‘Dad.’

Vos emits a loud snort and jerks awake. Alex swoops down to remove the whisky glass before it falls on the carpet.

‘Hello, son. Everything OK?’

‘I thought you were dead.’

‘So did I. What time is it?’

‘Half ten.’

Wakefulness gradually asserts itself. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Out.’

Vos straightens, and the sound of crunching alerts him to the corn chips between his legs. ‘Jesus,’ he mutters, scooping up the biggest shards and depositing them in the bag. When he looks up again, Alex has gone through to the kitchen and is raiding the fridge. ‘There’s some cheese in there if you want to make a sandwich.’

‘Right,’ Alex says, noting that there is no bread. He’s already taken the precaution of buying a pasta salad from the 24-hour garage. ‘You want anything?’ he says, grabbing a Coke.

‘You could bring me a beer.’

He returns to the living room, dropping the beer like a bomb on his father’s belly before throwing himself down on the sofa. ‘What are you watching?’

Vos stares at the screen uncomprehendingly. ‘Last time I looked it was the end of a Clint Eastwood film.’

‘Well it’s Celebrity Big Brother highlights now,’ Alex says, jabbing his fork into a glutinous mound of cold macaroni. With one stockinged foot he flips the remote control off the coffee table and drags it towards him, then presses the Channel Menu button with his big toe.

‘Look at that—’ Vos begins.

‘ “Six hundred channels and nothing on any of them”,’ Alex says wearily. ‘And to think there were only three when you were my age, Dad.’

Vos scowls. ‘Watch it, you. One of the few privileges of old age is being able to sound like a broken record. Anyway, where have you been?’

‘Round at Chris Jesperssen’s.’

‘Oh yeah? How’s he getting on?’

‘OK. You know he’s just started at art college?’

‘I seem to remember . . .’

‘He says it’s great.’

‘I’m sure it is. But the answer is no.’

‘Dad—’

‘The world is full of unemployed art-school graduates, son.’

Alex says nothing. He knows there is no point in arguing. For the next few minutes they sit and watch two people talking in a whirlpool bath. Then the commercials come on and Alex prods the Mute button.

‘Mum called today,’ he says.

‘Oh yeah? How is she?’

‘Trey’s youngest son is in jail.’

Vos looks over with an expression of wonderment. ‘Why?’

‘He got wasted at a party. Drove his car into a tree.’

‘That is the best news I’ve heard all day,’ Vos says truthfully.

‘Thought you’d like it,’ Alex says.

‘Trey will be devastated.’

‘Apparently he is. The kid was driving his car.’

A squawk of unalloyed joy. ‘It gets better and better.’

The commercial break ends and Alex prods the remote with his toe one more time.

‘I’m going to bed,’ he says. ‘What about you?’

‘Yeah, I’ll be up in a minute.’

‘Are you going to sit in that deckchair all night again?’

Vos gives him a stern look. ‘And if I do?’

‘Chris was telling me about his dog. It’s a Labrador, thirteen years old, spends all its time lying in the boot of his dad’s car, growling at people. Apparently that’s what they do when they get old.’

‘Well in dog years I’m nearly three hundred,’ Vos says. ‘I’ve also got a lot on my mind.’

‘Chris says they’re going to have to get the dog put down,’ Alex says. ‘The vet thinks it’s lost its mind.’

Then he finishes his pasta and goes to bed, leaving his father watching five people in a kitchen saying nothing to each other. Eventually it becomes too much to bear and he switches the TV off.

Upstairs in the bedroom Vos opens the sliding door and steps out onto the balcony. There’s an autumnal chill to the air tonight; he can feel it on the breeze scudding down the Tyne. Soon enough if he wants to sit out here he’s going to need one of those Arctic survival suits. But it’s not too cold just yet. He takes his whisky and his tin of Café Crème cigars and lowers himself into the camping chair. For a while he watches the lights dancing on the calm water of the marina; above the silhouettes of the terraces is the orange glow of the city. He lights one of the cigars and smokes it like a cigarette, with rapid, addictive puffs. Then he lights another.

Maybe Alex is right, he thinks. Maybe he is becoming like an old, ornery dog that just wants to be left alone to die in peace. Then again, he thinks, he’s only forty-two. He could have another fifty years left – although he doubts it. But then that’s the trouble with forty-two: you never know if you’re middle-aged or on the cusp of death. Forty-two has none of the certainty of twenty-two or even thirty-two.

Vos does not care for uncertainty, and right now there is too much of it in his life. Uncertainty about the Okan Gul case, uncertainty about his career.

He drains his whisky. It is now officially too cold to be sitting out here. He takes a last drag of his cigar, then flips it over the rail with his finger and thumb and watches the ember floating like an orange firefly into the black water below.

Part Two

NINE

Severin is late again, but Ptolemy is used to it now. Every day for the last week she has been at the supermarket car park at the appointed time, watching the colleagues milling around the entrance of the store, waiting for the doors to be opened, but without fail it’s thirty, forty minutes before the black Ford comes hurtling through the entrance. There is never any apology; there is barely a word spoken as they exchange packages, and then he is gone to wherever it is he goes.

Today it’s different, though. Today she is in Vos’s car, parked up on an access road next to a scrap-metal yard south of the river. Fifty yards further on is an unmarked Transit van containing a dozen officers from the Police Support Unit. Nearby, out of sight of the road, another van with a dog-handling team.

‘You OK?’ Vos asks.

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Here he comes.’

Ptolemy glances in the wing mirror. A fat-wheeled Porsche Cayenne has turned onto the access road and is approaching at a rapid clip. She instinctively lowers herself in her seat as it flashes past, raising her head in time to see it swing in through the gates of the scrapyard.

‘All units, wait for my signal,’ Vos says calmly into a comms handset.

Ptolemy wishes she had just a small amount of his self-assurance. Her heart is thumping and right now there is a part of her that wishes she was back at her desk in the Bug House, sifting through paperwork and listening to Mayson Calvert’s humming.

Delon Wombwell brings the Cayenne to a halt outside the site office Portakabin and his two passengers climb out. Philliskirk removes a hand-rolled cigarette from behind his ear, jams it in his mouth, lights it greedily and blows the smoke high into the air, where it drifts like mist between the teetering stacks of wrecked cars. He turns and looks at the vehicle appraisingly, gently running his finger along the lines of its roof.

‘Fucking nice motor,’ he says. ‘Wouldn’t mind one of these myself. No doubt destined for some yummy mummy in Essex, though.’

‘Keep your grubby hands off it,’ Severin says sharply.

Philliskirk looks wounded. ‘OK, OK, keep your fucking hair on. I don’t know what’s up with you today. Time of the month, is it?’

Delon giggles at that one. But then Delon giggles at anything Philliskirk says.

‘I was out with the North Shields crew the other day,’ Delon says. ‘We got an Alfa. Fucking nice cars, Alfas.’

‘You should ask Tiernan if you can have it,’ says Philliskirk. ‘As a thank-you for all your hard work driving car thieves around Tyne and Wear.’