That just about fitted with a law firm like Seiger and Sten.

‘What did you mean earlier about déjà vu, Task?’

‘I mean, you told me when you called that you thought something was going on, and that something turns out to be you looking into an ex-cop. We’ve done this dance before, Raker, and I know you’re going to tell me everything’s fine, but whenever you do, a few days later I discover that you’ve walked into some shitstorm. I’m not going to be giving you this information, then turning up at your funeral next week, am I?’

Tasker’s concerns weren’t overblown: I’d come close to losing my life before, been dragged so far into the shadows I’d wondered if I’d ever get back, but I quickly tried to allay his fears, as convincingly as I was able, and shifted our conversation on.

My daughter, Annabel, would often raise similar worries about my job, about the risks it posed to me, to our lives together, but she was a dance and drama teacher, far removed from the world that I existed in, and which Tasker was a part of as well, so my reassurance carried more weight with her than it did with him. Task had been a cop, in one form or another, for the best part of fifty years. He’d seen everything the world was capable of, all its lies and its devastation, all its violence and its blackness, and he’d seen it repeated over and over, time after time. That made him perceptive, it made him cynical and wary – but, most of all, it made him realistic.

So I knew he was right: sooner or later, a case would come for me and pull me back into the shadows.

And maybe there would be no way back.

I just had to hope it wasn’t this one.

20

There were five recording devices in each of the homes, concealed so well that it took us over ninety minutes to find them all. The only difference was the design: the Perrys and the Daveys had one type – theirs smaller, and more difficult to find – while Randolph and Emiline and the Gibbses had another: a little larger, possibly newer, but without the audio equalizer bars on the side of them.