But things had changed since his father’s day. These days, things weren’t so clear cut. There no longer seemed to be the villains and the innocent members of the public, the black and the white, the good and the evil, with the police protecting the one against the other. These days there were only shades of grey, when everyone was classed as a victim, and evil no longer officially existed. As often as not, the law seemed to be a weapon to be used against the police, not by them. Was there still something called justice out there? Was it something that Sergeant Joe Cooper would recognize? Would he think that his son was doing his best to pursue justice? Or would he have growled: ‘Do better, lad.’

Cooper heard the door open and a step approached his desk. There was a familiar exasperated sigh close to his left ear.

‘Still tilting at windmills, Sir Galahad?’

‘Don Quixote,’ muttered Cooper without looking up.

‘You read too much,’ said Fry. ‘It’s addled your brains.’

Cooper sat back and looked at her. She seemed as tired as he felt himself. Her face was drawn, and there were blue patches under her eyes.

‘How’s it going down there?’ he said.

‘With your friend the Ranger? Badly. They’ve bailed him.’

‘Really? I thought there was some forensic evidence. Cigarette ends –’

‘Unfortunately, there are no traces of Fox. The saliva samples from the cigarettes don’t match. And Fox’s colleagues confirm he has never smoked. They weren’t his fag ends.’

Cooper tried not to show how relieved he was. But he suspected Fry knew his thoughts anyway.

‘Anything on Leach?’ he said.

Fry shook her head. ‘Not yet. Maybe it’ll all come down to you and your instincts, and we’ll find that Ben Cooper is right and everybody else is wrong. Because you seem to take the opposite view every time these days. You even want to defend Warren Leach, for God’s sake. How can you do that?’

‘You have to look at what makes people do things. Their actions don’t exist in isolation.’

‘You should have been a social worker, not a copper.’

‘You’ve got more against social workers than most people do, haven’t you?’

Cooper looked up and noticed the expression on her face. Too late, he knew he shouldn’t have said that about social workers. He knew perfectly well that Fry and her sister had been taken into care after allegations of sexual abuse by their parents, and the sister had run away and become a heroin addict. Why Fry had shared those things with him, Cooper didn’t know. There was so much about her that he didn’t understand.

Now, he waited in shame and embarrassment for her to rip into him. But she didn’t do that. Her brief spasm of rage was brought under control.