Aaron blinked at him. Joel shrugged. “I did a bit of work on a left-wing newspaper. You know what I mean, though.”

“Yes. And...yes, that’s my superior’s intent. I have no problem with ensuring the law is observed, but that’s not what he’s asked for.”

“And that’s a problem? I mean, joking apart, you’re in the Met. Isn’t that what you do?”

He didn’t know, Aaron reminded himself, couldn’t know how much that simple syllogism hurt. You’re in the Met, the Met breaks unions, that’s what you do. Who you are.

He took a deep breath. “My father was a union organiser. Quite well known. His name was Terry Fowler.”

Joel blinked. “Terry—you don’t mean Firebrand Fowler? Oh good God, you do. How on earth are you in the police? No, wait. How are you related to Paul Napier-Fox if you’re Firebrand Fowler’s son?”

“He’s my father but I’m not his son. That’s rather the point.”

Joel raised a finger for a pause, and carefully eased more fish off the bone. He added rice and more saag paneer to his plate, plus a dollop of pickle. “Right, I’m ready. Enlighten me.”

“My mother was a Napier-Fox. Wealthy upper-crust family, high society, a Bright Young Person before her time. She went to Italy to study art one summer when she was nineteen, and married an Italian painter on a whim.”

Joel’s eyes flicked over his face. “Ah.”

“The family got the marriage annulled without much difficulty, but it was already too late. She was packed off to an aunt’s house in the Midlands for a year to have the baby, regain her figure, return, marry, pretend it had never happened. I’ve never known what they intended to do with me. A childless family, an orphanage, the doorway of a police station?”

“Lovely.”

“But instead she met Terry Fowler. The family, the Napier-Foxes, were livid. She was told she’d be cut off without a penny, but she didn’t care and nor did my father. He married her, knowing she had nothing and with another man’s child in her belly.”

“Gosh. He must have loved her very much,” Joel said. “Or been a very good man. Or both.”

“Oh, he was a good man,” Aaron said. “An excellent man. He was willing to take on a child that wasn’t his. He let everyone—her, me, everyone we ever spoke to—know how he had taken on this child that wasn’t his, all the time. I never had a chance to forget how good he was about that.”

“Oh.”

“It was what he did. He sacrificed himself—for the Cause mostly, but for anything else he could see going, and he never asked for anything in return, despite all he’d done for you. I was always, unchangeably, drowningly, in his debt.”