Boz, she’d thought before today, was like the anti-Gid. They’d met at work, they’d been borough CID together, she DS, he a constable, but where she’d moved up, making inspector, joining Homicide, he’d made a sideways move and joined the other team. He’d been working on a case involving the fringes of a local gang when he’d met and fallen in love with the sister of one of the suspects, from whom, idiot, he’d accepted money to suppress a key piece of evidence. The sister, Lauren, had visited him regularly while he did his time and when he got out, he’d married her and gone to work with the family business. Boz had grown up in care; Robin suspected that the Ryan family, both huge and tight, gave him the sense of belonging he’d originally hoped to find in the Met.

She paid for the coffees and carried them over. ‘And your brownie, sir.’

‘Cheers. So, how are you doing? How’s tricks?’ No patronizing note in the question this time, thank god; she felt a rush of good-will towards him. She’d always liked Boz, could never muster the wherewithal to blame him for what he’d done. A large part of her had actually been glad for him. The few bits he’d ever told her about his childhood had sounded like hell; he’d been overdue a bit of happiness, and she’d been there in the early days of Lauren, when he hadn’t been able to keep the smile off his face. Robin had been a character witness at his trial, in support of a lenient sentence.

She shrugged now. ‘So-so. You?’

‘Good. Lauren’s expecting again.’

‘Is she? Congrats.’

‘Thanks. Hoping for another girl, don’t tell her. Everyone keeps going on about maybe we’ll get a boy this time but I love my girls and I want another one.’ He opened the brownie and offered her some.

‘I’m all right, thanks.’

‘So, to what do I owe the proverbial?’

‘You’ve heard about Jamie Hinton, have you?’ The Ryans weren’t particularly big-time themselves, nor violent, but they knew a lot of people.

‘Of course, yeah. I mean, I saw it in the newspaper,’ he said. ‘Sorry about your job. Are you looking for an in on the dark side?’

‘I’m probably in enough trouble for now but if it comes to that, I’ll give you a call. No, I wanted to ask you if you’d heard anything about him or Jay Farrell.’

‘Guessed as much. Sorry, no, I haven’t. Only what I’ve read.’

‘I still don’t like Hinton for Farrell. I think it was a set-up, that either someone heard about the theft of the drugs and saw an opportunity to incriminate him, or, alternatively, it was a case of two birds with one stone.’