“Well, you drove me into a river, threatened me with a knife, then ran off with a big bag of money, so we’ll maybe start there and see what develops,” Tyler suggested. He slapped his hands together, like he was brushing off dust. “Take him away, Detective Sergeant. I want him out of my sight.”

Hamza rolled his eyes. “Now you’re pushing it,” he said, but he did as he was told and steered the limping Hill over to a knot of watching Uniforms.

“Great work, son,” Ben said, once the suspect was out of earshot.

“You’ll make a real detective of me yet, boss,” Tyler said, beating the DI to the punch.

A smile passed between them. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Aye well, you know me,” Tyler said. “Just like to be helpful.”

“You were that, alright,” Ben replied, then he put a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. There was some squeezing, and the cracking of a voice. “Now, you get yourselves up that road, eh? Big day tomorrow.”

All of a sudden, from out of nowhere there was something in Tyler’s eye. Dirt, maybe. A bit of leaf. He pressed a thumb into it, gave it a rub, then nodded. “Aye. Big day,” he agreed, and he looked down to find Sinead’s hand slipping into his.

The squeeze became a shake, then a pat, then Ben’s hand was withdrawn. “I’ll leave you two to it. I suspect there’s a bollocking to be dished out.” He started to move, then turned back. “Er… no pun intended.”

The DCs watched Ben go walking off, already taking out his phone, no doubt to call Logan. Tyler leaned in closer to Sinead and patted the strap of the holdall he had slung across his neck. “Nobody’s asked for the big bag of money yet,” he whispered. “You think if we keep quiet they’ll let us keep it?”

Sinead’s look was wholly unamused. In fact, ‘unamused’ was a good catch-all term to describe her demeanour in general.

“I’m just kidding, like. Obviously, we’re not going to keep it,” Tyler said. “Besides, there’s a big knife in there in an evidence bag. We probably don’t want to get caught with that.”

Her foot pressed down on his, drawing a little gasp of surprise.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Did you chase him?” Sinead demanded. She pointed to the car half-submerged in the river. “Did you get out of that car and chase him?”

Tyler looked down at himself. His trousers were a much darker shade from his hips down, and he was standing in a puddle of water.

“No,” he said, then he realised there was no way she was buying that, so he switched to damage limitation mode. “It was perfectly safe. I wouldn’t have done it if I thought there was a risk of getting hurt.”