The round bullseye break in the centre of the windscreen indicated that the boy had struck it with some force. The only part of the boy’s body hard enough to have created that, in toughened glass, would have been his skull. He looked at the spiderweb crack more closely to see if he could spot any strands of hair, which he could, and fragments of skin and blood from the scalp, which he saw were also present.

Next he looked at the roof and saw the marks where the boy must have struck it before bouncing off and into the road.

Not good.

He and Dunwoody ran past the car. A woman, a member of the public, was supporting the boy’s neck, and looked like she knew what she was doing. First-aid trained, he thought. Good. Two police officers were also kneeling beside him.

Dunwoody whispered into Turner’s ear. The classic gallows humour that helped keep them sane at times, when dealing with situations that might otherwise make them weep. ‘Is it a stay-and-play or scoop-and-run?’

‘The latter,’ he whispered back.

The colour of the boy’s bloodstained face was alabaster. Turner knelt beside him and immediately felt for his pulse.

It was alarmingly weak.

39

Tuesday 3 September

An hour and a half after the morning briefing meeting had ended, Roy Grace stood outside Cassian Pewe’s office. He’d long got used to this game the ACC played of making him wait, often for up to an hour, for no other reason Grace knew than he could. Power play. Childish, but he’d enjoyed keeping him waiting in turn. It had just gone 10.30 a.m. when he’d eventually arrived at his office, and now he’d been waiting close to half an hour.

Finally, just as Pewe’s staff officer came out of his own office and said, ‘The ACC says to go in,’ Grace’s job phone rang. He ignored it. Moments later, as he entered, his personal phone rang. Barely glancing at it, he hit the decline button.

Mr Immaculate sat behind his desk, studying something on his screen. There was no welcoming smile. Just, without looking up, a sharp, ‘So? You’d better have something good for me, Roy.’

‘I have – sir.’

And more than you bloody know. Clearly, the nuke hadn’t hit him yet. But it would be any day soon.

Closing the door behind him, he walked over and stood in front of Pewe. As he had anticipated, he was not invited to sit at either of the chairs in front of the large, shiny desk, but he sat down anyway.

‘Perhaps you’d care to update me?’ Pewe said, still apparently focused on his screen on something more important than his visitor.

To his joy, Pewe’s aggressive – and dismissive – demeanour faded fast as he recounted the events of the past twenty-four hours, and the evidence that had come to light. Saving the best to last.

Grace’s job phone rang again, and once more he rejected it.

‘I hope you’re not just virtue signalling, Roy,’ Pewe said when he had finished, using the corporate newspeak that constantly left Roy baffled – and wondering if Pewe had any idea what it meant, either. ‘This does change the optics.’