down sledgehammer rock. Age aside, Elder stood out for not having some part of his body studded or pierced, for not wearing black.

'Over here,' Vanessa said, seizing his arm.

With a fast smile and judicious use of the elbows, she found them a haven of sorts, squashed up against the window which faced out on to the High Street, smoke and condensation blurring the pane.

'Sorry,' she said.

'What for?'

'Bringing you here.'

Elder summoned up a smile. 'I've known worse.' He just couldn't remember when.

'Of course,' she said, 'it might be nothing.' Her words all but lost in an upsurge of sound.

'I'm sorry?'

'I said, it might be nothing.'

'Try me.'

He had to lean forward to catch every word. What Mallory and Repton had been playing at, he wasn't sure, but one thing was certain, they'd got Vanessa truly rattled.

'And you weren't holding anything back from them? Something Maddy might have said?'

'God, no.'

'You said they gave her a pretty tough time at the inquiry.'

'Yes. Said they were likely going to have her back in, but I don't think they ever did.'

Elder had obtained a copy of the Hertfordshire team's report and had still to get around to reading it.

Vanessa's face tilted up towards his, perspiration on her upper lip. 'It did make me think of something Maddy mentioned, about the Grant thing, something I'd more or less forgotten. There was this guy, SO19, Firearms, you know? Coming on to her. Not just the once either. Didn't like no for an answer.'

'You know his name?'

'Don't think she ever said. But ginger, she did say that. Ginger-haired. No wonder she never fancied him.'

'You think he might have persevered? Chanced his arm again?'

'You never know, do you? What some blokes will do.'

A bottle broke near the far end of the bar and Elder slipped down from his seat. 'Let's drink up and get out of here, okay?'

* * *

The street was busy with the slow passage of cars; rain dithered in the air and glossed the headlights. Young men and women trawled the pavement in threes and fours, the occasional couple arm in arm or hand in hand. Oblivious, a girl of no more than sixteen or seventeen sat cross-legged on the ground, tears raking her face. An elderly black man, dreadlocks streaming out from under his beret, pantomimed a sinuous shuffle to a tinny song from a beat box on the ground.

Always the intermittent sound of police sirens, some little distance off.

'I'm hungry,' Vanessa said suddenly. 'How about you?'

'I don't think so,' Elder said, realising as he spoke it wasn't true.

They bought falafels from a stall and ate them in pitta bread, leaning up against the wall.

'How's it all going, anyway?' Vanessa said. 'The investigation.'

'Oh, you know.'

'Still stuck?'

'Pretty much. But something will open it, it usually does.'

She smiled. 'I don't think I've exactly been a great help.'

'No. You were right to tell me. Ginger, we'll check him out. Besides, it's a good falafel. Can't get this in Cornwall, you know. Pasties, that's about it.'

'Cream teas.'

'That too.'

A youth wearing an England soccer shirt and little else, despite the cold, lurched against them, apologised, and staggered on his way.

'I'd best be making a move,' Elder said, stepping clear.

'Okay.'

'How d'you get back from here, Tube?'

'Bus.'

They walked together towards the station.

'Take care,' she said at the entrance. 'Good luck.'

'You too.'

The street light shone bright on her face.

When Vanessa sidestepped the usual coterie of druggies and near-drunks on her way to the bus-stop, it's doubtful that she noticed the dark blue saloon illegally parked near the crossroads, the man watching her carefully from behind the wheel.

* * *

Elder slept fitfully, disturbed by dreams in which his daughter, like a dragonfly, sloughed off one skin to reveal another, her face and body becoming those of Maddy Birch, only to be replaced, as easily, by those of someone he didn't recognise, so that, when he woke, his hair was matted to his scalp, the quilt, sticky with sweat, tangled between his legs.

Clambering from the bed, he stood for fully five minutes under the shower, warm water washing over head and shoulders as he soaped himself clean; a final burst of cold, face raised, as if to purge himself before stepping clear.

Coffee, toast, a white shirt more or less uncreased from the hanger, navy blue trousers, the same comfortable, well-worn shoes; yesterday's shirt and boxer shorts he stuffed into the washing machine, along with the quilt cover and pillowcase.

When he dialled Joanne's number, hoping to speak to Katherine, all he got was an automated voice requesting that he leave a message.

Someone in the flat below was treating him to Capital Gold and he countered with Radio 3. Haydn, probably. Wasn't it usually Haydn? Mozart or Haydn. Maybe Bach.

A chapter of Patrick O'Brian — enemy vessel at four o'clock on the horizon, run out the guns, run up the flag — and he was ready for something altogether drier. Scooping up his mobile just in case, he slipped it into his pocket; the 'Grant Inquiry Report', notebook and ballpoint were all ready to go. The A-Z he checked in the car.

No space in the small car park close to Kenwood House, so he parked on Hampstead Lane. Most of the tables outside the cafe were taken, Sunday broadsheets spread wide. The weather was kind. He found a space towards the rear corner, broke off a piece of his almond croissant, tasted his coffee and began to read. Somehow, the hum of other voices around him made concentration easier.

Ashley and his team, it seemed, had gone about their task with thoroughness if not inspiration; reading between the lines, it was clear certain sections of the Met had not made their task any easier than was necessary. The report's conclusions, which laid down a modicum of organisational blame but nothing else, were unexceptional. In the matter of James Grant and the second gun, Detective Superintendent Mallory had been given the benefit of any possible doubt.

Elder thought a few words with Trevor Ashley might not be out of place.

Taking out his mobile phone, he tried Joanne again with the same result.

The residue of his coffee was cold.

When he had himself been an officer in the Met and stationed in West London, he and Joanne had driven to Hampstead Heath with Katherine one Sunday afternoon and flown her kite from the top of Parliament Hill. Katherine - five then, or was she six? - had lost patience and run down the slope towards the children's playground and the paddling pool, Elder scrambling after her, laughing, while Joanne reeled in the kite's thin line.

Had she already been sleeping with Martyn Miles by then?

Some truths it was better not to know.