22

Grey Monday. The previous day's wintry sunshine had flattered to deceive. Karen Shields was at her desk, advancing a batch of circulars and memos towards the shredder. Elder had stopped off at the coffee machine on the way.

They sat either side of Karen's desk, the hubbub of the day ringing around them.

'How was your Sunday?' Karen asked.

'Nothing special. You?'

'Much the same.' Karen had slept in as long as she could, before meeting one of her friends on Upper Street for brunch, followed by a so-so movie at the Screen on the Green. In the evening, she'd watched TV, washed clothes, ironed, spoken to her sister in Stockwell, her mother in Jamaica.

'One thing I did do,' Elder said, 'read through the report on the Grant shooting.'

'Anything there for us?'

'Not that I could see right away. Pretty straightforward, really.'

'Dead end, then?'

'Probably.' Elder sipped his coffee through a hole in the lid. 'Might be worth contacting Ashley, the Herts. Super who ran the inquiry. Just for a chat. Talk things through.'

'A little help reading between the lines.'

Elder grinned. 'Something like that.'

How he could drink his coffee that hot, she didn't know. 'Mike and I checked out the last couple of possibles from the Sex Offenders Register.'

'Anything?'

Karen shook her head. 'Could have saved ourselves the trouble. Elderly rapist with diabetes and a dodgy hip, and a twice-convicted sexual predator incapacitated by the onset of Aids.'

'Oh, well. Tick 'em off and move on.'

'Where to?'

Elder set his cup on the edge of the desk. 'Vanessa Taylor?'

'What about her?'

He gave Karen the gist of what Vanessa had told him on Saturday evening.

Karen gave it a few moments' thought. 'Mallory and Repton, what do you think? They were just winding her up for the sake of it? Playing games?'

'It's possible. But, no, I think there's more to it than that.'

'And it goes back to Grant?'

'So it would seem.'

'Grant and Maddy.'

'Yes. Somehow.'

'Which is why you want to talk to Ashley.'

'Correct.'

'A little more than just a casual chat, then?'

Elder smiled. There was a sudden flurry of telephones in the middle distance. Raised voices. Someone urgently, repeatedly swearing.

'What about this other thing she mentioned?' Karen said. 'This ginger Lothario from Firearms?'

'Tracing him shouldn't be too hard.'

'You don't think it's clutching at straws?'

'I think right now we clutch at anything we can.'

Karen knew he was right. 'I'll get Mike and Lee on to it.' When she tried her coffee again, it was just okay to drink. 'By the way, Maddy's missing watch, I had the inventory double-checked in case there'd been some kind of clerical error. But no, no sign.'

'I asked her mother about it at the funeral,' Elder said. 'Apparently her father gave her the watch years ago. A Lorus. Nothing fancy. Water-resistant. Stainless steel. Maddy's name engraved on the back. And the date: fifteenth of the seventh, 1981.'

'Her twenty-first,' Karen said, doing the sums in her head.

'Yes.'

A brief image of Katherine flickered behind Elder's eyes.

'Vanessa confirmed,' he said, 'that was the watch Maddy still wore.'

'In which case,' Karen said, 'where is it now?'

They both turned towards the map on the wall, the area around the old railway line where Maddy's body had been found. Thick scrub, bushes, trees.

'It's been searched once,' Karen said.

'It could be searched again.'

'You think it's that important?'

'If it isn't there, there's a possibility whoever killed Maddy took it with him.'

'A souvenir?'

'Maybe.'

For several moments no one spoke. If that were so, it told them something about the killer, something a profiler could usefully work with.

Karen leaned across and dropped the polystyrene cup and what remained of its contents into the waste bin. 'Getting enough bodies out there's going to be a problem. We may have to rely on volunteers. But I'll make the case as strongly as I can.'

'Good.' Elder was on his feet. 'Just one other thing.'

'Go on.'

'Kennet. That alibi of his. I assume it all checked out?'

Karen shot him a look. 'I thought you didn't fancy him for this?'

'I know. It's just hard to get away from the idea that whoever did this, Maddy knew him, maybe knew him well.'

'I wouldn't exactly say Kennet knew her well, would you?'

'They'd had a relationship.'

'If you can call it that.'

'They'd slept together.'

'Half a dozen times in what? Three months?'

'That isn't a relationship?'

'You tell me.'

Elder held her gaze. 'I'd like to get Sherry to make a few more checks into his background. If you've no objection.'

Karen thought it would be pretty much a waste of time.

'Go ahead,' she said. 'Thanks.'

* * *

Graeme Loftus adjusted his position, feet apart, arm extended, sighted along the barrel of his pistol and fired into the centre of the stencilled figure that was menacing him from the target by the far wall. Eighteen rounds clustered around the heart.

By the time he'd signed out and left the building, the rain that had been threatening off and on again had set in with a vengeance. Mike Ramsden intercepted him on his way across the car park.

'Graeme Loftus?'

'Who wants to know?'

'DS Ramsden, Homicide.'

'What's this about?'

'Few minutes of your time, won't take long.'

'I'm getting soaked standing here.'

'That's my Sierra over there. Let's get in out the rain.'

Lee Furness was in the back seat and, with Ramsden holding the door open, Loftus grudgingly slid in alongside him.

'Bloody weather, eh?' Furness said with a grin.

Loftus said nothing. His reddish hair was darkened by the rain.

'Maddy Birch,' Ramsden said.

Loftus blinked. 'Who?'

'Maddy Birch.'

Loftus shook his head.

Furness took a photograph from his pocket and held it up between them.

'Oh, yes.' Loftus blinked again and wiped something, real or imaginary, from his moustache.

'You remember her now,' Ramsden said.

'Of course I bloody do.'

'Knew her well, then?'

'No.'

'You're sure.'

'Course I'm sure.'

'Not for want of trying.'

'Look, what —'

Ramsden smiled. 'All over her, what I've heard. Like a rutting bloody stag.'

'That's bollocks.'

'Pig at the fuckin' trough.'

Alongside Loftus, Furness laughed. Outside, the rain showed no sign of easing.

'Listen,' Loftus said, man to man. 'I gave her a bit of chat, offered to buy her a drink, you know how it is.'

Ramsden grinned encouragingly. 'Sure. Good-looking woman, out on her own. Few pints down. You were on the pull.'

'If you like, yeah.'

'Leg over at the end of the evening, only natural, right? Where's the harm?'

'Yeah.'

'Except she didn't want to know. Maddy.'

'Yeah, well… Can't score every time, you know?'

'And when she told you no deal?'

Loftus shrugged. 'That was that. End of story.'

'You walked away.'

'Yes.'

'And then?'

'Then nothing.'

'Had to smart a bit, though, getting the big no in front of everyone. Slinkin' away with your dick between your legs. Not so good for the old ego.'

Loftus shook his head. 'Happens, doesn't it?'

'Often? To you, I mean?'

Loftus bridled. 'No, not often.'

Ramsden glanced across at Furness and winked. 'Lover man. Cock of the walk. Just see him, Lee, can't you? Strutting his stuff. Rutting around.'

'All right,' Loftus said, colouring, 'that's enough.'

'Temper, too. Quick to rouse. Redheads, of course, what you expect. True to type.' Ramsden's fingers executed a little paradiddle along the back of the seat. 'Didn't take your temper out on Maddy, I hope? When you saw her again? You did see her again, didn't you?'

Loftus pushed open the car door. 'All right, we're through. Anything else you want to say to me, make it official. Federation solicitor, the whole bit. Otherwise, stay out of my way.'

Leaving the door wide open, he strode off into the rain.

'Touchy, isn't he?' Ramsden said.

23

The drive north to Hertford was slow and rendered slower by a broken-down lorry and two sets of competing roadworks, cable companies digging for gold. Close to where the A10 met the M25 near Waltham Cross, the rain started to fall for the second day running. Light at first, by the time Elder had turned off towards the centre of the town, it was swingeing down with such force he had the windscreen wipers working double time. The only space into which he could shoehorn the Astra was at the extreme edge of the car park, about as far from the entrance as it was possible to be. Running, collar up, he was nonetheless soaked by the time he pushed his way inside and reported at the enquiry desk.

A uniformed constable took him up to the small office with Detective Superintendent Ashley's name plate on the door.

Ashley shook Elder's hand affably and commiserated about the weather.

'If you want to take off that coat, put it on the radiator?'

'Thanks, I will.'

Ashley himself was wearing an ageing tweed jacket with patches on the elbows and around the cuffs; Elder half-expected him to take out a pipe and begin the ritual of striking match after match, trying to get the damned thing to light.

'You're one of Framlingham's cronies, then? The old geezer brigade.'

'Is that what they call us?'

'Amongst other things. Mind you, they already call me that and worse.'

Elder thought they were probably of an age.

'Helps supplement the pension, I dare say,' Ashley went on. 'Prevents the joints from seizing up.'

'Something like that.'

'What was it in the old days? Taking over a newsagent's. Running a pub. Now it's security. Guarding some posh enclave where they expect you to touch your cap and call them sir and madam.'

'You don't see yourself doing that?'

'Would you?' Ashley grinned and eased himself back in his chair. 'Herefordshire, me. Best fishing there is. Outside Scotland, of course. Got a little place all staked out.'

Elder had heard it, or similar, many times before, and wondered if it would ever come to pass.

'You wanted to talk about Maddy Birch,' Ashley said.

'Yes.'

'What happened to her, that kind of mindless violence, like those women in London, out running in the park, well, you know the statistics as well as I do. No matter how much you massage them, violent crime, crime against the person, it's up — what? — 15 per cent last year. And there's that pillock of a Home Secretary, fannying about with fancy schemes for tracking offenders by bloody satellite, telling people on council estates if they want decent policing they've got to pay for it themselves. Talk about the blind leading the poor bloody blind.'

He raised his hands, palms outwards.

'I know, I know, I'm ranting, but that man, this government, they get my bloody goat.'

Elder smiled and waited for Ashley to calm down. The rain continued to lash against the windows outside.

'You think there might be some kind of connection?' the detective superintendent said. 'Between the Grant shooting and Birch's murder?'

'I'm not sure. I think it's possible, without really seeing how. Just casting around, I suppose.'

'I'll tell you what I can.'

'You interviewed her yourself, you and DCI Mills?'

'That's right.'

'How did she strike you?'

Ashley gave it a few moments' thought. 'A little on edge, maybe. But no more than most in that situation. Wary of being criticised. Found in the wrong.'

'And was she?'

'Not as far as I can see.'

'And her version of events, the shooting…?'

'Basically the same as everyone else's. Detective Superintendent Mallory shot and killed an armed man in the line of duty; the circumstances didn't leave him any alternative.'

'Mallory's version of events, though, the business with the second gun, it depends to a large extent on Maddy Birch's testimony.'

'Not really. Even without it, there's no real alternative. No reason for Mallory to open fire without due cause.'

'You didn't ever consider bringing her in again?'

'We thought about it, yes, at one time. DCI Mills was pretty keen. But then… Well, you know what happened then. We'd lost our chance.'

Ashley pushed an uncapped pen across the papers on his desk. 'I can't see it would have changed anything.'

Elder thanked him for his time and not so many minutes later he was back in his car, the one o'clock news just starting on the radio, the sky lightening to the south where the rain was easing.

* * *

Karen had always thought going after Loftus would lead nowhere and from what Mike Ramsden had said there was little to make her change her mind. In some instances, the haste to employ a lawyer might be seen as an admission of guilt, but with Loftus it seemed to be short temper and little else. Earlier that day, she'd had a word with his immediate superior in SO19 and all the indications were that, aside from being a little prickly, he was a good officer with a near-exemplary record. Another blind alley, Karen thought. But maybe worth exploring a touch longer, just to be sure. She would get young Denison to poke around a little, see what, if anything, he could find.

More, maybe, than the half-dozen officers and twenty volunteers who'd been searching the woods along the railway line for any sign of Maddy's watch, and had so far come up empty-handed.

Whether Elder was still up in Hertford or not, she wasn't sure. Possibly back at his flat by now, she thought, smiling, taking an afternoon nap. In retirement that's probably what you got used to.

It was some way short of three when Sheridan came bustling towards her, tie akimbo, excitement palpable on his face.

'Sherry, what's up?'

Karen listened, not quite believing. 'How come we didn't know this before?'

'Never made it on to the computer.'

'Fuck!'

Grabbing her coat from the back of the chair, she brushed Sheridan aside. 'Tell me about it on the way down. Everything you've got.'

She called Elder from the car. 'Kennet, eleven years ago his then girlfriend applied for a restraining order against him.'

'And we've only just found this out?'

'This afternoon. When she didn't follow through with the application, any record was wiped clean. Sherry found out by chance, asking around, tracking back.'

'The girlfriend, any idea where she is now?'

Karen allowed herself a smile. 'Write down this address. I'll meet you there, thirty minutes' time.'

24

Karen drove fast: roundabouts were a test of nerve, traffic lights a starting grid. After weeks of dead ends and disappointment, she was pumped up. Friern Barnet, Totteridge and Whetstone, Hadley Wood. The roads narrowed, then broadened, then narrowed again. All those questions, statements, searches leading nowhere. Trees, some recently pollarded, lined the pavements; houses, mostly detached, stood back from the road behind tall hedges, neat gardens; small blocks of flats sat on the edge of curving drives clustered with BMWs and Jaguars, SUVs. Slow down, she told herself, slow down.

In the event, Elder was there before her.

'The restraining order,' he said, 'just stalking or more?'

'More.' Karen's face, he noticed, had taken on a definite glow.

The house was brick-built, slate-roofed, the windows on the first floor a cross-hatch of small squares that would have made the window cleaner curse inwardly and add another fiver to the bill. A near-mint Mini Cooper, grey with silver trim, stood outside the double-width garage.

When she rang the bell, Karen half-expected it to be answered by a maid, not the cap-and-frilly-apron kind, but someone overqualified and underpaid from Croatia or Brazil. In fact it was Estelle Cooper herself, Estelle Robinson as she'd been when Kennet knew her; Mrs Cooper now, alone at home with the Mail and daytime TV until the school run, parents sensible round here and taking it in turns so as not to clog up the roads; Jake and Amber were being collected today by Tara's mum from number 35.

'Mrs Cooper? I'm Detective Chief Inspector Karen Shields. This is my colleague, Mr Elder.'

They followed her through a parquet-floored hallway into a long living room at the rear of the house, French windows leading out into a diamond-shaped conservatory, large tubs of geraniums brought inside to protect them from the frost. There were photographs of the children above the fireplace and on an oval table at the side of the room, mostly those school photos with pristine uniform and artificial lighting that had always seemed to Elder, where Katherine and her friends were concerned, to transform them into distant cousins of the kids they really were.

Estelle Cooper sat small in the centre of a wide high-backed settee, the print dress she wore in danger of getting lost amongst the busy flowers of the upholstery. She had a sharp face with a downturned mouth and faded eyes, like a doll that had been played with, discarded and left, most of the life and stuffing gone.

'Would you like some tea?' she asked. 'I wasn't sure…'

'It's fine, Mrs Cooper, thanks,' Karen said. 'We won't take any more of your time than's necessary.'

'Estelle,' she said, 'please call me Estelle.'

'Very well, then. Estelle. Estelle, you had a relationship with Steven Kennet…'

Elder thought she flinched at the sound of his name.

'That was a long time ago,' she said.

'I know. I wonder, can you tell us a little about that relationship? How it ended, for instance?'

'Ended?' She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. 'Badly. But then I suspect you know.'

'Please tell us in your own words.'

'All right.' Her eyes rested on Karen, then slid away till she was looking at the floor. 'I started going out with Steven in 1989. I was working in central London, Holborn, as a legal secretary. I hadn't gone to university … well, I had, at least I'd started, but somehow, I don't know, I just hadn't seemed to be able to get on. Anyway, I was working for this firm and I started seeing Steven. I met him through a friend, a mutual friend, and he was … well, it was wonderful at first. He was considerate, you know, and kind and — this sounds a terrible thing to say — but for someone who did what he did, building work, you know, working with his hands, he was, well, not intellectual exactly, but interested in things, cultural things. We'd go to the theatre occasionally, foreign films, galleries.'

'When all this was happening,' Karen said, 'you were living together?'

'Yes. Steven wanted me to move in with him more or less from the start. And finally, well, he was… he could be very persuasive.'

'And how was that? Living together.'

'It was fine at first. At least, at least I thought it was. I'd never lived with anybody before. I suppose you could say I was a bit naive.' She was fidgeting with the material of her dress. 'Sometimes he got angry when I wouldn't…' She looked at Karen again as if looking for some kind of understanding, sympathy. 'He asked me to do things…'

Her voice slid away.

Karen glanced across at Elder; waited. 'On these occasions,' she said, her voice soft, almost a croon. 'On these occasions when he got angry, did he ever hit you?'

Estelle Cooper's eyes were closed.

'Did he hit you, Estelle?'

'Yes.'

'Often?'

Eyes still closed, Estelle turned her head aside.

Karen looked across at Elder again.

'Did you ever talk to anyone about what was happening?' Karen said. 'Ask for help?'

'I tried to, but I didn't know… it wasn't easy. In the end I plucked up courage and spoke to my mother, but at first she just wouldn't, she wouldn't listen. She stood there with her hands clasped over her ears and then, when I persisted, she said, "You silly little cow, why don't you stop complaining and just do what he says.'"

She was sobbing now, her arms locked tight across her chest, rocking slowly forwards and back. Karen went over and leaned towards her and at the first touch of a hand on her shoulder, Estelle stiffened and gasped.

Elder went in search of the kitchen and when he returned with a glass of water the two women were sitting on the settee side by side.

Estelle drank the water in small sips, like medicine.

