‘Maybe. But he’d normally have phoned to let us know by now. I’m worried about him, Jo. You said yourself he seems really down at the moment. Between what happened on Saturday and how things are for him at home at the moment, if he got back late on Saturday night and got a whole load of grief from Sadie …’

‘What?’

‘Well, what if he did something daft?’

‘Like what exactly?’

Clare said, ‘I don’t know. Crabby said he used to have a problem with drugs and booze. Maybe he’s gone on a bender.’ She paused. ‘Can you hold the fort here for a couple more hours, Jo? I’m going to go down to Neil’s place and check to see if he’s OK.’

Jo said, ‘Sure. But I think you’re wasting your time.’

‘Where the hell are you, David? It sounds like Bedlam there.’

David was standing in a queue for coffee, one hand clamped over his ear, the other on his phone, surrounded by two hundred other people equally desperate for their mid-morning caffeine fix.

‘I’m in Manchester, remember, Sal, that Prehistoric Society conference I told you about.’

‘Do they all have to shout so loud?’

Whatever she’d phoned about it didn’t sound as if she was in a good mood.

‘Are you alright, Sal? You sound a bit odd.’

Sally said, ‘How very perceptive of you. As it happens I’m very far from alright. I’ve just got off the phone from speaking to Mark Stone.’

‘Oh.’

Now he thought he knew where this was heading. He scooped up a cup of black coffee, waving aside the offer of biscuits, and retreated to a seat on a nearby windowsill.

‘Oh, indeed. What the hell do you think you’re playing at, David? Mark’s just told me that one of his officers arrested you for common assault.’

‘It wasn’t as bad as it sounds, Sal. Honestly. Just a bit of a misunderstanding.’

‘You seem to forget, David, I’m a serving police officer. I know exactly what common assault is. He said it was Paul Marshall. Isn’t he the bloke your lot have got the contract with? The one whose money is keeping your unit afloat.’

David took a sip of his volcanically hot coffee and had immediate cause to regret it. ‘Ow!’

‘What was that?’

He ran his tongue over his burning lip. ‘Nothing. Look, Sal, it all got a bit out of hand, that’s all. When I got up to site on Friday, Jo told me Marshall had been out on-site calling the odds.’

‘Isn’t he entitled to do that? After all, he is paying their wages.’

‘He might be, but I’m not having anyone threatening my staff. They don’t get paid enough for that. He was well out of order. One of the lads had to strong-arm him off-site in the end.’