‘Difficult? Have you seen the guidelines for interviews? Confrontation and intimidation are out. Exaggerating the evidence, emphasizing the seriousness of the crime. All out. What a load of crap. What do they think we are? A bunch of nannies?’

‘It’s only being realistic. A confession obtained like that will get thrown out by the court.’

‘Yeah, great. So we have to say, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious, and we’ve hardly got anything on you, anyway.” That’ll make them confess, all right. I can see them rolling over on their backs and spilling their guts to help me out, just because I’m a really nice man.’

‘I think you’re over-reacting.’

‘No kidding? You were never one for over-reacting, were you, Ben? Take the shit and don’t complain, eh? Well, that’s a good boy. The management will love you. Maybe you’ll still be here putting in your thirty years for your pension when the rest of us have got out to start earning a clean living. Maybe you’ll still be stacking up the paperwork and processing the same old scumbags in and out of the custody suite while we’re all working as security guards in Woolworth’s or as private enquiry agents for that Eden Valley firm, doing nice little divorce cases. That’s if you last that long. But my bet is they’ll get to you in the end, too. Even you, Ben.’

Cooper found himself staring at May’s hair. She smiled, and flushed a deeper pink. Her boyfriend, Frank, stuck his head round the kitchen door and eyed her suspiciously. He was wiry and black-haired, with a moustache and a dark stubble. He looked typically Italian, but he was a scrap merchant from Macclesfield.

‘I know which case it was,’ said Cooper.

‘OK,’ said Weenink. ‘So you figured it out. Go to the top of the class. Yes, it was the break-in at that little retirement cottage at Ashford. The Westons’ place.’

‘Wayne Sugden.’

‘Sorting Sugden out was easy,’ said Weenink. ‘There were some cotton fibres from an armchair that were the clincher. I sat in the chair myself when I went round to the cottage, and I noticed how easy the fibres came off. I had an informant who agreed he might have seen Sugden – and bingo. And he had a handy little motive, too – that business of old Weston’s with the nephew.’