‘God save me from high-profile cases. My boss loves press conferences. Just hearing the word Crimewatch gives him a hard-on.’

Sandy laughs. ‘We’ve got a few like that here. Same everywhere, old-style coppers are dying out. They’ve all got degrees now.’

‘You’re not wrong there.’

The WPC comes back with tea in proper cups and even a couple of Kit Kats. Nelson thanks her, thinking of the response he’d get if he sent Judy or Tanya out for refreshments. The word Kit Kat reminds him of Katie.

‘How’s the lovely Michelle?’ asks Sandy. He had been a guest at their wedding, twenty-odd years ago.

‘Champion. She manages a hairdressing business. Nice little set-up.’

‘And the girls?’

‘Both at uni.’

Sandy groans. ‘My boys too. Don’t know why the hell they have to go. Costing me an arm and a leg and all they do is get pissed in Thailand.’

‘How old are your sons?’ Nelson remembers them as little boys in identical Blackpool strips. He can’t remember their names.

‘Tom’s nineteen. He’s at Sheffield reading engineering. Ben’s just finished at Birmingham. God knows what he wants to do. Advanced piss-artistry perhaps. He’s living back at home, driving Bev and me mad.’

‘It’s tough, isn’t it,’ says Nelson. ‘Just when you thought they were off your hands.’

It’ll be another eighteen years before Katie is off his hands, he thinks. That is, if Ruth continues to let him be part of her life.

‘So, Harry,’ says Sandy. ‘What brings you to these parts?’

Nelson is so surprised to be referred to by his first name that he almost doesn’t answer. Somehow, in Norfolk, everyone calls him Nelson, except Michelle, that is. Ruth had even called him Nelson in bed.

‘I’m on holiday,’ he says, at last.

Sandy laughs again, the folds of his face turning upwards. ‘A holiday in Blackpool! Things must be bad.’

‘I wanted to spend some time with Mum,’ Nelson says, not entirely truthfully. ‘She’s getting on a bit.’

‘We all are, cocker,’ says Sandy. ‘I’m going to put in for early retirement in a few years.’

‘You’re joking.’ Nelson doesn’t know what shocks him more: that a contemporary of his might soon be eligible for early retirement or that Sandy Macleod, whom he has always considered the ultimate coppers’ copper, would ever want to quit the job.

‘I’ve had enough,’ says Sandy. ‘Too many bloody graduates, too much paperwork. Do you remember the old days? Drinking after hours in the Red Lion? Sid the Greek? Fat Bernie?’

‘I remember,’ says Nelson, though Sid the Greek and Fat Bernie are just names to him now. He’s sure that every police station has their equivalent. Suddenly he feels rather sad.

Sandy, though, seems to pull himself together. He sits up straighter, brushing chocolate crumbs off his paunch.

‘That case you mentioned, the fire. Professional interest, was it?’

‘Not really,’ says Nelson carefully. ‘Woman I work with, forensic archaeologist, victim was a friend of hers.’

Sandy groans. ‘Don’t talk to me about forensics. Every Tom, Dick and Harry’s a forensics expert these days. Put on a paper suit and you think you’re God.’

‘This woman’s OK,’ says Nelson. ‘Bit of a pain sometimes but OK.’

‘Well, we’re definitely treating her mate’s death as suspicious,’ says Sandy, pulling a sheaf of papers towards him. Nelson tries not to wince at the state of his friend’s intray. Though he’d never admit it to Sandy, Nelson quite likes paperwork and his desk at King’s Lynn is always immaculate.

‘Emergency services called at one a.m.,’ says Sandy, reading from a sheet. ‘Alerted by a neighbour. Arrived at one-twenty. Front door was locked, victim was just inside the door, looked as if he’d been clawing at it, traces of wood under his fingernails. Cause of death, smoke inhalation.’

‘Door locked from the outside?’

‘Yes. The key was still in the lock. No attempt to hide it. Seat of the fire was in the hallway. We found pieces of material just inside the front door, doused with petrol. Looks as if they’d been pushed through the letterbox.’

‘Jesus.’ Nelson is silent for a moment, thinking of Ruth’s friend – Dan Whatshisname – trapped in a burning house, clawing at a locked door. What a way to go.

