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it!’
    Henry bridled. Heat ran up his spine. He sat bolt upright. ‘I have the right to know what’s happening. No one has been in contact with me, no one at all. You and me go back one hell of a long way and I deserve something from you at least.’ Henry’s mouth tightened. ‘Have the divvy commanders rallied round him, the other chief supers? Am I screwed career-wise?’
    FB shuffled uncomfortably, pulling at his collar, which was tight fitting around his plump neck. ‘The divisional commanders are a pretty influential lobby.’
    Henry shook his head in disgust. He sat back, unable to conceal his cynicism. ‘And is it true about the footage I got of him trashing my car?’
    FB’s body language began to leak like a drain, reinforcing Henry’s position even more. ‘Is what true?’ he croaked.
    â€˜Unexplainably gone AWOL.’
    FB looked away.
    â€˜It bloody has, hasn’t it?’ Henry had only ear-wagged a rumour that the film he’d managed to obtain of Dave Anger merrily smashing his Mondeo to pieces had gone walkabout. There had been nothing confirmed about it – until now.
    â€˜I’m afraid it has.’
    â€˜Oh dear.’ Henry sighed.
    â€˜These things happen.’
    Henry slumped back on to the sofa, his face angled towards the ceiling. ‘Was anybody going to tell me officially?’
    â€˜At an appropriate moment, of course, yes.’
    â€˜I take it the mobile phone records are still intact?’ He was now referring to the phone company records of the text messages that Anger had sent him, mostly of a threatening nature.
    â€˜They are.’
    â€˜Well, that’s something.’ Henry chewed the inside of his cheek noisily for a while as though chewing the cud. ‘This ain’t going anywhere, is it?’
    â€˜Probably not,’ FB said, pouting.
    â€˜And what’s happened to my extra pip?’ He touched his shoulder. Now he was talking about the promotion to the substantive rank of chief inspector FB had promised him, which had never materialized. At the moment Henry was still temporary in the rank, which meant it could be taken away from him in the blink of an eye.
    FB remained silent, cogitating, doing what chief constables do best – as little as possible. He stood up and thoughtfully paced the large office, pausing at the window to gaze blankly across the sports pitches that Henry had hurried across a few minutes earlier. He turned.
    â€˜What exactly do you want out of this?’
    â€˜It’s not about wanting something. It’s about principles. About seeing justice done,’ he spouted grandly. ‘A bit of belief that the organization actually does what it says in all those highfalutin policies about equal opportunities and fairness and all that – y’know, the drivel that’s being rammed down my throat across at the training centre right now. How can I be expected to “walk the talk”’ – Henry twitched the first two fingers of both hands to represent speech marks – ‘when I don’t have any faith in the firm itself?’
    FB blinked theatrically, then looked at Henry as if he were dumb. ‘Fine words, noted … now what do you want out of all this?’
    â€˜Anger to be dealt with. Him to suffer, not me.’
    â€˜And in the real world?’
    The words permeated into Henry’s noggin. He held up his hands in submission. ‘It’s quite obvious you don’t want the stink this would cause, making the organization look bad.’
    â€˜Thing is,’ FB explained, ‘other than his minor problems with you, Dave Anger is the best head of FMIT yet. He’s respected and liked by the divvy commanders and his clear-up rate is excellent. Everyone who works for him likes him … but then again, not every one of them has screwed his wife.’
    â€˜It was a drunken one-night stand over twenty-five years ago