'Take your time,' Karen said quietly.

Her hand not quite steady, Estelle gave Elder back the glass.

'When finally I found the courage to tell him I was leaving him,' she said, 'he just said no. As though there wasn't any room for argument. I'll change, he said. I won't do it any more, you see. And for a long time, months, almost a year, that was what he did. It was like it had been before, when we started going out together, and then, suddenly, without reason, it happened again, he hit me, so badly I had to go to hospital, in the middle of the night, to Accident and Emergency, and I said, "Right, this time I am leaving you, I really am" and he said, he said, "I'll kill you if you do.'"

There was a clock ticking somewhere that Elder hadn't noticed before.

Karen reached across and took one of Estelle's hands in hers. 'You believed him,' she said.

'Yes. Of course.'

'What did you do?'

'I told my father this time. I hadn't dared tell him before. And he was wonderful. He came round when Steven was out and helped me pack my things, and then he went with me to the police. They asked me if I would make a formal complaint about Steven, apply for a restraining order against him, and I tried to say no, just tell him to keep away from me, but my father said, "You've got to sign a complaint", and in the end I did.'

'But, in the event, it never went that far?'

'No.'

'It never got to court.'

'No, I… I changed my mind. The thought of standing up in front of a magistrate, other people, and having to talk about… I couldn't go through with it. And besides, by then I thought Steven would have calmed down, found somebody else.'

She laughed nervously, as if something had suddenly struck her as amusing.

'I lived with my parents for six months or so before finding a flat of my own and that's when he started to turn up again. Just once or twice at first. I'd see him, you know, in the supermarket, or across the street, but then it was more and more. He'd be waiting there when I finished work, wanting to give me a lift home, things like that, and I told him it had to stop, I didn't want to see him again, and then one evening I came back home and he was there, in the flat, he'd got in somehow, I don't know how he'd got in…'

Pulling away from Karen, she pressed both hands hard against her face.

'I went back to the police and they said if I wanted anything done I would have to go through the whole process again, and this time I said I would. I'd had enough. My nerves were in tatters. But then — I don't know if Steven knew, about the police, I mean — but he just stopped. Following me. Coming round. I didn't see him again. Not after that. Not once.' Her eyes lowered. 'I assume he'd met someone else.'

'I'm sorry,' Karen said, 'to make you go through all this.'

'It's all right,' Estelle said. And then: 'Steven, has he … has he done something?'

'We don't know,' Karen said.

'He has, hasn't he? He's done this to someone else.'

'We really don't know.'

Estelle looked towards the window; before long it would be dark outside. 'The children will be home soon.'

Karen got to her feet, Elder following suit.

'I'm sorry for bringing all that back,' Karen said at the door. 'I really am.'

Estelle smiled the best smile she could. 'I hope it's done some good.'

'I'm sure it has. Thank you again.'

She stood there, watching them go. Jake and Amber would soon be chasing each other to the door. Biscuits and a warm drink to keep out the cold. How was school today and then probably a video before tea.

Karen stopped alongside her car, keys in her hand. Her face had lost its glow. 'I need a drink and I don't want to sit in a pub on my own. Maybe we could stop and pick up a bottle of Scotch?'

'How about Irish?' Elder said. 'I've got some back at the flat.'

'Okay, I'll follow you.'

They drove along Whetstone High Road towards North Finchley, the traffic congealing around them, Elder wondering why Estelle's story had affected Karen as much as he thought it had.

25

'Jesus!' Karen said. 'Don't you have any heating in here?'

Elder smiled. 'It's that underfloor thing. Comes on automatically, as far as I can tell.'

'No thermostat? Override?'

'What looks like a thermostat in the bedroom. Doesn't seem to work.'

Karen looked at him, eyebrow raised. 'How about the living room? Is it any warmer in there?'

'I doubt it, but I'm not sure. I seem to spend most of my time in here.'

In the kitchen were a dining table and two chairs and little else. Karen wandered off to check the living room, while Elder rinsed two glasses and wiped them dry. Still wearing her coat, Karen returned and looked idly along the kitchen shelves.

'This is how it works, then? They set you up in one of these places, what, rent free?'

Elder nodded.

'Plus salary?'

'Some kind of daily rate.'

'Overtime?'

'We didn't discuss it.'

'Maybe I should apply for early retirement now.'

'What? Before you make superintendent?'

'Yeah. And hell freezes over.'

Elder was holding the bottle of Jameson's over Karen's glass. 'Say when.'

'Say it for me.'

He poured them both a good shot, considered, then poured a little more.

'Cheers.'

They clinked glasses and stepped back.

'You want to sit?'

'Why not?'

The chairs were made from some kind of moulded plastic, less uncomfortable than they looked, though it was a close thing.

'It really got to you, didn't it?' Elder said. 'This afternoon.'

Karen shrugged. 'Kind of thing you hear all the time.'

Elder thought there was more to it than that, but he let it ride.

'How come you drink this?' Karen said. 'And not Scotch?'

'Habit, I suppose.'

Karen tried a little more. 'If you had to drink it blindfold, you think you could tell the difference?'

'I doubt it.'

'Kennet,' she said a few moments later, 'what do you reckon? You reckon he's our man?'

Elder made a face. 'We've got no forensics, nothing that places him at the scene.'

Karen nodded. 'Plus the little matter that he was still in Spain when Maddy was killed.'

'You said that had been checked?'

'We saw a print-out from the airline — electronic ticketing, isn't that what it's called? But did we go rifling through flight manifests and so on? No, I don't think so.' She sighed and shook her head and drank some more whiskey. 'We fucked up, right?'

'We don't know that.'

'No,' laughing despite herself. 'Not yet. But chances are looking pretty good.'

'Like I say, we don't know it was Kennet at all.'

'We know what he does when someone tries to walk away.'

'That was different, they were living together.'

'I'll kill you, that's what he said.'

'Situations like that, stakes are raised, people say that all the time. Doesn't mean they're going to follow through.'

Karen looked at him. 'Have you?'

'Ever said, I'll kill you?'

'To someone you were involved with, yes.'

'No. No, I honestly don't think I have.' But he'd thought it, more than once. Joanne. Martyn Miles. When first he'd learned the truth.

'Kennet didn't just say it,' Karen said. 'He beat her up. Put her in hospital.'

'That doesn't mean he killed Maddy.'

'You're backing away from this now?'

'No. Not at all. I just think we shouldn't get too —'

'What? Too excited?'

'Yes.'

'Chance would be a fine thing.' She drained her glass and slid it across the table towards him. 'Tunnel vision, that's what you're supposed to guard against, isn't it? When you're leading an investigation. I've been to bloody lectures on it, for God's sake.'

'It isn't easy,' Elder said. 'Everything starts to point one way, you get dragged along.'

'Frank,' pointing her finger, 'don't you fucking patronise me.'

'I'm sorry, I wasn't. I didn't mean to.'

Karen held his gaze.

'I held on to an idea for a dozen years once,' Elder said. 'Case I'd been working on. Girl who'd disappeared. Sixteen. So certain I was right about who'd murdered her I almost got my own daughter killed in the process. And I was wrong. Couldn't have been more so.'

Karen didn't speak straight away. 'Whoever it was, killed the girl, you found them in the end?'

'She's wasn't dead. She was alive. The other side of the world.'

'And your daughter? How's she now?'

Instead of an answer, Elder slid the bottle back in her direction. 'You ever had any kids?'

Karen shook her head.

'Before Katherine was born, when Joanne was pregnant, people would tease us, you know, half-joking, about sleepless nights, how your life's never going to be your own. What they don't tell you, how the minute they take their first step, kids, away from you, on their own, you've got this fear about what's going to happen to them. I don't mean paedophiles, things like that, just ordinary everyday things like stepping off the kerb at the wrong moment, falling off the top of the slide and cracking their head open. And then you start to worry about yourself. Mortality. Dying. Stuff you'd hardly thought about before. Like what happens if you're running up this hill, pushing them in the buggy, just the two of you in the park, and suddenly you have a heart attack and they're left alone.'

Karen topped up Elder's glass and then her own.

She'd affected not to notice the tears that had come momentarily to his eyes.

'She is all right, though? Your daughter? Katherine, is that what you said she was called?'

'Katherine, yes.'

'And she's okay?'

'That depends.'

'Something like that, it can't be easy. Not for either of you.'

'I don't know how to talk to her. Not now. Perhaps I never did. No. No, that's not true. I think we got on pretty well. Even after Joanne and I had split up. We could talk to one another then. But now, I don't know what to say to her, how to be with her, even, and as far as she's concerned, the less she has to do with me the better.'

Karen smiled with her eyes. 'You know what, Frank?'

'No, what?'

'You're feeling sorry for yourself.'

'Probably.'

'More so than you are for her.'

'That's not true.'

'It's the way it comes across.'

'Too bad.' Angry, he pushed back his chair and went towards the window.

Karen sat where she was, head down, then went to join him. 'I didn't mean to upset you.'

'You didn't.'

Her breath was warm on his face.

'I think I'm a little drunk, Frank.'

'Most likely.'

'How about you?'

'Me? I'm fine.'

'Earlier, when you asked about this afternoon. Letting it get under my skin ...'

'You don't have to tell me, you know.'

'No, it's okay.' She took another taste from her glass. 'When I was younger, not long out of school, doing some part-time college thing, I started going with this guy. Older than me. Quite a bit. He was a musician. Well, not even that. More a hanger-on, you know. Scarcely played at all. Did a bit of DJing, nothing special. But me, I was just a kid. What did I know? There's all my mates, you know, want to watch out, he's just out for what he can get. Well, he had that, didn't he, and we still carried on seeing one another. I'd go round, sleep over, stay weekends. My parents — I was still living at home — they were going ballistic, but I didn't care. Get your nose out of my business, let me live my own life, all that bullshit. Course, they were right. I turned up late one night, somewhere I was supposed to be meeting him, this club. All right, I was fifty minutes, nearly an hour late. He smacked me round the mouth, right there in front of everyone. Smacked me round the mouth and made it bleed. Next day he came round, all apologies, bought me this bracelet, expensive, you know, not cheap. Talked about moving in together, getting engaged.'

A wan smiled crossed Karen's face. 'Was a whole month before he hit me again. At a party this time. In front of all these people we knew. As if he needed to show he could.'

'You stopped seeing him,' Elder said. 'After that.'

'Not soon enough.'

'I'm sorry.'

Karen shook her head. 'That poor woman, in that huge great bloody house.'

'She got away,' Elder said. 'Started a new life.'

'Did she?'

'People do,' Elder said, knowing, even as he spoke, he was wishing that, for Katherine, it was true.

'I'd better phone for a taxi,' Karen said. 'Pick up my car tomorrow.'

'I could drive it in for you.'

'Okay.'

Neither of them moved.

His arm was not quite touching hers. And then it was.

Leaning forward, she kissed softly him on the mouth, then stepped away, 'This isn't going to happen, Frank. I'm sorry.'

A slow release of breath. 'Okay.'

Fishing her mobile from her bag, she punched in a number, spoke and listened, broke the connection. 'Twenty minutes.'

'I'll make coffee.'

'Good.'

Twenty minutes was fifteen. 'Kennet,' Karen said at the door. 'Tomorrow morning we'll see his girlfriend. The one he went with to Spain.'

For some time after she had gone, Elder could smell her scent in the room, recall the warmth of her arm, the slight pressure of her lips, barely opening. Foolish to pour himself a nightcap before turning in, but who was to know?

26

Vanessa had been thinking about Maddy. Oh, not constantly, far from it: too busy for that. A gang of twelve- and thirteen-year-olds, bored by the school holiday, had been entertaining themselves by chucking stones from the pedestrian bridge between Churchill and Ingestre Roads down on to the trains below. On the last occasion they had shattered the windscreen, injuring the driver seriously, twenty-seven fragments of glass having to be removed from his face and neck. Then there were the two fifteen-year-olds who, three times in a week, had robbed a local newsagent of the contents of his till, once making their getaway on stolen bikes, twice on skateboards. To say nothing of a plethora of burglaries that needed checking into and logging, crime numbers to be assigned, anxious or angry people to reassure, the whole tedious and largely pointless business set in some kind of motion.

Still, through it all, there were moments, unbidden, when she would remember Maddy's laugh, Maddy's smile, Maddy's fear. It's not funny. It's not some bloody joke. No joke at all in the end, no joke at all. A statistic, a tragedy, a headline for as long as it was news; the object of an inquiry going nowhere, an absence, a pall of blue-grey smoke rising into the winter air.

Even at that time of the evening, too late for the last stragglers returning home from work, too early for the raucous and the semi-drunk on their way back from the pub or off for a night's clubbing, she had to push her way through to the doors when the Tube pulled into the Archway. An elbow at her back. A face along the platform she half-recognised. Nobody.

Coming up out of the station, uncomfortably aware of the waft of her own sweat, she walked through the usual congregation of beggars and Big Issue sellers colonising the pavement, and joined the small crowd of people waiting at the lights. Sometimes she took her life in her hands and crossed against the red, traffic bearing down from several directions, but tonight, after a split shift and a couple of hours of unpaid overtime catching up on paperwork, the energy was lacking.

On the opposite corner, someone pushed out of the pub just in front of her, and for a moment she jumped, startled, and then, music and voices spilling through the door, considered a quick half before going home, maybe a rum and Coke. But the moment passed and she walked on, crossing the road again, lower down, much the same path, much the same steps Maddy would have taken so many evenings before.

A chill moved inexorably along Vanessa's arms.

You're not getting weird on me, are you? Freaking out?

Turning past the bollards at the top of her own street, away from the noise and the traffic, she laughed. Stupid mare! Silly tart! For God's sake, get a grip!

Lights showed behind a good few of the windows, blinds on the upper floors left open. The overlapping sounds of TV sets and stereos, indistinct and comforting. A dozen houses shy of her own she started feeling around in her bag for her keys. Stopped to disentangle them from her notebook and the charger for her mobile phone, something made her look across the street.

Someone was standing in the half-shadow a short distance down the street. A silhouette and little more. Broad and tall against the overhanging hedge. A shape. A man. Though she couldn't make out his face she knew his eyes were focused on her. Watching her.

Fear froze her, her legs, her voice, and then she hurried, half-ran the short distance to her door; key in the lock, she swung her head round and there was nothing there.

An empty road, an empty street.

Dark on dark.

Inside, she slammed the door closed and leaned back against it, catching her breath, her thoughts, slow, slow, slow, before climbing the stairs towards her flat on the second floor.

Without switching on the light, she crossed to the window and looked out. A couple were walking along now, arms round one another's shoulders, heads close; further along, a man, smaller, not the one she'd seen, was watching his dog defecating at the side of the road. Her breathing was almost back to normal, her blood ceasing to race. Already she was thinking of what she should have done, how she should have stood her ground, challenged him. She was a police officer, for God's sake. But police officers, she knew all too well, could be victims too.

It was some while before she left the window, drew the curtains, switched on the light. What had she said to Maddy? Report it, why don't you? You should.

There was a bottle of white wine half-empty in the fridge.

Half-empty or half-full?

Tomorrow, she would report it to the local station, even though she could see already the bored officer, hear his questions. This man, what exactly did he do? Maybe she would even phone Frank Elder, mention it to him? Or Karen Shields?

She could see the expression on the other woman's face, sympathetic but matter-of-fact: after what happened to Maddy, you're bound to be jumpy for a while. Apprehensive. Imagination in overdrive. Wouldn't be natural otherwise.

The wine tasted thin and bitter in her mouth and she poured the remainder down the sink. In bed, she moved the small reading lamp down on to the floor to lessen the glare, but left it switched on through the night.

27

Wednesday morning. A fine fall of rain. Elder had driven Karen's car to Hendon early, left it parked, and passed time in the canteen. In the queue, tray in hand, his stomach had rebelled at the sight and smell of sausages and bacon and he'd settled for two slices of toast. There was a copy of the Mirror left lying around and he thumbed through it, not really paying attention. After a while he saw Mike Ramsden come in and he raised a hand in greeting.

Ramsden carried over a breakfast plate full to overflowing. 'Best meal of the day.'

'Your boss in yet?' Elder asked.

'Just arrived.' Ramsden grinned. 'Like a bear with a sore head this morning. Don't know what she was up to last night, but it's left its mark, I'll tell you that.'

'See you in a while,' Elder said.

Ramsden mumbled something through a mouthful of egg and beans.

Karen was sitting at her desk, a large carton of orange juice close at hand. Elder said good morning and gave her back her car keys.

'What are you looking so smug about?' she said.

'I didn't know I was.'

'The girlfriend,' Karen said, 'she's called McLaughlin. Jennifer McLaughlin. Twenty-seven. Works in a chemist's, Muswell Hill Broadway. But not every day.'

'Today?'

'That's what I'm waiting to find out.'

Another fifteen minutes and they were on their way.

Jennifer McLaughlin was smart in her white uniform, buttoned and belted, reddish hair pulled back in a barrette, pale freckles across her face. If Kennet had a type it wasn't easy to discern what it was.

Karen showed her warrant card as discreetly as she could.

The manager agreed to let them use his office.

'What's this about?' Jennifer McLaughlin said, but the way, even in that enclosed space, she contrived to look neither of them in the eye, suggested that she knew.

'November just gone,' Karen said, 'you went to Spain.'

'Malaga, yes. Winter break.'

'You and Steve. Steve Kennet.'

'Yes, why? What's wrong?'

'When did you come back?'

'Twenty-eighth. End of the week.'

'Jennifer.'

'What?'

'This might be important.'

She slid both hands up along her neck, fingertips against the roots of her hair. 'We had a row. Stupid, really. About nothing. Where we were going to eat, which cafe. Steve, he lost his temper. Really lost it, you know?'

