‘Is that you, Terry?’

Sean jumped at his father’s voice.

‘It’s Sean, Dad.’

He put his head round the door of the lounge where Jack was trying to sit up straight on the settee, wincing at some nameless pain nagging at his insides.

‘There was a feller here called Terry,’ Sean said. ‘He left this.’

‘Right, right.’

Jack was blinking, trying to read the writing on the leaflet Sean was showing him.

‘You might be able to help him,’ Jack said.

‘With this clean up campaign?’

‘No, your inside knowledge,’ Jack tapped his swollen nose. ‘You might be some use after all, being a copper.’

‘What are you on about? Anyway,’ he said, to himself as much as to his dad, ‘after tomorrow I might not even be a copper.’

He wasn’t sure how much damage Saleem’s accusation could do him and although he knew Gav would stand by him, what if the lad really had hurt himself, got brain damage or something, and was pinning it all on Sean?

‘What did you get for my tea?’

Jack’s mind flicked from one thing to another at random, but Sean was happy he was thinking of food. He went back into the kitchen and warmed up some mushroom soup while the toast cooked.

‘I’ll have to be getting back home.’ Sean settled a warped tray on his dad’s knees and handed him the spoon.

‘Home?’

‘To Nan’s. She still fusses over me.’

‘Oh, aye. Will I see you tomorrow? You could take me to this.’ Jack waved the spoon at the leaflet, spraying it with soup.

‘Aye, why not. I’ll come over later in the day and give you a hand cleaning up.’ Sean said. ‘We’ll give Eileen a surprise when she comes back from her sister’s. See you, Dad.’

As Sean was letting himself out of the flat, Jack called after him.

‘Terry wants to find who killed his brother.’

‘You what?’

‘He wants to find who did it.’

Sean went back into the living room.

‘He needs to go through the proper channels then. Look, Dad, if it’s easier for you, you don’t have to tell anyone I’m a police officer.’

‘No, good plan!’ Jack wheezed a bitter laugh, ‘I never do!’

Sean wasn’t sure how well this Terry knew his dad, but it sounded like Jack didn’t even admit to having a son, never mind one in the police force.

CHAPTER FOUR

York

When the York Minster clock strikes the hour, the bell vibrates through the stone steps, up into the bones of Chloe’s chest. Compared to this huge building she is nothing, just a bundle of twigs that can be rattled apart by the sound. She hugs her arms around her knees even though it isn’t cold. The sun is overhead and she feels it pressing through her thin hair. She needs to move before her skin burns. She gets up and looks around. To one side she sees a road full of people and bicycles, but to her right there’s a sort of garden. If she stays close to the building there might be some shade.

She walks through a gate onto a lawn, slips her shoes off and enjoys the grass, cool and soft under her feet. There’s an ice cream van, but she can’t afford anything on their price list. She’s bought food, toiletries and her radio. She’s paid her hostel charge for the first week and now she’s down to her last few pounds. There are some children at the ice cream van, speaking another language, laughing, so she turns away from them and heads for the shade of the building where the grass is longer, more protected. There is something there, where the wall meets the ground, and she thinks at first she’s looking at the broken pieces of a wafer or a cornet, but as her eyes adjust to the shadows, she sees they’re little bones, cradled in a dry brown nest. She kneels down to get a closer look. Two skulls, with perfect beaks, tiny ribs and fine white legs, tucked up where they lay, hungry perhaps, or their hearts stopping as the nest fell. She looks up and sees a line of guttering, and beyond it a glimpse of the square edge of the Minster tower. It seems to be falling towards her. Her stomach lurches and she drops down on all fours. She’s crouching, staring at the skeletons of the young birds in the nest, when she hears a voice.

‘Are you all right?’

A woman is watching her from the path with two children, a boy of about eight and a teenage girl. The woman hesitates, while the children look embarrassed, the boy tugging at his mother’s hand.

‘I’m fine,’ she says. ‘Just found something, a nest. The baby birds are dead.’

The girl pulls a face, but the boy lets go of his mother’s hand and darts forward.

‘Cool! Can I see?’

Chloe sits back on her heels and he comes close.

‘Amazing! They’re sparrows’ skeletons, I think. Can I pick the nest up?’

She nods.

‘How do you know they’re sparrows?’ she asks him.

‘From the beaks.’ He cradles the nest in his small hands and peers into it. ‘It’s hard to be exactly sure; they could be coal tits. I’d need my book.’

‘Do you want it? The nest?’

‘Would you mind? Brilliant! Thanks.’ He looks back to check. ‘Mum, this lady says I can have it. Can I?’

The teenage girl rolls her eyes.

‘It’s not very clean,’ the mother says.

‘It’s fine, Mum. They’re just dry bones.’

‘Well, all right,’ she smiles at Chloe as if to say, this is what he’s like, this curious little boy. ‘Say thank you to the lady.’

‘Thanks.’

Chloe shrugs. She doesn’t have anything to say. It’s only when she watches them walk away down the path, the boy holding the nest up to eye level to scrutinise its contents, that she thinks how easy it was to give a gift of something that wasn’t hers to begin with. She shivers, her skin cooling in the shade. She lets her fingers play over the grass, thinking back to the first time she was allowed to work outside, in the prison grounds, and how strange the grass felt to her then. It was as if she had misremembered it. Each blade seemed stronger and thicker than she expected. Another chiming bell startles her and she checks her watch. Quarter to twelve. She stands up and decides to explore further round the building. She runs her fingers along the stone mass of wall until she reaches an iron fence and a gate. A cobbled street curves round to the right and she picks her way over the uncomfortable bumps until she feels smooth stone slabs under her feet again.

She half-laughs inside her mouth. Laughs at herself. They said at one of her parole hearings that she hadn’t grown up yet and she’d have to grow up if she was ever going to settle back into society. They wouldn’t think talking to little boys about dead birds and walking barefoot was proper grownup behaviour, but who cares? They’re not watching her now. She takes a step, which is half a skip. For the first time in ages she thinks she might be happy. She skips again, two, three times, until her toe catches the edge of a paving slab and she swears. She looks around to check if anybody saw and puts her shoes back on.

They’re coming out of the door when she gets back to the entrance. Emma is rubbing one of her knees and moaning about how many steps there were.

‘Oh my God, Chloe, I wish I’d stayed out here. You go round and round this horrible little staircase and the top’s all fenced in, like a cage. I wanted to go back down, but they said I couldn’t.’

Emma scowls at Taheera and the young man. Chloe isn’t sure what the situation is, but she saw them hold each other’s hands as they went in and she thinks they might want to be alone for a bit. Her mum trained her from an early age to be discreet around all the boyfriends she brought home from the pub.

‘Come on, Emma, there’s some nice shops we went past before. Wouldn’t mind having a look in the windows.’

She links her arm in Emma’s and half expects her to pull away, but she doesn’t. She clamps Chloe closer to her and they start to walk back across the open square towards the narrow streets.