Behind her, below the big kitchen window (dirty, cracked and mended with gaffer tape), was an Aga range and a Belfast sink. An ancient yellow-painted fridge in a corner. A dog chained to the Aga cooker – brawny and lean, with ugly white scars under a cropped sandy coat, pacing on more old newspaper stained with piss and littered with turds. It lunged at Ellie, barking again, but the chain pulled taut.

“Dog!” Liz shouted, and it cringed, whining. “Dog,” she said again, more quietly: it fell silent and lay down on its filthy paper bed. Most of the poor animal’s scars would be from the dog-fights Dom Harper organised, the rest from the family. But brutalised as it was, it would attack whoever the Harpers pointed it at. It was what they did: whatever beast or human strayed into their orbit they caught and coarsened, abused any kindness out of them, then made them part of the clan, so they fought in its defence, only unleashing their pain and anger on the targets Liz Harper selected.

“Well?” said Liz. A cigarette hung between her lips. There was a scuffed plastic ashtray on the table, the kind they had in pubs back when you could still smoke in them. Ash speckled her old cardigan and the blue Slazenger jersey underneath. “Can I do for you today?”

Upstairs, Keira was shouting, and heavy footsteps were stamping around. “It’s about your Tony,” Ellie said.

Liz sighed. She was a thickset woman, shapeless in her sweaters and cardigans. A pallid, doughy, jowly face. Stringy, greasy-looking hair, the colour of dishwater, eyes the dull hard grey of wet stone. Like her house, she always put Ellie in mind of a squatting toad. But half her bulk was down to her layers of clothing; the rest was muscle. “What’s he done now?” she said, folding her arms and wearing her usual expression when she learned one of her kids had been in another fight, caught in another theft, accused of another rape: indifference, angry victimhood and smugness. It made her face almost as punchable as Keira’s.

“He hasn’t done anything,” said Ellie. She shouldn’t have come here: the Harpers pushed her buttons at the best of times. But she had to break the news. And Liz Harper was still a mother. “We found a body this afternoon.” Liz opened her mouth – My son never killed anyone, typical police, always blaming us every time anything happens – and Ellie carried on before she could speak. “It was Tony, Liz. He’s dead. Looks like he got caught outside and froze –”

Jess howled in unbelieving grief, and the sounds from upstairs stopped. Liz stared at Ellie unblinkingly, the slack face blank. Then she shouted – not grief, not even rage but outright horror. The movement above started again, and footsteps came charging down the stairs.

“It’s that fucking pig,” Keira shouted. “That fucking pig’s done something –”