Kush explodes into an orgy of barking and I turn to see Sabine. She’s in tight jeans, a long-sleeved tunic which hangs down past her knees and has a scarf wrapped round her throat. Those bruises must have shown up. She looks worried by the ferocity of Kush’s reaction. Strange, I’ve not seen him like this before. Maybe it’s just because he didn’t hear her coming either. I manage to calm him down a bit, though I see Sabine’s still nervous. Whether about meeting me or because of Kush I can’t tell. But then she was the one to contact me, so I just need to get out of my head and say something before she thinks I’m an idiot.

‘Sure you haven’t been followed?’

Sabine laughs and it’s like a musical scale rising up and down. It all seems so surreal. Yesterday I was hauling a man off her and today we’re out on a sort of date.

‘Could all be a plot. First I’ll seduce you and then get you to kill him for me,’ she says.

‘Been done before. Many times.’

She sits down next to me. Kush eyes her suspiciously, then goes back to scanning the water. We chat for a bit, and it seems surprisingly easy given how out of practice I am.

‘So, is it exciting being a cop?’ she asks.

I watch a few more leaves tumble through the air as I think of everything that has happened today, every glimmer of hope fading away to nothing. The knowledge that a man we suspect of being involved in two separate murders has disappeared and we’ve so far been unable to find him is not exactly exciting. Intensely frustrating would be a better phrase.

‘I’m not a cop any more.’

‘Really? You look too young to be retired.’

‘Hormone treatment. Amazing what you can buy off the internet from dodgy Russian websites.’

‘Trouser trouble?’

‘Not those kind of hormones.’

She gives me a playful nudge. God, how I’ve missed this. I manage to stop myself from telling her that. We’ve only been here twenty minutes or so, bit too early for that sort of thing. Just hold off, I tell myself.

A slight breeze blows her hair across her face and she flips it away with a brief shake of her head. Exactly like Tanya used to do. I suddenly wonder how I’ve ended up on a date with a woman who is so similar.

‘Something wrong?’ she asks. ‘You’re looking at me strangely.’

‘Nothing, it’s just …’

‘Just what?’

It would take so long to explain. And I don’t really want to. I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear it anyway. Talking about your ex on a first date isn’t the smoothest of moves.

‘Never mind. Wanna do something fun?’

‘As long as it’s legal.’

‘I’m a cop, remember.’