‘Sometimes twice.’ The nurse placed the towels at the bottom of the bed. ‘He’s a good son, very attentive to his dad. Peter is his world.’

Craig scanned the rows of framed photos. He picked one up to look at Peter Carrington in his prime, taken at some work function. He was the life and soul of the party, broad shoulders flung back and barrel chest puffed out, belly bulging, a pint slopping in his hand. Craig could tell his loud, braying laugh would lift the fringe off your forehead.

Peter was surrounded by other coppers, detectives from another era with moustaches and gelled hair, wide patterned ties and cheap suits. They loved being police, these men, you could see the pride and swagger in the way they held themselves. Craig would have loved to have been in plain clothes back then, when everything was less complicated. Those were the days when you could go to work in the morning and look forward to making some juicy arrests with the boys, get stuck in, bang a few heads together, rather than spend all day hunched over a monitor watching endless CCTV footage.

He picked up the photograph and examined it closely, glancing at the old man to make sure it was the same person. It was difficult to reconcile the big, barnstorming beast of a man in the image with the slight figure, a whisper of his former self, in the wheelchair. Back in the day, Carrington had looked the business. He wore his lustrous hair swept arrogantly back on his head, the knot of his tie was bloated as big as a cravat and there was a medal with the legend ‘P’ around his neck, a fancy Breitling Colt watch on his wrist…

A Breitling Colt watch on his wrist.

Craig put down that photo and picked up the others, examining them quickly as the nurse crouched in front of Peter Carrington.

‘There you are,’ she told the old man. ‘You’re all ready for Ian now.’

He found a photo on the back row of Peter and a woman, presumably his wife, and a teenager. Craig stared at it. He recognized the boy immediately.

‘And look, Peter,’ said the nurse in a sing-song, ‘here he comes now!’

Craig went to the window, careful to stay out of sight, and looked out. He saw the large man he had spoken to at the drug support centre, the man who identified himself as Jon Wilson, but was also known as Matt Foster – and now revealed as Ian Carrington – walking along the leafy pavement towards the building.

Craig stepped back. ‘Will he have to sign in?’

‘Oh, he’ll come straight up, we all know Ian here.’ There was uncertainty in the nurse’s voice. ‘Has he done something wrong?’