‘Looks like a charmer, right?’

  ‘We need to get this picture on every copper’s phone,’ Miller said. ‘In all the papers.’

  ‘Already being done,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Good.’ Miller cocked his head. ‘Having said that . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  Miller had felt Wayne Cutler’s eyes on him when he’d pulled away from that house half an hour before and now he remembered them narrowing a few minutes before that. ‘Why are you so interested in Draper?’ ‘I have a strong suspicion we won’t be the only ones looking for him.’

  ‘Cutler?’

  ‘I was right about your unicorn pie, which incidentally you are far more likely to find on the menu in here than salad. There’s no way on God’s green earth that Wayne Cutler is lifting a finger to help us find Draper. He’s far more concerned about getting hold of Mr Draper himself.’

  ‘So that Draper can’t incriminate him?’

  ‘Which he definitely will, given half a chance. If Draper’s got anything to prove it was Cutler who hired him to kill Panaides, he’s going to sing like a giant canary on The Masked Singer. The problem for us is that, as of now, bearing in mind he actually knows the bloke, Cutler’s a tad better placed to find Dennis Draper than we are.’

  ‘And Draper’s better placed to find that lad from the station.’

  Miller let out a long breath and tapped a finger against the edge of the table. ‘We’re like those people who dress up as Daleks or dinosaurs to run the London Marathon,’ he said. ‘Everyone who counts is way ahead of us.’

  Xiu considered this, then shook her head. ‘Marathon’s the wrong word.’

  ‘All right then, Snickers.’

  ‘No, I just mean this is more of a sprint. A marathon takes ages and we might not have that long.’

  ‘Well, longer than a few hours. Hopefully.’

  ‘Hopefully.’ Xiu sat back and folded her arms. ‘So, what’s next?’

  ‘Well, if we survive lunch, and it’s a big if . . . I have no bloody idea.’

  Janet brought the two glasses of water over and laid down cutlery and paper serviettes. ‘I couldn’t find a lemon,’ she said. ‘I could pop a pickled onion in there if you like.’

  When she’d gone, Miller stared at the image on Xiu’s laptop. ‘I don’t think I’d shed a lot of tears if Cutler got to him before we did. I’m just saying. It wouldn’t be any great loss to humanity.’

  Xiu shook her head. ‘It’s not justice though, is it?’

  ‘Well, sort of. You know . . . biblically.’

  ‘Not for Natalie Bagnall or her mum and dad.’

  Miller sat up a little straighter. ‘That’s what we do next.’

  ‘What?’

  Miller took out his phone. ‘Have you got a number for Natalie Bagnall?’

  Xiu went back to her laptop for a few seconds. She read out the number and Miller dialled. He put the phone on speaker and set the mobile down between them.

  ‘Natalie? It’s DS Miller here. I’m with DS Xiu . . . ’

  Xiu leaned towards the phone. ‘Hi, Natalie.’

  ‘How are you? Sorry, stupid question.’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  Miller knew very well. ‘I’m really sorry to bother you . . . ’

  ‘Is there news?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, but I wondered if you might be able to help us.’ Miller could hear voices in the background. ‘You mentioned an old school photo.’

  ‘I was just looking at it ten minutes ago,’ Natalie said. ‘I’m at my mum and dad’s place and we’re sitting here going through all the old photos.’

  ‘That can’t be easy.’

  ‘I know it sounds a bit mad, but we’ve actually been laughing,’ Natalie said. ‘The pictures of Andy as a kid and that. Bad haircuts and wearing shorts at school. That photo you’re on about was in a box in the loft like I thought.’

  ‘Have you still got it there?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Hang on . . . ’

  Miller could hear voices again.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s the police.’

  ‘What do they want? Have they found out who—?’

  ‘It’s fine, Mum, I just need to grab . . . ’ Natalie came back to the phone. ‘OK, I’ve got it.’

  ‘I seem to remember you saying it was one of those photos that’s got the names of all the kids in the class.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s names underneath.’

  ‘OK, can you have a look and see if there’s a James?’

  There was near silence for a few seconds. A few breaths and sniffs. Miller looked across at Xiu, who crossed her fingers.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve found a James,’ Natalie said. ‘He’s stood right next to our Andy as it happens, pulling a stupid face.’

  She gave Miller the full name and Xiu immediately started searching on her laptop.

  ‘Listen, thanks so much, Natalie.’

  ‘Is this who you think killed Andy? This James?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, but it is someone we need to locate urgently.’ Xiu gave Miller a thumbs-up. She had an address. ‘I’ll be back in touch as soon as there’s any news,’ Miller said. ‘I promise.’ He thought about what he’d said earlier to Bob Perks; his stupid jokes and the reasons for them. He knew that, when it came to news, the likes of him and Natalie Bagnall were people for whom the funny bit at the end would never make the slightest bit of difference.

  As Miller put his phone away, Janet arrived with the food. Xiu quickly put her laptop away and snatched at her knife and fork. ‘We should get a shift on,’ she said, pushing half a rissole into her mouth.

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ Miller said. ‘You won’t finish it.’