'He hit you?'

She looked at the floor, guilty; as if she had something to be guilty about. 'I said I didn't want to stay, not any more. He could stay if he liked, but I was coming home. He said if I was going, we both were. I phoned the airline to change the flights. Cost a fortune. We didn't talk all the way back, sat in separate rows. Soon as we got back to Stansted that was that.'

'You've not seen him again?'

'No.'

'Which day did you fly back, Jennifer?'

'The Tuesday. Tuesday morning. The twenty-fifth.'

'All right. Thanks.' Karen doing her best to keep any excitement from her voice.

'Steve,' Jennifer McLaughlin said. 'He hasn't done anything, has he?'

'Not necessarily.' Karen opened the office door. 'Thanks for your time.'

Out on the street, the rain had just ceased, leaving the paving stones slippery and dark.

'Didn't waste any time, did he?' Karen said. 'Flies back on the twenty-fifth and a day later Maddy Birch is dead.'

'We still don't have proof.'

'We've got enough to bring him in for questioning.'

Elder nodded.

With a broad smile, Karen hit Ramsden's number on her phone. 'Okay, Mike. Bring him in.'

* * *

Kennet had finished in Dartmouth Park and moved on. One wing of the Whittington Hospital was slowly being transformed into prestige apartments with views over London, Waterlow Park on their doorstep, a ten-minute stroll to Highgate Village, five more to the Heath. Kennet was sitting on a platform two-thirds of the way up the scaffolding, time out for a smoke and a drop of tea from a thermos. One of his colleagues alongside him, stretched out, the Sun open across his face.

Situations like that, people panicked, even innocent people, tried to do a runner, but Kennet, Ramsden thought, where could he go? Besides, he'd seen them coming, sure enough, and not made a move.

'Steve,' Ramsden called up, keeping it friendly. 'A word, eh?'

Kennet shook out what remained in his cup, screwed it back on top of the flask, put the flask in his rucksack, said something to his mate, who was sitting up now, wondering what was going on, and began to climb down.

'DS Ramsden. This is DC Furness.'

'Yes, I remember.'

'Not altogether defective then.'

'What?'

'Your memory.'

'Sorry, you'll have to explain.'

'At the station.'

'What? Oh, come on.'

'No, you come on.'

Kennet's body tensed and his eyes narrowed just a little and Ramsden readied himself in case, but then Kennet relaxed and said, nodding back towards where he'd been working, 'Give me a few minutes,' and Ramsden said, 'Go ahead,' and then, to Furness, 'Go with him.'

Ramsden lighting a cigarette and pacing easily up and down, wanting to believe they had him, but not letting himself, not quite, preferring to believe in what they said about when the fat lady sings.

* * *

They kept him waiting the best part of an hour, trying his patience, the young uniformed constable as inscrutable as one of the Guardsmen on sentry duty on Horse Guards Parade. When Karen Shields entered, Ramsden and Elder close behind her, the PC stepped outside.

'You know you can have a solicitor present if you wish?' Karen said, sitting down.

Kennet smiled. 'No need for that.'

'And you realise you can leave at any time?'

Kennet made a play of getting up, then sat back down.

'You don't mind if I tape this interview?'

'Be my guest.' Leaning back now, enjoying it.

We'll see, Karen thought. 'I'd like to ask you some questions,' she said, 'about your recent holiday in Spain.'

'Great food, lovely weather, iffy hotel.'

'You stated previously that you and Ms McLaughlin returned to this country on Friday the twenty-eighth.'

'That's right.'

'According to Ms McLaughlin, you came back early on the twenty-fifth.'

Kennet drummed his fingers on the table. Broad fingers, nails cut short. Karen was remembering Maddy Birch's former husband. Working man's hands.

'Mr Kennet, is that the case?'

'Sorry, what?'

'That you flew back to this country on the twenty-fifth?'

A slight movement of the shoulders. 'If she says so.'

'What do you say?'

'All right, yes. Yes, the twenty-fifth.'

'Then why, when you were asked before, did you claim it was the twenty-eighth?'

Kennet threw up his hands, rocked back his chair. 'God, woman! Why d'you think?'

Karen leaned, almost imperceptibly, towards him. 'Tell me.'

'It's obvious, isn't it? She was killed on the Wednesday, wasn't she? Maddy. And you were going to be going round, all the blokes she'd been out with. Friends. Anyone who knew her. Asking questions, poking into their lives. Easier to stay out of it, right? No harm done either way.'

'Unless you've got something to hide.'

'Who hasn't?'

'Where were you on the evening of Wednesday, twenty-sixth?'

'See. There you go, right there.'

'Where were you?'

'Went to see this film. The Medallion. Jackie Chan. Holloway Odeon. Absolute bloody rubbish. Don't often go and see stuff like that, but sometimes that's what you want, right? Rubbish. Give your brain a rest. But can I prove it? No. Who keeps cinema tickets? No one. Afterwards I went to the pub up the road, set back, past the traffic lights towards the Archway. I don't even know what it's called. Had a couple of pints, went home.'

'And then what?'

'Then nothing. Up at six thirty next morning. Off to work, same as usual.'

'You didn't go out again?'

'No.'

'You're sure?'

'Course I'm sure.'

'Like you were sure you flew back to England on the twenty-eighth?'

'I've explained that.'

'This pub you say you were in, did you talk to anyone?'

Bloke behind the bar.'

'Think he'd remember you?'

'I doubt it.'

'No witnesses to support what you say you did or where you were.'

'That's right.'

'As an alibi, it doesn't begin to stand up, does it?'

Kennet smiled. 'Now you know why I lied.'

* * *

'So what do you think?' Karen asked.

They were in her office, herself, Elder and Ramsden. Late afternoon, early evening. Furness was babysitting Kennet in the interview room.

'I'd like to smack him in the face,' Ramsden said.

'Frank?'

'Would he be that sure of himself if he were guilty? I don't know.'

'You don't think he's covering up something?'

'Probably.'

'Well?'

'I don't know if it's what we want it to be.'

'Half an hour alone with him,' Ramsden said, 'I'd bloody find out.'

Karen laughed despite herself. 'Mike, you're such a sweet old-fashioned thing.'

'Bollocks,' Ramsden said. Adding a mock-deferential, 'Ma'am.'

'Well, I'd like to have another go at him, ask him about his relationship with Maddy. See if there isn't something we can shake him on there.'

Elder was just about to say something when his mobile started to ring. Turning away, he listened briefly. 'Five minutes. I'll call you back.'

'I'm sorry,' he said to Karen, 'something I have to deal with. You carry on.'

As he turned away, she wondered what could have brought the concern so clearly to his eyes.

28

Elder had recognised Maureen Prior's voice instantly, her tone preparing him for something bad but not for this.

'It's Katherine.'

For an instant Elder's heart had seemed to stop.

'She's been arrested.'

Of all his fears, not the one he would have most suspected, not the worst.

'Okay, Maureen,' he said now, standing close against the car park wall. 'Let me have the details.'

'She was arrested for possession.'

'Cannabis? Ecstasy? Out clubbing and —'

'No, Frank.'

'What then?'

'It was heroin.'

'Jesus!' The word expelled with a hiss of air.

Elder closed his eyes and brought his head forward against the corner of the wall. He could hear Maureen's breathing at the other end of the line.

'How much?'

'Five grams.'

'They're charging her with intent to supply?'

'Not yet.'

'Not yet? Either they have or they haven't, I don't see —'

'It's not so straightforward, Frank. There's someone else involved.'

'Okay, I'm coming up.'

'It's not my case, Frank. They're holding her at Canning Circus. I could put you in touch if you want. Perhaps if you just had a word…'

'No. I'm coming up.' Stepping back, he checked his watch. 'I can be there in a couple of hours.'

'All right. You'll call me?'

'Sure. If not tonight, tomorrow, first thing.'

'Good. And Frank…'

'Yes?'

'If you're driving, take care.'

Elder grunted and broke the connection. At least where he was, he was close to the M1, though by now the volume of traffic would be building steadily.

Sweating a little, he dialled Joanne's number.

'You've heard?' he said before she could speak.

'Of course.'

'Why didn't you call me?'

'Frank —'

'Why in God's name didn't you call me?'

He heard the clink of a glass. 'I'm sorry, Frank, I —'

'What? You didn't think I'd find out? You didn't think I wanted to know?'

'It's not that, Frank, it's —'

'How is she?'

'She's all right. I mean, I suppose she's all right. It's difficult, Frank, you don't —'

'I'm driving up, leaving now. I just wanted you to know.'

'Don't, Frank.'

'What else d'you expect?'

'She won't talk to you, you know.'

Elder wanted to hurl the phone into the far-flung reaches of the car park. Instead, he pocketed it carefully and made himself stand there for some moments, perfectly still, controlling his breathing, before reaching for his keys.

* * *

The first fifty miles of the motorway were nightmarishly slow; after that it cleared enough for him to pick up some speed, only to close down again beyond Leicester Forest East. Finally turning off at the exit for Nottingham South, he skirted the river and then drove along Maid Marian Way on to Derby Road, turning left again just past Canning Circus and into the police station car park.

There was a small fracas going on outside the entrance, a beleaguered PC standing amongst a group of angry women, doing his best to calm things down. Inside, a balding man with blood on his shirt was standing with his back against the wall, pressing a square of bandage against the gash in his head.

Elder identified himself to the officer on duty. 'I believe you're holding my daughter, Katherine.'

'Just one moment, sir.'

Elder caught the wounded man's eye.

'What the fuck you starin' at?' the man said, his accent raw from north of the border. 'You askin' for a fuckin' kickin', you.'

The noise from the street abated as the PC walked in off the pavement. 'Kenny, we can't have you hiding yourself in here all evening. You'd best get yourself off to Accident and Emergency, get that seen to.'

'No wi'out an escort, I'm not. Those are wild women out there.'

'Mr Elder?' The duty officer had returned. 'If you'll come through. The inspector would like a word.'

Elder had met Resnick once in the past four years, and then briefly. By reputation, he was a bit of an odd cove, a good thief-catcher nonetheless; not so many years before he had astonished all and sundry by taking up with a young woman from the force, some twenty or more years his junior.

'Frank.'

'Charlie.'

Resnick's grip was warm and strong, the smile quick to his face and gone; his expression as he sat back showed concern.

'You're working late,' Elder said.

'It's a poor business, Frank. Your girl. I'm sorry. Especially after what happened before.'

'Thanks.'

'I didn't know how to get in touch with you direct. I thought you and Maureen were probably still in touch.'

'She rang me as soon as she heard.'

Resnick nodded, awkward in the situation the Drugs Squad had left him to sanitise.

'Katherine,' Elder said, 'how is she?'

'Fine. Fine, Frank, all things considered.'

'I'd like to see her.'

Resnick scraped a speck of something from the cuff of his shirt, real or imaginary. 'All in good time.'

'Christ, Charlie. That bastard Keach kept her locked up —'

'I know, I know.'

'And now you —'

'Frank, it's not so straightforward. Hear me out.'

Elder sat back with a slow release of breath. 'Is it ever?'

Resnick resettled himself in his chair. 'The car she was travelling in was stopped on Forest Road East. There'd been an incident, Cranmer Street; a firearm discharged.'

'And they thought she was involved?'

'Not really. Just stopping everyone. Routine. They'd've been off and away if Katherine hadn't given the officer a piece of her mind.'

'She'd been drinking?'

'Maybe just a little.'

'She wasn't breathalysed?'

'She wasn't driving.'

Now we're getting to it, Elder thought.

'Officers hoiked them out of the vehicle,' Resnick said, 'the pair of them. ID, the usual palaver. Phoned it all in.'

'The driver,' Elder said, 'he was known to you.'

'Rob Summers. Two priors. Nothing too serious. Possession of cannabis. Public order. Some kind of argy-bargy at the university. Demonstration.'

'I've met him. Briefly. I didn't know he had form.'

'Drug Squad, they've had their eye on him for a while now. Suspected him of handling a little cannabis, spreading it around, friends mostly. Not worth the aggravation of bringing him in.'

'And now?'

'Some consideration he might be moving up, apparently. Different league.'

'They'd like a reason to squeeze him.'

'Something of the sort.'

'And that's where my Katherine comes in.'

'When the vehicle was searched there were a little over five grams of heroin in a small leather bag in the dash.'

'You're saying it was hers?'

'Her bag, Frank. Her stuff inside.'

'She was holding it for him.'

'Likely.'

'No way he's putting up his hand?'

'What do you think?'

'And Katherine?'

'Beyond the fact that, yes, the bag's hers and she hasn't the foggiest how the drugs got inside, she hasn't said a thing.'

'And you reckon holding her overnight might make her think twice, drop him in it, this Summers, change her mind?'

'Somebody does.'

'Somebody?'

'Bland. DI.'

'Then he doesn't know her very well.'

Resnick held Elder's gaze. 'How well do you, Frank? Driving round in broad daylight with a suspected drug dealer, sizeable amount of a class A drug in her possession.'

* * *

Katherine lay curled on the narrow bed, knees drawn up and pressed against the cell wall, the collar of her oyster-coloured jumper pulled up close to her neck. If there had been a belt with her tan jeans it had been punctiliously removed. Her feet were bare.

'Kate?' His voice was loud in the fetid, airless room. 'Katherine…'

A slight tensing of her muscles and nothing more. A tray of food, uneaten, lay nearby on the floor.

'Talk to me.'

A silence, unbroken, and then, muffled by her arm, so that Elder had to strain to hear: 'What for?'

'I want to help.'

She laughed then, a harsh sound that raised her head and broke into a jittering cough. Elder moved closer and sat, perched, near the end of the bed; when his leg inadvertently touched her foot, she pulled it, sharp, away.

'You want to help,' she said, not looking at him, her voice small and dry.

Times he had sat like that when she was a child, four, rising five; his hand would touch her cheek and, as he spoke and said her name, she would slowly stroke his lower arm, her fingers smooth and warm and small. His eyes smarted with the beginnings of tears.

'Of course I do,' he said.

The laugh again, harder this time. 'You mean like you did before?'

Elder flinched as if he had been hit.

For an instant he must have looked away, because suddenly he was aware of her staring at him, her gaze, the awful flatness of her eyes.

'Katherine…' he began.

But by then she had turned again towards the wall, head buried in her arms.

Elder stayed where he was, not moving, awkward, listening to her breathe. When the custody sergeant called time, Elder bent over her once more, stopped short of kissing her, stood and turned aside, the sound of the door closing behind him like the clenching of a fist.

She's alive and you're some great hero, your picture all over the papers, all over the screen every time you turn on the bloody TV.

Joanne's words.

29

Martyn Miles answered the door. 'She's in a bad way, Frank. Shaky at best.'

Joanne was sitting at one corner of the settee, legs pulled up under her, face drawn, a half-empty wineglass in her hand. A cigarette was smouldering in an ashtray on the floor. 'You've seen Katherine?' she said.

'Yes.'

'How was she?'

'Confused, angry, upset. Take your pick.'

'When I went to see her, she kept her face to the wall. She wouldn't tell me a thing.'

'The drugs they claim she had in her bag,' Miles said. 'Planted, like as not.'

'Martyn,' Joanne said. 'Please stay out of this.'

He carried on as if she hadn't spoken, as if he hadn't heard. 'No offence intended, Frank, not to you, but the police, you know what they're like, some of them.'

'Martyn,' Joanne said. 'I'm warning you…'

'All right, okay. Calm down, why don't you? Just calm down.'

Ash spilled down the front of Joanne's dress and she brushed it casually away. 'Heroin, Frank,' she said. 'What would she be doing with heroin?'

'These days —' Martyn began.

'Don't get to thinking she's like those skinny models you're so fond of.' Joanne said, her voice shrill. 'Doing cocaine and God knows what else every five minutes of the day.'

'One of your fantasies, sweetheart, not mine.'

'Fuck you,' Joanne said, swigging down what was left in her glass.

'All I'm saying is, Frank,' Miles went on, 'these days you can never tell. Well, you'll know that yourself, better than anyone.'

'For Christ's sake, Martyn, stop trying to get him on your side.'

'I didn't think it was a matter of sides.'

'No?'

'No.'

'Because if it is, why don't you tell him what you told me when you heard Kate had been arrested. See how far he's on your side then.'

'Oh, for Christ's sake, leave it out, Joanne…'

'Why? Because it doesn't suit you now? For Frank to know what you really think?'

'Now you're being stupid.'

'Am I?'

Miles gave Elder a look as much as to say, You see how unreasonable she's being.

'I think,' Elder responded, 'I might like to know what it was you said.'

'He said it was no more than she deserved.'

'What I said was, it might not be such a bad thing.'

'Why was that, Martyn?' Elder said. 'I'm not sure I understand.'

'You know, Frank. These past months, the way she's been. And now it seems drugs as well.'

'And you think being locked up in a police cell will make her see the light?'

'It might scare some sense into her, yes.'

'Don't you think she's been scared enough?'

'That was a year ago, Frank. She can't keep hiding behind that forever.'

'Listen to yourself,' Joanne all but screamed. 'Just bloody listen to yourself. You don't understand a bloody thing.'

'And you do?'

'Yes, I fucking do.'

'That's it. That's it. Get hysterical,' Miles said. 'Great help all round.'

Tears welled in Joanne's eyes.

'Martyn,' Elder said. 'Maybe you should let Joanne and I talk.'

'Fine.'

* * *

The lanterns on the patio shone small candles of light through the window, their reflections doubled and redoubled in the glass. Nursing a fresh glass of wine, Joanne stood close against the window, staring out, and Elder wondered if in some way it made her feel invisible. Or was it something to do with how she felt, what might happen at a touch? He could see her face, its contours in the glass, not quite real, white against the dark. The small triangle of skin where the hair parted at the nape of her neck.

