‘All we’ve got is a description. Blonde, good-looking, young.’

‘OK. Well let’s work those angles and see what we can get. Meanwhile it might be worth reminding the criminal fraternity of the consequences of holding back on this one.’

‘I’m on it.’

‘Not you, Theo.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m putting every available detective on the street. But I want you back at the Bug House.’

Vos stares at her. ‘Why? You think I might not be able to control myself? That someone might take a dive off a fire escape during the course of questioning? After all, I’ve got a reputation to uphold.’

‘Damn right you’ve got a reputation to uphold, DCI Vos,’ Anderson says. ‘You’re the best fucking detective I’ve got – which is the only reason I’m letting you within a hundred miles of this case.’

The shakedown begins in earnest within ten minutes of Vos leaving Anderson’s office. Within an hour every known villain in the city is in no doubt of the seriousness of the situation, having either been approached personally or having had the message relayed to them by their associates. It’s like water being dripped into a balloon: sooner or later the balloon is going to burst. It’s just a matter of time.

But in his office in the Bug House, Vos knows that time is the one thing he does not have.

Shortly before 11 a.m. Seagram arrives outside the offices of AAA Taxis and pushes the buzzer.

‘Where to?’ says the disembodied voice.

‘It’s me, Jean,’ Seagram says.

Ma Breaker is sitting behind her desk, face like thunder. Ryan, her youngest and stupidest son, is slumped on the leather settee looking decidedly uncomfortable.

‘First of all,’ she says, ‘I am not very happy with you, Bernice.’

Seagram shrugs. ‘What can I say, Jean?’

‘I appreciate you’ve got a job to do, but there’s a time and a place for everything, and the bingo night at the Excelsior is not one of them.’

Seagram notices that Ma’s fingers are still stained with red ink from the blotting pens.

‘Jean, I really don’t have much time.’

The old woman raises her hand and then points an accusatory finger at her son. ‘Tell her what you told me.’

‘Aw, mother!’ Ryan says.

‘Tell her!’

Ryan twists like a fish on a line. ‘Jimmy Rafferty, yeah?’ he mumbles.

‘What about him, Ryan?’

‘Well I don’t know him that well, right? But I sometimes see him about.’

‘Do you know where he is, Ryan?’ Seagram says.

Ryan shakes his head earnestly. ‘No. Honest. Like I say, I just sometimes see him about.’

‘Tell him about the lass, Ryan,’ Ma says ominously.

‘He’s seeing this lass,’ Ryan says. ‘He said it was a secret, that nobody was to know, but—’

‘But you’ve got a gob like the mouth of the Tyne,’ Ma says disparagingly.

‘Who is she, Ryan?’ says Seagram.

‘I don’t know her name. Honest, he wouldn’t tell me her name. Only that she’s posh. Rich, like.’

‘What’s a toerag like Jimmy Rafferty doing with a posh rich girl, Ryan?’

‘I dunno. He met her at this club in town a couple of weeks ago. He says she likes a bit of rough. Says she’s always gagging for it off him . . .’ Ryan stops himself, conscious of his mother’s disapproving glare.

‘Go on, Ryan.’

‘Yeah. Well, Jimmy’s well smitten. He was on about how he would do anything for her, you know? That they were going to run off together.’

‘But he didn’t say who this girl was?’

‘It had to be a secret, he said.’

Seagram stares at him, repulsed by his eager eyes and his damp red lips.

‘When did you last see Jimmy Rafferty, Ryan?’

Ryan hangs his head. ‘About a week ago.’

‘Where?’

‘Snooker hall on Byker Road.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘I dunno. Can’t remember.’

A stapler flies from Ma Breaker’s hand and strikes her son in the chest with a hollow thud. ‘Tell the police officer, Ryan, or so help me God I’ll rip your ears off.’

‘He said it was going to happen,’ Ryan says sullenly, rubbing his chest.

‘What was going to happen?’ Seagram says.

‘They were going to be together. He said things had changed and he’d done what she asked and now they were going to be together and nothing was going to stop them.’

Seagram goes across to the settee, and Ryan Breaker flinches like a whipped dog as she hunkers down in front of him.

‘That’s very good, Ryan,’ she says, smiling icily. ‘You’ve been a big help. Now I need you to think: what had Jimmy done?’

Ryan’s face is contorted by his natural instinct not to say a word to the police and by his total and complete fear of his own mother.

‘There was this bloke. Foreigner. Friend of her dad’s.’

‘Go on, Ryan.’

‘She told Jimmy that he’d tried it on with her. Feeling her up and that. She wanted Jimmy to sort him out for her.’

‘And?’

‘He did,’ Ryan Breaker says. ‘Jimmy sorted him out.’

Seagram stares at him. ‘The girl, Ryan. I need you to remember everything Jimmy told you about her.’

‘He didn’t say much—’

‘Everything, Ryan.’

Ryan Breaker sighs. Seagram can almost hear the gears clanking in his thick skull. Then he looks up, and there is a light burning dimly behind his eyes.

‘The club where he met her; Jimmy was working on the door that night. That’s why he was so pleased with himself when she started chatting him up.’

‘I don’t understand, Ryan.’

There is a pause while Ryan assembles his thoughts. Then he licks his lips and nods. ‘The club was Aces High. Down on the Quayside.’

‘Yes, I know it,’ Seagram says.

‘The girl was – well, Jimmy never knew this, it was one of the other bouncers that told him afterwards.’

‘What about the girl, Ryan?’

Ryan looks at her in triumph. ‘It was her dad that owned it,’ he says.

Ptolemy is staring at the wall map of Northumberland when Vos finally emerges from his office. He’s been there all morning, hidden behind drawn blinds, and she can only imagine what sort of personal hell he must be going through as the minutes tick by with no word about Alex. Part of her wants to go in and see him, to offer him at the very least the consolation of human contact, but she knows that the best thing she can do for Vos now is to help find his son.

‘It’s a big place when you look at it like that,’ Vos says, nodding at the map.

‘Yes, sir,’ she says.

Vos goes across to Mayson Calvert’s desk. On it is a plastic sack marked EGROS WOOD PELLETS. He dips his hand in and scoops up a pile of cylindrical pellets no more than a centimetre in length.

‘So this is Mayson’s elusive wonder fuel, is it?’ he says, letting the pellets trickle through his fingers into the sack.

‘I’ve had the full rundown this morning,’ Ptolemy says. ‘Apparently their high-density, low-moisture content allows them to be burned with a far higher combustion efficiency than traditional fossil fuels. I can even tell you the chemical compound if you like, sir.’

‘No, thanks,’ Vos says. ‘Where’s Mayson now?’

‘He went out for a sandwich.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’m OK.’

‘You’ve got to eat.’

‘I kind of got sidetracked, sir.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I was thinking about those pellets, and why the dust ended up on the victim and on the rope and in Jimmy Rafferty’s car. And then I saw them – and I remembered that when I was a kid I used to help with the mucking out at the stables down the road. The woman who ran the stables used pellets just like these as bedding for the horses. And then there’s the rope; I checked it out online and aramid rope is used for securing horses in transport boxes. It’s flexible, but it’s also incredibly strong.’

Vos frowns and sits on the edge of the desk. ‘So what are you getting at, Ptolemy?’

‘Jimmy Rafferty’s car was stolen from Morpeth. Okan Gul was killed at Stannington, just down the road. But Jimmy’s from North Shields. What’s he doing all the way out there? How come he knows the area so well? And then I thought about the horse connection and – oh, I don’t know, sir. It’s probably nothing.’