“Enfield, sir. Paul Enfield.” He looks over his shoulder. “He hasn’t arrived yet, but I can probably get his contact details.”

“That’s all right,” Tyler tells him, remembering the small white business card Daley threw at him. “I think I have them already.”

He sits there for a moment and considers. He’s not keen to head back to the vicarage again, not with Oscar still there. He pulls out his mobile and the card from Guy Daley and dials the number.

—

Paul Enfield is curt with Tyler on the phone, no doubt because of Guy Daley’s poor attitude, but the fire officer is still keen to meet and so, forty minutes later, Tyler is pulling up outside the brand-new headquarters of the South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service. As he gets out of the car he stifles a yawn. It’s not even 8 a.m. and it already feels like he’s done a full day’s work. Then he remembers, he has.

The building is an orange-bricked sore on the sandstone face of the city. Tyler gives the designers their due—they’ve at least tried to insert some architecture into the project; the front is dissected by a ground-to-roof slash of colored glass. Unfortunately, or quite deliberately for all he knows, the chosen colors—reds, yellows, and oranges—appear to be licking their way up the side of the building like so many PVC flames. Inside, a smell of fried and baked goods hangs in the air, mixed with a chemical odor, like burning plastic. He sits in an enormous tub of a chair in the reception area, all chrome and faux black leather, his back to the flaming window. It throws panels of colored light over his head and across the tiled floor.

“DS Tyler?” A giant of a man looms over him, his broad frame blocking out the fluorescent glare from the ceiling. His black skin is mottled by the colored light from the window, making him look like something from a psychedelic movie from the ’70s. He smiles broadly, exposing a row of even white teeth. “Paul Enfield,” he says, extending a deep-ridged palm. Tyler takes it, the calluses rough against his fingers. He stands, still holding the man’s hand so they end up standing too close to each other. Enfield is half a head taller; Tyler has to crane his neck to meet the man’s eyes. He becomes aware of a tight gray T-shirt that cuts into biceps the size of most people’s thighs. They let go of each other’s hands.

“Would you like a coffee?” Enfield holds out a tree-trunk arm in the direction of what Tyler supposes is the cafeteria. The smell of burning plastic, however, forces him to decline and, whether or not Enfield takes this as a slight, the smile fades. He pulls across another of the gigantic faux-leather tub seats with a casual single-handed movement. On him it looks normal sized.