It was past midnight by now, Elder thought, closer to one.

The reflection of his face slid over hers and merged. Slowly, he touched her shoulder with his hand.

'Frank.'

When she said his name a small circle of mist blurred the glass before her face. She said his name again and turned and when she turned it was into his arms. Eyes closed at first, he held her close, her head beneath his chin, feeling her heart race against his chest.

Minutes passed.

Minutes passed and her breathing steadied and she lifted her face towards his. 'I'm sorry,' she said.

With a slow shake of his head, he stepped away.

'I need a cigarette,' she said and crossed the room.

Elder went through into the kitchen and ran the tap, drank water from a glass. Whoever Joanne had in to clean had worked hard on the bottoms of the burnished pans, hanging in perfect order from a polished metal rail high on the wall.

In the living room, Joanne was sitting at one end of the settee and he sat opposite her on a pale curve of cushioned chair that gave a little with his weight.

'What will happen?' Joanne asked.

'To Katherine?'

She looked back at him as if to say, What else?

'They could charge her with possession with intent to supply, in which case she'd almost certainly be released on police bail. But I don't think they will.'

'Because of you?'

'That wouldn't matter one way or another.'

'What then?'

'I don't really think it's Kate they re interested in. It's him. Summers. I think they were hoping if they pressured her, she'd give them something they could use against him.'

'And she won't?'

'It doesn't look that way.'

'God.' Joanne took a last drag at her cigarette and ground it out in a hollow globe of glass.

'How long has she been seeing him?' Elder asked. 'Summers. D'you know?'

Staring at the floor, Joanne shook her head. 'I don't know who she's been seeing, Frank. Not recently. She won't talk to me. About anything. And if I ask her, she just flies off the handle and storms out. Martyn's right, she's been running wild and I don't know what to do.' She looked at him then. 'She's our daughter, Frank.'

'I'll talk to her. If I can.'

Joanne pulled a folded square of tissue from a pocket in her dress, dabbed her eyes and lit another cigarette.

'You'll stay, Frank.'

'I don't think so.'

'This time of night…'

'I'll go to a hotel'

'There's no need.'

He shook his head. 'It's easier.'

'Martyn won't be back, not tonight.'

'It isn't that.' He crossed towards her and aimed a kiss at the top of her head. 'I'll see you tomorrow, okay?'

'Okay.' She reached up for his hand but he was already on his way towards the door.

Outside, any wind there'd been had dropped and the air, as he walked back down through the winding criss-cross of roads towards the city centre, was heavy and still.

30

Against all odds, Elder slept like a stone. The radio alarm on the small bedside table woke him with inane chatter, slightly off station. In the bathroom mirror his face looked tired and drawn; a thin scar, where Adam Keach had cut him with a knife, ran from the centre of his forehead down along the bridge of his nose, stitch marks like tiny perforations to each side.

The hotel dining room was busy with business people in dark suits, enjoying the full English behind the Telegraph or the Mail. In the buffet, the scrambled eggs were congealed and the catering tomatoes swam in a sea of their own juice. The toast, brought to the table too soon, was scarcely brown and almost cold.

'Coffee or tea?' the waitress said with a charming smile, her heavily-accented voice, to Elder's ears, from South America or Spain. Though he asked for coffee, she brought him tea regardless, and he had neither the heart nor the energy to complain.

He met Maureen Prior in the Starbucks on Lister Gate, close by the entrance to the Broad Marsh Centre. She was seated at a table in the rear when he arrived, unobtrusively dressed in brown and beige. He might have seen her in bright colours once, but couldn't easily remember when. Her hair, medium-length, mid-brown, softened the sharp oval of her face.

'Good to see you, Frank.'

'You, too.'

He went to the counter to collect the coffee he'd ordered, carried it back and sat down.

'I'm sorry about Katherine,' Maureen said.

'Thanks.'

'She's been charged?'

'No, thank God.'

'Special pleading then.'

'Not on my part. No favours asked.'

'She's your daughter, Frank. Five grams in her bag. Difficult to see her walking away else.'

Elder told her what had happened, what little he knew, and she listened carefully, breaking off pieces of muffin almost absent-mindedly with one hand.

'They think she's lying, obviously,' she said when Elder was through. 'Covering up for Summers.'

'You know him? Anything about him?'

Maureen shook her head. 'Drug Squad, any idea which officers are involved?'

'Resnick mentioned a name. Bland.'

Maureen smiled. 'Ricky Bland.'

'You know him?'

'By reputation.'

'Which is?'

'Bit of a chancer. Gets results. One way or another. Came up from the Met, oh, good few years back now.'

'You don't like him.'

'I said, I don't know him.'

'You know what I mean.'

Maureen ate some of her muffin. 'What I've heard, let's say he sails close to the wind. Came under investigation once, him and a partner. Eaglin? I'm not sure of the name. Quantity of crack cocaine confiscated and then disappeared. There was some rumour Bland and whoever had sold it back to the dealer they'd taken it from in the first place.'

'Nothing proved?'

Maureen laughed. 'Answer that for yourself, Frank. They're still out there, working. Putting the bad guys away. Some of them, at least.'

'You think they were guilty?'

The laugh transposed into a smile. 'You know me well enough, Frank. Everyone's guilty in my eyes.'

Watching Maureen eat had made Elder hungry and, seeing him eyeing the plate, she pushed it towards him. 'What about you, Frank?'

'What about me?'

'How's it going in London?'

'Not so badly.'

She looked at him seriously. 'When it's over, you ought to consider coming back up here.'

He shook his head. 'It's too complicated. Besides, if I wanted more there's plenty where I am. Devon and Cornwall have just brought four detectives out of retirement and they're scoping round for more.'

'Sheep rustling at a premium, is it?' The smile back on Maureen's face. 'Someone playing fast and loose with the mackerel fleet?'

'Six murders in eight days. One of them specially nasty, couple in a garage badly beaten, then shot.'

'You're not tempted?'

'Not what I went down there for.'

'If you were up here you'd be near Katherine.'

'Not where she wants me to be.'

'You think she means it?'

'I know she does.'

Maureen resisted the temptation to say more. 'Ricky Bland, you're going to see him? I could come with you if you like.'

'It's good of you, but no, it's okay. An address though, just in case he isn't pulling overtime.'

Maureen was already reaching for her mobile. 'Just let me make a call.'

* * *

The house was in Mapperley Plains, a once-new development near the golf course, UPVC windows and frosted-glass aluminium-framed doors. A blue Audi A6, dented, stood outside the garage. The front lawn was in need of a final mow, the grass already beginning to clutter up with leaves.

Elder knocked on the door and rang the bell.

Nothing seemed to happen.

An arthritic Honda saloon came cautiously along the street, slowed down almost to a halt, then continued on its way. Neighbourhood watch, Elder thought.

He rang the bell again.

This time there was movement within, an inner door opening and then bolts being released, locks turned. The man who appeared was mid-forties with a thick stubble and close-cropped hair, a V-neck jumper hastily pulled over an otherwise bare chest, patterned boxers and bare, muscular legs.

'Richard Bland?'

'Who the fuck are you?'

'Frank Elder. I used to be on the job.'

He looked at Elder keenly, squinting a little into the light. 'This better be good, pal.'

'Katherine Elder, she was arrested yesterday. Possession of heroin. She's my daughter.'

Bland looked at him again and pulled the door wider. 'Come on in. Tryin' to get some kip. Three late nights on the fuckin' trot. Thought you were one of them bleeding-heart collectors, famine in fuckin' Sumatra or somewhere.'

Dust had gathered in small circles in the corners of the hall. The room Bland led Elder into was almost bare, crumpled clothes and cans and empty take-out boxes on the floor. The Venetian blinds were two-thirds closed.

'Cunt took all the furniture when she left. Had a van come round when I was out. Sleeping upstairs in a fucking sleeping bag.' He pointed towards the kitchen door. 'There's beer in the fridge, help yourself.'

When Bland came back down, blue shirt outside his jeans, he grabbed some beers for himself, lit a cigarette, and instructed Elder to get hold of the pair of plastic folding chairs that were leaning up against the wall.

They sat outside on a small patio, looking out over a rectangle of unkempt lawn, bare borders, a line of recently planted saplings. In amongst the hum of traffic, children cried and dogs set off a chain of barking. January notwithstanding, there was some warmth in the sun.

'Get shot of this fuckin' place,' Bland said, 'soon as I fuckin' can. Get back into the city. One of them new flats, by the canal. Only thing, minute I sell it, the bitch gets fuckin' half.'

Elder said nothing.

'You married?'

'Not any more.'

'Know what I mean then.'

For a while they swapped war stories about life on the force, Bland quizzing Elder a little about his time with Serious Crime, elaborating on the spread of drugs, the steady influx of guns.

'Fuckin' Noddies out patrolling St Ann's in body armour with Walther P990s holstered at their fuckin' hips like Clint fuckin' Eastwood. Me, I can walk into a crack house or down some alley in the Meadows and all I've got is a finger to stick up their arse, always supposing they'll bend over and oblige.' He coughed up phlegm and spat it at the ground. 'Every kid dealing out there on the streets has got a Glock or some converted replica stuck down the back of his designer fuckin' underwear. Niggers driving round in thirty thousand plus of motor with their fuckin' rap music blaring out and an Uzi under the fuckin' front seat. All very well to say it's one another they're killin', only problem with that they're not killin' one another fuckin' fast enough.'

He dropped the butt of his cigarette into the empty Heineken can and lit another.

'Your kid,' he said, 'she was carrying for the bloke she was with, Summers, no fuckin' doubt. Thought a night in the cells might get her to turn him over, but it didn't. No worries, we'll get him another way.'

'And Katherine?'

Bland popped another can. 'Needs to reconsider the company she's keeping.'

'Tell me about Summers,' Elder said after a moment.

'Rob Summers. Robert. Early thirties. Moved here from Humberside twelve or thirteen years back to go to university. Hung around ever since the way some of 'em do. Too idle to get up off their fuckin' arses and move somewhere else. That or too fuckin' stoned.' Bland swallowed down some beer. 'Started selling a little dope when he was still a student, nothing too serious. Carried on ever since. Low-level, just below the eyeline, you know the kind of thing.'

'So why the great interest?'

'While or so back, six, nine months maybe, his name started cropping up. Heavy hitters now. Not round the estates, either. Clubs and the like. Upmarket.'

'You've had him in?'

Bland sneered. 'Clever bastard, isn't he? Loves the sound of his own voice. Reckons he can talk his way out of fuckin' anything. Get the Red fuckin' Sea to part if he's a mind. Talk soft tarts like your Katherine into carryin' for him, carryin' the can.'

He could see the anger rising in Elder's face and eased forward on his chair, one officer to another, man to man.

'Listen to what I'm saying, Frank, don't go wading in, doing your indignant-father thing. Okay? Don't rock the boat. Not now, now we're close. Someone coming in from outside, making him jumpy when there's no need. There's too much at stake.'

'You're asking me?' Elder said.

'Asking you, yes, that's right.'

'And Katherine?'

'She can walk. I'll make the call. Go and get her if you like. After this.'

'All right,' Elder said, getting to his feet. 'Thanks for that at least.'

'We're all right about Summers?'

'Won't lay a hand on him, you've got my word.'

Bland swallowed down some more lager, belched, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'Need a lift back into town?'

Elder shook his head. 'It's a nice enough day, I'll walk.'

Bland followed him through to the front door. 'Where did you get this address?' he asked.

Elder hesitated. 'Maureen Prior.'

'Wasting your time there,' Bland leered. 'Had it sewn up when she was seventeen. I can put you in touch with several blokes counted the stitches, if you like.'

Elder had to restrain himself from thumping him hard.

31

The custody sergeant made Katherine sign for the contents of her pockets and her purse. As soon as she and Elder were outside, she began to walk away.

'Wait. Katherine, just wait,' Elder said.

'What for?'

'We need to talk.'

'I don't.'

He took hold of her arm and she shook him off. 'You need to talk, phone the Samaritans. See a shrink.' Anger blazed in her eyes. 'I did. See what a lot of bloody good it did me.'

He stood and watched as she strode towards the far pavement, forcing the traffic to swerve and brake: one moment she was walking past the corner of the Circus and then she was lost to sight.

He had a good guess where she would go and it wasn't home.

Don't rock the boat, Bland had asked him, leave Rob Summers alone, leave him to us. The curtains at the front of the house in Sneinton were drawn again, the same ginger-and-white cat sitting on the window ledge alongside the door. When Summers answered it, Elder pushed him back into the hall.

'Something you forgot to tell me,' Elder said. 'Left off your CV. Teaching, writing poetry, the odd story. Somehow you left out the fact you deal drugs on the side.'

'She's not here,' Summers said, 'if that's what you're thinking.'

'Of course she's bloody here.'

'All right. But she's upstairs, lying down. She's exhausted, right. Worn out.'

'Whose fault's that?'

'She's taken something to help her sleep.'

'No need to ask where she got that from.'

Summers shook his head. 'Come though here and sit down. Or do you want to stand yelling in the hall?'

The room was the same jumble as before, the same sweet afterwash of cannabis in the air. Summers switched on the stereo, but turned the volume low.

'Okay,' Elder said, 'start talking.'

Summers retrieved a packet of Rizla papers and a tin of Old Holborn from one of the shelves and began rolling himself a cigarette. 'When I was at Uni I traded a little dope, right. Mostly to friends. It's no secret.'

'You were arrested. Charged.'

'Someone ratted me out.'

'Some honest citizen.'

'Some creep.'

'You were found guilty.'

'Of possession.'

'Still a crime last time I looked.'

'Come on,' Summers said. 'A few ounces of cannabis resin. These days all that'd get you would be a nod and a wink, keep it out of sight.'

'And you got what? A suspended sentence? Probation?'

'Something like that.'

'But that's not all.'

'I don't…' For a moment, Summers seemed genuinely confused. Then, shaking his head. 'Jesus, you're dredging that back up?'

'Assault, wasn't it?'

'Affray. A demo on the university campus. Some arse-hole American right-wing Christian anti-abortionist coming to speak at the Student Union. I'm just sorry I didn't get in a few good punches while I had the chance. He's probably in some think-tank now, advising Bush on social policy.'

'And you're what?'

'We've just been through all that.'

'As much as five grams of heroin, more than enough for personal use.'

Summers shook his head, more emphatically this time. 'Not mine.'

'You saying it was Katherine's? Is that what you're telling me?' Elder's voice reverberated in the confines of the room. 'You're saying she's on heroin now?'

'Of course she's not.'

'Because if she is, I'll know who turned her on.'

'Relax, she's not. She won't go near the stuff.'

'Then how did it get into her bag?'

'I don't know. We were at a party the night before.'

'And this was what? Somebody's idea of a joke? A party bag? Smarties and a piece of cake, three balloons and a stash of H?'

'I don't know. Maybe it was a mistake.'

'A mistake?'

'All right, all right. More likely, someone trying to set me up.'

'And why would they do that?'

'Look,' Summers said. His roll-up had gone out and he lit it again. 'Believe this or not, it's up to you. Eighteen months or so ago, I was stopped in the street. Stop and search, right? Coming down through Hockley. Late at night. Happens all the time. Well, you know. You should. Two blokes in plain clothes, Drug Squad or so they said. Of course, they didn't find anything, there wasn't anything to find.' A few stray ends of tobacco flaring up from his cigarette. 'Maybe I was a little mouthy, I don't know. Whatever reason, it put a hair up their arse. Been on my case ever since. Oh, not all the time, every day. Just once in a while, when they've got nothing better to do. Pull me over, pat me down. Reason to believe… you know the drill.'

'That's why you take precautions.'

'That's why I'm clean.'

'The reason you make sure you're not caught carrying your own stuff.'

'There is no stuff.'

'No?'

'No.'

'This place stinks like a cafe on some backstreet in Amsterdam.'

Summers threw back his head and laughed. 'I'll have to take your word on that.'

Elder reached forward quickly and took hold of Summers's arm between elbow and wrist. 'I don't give a damn what you do, how much skank and scag and shit you shift. But you get my daughter involved once more, any way at all, and I'll see you pay. That understood?'

'Let me fucking go,' Summers hissed.

Elder increased the force of his grip and then pulled his hand away.

'I mean it. If Katherine ever gets into trouble again because of you, I'll be back. And you'll regret you ever saw the light of day.'

* * *

An hour later, he was on the motorway, heading south.

32

Karen woke before the alarm and lay there listening to the wind rattle the windows and the occasional vehicle going past on the wet road outside; once, twice, she turned over, pulling the covers higher, trying for another ten minutes' sleep, but it wasn't to be. Sooner or later she would have to brave the first cold journey to the bathroom, the shower.

'What's the matter with you, child?' her father had said when he'd visited. 'All this promotion, chief inspector now, and you're still content to live like this.'

Child! She wondered if she would ever reach an age when he ceased, automatically, to call her that? Only when and if, she supposed, she had a child of her own. But there was some truth in what he said, she could afford to move, a bigger flat, bigger mortgage, but where would she move to? And why?

She was happy here. The damned cold aside. What she should do, she told herself for the thousandth time, was pay to have those old windows, which had been there since the days of Methuselah, taken out and new, double-glazed ones put in. Sort out the damp. Get the central heating overhauled, radiators with individual thermostats attached. Radiators, for God's sake, that worked.

In the bathroom she splashed cold water into her face, shivered, and squeezed toothpaste on to her brush.

One reason she didn't do these things, she knew, was the inevitable hassle and disruption. Finding a building firm that wasn't going to mess her around or, worse, rip her off, was the first thing; workmen who would actually turn up to time and do the job until it was finished, instead of the usual two days here, two days there, now you see them, now you don't; the place left looking like a tip while they juggle jobs all over half of London. Someone you could trust.

