‘Hi, Tony.’ A long moment of uncertainty. Two years of literal silence, their only communication irregular flurries of e-mail. But three short syllables were all it took to penetrate the shell that he’d grown round his emotions.

‘It’s Carol.’ Three more syllables, these ones entirely unnecessary. He’d know her voice through a sea of static. She must have heard the news about Vance.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she continued, sounding more confident. Professional, then, not personal after all. ‘I’ve got an assignment that I really need your help with.’ His stomach felt leaden. Why was she doing this to him? She knew the reasons he’d drawn a line under profiling. She of all people should grant him more grace than this.

‘It’s nothing to do with profiling,’ she added, the words falling over each other in her haste to correct the false assumption she’d feared, the one he’d so readily made.

‘It’s for me. It’s something I’ve got to do and I don’t know how to do it. And I thought you would be able to help me. I’d have e-mailed, but it just seemed easier to talk. Can you call me, please? Thanks.’

Tony stood motionless, staring out of the window at the blank faces of the houses that opened straight on to the pavement on the other side of the street. He’d never really believed Carol was consigned to his past.

‘Do you want a glass of wine?’ Frances’s voice from the kitchen cut across his reverie.

He walked back into the kitchen. ‘I’ll get them,’ he said, squeezing past her to get to the fridge.

‘Who was it?’ Frances asked casually, more polite than curious.

‘Someone I used to work with.’ Tony hid his face in the process of pulling the cork and pouring wine into a couple of glasses. He cleared his throat. ‘Carol Jordan. A cop.’

Frances frowned in concern. ‘Isn’t she the one …?’

‘She’s the one I worked with on the two serial killer cases, yes.’ His tone told Frances it wasn’t a subject for discussion. She knew the bare bones of his history, had always sensed there was something unspoken between him and his former colleague. Now at last this might be the chance to turn over the stone and see what crept out.

‘You were really close, weren’t you?’ she probed.

‘Working on cases like that always brings colleagues close together for the duration. You’ve got a common purpose. Then afterwards you can’t bear their company because it reminds you of things you want to wipe off the face of your memory.’ It was an answer that gave nothing away.

‘Was she calling about that bastard Vance?’ Frances asked, conscious that she’d been headed off at the pass.

Tony placed her glass by the side of the chopping board. ‘You heard about that?’