‘Just remember, Roy, this stays strictly confidential.’

‘Of course, ma’am, absolutely. Thank you for the update.’

The moment he put the phone down, it rang again. It was Norman Potting, sounding worried. ‘Chief, I’ve just had a call from the quack – I rang the surgery about some symptoms I’ve been having for over a month now.’

‘Your prostate?’

‘No, touch wood, that’s all tickety-boo now. No, it’s something else. He wants me to come in this morning, which I guess is not good news.’

‘Norman, I’m sorry to hear that. Let’s hope it’s just something minor. Will you call me as soon as you’ve finished with the doctor? And, of course, if you need to take any time off, that goes without saying.’

‘Thanks, but it won’t come to that, chief, I’m a tough old bugger!’

Roy put the phone down and sat back in his chair. With the DS’s age and his previous health issues – plus the knowledge he didn’t really look after himself – he was worried about just how serious this might be. The old warhorse was not a man to wear his heart on his sleeve.

He was fond of the sometimes curmudgeonly detective and, if his news was bad, he and Cleo would support Norman all they could, both as a friend and as a long-time colleague.

Shit, he thought. What was it about bad news coming in threes?

12

Monday 2 September

One of their colleagues on B-Section of the Brighton and Hove Response, who was a bit of a comedian, had once named them Little and Large, and the moniker had stuck. It wasn’t an entirely unjust description. PC Holly Little, who was known to her colleagues as the Pocket Rocket because of her short stature but feisty nature, was always the first to dive head first into a brawl or any other kind of dangerous situation. Her much older colleague, PC John Alldridge, with whom she was regularly partnered, was a six-foot-four, eighteen-stone former rugby forward, known as the Gentle Giant. He had recently transferred back to Uniform from CID because he missed the adrenaline rush of response work and wanted to spend his last couple of years before retirement back where he had started his police career, on Response.

The shift was getting tedious as they cruised the quiet Monday-morning streets of Brighton and Hove in the marked car. At the best of times, this shift was usually uneventful – criminals tended to get up late, even on fine days like this one.

So far, there had only been one shout – a Grade One – responding to an anxious call by a neighbour reporting that the people in the flat next door were killing each other. When they got there, on blues and twos, it had turned out to be a false alarm. The young couple had been happily watching an old Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor film, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which was about marital strife and involved a lot of shouting.