Karen rinsed her mouth, spat, wiped her face on the towel and sat down on the closed toilet lid.

Someone you could trust.

Someone who would have access to your home, your things; who was adept at climbing in and out, gaining entry, scaling walls and scaffolding.

She was thinking of Steven Kennet, broad-faced, smiling.

Now you know why I lied.

No, she thought, standing up and switching on the shower. Not yet they didn't.

As the water ran over her, bouncing off her shoulders and the back of her neck, she ran her mind back over what she had learned about the possible break-in to Maddy Birch's flat. Nothing taken, barely disturbed, just a sense that someone had been there.

Karen reached for the shower gel.

Yesterday there had been- a message saying that Vanessa Taylor had called, but she'd been too busy to ring back. She would try this morning before the day took hold. A short while later she was dry and partly dressed and spooning coffee grounds into the pot. Not so many minutes past six o'clock.

* * *

Elder had contacted Karen from Nottingham, explaining the reason for his absence in as little detail as possible, the bare bones. Back inside the building now, he opted for the stairs instead of the lift and was puffing slightly by the time he reached the fourth floor.

'How is she, Frank?' Karen asked immediately. 'Your daughter?'

Elder hunched his shoulders. 'Good as can be expected.'

He looked tired, she thought; heavy round the eyes.

'You talked to Kennet again?' Elder asked.

Karen nodded. 'We pushed him back and forth about Maddy; this most recent woman, Jennifer. Nothing. Nothing we could use. Oh, sometimes you got the feeling he was close to showing us a little, giving something away, but then he'd clam up. As if he was teasing us almost. Enjoying it.' She shook her head. 'By the time we finally kicked him loose I was with Mike, wanting to smack him in the face.'

'Not enough to hold him?'

'Not really. No.'

'No chance of a search warrant then? Turn his place over, see what we can find?'

'Not without something more solid. Conjecture, that's what the magistrate would say. Supposition. No reasonable grounds.'

'And what do you think?'

'I think he's still our best shot.'

'Denison's not been able to shake anything out about Loftus?'

'Not a thing.'

Karen unwrapped a mint and offered one to Elder, who shook his head. 'I spoke to Vanessa Taylor earlier,' she said. 'A couple of nights ago, she thinks there was someone hanging around outside her flat.'

Elder sat forward sharply. 'She thinks or she knows?'

'She can't be certain, it was dark. One minute he was there, the next he'd gone. No chance of a description, anything like that. If it hadn't been for what happened to Maddy, I doubt she'd have even bothered getting in touch. Her flat, it's not far from where Maddy Birch used to live.'

'You've informed the local nick?'

'Vanessa had done that herself. I checked. They've promised to have a car drive by at intervals through the night; increase foot patrols.'

'How did she sound? Vanessa?'

'A little nervous. Concerned not to be wasting my time.'

'You think one of us should go and talk to her?'

'I'm not sure what she could tell you that's any different. My guess, in the circumstances, it's her imagination working overtime.'

Karen pushed her chair back away from the desk and stretched her long legs. 'I thought I'd drive out and see Estelle Cooper. Talk to her on my own this time. See if I can't get her to loosen up a little. Might learn something useful.'

'Woman to woman,' Elder said.

A smile passed across Karen's face.

'What?'

'Shirley Brown, Stax, '74. I used to play it all the time.'

Elder had no idea what she was talking about.

* * *

When Karen arrived in Hadley Wood, Estelle Cooper wasn't at home. The children, according to one of the neighbours, were having a day off school. An inset day, isn't that what it was called nowadays? Estelle had taken them out for the day. Somewhere in London. The Science Museum?

Karen returned to her car. She would try again after the weekend; no sense trying to talk to Estelle when there was a chance her family were around. What she wanted was Estelle Cooper alone.

* * *

Maybe, Vanessa thought, she just hadn't been in the mood. Coke and a bucket of popcorn. The Odeon, Camden Town. Wind down. Relax. Love, Actually. They had to be kidding, right? And of course, sitting there on her own hadn't helped. She remembered when she'd been to see Bridget Jones's Diary with Maddy. How they'd loved it, every minute, right down to the slushy ending. Practically wet themselves with laughter.

Poor Maddy. God, she missed her!

Somehow she didn't fancy the Tube home and waited fifteen minutes for a bus instead, her and a couple of dozen others, half of them hungry from the pub and scarfing their way through burgers or chicken chow mein, the stink of onions, kebabs and hot sauce, fast-food litter swirling round their feet. She was just about to give it up as a bad job, walk back to the Tube station after all, when there it was at last, veering towards them from the lights, a 134.

The lower deck was crowded and she went up on top, a spare seat beside the window near the back, and as she sat down a man sat next to her, leaning for a moment quite heavily against her as the bus lurched away.

'Sorry,' he said, and then, 'Vanessa? It is Vanessa, isn't it? Almost didn't recognise you.' A quick, apologetic smile. 'Miles away.'

He was holding out his hand.

'Steve. Steve Kennet. I used to —'

'I know, I know.'

'Haven't seen you since… must be ages. Couple of years, at least.'

Vanessa nodded and said nothing. One of the last times she'd seen Steve Kennet, one evening in the pub, when Maddy had gone to the loo he'd leaned across and said, 'How about meeting up one night, just the two of us? What d'you think?' Afterwards he'd tried to pass it off as a joke, but she'd never been sure.

'Terrible, wasn't it?' he said now. 'What happened to Maddy. Couldn't believe it when I first heard. You don't think, do you? Someone you know.'

Vanessa shook her head.

'So, anyway, where've you been?' Perkier now. 'Tonight, I mean. Not working, I hope?'

'Cinema.'

'Anything good?'

'Not really.'

'Pirates of the Caribbean,' Kennet said. 'You seen that?'

'No.'

'It's good. A laugh, you know?'

'That what you saw tonight?'

'Me? No. Just out for a drink, few beers.'

Vanessa looked out of the window. They were moving slowly along Kentish Town Road, passing close to where she worked. Superimposed on the upper storeys of buildings she could see Kennet's reflection, the thickness of his hair, the collar of his leather jacket turned up against his neck, his eyes watching her. At Tufnell Park she made as if to get up.

'This isn't your stop,' Kennet said.

'Isn't it?'

'Not unless you've moved.'

'How do you know where I live, anyway?'

'We walked past there one night, remember? You and Maddy and me. Going back to her place. That's my street, you said.'

'Well,' Vanessa said, standing. 'Not any more.'

He swung his legs out into the aisle, leaving just enough room to let her pass.

'I'll get off if you like. Walk you home.'

'Don't bother.'

She just made it down the stairs before the doors closed. She stopped herself from looking back up at the bus as it drew away, knowing she would see his face at the window, looking down. She had bought herself a good twenty-minute walk and why? Because she'd been uncomfortable sitting pressed up next to him, certain that any moment he would say something she didn't want to hear, a proposition of some kind?

Two-thirds of the way along Junction Road, she turned right down St John's Grove, cutting through. At the end of her own street, she hesitated, then quickened her pace; it was only as she neared the short path leading to her front door that it occurred to her Kennet might have been the man standing in shadow outside her house a few nights before.

The keys slipped from her hand.

Her skin froze.

Only with the door finally open, did she turn.

Nothing, nobody there.

Vanessa, she said to herself, for God's sake get a grip.

In bed less than fifteen minutes later, she lay listening to each sound; another hour almost before she finally drifted off to sleep.

33

The early rain clouds had disappeared, leaving the sky above Primrose Hill a clear, crystal winter blue, the light glinting off the roof of the mosque at the edge of Regent's Park below. From his vantage point near the top, Elder watched Robert Framlingham striding up from Prince Albeit Road like a landowner out to survey the vastness of his acreage and his EC subsidy. Framlingham wearing his Barbour jacket and a pair of softly polished, hand-stitched brogues.

'Frank, good to see you.' His grip was firm and warm. 'Sorry if I'm a couple of minutes late.'

'Sit or stroll?' Elder said.

'Oh, stroll I think, don't you? You can fill me in as we go.'

For the best part of a circuit Elder talked and Framlingham was mostly content to listen, the Hill busy with dog walkers, young mums and the ubiquitous au pairs, students and skivers and OAPs, all making the most of the morning sun.

When Elder had finished, they continued to walk for a while in silence, Framlingham running it all over in his mind.

'Kennet, your mind's pretty made up then?'

'Not necessarily.'

'And Shields? What about her?'

'There's not a lot else for her to latch on to.'

'So far, Frank. So far.' Framlingham paused to ease something off the sole of his shoe. 'That business with Mallory and Repton, that young PC in the car. I wonder if I'd let that go for nothing, after all.'

Elder fixed him with a look. 'You know something that I don't.'

Framlingham allowed a smile to spread slowly across his face. 'A good deal, Frank, a good deal. And much of no conceivable use to man or beast.' He rested his hand for a moment on Elder's arm. 'All I'm saying, don't lose sight of the bigger picture.'

They shook hands.

'Your daughter, Frank. I heard just a little. I'm sorry. If ever there's anything I can do.'

A wave of the hand and he was on his way.

* * *

The Brent Cross shopping centre was just off the North Circular Road, no more than ten minutes in the car from where Elder was staying. By mid-morning, the car parks were close to full.

Vicki Wilson was standing in the centre aisle, between Next and Hennes, in front of a brightly coloured demonstration stand promising tomorrow's mobile phone today. Make-up picture-book perfect, Vicki was smiling her best professional smile and glad-handing leaflets extolling the virtues of a technological marvel which allowed you to text, take and transmit photographs, download video clips from current movie releases and the top ten singles, watch the latest Premiership goals, surf the Internet and, if time allowed, make the occasional phone call. She was wearing a short pencil skirt and a T-shirt with the manufacturer's logo snug across her breasts.

She'd been there since ten, the best part of an hour, five more to go, and her feet in those stupid shoes were aching already.

Oh, Christ, she thought, when Elder approached. Another sad bastard, can't take his eyes off my tits. Elder had walked past her once slowly, turned and come back around. When he got closer, she revised her opinion. Shit. It's only the fucking law.

'Vicki Wilson?'

'If you're asking that you already know the answer.' Her voice was sharp, east London-edged, Goodmayes or Dagenham.

'Frank Elder.'

'Here.' She pushed a leaflet into his hand.

'What time d'you get a break?' Elder asked.

'Not soon enough.'

'How about a cup of coffee?'

'Now?'

Elder tried a tentative smile. 'Why not?'

'Just hang on a minute.'

She fanned the leaflets out across the table behind her, lifted a shiny green jacket from the back of the chair and slipped it across her shoulders, picked up her bag and walked with Elder towards the lift by the corner of Marks & Spencer.

They sat at the end of a row of small tables overlooking one of the aisles; below, shoppers wandered past oases of green-leaved plants, plastic and real, prospering equally beneath a glass roof.

With a small sigh, Vicki eased off her high-heeled shoes. Touch a fingernail to her face, Elder thought, and it would glide like a skater on fresh ice.

'How d'you know where I was?' she asked.

'Your agency.'

'Wonder they didn't give you my address and chest measurements while they were about it.'

'They did.'

'You're fuckin' kidding.'

'Maybe not the chest measurement.'

Vicki tossed her head. 'Coppers, you're all the bloody same.'

Elder held his tongue.

'Jimmy, innit? That's what you want to talk about.'

'Jimmy?'

'James William Grant. Jimmy. It was what he liked to be called. By his friends.' Vicki stirred some of the chocolate from the top of her cappuccino into the froth and brought the spoon to her mouth. 'Come to make sure I've done what I was told, I suppose.'

'What you were told?'

'Keep my mouth shut, of course.'

'What about?'

'I don't know, do I? Fuckin' everything.'

'Who told you this?'

'I don't know, do I? Some copper, plain clothes.'

'Describe him.'

Vicki leaned back in her chair. 'Forties, maybe. Smart. Bit old-fashioned, but smart. Joking with it. Not heavy. But all with that look in his eye. Like it wouldn't pay to cross him, you know?'

'He have a name?'

'Not for me. I'd seen him, though. Seen him before. After what… after they killed Jimmy. Talking to the one who shot him. That bastard.'

'How do you know he was the one?'

'Came over and told me, didn't he? That morning. Right after it happened. I was sitting in the back of this police car, right? Didn't really know what was going on. 'Cept I knew Jimmy was dead. I knew that. Anyway, he come over, pointed his finger, right in my face, and made this sort of popping sound. Like a little kid, you know, pretending he's got a gun. That's the finger, he said, pulled the trigger. Put him away. And then he laughed and wandered off. Mallory. I asked this copper in the car and he told me. Detective Superintendent Mallory.'

'And this detective, the one who came to see you, him and Mallory they were together?'

'Yeah, I said so, didn't I?'

'Tell me again what he said to you.'

'I already told you.'

'Tell me again.'

'"Anyone comes round asking questions, anyone, you don't know a thing.'" She lifted her cup from its saucer but didn't drink. 'No one has. Till now. And if they had, I don't know anything anyway. Jimmy, he never talked about… you know… what he did. Not really. Joke about it sometimes, bragging I suppose. This big score or that, but that was all. Nothing more. Just, sometimes he was there, sometimes he wasn't. Besides, I hadn't known him very long. And I liked him, you know. He was fun.' She looked at Elder, moist-eyed. 'Why did they have to kill him?'

'I don't know.'

'He always said whatever he did, he'd be okay. Said they wouldn't touch him, you know?'

'They?'

'The police, I suppose.'

'He didn't say any more? Give any names?'

'Said he had someone looking out for him, that's all. All-round protection. Like garlic. You know, keeping away vampires.' She shook her head. 'Wasn't true, was it? Not in the end.'

Elder drank the rest of his coffee.

Vicki renewed her lipstick, leaving a near-perfect impression on a folded napkin. 'I'd better be getting back to this sodding job.'

'Here. Take this.' Elder took a notebook from his pocket, wrote down his mobile number and tore out the page. 'If you do think of anything, call me.'

Vicki hesitated, then pushed the piece of paper down into the side pocket of her bag. 'Thanks for the coffee.'

'Any time.'

Elder walked with her back to her stand, where a covey of small kids, having strewn half of her leaflets across the floor, was misspelling obscenities on the white spaces of the painted board.

'Fuck off!' she shouted. 'The lot of you.'

While they jeered and whistled and offered her the finger, Elder bent down and helped retrieve the leaflets from the ground. Then he wished her well and carried on to where he'd parked his car.

* * *

'I could be back over your way Sunday evening,' Framlingham said in response to Elder's call. 'Whitestone Pond. Near the old Jack Straw's Castle. I'll be parked on the north side. Seven, give or take?'

It was dark when Elder arrived, Framlingham sitting with the car window wound part-way down, listening to a broadcast of Idomeneo from the Met.

At the aria's end, he turned the radio down to listen, Elder sitting in the passenger seat alongside.

'Of course,' he said, when Elder had finished, 'he could have been lying to her. Vicki, is that her name? Mouthing off.'

'Why would he do that?'

'Wanting to impress?'

'I don't think so.'

'Grant had someone in his pocket, is that what you're thinking?'

'Either that or the other way round.'

'He was an informer, you mean?'

'It's possible.'

'He'd be high-grade if he were. Top drawer. Not some snivelling menial of the toerag variety.'

'How easy would it be to find out?'

A smile passed across Framlingham's face. 'How difficult, you mean. That stature of informant - Covert Human Intelligence Sources, as we're supposed to call them nowadays. CHIS, can you believe that? If it hasn't got a fucking acronym, it doesn't exist. But that's by the by. All that information's kept on a closed file at the Yard. Strictly need-to-know. Senior officers only. And I mean senior.'

'That would include you, surely?'

'Given good reason, Frank, it might.'

'You'll try then?'

'It may take a day or two, but I'll try.' The moon broke through the clouds as Elder skirted the pond, heading back the way he had come.

34

There were times when Estelle thought it was only the garden which kept her sane. If sane was what she was. Her friends, of course, had she really had any friends, would have said, Darling, you've got the children, and while it was true that they still accounted for a large part of her life, they were no longer hers in the way they used to be. Jake acted and sounded more like his father every day, and Amber, at five and a half, was lost much of the time in a world of ballet shoes and tutus and the right shade of pink for her cardigan, the right shade of blue for the band which held back her hair.

As for Gerald, he was, of course, the perfect gentleman, so polite at times it was as if he'd forgotten who she was and imagined her some distant cousin come to stay. He left early each weekday for the City and often returned late, occasionally phoning to say he was sorry but he'd have to miss dinner, and if that happened sometimes he'd bring her flowers and a little note. Once she found in one of his pockets a card advertising a members-only gentlemen's club in Soho and she'd been careful to put it back, pleased that he'd found somewhere to relax and unwind. If he asked her for sex now it was once a month at most, the light always out beforehand; when his leg slid over hers in the way she recognised, she would put her bookmark carefully in place and excuse herself to the bathroom; quite often, by the time she returned, he would be asleep and snoring.

Estelle stood now by one of the rose beds, late morning, wearing an old green woollen coat, slacks tucked down inside calf-length Wellington boots, a pair of scuffed brown gardening gloves on her hands. The trouble with January, it was too late to plant more bulbs, too early for much else; all she could usefully do was tidy up the beds, cover the mess left by one or other of next door's cats, nip off the odd brown leaf with her secateurs.

She thought how ugly the rose bushes were, pruned back, their hard green stems poking up blind into the air.

Somewhere in her mind she heard the car approaching, then a silence, then, faint, the front doorbell. If the door to the conservatory had not been open, it was unlikely she would have heard it at all. Not that it mattered: whoever it was, another of those smartly dressed Mormons or someone collecting for the church bring-and-buy, they would soon lose patience and go away.

