‘Although what?’

  ‘That barman down at the Olde Pump House was quite cute.’

  ‘The one who wanted to get a selfie with me?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  He turned, snorting out a laugh as he did so. ‘Good god. What fresh hell is this?’

  ‘I got his number,’ she said, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Might give him a call sometime. Might not. I’ll see.’

  He sighed. ‘Well, what can I say? God help the poor bugger.’

  35

  ‘Is your dad in?’

  Emma recognised the uniform – a practical dark grey trouser suit and flat shoes. ‘CID?’

  DC Okeke nodded. ‘I’m on your dad’s team.’

  ‘Ah.’ Emma narrowed her eyes. ‘You must be Samantha.’

  Okeke’s eyes widened ever so slightly. ‘He’s mentioned me?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Emma, smiling. ‘You’re the token female in the department, right?’

  Okeke laughed. ‘For my sins, yes, I am.’

  Emma stepped back and gestured for her to come in. ‘He’s just in there. In the study.’

  As she went to knock on the study door, Boyd simultaneously opened it, mid-yawn, mug in hand, headphones dangling from his good ear and his shirt half untucked. Ozzie emerged and pushed past his slipper-clad feet.

  Emma simply smiled and pointed to her right, indicating DC Okeke standing in the hallway.

  Boyd hurriedly pulled his headphone out and tucked his shirt in. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s nice to see you too,’ said Okeke, catching Emma’s eye and smiling. ‘I’m checking up on you, guv. Sutherland came in this morning and said you were on sick leave.’

  ‘Well… technically, I suppose. Though it might be more accurate to say that Her Madge has put me on the naughty step.’

  ‘Because of the press conference?’

  He nodded. ‘Among other things. You want a coffee or something?’

  Okeke checked her watch. It was half five. ‘It’s half past beer o’clock – I’ll take one of those, if there’s a cold one going?’

  ‘Ah, I’m afraid this is a red-wine-and-alcopop house. Can I tempt you to a stale glass from yesterday’s bottle?’ said Boyd.

  Okeke grimaced.

  ‘Or a WiKeD Orange?’ offered Emma.

  She nodded. ‘That sounds better.’

  ‘You want me to pour you a glass of stale wine, Dad?’ asked Emma, already on her way to the kitchen, Ozzie dutifully following.

  Boyd gave that a few seconds of deep consideration before saying. ‘Why not?’

  He scratched his jaw awkwardly and turned to Okeke. ‘You here to talk shop or… point your finger at the naughty boy?’

  ‘Like I said, just here to check up on you, guv. And Minter wanted me to say thanks.’

  ‘Well, he was making a bit of pig’s ear out of it, truth be told.’

  ‘Yeah, he knows. We’ve all been relentlessly errring and uhhing at him all day.’

  Boyd smiled. ‘He was really shitting it, poor sod. Anyway, I suppose you better come into my man cave. ’Scuse the mess.’

  He led the way into his study and dropped into his slouch chair. The chair wheezed wearily beneath him.

  ‘There’s a stool there,’ he said, pointing, ‘if you want to sit.’

  Okeke grabbed a chrome bar stool with a small leather backrest from the corner of the room. ‘The inquiry team are behind you, sir.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘We think that this feels like a botched kidnapping rather than some migrant encounter.’

  ‘Of course it is. The Chief Stupid’s more concerned with keeping Border Force happy than making sure the news is reporting this accurately.’

  ‘It’s about political currency,’ said Okeke, supressing a smile.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘A story about bloodthirsty migrants in the Channel works wonders for the government, doesn’t it? For Border Force funding, particularly.’

  ‘And for selling toilet-paper tabloids.’

  ‘Exactly. It’s… er… ’ She glanced at his computer screen and pulled an awkward face. ‘Have I caught you at a bad time, guv?’

  Boyd followed her gaze. Shit! He still had the lurid pink AskforSasha website up. ‘Oh, that – no, that’s not for me!’ he exclaimed, feeling the heat rising in his cheeks. ‘That’s a bit of research.’

  She nodded slowly, pressing her lips together in an attempt to hold back a smile ‘Right. If you say so.’

  ‘No, seriously.’

  ‘It’s fine, guv.’ She nodded, grinning. ‘There’s no judging going on here.’

