She nodded. ‘Text me when you get out of school and we’ll take it from there. Hopefully, she’ll have turned up at work and that’ll be the end of it.’ She tried to reassure him with a smile that matched her voice.

He looked dubious. ‘You think?’

No. But, ‘Chances are,’ was what she said as she stood up and eased him out the door. She watched him as far as the front entrance, his shoulders hunched, his head down. She wanted to believe Bev McAndrew was fit and well and on her way home. But convincing herself would have required a triumph of hope over experience, and Paula didn’t have it in her.

She turned away, momentarily nostalgic for her old team. They would have understood exactly why she was bothering with Torin and his barely missing mum. But that was then. Instead she had DCI Fielding to face. She’d heard good things about Fielding’s conviction rates and this was definitely a team she wanted to hitch her wagon to. But already she’d kept her new boss waiting. It was far from the perfect start she’d hoped for. Hopefully, it wasn’t too late to redeem herself. She’d simply have to try that little bit harder.

7

The tram rattled across the high Victorian viaduct, sleek modern lines a contrast to the soot-stained redbrick arches. It was, Tony thought, a powerful metaphor for the whole area surrounding the Minster Canal Basin. Opposite the viaduct was the ruined apse of the medieval minster itself, its stained limestone tracery all that had been left standing when a stick of Luftwaffe bombs had reduced the rest of the building to rubble. A dozen years ago, the viaduct and the minster had bookended a higgledy-piggledy scrum of random buildings, half of them empty and decaying, their window frames rotten and their rooflines sagging. The canal district had been the least lovely and least loved of inner-city Bradfield’s precincts.

Then a bright spark on the city council had discovered an EU fund aimed at reinvigorating depressed and deprived inner-city environments. These days, the canal basin was the hub of a lively area. Craft workshops, indie publishers and software developers worked cheek by jowl, flats and studio apartments occupied the upper floors and a sprinkling of bars and bistros provided somewhere for locals and visitors to mingle. One of Bradfield Victoria’s premier league stars had even lent his name to a Spanish tapas bar that he occasionally deigned to grace with his presence.

The basin itself had become a mix of permanent residential moorings and short-stay marina slots for the narrowboats that provided holidays and day trips where once they’d shifted cargoes round the country.