Dalgliesh knew those last gruffly spoken words had been the confirmation of an acceptance which, once given, would be unassailable. He was glad that, whatever the unknown faces, problems and challenges that lay ahead for him in the next few days, Emma’s weekend would be lively in his imagination and for her would be happy.

Chapter 2

2

For Detective Inspector Kate Miskin, her flat on the north bank of the Thames, downstream from Wapping, was a celebration of achievement in the only form which, for her, had any hope of permanence, solidified in steel, bricks and wood. She had known when first taking possession of the flat that it was too expensive for her, and the first few years of paying the mortgage had meant sacrifices. She had made them willingly. She had never lost that first excitement of walking through rooms full of light, of waking and falling asleep to the changing but never-ending pulsation of the Thames. Hers was the top-floor corner flat, with two balconies giving wide views upstream and to the opposite bank. Except in the worst weather, she could stand silently contemplating the changing moods of the river, the mystic power of T. S. Eliot’s brown god, the turbulence of the inrushing tide, the glittering stretch of pale blue under hot summer skies, and after dark the black viscous skin slashed with light. She watched for the familiar vessels as if they were returning friends: the launches of the Port of London Authority and the river police, the dredgers, the low-laden barges, in the summer the pleasure boats and the small cruise ships and, most exciting of all, the tall sailing ships, their young crews lining the rails as they moved with majestic slowness upstream to pass under the great raised arms of Tower Bridge into the Pool of London.

The flat could not be more different from those claustrophobic rooms on the seventh floor of Ellison Fairweather Buildings where she had been brought up by her grandmother, from the smell, the vandalised lifts, the overturned rubbish bins, the screaming voices, the ever-constant awareness of danger. As a small child she had walked frightened and wary-eyed in an urban jungle. Her childhood had been defined for her by the words of her grandmother to a neighbour, overheard when she was seven and never forgotten. “If her ma had to have an illegitimate kid, at least she could have stayed alive to look after it, not dumped it on me! She never knew the father, or if she did she wasn’t saying.” In adolescence she had taught herself to forgive her grandmother. Tired, overworked, poor, she was coping unaided with a burden she hadn’t expected and didn’t want. What remained with Kate, and always would, was the knowledge that never to have known either parent was to live life with some essential part of you missing, a hole in the psyche which could never be filled.