Sharon had stopped and was talking to a man in a suit. She introduced him as a criminologist. The calibre of the visitors attracted by the demonstrations was astounding. Next to him was a woman from a charity representing convicted youths between the ages of fifteen and eighteen: all the teenagers on her files were boys, and all their crimes were gang-related.

Chapter 42

DC Emma Hide entered the main lobby of Eden House and greeted the weekend staff downstairs. During a murder inquiry, the incident rooms upstairs were usually busy at the weekend, but today was different: DI Porter was visiting the barricades on the Beacon Estate, and everybody else on duty except Emma herself was occupied with the hunt for the Cotton brothers. A total of seven addresses had been checked, but the pair remained elusive and it was beginning to look embarrassing for the force.

Emma had felt a mixture of sadness and disappointment when she was told that Will Phillips was leaving the team. She had no idea why, apart from it being personal. She’d worked with Will for three years. He was a decent, ordinary bloke. She’d met Katrina, his wife, when they’d gone out in Penrith to celebrate Will’s promotion to DS. It had come on the back of a tough case, as it always did, but Will had never struck her as anything but straight.

Going to London with DI Porter earlier in the year had given her a new insight into her boss. She’d found that she wasn’t as hard as her exterior would have people believe. The moment she’d met Matt Carter, the DCI in London in charge of the case, Emma had known that something had gone on between the two of them. She saw it in his eyes and his body language when Kelly was around. He was an old flame for sure.

She liked having a context for the enigmatic Kelly Porter. She had renewed respect for the woman when she saw her as real, like other people, with failed relationships, bad choices in men, a vulnerable heart and a complicated past. When she found out exactly why Kelly had left London, it had added sympathy to the growing list of emotions she felt towards her boss. Publicly, the Met claimed that sexism, misogyny, favours and favourites were a thing of the past, but everyone knew that was bollocks. As long as women had wombs – despite new targets for promotion – they’d stay on the back foot. Real status was won on the street.