‘Nah,’ Conway said. Hand over hand on the wheel, strong and smooth, arcing us round a corner. ‘The state of her? She’s stuck with him for good.’

The gardens we’d passed that morning were empty, deep under a thick fall of silence. We were metres from a main road, but among all that careful graceful leafiness we were the only thing moving. The MG’s smooth engine sounded rude as a raspberry.

‘Costello,’ Conway said, and left it, like she was deciding whether to keep talking. The people with the five-foot concrete mug-handle had it floodlit; make sure we could all appreciate it twenty-four-seven, or make sure no one nicked it to go with his eight-foot concrete mug.

Conway said, ‘They haven’t replaced him yet.’

‘Yeah. I know.’

‘O’Kelly was talking about July; something about after the mid-year budget. Unless this goes tits-up, I should still be in the good books then. If you were thinking of applying, I could put in a word.’

That meant partners. You want him, Conway, you work with him . . . Me and Conway.

I saw it all, clear as day. The slaggings from the butch boys, the sniggers rising when I found the gimp mask on my desk. The paperwork and the witnesses that took just that bit too long to reach us; the squad pints we only heard about the next morning. Me trying to make nice, making an eejit of myself instead. Conway not trying at all.

It means you can take whatever goes wrong, I had said to Rebecca. As long as you’ve got your friends.

I said, ‘That’d be deadly. Thanks.’

In the faint glow of the car lights I saw the corner of Conway’s mouth go up, just a fraction: that same ready-for-anything curl it had had when she was on the phone to Sophie, way back in the squad room. She said, ‘Should be good for a laugh, anyway.’

‘You’ve got a funny idea of a laugh.’

‘Be glad I do. Or you’d be stuck in Cold Cases for the duration, praying for some other teenage kid to bring you another ticket out.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ I said. Felt a matching curl take the corner of my mouth.

‘Better not,’ Conway said, and she spun the MG onto the main road and hit the pedal. Someone smacked his horn, she smacked hers back and gave him the finger, and the city fireworked alive all around us: flashing with neon signs and flaring with red and gold lights, buzzing with motorbikes and pumping with stereos, streaming warm wind through the open windows. The road unrolled in front of us, it sent its deep pulse up into the hearts of our bones, it flowed on long and strong enough to last us for ever.

Chapter 30

Chapter 30