The officer taking the notes glanced up at the car, at the voices, at Mo’s beard. Omar let out a weak laugh. ‘No, look, my dad’s just a wee guy that runs a shop, it’s not a security matter, it’s just guys with guns. They wanted money. Afghanistan, they said it was, something about Afghanistan.’

‘Turn around and put your hands on the roof of the car please, sir.’

‘They’re criminals!’

‘Just put your hands on the car please, sir.’ He said it more firmly this time. Omar did as he was asked.

The other officer moved round to the other side of the car and motioned for Mo to come and copy Omar’s example. With the boys arranged on either side of the car, the officers took a man each, patting them down.

Mo knew he looked the most alien because of his beard and so he started talking quietly to the officers searching him, thickening his accent to its private school best. ‘Officer, we really appreciate that you have to do this, really, we do, but my friend’s dad is just a very ordinary member of the public. He’s Scottish.’

Omar watched across the roof of the car and saw the officer’s eyes narrow spitefully at the back of Mo’s neck. He knew, suddenly, that sounding posh was not the way to invite sympathy and he tried to signal to Mo, but Mo wasn’t looking at him.

‘You see,’ continued Mo, ‘my friend’s dad was taken from his home by gunmen, they’ve injured his sixteen-year-old sister.’

‘’S that right?’

‘Yes. They bundled him into a van and we ran after them, following the van, but we seem to have lost it.’

‘Why didn’t you call the police, sir?’

‘Well, we went after them.’

‘D’yees not have a mobile? One can drive, one can call.’

‘I suppose… we didn’t think… It’s a big white van, possibly a Merc, a panel van, the left light at the front’s broken, it’s brighter, because they went into the wall near the house-’

‘Right? Really?’ The officer’s pace was slow. He stopped searching Mo, half smirked, pressed the end of his automatic pencil.

Just then, looking over Mo’s shoulder at the motorway below, Omar saw the van with one bright light coming out of the empty motorway towards them. He screamed, ‘Hoi!’ put two hands on the Vauxhall’s bonnet and skimmed across it, sprinting to the crash barrier just as the van shot underneath the bridge. Omar hung over the railing, shouted after it, ‘Nugget! Nugget!’

A blinding whoosh of pain stabbed his shoulder, swept up his neck and circled his ribcage, making his knees buckle. He twisted as he slid to the ground, trying to turn into the painful hold that the policeman had locked him in.

Holding him by the wrist, the officer lifted Omar to his feet as easily as a hollow stick, guiding him back across the road to the squad car. Omar saw the white van through the far railings, trundling off along the motorway, headed for the city.

Alex Morrow bit slowly into her index finger, pressing her teeth until she could hear a small crunch in the skin. She was so angry that the upper lid of her left eye was twitching, blurring the changing view through the rain-splattered car window. If she didn’t calm down before they got there she’d blurt something, make a fool of herself in front of him. The thought of meeting Grant Bannerman face to face made her bite her finger again.

Years ago a well-meaning training officer had told her never to question a superior’s decision, forget fair, just do the job, ignore the politics and don’t take it home. What the hell did he know, she thought now, sinking her teeth a little deeper into the skin. He never rose above sergeant. At her level the whole job was politics, as if she had anything else to think about, as if she had a home.

The tinge of melodrama shamed her to her senses. She released her finger from the grip of her teeth. She had a home. Of course she had a bloody home. She just didn’t want to go there.

The car purred quietly, the uniformed driver carefully taking his time, observing every traffic by-law because she was in the car, taking no chances. He pulled on the handbrake at each set of lights. It was all she could do not to slap him.

She knew her anger was disproportionate and scattered, leaking from her like water through a sock. It was being noticed, remarked upon in her assessments. It’s nothing, she said, it’s about nothing.

They’d had a quiet night up until now. October was the start of the cold weather, when the drunken street fighters scurried home to beat uncomplaining wives in the warm, when all the really bad men went off to winter in the sun. Start of the academic year, she remembered, a good time for long term investigations and reviving cold cases.

The streets were empty. Cold rain pattered softly on the glass, swept aside by the rhythmic wipers, revealing and obscuring the Vicky Road. The address they were headed to was familiar from her childhood, so quiet a suburban area that she hadn’t been back in decades. The crimes here were burglaries, noisy teenage parties, local stuff.

She saw the driver glance uncertainly at his silent GPS for guidance. ‘Take a right at the roundabout,’ she said, ‘then take a left.’

They were just a few streets away, so she went through the checklist she always followed before a public appearance. Hair tidy, touches of make-up in place, she ran a finger under each of her eyes. She had small eyes and her mascara tended to puddle underneath. Handbag on the floor of the car, nothing personal hanging out of the top, no tampons or photos. She pulled her suit jacket straight, touching the buttons with her fingertips, making sure her armour was secure.

The car pulled up at the mouth of the street, at an unfamiliar no entry sign and the driver hesitated, not knowing whether to break the law or observe it and piss about, circling the address through the back streets.

‘Take it,’ she snapped.

He turned into the road slowly, as if reluctant. He’d been reprimanded for a high speed violation, she remembered now, and was showing the boss that all of that was behind him.

The street was smaller than she remembered, the houses low bungalows rather than the mansions of her memory. She used to cross this street to primary school everyday. Her hand still remembered the warmth of her mother’s palm as she led her across the road. She curled her fingers around her palm at the thought. This area seemed hugely wealthy to them back then.

Straight ahead blue and white tape had been strung across the road, blocking the street. A uniformed cop was standing in front of the tape and approached the driver’s door as the car slowed to a stop. He was dressed against the cold in reflector jacket and big padded regulation gloves, scissoring the fingers of one hand into the other as he arrived at the window. Not long ago Alex had been in uniform, had worn the ridiculously padded gloves and remembered how uncomfortably they splayed her fingers. Her driver lowered the window.

The cop bent down. ‘Road closed.’

‘I’m here with a gaffer.’ Her driver pointed at Morrow.

‘Oh.’ The cop blushed, embarrassed that he hadn’t noticed her through the windscreen. ‘Sorry. Can you park up over there?’

‘Aye, keep your eyes open, won’t you?’ said Morrow.

The driver smirked, trying to side with her as he pulled up the road a little.

She could see all the way down the empty street to the tape at the far end. The house was on her right, taking up the corner, the crime scene forming an awkward T-junction around the house. Straight ahead of her, beyond the second line of tape, squad cars were parked with their siren lights still blinking, bathing the street blue then red, like Cinderella’s dress. At Morrow’s end of the road a couple of uniforms lingered in front of the tape, backs rod straight, hands clasped behind, formal poses that alerted anyone in the know to the fact that very senior officers were very nearby.