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him. He’d done his best for the boy. He’d tried to see it his way, tried to offer him the benefit of the doubt, but in the end he had a job to do, no matter how distasteful that job might be.
    ‘I don’t believe you, son,’ he said at last. ‘I think you were there in that house and I think this is down to you. Maybe your dad helped. Maybe the pair of you did it. But that’s no defence, not in a court of law, not with something as horrible as this.’
    Faraday stiffened, recognising Winter’s cue to show Scott Spellar the contents of the manila envelope. There was a soft shuffling noise as the photographs spilled across the table, then a moment of absolute silence as the boy tried to make sense of the pulped remains of his grandfather’s face. The work of the Scenes of Crime photographers was seldom pretty. They weren’t paid to disguise the truth.
    Scott’s voice was low, barely audible, pain salted with disbelief.
    ‘Jesus …’ he said.
    Another silence. Then Winter. He was playing it stern this time, the father figure with young Scottie’s best interests at heart.
    ‘I hate to say this, son, but you should maybe take a good look at yourself. It doesn’t matter whether or not you meant it. It doesn’t matter whether or not you lost your temper. All that matters is these, because all that’s left of him is this. Take a look at the next one. Go on, look at it.’
    ‘Told you already. I was with my girlfriend.’
    ‘Name? Address? Phone number?’
    ‘She … oh shit …’
    ‘You don’t want us to talk to her?’
    ‘No fucking point, is there?’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Because … oh, Jesus, forget it.’
    ‘We can’t Scott, we can’t forget it. That’s not the way things work here. You’re down for murder, son. And even worse, you’re down for kicking the shit out of your own grandad. You know who gets a copy of this lot? Of every single photograph? The jury. And you know what they’ll do when they see what you’re seeing?’
    He let the question hang in the air. Faraday got up and went to the little wired glass window in the door. He felt cheapened. He felt trapped. He felt as banged-up as Scott Spellar. This was grotesque.
    The boy was talking again, but in a different tone of voice, confidential, private, treating his interviewer the way Winter had always designed it, as a friend. He’d been to London. He was involved with some guys. They were dealing dope. Nothing heavy. Just an ounce or two of weed. He’d brought the stuff back and dropped it off and naturally he wasn’t keen to go a whole lot further. Not because it hadn’t happened but because you never grassed on your mates.
    ‘Not even when you might be facing a murder charge? Your own grandad?’
    It was a reasonable question, but Scott ducked it.
    ‘No way,’ he said. ‘No fucking way.’
    ‘Then I don’t believe you.’
    ‘You have to.’
    ‘No, I don’t.’
    ‘Yes, you do.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because it’s true.’
    The exchange went on and on, Winter pushing harder and harder, tearing layer after layer of fancy wrapping off Scott’s pathetic little parcel. First it was dope. Then it was something harder. Finally, by the time Cathy Lamb knocked on Faraday’s door and stepped inside, it was cocaine, a lot of cocaine, and guys so heavy that only a lunatic would cross them.
    Faraday looked inquiringly at Cathy. A break from this would be more than welcome.
    ‘The post-mortem starts in twenty minutes, boss,’ she said. ‘I’ll run you up there.’
    The sight of Sammy Spellar’s thin little body under the pathologist’s knife compounded Faraday’s growing sense of despair. What had happened up on Anson Avenue was bad enough, graphic evidence of a society gone mad, but what was even worse – and what he’d become part of – was the tawdry piece of theatre down in Interview Room One. The fate they were about to inflict on Scott Spellar didn’t bear contemplation. Not if he bent the knee to Paul Winter.
    Stepping