  TWENTY

  Draper didn’t know Blackpool that well – and he had knocked about in some very dodgy parts of the country with some seriously iffy individuals (several of whom he had later killed) – but even he was surprised by just how many people appeared to be living on the streets. Yeah, there were plenty of so-called ‘street artists’ or buskers making a racket in the touristy parts of town, but they didn’t really count. He reckoned that most of them were actually students or lived at home with their parents and were only hanging about on the streets all day because it was easier than getting a proper job. Because they just happened to juggle a bit or know the chords to ‘Wonderwall’ or ‘Summer of bloody ’69’.

  If someone was willing to stump up the money, he’d happily take on a kill one/kill one free type contract and knock off the lot of them.

  The next idiot he heard singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ he’d do for nothing.

  No, he was talking about the great many that were properly homeless, that dossed down in doorways with ratty dogs or made their beds out of the cardboard boxes used for fridge-freezers that they nicked from those massive skips behind Currys. The ones that genuinely had nowhere safe to go and slept out in the rain and snow after a day spent begging for enough to get a hot meal.

  Those useless, scrounging tossers.

  He’d seen a documentary about it once, so he knew that a lot of them had mental health problems or were escaping abusive relationships of one sort or another. If you caught him in a generous mood (you were more likely to win the lottery or see a Yeti in Tesco) he might even shrug and say that was fair enough. But Draper had been around a bit, and he knew that most of them ended up where they were because of drugs. Plain and simple. Ended up where they were supposed to, if you asked him.

  There weren’t too many people he liked very much, or even at all, but Draper really hated druggies. Obviously, everyone had a sneaky puff of wacky-backy when they were young or popped a pill to see what it was like, but normal people stopped. Normal people went ‘Well, this is a bit rubbish’ and got a life. Those weirdos who went ‘Yeah, this is really great, I quite fancy doing something that will end up with me losing my family and all my money and will probably kill me’ were people who deserved everything they got, because it wasn’t like they didn’t know what they were getting into, was it? It was like those morons who climbed into cages with lions or thought they could trot up mountains in a pair of carpet slippers.

  It was natural selection in action.

  He actually had more sympathy – which is to say some sympathy – for the people that sold the stuff, because, honest or not, they were just trying to make a living. They had a work ethic, at least. It hadn’t stopped him putting one into the back of George Panaides’s head, but that was only because he was trying to make a living too, so Dennis Draper wasn’t going to feel remotely conflicted about that, thank you very much.

  Mind you, Draper could say one thing for the town’s community of smack-rats and stoners: they did tend to stick together. Credit where it was due and all that. Almost everyone he’d spoken to was very wary when it came to giving out information, especially about one of their own. Wary until Draper had got his wallet out, of course, but he admired that initial effort.

  It hadn’t taken very long.

  He walked quickly along the prom, past the north pier towards the illuminations. He jogged across the tramlines, smiling at the young couple waving from one of the town’s ubiquitous horse-drawn carriages, then cut left on to Church Street. There were two branches of Greggs within spitting (or throwing up) distance of the Winter Gardens, and because the zonked-out imbecile he’d spoken to hadn’t been very specific, Draper knew he’d need to check out both.

  ‘She loves them veggie sausage rolls, mate, so she’s usually hanging about near one or the other.’

  He found her in a doorway near the second one, competing with several other beggars working the foot traffic between the seafront and the shopping centre. Some were using kids, which Draper thought was a bloody disgrace, and a couple were shuffling up and down with their hands out and some chat about a ‘hostel’, which he and anyone else with an ounce of common sense knew meant ‘heroin’. The girl herself was just sitting there quietly, head down with a rucksack next to her and a tatty hat on the floor. She looked up at anyone who walked past and muttered something about change, but she didn’t push it, and when the passer-by had done exactly what they were supposed to do and passed by, she just nodded and lowered her head again.

  Off her face already, Draper guessed.

  It was a shame, because underneath all that grime she looked like she might even be quite a pretty little thing. Stupid, really, the things people did to mess their lives up. To piss other people off, to make enemies, to get themselves killed.

  He stared into the window of a mobile phone shop for a while, then turned and wandered across. Halfway there, one of the girl’s rivals tried her luck, but Draper just glared and the woman scuttled quickly away.

  The girl looked up.

  Draper smiled and dug into his pockets. He pulled out a handful of coins then bent to drop a fifty pence piece into the girl’s hat.

  Finn smiled back and raised a thumb.

  ‘Cheers, mate . . . ’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Schwarzpool!’ Miller nodded, pleased with himself.

  Xiu looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what this place would have been called,’ he said. ‘You know, if Hitler had won. If we’d got a spinny-round, lighty-up swastika on top of the Tower and Germans goosestepping along the prom.’

  ‘But he didn’t win,’ Xiu said.

  ‘I know he didn’t. I’m just saying—’

  ‘And why would the name be half in German and half in English?’

  ‘It wouldn’t,’ Miller said. ‘I just don’t know what’s German for pool . . . ’

  They were walking from the car towards a terraced house a few streets back from the front. Xiu took out her phone; swiped and stabbed as they approached the address.

