‘Yes, sure,’ she replied instantly. She knew it had to be serious stuff to bring the afternoon to such a sudden conclusion.

Ali, sensing this too, backed off her confrontation with her partner, who said, ‘I can drop Ellie and Rosie off.’

‘But it’s out of your way,’ said Ellie. ‘We live north. You’ll be driving into the town centre.’

This seemed to nonplus him for a moment, then he said, ‘No problem,’ reinforcing his assurance with a rare smile.

‘Then thank you very much, Ed,’ Ellie replied, returning his smile. Generally she found him reserved to the point of diffidence, but as she got to know him better, she was beginning to see what Ali saw in him. And his tranquillity provided the perfect foil for Ali’s usual ebullience.

Ellie followed Pascoe out into the hall.

‘What’s happened?’ she murmured.

‘There’s been a shooting. Someone dead. Shirley Novello hurt.’

‘Oh shit. Not again.’

A few years earlier she’d actually been present when Novello was shot.

‘How bad?’ she asked.

‘Don’t have too many details, but it doesn’t sound good.’

Ellie felt all the residual warmth of the day fade from her body. She and Novello weren’t best buddies, but for a policeman’s wife, hearing of a serious injury to any officer is like a rehearsal of that moment when the bad news will be yours alone.

‘Was it an op?’ she asked.

He hesitated then said, ‘Nothing I knew about. Wieldy thinks Andy might have been using her for something.’

This was untypically vague.

‘Why don’t you ask him?’

‘We will, when we can raise him,’ he said neutrally. ‘Wieldy’s tried. He’s not answering his mobile.’

Many questions were buzzing through her head. Already these uncertain references to Dalziel were shifting his role from ominous apparition to guilty first mover.

‘You mean the fat bastard’s up to his old tricks?’ she said. ‘Need-to-know rules, except he’s usually the only one who needs to know?’

‘Could be,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ve got to go.’

‘I know. Come here!’

She put her arms around him and drew him close, crushing him against her body. This had nothing to do with mellow fruitfulness. This came out of the dreadful awareness that only when she had him in her grasp like this could she be sure of him. Out of her sight he was at the mercy of whatever malignant Fate cared to hurl. She would never forget, could never forget, the moment they had come to tell her that he’d been caught in the same explosion that comatized Andy Dalziel.

‘Careful,’ he said. ‘Or I may have to do you for perverting the course of justice.’

‘Do me any which perverted way you like, so long as you come back safe,’ she said.

He broke away and went out of the front door. Without his supporting strength she felt faint and dizzy.

How much easier life would be without love, she thought. The Holy Joes are forever preaching that it’s love that makes the world go round. It isn’t. It’s love that stops the world in its tracks. Be faithful in love, they tell us, and all will be well. Travel with love in your heart, and you’ll never walk alone.

They’re right. You’ll have a shadowy companion, invisible only at the moments of greatest ecstasy, but otherwise constantly present. His names are fear and loss and pain.

One way or another, love always betrays.

By the time Fleur Delay got back to the hotel, she was close to collapse.

The adrenalin rush of having to deal with the aftermath of Vince’s violence had kept her going till they reached the car. Then she’d said, ‘You drive,’ and sank into the passenger seat.

Vince said anxiously, ‘You OK, sis?’

‘Yes, sure, I just banged my head.’

She put her hand to her brow and looked in the rear-view mirror. There was a small cut there with a trickle of blood which she wiped away with a tissue.

Vince, reassured, drove carefully away from Loudwater Villas. He was normally a flashy driver, but he knew that his sister would get seriously pissed if he did anything that drew attention.

Sometimes Fleur felt it as a blessing that he was so easy to fool. Sometimes it filled her with fury and resentment. Anyone else living as close to her as he did would have been aware for a couple of months at least that there was something seriously wrong. There had been times after the fatal diagnosis when she had come close to telling him that she hadn’t been away from home for a minor woman’s operation, that the drugs he sometimes saw her taking couldn’t be bought over the counter at the local chemist’s, that the wigs she’d started wearing weren’t a belated fashion statement in reaction against the onset of middle age. If she could have hoped for loving support and comfort, she might have given way to the temptation. But she knew that when the time came to say, ‘Vince, I’ve got news for you. I have an inoperable brain tumour and I’m going to die,’ the support and comfort would be all one way.

She wanted to have him safe and secure when she told him, she wanted him to be a long way away from London, and most of all she wanted him to be a long way away from Goldie Gidman. Spain wasn’t all that far, but it was as far as she could hope to remove Vince, and even then she had found it hard to get him to share her enthusiasm for the idea of buying a villa on the Costa del Sol and settling down there. For a holiday it suited him very well with its sunny beaches, cheap booze, and unending supply of succulent bimbos who’d left their inhibitions behind at Luton Airport. But as for living there…!

She’d countered with economic arguments. This was the perfect opportunity for them to invest some of their hard-earned savings in a bit of truly palatial real estate. The Spanish property boom had gone into a nose-dive as the credit squeeze left lots of ex-pats unable to keep up payments. Making a sale even at a substantial loss was better than repossession and for someone with Fleur’s long experience of the economics of distress it had been easy to snap up a real bargain: four bedrooms, sea views, private garden, swimming pool, games room, all mod cons, at just over half the price the owners had paid three years ago.

The deal was close to completion, but the way she’d felt over the past few days, the sooner it was done the better.

‘We’re here, sis,’ said Vince.

She opened her eyes. They were in the Keldale car park.

In the next row she spotted the red Nissan, so that was all right.

She said to Vince, ‘Take the laptop up to your room. You can keep a check on her in case she goes out again.’

‘Me?’ said Vince dubiously. Like following Blondie and Tubby into the cathedral, this wasn’t the kind of task he was usually given. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to get cleaned up, then I’ll take a close look at the stuff I took off that guy you shot, and then I’ll report in to The Man. That OK with you, Vince?’

She spoke sharply. She’d always felt the need to be firm with Vince, but lately firmness had drifted into irritability.

‘No need to get in a strop,’ he said. ‘All I meant was, how long will you be? If the guy I offed is our man, we’ll be heading for home, right?’

He sounded hopeful.

She said, ‘Maybe.’

She checked herself in the mirror. She looked a bit pale, but the cut on her forehead had stopped bleeding. Taking a deep breath, she got out of the car and willed herself to walk steadily towards the hotel.

It seemed to take an age, but finally she was in her room with the Do not disturb sign on her door. She kicked her shoes off, went into the bathroom and bathed her face in cold water. Then she took a couple of tablets. How many had she taken today? She couldn’t remember.

Back in the bedroom she looked longingly at the bed. It invited her to lie on it. Instead she spread across the duvet the trophies she’d brought with her from Loudwater Villas. A hip wallet, a mini recorder, and a phone.