Sinead studied his face. She eased up on the foot, but only a little. “Aye you would,” she said.

Tyler pushed his chest out. “Because I’m a big brave hero?”

“Because you’re a bloody idiot,” Sinead corrected.

Tyler laughed, and draped an arm around her, pulling her in close. “Hey, you’re the one who married me,” he said. “So, who’s the idiot now?”

She hugged him, and all the flashing lights and hubbub melted away.

They stood like that for a while, alone in a sea of officers. Just the two of them.

“You ready?” she asked him.

Tyler looked to the sky. Breathed it in.

He looked over to where Pete Hill was being forcibly inserted into the back of a polis car. “Aye,” he said. “I actually think I am.”

Then, with a crafty wee rub of a bollock, he followed his wife to her car.

Chapter Forty-Six

Moira Corson regarded the device standing propped up on the adjustable table that had been moved into position across her bed.

“What is it?” she asked, squinting at her reflection in the polished glass.

“It’s one of them iPad things,” Ben told her.

“That’s not an iPad,” Moira scoffed. “How much did it cost?”

“Never you bloody mind what it cost,” Ben said. Then, when she turned her beady eyes on him, he begrudgingly revealed it had set him back a shade under eighty quid.

“Definitely not an iPad, then,” Moira said, although she sounded more pleased by this than disappointed. “What’s it for?”

Ben folded up the box the tablet had come in, and shoved it into an Argos carrier bag. “Well, I’m heading back up the road this afternoon,” he told her. “And since I won’t be able to get in to see you, I thought I could check in on this. It does video.”

Moira regarded the thing with suspicion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I’d be able to call you. But with my face,” Ben said. “I mean… not with my face. I wouldn’t dial the numbers with my… My face would be on the screen, I mean. Talking. It’d be just like I was here.”

“And why would I want that?” Moira demanded. “Good riddance, I say. Bit of peace and quiet’s what’s been sorely lacking around here lately.”

“Ah, quit your moaning, you ungrateful old bastard,” Ben muttered, but loudly enough for her to hear every word.

He picked up the tablet, felt around the rim a full five times before he found the power button, then seemed genuinely alarmed when the screen illuminated once he’d pressed it.