‘You have nothing to apologize for,’ she told him quickly.

‘It’s been hard.’

She reached out and squeezed his arm. ‘Of course it has.’

‘So, six thirty tonight, then. If you can make it. There’s something… I would really like to pick your brains about.’

‘Of course.’

‘In the meantime,’ he said gruffly, and opened the door wide, ‘I’m sure there are lots of things you should be doing.’

Back in the incident room, one of her team was leaning over Ajay, who was typing at his desk.

‘Stephen with a p-h,’ the detective was saying, pointing at the screen. ‘There he is.’

‘We’ve got an ID on your face in the crowd,’ Ajay told Sasha as she came up behind him, and he clicked on the Police National Computer. ‘Stephen Gosling, one of our local drug dealers.’

All the man’s details appeared on the screen, including his police mugshot. It was definitely the same man she saw in the crowd. Sasha remembered him now. As a detective sergeant, she’d been involved in a drugs operation that had resulted in Gosling’s conviction a few years back. Leaning across Ajay’s desk, she read the list of his other offences, which were as long as your proverbial arm.

‘So Gosling was just passing by Hockley station, which is miles from his home on Canvey Island,’ said Ajay sarcastically. ‘He just happened to be in the neighbourhood the morning after Andrew Dean’s death, and stopped to see what was going on, as you do. It could be a coincidence.’

‘Maybe.’ Sasha reached over Ajay’s shoulder to manipulate the mouse. He rolled back his chair to give her room to scroll down the screen, skim-reading Gosling’s last known address, vehicle registration, his date of birth, convictions, cautions, and the other information they had about him on the database. And her attention was caught by one name on a list of known associates. ‘Or maybe not.’

5

Abs had just stepped inside Jez and Bethany’s plush double-fronted town house in the Clifftown conservation area when the doorbell rang again and Tony stood on the step, a sagging bunch of geraniums in his fist. There was no paper or cellophane around them, and Abs suspected Tony had picked them from someone’s front garden on the way.

It was the first time Abs had seen Tony in three years, and he had to swallow his shock at the sight of his former mate. Tony was never the best-looking of men, but he had aged badly. His face was red and blotchy and his deep-set eyes were almost lost in a web of creases that streaked down his cheeks and back into his receding hairline. His weak chin dropped into his short neck and he wore the same cheap denim jacket he had on the last time Abs had seen him. The pot belly which bulged over his tatty jeans, and the battered trainers he wore, only added to the general sense that Tony hadn’t been looking after himself in the intervening years. It was difficult to believe he was in his early thirties, the same as Abs and Jez. And judging from the awkward silence in the hallway, Abs knew Jez was thinking the same thing.