  He sighed. ‘It’s Nix casework.’

  ‘No!’ She feigned shock. ‘Surely not. Being on sick leave, you’d have passed this on –’

  Boyd rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, yeah, I was going to. I was just making sure it wasn’t some dead-end alley. Didn’t want to waste everyone’s time, you know?’

  Okeke smirked. ‘Well, is it?’

  ‘Jo Bambridge called me a couple of hours ago. Turns out she had my number, not yours. She remembered she took photos of Gerald Nix’s screen the day everything blew up and she left him.’ He nodded at the columns of thumbnail images of young women. ‘Nix was on this website chatting up some young lady called Zophia Kardevev. This is what Jo saw while he was out of the office, and she took some photos in case he tried to deny what she’d seen.’

  ‘We’ve got a full name?’

  ‘If it’s real, then, yeah, we finally have a full name.’

  Okeke did an air punch. ‘Yuss!’

  ‘Well, let’s not get too excited. It could well be an alias –’ Boyd clicked on her profile – ‘but it’s more than we had yesterday!’

  She leant forward to get a closer look. ‘You sure it’s this woman?’

  ‘Look,’ he said, pointing to her profile page. ‘No updates from her in over four months. And this one? Her last update was over two years ago. Status: adopted.’

  ‘Adopted? Wow.’ Okeke shook her head. ‘Like they’re pets.’

  ‘I know. The whole thing is pretty creepy.’

  ‘I wonder if this is how Trump found Melania?’ she joked.

  ‘Christ alive. I really don’t want to think about what pictures he might have sent her.’

  Boyd heard Ozzie’s loud bark through the study wall. He glanced at his watch – six o’clock. From the desperate tone of Ozzie’s insistent barks, she was probably prepping his dinner.

  ‘Anyway,’ Boyd went on. ‘I’ve been thinking about this Zophia. She could be just some innocent, looking for a sugar daddy – or she could be the key to this whole thing.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Okeke.

  ‘I mean, maybe Nix was being played. Suckered into believing she wanted him to –’ he looked at her profile again – ‘Christ, adopt her. Maybe she lured him into some sort of compromising situation and he was suddenly hers to ruthlessly exploit.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘To suck him financially dry? Then discard him?’

  Emma pushed the door open without warning. She entered with a glass of red for Boyd and two bottles of neon-orange pop-for-grown-ups. He suspected the unannounced entrance was deliberate. Emma – ever hopeful that she might catch the beginnings of something going on with her dad and any female in his life.

  Emma was way off the mark if she thought he’d carry on with someone he worked with. Especially someone so much younger. Sam was almost young enough to be his daughter.

  Emma gave Okeke a bottle and placed Boyd’s wine glass on the workstation desk. She glanced at the screen. ‘Relax, Dad’s not investing in a Russian mail-order bride, by the way.’

  Okeke looked disapprovingly at him. He didn’t have to think too hard to guess what that meant: This is work. It’s supposed to be confidential.

  ‘Thanks, Emma,’ he said.

  She lingered.

  ‘Thanks, Emma,’ he repeated, looking from her to the door.

  She huffed and rolled her eyes, momentarily looking twelve again. ‘Right. Sorry. Shop talk, huh?’

  ‘Indeed. Feel free to close the door on your way out.’

  ‘How very rude,’ she mock-scolded him, flouncing out of the study and pulling the door to behind her.

  ‘There,’ said Boyd, when the door clicked shut.

  ‘I like her.’ Okeke grinned. ‘She’s haughty.’ Then she nodded at the screen. ‘So we have a photo of Nix’s girlfriend, and it looks like we may have a name.’

  ‘The photo is the thing to pursue,’ said Boyd. ‘The name is almost certainly an alias.’

  Okeke pursed her lips. ‘It’s been insta-filtered to death. She’s probably a sixty-year-old fishwife with a mono brow and a moustache.’

  Boyd almost spluttered his wine onto the keyboard. ‘I’m sure she is.’ He wiped his mouth. ‘But what won’t have changed are her facial details like relative pupil distance, nose-to-lip-line ratios.’

  ‘You’re talking about facial recognition software?’

  ‘Uh-huh. It’s disturbingly good these days.’

