Tyler watches the kid sitting opposite him. Barry Nelson is seventeen, but he looks a lot younger with all that snot dripping freely off his nose ring, and the tiny balled-up fists he uses to try to staunch the tears leaking from his eyes. The “appropriate adult” sitting next to him is Helen Cooper (“Call-Me-Hels”). Doggett clearly knows her of old, and the vein in his head has been pulsing dangerously for the hour and a half they have been waiting for the social worker to arrive. She is an ephemeral woman in a floaty dress who spends a great deal of time asking Barry if he is okay, rummaging through her handbag for tissues, and apologizing profusely for keeping them waiting despite the fact she is still the one holding things up. Most AAs see themselves as something only slightly short of a solicitor. They are squarely on the side of the poor little blighters they have been called in to represent, and most have watched too many courtroom dramas and barely resist the urge to shout “Objection!” to every question put to their clients. Conversely, Call-Me-Hels is doing her best to be on everyone’s side and no one’s, which for some reason Tyler finds even more infuriating. He has to admit he’s with Doggett on this one; he dislikes this woman immensely.

Despite her presence in the room, Barry appears completely alone. It seems he is estranged from his parents, who threw him out when he was just fifteen. Since then he has been working for the butcher and living above his shop, but when they rang George Simmonite and asked him to come to the station, he refused on the grounds “the lad” had nothing to do with him.

Tyler’s head is pounding, and every now and again he is forced to cover his mouth while he coughs up black crap from his lungs, though the coughing fits are shorter and repeat less frequently. He had been unconscious in the churchyard for only a moment or two, but the paramedics tried to make him go to the hospital with them.

Once Call-Me-Hels has finished doling out tissues and checking her makeup in a compact, she sits quietly and stares into space, smiling. It’s a little unnerving how switched off she looks. Doggett deals with all the usual persons present housekeeping, and Barry sits sniveling throughout. Finally, Doggett reaches down to his feet under the table and brings up a plastic evidence bag containing the backpack Guy Daley recovered at the crime scene.

“Is this yours, Barry?” he asks.

Barry looks up and immediately down again.

“Because it has your initials written on the label in felt-tip pen, mate? See, here?” The plastic crackles under Doggett’s fingertips. “B.N. Barry Nelson. So . . . I’ll ask you again, does this belong to you?”

Barry nods his head without looking up.