Relieved to be out of the arseless surgical gown and back in his work clothes, Boyd and Charlotte looked at the printed page of pictures on the consultant’s desk.

  ‘It’s a tumour, protruding about three centimetres into the colorectal channel. I’m presuming the aches and pains you’ve been having were generally after mealtimes?’ Dr Chudasama said.

  Boyd nodded.

  ‘Well,’ the doctor continued, ‘the good news is, from what I can see, it isn’t that big. Your surgeon Mr Mumford will probably excise a section of colon, maybe twenty centimetres long to be sure he’s got it all out with good margins. But…’

  Charlotte clutched Boyd’s hand tightly beneath the desk.

  ‘But…?’ prompted Boyd.

  The consultant pressed out a worryingly thin smile. ‘It looks as though it could have burrowed through the bowel wall. There may be – in fact, there probably will be – more of it outside. The question is how much.’

  ‘Is there a scan you can do to find out?’ asked Charlotte.

  He nodded. ‘We’ll book you in, William, for an abdominal CT scan as soon as we can next week. Probably Monday morning.’

  ‘Right.’ Boyd sighed. That meant bumping another team update briefing. He’d bumped this morning’s, which he was hoping to get away with without having to explain himself. But another one? Okeke was undoubtedly going to notice and ask him what was going on.

  29

  Boyd’s drive to work, first stopping to drop Charlotte off at the White Rock Theatre, before continuing five minutes up Bohemia Road to the station, felt like the backdrop to a movie: a projection of someone else’s humdrum daily routine.

  He parked, entirely on autopilot, flashed his ID at the front desk, climbed the stairs and entered CID. His mind was swimming. The consultant’s debriefing had been steeped in positivity and sugarcoated with upbeat phrasing; it looked entirely fixable, and for it to be caught at this stage was… lucky.

  But, of course, everything that had been said to him after the word ‘tumour’ had fallen on deaf ears. It had been Charlotte who’d been listening closely, asking all the questions for him.

  And now here he stood at his desk, with his jacket dumped on the back of his chair and the computer booting up. Everything was entirely normal. Except it wasn’t. Still coasting on autopilot, Boyd went to the kitchenette and slapped the kettle on.

  ‘It looks to be nicely contained to one area, William … I know it all sounds ominous but it should be a straightforward operation to remove it. We’ll discuss chemotherapy afterwards.’

  ‘Guv?’

  Okeke’s voice broke through his brain fog.

  ‘You all right?’

  It was a welcome relief. Boyd turned away from the kettle to look at her, a cheerful smile thrown onto his face. ‘Morning!’

  ‘You looked like you were away with the fairies there,’ she replied.

  ‘I’m just a bit knackered.’ He pulled a mug out from the cupboard. ‘Another sleepless night.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ She joined him and pulled a mug out for herself. ‘I keep getting flashbacks in my sleep.’

  ‘Hmmm?’

  ‘Brighton. The Russians?’ She spooned coffee granules into her cup and his. ‘And what I, you know, did.’

  A distraction. Perfect.

  ‘Georgians,’ he corrected. ‘And you did what you had to,’ he replied solemnly, quietly. ‘We all did.’

  ‘I know. But…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s the sensations that I’m struggling with. The sound he made… when I –’ She looked down at the floor.

  ‘You need to put a lid on that, Sam,’ he told her. ‘It’s done with. It’s history.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And if you’d hesitated,’ he went on, ‘even for a second, we wouldn’t be talking now.’

  ‘I know.’ They both stared at the rumbling kettle. ‘I can live with it. But I could do without the playbacks in my sleep.’

  He patted her awkwardly on the back. ‘I get those too, mate. They linger… They don’t ever fade, but they do become less frequent.’ At a guess, it had been a month since he’d last pictured Julia and Noah in their crumpled car. A fleeting replay at best, which he’d quickly pushed back into its box at the back of his mind and snapped the lid on tight.

  The kettle clicked off.

  ‘So… what’s the latest?’ he said, changing the subject as he poured the water into their mugs.

  ‘We’ve ID’d our Richard,’ she told him.

  ‘And?’

