‘And? There has to be an “and”, right? There generally is with you,’ Carol said, bitterness still evident in her voice. She wasn’t loosening up, he thought. He’d hoped they’d slip into old rhythms without realising it, but she was too watchful of herself for that. Time appeared not to have done much healing of her hurt.

‘There is. I bought more shopping than I’d intended and I got the bus home. And that’s when I realised buses have CCTV that films outside the bus as well as inside. Bradfield buses have fourteen cameras on each double-decker bus, did you know that? So I suggested to Paula that they take a look at the footage. Which they did.’

‘Was it helpful?’ Scott asked.

‘Oh yes. They got a bit of Bev on one camera. And they caught a few seconds of the bloke who was following her. It wasn’t much use for ID. Medium height, medium build, though he could have been a slim guy wearing bulky clothing. He was wearing a hoodie and he kept his head down. You can see he’s wearing glasses, but that’s about all. They told me they had footage of the man who abducted Nadia, and it was pretty much the same. There’s only one distinguishing feature.’ Tony looked down at the table. He hated this piece of information. In his head, it was the one that made him look guilty. ‘He’s got a noticeable limp. He limps with his left leg.’

‘Oh, fuck,’ Carol said. With feeling.

‘You have a limp?’

Sometimes it was tempting to go for the crass one-liner. This probably wasn’t one of those times. ‘I had major knee surgery a couple of years ago. A patient attacked me with a fire axe. Someone else’s patient, I always like to point out.’

‘And you were supposed to have a second surgery to deal with the limp,’ Carol said. ‘I take it you’re still dodging Mrs Chakrabarti?’ She half-turned to Bronwen. ‘He does have a limp. It’s worse when he’s tired. Such as, when he’s tramped two miles across town to shop in a non-local branch of Freshco.’

Scott gave him a sharp, assessing look. ‘I don’t like the limp,’ she said. ‘That’s the sort of circumstantial that the CPS gets very hot and horny over.’

‘Lots of people have a limp,’ Tony protested.

‘No, actually, they don’t,’ Carol said. ‘And if you’d done what you were supposed to, neither would you. Doing nothing just gets you into trouble, Tony. And not for the first time.’

She’d never held back. He’d always admired that in her. But it was hard to take when he was the target of her sharpest assaults. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.