Superintendent Gristhorpe frightened her a little, perhaps because he made her think of her father, and she always felt like a silly little girl when he was around.

Banks, though, was like an older brother. And, like a brother, he teased her too much, especially about music when they were in the car. She was sure he played some terrible things just to make her uncomfortable. Right now, though, as she approached the busy Leeds Ring Road, she would have welcomed something soothing to listen to.

Susan was building up a nice collection of classical music. Every month, she bought a magazine that gave away a free CD of bits and pieces of the works reviewed. It provided a breakdown of what to listen for at what points of time – like “6:25: The warm and sunny feeling of the spring day returns,” or “4:57: Second theme emerges from interplay of brass and woodwinds.” Susan found it very helpful, and if she liked the part she heard, she would buy the complete work, unless it was a lengthy and expensive opera. At the moment her favorite piece was Beethoven’s “Pastoral” Symphony. She knew Banks would approve, but she was too embarrassed to tell him.

Susan went on to think about her talk with Tom Rothwell by the river, and about the agonies he must be going through. It was hard enough being homosexual anywhere, she imagined, but it would be especially tough in Yorkshire, where men prided themselves on their masculinity and women were supposed to know their place and stick to it.

There was a prime example of Yorkshire manhood sitting right next to her, she thought, all Rugby League, roast beef and pints of bitter. And she couldn’t imagine what he could find offensive about her perfume. It certainly smelled pleasant enough to her, and she used it sparingly.

The traffic snarled up on the Ring Road, and Hatchley sat there with the tattered Leeds and Bradford A to Z on his lap squinting at signs. He was the kind of navigator who shouted, “Turn here!” just as you passed by the turning. After several misdirections and a couple of hair-raising U-turns, they pulled up outside candidate number one, a newsagent’s shop at the edge of a rundown council estate in Gipton.

Two scruffy kids swaggered out as Susan and Hatchley went in. The girl behind the counter couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen. She was pale as a ghost and skinny as a rake. Her hair, brown streaked with silver, red and green, teetered untidily on top of her head, and unruly strands snaked down over her white neck and face, partly covering one over-mascaraed eye.

She looked as if she had a small, pretty mouth underneath the full and pouting one she had superimposed with brownish purple lipstick. Susan also noticed a pungent scent, which she immediately classified as cheap, not at all like her own. The girl rested her ring-laden fingers with the long crimson nails on the counter and slanted her bony shoulders toward them, head tilted to one side. She wore a baggy white T-shirt with “SCREW YOU” written in black across her flat chest.

“Mr. Drake around, love?” Hatchley asked.

She moved her head a fraction; the hair danced like Medusa’s snakes. “In the back,” she said, without breaking the rhythm of her chewing.

He moved toward the counter and lifted the flap.

“Hey!” she said. “You can’t just walk through like that.”

“Can’t I, love? Do you mean I have to be announced all formally, like?” Hatchley took out his identification and held it close to her eyes. She squinted as she read. “Maybe you’d like to get out your salver?” he went on. “Then I can put my calling card on it and you can take it through to Mr. Drake and inform him that a gentleman wishes to call on him?”

“Sod off, clever arse,” she said, slouching aside to let them pass. “You’re no fucking gentleman. And don’t call me love.”

“Who have we got here, then?” Hatchley stopped and said. “Glenda Slagg, feminist?”

“Piss off.”

They went through without further ceremony into the back room, an office of sorts, and Susan saw Mr. Drake sitting at his desk.

Below the greasy black hair was the lumpiest face Susan had ever seen. He had a bulbous forehead, a potato nose, and a carbuncular chin, over all of which his oily, red skin, pitted with blackheads, stretched tight, and out of which looked a pair of beady black eyes, darting about like tiny fish in an aquarium. His belly was so big he could hardly get close enough to the desk to write. A smell of burned bacon hung in the stale air, and Susan noticed a hotplate with a frying-pan on it in one corner.

When they walked in, he pushed his chair back and grunted, “Who let you in? What do you want?”

“Remember me, Jack?” said Hatchley.

Drake screwed up his eyes. They disappeared into folds of fat. “Is it…? Well, bugger me if it isn’t Jim Hatchley.”

He floundered to his feet and stuck out his hand, first wiping it on the side of his trousers. Hatchley leaned forward and shook it.

“Who’s the crumpet?” Drake asked, nodding toward Susan.

“The ‘crumpet,’ as you so crudely put it, Jack, is Detective Constable Susan Gay. And show a bit of respect.”

“Sorry, lass,” said Drake, executing a little bow for Susan. She found it hard to hold back her laughter. She knew that old-fashioned sexism was alive and well and living in Yorkshire, but it felt strange to have Sergeant Hatchley defending her honor. Drake turned back to Hatchley. “Now what is it you want, Jim? You’re not still working these parts, are you?”

“I am today.”

Drake held his hands out, palms open. “Well, I’ve done nowt to be ashamed of.”

“Jack, old lad,” said Hatchley heavily, “you ought to be ashamed of being born, but we’ll leave that aside for now. Girlie magazines.”

“Eh? What about ’em?”

“Still in business?”

Drake shifted from one foot to the other and cast a beady eye on Susan, guilty as the day is long. “You know I don’t go in for owt illegal, Jim.”

“Believe it or not, at the moment I couldn’t care less. It’s not you I’m after. And it’s Sergeant Hatchley to you.”

“Sorry. What’s up, then?”

Hatchley asked him about the masked killer with the puppy-dog eyes. Drake was shaking his head before he had finished.

“Sure?” Hatchley asked.

“Aye. Swear on my mother’s grave.”

Hatchley laughed. “You’d swear night was day on your mother’s grave if you thought it would get me off your back, wouldn’t you, Jack? Nonetheless, I’ll believe you, this time. Any ideas where we might try?”

“What have you got?”

“Shaved pussies, excited penises. Right up your alley, I’d’ve thought.”

Drake turned up his misshapen nose in disgust. “Shaved pussies? Why, that’s pretty much straight stuff. Nay, Jim, times have changed. They’re all into the arse-bandit stuff or whips and chains these days.”

“I’m not just talking about the local MPs, Jack.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny. Even so.”

Hatchley sighed. “Benny still in business?”

Drake nodded. “Far as I know. But he deals mostly in body-piercing now. Very specialized taste.” He looked at Susan. “You know, love – pierced nipples, labia, foreskins, that kind of thing.”

Susan repressed a shudder.

“Bert Oldham?” Hatchley went on. “Mario Nelson? Henry Talbot?”

“Aye. But you can practically sell the stuff over the counter, these days, Ji – Sergeant.”

“It’s the ‘practically’ that interests me, Jack. You know what the law says: no penetration, no oral sex, and no hard-ons. Anyway, if you get a whiff of him, phone this number.” He handed Drake a card.

“I’ll do that,” said Drake, dropping back into his chair again. Susan thought the legs would break, but, miraculously, they held.

The girl didn’t look up from her magazine as they went out. “Better give that reading a rest, love,” said Hatchley. “It must be hell on your lips.”

“Fuck off,” she said, chewing gum at the same time.