  ‘Even on filtered social media pictures?’

  ‘Particularly on those. They tend to flatten the skin tones and blemishes out that the software doesn’t give a crap about anyway. Plus there’s the embedded image metadata, which will give up some more information.’

  Okeke swigged her bottle. ‘English please! I didn’t have you down as a digital forensics nerd, guv.’

  He pointed at the time on his computer. ‘It’s gone half five. You may call me Boyd now. Anyway, I’m no digital expert, but I read a book. That’s how it works, you know… Knowledge. You read it, you take it in.’ He smiled to make that sound a little less smart-arsey.

  ‘You want Minter to log this into the –’

  ‘No,’ he replied quickly. ‘I want to follow it myself.’

  She looked at him warily. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’ll get buried. The higher-ups are nudging this investigation in a decidedly different direction –’

  ‘The migrant story?’

  Boyd nodded. He wasn’t entirely convinced Border Force did have an ongoing investigation into Nix. It could easily have been utter bollocks coming out of Hatcher’s mouth. He wouldn’t put anything past her. Whatever the truth, she clearly had an interest in steering anyone in Sussex Police well away from looking too closely at Gerald Nix and his affairs, business and otherwise.

  ‘Then how are we going to do this?’ Okeke asked.

  ‘I’ve got an old contact who owes me one,’ said Boyd, noting the ‘we’ and appreciating it. ‘Can you keep this to yourself for now?’

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t trust Minter and the others, but it puts them in a shitty situation if they know we’re going off-piste and they get asked about it.’

  ‘Sure. Makes sense,’ agreed Okeke.

  There was a gentle knock on the door.

  ‘All right. Okeke, are you sure about this?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘I’m in.’

  ‘Okay, good.’ Then Boyd raised his voice: ‘Yes. We’re done talking shop!’

  Emma opened the door and peered in cheekily.

  Boyd fixed her with a stern look. ‘You’re not interrupting anything, Em. Come in.’

  His daughter almost managed to disguise the flicker of disappointment on her face. ‘You staying for dinner, DC Okeke?’

  Okeke smiled. ‘Call me Sam. No… my boyfriend’s making me supper tonight. But thanks, Emma.’

  ‘Ah, okay,’ replied Emma, backing out of the study and closing the door again.

  ‘She’s started hassling me to find someone else,’ Boyd explained. ‘She’s worried I’ll end up a crusty old bachelor. I expect I’ll be signed up to God knows how many dating sites now she’s got the idea in her head,’ he added mournfully.

  Okeke laughed. ‘You might enjoy it!’

  ‘Well, you’d better watch out! I think she was eyeing you up as a potential candidate.’ He laughed too. ‘You dodged a bullet there, mentioning your boyfriend. She’ll be off your case now. Very well-played, DC Okeke. Kids, eh? Are they on your to-do list?’ he asked, nodding in the direction of the door.

  ‘Me? No, sir. Uh-uh!’

  ‘Sorry, that was a bit forward of me.’

  ‘A career,’ she added. ‘I much prefer one of those. Though if we get this Nix thing wrong, we’re both shooting ourselves in the foot there, aren’t we? Anyway –’ she took another big swig of her bottle to finish it off – ‘the man I’m with is more than enough of a kid for me to deal with.’

  36

  The next morning, Emma drove him to the hospital’s outpatients department to have the Princess Leia Pretzel removed from the side of his head and the stitches examined.

  ‘That’s looking fine,’ said the nurse.

  ‘I’m going to put on a smaller dressing this time. Just a plaster should do,’ the nurse continued.

  ‘Thank fuck for that,’ Boyd blurted out in relief.

  ‘Dad!’ Emma yelped beside him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to the nurse. ‘He’s got a right potty mouth.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the nurse replies, laughing. ‘I’ve heard far worse, my love, far worse.’

  ‘I’ve had the mickey taken out of me for a week now,’ grumbled Boyd. ‘I think I’ve earned a bloody swear word or two.’

  ‘By who, Dad? You’ve hardly seen anyone but me and Ozzie.’

  ‘The postman, for example,’ he retorted. ‘He asked if you’d hit me with a frying pan.’

