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only imagine. Not a lot that was blameless and shiny, he thought. Go looking for dirt and dirt’s likely what you’ll find. So no matter he’d been barely going to school when the strike had started, if the police came out of things badly, chances were, carrying out an investigation in the same area, he’d end up well and truly tarred with the same brush.
    Anyone other than Hastings, he might have thought he was being dangled over the shit on purpose, but Hastings, he was sure, didn’t have a Machiavellian bone in his body.
    Or did he?
    Maybe he was a lot cleverer than he looked.
    No, Picard thought, I’ll pass. Pass the job on to somebody else.
    Catherine Njoroge was at her desk, scanning the reports thus far in on the death of a seventy-two-year-old man who’d been found wandering close to his home with what turned out to be severe injuries to head and body. Three days later, he’d died in hospital. His sons, twins, both of whom had lived with him in the same house, both unmarried, had been arrested and questioned: so far, ‘No comment’ was the most either of them had said.
    ‘Patricide,’ Picard said, glancing down over her shoulder. ‘That the word?’
    ‘We don’t know that yet, do we, sir?’
    ‘Course we bloody do. Anyway, let it go, no longer any concern of yours.’
    She looked up at him, surprised.
    ‘Open and shut, after the old man’s cash, something of the sort. Let that team of yours handle it. Ex-team. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.’
    Catherine closed the file.
    ‘Jenny Hardwick,’ Picard said. ‘Know the name?’
    Catherine nodded. ‘That’s the woman whose body was found, north of the county. Reported missing – what was it? Eighty-four? Nothing heard of her till now.’
    ‘Right. Not till she turned up more or less in her own back yard.’
    Catherine cleared her throat; the beginnings of a cold. ‘Sorry, but I’m not clear what you’re saying. I’m going to be assisting you in the investigation?’
    Picard smiled. Picture perfect, Catherine thought.
    ‘More than that,’ he said.
    She took a breath. ‘Why me?’
    ‘Here long enough to get your feet under the table, feel your way around. Time to get stuck into something more than a walk in the park, show us what you can do. Live up to all those references. Commendations.’
    Catherine bridled, bit her tongue.
    ‘Andrew and I discussed it, of course. Something for me, he thought, potentially high profile, media interest. Only natural, I suppose. But I thought, no, why not Catherine? Time to get that light out from under its bushel.’
    The smile again, slimier than before.
    You bastard, she thought. I can see what you’re up to. You either think this is going to fizzle out in a mess of false trails and dead ends, or else it’s going to blow up in someone’s face. Mine. No way you’d be delegating this otherwise. Designed to fail.
    ‘Thank you, sir,’ she said. ‘I appreciate it. The vote of confidence. Just as long as you’re sure.’
    ‘Of course.’ He held out a hand. ‘I’ll be keeping a watching eye, naturally. You’ll report directly to me. That way, if there’s anything you’re uncertain of . . .’
    ‘Thank you, sir.’
    ‘Look around, pick your own team. Someone experienced, not go amiss. Couple of young DCs, keen enough to do the legwork. B Division, you might look up there. Local knowledge, that kind of thing.’
    ‘Yes, sir, thank you,’ she said again, the words ‘poisoned chalice’ ringing in her ears.
    It was a good hour before she thought of Charlie Resnick, languishing now, she believed, in the bowels of Central Station. Not so many minutes more before she gave him a call.

6
    THE FIRST TIME Catherine Njoroge had encountered Resnick she had been newly made up to sergeant and assigned to the City Division’s Robbery Squad, where he had recently been made senior officer in charge. Something of an unlikely move for him it had seemed, sideways at best, Resnick, for a good number of