“You’d better believe it,” Mower said quickly, speaking quietly and glancing behind him as if anxious not to be overheard.

“You’re not here officially then? Undercover or something? The whiskers are new. Suits you.”

“I’m not here at all, as far as Michael Thackeray’s concerned,” Mower said, too quickly, Laura thought. She raised a sceptical eyebrow.

“He told me you were in rehab.”

Mower shrugged.

“I was then. Now I’m not,” he said. “Don’t look so stricken, Laura. It’s not what you think. I’m as dry as the Gobi, clean as the proverbial whistle.”

“So what …?”

“Nothing heavy. I was just up here doing a bit of moonlighting, trying to get my head together before I have to decide whether to sign back on or not. And then this. I asked them not to call the police until I made myself scarce. They don’t know up here I’m a copper and I don’t want the nick to think I’ve gone soft as well as the other. This being the Wuthering, my mates here’ll just think I’ve unfinished business with the fuzz. I suppose Joyce called you, did she? I asked her not to mention my day-job to the people up here but I hadn’t reckoned on her calling you.”

“She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. When did this happen?” Laura glanced around at the devastation.

“We close the place at four-thirty, after the afternoon classes finish. Open up again at seven. We were in the back having a coffee and talking things over when we heard some banging and crashing about out here.” Mower shrugged. “They can’t have been in here more than a couple of minutes,” he said. “I don’t know why I was so surprised. We should have expected it, I suppose.”

“This was some of the kids you hadn’t got off the street, then?”

“You can’t win ‘em all,” Mower mumbled. “You’d better come in. Your grandmother hasn’t taken it very well, I’m afraid. Donna’s plying her with tea and reassurances, but at her age it’s hard to cope with, I guess. You met Donna Maitland, didn’t you?”

Laura nodded, recalling the local mother who had hauled herself out of the despair and depression which incapacitated so many on the Heights, got herself qualified and had then been appointed as the manager of the Project; a nervous, driven woman whose own nephew had been a casualty of the drug-culture which crippled so many of the estate’s young people.

Mower led her through a tidy classroom, untouched by the marauders, and into a small kitchen where Joyce Ackroyd was huddled over a mug of tea at a Formica-topped table beside a blonde woman in a smart blue suit, thin almost to the point of emaciation, who drew hard and frequently on a roll-up cigarette.

“Donna,” Laura said quietly. She had been impressed by Donna’s energy and her fragility on her first visit. Now the dark circles under her eyes seemed to have deepened in the intervening weeks and her bottle blonde cascade of hair offered a brittle sort of defiance around a carefully made-up, not unattractive face now trembling on the edge of angry tears.

Laura put an arm round her grandmother’s thin shoulders and had her hand seized fiercely in return.

“D’you know who would do this?” Laura asked.

“There’s no helping some,” Donna said wearily. “There’s a few skag-heads out there who’d wreck owt just for t’sheer fun of it.”

“Will you write something, love?” Joyce asked urgently. “Our budget won’t run to putting this lot right. We’ll need some extra help.”

“I thought the council were backing you,” Laura said.

“Only t‘running costs,” Donna said. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and ran her fingers through her hair in lieu of a comb, evidently determined to resume the role of manager in spite of her evident distress. “Capital came from t’Lottery and there’ll be no more of that.”

“You’re not insured?”

“You must be joking,” Donna said, angry now. “Have you never heard of red-lining? They drew a red line round the Heights so long ago the ink’s pretty well washed out. No banks or insurance companies’ll touch us - or any other poor sod up here. Why d’you think the loan sharks make such a killing? They’re the only beggars’ll help anyone get by. And I don’t think they’ll be holding a street collection for us.”

Laura glanced at Mower.

“Hadn’t you better call the police?” she asked. He shook his head.

“Donna’ll deal with that shortly. We just thought you might like to take Joyce home before we get into all that hassle. Not that there’s much chance of finding the little toe-rags who did it. They’ll have had the sense to wash the paint off their hands by now.”

“I could give you their names with a ninety-nine per cent chance of being right,” Donna said. “But making it stick’s another thing. They’ll all have been at home wi’their mates- or their mums - if a copper comes asking.”

“I’ll give Joyce a ride home,” Laura said. “If anyone wants to talk to her they know where to find her.”

She helped her grandmother into her coat and handed her the stick she needed to walk with now arthritis had made movement difficult.

“It’s too late for today but I’ll talk to my editor first thing in the morning and come back up to see you,” she said to Donna. “I’m really sorry about this. It all looked as though it was going so well.”

“It’s the first thing we’ve ever had up here that’s got some o’t kids off the street and sitting still for an hour or two,” Donna said, her voice husky with emotion. “Thrown out of school long ago, most of‘em. Given up on reading and writing. But they like computers. Got a bit o’street cred, they have. And because we’re on t‘spot, not a bus-ride down into t’town, they’ll come in, won’t they? Come in and stay in, some of’em. We’ve got a few of them into rehab, and I’ve real hopes of jobs for a few already. And now this.” She lit a fresh cigarette and drew smoke into lungs so damaged that Laura could hear them whistle from the other side of the room.

“Tomorrow,” she promised, propelling her grandmother through the door.

Joyce struggled into the passenger seat of the Golf and said nothing as Laura drove her the quarter mile to her tiny bungalow which stood in the shadow of the Heights’ three massive blocks of run-down flats. She too was breathing heavily by the time she had opened the front door, turned on the lights and allowed Laura to help her off with her coat and into her favourite armchair by the gas fire. Laura gazed at her grandmother for a moment, absorbing the pallor and the lines of weariness beneath the shock of white hair. But Joyce’s green eyes, so like her own, still gleamed with anger.

“I’ll get onto the powers that be at the Town Hall tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll not see Donna defeated.”

“Will they listen?” Laura asked carefully. There had been a time when Joyce Ackroyd had been the uncrowned queen of Bradfield Town Hall, but it was years since she had been forced into retirement by ill-health and she knew that the new faces of municipal Labour regarded the likes of Joyce, an unreconstructed admirer of heroes like Nye Bevan and Tony Benn, with as much incomprehension as she regarded them.

“If we don’t make the Project work, they’ll privatise it, as like as not, or just close it down regardless,” Joyce said. “I want to see it succeed. But we’ll need some help. They’ve got all these schemes for reconstruction, partnerships, I don’t know what, but when you want some cash for something simple that actually works you can’t get a damn’ penny …” For a second she covered her eyes and Laura thought that she had never seen her combative grandmother so depressed.

“You know they found another young lad dead last night, don’t you?” Joyce asked suddenly.

“Not the one who was knocked down in town?”

“No, the one who fell off the roof of Priestley House. Overdose, they’re saying, out of his head. That’s the fifth or sixth this year and no one seems to be doing a damn thing about it. I don’t know what that man of yours thinks he’s about, but heroin up here is wiping out a whole generation. Aren’t the police even interested?”