They are standing at the window of his office, looking down over the car park two floors below, where Al Blaylock is being led, with as much remaining dignity as he can muster, into the back of a police car that will take him to the nearest custody suite.

‘In any case,’ Vos continues, ‘he’d probably insist on representing Melody. He’s got his faults has Al, and his biggest is loyalty to Jack Peel and his family.’

‘That’s the problem with loyalty,’ Anderson says. ‘It’s always blind. Look at Jimmy Rafferty: he thought Melody loved him, but all the time he was just her hit man. Then again she’s Jack Peel’s daughter. What do you expect?’

‘She’s smarter than Jack ever was,’ Vos says. ‘Believe me, she’s smarter than the lot of us.’

‘Maybe so, but she’s also a deeply disturbed individual, Theo. She ordered Okan Gul killed because he groped her. She invited him over from Amsterdam to his own execution.’ Anderson sighs and turns away from the window and slumps in a chair next to Vos’s desk. ‘Anyway, she’ll have plenty of time to reflect on how smart she is when she’s behind bars.’

Vos can see the scars on his face reflected in the glass. He’s not so sure. When they apprehended Melody Peel she was in the middle of a spa treatment at her health club in Newcastle. She is now downstairs in the interview room where, despite twenty-four hours’ questioning, she has repeatedly denied all knowledge of Jimmy Rafferty, of asking him to kill Okan Gul and Alex Vos, and apart from Rafferty’s word, there’s nothing to prove otherwise. Even the positive identification by Alex’s friends will be swatted away by Melody’s expensive defence team on the grounds of alcohol and narcotic impairment. The rest of the evidence is just circumstantial.

In less than an hour they will have to make the decision to charge her or let her go.

No, she’s smart all right, Vos thinks, running his finger along the crisp ridge of stitches running down his cheek. And somehow he doesn’t think he’s seen the last of Melody Peel.

TWENTY-ONE

‘They say he was a Satanist, you know,’ Phil Huggins says.

‘Really?’

‘Oh, yeah. He may have been the father of the Newcastle City Police, but he had a cellar full of virgins and regularly indulged in midnight orgies on the Town Moor.’

Ptolemy looks appraisingly at the stern, patrician features of W James Buglass. ‘Then I’d say he’s right at home,’ she says.

‘For Christ’s sake, Phil,’ Fallow says. ‘Give her the bloody pen.’

From behind his back, Huggins produces a black marker pen and solemnly offers it to Ptolemy. He looks at Fallow, Seagram, Mayson Calvert and Sam Severin, all of whom are standing in a semicircle in front of the battered old portrait.

‘What do you think, guv?’ he says to Seagram. ‘Can she sign the sideburn?’

‘I think so,’ Seagram says. ‘Welcome to the Bug House, Kath.’

TWENTY-TWO

Nine a.m. Monday morning, and in a joyless room in central Newcastle two men sit opposite each other. One is Detective Chief Inspector Theo Vos. The other is a trauma assessment counsellor.

‘So how is he?’ says the counsellor.

‘Alex?’

‘Yes. How do you think he’s coping? Be honest.’

‘Better than I would. He’s a strong kid.’

‘No nightmares? Flashbacks?’

‘He’s more concerned about getting to the next level of Call of Duty.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Me? I’m fine.’

The counsellor chews thoughtfully on the end of his pen. He has interviewed dozens of police officers in this room during the course of his work and knows that by nature they are a taciturn, emotionally retarded breed. Yet he has never come across anyone quite like Vos, no one as genuinely opaque. He looks into those dark eyes and he genuinely sees nothing behind them. Vos’s defences are total.

‘I’m sorry that you didn’t want to continue with our sessions,’ he says. ‘I thought we were making genuine progress.’

‘You make it sound like I need therapy.’

‘Well, therapy can be an emotive term. But we all need someone to talk to, surely?’

‘I talk to people every day of my life,’ Vos says. ‘Sometimes it’s just nice to sit and look at the view.’

‘And what view do you see?’

‘Depends. Sometimes I see me and Alex having a laugh. Father-and-son stuff. Sometimes I see him when he’s my age. Sometimes I see his mother with that stupid fucking dentist in Florida and I wonder what might have happened if we’d stuck it out.’

The counsellor sits forward. ‘Go on.’

‘Sometimes I see Vic Entwistle lying there in a pool of his own blood on the floor of Jack Peel’s casino. I see Peel bleating for his miserable life on that fire escape. And sometimes I see myself throwing him off.’

The counsellor has a startled expression. He swallows hard.

‘Did you kill him, Mr Vos?’ he says.

Theo Vos says nothing. Outside the rain is beating against the windowpanes again.

‘You’re the counsellor,’ he says presently. ‘You tell me.’