He eventually made it to the front of the queue, and found himself squeezed in a little uncomfortably next to a strapping bloke in a Hackett shirt. He made an involuntary noise, and the guy said, ‘Sorry,’ and shuffled away a bit. ‘I’m fatter than I think.’

‘You’re all right,’ Jason said, with a nod.

A barman came over to him and he managed to get his order in before anyone else. Once he was done, the bloke next to him asked, ‘Are you guys coppers?’

He turned to look at this man a little more carefully, trying to work out why he was being asked. The guy didn’t seem to be angry. Just cheerfully curious.

‘Yeah,’ Jason answered. ‘We are. But off duty.’

‘Oh yeah, obviously.’ The guy shrugged. ‘You have to have time off. I used to tell my ex that. She was always on the job. Though actually –’ he gave a laugh – ‘it turned out it was bullshit, and she was on a different job.’

‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ Jason said, his eyes on the first almost-poured pint. ‘That’s tough.’

Jason had never known why he gave off such a strong aura of ‘tell me your problems’. He was tempted to blame the psychology degree, though it had happened to him as a teenager, too. Somehow people found him approachable whenever he didn’t actively give them fuck-off vibes. And sometimes even then.

‘I was pretty cut up at first,’ the guy said in a lower voice. ‘But actually it was the best thing for me. I was tired of the games. And, oh my God, Juliette loves to play games. She got me to move here, and then was stringing some poor bastard in her team along, too.’

Jason found his pulse quickening. It was no different to the feeling when a witness said something incriminating.

He glanced at the big bloke, who was holding on to the bar with one hand now, bouncing his other fist off the surface. He was clearly in his late twenties. Quite expensively dressed. Attractive. And his accent was decidedly Brummie. He was from Birmingham, like Hanson.

‘Your ex was called Juliette?’ Jason asked, as the two pints arrived in front of him.

‘Yeah,’ the guy said, glancing at him and then away. ‘I’d worry she might come in here, but this isn’t Juliette’s kind of place.’

‘What kind of an officer is she?’ Jason asked, lifting one of the drinks with a hand that felt cold. ‘Uniform?’

‘No, a detective,’ the guy said. ‘She came here to become one.’

Jason took a long, steadying breath in through his nose, and then said, ‘Let me buy you a drink. What was your name?’

‘Damian,’ the strapping bloke said, looking a little taken aback. ‘You really don’t have to …’

Jason cut across him, with a very determined smile. ‘I’d like to hear more about your ex, if that’s OK with you.’

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