Elliot’s eyes narrow. “Aye. We played golf together a few times. Not often, mind; he wasn’t exactly in my league. Eight handicap,” he says, quite literally blowing smoke. “I’m going for the club championship this year.”

“Impressive.” Tyler has no idea if it is or not.

Elliot coughs. “Aye. Cartwright was strictly amateur status.”

The driver of the lorry jumps down from the cab and looks at a clipboard. He glances up and down the road a couple of times and then back at the information in his hands.

“Look at this joker.” Elliot drops his cigarette butt on the ground, where it joins a hundred others. He stamps it out with a foot and shouts at the driver, “Are you picking up or dropping off, man?”

The driver looks up for a moment, winces into the sunlight, and then looks back down at his clipboard as though it alone holds the answers he seeks.

Elliot huffs. “I’d better sort this out. We’re expecting a meat delivery of our own any minute.” He claps Tyler on the shoulder and starts toward the lorry. But as he walks he turns and raises his voice. “If you want any more info on Gerald Cartwright,” he says, “I suggest you ask Jim Doggett. I seem to remember he was in Gerry’s league.” He smiles and turns back to the driver.

The orange spark of his cigarette butt flares once on the wind and goes out.

—

Constable Rabbani lives with her parents in one of a short row of newly built terraced houses in Sharrow. Tyler parks on a side street overlooking the back of the houses where the gardens have been paved over and joined into one shared courtyard. A group of young boys are playing cricket between rows of drying washing. When they see Rabbani get in the car they begin shouting at the house.

“Cousins,” she explains as she gets in, “telling the whole family some bloke’s just picked me up.”

“Do you want me to go in and explain?” he asks.

“Fuck, no! Sorry, sir. It’s just . . . sometimes they forget I’m with the police.”

He smiles. “No need to remind them, eh?”

It takes them no more than ten minutes to reach the university. Finding somewhere to park takes nearer fifteen. Sophie Denham is a law student who’s agreed to meet them strictly on her own terms. Her suggestion to Rabbani was that they meet her in the coffee shop at the student union. Tyler doesn’t want to meet the girl at all, but he can’t just ignore the possible lead. He tells himself his interest is professional. They were at school together—Oscar and this . . . so-called fiancée—which means she’s likely to have known Gerald Cartwright as well. And anyway, as uncomfortable as the whole interview is likely to be for him, better he talks to her than Doggett.