Ptolemy wonders what Millican thinks about her. What she will say five or six years down the line when she looks back at her first CID investigation.

Yeah, I was stuck in a warehouse with this biscuit-scoffing DC who was obviously a useless bitch, because they’d given her all the paperwork to do. What a fucking loser she must have been.

It wasn’t even as if she led a glamorous life outside of work, Ptolemy reflects glumly. Ray had called this morning from Tallinn to say one of the other truckers had suffered a suspected heart attack, and that he was now expected to drive on to Riga to fulfil the contract. That meant he wouldn’t be back home until the middle of next week at the very least, and she could tell from his voice just how utterly thrilled he was at the prospect of another four days driving on Eastern Europe’s potholed roads and staying in its primitive truck stops.

Almost as thrilled as she is at the prospect of another night on her own with only the prospect of a frozen dinner and some backed-up episodes of EastEnders on Sky+ to look forward to.

As she drags over another box, she wonders what Severin will be doing tonight. Letting his hair down? Toasting his success in cracking the car-ringing gang? Just how did an undercover detective let his hair down? Presumably the nature of his job meant there were limited places he could go. A darkened cinema, perhaps? The idea of inviting him round for dinner skitters unexpectedly into her mind; two lost souls, all dressed up with nowhere to go, sharing a lonesome spaghetti bolognese and a tragic bottle of cheap red wine.

Stop it, Kath.

She reaches into the box, removes the attached paperwork and keys the VIN and the registration number of the vehicle in to the computer database, along with the name of the registered owner and insurance details. Beneath it, something bulky inside a plastic grocery bag. What now? she thinks wearily. She picks up the bag and tips it upside down. Its contents fall with a thud on the desktop.

‘Naughty, naughty,’ says WPC Millican, who has come across with a plate of biscuits. She reaches down for the object on the desk. ‘I thought these were illegal.’

‘Don’t touch it!’

Millican recoils and the biscuits fall to the floor. Ptolemy reaches into her pocket for a pair of thin rubber gloves. She puts them on and picks up the object. It is the size and shape of an electric shaver, except instead of blades it has two raised nubs.

‘Get me an evidence bag,’ she says.

Millican hurries across to her desk and returns with a clear Ziplok bag. Ptolemy drops the object in the bag and seals it.

There is something else in the box.

It is a rope, coiled like a sleeping snake.

Detective Chief Inspector Frank Maguire, head of the Greater Manchester Police Drug Squad, is a tall man with the languid demeanour of someone who has ruled his particular fiefdom for so long that he has outlived all his enemies.

But Newcastle is not his patch – and Mhaire Anderson, while not strictly an enemy, is not beholden to him either. Furthermore, Maguire has been conducting an investigation on her patch, without telling her. And if there’s one thing that pisses Anderson off, it’s a lack of professional courtesy.

‘Six months?’ she exclaims disbelievingly. Then, noticing the other diners in the restaurant looking at her, she lowers her voice to a hiss. ‘You’ve had Wayne Heddon under surveillance for six months? And how many fucking times has he been to Newcastle?’

Maguire, trying to remain calm under fire, offers a weak smile and plucks distractedly at the moules marinière in the bowl in front of him.

‘Listen, Mhaire,’ he says in his smooth Ulster brogue. ‘You know the form. If Heddon had had meetings at the Savoy we wouldn’t necessarily have told the Met about it.’

‘You fucking liar, Frank. You would been round at Scotland Yard kissing their arses for permission to be on their patch. But just because this is Newcastle, you think you can do what you bloody well like.’

‘That’s not true and you know it. I have the utmost respect for—’

‘Ah, don’t give me that slaver, Frank. I’m too old and I’m too ugly. I ought to make an official complaint and bugger your six-month surveillance operation.’

Maguire shrugs. ‘Look, we could have done this over the phone, Mhaire, but I came up to see you personally as a gesture of good faith.’ He hands her a slim file. ‘And I’ve brought this with me, in a renewed spirit of cooperation.’

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s a log of Wayne Heddon’s visits to Newcastle. All his meetings with Jack Peel and Okan Gul. Where he stayed. What he did. When he went for a shit. It’s all there.’

Anderson flips through the file suspiciously, but from what she can see it’s as thorough as Maguire claims.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘Then answer me this: who tied Okan Gul to the railway line?’

Maguire shakes his head. ‘I have no idea. I didn’t even know he was dead until you told me.’

‘You don’t seem terribly bothered about it, considering Gul was central to your investigation.’

‘If I thought it had anything to do with my investigation then I assure you I would be.’

Anderson narrows her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean on the night Okan Gul died in Newcastle, Wayne Heddon was in a hotel in Amsterdam having a meeting with several high-ranking representatives of the Kaplan Kirmizi.’

‘You’re saying Gul’s last visit was nothing to do with the drugs deal?’

Maguire smiles, sensing that after all his discomfort, he has finally gained the upper hand.

‘Not unless it was a social visit to catch up with his Newcastle middleman. In which case, I wouldn’t be interested anyway.’

‘His Newcastle middleman had been dead two weeks, Frank,’ Anderson reminds him.

‘Jack Peel was dead, yes,’ Maguire says, ‘but heroin abhors a vacuum. The deal still needed to go through.’

‘So who was the replacement, Frank?’ Anderson says.

Maguire avails himself of a long, feline stretch. ‘I know it’s frowned on in these politically correct times in which we have the misfortune to live,’ he says, ‘but I don’t suppose you’d care to discuss this over a glass of whisky back at my hotel, Mhaire? Bushmills, of course. County Antrim’s finest.’

‘What sort of relationship do you have with your ex-wife?’ Gilcrux asks.

‘None of your business.’

‘I understand she left you. And left you holding the baby, as it were.’

‘Alex was ten years old and he chose to live with me,’ Vos says. ‘But like I say, it’s none of your business.’

‘Must have been difficult looking after a kid, holding down a job with antisocial hours.’

‘We got by, Mr Gilcrux. We managed.’

‘Well-adjusted boy, is he? Does well at school?’

‘He still gets a bit of teasing sometimes,’ Vos says.

Gilcrux rolls his pen between his fingers. ‘About what?’

‘The scars.’

‘Scars?’ The rolling becomes faster.

‘On his back,’ Vos says. ‘From when I used to thrash him with my belt. Poor little bastard. I hate his mother, but I should have never taken it out on him.’

The pen is still. Gilcrux blinks slowly.

Vos sits back in his chair and crosses one leg over the other. ‘Like I said, Mr Gilcrux, it’s none of your fucking business.’

‘Hey, kiddo. What’s happening?’

Alex looks up from his Iain M Banks novel. Then he looks at his watch. ‘You’re back?’ he says. ‘Before nine? Did you forget something?’

Vos picks up a cushion from the end of the sofa and throws it at his son. ‘Thought we could have some quality time together. Go for a curry or something.’

‘Jesus. No, Dad. That’s so creepy.’