“I’m sure they are, Nan,” Laura said, with more confidence than she felt. She suspected that the kids on the Heights who killed each other quickly with knives or slowly with heroin and crack rated much lower in official priorities than the grammar school boy from a wealthy home who had been run down the night before.

“Well, put a bomb under them for us, will you, love?”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Laura knew that her grandmother did not altogether approve of her relationship with DCI Michael Thackeray believing, with the same certainty with which she believed in the future of British coal and the need to renationalise the railways, that men and women should have the decency to tie a legal knot before embarking on life together. But she would use the connection ruthlessly if it suited her. Laura had been relieved to discover that Michael took Joyce’s reservations in his stride and found it in himself to approve very thoroughly of her.

She made more tea and then slumped into a chair on the other side of the fire and shook her head in mock despair.

“Are you ever going to take it easy?” she asked.

“What do you want me to do?” Joyce snapped back. “Sit in this little box goggling at t’other one till the Grim Reaper pops in to put me in the final box of all? If there’s owt I can do to help folk like Donna while I’m still standing I’ll do it. And it’ll be a pity when they run out of folk like me, an’all.”

Laura grinned, shame-faced.

“Will someone at the Town Hall see you, d’you think?”

“Oh, aye, they’ll see me all right, if only to shut me up,” Joyce said grimly. “Can you give me a lift down in your lunch hour tomorrow, pet?”

Chapter Two

Laura woke early to find herself tucked snugly into the curve of Michael Thackeray’s body with one of his hands comfortably beneath her breast. The closeness of him filled her with desire but she could see that it was not yet seven and chose not to rouse him so early. They had both fallen into bed exhausted the previous night and had fallen asleep before either of them could respond to the whispers of their bodies which suggested anything different.

He had come home in a bad mood, although evidently reluctant to tell her why. And he had only seemed to half listen as she had passed on her grandmother’s unease about the state of Wuthering, the estate which caused the police as well as the local council the greatest trouble in a troublesome little town which prosperity still resolutely seemed to pass by. But he had not seemed to be very interested. Secrets and lies, she thought ruefully, lies and secrets: they had haunted their relationship since the beginning and even now that they had achieved a sort of truce together she still suspected that their jobs might one day drive them apart in some way which would be hard to forgive.

She did not think too hard about the future at all these days, tiptoeing round it in a way she knew could not be sustained indefinitely. What she wanted and what Michael wanted seemed as far apart as ever. His divorce had drifted into the realms of sometime, perhaps never, and she had avoided talk of children since he had returned to her new flat only slightly shame-faced after their last serious difference of opinion. Apparently relaxed, he was helping her choose rugs and pictures to replace what she had lost when her last home had been trashed. But she knew, and she suspected he knew, that there was too much left unsaid for her to be sure of him any longer. Soon, she thought, they must thrash out where they were going together, if they were going anywhere at all.

Carefully she slipped from his arms and went to take a shower. By the time she emerged, Thackeray was awake, his eyes wary as he watched her come back into the bedroom, throw off her towel and begin to dress.

“It’s very early,” he said and she was not sure whether there was an invitation there. Once she might have been certain.

“Busy day,” she said, pulling on black trousers and a silk shirt of deep green and beginning to brush her tousled copper curls with rather too much vigour. “I promised to take Joyce to the Town Hall at lunch-time so I need an early start. Otherwise Ted Grant will be ranting and raving again. I told you last night.”

Thackeray put his hands behind his head and watched her pin her hair up in a severe pleat.

“Tell her we really are working on the heroin problem up there,” he said carefully.

“So why don’t they think you are?” Laura came back quickly.

“It’s out of my hands, Laura. The drug squad do things their own way, you know that. They report to county, not to Jack Longley. I dare say he knows what’s going on but he hasn’t told me.”

“And reassuring the local community isn’t part of the game plan?”

“I doubt the drug squad would recognise a community if it jumped up and bit them,” Thackeray said.

“Is that what was pissing you off last night?”

“Oh, partly that and partly Jack Longley cuddling up to local businessmen,” Thackeray said. “His mates from the Lodge, a lot of them.”

“You must be joking?”

“The so-called business community can do no wrong these days. It’s official. You know how it is. Longley meets them at his wretched Masonic meetings and every now and again they think they can decide police priorities for him. This time it’s Ecstasy at the Carib Club taking priority over heroin up on the Heights.”

“The schoolboy who was knocked down?”

“Son of some local worthy, so we pull all the stops out to find the pusher. Chances are the lad got it off a friend who got it off a friend who bought it off someone he’d never seen before weeks ago in a pub he can’t remember the name of. But I suppose we’ll have to go through the motions to please Grantley Adams.”

“Grantley Adams was a mate of my father’s,” Laura said, suddenly thrown back to a childhood where she had seemed to be constantly at war with her father’s ambition to make a million before he was forty. “I remember him coming to the house years ago when I was just a kid. He’s quite old to have a son still at school.”

“Second family, I think,” Thackeray said. “You know how it goes: boredom sets in and he swaps his middle-aged missus for a new trophy wife and another batch of kids.”

“And this one’s let dad down big time? Still, it must be dreadful for the family.”

“Yes,” Thackeray said quickly and Laura flinched at the look in his eyes. “But it’s police priorities I’m talking here, not family tragedies. Those I never could do much about.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and kissed him.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think work’s getting us both down. See if you can get away at a sensible time tonight and we’ll go out for a meal. That new Thai place on the Manchester Road is supposed to be very good.”

Thackeray relaxed slightly and returned her kiss with interest.

“Things must be looking up if Thai food’s arrived in Bradfield,” he said. “I thought that was only available in poncy Leeds.”

“We could try fusion cooking if you want to go that far …”

“Let me get used to one thing at a time,” he said, laughing. “You know I’m only a roast beef and Yorkshire pud country lad at heart.”

“Oh, I think you washed the last traces of muck off your boots a long time ago. And I’m sure that if you really want to get to grips with heroin on the Heights rather than recreational drugs in the pubs and clubs you’ll find yourself a way. But watch out for Grantley Adams. I can remember taking a very distinct dislike to him. A bullying man, as I recall. Managed to pat me on the head and tweak my hair at the same time without my dad noticing anything at all. Getting back at me for some cheeky remark I’d made; no doubt some socialist heresy I’d picked up at my grandmother’s knee and parroted without really understanding. But very nasty, as I recall.”