  ‘His full name is Richard Philip Leeder. I’ve gophered up some intel on him… and we’ve got some more stuff back from Ellessey.’

  ‘Good. Incident Room? Five minutes?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ll go round up the rabble.’

  ‘So, let’s have the forensics stuff first,’ said Boyd. ‘Magnusson?’

  She flipped open the folder in front of her. ‘The DNA chromograph for the coffee cup –’ she sighed – ‘finally came back. I ran it through the NDNAD.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There’s nothing on record, I’m afraid. Our coffee drinker isn’t a habitual crim. Under Good News, however, Ellessey came through very quickly on Mrs Westfield’s sample. It’s a familial match for lucky victim two. He’s confirmed as Andrew Westfield. Dental records have given us a match for Mark Meadows too.’

  ‘I know already,’ said Boyd. ‘Dr Palmer came through with that yesterday.’

  ‘Yesterday?’ Magnusson looked irked. ‘I only just got the email this morning!’

  ‘She rang,’ Boyd replied, then got up from his seat, approached the whiteboard and wiped away the question marks beside the names on the whiteboard. ‘So, that’s two out of three.’ He returned to his seat. ‘Now then, what have we got on this Richard Leeder?’

  ‘Right,’ began Minter, ‘he’s the only child of Dereck and Alison Leeder. Dereck was a property developer and builder. Like Bridgette Westfield said, Dereck was very wealthy indeed.’

  ‘Was?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘He passed away during the pandemic, boss.’

  ‘Of Covid?’

  Minter shook his head. ‘No, he was involved in a building site accident. The report says he was checking on a stalled project when he fell off some scaffolding.’

  ‘Any queries around that?’ asked Boyd. ‘Or was it nice and straightforward?’

  Minter shook his head. ‘His surveyor was with him at the time. He said that they’d gone to check that the site was still tight and secure after six months of being closed down and that it wasn’t exposed to the elements. Clearly it wasn’t all that secure, though.’

  ‘Okay. What about his mum? Can we interview her?’ Boyd asked.

  ‘Not exactly, boss, no. She died when Leeder was young. From breast cancer.’

  ‘What about other close family? Partner? Kids?’

  Minter shook his head. ‘None that we have found so far. Richard Leeder’s a bit of a ghost. He’s not listed as missing but it seems that he’s completely vanished.’

  Okeke stepped in. ‘We managed to locate his profile on LinkedIn. There was loads of professional bio stuff. He went to York uni and got a degree in economics. Worked for several finance companies in London. He seems to have done very well for himself. But his bio dries up in 2011. And nothing’s been added to it since.’

  ‘That’s the same year that Meadows and Westfield went missing,’ noted Boyd.

  Okeke nodded. ‘We’ve got his profile picture, although I’m not sure when it was taken.’ She pushed a printout across the table for Boyd to look at.

  He picked it up and found himself looking at a head-and-shoulders image of a man in his thirties. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him; he was a well-groomed man in a nice-looking suit, with a professional but friendly we-can-do-business smile, nothing too toothy. Perfect for LinkedIn. He bore a vague resemblance to the face on the scanned driving licence. But then, given the appalling quality of that image, so would a sizable number of white middle-aged, slightly overweight, slightly balding men.

  ‘We searched all the socials,’ added Minter. ‘Tried all the variations on his name – Rick, Ricky, Dick Leeder et cetera – and came up with a Facebook account that is almost certainly our man. The profile pic, I’m positive, is the same bloke as the one on LinkedIn, just a bit older. We’re going to need a warrant to send to Facebook for –’

  ‘Meta,’ said Magnusson. ‘Keep up, sergeant.’

  Minter pushed on. ‘For a data dump from them.’

  Boyd nodded. ‘I’ll talk to Sutherland.’

  DSI Sutherland was searching through the drawers of his desk as Boyd entered, looking very frustrated. ‘Where’s my ruddy hole puncher gone? I swear that thing has legs.’

  Boyd strode over and picked the hole puncher up from the top of the filing cabinet in the corner. ‘The handle kept catching in the top of the drawer every time I opened it,’ he explained. ‘It was a pain in the arse.’