  The nurse and Emma chuckled. Rather unsympathetically, he thought grouchily.

  ‘And it’s only been five days, Dad. Not a week.’

  ‘Feels like a lot bloody longer,’ he muttered.

  The nurse gently dabbed the stitches with antiseptic, then laid a plaster over them. ‘Well done. It looks no worse than a shaving accident.’

  ‘Seriously?’ he said. ‘Behind my ear?’

  Emma dropped him off at Hastings train station. She wanted to come along for the ride up to London, but then Ozzie would be trapped in the house all day, so she reluctantly accepted she was going to have to stay at home. Boyd was secretly relieved. He had to see a man about an entirely different dog, and Emma was too nosy by far.

  ‘What time will you want picking up?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ll text you when the train’s approaching Hastings. I can’t imagine it’ll be that late.’

  ‘Will you want some dinner?’ she asked.

  ‘No, you sort yourself out, love. I may just grab a McFatBastard at Charing Cross.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ she said, with a not-too-subtle stare at his tummy.

  He leant across and a planted a kiss on her cheek. ‘I’m sure. Apologise to Ozzie for me, will you?’

  ‘I think I’ll take him out later on today anyway, if it’s not too wet.’

  ‘All right. See you later, Ems.’ He got out of the car and, with a wave, set off towards the station entrance.

  It was weird returning to London. They’d only moved away just over a couple of weeks ago and yet it felt like it had been much longer. It was a similar sensation to returning home after a by-the-pool package holiday – the sense that months had passed yet nothing had changed. From sunshine and sangria back to grey skies and grumbling – the greater the contrast, he suspected, the longer the perception of elapsed time.

  And Hastings had been a contrast in many ways. The omnipresent squawk of gulls, the constant nagging tug of an offshore breeze and the salt ’n’ vinegar smell of chippies along the seafront promenade.

  And the slopes. Jesus Christ, those bloody inclines.

  Sunil Chandra was already waiting for him at the bar inside the Nags Head by Covent Garden, listening to something on his phone. He was nursing a pint of Guinness that sat on the counter beside him.

  Boyd had picked the Nags Head because it usually emptied out completely after lunchtime and, being a London landmark pub, you didn’t need to bother with directions. It was the same with the nearby Punch and Judy, down in the Piazza. That had been a favourite of Julia’s.

  ‘All right, Boydy,’ said Sunil, putting his phone away. ‘Get you a pint, bro?’

  ‘I’ll take an IPA.’

  ‘Cool.’ Sunil craned his neck and looked at the plaster above Boyd’s ear. ‘What happened there, mate?’

  ‘I got chased by a giant clown with blades for fingers,’ Boyd deadpanned. ‘You should see the clown, though.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ Sunil shrugged, guessing he wasn’t going to get a straight answer. He ordered and paid. ‘You want to go sit down somewhere?’

  Boyd nodded. They found a booth of dark wood panelling and frosted glass, well away from the bar and the dwindling number of regulars finishing their lunchtime pints and checking their watches. The afternoon business at the Nag’s Head used to be a steady trickle of curious Japanese tourists or bawdy Americans wanting to try out some ‘weird British beers’. But no longer, it seemed.

  ‘How long’s it been?’ asked Boyd.

  Sunil stroked his bushy black beard as if it was a touchstone full of wisdom. ‘Two or three years – gotta be at least that, right?’

  The data analyst was whippet thin, but his big black beard made his face look round and fat. He wore his dark hair short – shaved short – and his thick-rimmed glasses made him look like one of the Proclaimers.

  ‘Yeah. I think you’re right,’ replied Boyd. ‘Tempus fugit and all that.’

  ‘How’ve you been, mate?’ Sunil asked.

  That question came far too easily, thought Boyd. He doesn’t know. Does he?

  ‘I’ve been better, Sunny. Been better.’ He decided to leave it there, hoping to avoid ten minutes of awkward questions, commiserations and so on. ‘How’s you?’

  ‘Lots has happened, bro, hasn’t it? 2020 was total shit, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Not my favourite year, all told,’ said Boyd.

  ‘And last year wasn’t much better. My department’s been downsized. We’re all wondering who’s next for the chop.’

  ‘Really? I’d have thought digital forensics would be a safe place.’