  ‘There are lots of German words for pool,’ she said, scrolling through her search results. ‘It depends on what sort of pool we’re talking about. Swimming pool, typing pool, pool like snooker . . . ’

  ‘Well, it’s not one of those, is it?’

  ‘I’d go with . . . Tümpel, then.’

  ‘Schwarztümpel!’ Miller began to strum an invisible ukulele, then proceeded to startle a passing dog-walker with what was actually a pretty decent George Formby impression. ‘With me little stick of Schwarztümpel rock. Aye up, turned out shite again . . . ’

  Xiu opened the front gate. They took out their IDs as they walked up the narrow path, then stopped to stare at the front door or, more specifically, the metal ramp leading up to it.

  ‘Does he live on his own?’ Miller asked.

  Xiu said, ‘No idea,’ and rang the doorbell.

  When the door was opened, Miller stared at the property’s occupant as though he’d never seen a man in a wheelchair before. Or even a wheelchair.

  The man in the wheelchair stared back.

  Xiu held up her ID and introduced herself and Miller. ‘Are you James Holloway?’

  ‘Yeah,’ James Holloway said. ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Can we come in?’

  Miller looked at her. ‘Is there any point?’

  ‘Miller!’

  ‘Well, he’s clearly not the—’

  Xiu smiled at Holloway. ‘Can we . . . ?’

  Holloway moved back to allow them in and they followed him into a spacious living room. 5 Live Sport was playing on a radio somewhere; a conversation about curling, of all things, to which, on any other occasion, Miller might have made one or two salty contributions – pointing out to no one in particular that anything which involved sweeping could not possibly be a sport – but now was probably not the time.

  He and Xiu sat together on a small sofa and Holloway wheeled himself into a position directly in front of them.

  ‘What’s this about?’ he asked.

  Miller leaned forward. ‘I don’t want to pry and I’m sorry if this sounds in any way insensitive, but I don’t suppose there’s any possibility that whatever happened to put you . . . you know . . . ’

  ‘In a wheelchair.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘A car accident.’

  ‘Right, thank you. A car accident which I’m guessing didn’t happen in the last three days?’

  Holloway looked at Xiu. ‘Is he really a detective?’

  ‘It was a long shot.’ Miller stood up, ready to go. ‘Clutching at straws, really. Sorry.’

  ‘Mr Holloway,’ Xiu said, ‘do you remember a kid you were at school with named Andrew Bagnall?’

  Miller sighed and sat down again.

  ‘I remember the name,’ Holloway said. ‘But not the kid.’

  ‘You were in the same class. Bagnall . . . ’

  Holloway thought about it. ‘OK, yeah, I think I might know who you mean. Strange lad.’

  ‘So, you weren’t a friend of his?’

  ‘If I remember rightly, he didn’t have many friends. Like I said, he was a bit strange. Always had his head in a book.’

  ‘What a weirdo,’ Miller said.

  ‘Do you remember anyone he hung about with?’

  ‘I don’t, no.’

  Miller stared pointedly at Xiu, then stood up again. ‘Sorry to have wasted your time,’ he said. Then rather more quietly, ‘And ours.’

  ‘OK, then.’ Xiu stood up, too.

  ‘My brother might remember.’

  ‘Why would he remember?’ Xiu asked.

  ‘I think Andy Bagnall played football and my brother was in the school football team, so . . . it’s just a thought.’

  ‘Will you ask him?’

  ‘Yeah, I can call him.’ Holloway turned his chair and moved towards the door. ‘I’ll have to leave a message, mind; he never answers his bloody phone, and he’s not always the best at getting back to you.’

  ‘Could you tell him it’s urgent?’

  Holloway shrugged. ‘OK.’

  ‘Not as a ruse to get him to call you back,’ Miller said. ‘But because it really is urgent.’

  ‘Yeah, I get it.’

  ‘I mean properly urgent. Not urgent like a business meeting’s urgent or an urgent dash to the chippy before they run out of haddock. Urgent as in murderous psychopaths with guns and people having their hands chopped off for shits and giggles.’ Miller nodded and smiled. ‘That kind of urgent.’

  The colour drained from Holloway’s face.

  Miller turned to see Xiu staring at him. ‘What? I just want to make sure he knows this is somewhat pressing.’

  Walking back to the car, Xiu said, ‘What the hell was that all about?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That . . . performance.’

  ‘Well, like I said—’

  ‘You scared the poor bloke half to death, and I don’t know what you thought you were doing when he answered the door.’

  ‘OK, so I might have been a little . . . brusque.’

  ‘Brusque?’

  ‘Curt, then. I was curt.’

  ‘You were rude, Miller.’

  ‘Look, I might not be the finest detective in the world – though I’m certainly in the top half-dozen – but it didn’t take a genius to work out that he wasn’t the lad we’re looking for. The wheelchair was the big clue, in case you missed it. I was just trying to keep things moving along because time is not exactly on our side.’

  ‘It was worth talking to him,’ Xiu said. ‘He might well have known the lad we’re after and maybe his brother will come up with something.’ She keyed the fob on the car key to unlock the doors.

  Miller walked around to the passenger side and nodded back towards the house. ‘You talk about me being rude . . . ’