‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Good. So you’re going to do all of that, and you’re never going to ask another question about Black Gale again, ever, or things start going wrong for you. Because I will start digging around in your past cases and find all the shit I know you covered up, all the lies I bet you’ve told the cops, and then I will call the police, and I will do the same with Connor McCaskell, and I will tell them everything. I’ll tell them you illegally obtained the paperwork from this case as well – an open investigation – which will, in turn, compromise your sources and end with them in the dock too. And who knows? Just because I can, I might even throw in the fact that you hit a deer and failed to report it.’ He used his boot again, pressing down at the side of Healy’s head, crushing his face into the floor. When I moved, automatically trying to stop him, he swivelled the shotgun around and pushed the barrel into my chest. Its weight rocked me back. ‘Don’t think that I won’t do it. Even after everything I’ve said, don’t think I won’t cut you down. If it’s me or you, you’d better believe it’ll be you that goes in the ground first, whether that means some journalist sniffing around me or not.’ He prodded my chest with the barrel again. ‘Step back.’

I did as he asked.

As he released his foot from Healy’s face, he turned to me again, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. ‘You’re a clever bastard, you know that, Raker? I’ve gained a new appreciation for you since yesterday. All the moves you’ve been making, they’re moves I’d have made, or moves I maybe wouldn’t have even thought of. Sending Bryan here down to Leeds, now that was a smart idea.’

‘Obviously not smart enough.’

‘Well, everyone’s a genius in hindsight,’ he said, shrugging, and something moved across his face, brief, ephemeral, like the flicker of a candle flame. ‘The year before I left Lancashire Constabulary – this would have been October, November 2010 – I landed this case: a killing in Preston. It was a family of four: Dad, Mum, son of nine, daughter of eleven. I walked in there and that place was like a bloodbath. In fifteen years as a cop, I’d never seen anything like it. The anger of the killer – it was fucking scary. You think you’ve seen everything, you think you’ve pushed it all so far down that nothing will ever bother you again, but it does. That family, they all got to me so much, I was seeing crime-scene pictures of the kids every time I blinked.’

I watched him, confused now.

Why was he telling me this?