  Sutherland took it from him. ‘I said you could use my office, Boyd, not bloody rearrange it.’

  Boyd sat down in the visitor’s seat. ‘I’ve got a couple of things for you if now’s a good time?’ he said.

  Sutherland sat back down, placed the hole puncher back in its drawer, which he immediately shut. ‘What can I do you for?’

  ‘We need an application for a data dump from Facebook.’

  He looked surprised. ‘You’ve got a suspect already?’

  Boyd gave Sutherland a non-committal shrug. ‘Maybe. He’s looking somewhat promising.’ He updated the DSI with their leading theory that Leeder, Westfield and Meadows and the yet-to-be ID’d Robin had been involved with something serious.

  ‘All right, email me the details and I’ll fill in the request form before lunch.’

  ‘Thanks. The other thing…’

  Sutherland nodded at him to continue.

  ‘I may need to take some sick leave. Pretty soon.’

  Sutherland narrowed his eyes. ‘How much and how soon?’

  Boyd had been planning to share the news with Emma first. Emma then, unavoidably, Sutherland and finally, of course, his team. But he’d started now and asking Sutherland for sick leave without some kind of an explanation wasn’t going to wash.

  ‘I’m going to need to go into hospital in the next couple of weeks. For an operation.’

  ‘Oh? What kind of an operation?’ Sutherland asked.

  Shit. It looked like he was going to have to spit it out. ‘I’ve got cancer,’ he said.

  Sutherland’s doughy face instantly folded into an expression of genuine concern. ‘Cancer? Jesus Christ. Which one? Where?’

  ‘Bowel cancer,’ Boyd said. ‘The consultant said it was a good one to have.’

  ‘If there is such a bloody thing,’ Sutherland commented.

  ‘I’ll need a couple of weeks. I’ll be in hospital for a few days after the op and then the rest at home. I may need to have a course of chemotherapy after. But we’ll cross that bridge…’

  Sutherland got up out of his seat and came around the desk. For a horrifying moment, Boyd thought he was going to give him a hug. Thankfully he just perched on the corner of his desk. ‘You take all the time you need, Boyd. I mean it. Just dial it in as you need it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Sutherland shook his head and tutted. ‘Bastard bloody cancer. Seems to be a lot of that going around these days. My brother-in-law, poor sod, had the prostrate one…’ He was about to head off on a tangent, then stopped himself. ‘Well, you probably don’t want to hear about that.’

  Boyd supressed a smile. ‘I think you mean “prostate”. Sir… I haven’t told anyone else at work yet. It’s all been a bit quick. I’m still trying to catch up with the news myself. Please… not a word to anyone. Not even HR. Not until I know how much time off I’m going to need.’

  ‘Of course, of course! You’ll keep me posted, right?’ Coming from Sutherland, Boyd mused, that could easily have been to enable him to get ahead of the curve and the inevitable rota shuffling. But he was pretty sure he detected genuine concern for a friend in his voice.

  ‘Yup. Of course,’ he replied.

  30

  Emma brought the casserole dish in from the kitchen and plonked it down a little too heavily on the dining table.

  ‘Chicken,’ she announced tersely. She returned to the kitchen and came back with another steaming serving bowl, which she banged down beside the first. ‘Mash.’

  She pulled out a chair and sat down. It was just the two of them for dinner this evening. Charlotte was at the theatre; apparently they were a staff member down and dealing with a sold-out audience for some Eagles tribute band.

  ‘You all right, there, Ems?’ Boyd asked.

  Emma reached for a serving spoon and splashed some chicken chasseur onto her plate. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Is it Dan?’ Boyd guessed.

  Emma skewered him with a glare. She reached for the wooden bowl at the end of the table, where car keys, house keys, junk mail and – for some reason, dead AA batteries – wound up. She pulled an opened envelope out of the bowl and set it down beside his plate.

  ‘When, exactly, were you planning on telling me?’ she spat.

  He looked down to see it was a letter from Conquest Hospital.

  ‘Ah,’ was all he could think to say.

  ‘You think I’m too dumb to have noticed you and Charlotte with your whispered conversations in the corners? I’m not an idiot, Dad. Do Grandma and Grandad know as well?’

