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until he dries out. Perhaps phone Roisin, or call Helen Tremberg to see if anything has occurred that requires his attention.
    Realizing he has thought himself into inertia, he retreats from the downpour and leans against one of the concrete columns that support the overpass. Closes his eyes. Wonders for a time whether he should have responded to ACC Everett’s muttered criticisms, or whether he was right to keep his mouth shut.
    He looks back the way he has come. Back at the city where he has spent most of his career so far. Where he has risked his life, and captured men and women who have claimed the lives of others. It is a city he cannot love, and yet he feels an affection for it. A closeness. Feels a bond with this city at the end of the motorway, which grew to prosperity on the back of an industry which killed its men, only to slump into listlessness and decay when it disappeared.
    At the back of the Police Authority building he can make out the shapes of two stick men. Two silhouettes, picked out against the white paint of the
Corsair
and the gray of the sky.
    He wonders if they are committee members. Whether they are councillors having a shifty smoke, or laughing at the great, hulking sergeant who had turned up damp, but still somehow seemed to persuade Tressider that the sun shone out of his arse.
    McAvoy begins walking back. He makes no attempt to protect himself from the rain. He is too soaked to see the point.
    Lost in thoughts, adrift in a not-unpleasant daydream, he does not see the two figures depart. He finds himself back at the riverside quicker than he had expected. Gives a last look at the water. Indulges himself in a smile as he looks at the wheels of the supermarket trolley sticking out of the mud bank. The bottles and mattress springs that litter its surface. The mobile phone, sitting on the thick and cloying surface like a tooth left in the frosting of a chocolate cake . . .
    He moves to the water’s edge. Crouches down.
    The mud stops perhaps ten feet below him. Slopes down to water six feet below that.
    From this angle, the phone looks relatively new. He wonders if it has slipped from somebody’s pocket. Whether it has been kicked accidentally over the side, amid the chaos and frenzy of the rain.
    McAvoy screws up his eyes. He’s surprised the phone hasn’t yet slipped beneath the surface. Whether it is his duty as a policeman to try and recover such obviously valuable property.
    Leading down from the footpath, nailed into the river wall, is a metal ladder; its surface slick and grimy, mud-soaked and treacherous.
    Is it worth it, Aector? Seriously?
    He looks at his watch.
    It could belong to one of the committee members. Could be important.
    Screws up his eyes.
    You could fix it, if it’s broken. Would be a challenge for you.
    Lifts one gigantic leg over the side.
    Just see if you can reach it . . .
    Begins to climb down.

10:46 A.M. EIGHTY MILES WEST.
    A LIGHT DRIZZLE falling softly on gray, uneven pavements, on plywood shop fronts and untaxed cars.
    “Shit-tard bollocking fuckcunts!”
    Harry Tattershall is a magnificent and venomous swearer: doing things with words that other people would require a snooker ball and a football sock to achieve. Were he able to do the same with the non-vernacular, he would be poet laureate.
    “Twat-box cock cunt!”
    He picks up the bundle of dropped keys from the damp, dirty curb. Bangs his head on the wing mirror of his old-style Saab as he rights himself.
    “Fucking wank-titting monkey pisser!”
    He rubs a hand over his forehead and pushes the raindrops back through his thick, gray hair, then takes off his cola-bottle glasses and smears the moisture and fingerprints into a new pattern, before replacing them on his broken nose. He shivers, wishing he’d thought to pull on more than tracksuit pants and a lumberjack shirt before slamming the door closed at his housing association flat. He is a short, fleshy-limbed man in his late fifties, who does not