‘Good question, and of course, it is who killed him.’ He pointed at the body on the screen. ‘To be honest, I don’t much care who killed Fats but if anyone, down here or among our friends in the North, can lay hands on whoever murdered the Wang family I’d be very happy. If investigations lead nowhere else, so long as we get scum like that behind bars for life, my work here is done.’

‘Aw, don’t say that, guv, we’d miss you.’

‘Right, toddle off and bring me something to make me proud of you.’

He went straight from the conference up to Kieron’s room, but had to wait ten minutes. ‘Come on in. I won’t bother to ask if we’ve closed down all the county lines on our own patch and every surrounding one but give me some good news – any good news.’

‘That bad?’

‘Let me tell you now, if anyone asks you what a Chief Constable does, the answer is budgeting – resources, budgets, cuts, make-do. Seems I joined the police force to be an accountant.’

He shifted himself, stood up, moved the chair. Sat again.

‘They still haven’t got to the bottom of it.’

‘Who? Greater Manchester force?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I thought you meant the Chinese family.’

‘No, I meant my torn tendon.’

There was no polite answer Simon could give, so he just shook his head.

‘You’ve got an ID for caravan man anyway. What next?’

Serrailler filled him in.

‘The thing is –’ There was a knock and Kieron’s secretary put her head round the door.

‘Can the DC have a word, Simon? He says he’s got something.’

Denzil came in, face lit up like a hundred-watt bulb. ‘Result!’ he said, punching the air. ‘We’ve got his phone!’

Ben Longley, aged fifteen, had lost his new, birthday-present smartphone when he was biking along a towpath thirty miles beyond Bevham and gone back, with his brother Zak, to find it or else. After forty minutes they spotted it, caught up in a thick clump of grass beside the canal, except that when they managed to disentangle and retrieve it, Ben saw that the phone was not his.

‘Chuck it back.’

‘No, it’s all right.’

‘It’s dead, stewp, been in the water, like yours will be.’

But Ben had slipped it into his pocket and they’d gone on looking for his own half an hour longer, before giving up.

‘It’s a junk one anyway, bet you, some old pensioner’s Nokia. You thinking of going home ever again?’

He had spent half the night faffing with the lost phone, then read that to dry it out he should put it into a bowl of rice and went to nick a bag of it from the kitchen cupboard.