He had sufficient self-awareness to acknowledge he might be emotionally biased.

Pascoe was very close to the Fat Man. Romantics-there are a few of those even in the modern police force-analysed this as a vicarious father/son relationship. Dalziel had no children, or at least none he acknowledged, and years ago Pascoe’s father had confirmed the distance between himself and his son by opting to emigrate to Australia with his eldest daughter and her family.

The Romantic analysis of the D and P relationship went something like this: as initial distrust and dislike had moderated, via reluctant acknowledgement of detective skill and technique, to mutual respect and even affection, the residual ability to get up one another’s noses had been rendered innocuous by subsumption into a quasi-familial mode. You may at times loathe your parents or kids, but that doesn’t get in the way of loving them.

Wield felt it was maybe a bit more complicated than that. What he was certain of was that he owed his own progress, perhaps even survival, to the Fat Man. He had congratulated himself for many years on the skill with which he’d concealed his gayness from his institutionally homophobic employers. It was only late on, around the time he decided-without marking the occasion with a ticker-tape parade-to come out, that he realized he’d never fooled Andy Dalziel. Looking back, he began to understand how much he’d benefited from the Fat Man’s protection. Nothing obvious involving civil rights and liberal declarations and such. Just an invisible circle drawn round him which said, He’s in here with me, touch him at your peril.

He’d never said thank you because he knew if he had, all he’d have got back was, For what? And indeed, for what? The right to function like any other copper? Surely he had that anyway. So, no thank yous. But what he did give the Fat Man was unconditional trust that, whatever he was, so would he always be.

Trust was one thing, reality another. There was no getting away from it, the way things had turned out today meant there was a big dark cloud hanging over Dalziel, and Wield doubted it was about to burst in blessings on his head. Nowt he could do but get on with his job.

He had disposed of the Duttas as the superintendent had suggested and now he was sitting collating statements from the other Loudwater Villas tenants.

The sound of a rackety engine caught his ears and he looked out of the caravan window to see a dusty white Bedford van pull up in front of the building.

A young man got out, early twenties, dressed in baggy jeans and a red T-shirt. He stretched his arms and yawned, then pulled a grip off the passenger seat and headed into the Villas.

Wield frowned. He’d set up a checkpoint on the approach road. They couldn’t keep people out who had a genuine reason for going in, such as, they lived here. But where there was doubt, the officer on duty would ring in to check; and where there was no cause for doubt, he would make a note and ring in with the details to indicate there was somebody new to interview.

None of the caravan phones had sounded in the last five minutes.

The sergeant said, ‘Smiler, who’s on the checkpoint?’

The constable so addressed, glanced at a list and said, ‘It’s Hector, Sarge. Everyone got called in for this one.’

The last sentence was significant.

In a case of murder accompanied by a serious assault on an officer, everyone was expected to turn out and help. Indeed, everyone wanted to turn out and help. But if Wield had been consulted, he’d have advised that the best way Police Constable Hector could help was to continue to devote himself to whatever unimaginable activity occupied his mind on his day off.

The sergeant rose and opened the caravan door. From this elevated position he could see down to the checkpoint quite clearly.

There was no one there.

The air was very still and a distant splash drew his attention down to the river bank. There he was, that unmistakable figure, lanky and skinny, with a head set slightly beneath the level of the shoulders, as though like a terrapin’s it could fully retract in time of trouble.

He was throwing stones into the water. No, on closer observation of the throwing style, it seemed likely he was trying to make stones skip across the surface of the water, only they never rose out of the initial splash.

This time I’ll kill him, thought Wield. But that pleasure would have to wait.

He jumped down from the caravan and headed into the building.

As he ran up the stairs he could hear raised voices drifting down from above.

He found their source on the second floor outside number 39.

The young man from the white van was having a row with PC Jennison, who was on guard outside the fatal flat. The SOCO team had finished and now its sole occupant was the faceless corpse waiting to be bagged and transported to the morgue. Joker Jennison had risked a peep and wished he hadn’t. Now the door was firmly closed and he was concentrating on his appointed task of keeping unauthorized personnel out.

At sixteen and a half stone, he formed a pretty effective barrier, but while he was winning the battle he was clearly being worn down by the argument and he spotted Wield’s arrival with relief.

‘Sarge,’ he called. ‘This gent says he wants to go inside and he won’t take no for an answer.’

‘No, I bloody well won’t!’ exclaimed the man, turning. ‘You in charge here? Then tell your pet ape to let me in.’

He had a lilting Welsh accent and a fiery Welsh tone.

‘I’ll do what I can, sir, but first why don’t we calm things down a touch, and take a close look at this thing together?’ said Wield.

His words were softly spoken and would have won plaudits in a bedside manner contest. But he knew it wasn’t his soft answers that turned away wrath but the agate-hard face they came out of.

‘Yes, all right, it’ll be good to talk to somebody who’s got two penn’orth of sense for a change,’ said the man, shooting a twelve-bore glance at Jennison.

He allowed himself to be led away to the far end of the corridor.

‘Now, sir, I’m Detective Sergeant Wield of Mid-Yorkshire CID,’ said Wield, producing his ID.

He let the man study it for a moment, then put it away and took out his notebook and pen, by these small rituals providing a space for the more volatile vapours of anger to dissipate.

‘OK, sir,’ he said, pen poised. ‘Could you start by giving me your full name and address, and then explain why you want to get into number 39?’

The man let out a long sigh, but his voice was relatively calm as he answered.

‘My name is Alun Gruffud Watkins,’ he said. ‘My address is Flat 39, Loudwater Villas. And I want to get inside because that’s where I bloody well live!’

16.00-16.30

Maybe I ought to play the lottery today, thought Maggie Pinchbeck. Clearly I’m on a roll.

Her first stroke of good fortune had been the timely phone call from Gwyn Jones.

The reasons for the Bitch’s anger had been made clear on the journey from the Shah-Boat to Marina Towers.

‘Family fucking emergency! His old gran seriously ill. Got to go back to fucking Wales to help sort things out. God, you could almost hear the tears in his voice! And all the time he’s heading up to Yorkshire chasing a story! Bastard! There’s got to be trust, hon. Once a man starts treating you like an idiot, that’s finito.’

Maggie noted that it wasn’t the lie that bothered her, it was the assumption she wasn’t smart enough to spot it.

It had been an easy job for Beanie to get Gareth Jones to repeat a full account of what he’d overheard when bugging the terrace table, almost as easy as it was for Maggie to get the Bitch to repeat the story.

‘Like any kid, he really wants to impress big brother,’ said Beanie, ‘and knowing that Gwyn’s got this thing about Dave the Turd, soon as he heard the name Gidman, he couldn’t wait to pass the info on to Gwyn.’