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AMT 45 Hardballer that was so shiny it looked as if it was meant to be worn as jewellery. The dealer couldn’t believe it when Caffery didn’t jump at the Hardballer, because he personally thought it was the shiza and it wouldn’t be hanging around long because the next person through the door would be snapping it up, if Caffery didn’t have the good sense to take it off him. In the end Caffery did take the fashion-statement gun. Not because he liked it but because the Glock was the same as a force-issue weapon, and although he didn’t intend getting touched for it, you had to look at every eventuality. A force-issue gun would point fingers at the wrong people. It was better to get caught with a street gun, even if it was an embarrassing bit of bling.
    Usually the Hardballer was kept under the bag in the kitchen pedal bin, because if there was one thing Caffery had respected about the Tulse Hill dealer, it was his choice of hiding place. He’d be screwed if he used the damn thing and, anyway, that wasn’t the point. The point was there were times when he needed the sense of security it gave him. Just knowing it was there. This week was one of those times.
    He closed the glove compartment and looked out of the window at the walls, checking the shadows again, concentrating on the ones at waist height. He hadn’t told Powers the whole story: he hadn’t mentioned that it wasn’t only the video that unnerved him. He hadn’t said that ever since Operation Norway he’d had the feeling someone was watching him. If it didn’t sound insane he’d say the Tokoloshe had been following him. The Tokoloshe? In the streets of Bristol?
    It had started in this car. Late one night, more than a week ago, he’d been parked in a deserted alley in the centre of Bristol late and someone, or something, had leapt on the car, slammed into the bonnet. It had been gone too quickly to see what it was, but he’d had the impression of something small, something close to the ground, scurrying away. That had been the beginning. Now he imagined the damned thing everywhere. In the shadows, under cars. Even in the mirror when he shaved in the morning.
    He looked at his watch again. It was ten thirty-five. Only one victim had survived Operation Norway. He’d given the police a garbled statement on the day of the arrest, but now he was in Southmead Hospital, fighting for his life. The doctors weren’t letting anyone near him, especially not the police, stressing him with their questions.
    So what now, you twat? thought Caffery.
    After a moment or two he started the car. He knew where to go. He wanted to see where Ben Jakes’s body had been on the night someone had shaved off some of his hair.
    5
    Every month the underwater search unit did a handful of decomposed-body recoveries. A decomposed corpse is a dangerous thing. A biohazard. The fluids it produces when the abdomen splits can transmit a number of blood-borne diseases, and if the body has been eaten by rats there are other dangers: the transmission of leptospirosis or Weil’s disease. Sometimes when the corpse is moved it will ‘sigh’, as if it has come back to life as air leaves the lungs, maybe expelling tuberculosis spores into the air. Most police forces in the UK insist that severely decomposed cadavers are handled by teams trained to use breathing apparatus. In short, the divers. Even if the body is on dry land.
    Flea’s unit had a strict clean-up routine in their headquarters after a body recovery and usually they managed to keep the place smelling OK. But that morning, at ten o’clock, sitting in the office filling in the RIDDOR accident forms, she noticed that something was wrong. She sniffed the air. Not nice. She put the forms into the envelope, got up and went into the corridor. Sniffed again.
    After the accident with the air lines yesterday, paramedics had checked her over but she hadn’t let them take her in. She was fine. Fine and sturdy. She’d dropped on to the