  ‘Nope,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, at least I’m not the last to find out, then.’ She pulled the letter out of the opened envelope and slid it across the table to him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had an appointment this morning?’ she asked. ‘You’re not supposed to keep things from me. Remember?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ems. I wanted to wait until I had something to actually tell you,’ he explained.

  ‘Well, do you? Have something to tell me? Do I get to know how that went?’ She served herself another spoonful of the casserole. ‘Or will I finally get briefed when your hair starts falling out?’

  ‘There is a tumour down there,’ he replied.

  Emma’s face began to soften. ‘Is it operable?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s the plan. Just a bit of colon splicing. I’ll be in and out of hospital in a few days. It’s going to be okay, Ems. A bit of surgery, then a bit of the ol’ chemo if I need it.’

  ‘Chemotherapy?’ Emma said. The timbre of her voice raised a notch. ‘I did some googling this afternoon. They do chemotherapy when they think there’s a chance it’s spread elsewhere. Dad? I want the whole truth. Please.’

  ‘They also do it to be on the safe side,’ he said. ‘Kind of a “nuke it from orbit” approach.’

  ‘Is that what they actually said?’ She was getting angry again. ‘Because that sounds more like your expert opinion than theirs.’

  He sighed. ‘I’m due a CT scan on Monday,’ he told her, and repeated what the doctor had told him.

  She bit her bottom lip, reached out and grabbed his hand. ‘Oh God, Dad…’

  ‘If it has, you know… spread… it’s early days, Emma. They’ve caught it nice and early.’

  ‘No,’ she snapped, squeezing his hand. ‘No. No. No. You don’t give me the baby version. You give me the shitty true version.’

  ‘That’s it,’ he replied. ‘Honestly. That’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘So, we’ll know how big a deal this is on Wednesday, then?’

  He nodded.

  ‘I’m coming along.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Charlotte’s coming with me.’

  ‘No. We’re both coming with you,’ Emma said firmly. ‘No arguments. I’m not having you bullshit me on Wednesday. I mean it, Dad! I want to be there to hear for myself.’

  He let go of her hand and raised both of his in surrender. ‘All right. All right. There’s no need to do Mrs Arsey at me.’

  ‘Well, I am pissed off. I learned about this entirely by accident!’

  ‘By snooping, you mean.’

  Her brows locked together.

  ‘Nuh-uh,’ he said. ‘You can’t bollock me any more. New rules.’

  ‘Huh?’

  He shook his head officiously, then mimed pulling out a referee’s red card and waving it around for all to see. ‘You can’t do angry at me. You have to be all sweetness and smiles with me from now on.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, I do, do I?’

  ‘Yup,’ he said, pocketing the imaginary red card. ‘… because I’ve got cancer.’

  31

  Boyd climbed out of his Captur and crossed the station’s car park to find Okeke finishing a cigarette outside the main entrance.

  ‘Morning,’ he called out chirpily as he approached her.

  She had a face like thunder. ‘When exactly were you going to tell me?’ she said, glaring at him.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, not you too. Who told you?’

  She stubbed the cigarette out. ‘The late starts. The groaning like an old fart every time you get up from your chair? I worked it out.’

  He wasn’t buying her detective skills at all. ‘Was it Sutherland?’

  ‘Sutherland knows?’ That seemed to make her even angrier.

  ‘I had to tell him to organise time off, for fuck’s sake, Okeke.’

  ‘We’re meant to be… friends. Share things, you know?’

  He raised a brow. ‘Emma? Was it?’ he asked.

  Okeke’s mouth clamped shut.

  He sighed. He should have sworn Emma to secrecy. For what good it would have done. She and Okeke were as thick as thieves.

  ‘How’s Charlotte?’ Okeke asked, looking to change the subject.

  ‘She’s fine,’ he replied. ‘She’s a trouper.’ He pushed the door open. ‘Tell me it’s only you who knows.’

  ‘It’s just me… unless Sutherland’s been blabbing.’

  ‘Right, well, can we keep it that way for now?’ Boyd asked. He beckoned for her to lead the way in. ‘Since you’re in the know… what happened to “How are you coping, guv?”’