Climbed the steps to the town hall entrance and into cooler, dimmer air. The creaky old ballroom had been transformed: phones, computers, desks; officers in shirtsleeves peering at screens, making calls, rippling their fingers over keyboards. It was like the floor of a stock exchange: an air of controlled panic. Hirsch glanced upwards. Dusty sunlight crept in from windows high on the walls. Lovely wainscoting, lovely pressed ceiling, and emotion surged through him as he recalled the walls and ceilings of the house on Hamel Road.

He swallowed and approached a plain-clothed officer wheeling in a whiteboard. ‘Can you point me to whoever’s in charge?’

She took in his dusty boots and trousers, the tidemarks of sweat on his shirt. Pointed to a long desk behind partition walls in a corner of the ballroom. ‘Inspector Kellaher.’

Hirsch could see two men conversing on the far side of the desk, their chairs turned to each other. He crossed the room, the old polished floorboards creaking under his feet. It continued to be used as a ballroom—he’d attended the high school ball with Wendy a few months back—but his first experience of the room had been a public meeting, local people objecting to the thuggish enforcers then stationed at the Redruth cop shop. It had worked: the thugs were replaced by Brandl and her little team.

He knocked on one of the partitions and stepped in. ‘Inspector Kellaher? Constable Hirschhausen, sir. I was told to report.’

The older man looked at his watch. White shirt, blue tie, sleeves rolled back on hard, veined forearms. A solid man with a bulky jaw and a shrubbery of brown hair salted with strands of grey. About fifty, his face stretching with tension as he leaned over the desk and tilted his chin up at Hirsch. ‘I expected you some time ago.’

Hirsch wasn’t going to let that go unanswered. ‘I was taking part in a line search, sir. Quite some distance away.’

Kellaher grunted, then gestured at the man next to him. ‘Sergeant Dock.’

Dock stood. About thirty, dressed in a pearl grey open-necked shirt and tight charcoal trousers. A sleek man with carefully styled dark hair. Leaning across the table, he offered his hand, but with faint amusement, as if in anticipation of trouble coming Hirsch’s way. The handshake brisk, dry. He settled back in his chair with little adjustments of his shirt and trousers. A man who can’t abide creases, thought Hirsch. A man who walks around thinking about his next pair of sunglasses.

‘Sit,’ Kellaher said.

One chair faced the senior men—intended for me all along? Hirsch wondered. It was a straight-backed but bendy plastic thing. ‘Sir.’