‘Did you find anything else?’

‘No,’ says Sandy. ‘We had the bloody forensics buggers in there, sealed the place off, went over everything with a fine tooth comb. There were a few things that seemed out of place. For one, we didn’t find a mobile or a computer. You’d expect a university professor to have a computer. Probably one of the latest iPricks.’

Sandy speaks with contempt, and certainly his own computer, which looms over the desk, is not of the cutting-edge variety. It has ‘Property of Blackpool CID’ stamped on the back.

‘Maybe it was at the university,’ suggests Nelson.

‘No, we checked. He shared an office with another chap. Lots of books but no computer.’

‘Why would someone take his computer?’ asks Nelson.

‘Search me,’ says Sandy.

‘But you’re thinking murder?’

‘I don’t think it was an accident, put it that way. I think someone wanted Dan Golding dead.’

‘But why? I mean, he was a university professor.’

Despite his association with Ruth – and with Erik – Nelson still imagines a university professor sitting in a book-lined room, writing with a quill.

Sandy looks at him consideringly for a moment, as if wondering how much to tell him. Then he seems to make a decision, reaching for another file which is lying (Nelson can hardly believe this) on the floor.

‘Dan Golding taught at Pendle University,’ he says. ‘It’s one of the new ones, on the outskirts of Preston. Thing is, we’ve had a few funny incidents at Pendle recently.’

‘What sorts of incidents?’ asks Nelson. He’s expecting some loony lefty behaviour, animal rights activism perhaps (he’s had experience of that himself recently). So he is amazed when Sandy says, his comedian’s face deadly serious, ‘White supremacists.’

‘White supremacists? You mean, like the Ku Klux Klan?’

Now Sandy does smile, a brief, gummy grin which is soon replaced by the sad clown expression. ‘Lancashire’s version,’ he says. ‘No burning crosses but offensive notes sent to black members of staff, an attempted fire-bombing of a gay pride event, statue of Nelson Mandela defaced. Obviously an organised group, though we haven’t made much headway in identifying the ringleaders. The feeling on campus is very twitchy.’

Nelson remembers Ruth’s description of Dan feeling ‘intimidated’.

‘But why would they target Dan Golding?’ he asks.

Sandy shrugs. ‘He was Jewish, apparently. That might be cause enough for these bozos. But if this was them – arson with clear attempt to kill – it’s a step up from sending anonymous notes with pictures of monkeys on them.’

‘Is that what they do?’

‘Yes. Crude little leaflets about the superiority of white Aryan men. Last one was so badly spelt that my sergeant – a university boy – said that if this was Aryan supremacy he was glad to be black.’

This fits with Nelson’s own experience of the far-right – most of the Neo-Nazis he has met have been so stupid that walking and talking at the same time was an effort. Didn’t stop them being violent, though. He remembers policing a demonstration in Salford that got very nasty.

‘Have you got any suspects?’ he asks.

‘A few names,’ says Sandy. ‘Nothing definite.’ He doesn’t seem inclined to share these names with Nelson and Nelson doesn’t blame him.

‘So Dan Golding might have been killed by Nazi arsonists?’

Sandy smiles sardonically. ‘Welcome to my world,’ he says.

CHAPTER 9

Nelson thinks about Sandy’s last statement as he drives across Blackpool to his mother’s house, the house where he grew up. Welcome to my world. Does Sandy think that Nelson’s world does not include racists, arsonists and other unpleasant forms of humanity? Does he think that Norfolk is all about sheep-stealing? But Sandy mentioned Nelson’s recent cases, he must know that his old friend has been to some very dark places. He was probably just trying to wind him up. That would be like the old Sandy. One thing is clear though: the death of Ruth’s old friend Dan is starting to look very suspicious. He will have to ring her and let her know. He wonders what she and Katie are doing at this moment. He knows that Ruth and her archaeologist boyfriend have been on a boating holiday and (grinding gears) he doesn’t mind this in the least. Nevertheless, when he thinks of Ruth and Katie he always thinks of them on their own, walking on the beach or sitting in Ruth’s untidy cottage playing with educational toys given by Ruth’s trendy lefty friends. He smiles, vowing silently to buy Katie a toy gun for her next birthday.