Cooper had been coming to May’s for years. He remembered the sign in the window first being painted – it was just after May and her boyfriend, Frank, had come back from a fortnight’s holiday in Rome. In that fortnight, May had discovered pasta. She arrived back in Edendale full of stories of the most wonderful fettuccine and funghini. A whole range of pasta dishes had made an appearance on the menu, scrawled in blue ballpoint that had faded with time. Now you could search for Italian influences and find only a word that might have been ‘tagliatelle’ written sideways in the margin next to the steak and chips. But if you wanted to be in May’s good books, you could still ask for pasta.

There was only a middle-aged couple in the cafe, drinking tea silently at a table near the counter. The woman had plastic carrier bags full of groceries from Somerfield’s; the man had a blank look, as if he wished he were far away. They stared briefly at the detectives, then looked away, embarrassed to be noticed.

Cooper ordered a couple of coffees – black and strong, the way May always made it.

‘That bit of trouble of yours, Todd . . .’ he said.

‘I’d prefer it if you’d just keep your mouth shut, mate,’ said Weenink. ‘It’s an old story anyway. You’ve heard it all before.’

‘Did you fit somebody up?’

‘Just helped things along, Ben. Some would say it doesn’t matter if the suspect is guilty. We can’t have them getting away on some technicality, can we? You know what the courts are like – not to mention the bloody Criminal Preservation Society. You can see when a bloke is gearing up for a spell in Derby. So what’s the problem?’

May herself was behind the counter. She was a big woman, well into her fifties, with a face permanently pink from the heat of the kitchen and large, widespread breasts like upturned soup tureens that had been pushed down the front of her blue apron. Her hair was dyed a pale strawy colour today that reminded Cooper of something.

‘Todd, there are people round here who have it in for you. They’d take any chance . . .’

Weenink threw out his arms. ‘Oh, tell me about it. That’s why you need your friends to stand by you. Of course, I’m relying on you to keep this to yourself, Ben. As long as we stick together, they haven’t got anything.’

‘But why do it, Todd?’

‘Why? Can’t you see they’re all laughing at us? I even got bollocked for abusing a prisoner the other week. I called him a Scotch pillock and got my arse chewed off by the Super for racism. But he was a Scotch pillock, Ben.’

‘I know it’s difficult.’