Nearer the bottom of the garden a sparrow was giving itself a bath in the dirt, its wings spraying up a film of loose soil. Helped by the cold air overnight, the ground had dried out quite well; the sky today a washed-out blue-grey smeared with cloud and the temperature in single figures, eight or nine at most.

The side gate clicked open and when Estelle turned she saw the black detective who had, for a moment, held her hand. Tall, she hadn't remembered her as quite so tall; as tall as Gerald she could swear, the heels of her boots making sharp indentations in the lawn.

'Mrs Cooper. Estelle. How are you this morning?' Smiling, smiling, smiling. 'I rang the bell, but I suppose being in the garden, you didn't hear. I hope you didn't mind me finding my own way round?'

'No, of course not. Not at all.' What else was she supposed to say?

'You do all this yourself?' Karen Shields said, looking round. Though in all probability meant as praise, to Estelle's ears it came out more as accusation. Is this all you do with your life?

'Gerald helps with the heavy work sometimes, that is, he used to. And Jake, now he's older, he —' Abruptly she stopped: why was she saying this?

'Estelle?' Karen asked gently. 'Are you okay?'

She looked up at her, that large commanding face with those red, red lips. Beautiful, was that the word?

'Estelle?'

'Mm? Yes, of course.' Of course what? She didn't know.

'Why don't we go inside?' Karen said. 'That cup of tea you offered last time. Something to keep out the cold.' Walking back towards the house, she took Estelle's arm.

* * *

They sat in the conservatory, the door now closed, the corners of glass beginning to mist over. Here and there a flower, brick red or butterfly white, still clung to one or other of the geraniums, their upper leaves healthy and green, those gathered round the base shrivelled brown and paper thin.

Tea was in broad-brimmed white cups with a gold line faded around the rim; the china teapot in its cosy sat on a tray with a matching milk jug and sugar bowl, though the sugar remained untouched. Rich tea biscuits fanned out on a plate. Paper serviettes.

Karen took her time, listening while Estelle pecked at conversation like a bird, waiting for what might be an opportune moment.

In the end she dropped her question into the silence, like a pebble falling slowly into the well.

'Estelle, I know this will be difficult, and if there was any way I could avoid asking you I would, but when you said there were things Steven Kennet wanted you to do, things you felt uncomfortable with, I need you to tell me what they were.'

Estelle's hand shook and tea spilled from her cup into her saucer and from there into her lap. 'How silly of me,' she said, dabbing at it with her serviette. 'I'm sorry, what was it you said?'

* * *

When Karen left an hour and a half later, her face was rigid with anger and hurt, her mind alert. During the course of their relationship Kennet had persuaded Estelle to take part in a number of scenarios in which they played out the act of rape. Sometimes where they were living, sometimes in cheap hotels, and sometimes, after dark, on Wimbledon Common and Hampstead Heath.

In those instances, what he had her do, against her will, was walk along the path pretending to be lost, whereupon he would appear as the apparently kind stranger, offering to show her the way. Or sometimes, wearing a mask, he would jump out at her, grab her arms and throw her to the ground.

Towards the end of the relationship, when she wouldn't agree to play along, he raped her for real.

Karen called Mike Ramsden from her car before switching on the ignition and slotting the seat-belt buckle into place.

'Mike? I want Kennet back in for questioning. ASAP. Drag him down off a roof if you have to.'

One last glance back at the house before she drove away.

* * *

Steven Kennet was nowhere to be found. He had failed to show up for work that morning, no reason, no excuse. His home address was a flat off Seven Sisters Road, between Finsbury Park and the Nag's Head. No reply. One of the couple who lived above said they didn't think he'd been home last night. Came in and drove away. A van. 5 cwt Ford van, dirty white. They hadn't seen him that morning either.

'Keep looking,' Karen said. 'Keep a watch on the flat. Let's get a description ready for circulation, details of the van.'

* * *

When Tara's mother delivered Jake and Amber back home just before four and there was seemingly no one in, she simply bundled them back into the Toyota and drove them along to number 35 with Tara, where she gave them all chocolate biscuits and juice and then, after they'd played together and the Cooper telephone remained unanswered, some pasta with M & S tomato sauce.

As far as Jake and Amber were concerned it was an unlooked-for treat.

Tara's dad went to the house as soon as he came home and knocked loud upon the door; he let himself into the garden by the side passage and found the conservatory locked, the whole house in darkness. Shouting yielded nothing.

They thought of phoning the police, but decided to wait until Gerald Cooper arrived from work, at least he would have a key.

Gerald, as it happened, caught the early train and was back by seven, to find a note from Tara's parents pinned to the door. He thought he'd have a quick G & T before going to fetch the kids. God knows where Estelle had gone off to, silly mare.

He found her in the lounge, hanging from the chandelier, the kitchen stool she'd brought in to stand on kicked away.

35

Elder read bad news in Karen's face before hearing the words.

'Shit,' he said. And then, 'Poor woman.'

'Yes.'

'How are you feeling?'

'How am I? What difference does that make? She's dead, for Christ's sake.'

'You went to see her yesterday? Spoke to her?'

A laugh choked from Karen's throat. 'Yes, I spoke to her.'

'How was she?'

She looked at him as if he were some kind of fool. 'How do you think she was? I cosied up to her and calmed her down and made her tell me about that arsehole Kennet raping her.'

'He raped her?'

'He raped her. Sometimes in some kind of sick game she went along with and sometimes for real.'

'She told you this?'

'She told me this and then I left her alone, alone in that house with her gardening gloves and her fancy fucking teacups and her fake fucking chandelier.' There were tears running freely down Karen's face. 'And yesterday afternoon when I wanted that bastard brought back in, he'd fucking disappeared.'

Elder eased her chair away from the desk. 'Sit down a minute.'

'I don't want to sit down.'

'Sit down, have some coffee, let's talk this through.'

'I don't want any fucking coffee either.'

'Karen.'

'What?'

'Sit down. Come on.' Firmly but gently, he took hold of her arm. 'Let's sit.'

Karen sighed and did as she was told; she found a tissue in her bag, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. Elder pulled another chair round from the other side of the desk and sat opposite her, close enough to have held her hand.

'It's not your fault, you know.'

'Oh, no. Yes, it is. Of course it is.'

'You didn't do any of those things to her.'

'I made her talk about them, think about them.'

'You were doing your job.'

'My fucking job.'

'Besides, you think they weren't on her mind, all the time? You think she could forget? Ever?' He was thinking of Katherine, standing in Rob Summers's house, back before Christmas. Dad, I'm never going to be like I was before. 'It's Kennet,' Elder said. 'That's who's to blame. What we've got to do is make sure he doesn't do it again. Make sure he pays.'

* * *

Jennifer McLaughlin was serving a customer with something for a sore throat and sympathising: a lot of it about this time of the year. Elder went in and begged ten minutes of her time. Together with Karen they walked along the Broadway, Jennifer taking the opportunity for a cigarette; Karen doing her best to inhale but getting only petrol fumes instead. Starbucks was full so they went on past the circle to Pizza Express.

Karen began her questions as delicately as she could, but Jennifer, a good decade and a half younger than Estelle Cooper by age, and several generations by attitude and experience, was largely unfazed.

'We quarrelled about it, yes, course we did. All that play-acting stuff. Don't know now why I went along with it as long as I did.' Pausing, she looked Karen in the eye. 'Except, well, it was exciting at first. You know? You know what I mean? It's only afterwards you think, God, what was going on there at all?'

'And when you fell out on holiday,' Karen said, 'is that really what it was about? More of the same?'

Averting her face, Jennifer slowly released a wavering line of smoke. 'Yes,' she said.

'We'd like you to come in and make a statement,' Karen said. 'I presume that's okay?'

'Now? You don't mean now?'

'Later this afternoon would be fine. When you finish work. We can give you a lift both ways if that would help.'

'All right.' She looked at them again, first one and then the other. 'He has done something this time, hasn't he? Something serious.'

'It's possible,' Elder said.

'Dear God,' Jennifer whispered and crossed herself.

'If it were necessary,' Karen said, 'you'd be prepared to give evidence in court?'

'Oh, yes.'

'You don't know the names of anyone Steven went out with before, do you?' Elder asked. 'We'd like to talk to as many as we can.'

Jennifer reached for her pack of cigarettes. 'I don't know, I might. If I think about it, you know. Names he's mentioned. Not above a bit of bragging, as you might imagine. But offhand there's only that —' The cigarettes slipped from her hand. 'Only that policewoman, the one who was killed. Oh, God. Oh, my good God!' A sudden shiver running through her, every vestige of colour bleached from her face.

* * *

In the end, Jennifer McLaughlin came up with three names, going back, she thought, a good few years. One might have been working in Waitrose, another a nurse. All were — or had been — north London-based.

'You and me then, Frank,' Karen said. 'Bit of old-fashioned legwork. What do you say?'

36

Elder picked up the CD box and glanced at the front: a round-faced black man with short cropped hair, saxophone balanced over one shoulder, hands together as though in prayer. 'Stanley Turrentine,' Elder called towards the kitchen. 'Should I have heard of him?'

No reply.

Saxophone and what? Organ?

'Sorry,' Karen said, carrying through two newly rinsed glasses and the bottle of Aberlour she'd spotted on special offer on their visit to Waitrose. 'You said something but I couldn't hear what.'

'Turrentine, is he famous? '

'Celebrity-famous or the jazz-cognoscente kind?'

'Either.'

'Maybe a little bit of the latter.' She poured two quite generous measures of Scotch, handed one to Elder, and raised her own. 'Cheers.'

'Cheers.'

'I saw him a few years back at the Jazz Cafe.' Karen smiled. 'Back in my clubbing days.'

'Now you sit around in the evenings knitting and doing crochet.'

'Something like that.'

The whisky was good, warm on the back of the throat. They'd eaten at a place on Upper Street, Turkish; had to stand in line twenty minutes or so for a table, but it had been worth it. Lamb kebabs and rice, hot sauce, a bottle of red wine.

'He played this,' Karen said, listening. 'You know it?'

Elder shook his head.

'"God Bless the Child".' She sang a few bars.

* * *

During the course of a long afternoon they'd managed to track down and talk to two of the three women whose names Jennifer McLaughlin had remembered.

Maria Upson, a nurse working in Orthopaedics at the Middlesex, had confirmed pretty much everything about Kennet they either knew or suspected; she'd gone out with him for nine months and now regretted almost every minute of the last six.

'Men,' she said, with a not totally disparaging glance towards Elder, 'get to know them, or think you do, let them slip under your guard and they either turn into five-year-olds who want cuddling and cosseting or else they're Fred West.' She didn't need to add which Kennet resembled most.

Lily Patrick was a trainee manager at Waitrose and the picture she painted was different: Kennet was kind, funny, considerate. Okay, he did once climb through her second-floor bedroom window in the middle of the night and scare the wits out of her, but that was to deliver a dozen red roses and some red balloons on her birthday. 'You know, like the Milk Tray man.'

'And sexually,' Karen said, 'he didn't ever suggest anything you felt uncomfortable with?'

'No.' Blushing, but just a little. 'What kind of thing?'

'Games, acting out fantasies. That kind of thing.'

'We did act out a bit of Romeo and Juliet once. You know, the balcony scene. After we'd seen the movie.'

'I was thinking of something a bit less romantic'

'I don't understand.'

'Rape fantasies, perhaps.'

'Rape?' Lily wiped her hands down the front of her Waitrose overall, as if they were suddenly sullied. 'You're joking, right? This is some kind of a joke?'

'No.'

'You've got to be.'

'It's something people do, Lily. Fantasies like that. Ordinary people.'

'Not people I know. Not Steve.'

Elder had been thinking about a song by Dire Straits Joanne had played over and over. He was trying to recall their fantasy life, his former wife and himself, if they ever had one.

'If it was so good,' he said, 'the relationship with Steve, how come you stopped seeing him?'

'He went away, didn't he? The Middle East somewhere. For work. This big project, rebuilding a hospital I think it was. Kuwait, maybe. Somewhere they couldn't drink, I know that. No alcohol. I remember Steve joking about it, how he'd have to be careful which airline he was flying with, in case, you know, it was dry. As much free booze as I can get, he said, before the drought.'

'He liked a drink then?' Karen said.

'No more than anyone.'

'And you haven't seen him since then? What was it? Eighteen months ago?'

'Two years nearly. No. He's still there, isn't he? Living there.'

'You've heard from him then?'

'No. Not really. Not since Christmas, Christmas before last.'

They'd thanked her for her time and left her looking wistful and not a little sad.

The third name — Jane Forest — they were still waiting to track down.

* * *

Karen was sitting on a low-backed two-seater settee, orange with purple and red cushions; Elder opposite in a grey wicker chair. The music was still playing over sounds of traffic and muffled voices from the street.

'Close on two years ago,' Karen said, 'according to Lily Patrick, Kennet went out to Kuwait.' She shook her head. 'I don't think so. Eighteen months ago, or not so long after, he started seeing Jennifer McLaughlin.'

'During which time he was also seeing Maddy Birch.'

'And, presumably, shopping at Tesco instead of Waitrose.'

'Seems to be a pattern,' Elder said.

'So what's the betting while he was going out with Miss Waitrose, he was seeing someone else then too?'

'Somebody whose fantasies ran on the rougher side of Cadbury's Milk Tray and Romeo and Juliet.'

'Most likely. Though even Juliet died in the end.'

'So did Romeo, remember?' Elder sipped his Scotch. 'If I knew my Shakespeare better, I could probably come up with someone more like Kennet than Romeo.'

'Othello,' Karen suggested. 'No, Iago.'

Elder had seen it once, Othello. When he was in the sixth form. The Grand in Leeds. A matinee. He could remember the teacher forever shushing them, then reading the riot act when they got back to the coach; remember the name of the girl he'd sat next to but not a lot about the play. Desdemona? A handkerchief?

'Wait, wait,' Karen said. 'Titus Andronicus.'

'Who?'

She laughed. 'I don't know. I just know there was a lot of blood.'

Stanley Turrentine seemed to have come to an end. It was comfortably quiet.

'I'm sorry about the other night,' Karen said after a while.

'The other night?'

'At your place. You must have thought I was being a bit of a tease.'

'No.'

'You didn't think I was coming on to you and then backing off?'

'I didn't think you were coming on to me at all.'

Karen threw back her head and laughed. 'God! I must be losing my touch.'

'No, it's me. Forgetting how to read the signs.'

'A little rusty?'

'Something like that.'

'Well,' she picked up the bottle of Scotch and tipped some into his glass, 'what you need is a little lubrication.' And then, aghast, 'I can't believe I just said that.'

'You didn't.'

'No, you're right.'

But he was smiling, smiling with his eyes, and though she wasn't certain, having got this far, she kissed him anyway. Once would have been okay, acceptable, within the limits of the situation, a point of some return, but it was more than once: his mouth, his neck, his cheek, his eyes. His hands on her body, her back, her thighs, her breasts. She pulled him towards her from the chair on to the floor. Oh God, they weren't going to do it on the floor? His fingers warm across her shoulder blades, his leg between hers. Some part of her mind flashing warnings. Her diaphragm was in its box in the bathroom, no condoms, and the chances of his having one were less than nil. As his thumb brushed her nipple she repositioned herself. Buttons and zips. She unbuckled his belt. Salt and sour in her mouth. Grabbing one of the cushions from the settee she raised herself up and touched herself between her legs. He kissed her there and there. Her heels drumming on his spine. If screams could only wake the dead.

Afterwards, they lay side by side. Somehow Karen had contrived to turn the music back on again. 'More Than You Know'. Elder was amazed at the colours of her skin, everything from dark chocolate to iron grey.

'I'm going to have a shower,' Karen said eventually, scrambling to her feet.

Elder lay there wondering what the time was, whether he'd be expected to stay the night. Whether he wanted to.

She came back five minutes later wearing a cotton robe, glass of water in hand, broad smile on her face.

'What?' Elder said.

'Wasn't so long ago, I could have got dressed up, really fit, put on my face, got myself down to the Funky Buddha, Sugar Reef, Chinawhite. Pulled some rising rap star or a brace of Premiership wannabes. And what do I end up with?' She laughed. 'Tired white meat.'

'Thanks. Thanks a lot.'

'My pleasure.'

'You've got a mouth on you, you know that.'

'You should know.'

Elder shook his head. 'Look, I should go.'

'Okay. You need a hand up off the floor?'

He looked at her to see if she were being serious and couldn't tell. When he was in the shower his mobile rang and Karen answered it.

'Here,' she said, handing it to him as, water off, he reached his hand around the shower curtain. 'A woman. Young.'

He knew it was Katherine before he heard her voice. 'Dad. I need to see you. It's important.'

'What about?'

'When I see you, okay?'

'All right, but I'm not sure when —'

'Dad, if it weren't urgent, I wouldn't have asked.'

He knew it was true.

'Tomorrow morning then,' Elder said. 'Nine thirty, ten?'

'Make it ten. The Castle. I'll meet you in the grounds.'

'Katherine —'

'Tomorrow.' And she finished the call.

'Trouble?' Karen asked once he was dressed. She was in the process of making coffee.

'I've got to go up to Nottingham tomorrow. My daughter again. I'll be back down as soon as I can.'

'Don't worry. We'll keep after Kennet. See if we can't trace this Jane Forest. Meantime, it's my turn to call you a cab, okay?'

Elder nodded. 'Okay.'

She kissed him at the door, nothing lingering. 'Not so tired,' she said, grinning. 'Just very white.'

