Jane was having dinner with her parents at a small Italian restaurant to celebrate her birthday. It was just the three of them as Pam, her sister, had cancelled due to one of her sons having mumps. Jane was trying to be relaxed but really didn’t feel it. She was unhappy about being thirty years old, as well as the fact that she was now working out of Gerald Road police station. She made no mention that her position with the Flying Squad had been short-lived or that she was disappointed to have been sidelined. She was having a problem winding her spaghetti into the spoon as she had a nasty bruise on her thumb from a session at the shooting range, but like everything else in her life, she kept it to herself.

‘I don’t know where that station is,’ her father said, as he expertly wound his spaghetti around his fork.

‘It’s in the heart of Belgravia. It’s a really nice location.’

‘Oh yes, close to all those posh shops,’ her mother said, not attempting to spin the spaghetti but slicing it up with her knife and fork. Jane’s parents were both relieved about her transfer. They’d been concerned for her safety when she had worked with the notorious Sweeney.

As a birthday gift to herself, Jane had traded in her VW and had bought a second-hand Mini Cooper, and she had at last been able to repay her father the money he had loaned her for the deposit on her flat. She was now keen to sell and was looking for something larger – not that she had anyone to share it with, she thought wistfully.

She tried to be as good-humored as she could throughout dinner – even when her mother insisted on asking if she was seeing anybody. She just changed the subject and told them that she had been reunited with an old colleague, Spencer Gibbs, from her early days at Hackney Station and then at Bow Street.

‘He feels he’s being sidelined as well,’ she said.

‘What do you mean?’ her dad asked.

‘I don’t want to talk about it, it’s just he did something he shouldn’t have done and . . . ’

‘But you said he was sidelined “as well”. So have you done something that you shouldn’t have done?’

‘For goodness’ sake, Dad. It’s not a question of something I did.’

‘But why did you say you were being sidelined as well as Spencer Gibbs if you haven’t done something wrong?’ her mother said nervously.

‘For Christ’s sake, it’s not something I have done wrong or Spencer has done wrong, just leave it alone.’

‘It’s only because we are concerned about you,’ her father said, obviously shocked by her tone of voice.