Before he could open the door, Jessica touched him on the arm. ‘I need you to be on form today. You’re here for a reason – and it’s not your sad but partially impressive knowledge of “Star Wars”.’

She was hoping for a laugh which didn’t come. Instead he opened the door and got out, waiting for Jessica as she rounded the vehicle and checked the address on her phone. ‘I bet this isn’t what she expected when she married one of the richest businessmen in Manchester,’ she said, looking each way before crossing the road.

Ruby Long lived in the middle of a row of terraced houses in the Wythenshawe area. The house next to hers had a skip outside and there was a smell of burning as Jessica noticed a bonfire in the field at the end of the road. The houses were all red-bricked with sloping brown-tiled roofs and small front yards barely wider than the adjoining pavement. Ruby’s property was filthy on the outside, with black soot-like dust splattered across one of the downstairs windows. Jessica could hear a cross between a giant bumble bee and a jumbo jet zipping along the road parallel to where they were. Before approaching Ruby’s door, she waited as a boy who couldn’t be older than eleven or twelve turned the corner at the end of the road, dropping one leg to the ground and spinning a moped around before speeding towards them.

Against her better judgement, Jessica stepped off the pavement, standing in the centre of the road and holding an arm out to make it clear she wanted the biker to stop. The groaning of the engine was almost deafening as the youngster skidded to a halt next to her.

‘Where’s your helmet?’ Jessica asked him, wondering which of the various offences being committed in front of her eyes she should mention first.

Up close, the boy looked even younger, although his voice had broken and he had an angry inflection in his voice. ‘Who the fook are you?’

Jessica pulled the keys out of the bike’s ignition and told him she was from the police, rolling her eyes as the expected mouthful of abuse arrived. After establishing that he was apparently ‘eighteen’ and that his licence was ‘at home’ – although he couldn’t remember where he lived well enough to tell her – Jessica spent fifteen minutes waiting for a local patrol car to come.

When the uniformed officers arrived, it was clear they were already very familiar with the boy who had spent the time in between calling Jessica a lot of words she was pretty sure she hadn’t known when she was his age – even if he did turn out to be eighteen.

As one officer placed the boy in the back of the patrol vehicle to return him home, the other tried to figure out what they were going to do with the bike. He offered Jessica a ‘thanks’ that didn’t seem overly genuine, pointing out the biker was ‘twelve, maybe thirteen’. Jessica’s joke about the lad having two kids by two different mothers was met by a stony-faced agreement that she probably wasn’t far wrong.

‘Welcome to Wythenshawe,’ Rowlands said as Jessica finally got around to knocking on Ruby’s front door.

The inside of Ruby’s house wasn’t as dirty as the outside but there was something unerringly familiar about it. The carpet was the same shade of red as that in Nicholas’s club and the decor of bright, glittery tat felt similarly forced and fake. Rowlands noticed it straight away, pointing out the wooden border that ran along the walls.

Ruby herself wasn’t exactly happy to see them. Although Jessica had called to arrange a time when they could talk, she opened the door with a ‘I wondered where you lot were’ and then turned, walking through the house, shouting ‘and take yer fooking shoes off’ over her shoulder. Nice to see you too.

Jessica slipped hers off easily but Rowlands hopped from one foot to the other, nearly overbalancing as he tried to untie the laces on his boots. Six months previously, she would have playfully nudged him with her shoulder but she wasn’t sure if they had the same relationship nowadays.

‘Over, under, in and out, that’s what tying shoes is all about,’ she said. ‘Just do that backwards.’ After what seemed like an inordinately long time, the constable finally dropped his boots to the floor, revealing socks with cartoon characters on.

‘You’re worse than Adam,’ Jessica said, walking in the direction Ruby had headed in.

She found the woman sitting in an armchair in a living room that was as garish as the hallway. The walls were painted red up to the border and then a slightly off-white above it. There were at least half-a-dozen mirrors and a haze of smoke hanging around the ceiling. Jessica remembered the way Eleanor had described the casino and couldn’t help but wonder if Ruby was somehow creating her own low-rent version.

Ruby scowled at the officers, cradling a cigarette in her hand. Her expression only told part of the story as her face was brown bordering on orange, her skin wrinkled and leathery, making her look far older than the mid-thirties that she was. Jessica could only assume that was what a lifetime of cigarettes left you with.

She took another drag, before stubbing it out on an ashtray balancing on the windowsill. Jessica sat on the sofa, with Rowlands next to her. ‘I was hoping for a bit of background on your former husband,’ Jessica said.

Ruby shrugged, reaching into a handbag by her feet, pulling out a packet of cigarettes and taking one out. She offered the pack towards them in a gesture Jessica hadn’t expected, although she did seem pleased when they both turned her down.

‘I’ve not seen him in years,’ Ruby said, hunting around the floor before realising she had left the lighter on the windowsill next to the ashtray.

‘What about your son?’

Ruby didn’t look up as she lit the cigarette. ‘Him either.’

‘How long ago did you split up?’

She breathed in deeply, holding the smoke in her mouth before finally exhaling as her eyes closed in pleasure. ‘Ten years ago when he hooked up with that tart he’s married to.’

Nicholas certainly liked his women young. Jessica knew that Ruby had been eighteen when she’d had Nicky – and they were already married by then. Meanwhile, if Tia was now in her late twenties, that meant she was also a teenager when she had got together with Ruby’s then-husband.

Jessica was roughly the same age as Ruby and it seemed creepy that the woman in front of her had a son who had just turned eighteen. She barely felt old enough to have a child now, let alone having one who was already an adult.

‘How often have you seen Nicholas since?’ Jessica asked.

Ruby shook her head dismissively. ‘Not much, maybe once a year?’

‘Do you have any contact with your son at all?’

The woman held the cigarette close to her mouth but didn’t touch it to her lips. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘We’re looking into a few things surrounding your former husband.’

Ruby smiled, exposing yellow teeth that somehow fitted with her skin tone, like a womble with a crack habit. ‘Anything that could get him sent down?’

Neither officer replied but Ruby got the message that it would be a good time to tell them anything she knew.

‘How did Nicholas get custody of your son?’ Jessica asked, being careful to use the word ‘your’ instead of ‘his’.

The smile disappeared from Ruby’s face as she puffed heavily on the cigarette. ‘You’ve not got a clue, have you, love? Have you ever met him?’

Jessica nodded.

‘Well then, you’d know that if he wants something, he gets it. The minute he said he wanted custody, he was always going to get it. If I’d gone up against him in court, he would have found a way to get to the judge. If he couldn’t do that, he’d go through Nicky, promising him all sorts to tell people I’d done things I hadn’t. If all of that failed, he would simply make me disappear. There was no point me even opposing him – at best I’d lose, at worst, I wouldn’t be here now.’