Maggie tipped her head to one side, her eyebrows raised and her eyes filled with sympathy.

“Don’t do that,” Jack said gently. “Don’t look at me like I’m making a mistake ’cos I’m grieving. I had a DNA test done.”

For the first time since Jack had started on his strange journey of self-discovery, Maggie started taking him seriously. She pulled her chair tight under Jack’s desk and read through the newspaper cuttings in front of her. Jack looked around the squad room—every person here was a stranger. His immediate team was currently in Essex without him, being led by a man who had lost faith in him, if he’d ever really had any faith in him in the first place. Jack picked up one of the old, blurred, black and white newspaper images of Harry’s funeral.

“Charlie won’t leave this kind of mark. There’ll be a handful of old builders and some of Mum’s friends to have a sherry with her at the wake afterward. Then, nothing. He won’t be remembered nearly forty years from now.”

Maggie took Jack’s hand, and pressed it to make him stop. She almost felt sick.

“Listen to yourself! This man—this terrible, horrible man—is no one to be proud of. Charlie, or ‘Dad’ as you used to call him, will be dearly missed by good, hard-working people—whether there’s ten or ten thousand of them. Jack, please, this isn’t you!”

“This is me!” he snapped, making Maggie jump.

He was desperate to explain how he felt, but he didn’t understand it himself. He repeated something Eddie had said to him.

“‘People can see strength and that gets you respect.’ It was never the job, or moving to London that was wrong, Mags—it was me. I’m not planning on changing sides, but I am going to start being the man I’m meant to be. I will be heard. And Ridley will start treating me with the respect I deserve.”

Chapter 32

It was almost forty-eight hours since Kurts, Wassan and Marchant had been escorted back to London and, just as Ridley had predicted, they’d all been “no comment” the entire time. Kurts could be charged with perverting the course of justice, because Barry had been hiding in his flat—but they still needed to prove he knew Barry was there. Wassan was just hours away from being released. And Marchant was waiting for his lift back to Essex, after his good deed of playing chauffeur to his brother had finally exonerated him from any involvement in the train robbery.

Jack was head-down, checking numerous family statements supporting the fact that Marchant had never left the hospital at any point during his sister-in-law’s 27-hour labor. It wasn’t his aim to undermine Ridley or make him feel stupid; all Jack wanted was to be taken seriously.

Ridley sat at his desk, door open, and looked through the army service records of every man and woman who’d ever crossed paths with either Barry Cooper or Mike Withey. There were so many possibilities, but, as the hours ticked by, his gut got louder and louder. He was on the wrong track. He looked up to see Jack in the doorway.