She turned to the door. As Brady moved to open it for her, Grant said, ‘One thing I don’t understand. Why you? Why not Bella?’

Jean Fleming turned slowly. ‘You don’t remember her very well, do you? She was never much of a one for positive action about anything. If it was left to her she’d just pretend Ben Garvald didn’t exist and hope for the best. But this time, that’s not good enough, because if anything, I stand to lose even more than she does. A scandal could ruin me, Mr Grant, destroy everything I’ve worked for. We’ve come a long way from Khyber Street, you said that yourself. Too far to be dragged back now.’

When she turned and went through the main office, she found that she was trembling. She didn’t bother with the lift, but hurried down the three flights of marble stairs to the ground floor and out through the revolving door into the portico at the front of the Town Hall.

She leaned against one of the great stone pillars that towered into the night above her and a gust of wind kicked rain into her face in an oddly menacing manner, ice-cold, like the fear that rose inside her.

‘Damn you, Ben Garvald! Damn you to hell!’ she said fiercely and plunged down the steps.

‘Quite a girl,’ Brady said.

Grant nodded. ‘And then some. She couldn’t be anything else to survive a place like Khyber Street.’

‘Do you think there’s anything in it, sir?’

‘Could be. They didn’t come much tougher than Ben Garvald in his day. I don’t think nine years of Parkhurst and the Moor will have improved him any.’

‘I never knew him personally,’ Brady said. ‘I was pounding a beat in “C” Division in those days. Had he many friends?’

‘Not really. He was always something of a lone wolf. Most people were afraid of him if anything.’

‘A real tearaway?’

Grant shook his head. ‘That was never Garvald’s style. Controlled force – violence when necessary, that was his motto. He was a commando in Korea. Invalided out in ’51 with a leg wound. Left him with a slight limp.’

‘Sounds a real hard case. Shall I get his papers?’

‘First we need someone to handle him.’ Grant pulled a file forward, opened it quickly and ran his fingers down a list. ‘Graham’s still on that rape case at Moorend. Varley went to a factory break-in Maske Lane way an hour ago. Gregory, sick. Lawrence, sick. Forbes, gone to Manchester as a witness in that fraud case coming up tomorrow.’

‘What about Garner?’

‘Still helping out in “C” Division. They haven’t got a plain clothes man capable of standing on his own two feet out there at the moment.’

‘And every man a backlog of thirty or more cases at least to work through,’ Brady said.