The lights complete another cycle, and Tyler slams his hand down on the dashboard. “Fuck!” He glances to his right to see the woman in the passenger seat of the car next to him watching. Fuck this! He starts the engine, flicks the left indicator, and inches his way out into the bus lane. He speeds past the line of waiting traffic, ignoring the disapproving glares of the trapped motorists. At the next junction he finds the first empty parking space and abandons the car on a meter. He can collect it first thing, before the wardens come by. It’s insured, and it’s not as though it’s his car anyway. Maybe they’ll sack him for misuse of public property, and the rest of his problems will go away. He presses the lock button on the key fob, the lights flash twice in quick succession, and the car chirrups an irritatingly jovial goodbye.

His route home takes him past the Red Deer and he hovers outside for a moment, wondering if this is where he was heading all along. Once inside, he orders a pint of Moonshine and heads out to the beer garden. He finds a spot on a bench near the back wall and uses the conversations of the postgrad students and after-work crowd as white noise to help focus his thoughts.

He’s halfway through the second pint when Sally-Ann calls.

“How was your day?”

He begins to put her off, annoyed with himself for answering the bloody thing in the first place, but she starts speaking again right over the top of him. “Was it him, then? Was it Cartwright? Oh my God, Adam, this is going to be fucking huge! You’ll be mega-famous. Assuming you’re on the case. You are . . . aren’t you?”

He starts to tell her they’re not sure of anything yet but she’s already talking again, filling him in on the gossip back at the station. How everyone’s saying the son did it, how Carl heard from that skinny bloke in Reception how he overheard Doggett telling Jordan they’d have the whole thing wrapped up in a couple of days . . . and on and on.

He tunes out her voice and goes back to his thoughts. He could still go to Jordan, make out it was the shock that stopped him saying anything earlier. She’ll be pissed with him, but it would probably be all right. She’d reassign him without any fuss, and maybe no one would even need to know why.

“Adam?” Sally-Ann’s voice brings him back to the present.

“Sorry?”

“I said, how did it go last night? With that bloke? I saw you slipping out the door with him. You’re a dark horse, aren’t you? Only, I said to Carl—”