37

It was a peerless winter's day. Elder had considered driving, but in the end had opted for the train. Not so much over an hour and a half, an hour and forty minutes, and he was in the centre of the city, walking past the canal and then the bus station, one edge of the Broad Marsh Centre taking him on to Lister Gate, Castle Gate and Maid Marian Way. The Castle sat on rock, not a child's idea of a castle with turrets and narrow windows and now-crumbling arches, the castle of Robin Hood and King John, sword fights and bows and arrows, but something more recent, more four-square and municipal.

The grounds were as neat and cared for as Elder remembered, the earth in the flower-beds newly turned, the wood of the bandstand looking as if it might have been given a fresh lick of paint, or maybe that was just the untrammelled winter sun, pale but warm enough to lift the chill.

Katherine was standing by the lower wall, leaning against the parapet, staring out. She turned her head as Elder approached, what looked like a man's fleece zipped up almost to the neck, trainers, baggy jeans.

Elder hesitated, bent to kiss her cheek and, as she turned her head aside, kissed the ragged crop of her hair instead.

'Not a bad morning,' he said, needing something to say. 'Nice coming up on the train. Bright, you know. Quick too. No sooner've you glanced at the paper, had a cup of that dreadful tea, than you're here.'

He was babbling.

There were the same dark patches around her eyes that he'd noticed before. The oversized fleece made her look undernourished and small. Unwell. Not so much more than a year ago she'd been running for her county, she'd been… He stopped himself, stopped the thought.

'Last night,' he said. 'You sounded worried.'

'Yeah, well… Let's walk. Can we just walk?'

They set off slowly along the path that would wind them, eventually, up to the Castle itself.

'You've got to promise me,' Katherine eventually began.

'Promise what?'

'You've just got to promise, that's all.'

'What?'

'That you won't snap your rag, get angry. Just let me … let me finish, okay?'

'All right.'

It was a while more before she began again. 'When you came up before, the heroin, it was Rob's, you were right. Well, not his exactly, he was holding it for someone. No, wait, wait. Remember what you said. Calm down, okay? Chill.' Katherine stopped, head down, arms hanging loose by her sides. 'I knew this was a bad idea.'

'No, it's fine,' Elder said. 'Go on, go on.'

They set off again, walking slowly.

'It was my fault, really stupid, if I'd kept my mouth shut we'd have got away with it, nothing would have happened. But once we were at the station and that bastard from the drug squad got involved…'

'Bland?'

'Yes. Him. He'd been on Rob's case for ages, picking him up for this and that, you know, threatening him. How they were going to find him with this huge stash in his possession, get him sent down for a long time. Never actually doing anything — I mean, he could have arrested him plenty of times for little things, but all he ever did was keep on needling him.'

Katherine stopped on the curve of the bend, looking back down towards the gate and over the town.

'Then, after last time, when you came round, he was there a few days later, half-six in the morning, him and some pal of his…'

'Eaglin?' Elder interrupted, recalling that Maureen had mentioned his name.

'I don't know. They didn't stop for much in the way of formal introductions. Turned the place upside down. Rob, he tried to stop them and they punched him, knocked him down and kicked him.'

'They had a warrant?'

'So they said.'

'You didn't see it?'

'I didn't see anything. Just crashing and shouting from upstairs while I was trying to see to Rob. He was bleeding from a gash to the head.'

'And this was when?'

'Two days ago. Monday.'

'What happened then?'

'They came back down, grins all over their rotten faces, waving this bag of crack cocaine. Got you, you bastard. Talk your way out of this one. Claimed they'd found it under the boards in the bedroom.'

'Is that where he kept it?'

'They'd planted it. It wasn't his.'

'Like the heroin in the car wasn't his.'

'No.'

'No? It's no use covering up for him, Kate…'

'I'm not. Not this time. Not about this. I mean…' Angling her head up towards the sky, down towards the ground, avoiding his eyes. 'I mean, that was where he kept stuff, yes, all right, sometimes, but not crack, he didn't deal crack, not ever, hardly ever, and honestly it wasn't his. It wasn't.'

There were tears running down into the hollows of her cheeks. While Elder fumbled in his pockets for a clean tissue, Katherine wiped her face with her sleeve.

'What happened after they arrested him?' Elder said.

'That's it, they didn't.'

'Why not?'

'Because they wanted him to make a deal.'

'What kind of deal?

'They wanted him to give them information.'

'About what?'

'What do you think?'

'Who was supplying him. Other dealers, maybe. I don't know.'

Katherine had started walking again. 'Suppliers, yes. If there was a safe house they used. That was what they seemed to want more than anything.'

'And he told them?'

'There wasn't a lot else he could do.'

They were at the high wall which overlooked Castle Boulevard, the canal and the Meadows. A small flock of birds, six or seven, too white almost to be pigeons, took off from the rock face and scattered out in a random curve before alighting on the roof of the Brewhouse Museum below.

'Rob gave them the address of this flat in Forest Fields, he didn't think they were still using it, it was all he could think of to do. Turns out they were. Bland and his mate went round just as it was getting dark. What we heard they got close on nine thousand in cash and God knows how much crack. H too. If they ever find out it was Rob gave them away, they'll kill him.'

'Where is he now?'

'In hiding.'

'As well as the money and drugs, Bland and Eaglin, did they make any arrests?'

'Not as far as I know.'

For a moment she let him hold her hand.

'Where are you staying?' he asked.

'At Rob's, why?'

'Go home. Go home to your mum's.'

'No.'

'Do it, Kate.'

'But if he wants to get in touch with me…'

'He'd be stupid coming there. He can ring you on your mobile, surely?'

'I suppose.'

'Is there anything you need to collect?'

'No, not really.'

'Then go now, I'll walk along with you.'

'And then what?' Her face thin and pleading. 'Is there anything you can do?'

'I don't know. I can try. What I can't do is promise. Okay? You understand?'

She nodded, sniffing, hands in pockets, so forlorn she was a child again, agonising over a broken toy, a favourite doll lost, her friends had refused to play with her at break time, or she had lost a glove, grazed her knee. He'd never come to terms with loving her as much as he did: never would.

'Come on,' he said. 'Let's go if we're going.'

38

The sun persisted behind a thin skim of cloud, but close to the Trent the air bit sharp into unprotected skin. Maureen wore scarf and gloves, her anorak zipped and buttoned. She had met Elder on the south side of the bridge, near County Hall, and they had set out along the river towards Wilford, the City Ground at their backs.

A few runners and the occasional dog-walker aside, they had the path pretty much to themselves.

'You believe her?' Maureen said.

'I believe her, yes.'

'Not Summers?'

'Without speaking to him face to face, it's difficult to know. He was obviously lying to me before.'

'Come on, Frank. His girlfriend's father and an ex-copper, what do you expect?'

'It doesn't help me to accept his side of the story at face value, that's all.'

'Katherine, though. She saw what she saw.'

'Yes, I suppose so.'

They continued walking. Nearing the pedestrian bridge that led across to the Memorial Gardens, a pair of swans and sundry assorted ducks swam towards them, hoping for bread.

'Bland and Eaglin, taking down the safe house and pocketing the proceeds, you think it's possible?'

'Anything's possible, Frank, you know that.'

'But likely?'

'Drug Squad, you know, a few of them, old school, pretty much a law to themselves. And these two, they're both known to sail pretty close to the wind. But this ... I don't know, Frank, I'd need proof.'

'Yes.'

'Not easy.'

'If something like that went down, word would get around.'

'I know. It's a matter of who to talk to, who to trust.'

'Nothing different there then.'

Maureen smiled. 'Nothing at all.'

At Wilford Bridge they crossed on to the embankment and followed the curve of the river back around.

'What time's your train, Frank?' Maureen asked.

'Quarter past.'

'I'll nose around, see what I come up with. Let you know.'

'You'll be careful.'

She gave him a look.

'Thanks, Maureen.'

They shook hands.

'How's it going down there in the smoke?'

'Three steps up, two back.'

'Better that than the other way round.'

At the station he bought a paper and sat on an empty bench to make some calls. Katherine's phone was switched off and he left a message, 'Great to see you, don't worry. Love, Dad.'

Elder phoned Karen on his mobile as the train was nearing St Pancras: still no sign of Kennet, but they'd got a line on Jane Forest and she was hoping to talk to her later that afternoon.

* * *

The scar that ran down one side of Jane Forest's face, beginning just below her right ear and continuing down past her jaw, was only visible when she turned into the light. When her hair swung back from her face. Self-conscious, most days she wore a roll-neck jumper or a scarf inside the collar of her shirt or blouse.

'Why didn't you report it?' Karen asked.

'I was frightened.'

'Of him?'

'Yes, of course. But not just that.'

'What then?'

'What people would say.'

'People?'

'When it got out. Whoever I had to explain it to. The police. You. My parents. Everyone.'

'You were the victim. There's no blame attached to that.'

'Isn't there?' Jane Forest twisted the cap off the bottle of Evian and lifted it to her mouth. They were standing in a small yard at the rear of the florist's where she worked, one of a small parade of shops at the bottom of West Hill, adjacent to Parliament Hill Fields. Jane was wearing a green overall that tied at the back, the name of the shop embroidered in small yellow letters at the front.

'You know the North End of the Heath,' she said, 'up past the Vale of Health?'

Karen shook her head.

'We used to go up there, one or two in the morning. Park round the back of Jack Straw's Castle. Not that we were the only ones. That time of night it's mostly gays, lots of black leather, chains, that kind of thing. Real bondage stuff. Anyway, we'd go out into the middle of the Heath; up there it's mostly bracken, trees, really overgrown, but there are these paths running through. Quite high up, you know. And I'd walk along as if I were on my own, pretending I didn't know Steve was there. And I didn't. I mean I never knew exactly where he was.'

She took another swig at the bottle and wiped one edge of her mouth with the back of her hand.

'Sometimes he'd keep me waiting, just wandering up and down, for ages. Twenty minutes, more. These blokes every now and then staring out at me from behind bushes, wondering what on earth I was doing.'

'You weren't scared?' Karen said.

'Of course I was scared. That was the point.'

'Go on,' Karen said.

'Well, sooner or later Steve would jump out at me and I'd — I don't know — pretend to fight him off, try to run away.'

'And he'd catch you?'

'Oh, yes.' There was a certain light in Jane Forest's eyes, blue-green eyes.

'And then? '

'Then we'd have sex.'

'Consensual?'

'Sorry?'

'He didn't force you?'

'Yes, of course.'

'Against your will?'

'Yes. No. I mean, not really. But in the game, the game we were playing, yes. He'd hold me down, tear, you know, some of my clothes

'Hit you?'

'Not usually, no. Not hard.'

'Nothing more?'

'What do you mean?'

Karen was looking at the scar on Jane Forest's face and Jane turned her head away and touched the tips of her fingers faintly to the pale, raised line.

'Sometimes, not often but sometimes, he would have a knife. It was big, broad, a sort of carving knife. This black handle with — what do you call them? — rivets through it. My butcher's knife, he called it. Want to make good and sure I don't butcher you.'

She was starting to shake now, first her arms, the upper half of her body and then the rest. Karen took the bottle of water from her hand before it fell.

'One night, it was my birthday, he said, "I've got something special for you, a celebration." He tied my hands behind my back. He… he put the point of the knife… inside me… and when, when I started to scream, really scream, he punched me in the face and when that didn't make me stop he cut me. Cut my face.'

'Here,' Karen said, moving an upturned crate away from the wall. 'Here, sit down. There. Now put your head down towards your knees. That's it. That's right.'

A blue tit alighted for a moment on top of the gate that led out from the yard into the alley behind, yellow beneath cobalt-blue wings.

'Afterwards,' Jane said, barely raising her head, 'as soon as it had happened, he was so upset, he really was. Almost beside himself with worry. And really gentle, caring, you know? He took me to the hospital, the Royal Free. Casualty, A & E. We said I'd been sleepwalking and stumbled over something, fallen against the window breaking the glass.'

'They accepted that?'

'They seemed to. They stopped the bleeding and then stitched me up. Steve, he held my hand the whole time.' She looked at Karen. 'He was so sorry, genuinely sorry. He knew he'd let it get too far, out of hand. He said he wouldn't blame me if I never wanted to see him again.'

'And did you?'

'At first I thought, yes, it would be okay. Him being so nice and everything. But after that night, I don't know, it was different. I mean, we never… it wasn't just that we stopped, you know, those games, we never had sex at all. He didn't… he wouldn't even touch me. And then, after a while, he told me he was seeing someone else.'

She looked away.

'It's happened again, hasn't it?'

'We think so.'

'Has he… did he… oh, Christ!' She let her face fall forward against Karen's waist and for several minutes Karen held her, stroking her hair, touching once, inadvertently, the ridge of scar tissue running down across her neck.

* * *

Together with another officer, Vanessa Taylor had spent two hours that afternoon interviewing a cocksure, snotty-nosed nine-year-old about throwing stones and doing serious damage to trains and train staff. The nine-year-old and his father and his social worker, neither of them speaking to one another but both quick enough to interrupt and intercede. The boy's mother had left home eighteen months before, taking two of his younger siblings with her and leaving the boy and an elder sister behind. The father's response had been to go running to social services claiming that he couldn't cope: result, the boy was taken into care, the girl went off to live with an aunt. Some time in the following months, she drifted back and then, after almost a year and two bouts of short-term fostering, the boy followed. Social services, meanwhile, were worried that the relationship between dad and thirteen-year-old daughter was inappropriate to say the least.

In the run-up to Christmas, the boy was excluded from school and a week later stabbed his home tutor in the back of the hand with a ballpoint pen, alleging the man had tried to molest him.

Armed with this background at the case conference beforehand, Vanessa began the interview feeling sympathy for a young person whom life had dealt a raw hand; thirty minutes later she wanted to use the same hand to slap the smirk off his ratty face. Sullen, even tearful when it suited him, he was quick as a trained solicitor to proclaim his rights and privileges, taunting them with their relative powerlessness over him.

By the time the interview was over, the boy released back into his father's care, the social worker chewing her way through a roll of mints as she wrote up yet another report, Vanessa was more than ready for a drink.

Two pints and a vodka and tonic later, she wandered into Nandos with a beat sergeant she vaguely fancied and devoured peri-peri chicken and rice while listening to him rabbiting on endlessly about Thierry Henry and glories to come once Arsenal had settled into their new 60,000-seater stadium at Ashburton Grove.

Scratch him off the list.

Nine fifteen. Too late to catch a movie, too early to go home.

There used to be music, she knew, at the Bull and Last. Sometimes it was jazz but sometimes it was okay. Tonight, when she pushed the door open into the bar, it was nothing, just the electronic jingle of a few brightly lit machines and a television mumbling to itself above the bar. Fairly busy all the same, mostly men sitting singly or in pairs. A trio of clearly underage girls wearing next to nothing, more slap than clothes.

She could have turned round and walked out again, but instead she asked for a vodka tonic and carried it over to an empty table near the middle of the room, a few faces turning to watch her progress but not many.

She hadn't been there more than a few minutes before she was aware of someone leaning over her from behind.

Steve Kennet, smiling, drink in his hand, jeans, check shirt and short leather jacket, still trailing the faint scent of aftershave. He was sitting down next to her almost before she could react.

'Regular bad penny,' he winked. 'That's me.'

39

Vanessa didn't move. Didn't return Kennet's smile. 'What are you doing here?' she said.

Kennet shrugged. 'Same as you.' Affable enough.

'Why here?'

He glanced around. 'Not a bad pub. Quiet. Except on music nights. Or when there's some band on at the Forum. Packed out then.'

'You come here a lot then?'

'Wouldn't say a lot, but yes, once in a while. Steady.'

'You're not following me?'

When he laughed, his head jolted back, Adam's apple pushed out against his skin. 'That what you think?'

'I don't know. The other night on the bus, now this.'

Kennet shrugged. 'Small world.'

'Not that small.'

'Coincidence, then.'

Vanessa held his gaze a few moments longer, then picked up her drink.

'I'll move on if I'm troubling you,' Kennet said. He made no move to go. 'You've had a bad day, maybe. Want to be alone.'

'I have, as it happens. A shitty day.'

'Keeping the street safe.'

'Yes, if you like.'

'Okay, I just thought, you know, see a friend, share a drink, a chat…'

'I'm not your friend. We're not friends.'

'All those times…'

'I was Maddy's friend. Not yours.' Her voice was loud enough to turn a few heads in their direction.

'All right. Okay.' Kennet on his feet now, still smiling, backing away. 'Just thought you might appreciate the company, that's all.'

Hands raised, as if in surrender, he retreated towards the bar, pulled out a stool and sat down, quick to exchange a few words with the barman, who looked over in Vanessa's direction and laughed.

Vanessa closed her eyes, picked up her glass and lowered her head towards it, resting the rim against the bridge of her nose. When her breathing had steadied she leaned back, finished her drink in two swallows.

'You know there's a law,' she said to the barman, nodding towards the trio of girls nearby, 'serving alcohol to kids under eighteen.'

Kennet didn't as much as glance in her direction, but one of the girls stuck out her tongue and called her a name and the two others gave the finger to her back and giggled loudly.

* * *

There was a bus coming and she caught it to the Archway, thinking as they stop-started along about the boy they'd interviewed, what kind of a life he had, his sister too, wondering how much truth there was in the social worker's concerns, doing her best not to think about Kennet at all.

It was a nice enough night, not cold, not near as cold as it had been, and, getting off the bus, she loosened the scarf and unzipped the front of her coat. At the far side of the lights, she bought a copy of the Big Issue, though she knew, in all likelihood, it would end up in the bin unread. On Holloway Road she lengthened her stride. More exercise, that was what she needed, either that or it wouldn't be too long before she couldn't even squeeze herself into a thirteen. Swimming. Why didn't she leave for work an hour early, do a few lengths in the Prince of Wales pool?

