Another nod. ‘You for involving us. Me for being so keen to be involved. Your assistant commissioner for being so keen for the Clarion to lean on Castagna. And Anthea for not giving a shit about the fact the poor bastard got disappeared.’ She shook her head. ‘But mainly I blame Castagna. You’re absolutely sure he’s dead? Don’t tell me to look at the news reports; we both know they can be fixed.’

‘He’s dead. I put a remote-detonated shaped charge on the underside of his car. He drove off, laughing at me for letting him go. When he got far away enough to be safe from the machine pistol I was carrying he stopped. Shouted the odds out of his car window about how he was going to kill us all. Me, you, my wife. So I pushed a button and the bomb punched a jet of molten copper through the bottom of his driver’s seat. What was left wasn’t identifiable as a human being, by the time the fire was put out. Most of him having been blown out through a hole in the roof in tiny pieces.’

‘That sounds too quick to be real justice.’

‘Yeah. But it’s what I had.’ Mickey guessed she’d swap a dozen dead Joe Castagnas to get her colleague back. ‘Mark didn’t deserve to die. But he did, and I took revenge for him.’

‘Revenge.’ She seemed to consider the word. The concept. ‘It was revenge for your sister that started this all off, was it?’

‘Yeah. And it felt good. At the time.’

Although the first kill, the most important one of them all, now seemed as meaningless as all the others. As seen through the filter of what had followed.

‘You and your wife…’

‘That’s over. She’s not the type to take prisoners. Or forgive the sort of things I’ve been up to. It’s amicable enough, but it’s final.’

‘Like with the Met?’

He laughed sardonically. ‘Like with the Met? The Met’s even more implacable than Roz. The Met would have put me in solitary for fifteen years, given the chance. Or possibly sent me to Broadmoor. I was lucky that you gave me what I needed to fend them off. And put the Met over a barrel. I showed her that video and it was interview terminated. I’m out early. Nothing signed yet, but Jasmine doesn’t really have a lot of choice, thanks to you. Medical discharge, full pension rights. And I keep the commendation and the Christmas tree ornament. Should be handy when it comes to job hunting.’

‘Job hunting? Why would you want another job?’

A question Mickey had been asking himself. A lot. Because he undoubtedly didn’t need to work. Not with his share of Joe’s money available from Shaw whenever he chose to call it in. If he could bring himself to touch it.