‘I rang Mick.’

‘Purdy? Oh aye. And what did he have to say?’

‘Nothing. I couldn’t get him. I knew he was going to be busy this weekend. He’s been running some big Met op, he’s a commander now. They’ve got to the arrest stage, so that probably meant all mobiles switched off. Anyway, I left him a message.’

Dalziel digested this. Purdy a commander. The lad had done well, but he’d had the look of a high-flier back when they’d met all those year ago. More puzzling was the woman’s knowledge of him; not his promotion, that was understandable, but the details of his operational timetable.

He said, ‘Sorry, luv, I’m not getting this. Seven years on you’re trying to get your husband declared dead, then you get his picture through the post, and the first thing you do is ring his old boss? Why not your best friend, if it’s a bit of emotional support you want? Or your solicitor, if it’s professional advice. Why dig right back into the past and come up with your man’s old boss?’

She said, ‘Sorry, Mr Dalziel, I keep forgetting you didn’t actually speak to Mick. I should have told you right away. There’s another reason I need to get a presumption of death. Mick and I are going to be married.’

Vince Delay watched Tubby stand up then sit down again and start talking to Blondie.

Briefly he had a full-frontal view of the fat guy and now he dropped his eyes to compare what he’d seen with a photograph he was holding in his hymn book. It was a full-length shot of a man lounging against a tree, thirtyish, blond hair ruffled by a breeze, with the slightly mocking half-smile of a guy who knows what he wants and has no doubts about his ability to get it.

The only time Vince had seen him in the flesh, trouble had wiped that smile from his face but otherwise he’d looked the same.

Fleur had said, stick to Blondie and she’ll lead us to him, and this is where she’d led.

He let his gaze drift from the photo to the bulky figure sitting close to the tart. Question was, could anything have changed this to that in seven years?

Didn’t seem likely.

Pity, he thought. Would have been nice if things had turned out so easy. Not that it bothered him. Not his responsibility, not since Fleur took him in hand. Would have been nice for Fleur though. Or maybe not. Fleur was clever and for some reason clever people often seemed to prefer things a bit complicated. Himself, he’d have been delighted if it had been Tubby. Whack! And then back down the motorway, leaving this northern dump to fall to pieces in its own time.

One thing was sure: whoever Tubby was, all that praying, he had some heavy stuff on his mind. And now it looked like Blondie was laying some more on him. This surveillance stuff was real boring.

Couldn’t even light up. Not many places you could these days. No laws to stop the bastards lighting candles though. Back in the car he guessed Fleur would be on her second or third ciggie by now, probably having a coffee from the flask. Maybe a little nip in it. No, scrub that. Not Fleur. On a job you had rules and you stuck to them. You look after the rules and the rules would look after you, she was fond of saying. And if she caught you breaking the rules-her rules-then retribution was instant and unpleasant.

Though sending him to do the tailing was breaking the rules, wasn’t it?

Maybe it meant she’d decided he wasn’t just muscle, he could think for himself.

The idea was both flattering and disturbing. It suggested a change in their relationship and he didn’t like change.

She’d laid down the terms pretty categorically in the prison visiting room as his last and longest stretch came within sight of the end. He’d served them years the hard way and he’d got respect, but at a price. Fleur was the only person he could share his horror with at the prospect of going back inside. In another sort of man this admission might have been linked to a resolve to go straight. Delay’s resolve was different.

‘I’ll top myself first,’ he said.

Fleur had given him the look that since she was nine had reversed the three years between them and made him feel like her kid brother.

‘Don’t talk stupid, Vince,’ she’d said brusquely. ‘Now, where are you going when you get out?’

He looked at her, puzzled, and said, ‘Thought I’d come home to start with…’

‘Home’s gone, Vince. I’ve got my own place now. You’re welcome to come and live with me, but there’s rules. You do things my way, in or out of the flat. Break the rules, and you’re on your own. For good. What do you say? Yes or no?’

‘Well, sounds all right, sis, but a guy’s got to have a bit of choice, know what I mean…’

‘Yes or no, Vince. That’s one of the rules. I ask yes or no, you answer yes or no.’

‘OK, keep your hair on. I mean yes.’

‘Something else. I think I can get you a job.’

‘You mean, like…a job?’ he said, horrified.

She shook her head. She knew her limitations.

‘I mean like the kind of job you’re good at,’ she said. ‘Except that what you’re not good at is not getting caught. So if you come to live with me, you come to work for me too, OK? No branching out on your own. I call the shots, OK?’

‘Is that a yes or no question, sis?’

‘It’s a yes or yes question, Vince. If you want to live with me, that is.’

‘Then yes.’

It had been a good decision. There’d been a couple of rebellious moments-like he’d said, a man’s got to have a bit of independence-but they’d all got sorted, and Fleur had one great argument to support that her way was the best way: for more than a dozen years now he’d stayed out of jail!

He put the photo back in his wallet and for want of anything better to do let his gaze focus on the open hymn book once more. Some of this stuff was dead easy, but a lot of it was like reading the instruction book for a computer.

A servant with this clause

Makes drudgery divine.

Who sweeps a room as for thy laws

Makes that and the action fine.

What the hell was that all about?

He sighed and shifted in the chair whose wickerwork seat felt as if it was stamping its imprint on his behind. The thought took him back to his first time inside. They’d made him strip and take a shower. One of the screws had said mockingly, ‘Nice arse, Delay. You’re going to enjoy yourself here.’

It had taken half a dozen of the bastards to drag him off the man and then they’d given him a good kicking. But he’d been limping round the yard a couple of days later, an object of respect, and the screw had still been in hospital.

Happy days.

But not the kind of happy days he ever wanted to enjoy again. He was going to stay out whatever it took. And if ever Fleur’s way looked like failing, then he’d just have to do things his own way.

Normally Andy Dalziel was to diplomacy what Alexander the Great was to knots, but this time he hesitated the cutting edge and essayed a bit of gentle plucking.

‘So you and Mick, this a long-standing engagement…?’

She laughed, a pleasant sound which the old cathedral absorbed with indifference though a few human heads turned in surprise.

‘What you mean is, how long have we been at it? Or even more bluntly, were we at it while Alex was still around? Very much not. Mick stayed in touch, we became good friends, we were close, I could tell he was interested romantically, so to speak, but it wasn’t till the end of last year that I finally acknowledged that Alex was gone for good. Mick’s told me since he was starting to think I’d never get Alex out of my system. It came as a real shock to him when I finally made the break.’

Hearing himself proposing marriage must have come as a bit of a shock to Mick, too, thought Dalziel. He recalled Purdy declaring one boozy night that the only woman worth marrying was a billionairess with huge tits, no family, and an hour to live.