“It’s true,” Laura said, willing Thackeray to believe her. “Donna couldn’t have known. It’s just not possible, any more than Joyce could have been involved. The whole thing’s absurd.”

“It’s the drug squad you need to convince, not me,” Thackeray said. “And you’ll find they think they’ve heard all that before. If Donna’s in charge of the premises she has a duty to make sure no one brings anything in they shouldn’t. You know that, Kevin. People have gone to jail for less.”

“You’re joking,” Laura said sharply. “Donna can’t search them every time they come through the door. Any one of those kids could have brought something in.”

“Brought,” Mower said softly. “Or planted, maybe.”

Laura glanced at him sharply.

“Someone who wanted the place closed down, perhaps?”

“You’re going to need solid evidence, one way or another,” Thackeray said sharply. “In the meantime Joyce and the others are in a lot of trouble. Laura, I suggest you get down to Eckersley with a lawyer and get Joyce out of there, at least.”

“Right,” Laura agreed, although she glanced at Mower anxiously before slipping on her jacket. “I’ll keep you in touch with what’s happening,” she promised. The silence lengthened after she closed the office door behind her. Thackeray eventually stopped drumming his fingers on the desk and sighed.

“How long have you been working up there?” he asked.

“Three, four weeks,” Mower said.

“And the booze?”

“I’m OK, guv,” Mower said, very aware that Thackeray would see through evasion on that score. “They were happy with me at the clinic. It was an aberration. When I sat down and sorted my head out I discovered I could leave it alone.”

“I hope you’re right,” Thackeray said, recalling the dozens of times he had told his superior officers much the same and proved himself wrong within days. “You’re going to need a clear head to get yourself out of this mess.”

“So what happens next?” Mower asked, his face unusually pale beneath the beard.

“You talk to the drug squad, I talk to Jack Longley. But before I do that I want to know one thing.”

“That I wasn’t dealing heroin?” Mower asked with a crooked smile.

“I’ll take that as read,” Thackeray conceded. “I don’t know your friend Donna Maitland but you and Joyce Ackroyd don’t look much like candidates for Mr. Big up on the Heights to me. No, what I really want to know is whether or not you want your job back.”

Mower shrugged again.

“It looks like I may not have the choice,” he said.

“Stop playing games, Kevin,” Thackeray said.

“Do you want me back?”

Thackeray’s chilly gaze weighed up the younger man, bearded and dishevelled in his jeans and sweatshirt, and softened slightly.

“If you want me to fight your corner, I will,” he said. “But I don’t want to stick my neck out and then have you chop it off.”

Mower rubbed a hand over his face with a faint rasping sound and attempted a smile.

“Rita wouldn’t have wanted me to pack it in, would she?”

“I can’t answer that, Kevin,” Thackeray said. “What I need to know is what you want.”

“It’s another two weeks before I’m due back …”

“It’s about two minutes before I have to see Jack Longley and tell him what’s been going on up at Wuthering. And I’ve a murder inquiry to run.”

“Yeah, I heard.” Mower got to his feet wearily and opened the door. He hesitated only for a moment.

“I don’t know what I want, guv. I can’t pretend I do. It’s not that I’m not grateful …”

Thackeray shook his head impatiently.

“Get down to Eckersley and talk to Ray Walter. Give him whatever help he needs.”

“Sir,” Mower said and closed the office door behind him.

“Damnation,” Thackeray said after he had gone.

Later that afternoon Mower drove furiously back up the hill to the Heights and pulled up with a screech of brakes outside the primary school where a cluster of gossiping mothers with pushchairs and an isolated father watched in astonishment as he got out of the car and began pacing the pavement anxiously. It was ten minutes or so before the children began to straggle out of the school door with coats half on and bags trailing behind them to find their parents.

Mower had spent the intervening hours since he had left Thackeray at Eckersley police station where the drug squad had taken their time over interviewing him and taking a statement about his involvement in the Project. Ray Walter had arrived personally to see him sign it, with a sneer on his face that told Mower as clearly as any words that the DI regarded him as compromised.

“Nice set-up they had going there,” Walter said when Mower handed him the completed document. “Just a pity you didn’t notice what was going on.”

“What do you mean,” Mower asked.

“Kids coming and going, in and out of the place all hours. No questions asked. No cash and goods changing hands on the street. Ideal. Just a pity you didn’t suss it.”

“There was nothing to suss,” Mower said flatly.

“No?” Walter raised an eyebrow. “Never mind, Kevin. I don’t suppose they’ll mind that you’ve lost your nose for an iffy set-up when you get kicked out of the job.”

Mower had not responded to that, battening down his fury and concealing clenched fists in the pockets of his leather jacket.

“Have you released Joyce yet?” he asked.

“We’ve let the old girl out. Real spitfire she was, demanding her rights. She’s got a record for civil disobedience as long as your arm. I expect she’s into legalising cannabis now.”

“Yeah, right,” Mower said. “And Donna?”

“No way. I reckon she’s ripe for aiding and abetting even if we can’t pin the dealing on her. We’ll keep her here for her full twenty-four, I reckon. And the iffy king of the turntables, Sanderson. One of them must have know what was going on.”

“No way,” Mower said. “Dizzy B’s never been to Bradfield before this weekend as far as I know.”

“As far as you know. All I can say is you’ve got some dodgy friends, Kevin. I should think about that, if I were you.”

“There’s nothing dodgy about Donna. She hates the drug scene.”

“Maybe,” Walter conceded. “Any road, your precious Donna gave me a message for you. Would you pick up her kid from school, she said. Got a little thing going there, have we, Kev? Be waiting for her when she gets out, will you?”

“Sod you,” Mower had said. “Sir.”

He waited another twenty minutes outside the primary school, watching the last stragglers crossing the playground, before he had to accept that Emma was not amongst them. His heart thumping, he hurried to the main door of the school and found a pleasant-looking woman putting files away in the school office.

“I’ve come to collect Emma Maitland,” Mower said. “But she doesn’t seem to have come out with the rest of the children.”

“And you are?” the woman asked.

“A friend of Emma’s mother. She’s been unavoidably detained.”

“I’m Pat Warren, the head here,” the woman said. “I couldn’ t just let Emma go with someone I don’t know, you know, without Donna letting me know herself. But in any case, you’re too late. Emma’s already been collected.”

“Who by, for God’s sake?” Mower’s mouth suddenly felt dry. The head teacher’s face softened slightly.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Social services came to pick her up. They had an emergency care order. There was nothing I could do about it and I had no idea where Donna was, so I couldn’t call her. I got no reply when I tried the Project.”

“Jesus wept,” Mower said. “Donna will go completely spare. She worships that child.”

“I know. I’m sorry, Mr …?”

But Mower had spun on his heel, his face pale and set, walking quickly across the now deserted playground where a couple of soft-drink cartons blew with the crisp packets in the sharp wind and out into the street where an alcopop bottle rolled in the gutter before he kicked it viciously across the street. It could not be coincidence, he thought. Just because you were paranoid did not mean they were not out to get you. And he was totally convinced that someone was out to get Donna Maitland and, through her, him.