‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ Carla said. ‘I’ve got a date night with Baz.’

‘Family first.’ Bremer smiled. ‘Meet the rest of you at the Jericho Tavern in half an hour.’

Nell was in the alley by the pub and wishing she was elsewhere when Bremer appeared.

‘May I?’ He gestured to the cigarette in her hand.

‘You smoke?’

‘I’m one of those irritating social smokers.’

She handed him the pack and the lighter, then watched as the flame lit up his face.

‘It must have been tough.’ He blew smoke into the still night air, refusing to catch her eye.

Tough? She studied his face for clues, but when he finally looked down at her she knew instantly what he meant. She also knew she’d give anything for him not to continue, but he did.

‘The stabbing.’

And there it was. Darren’s face in front of her. Six foot two. Tiger tattoo on the arm holding the knife.

She’d become separated from her team so it was just the two of them in the men’s toilets of a shitty little pub. She’d already had her baton up, but then he’d lunged, digging into her skin – searing pain, surprise, shouting, staring down at blood pouring like rain, falling—

Nell took a long drag of her cigarette. Why was he bringing this up now, didn’t they have enough to think about?

But of course she knew why. She cursed Paul for interfering.

‘Did you blame yourself for not wearing a vest,’ Bremer asked, ‘or the intel unit for not knowing you needed one?’

Did. Past tense. She almost laughed; nothing about that event was past tense.

‘I should have worn a vest.’

‘But?’

Nell stubbed out the cigarette with her boot. ‘But intel didn’t say I needed one.’

Bremer nodded. Took a drag. ‘The analyst missed it.’

There it was.

‘Yeah. I read the report before we kicked the door in. Nothing about a knife.’

She thought about the incisions he’d made in her body, always there, seen but not seen. Hard lumps of scar tissue that would never go away, though they might dull with age, hopefully like the memories.

‘From what I read, they did check, but missed it.’ Bremer was watching her carefully, as if judging her reaction to each word. ‘They did an officer safety check, ran the address through all the databases to see if any warning signs came up, but they got nothing. Then they double-checked on description and name, linking it with drugs and the name of the pub, but again, nothing.’

Nell lit up another cigarette. She felt oddly calm even though she could see Darren’s face as she fell to the ground: sneering, ugly, hate-filled. She remembered the heat around the incision, panic, hands cradling her as radios crackled.