Eight o’clock struck Catherine as a purposefully early start, the start of a man with a busy day ahead of him. A big day, perhaps. Heroin shipment day, even.

Fleeting was last seen in his favoured boozer, the Raven’s Crag, the night before. According to the landlord, he drank in comparative moderation and jacked it in well before last orders. Once again, the behaviour of a man with important things to do the next day.

‘It’s Anthony Thomson,’ Laura announced, glancing at the screen. ‘Why do they call him Beano, by the way?’

‘Because of his rank,’ Catherine explained. ‘He’s a detective constable.’

Laura’s screwed-up expression indicated that this hadn’t shone much light, but Catherine wasn’t spelling it out any further.

Catherine climbed into the passenger seat, Laura tarrying outside a few moments, muttering acknowledgements as she took the call.

‘Preliminary Forensics are in on the Top Table vans,’ she reported, slipping behind the wheel. ‘They found traces of blood in one of them: O neg. It’s a match for Jai McDiarmid.’

‘Supporting what we’ve said all along,’ said Catherine with a frustrated sigh, as the evidence flipped back on itself one more time. ‘Maybe it’s not that we’re missing something; maybe just the opposite. Maybe this is precisely what we thought it was, but there’s something else in here that doesn’t belong, and that’s why it doesn’t add up. Callahan and Fleeting were definitely gearing up for something important, and now it’s all but established that Fleeting killed McDiarmid. So what if this is just what it looks like: tit-for-tat drug killings?’

‘Except we now know the scene at the depot was staged,’ Laura reminded her, rather balefully.

‘But what, really, does that change? What if Steel’s people did it, and the reason they staged it to look like Callahan and Fleeting were torturing Miller was that they were the ones torturing him? Or at least to disguise the fact that they killed Miller, and Callahan and Fleeting had nothing to do with it? Maybe Paddy Steel and Tommy Miller both knew something about that decoy heroin shipment. Because that, to me, is the key: that’s the rogue element that’s throwing everything else off.’

Laura didn’t reply. She just stared out through the windscreen with a pained expression, as though none of what Catherine was saying made any more sense than why people called Anthony Thomson Beano. She went to put her key in the ignition, then just stopped and slumped back in the driver’s seat, like she had lost all will.

‘Are you all right?’ Catherine asked her. She had stopped herself doing so about half a dozen times already today, Laura having been even more sullen and withdrawn than usual, but she couldn’t let this one go.

Laura looked across at her, concern and apology written across her face in equal measures.