A chug of diesel and an air-cooled rattle. The Jolly Deathtrap lumbered into the car park. A figure sprang out almost before the engine stopped. Donald was on Finn before he knew it.

“Was it you?” Donald clutched at Finn’s flesh and shook him wildly. “Was it you? Was it you that hurt my daughter?”

“What? What are you talking about? What on earth do you think I’ve done?” Finn struggled to get free. Donald slammed his head hard against the side of the van.

“You think you can take anything you want, don’t you?” Finn’s face was innocent and baffled, but Donald was too angry to stop. His fist slammed into Finn’s eye socket. “Just help yourself to whatever you fancy, it’s all yours, right? But it’s time you bloody learned, you little bastard… ”

“Donald.” Mike’s voice, familiar but strange. “Stop. Let him go. You’re going to kill him. Please. It’s not him you want. Please. Stop. Stop now.”

Donald turned around. In the moment when he met Mike’s guilty, horrified gaze, understanding finally came to him.

Chapter Seventeen: 2006 and earlier

“I’m quitting.”

That silence, stretching out and out, and Harry picking at the edge of the blotter on his desk. Harry never used it but he kept it anyway. Perhaps he liked how it looked, its suggestion of fusty respectability and the status of a man who only ever had to write his signature. Perhaps it reminded him of the man before him: Charles, who in his turn had inherited it from Albert, whose name was still a legend. Perhaps it was superstition. Perhaps he’d just never got around to throwing it out. The end of his career, and Donald was thinking about the history and cultural significance of the desk blotter. He should be taking this more seriously. He should be taking stock.

He got his start in the schoolyard, as so many of his profession were supposed to do. Oddly, it began not in delinquency but brotherhood. Of course he and his mates broke bones and rules and windows, but no more than the other kids. What set them apart was their flat refusal to tell.

“What happened, Donnie? You were right there, you must have seen who threw it.”

“You didn’t get that black eye by yourself, Donnie, did you? Tell us who hit you. You won’t be in trouble.”

“Of course something happened, you didn’t dive into a fight because you thought it looked fun. Unless you’re telling me you’re stupid, Donald, which I think we both know isn’t true. Stubborn, maybe, but not stupid.”

Silence, and the blank-eyed stare that told those in authority there would never be another answer.

Secondary school, and the question of what to do with his future. His early ambition had been to be a stunt rider like Evel Knievel. At fifteen, joining the police began to appeal. He liked the sense of belonging that came with it, the uniform and the brotherhood, but it was more than that. The world was a chaotic place; that much was clear. He liked the notion of being the enforcer of rules and order.