At the corner of her street she slowed her pace and looked around but it was a bright night, as well as relatively warm, and there were no shadows lurking in dark corners. As usual, it took her a few moments to locate her key and she was just slotting it into the lock when an arm wrapped itself tight around her neck and she felt something cold and sharp pressing fast against the underside of her chin.

'Don't scream,' Kennet hissed in her ear. 'Don't make a fucking sound.'

* * *

Elder had phoned Maureen in Nottingham, not once, but twice.

'It's difficult, Frank. Seen asking too many questions too soon and the whole think might slip away. Give me another day or so, okay? As soon as I know anything definite, I'll be in touch. You've got my word.'

At least Katherine was at home where he wanted her to be. After a desultory five minutes of conversation, more silences than words, she asked him if he wanted to speak to Joanne and he said, no, it was okay, another time.

In the silence, Elder reached for the bottle and the glass.

He was drinking too much, spending too much time alone. Why had that been fine when he was down in Cornwall — perhaps the thing he relished most — but not here, in the city?

Difficult, too, not to let his mind slip back to the previous night, the taste and touch of another's skin. He was midway through dialling Karen's number when he stopped: what had happened between them, it was a one-off, a collision of need and circumstance, no more. Tired white meat, was that what she'd said? Sipping a little Scotch, he clicked the switch on the radio, a special report from our correspondent in Darfur.

* * *

In the hallway, Kennet kicked the front door closed. It was dark: not black but muted dark. Free newspapers and unwanted mail lay all down one side and underfoot. The air was stale and cold. When Vanessa opened her mouth to shout, Kennet narrowed the angle of his arm against her throat and a constricted choking sound was all that emerged. The knife was steady against the curve of her chin.

'Up!' he hissed. 'Up, up. Upstairs.'

Something seemed to have happened to Vanessa's eyes. The contours of everything - stairs, banisters, the electric flex that hung down to a bare bulb - were blurred. And then she realised she was half-blinded by tears.

Kennet's knee nudged against the back of her thigh.

Again, harder this time.

'Get moving. Go on.'

On the first landing she slipped and her footing almost went, but he held on to her, hauling her back upright. His breath, smelling of beer and tobacco and something else she couldn't make out, was warm and raw against her skin.

'Move. Come on, come on.'

The television was on in the first-floor flat, the sound of laughter muffled and brief. One of the things she'd always liked about the building was that people kept themselves to themselves. If ever she did bump into one of the other tenants a quick nod was all that usually passed between them, occasionally a brief word. Some bland remark about the weather or complaint about the bins was the most any of them had ever exchanged.

She knew she had to get away from him before they reached her own flat and he got her inside. Get away or raise the alarm.

On the final landing, she dug her elbow into his chest as hard as she could and wriggled as she kicked her heel back against his shin, but all that happened was he laughed and increased the pressure on her neck until she was afraid the flow of blood might stop and she would faint.

'Inside. Come on, inside.'

Her fingers couldn't fit the key into the lock until he withdrew the blade from her face and his hand slid smoothly over hers. 'There.' Steadying her until the key slipped in and turned.

'Good girl.'

Vanessa's eyes closed tight.

They were inside.

'Don't switch on the light,' he said. 'Not yet.'

His arm was no longer at her neck and she moved a few stumbling steps away, her hand against her throat. Heard him turn the key in the lock and slip down the catch.

The curtains were open and when she turned there was light enough to see the shape but not the detail of his face. The knife was back in his hand, held low against his side. She thought he was smiling but she wasn't sure.

'Anything to drink?' he said, the ordinariness of the question taking her by surprise.

'What?' A croak of sound and little more.

'A drink. You know, wine, some beer. Vodka, that's your thing.' As if this were normal now, some kind of date. Calling round after the pub. Want to come in for coffee, both knowing what that meant. The features of his face were clearer now and yes, there was a smile playing at the edges of his mouth and around his eyes.

'Look,' Vanessa said, her voice no longer recognisable as her own. 'Why don't you just go? Leave. We'll forget about it, okay?'

'Forget? I don't think so. Not once we've finished. Not once we're through.' He was tapping the knife against his leg. 'Now, what about that drink?'

The bottle was on the shelf unit in the alcove to the left of the gas fire. Stolichnaya, four-fifths gone. A couple of shot glasses alongside. Books, not many. CDs. David Gray. Damien Rice. Norah Jones. Magazines. The telephone was on a low table to the right; her mobile in the inside pocket of her coat. She could hear her own breath reverberating inside her head, against, it seemed, the inside of her skull.

'Just a small one for me,' Kennet said, a smirk just visible on his face.

Unsteady, Vanessa poured vodka into the glass and it spilled over the rim.

'Nerves,' Kennet said. 'Don't worry. Soon take the edge off those.'

She was thinking about Maddy, about what had happened to her. She knew she had to do something now, before it was too late. The vodka bottle still tight in her hand, glass cold and smooth against her palm. Her eyes flicked back towards the door, the key still in the lock.

'Here,' Kennet said, leaning forward. 'Why don't you let me put that somewhere out of harm's way?'

And he lifted the bottle clear and, with a smile, returned it to the shelf.

'That's better,' he said. 'Now we can relax a little. Get to know one another better. What do you say?'

* * *

How long they had been sitting there, Vanessa didn't know. Sitting opposite one another, the small table pushed aside. Knees touching. Fifteen minutes? Twenty? More? Kennet talking about this and that, about his work, his holiday in Spain, and all the while easing his hand between her legs, slowly, slowly, forcing them apart, his fingers pressing hard, then soft, before switching his attention to her breasts, and all of this happening, this unwonted fondling, almost casually, without remark.

When he squeezed, finger and thumb, her uncovered nipple, she cried out with a start.

'Sorry,' he said with an apologetic smile. 'Hands too cold. Warm them up a little, eh?' And slid both hands between his thighs, legs closed tight.

Vanessa threw what was left of her vodka in his face, aiming for his eyes, and as she did so lurched sideways, reaching for the bottle on the shelf.

'You bitch!' he said, grabbing at her arm.

Shaking him off, Vanessa swung the bottle as hard and fast as she could against his face. The base struck the temple, just above the eye, and as he staggered back she swung again, teeth gritted, full force, and the bottle shattered against his cheek, driving him sideways through a quarter-circle, left leg folding beneath him, blood streaming from below his eye.

Vanessa dropped the bottle and dashed for the bathroom, feeling for her mobile as she ran.

Two bolts, top and bottom, and she slid them across, leaning her weight back against the door as she dialled 999.

'Emergency. Which service do you need, caller?'

She gave the details as precisely as she could, waiting all the time for Kennet to hurl himself against the door and break it down.

When it didn't happen she began to cry and when she heard the sirens, distant at first, then closer, closer, and then feet loud and heavy on the stairs, she cried louder and couldn't stop, not even when the first officers to respond had convinced her it was safe enough to unbolt the door; not even when she saw the glass, some of it smeared with blood, upon the floor; not till the fresh-faced young PC, barely out of training, so young he looked more like a boy, led her firmly, not roughly, over to an easy chair and sat her down, sat with her holding both her hands and telling her it was all right, it was okay, they'd only got the bastard, hadn't they? Legging it across the Holloway Road and he'd run smack into the side of a bus and cannoned off. On his way to A & E now, most likely, cuffed inside an ambulance. That's it. Go on, cry. Let it out. This kid with bum fluff on his cheeks, still holding her hand while other officers secured the scene.

'The knife,' Vanessa said. 'He had a knife.'

'We'll find it. Don't worry.'

And they did, an hour later, where Kennet had thrown it, in the front garden of the house closest to the main road, hard up against the wall.

40

The doctor had checked Vanessa over, pronounced her bodily sound, waited while an officer took Polaroid photographs of the marks on her neck, then given her something to help her sleep. But of course she'd hardly slept at all. For half of what remained of the night she lay in bed, knees pulled up close to her chest, trying to blank out the sound of Kennet's voice, the coarse warmth of his breath. For the rest, she'd sat up in her old dressing gown, a blanket pulled round her, staring at the images that moved across the television screen. ITV Nightscreen. Skiing on 4. A signed edition of the Antiques Roadshow, especially for the hard of hearing.

'You're a lucky girl,' one of the officers had said. 'Dead lucky.' And then tried to swallow back his words. 'You did brilliant,' said another. 'Fucking brilliant.' Vanessa was not just thinking about herself; she was thinking of Maddy. Had that been him? Kennet? Had he done those things to her? She had never seen the photographs of the body, only spoken to someone who swore he knew someone who had, but she knew that as well as being raped Maddy had been cut badly with a knife before she died.

Lucky girl.

She was, she was: she pressed her face against the rough material of the blanket and wept.

* * *

Alerted by the senior officer at Kentish Town, Karen had arrived shortly after midnight and spoken to Vanessa briefly, enough to get an abbreviated version of what had happened, and arranged to take a proper statement in the morning. She'd considered phoning Elder and waking him with the news, but decided to let him slumber on.

At the hospital, Kennet had taken eleven stitches to the face, and an X-ray of his chest had shown three broken ribs. Now he lay in a side ward, sedated with painkillers and handcuffed by one wrist to the bed, an officer sitting cross-legged outside reading the Mail and trying to catch the eye of one of the nurses and scrounge another cup of tea.

Elder was finally put in the picture at seven and met Karen outside the hospital at eight. Ramsden and Denison were already there, the uniformed officer having been gratefully relieved.

One of the lifts was out of order and a porter was carefully positioning a patient on a trolley in another, so they took the stairs.

'Has he been charged?' Elder asked.

'Not yet.'

'Possibilities?'

'As it stands? Aggravated assault. Possession of an offensive weapon. Enough to hold him.'

When they got into the room Kennet was on his side, sheet pulled level with his chin, eyes closed. A nurse had just finished checking his temperature and blood pressure and was entering the results on his chart.

'Is he asleep?' Karen asked.

The nurse shook her head.

'Kennet,' Karen said, moving closer. 'Mr Kennet.'

No movement; no response.

Ramsden seized hold of the sheet and tugged it sharply back.

'Mr Kennet,' Karen said, 'there are questions I need to ask.'

Kennet's eyes had closed again.

'Is there any reason,' Karen asked the nurse, 'why he shouldn't answer questions?'

The nurse shook her head. 'The painkillers might have made him slightly woozy, but other than that, no.'

'I'll give him fuckin' painkillers,' Ramsden said.

Karen shot him a warning look.

'Listen, Kennet,' Elder said, leaning towards the head of the bed. 'Why don't you sit up? The sooner we get this done, the better.'

Nothing.

'Nurse,' Karen said. 'I wonder, could you help to sit him up?'

'I suppose so, I…' She faltered, for a moment uncertain. 'Mr Kennet, come along.' When she touched his shoulder, he shrugged her off.

'What seems to be the problem?' the doctor said, walking towards them. He was tall and bearded, mid-thirties, his accent from north of the border.

'These police officers,' the nurse said, 'they want to question the patient.'

'All right, nurse. Thank you.'

She wheeled her equipment trolley away.

'Detective Chief Inspector Shields,' Karen said, holding out her hand.

The doctor's grip was strong but brief.

'This man is charged with a serious crime,' Karen said. 'And we have reason to believe he can assist us with several more. It's important that we talk to him.'

'Now?'

'Now.'

The doctor lifted the chart from the end of the bed and gave it a cursory look. 'He seems to have been well medicated to control his pain…'

Ramsden snorted.

'If I can suggest, an hour or so might allow the more soporific effects of the medication to wear off and you'd likely get clearer answers to whatever questions it is you need to ask. Besides,' with a glance towards the handcuffs, 'he's not exactly going anywhere, is he?'

Outside, Karen spoke to headquarters on her mobile, while Ramsden lit a cigarette.

'Right,' she said, breaking the connection. 'We've got a warrant to search Kennet's flat. Mike, you get over there. Lee'll meet you there. Paul can stay here at the hospital. I'll arrange for him to get spelled by someone from the local nick.'

Grinning, Ramsden was on his way.

'How far's Vanessa Taylor's place from here?' Elder asked.

'Not far. She should be up to making a statement by now. Come on, I'll call her from the car.'

The traffic approaching the Archway roundabout was solid in all directions and they were stuck alongside an articulated lorry that was heading back to Holland and behind a people carrier ferrying half a dozen kids to school, several of whom were making faces out of the rear window. Karen fiddled with the radio, then switched it off.

'I don't suppose there are any witnesses?' Elder said.

'To last night? No.'

'Vanessa's word against his.'

'Pretty much.'

'And there are no injuries?'

'To her? Some bruising to the neck. Little else. Not a lot to pass round in front of the jury.'

'Maybe it'll look more spectacular this morning.'

'Maybe.'

'And the knife?'

'Forensics are checking it for prints. Hopefully he wouldn't have had time to wipe it clean.'

'You'll try and match it to the wounds on Maddy's body?'

'You bet.'

They slid forward another couple of metres. 'I thought Livingstone had sorted all this out,' Elder said.

'So he has.'

'I don't know how you put up with it.'

Karen smiled. 'I suppose the most you get's the occasional tractor?'

'Cattle. Sometimes a herd of sheep.'

'I don't know how you can do it, Frank.'

'What?'

'Live like that. Cut off from everything.'

'Everything?'

'Don't be obtuse. You know what I mean.'

The lorry turned off into the left-hand lane and Karen accelerated into the space, swung hard right, cutting up not one vehicle but two, then left again and down through the first set of lights, pulling wide round a 43 bus.

'You enjoy this?' Elder asked.

'Love it.' Karen grinned.

* * *

Vanessa was pale-faced and puffy-eyed. The bruises round her neck had intensified in colour. She made them coffee without bringing the water properly to the boil and the granules floated around the surface, only partly dissolved. Her account of the attack and what had led up to it was flat and emotionless, as if she were describing something that had happened to a distant friend rather than to herself. Only when she spoke of the moment Kennet had first jumped out at her, the knife to the side of her face, did her voice falter and break. Elder could see a faint red line traversing the skin.

'The man you reported seeing across the street,' he said. 'You think that was him as well?'

Vanessa waited a moment before answering. 'No, I'm not sure.'

'It hardly matters,' Karen said. 'From what you've said, it looks as if he was stalking you. Building up to last night.'

'Agreed,' said Elder. 'But if it was him, it suggests a pattern. Watching. Following.'

'You're thinking of Maddy, aren't you?' Vanessa said. 'What happened to her?'

Both Karen and Elder looked back at her.

'You think he killed her.'

'In the circumstances,' Karen began, 'we have to consider —'

'Oh, come on!' Vanessa almost shouted, suddenly angry. 'Don't give me that crap.'

'It's a possibility,' Elder said.

'It's more than a bloody possibility.'

'Maybe.'

'Sod maybe!' Flushed, Vanessa went towards the door, stopped and turned back. Nowhere to go. 'Kennet, what's he saying?' she asked.

'So far, nothing.'

'He threatened me with a knife; half-choked me. He was going to rape me.'

'I know,' Karen said. 'I know.'

'He was going to kill me.'

Karen reached for her hand, but she pulled away; crossed to the sink and turned on the cold tap and then nothing, simply stood there, watching it run.

After a few moments, Elder went over and switched it off. When he brushed her shoulder accidentally she jumped.

'We ought to go,' he said quietly.

'Then go.'

'Vanessa,' Karen said at the door, 'you should arrange to see somebody.'

'Somebody?'

'You know what I mean. A counsellor. They'll sort it out at the station, I'm sure.'

Vanessa stared back at her hopelessly. 'Don't let him get away with this.'

'Don't worry. We won't.'

* * *

Kennet was sitting up in bed, propped against a number of pillows, his recent stitches standing out like tiny bird marks along the plane of his face. Seeing Karen and Elder he actually smiled.

'Back in the land of the living,' Elder said.

'Just about.'

'Luckier than some.'

'There are questions,' Karen said, 'about last night.'

'You mean when I was attacked?'

'You were attacked?'

'Of course.' Kennet touched his fingertips to his coming scar. 'Bloke who stitched me up reckoned I was lucky not to lose an eye.'

'And Vanessa, what was she lucky enough to escape with?'

'Anything that happened to her, self-defence.'

'Wait,' said Karen. 'Wait. You're claiming she attacked you?'

'Of course. Asked me up, started fooling around, everything going along fine and then — wham! — swung at me with the bloody bottle. Out of nowhere.' He shook his head. 'I knew she'd been drinking, but not that much. Not like that. Out of control. If I'd known that I'd never have agreed to go back with her after the pub.'

'She invited you, that's what you're saying?'

'Yes, of course. What else?'

'The knife,' Elder said. 'What about the knife?'

Kennet looked back at him, all wide-eyed astonishment. 'What knife?'

'The one you threw away just before you ran full pelt into the bus.'

'I don't know anything about any knife.'

'We'll see.'

Ten minutes later Elder and Karen were standing in the corridor outside. Kennet had persevered with his story: Vanessa had been the one to attack him, breaking a bottle across his face, and any injuries she might have sustained had been a result of him trying to restrain her. In the end he'd left her swearing and screaming and headed home, so stunned by what had happened that he'd not been thinking where he was going when he stepped out into the road and got side-swiped by a bus. No hard feelings, he hoped she was okay, nothing much more than a thick head.

'How long d'you think he'll stick to that?' Karen said.

'As long as he can.'

'Any prints on the knife?'

'We can hope,' Karen said.

Elder was looking at his watch. 'Another twelve hours before he has to be charged.'

'Time enough.'

The doctor agreed there was no reason Kennet couldn't be released from hospital that afternoon. By which time they would have heard back, not only about the knife, but also have the results of the search of his flat. Time enough, Karen thought, was probably right.