Joe held up the phone.

‘Is it possible to track the movements of this phone for the last couple of months? Also, is there a way to find out where the photos on it were taken?’

Alex shot him a look of derision. Mock-derision? Hard to tell, but he and Joe had an understanding. Alex showed Joe nothing but contempt; Joe showed Alex nothing but subservience. They’d known each other for six or seven years, and Joe Romano was one of the few people that Alex genuinely got on with at Elland Road. The feeling was mutual.

‘Are you asking me because you really don’t know, or because you want me to do it for you and you’re being polite?’

‘Both, actually.’

‘Is that a witness’s phone? Why not just copy the photos across to yours?’

Joe pulled the brand-new iPhone from his pocket.

‘Sam told me to get this. I hardly know how to turn the bloody thing on, never mind copy images to it.’

With a massive sigh, Alex took Jane Shaw’s phone, flicking through a few of its features in as many seconds, as if it was a source of minor irritation.

‘You want locations for all the photos?’

‘No, just one of a young woman, portrait shot, dark hair, nose piercing.’

‘OK… Found it. Give me a few minutes,’ he said as he left. ‘There’s software for all this stuff.’

Joe knew. They had software for everything these days. At some point in the future, data would simply be fed into a massive computer program. Vehicle tracking, phone tracking, social security payments, fingerprints, credit card transactions, CCTV face and gait recognition… Crimes would be solved instantly, just as soon as the data was in. The culprits could be taken straight to jail, and coppers would be downgraded to modern-day rat-catchers.

He put his feet up on the desk, lay back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Sam had made a good choice. Medicine’s a safe bet. You can’t teach a computer to have a good bedside manner. Or can you? He closed his eyes and tried not to think about what might await his son in ten, twenty, fifty years. It was too terrifying to imagine.

As Sam had got older, the love that Joe felt for him had changed. What had been fond and natural when his son was a child had slowly turned into a constant worry, a light but noticeable discomfort in the stomach whenever Joe thought about him, and about what the world had in store for his beautiful boy.

The password on Jane Shaw’s phone: 1996. The year Craig was born. Joe wasn’t the only parent who feared for the future. Jane Shaw hadn’t rung the police because she’d needed a fix. She’d rung because she was worried sick about her baby boy. But why? Because he’d taken off somewhere for a few days?