‘Was it?’

  ‘Too bloody right it was, Posh . . . ’

  Xiu didn’t mind the nickname any more, though she still wasn’t quite sure why Miller persisted in using it.

  ‘Because when it’s pronounced correctly, Xiu sounds like jus,’ he’d told her, the last time she’d raised the issue. ‘Jus. Which is basically just posh gravy, right?’

  ‘Yes, I do understand the reasoning—’

  ‘Hence “Posh”. It’s a daft nickname, that’s all.’

  ‘I understand that, too. I’m just not sure what nicknames are for.’

  ‘Well, they’re not for anything,’ Miller had said. ‘But if someone’s got an unusual name, or a name that sounds like something else, it’s only natural to . . . adapt it.’

  ‘Is it, though?’

  ‘If you were German, say, and your name was Koch . . . well, the temptation to turn that into an amusing nickname would be irresistible. Actually, I’d say it would be pretty much compulsory.’

  ‘Because Koch sounds a bit like cock.’

  ‘Because it sounds exactly like cock.’

  ‘It actually means cook.’

  ‘Not the point. I’m simply pointing out that nicknames are a thing, especially with coppers, and that almost everyone has one at some point. Actually, I’m not sure I’ve got one . . . unless I just haven’t heard it.’

  ‘People call you all sorts of things.’ Xiu had smiled then and turned away. ‘But I’m not sure you want me to tell you what they are.’

  Now, for reasons that Xiu was still unable to fathom, Miller was continuing to blather on about the Second World War.

  ‘They made Wellington bombers here and they used the place to house thousands of troops on leave. Like I said, a legitimate target. But Hitler specifically told the Luftwaffe not to bomb the place, because it turns out he was a bit of a fan. No doodlebugs on Blackpool! Nein! When the Germans won – which, spoiler alert, they didn’t – Adolf was planning to make Blackpool the holiday destination of choice for Nazis in need of a bit of R&R. Maybe there were a lot of Nazis who liked donkey-rides and rollercoasters, I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but by all accounts he was all set to stick a massive swastika on top of the Tower.’ He nodded to where the tip of the tower was just visible in the distance. ‘Maybe a revolving one or something. As I said, I don’t know the details.’

  ‘Right,’ Xiu said. ‘Thanks for sharing.’

  They both turned at the commotion near the front door and watched as half a dozen uniformed officers escorted Josh and Jason Goody from their home and attempted – amid a barrage of vituperative effing and jeffing – to get them into the back of a police van.

  Miller turned to see an old woman watching from next door’s garden, shaking her head, arms firmly folded. ‘I’m sorry about the language,’ he said.

  The old woman shrugged, then waved at the prisoners – who had presumably not been the loveliest of neighbours – before letting the pair know exactly what she thought of them with a torrent of shouty filth that made Josh and Jason sound like children’s TV presenters.

  ‘Glad to be of service,’ Miller said.

  Just before being bundled into the van, the younger Goody brother leaned back and launched a healthy gobbet of spittle in the direction of the two detectives responsible for his apprehension and arrest.

  ‘Disgusting,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Agreed,’ Miller said. ‘But I can’t help admiring the distance and elevation. That gob must have travelled twenty feet.’

  They walked towards their car.

  ‘We should celebrate,’ Miller said.

  The obvious charge was assault with a deadly weapon, but Miller thought they could push to do each Goody for attempted murder, considering that the attack appeared to have been well planned and the deadly weapons in question were machetes. It was a good result, though not for the lad who’d undergone four hours of emergency surgery three days before and might well lose the use of his right arm.

  ‘A couple after work?’

  ‘I’ve got something on tonight,’ Xiu said.

  ‘Ah.’ Miller nodded. ‘King’s Arms, is it?’

  Xiu unlocked the car and climbed into the driver’s seat.

  Once a week, the pub in question hosted a heavy metal night in a room upstairs. Bands with names like Blood Whores and Goatkillaz would do serious damage to the hearing of a hundred or so sweaty metalheads and, while Miller didn’t know if Xiu actually liked the music, she was awfully fond – in a ‘take them home for the night and get even more sweaty’ kind of way – of some of those who did.

  Male, female, whatever. Xiu did not seem particularly fussy.

  Miller fastened his safety belt. ‘There’s no need to be embarrassed.’

  Xiu put her foot down. ‘Says the bloke who dances tangos with old age pensioners.’

  ‘Fair point,’ Miller said. ‘A fair point, well made.’

  TWO

  Reading a room was not always Miller’s strong suit, but it was obvious enough that something was going on; had been ever since he and Xiu had got back to the station. Clusters of staff were gathered in corners, whispering. There were murmured comments and knowing looks.

  There was an atmosphere.

  Basing his assumption on similar situations in the past, Miller concluded that, whatever had happened or was still happening, chances were it had something to do with him. There had certainly been a comparable frisson when he’d returned to work a few months previously. He was as surprised as anyone at the time to find himself working a case again so soon, but bar a few sideways looks (and he was always going to attract those) the awkwardness had largely died down.

  Fellow officers still laid a hand on his arm now and then.

  An anonymous colleague had left a couple of inspirational (and helpfully laminated) messages on his desk:

  You will survive and you will find purpose in the chaos.

  Moving on doesn’t mean letting go.

  Miller had binned them immediately.

  Now, sitting at his desk, trying and largely failing to lob scrunched-up memos about ‘workforce wellbeing’ and ‘innovations in the effective reviewing of CCTV footage’ into a wastepaper basket, Miller racked his brains. Had he upset anyone recently? He decided he’d better narrow it down and think about anyone he might have upset that day.

  He’d called DI Tim Sullivan a ‘premier league shit-gibbon’, but that was par for the course. He’d had what some might have perceived as a heated debate with DS Andrea Fuller about whether it would be better to have hands for feet or feet for hands, but they were still friends at the end of it (even though she was entirely wrong). He’d told Tony Clough that his new haircut made him look like a paedophile, because it did.

  None of those exchanges could really explain what was going on.

  Eventually, curiosity got the better of him and Miller collared Xiu as she walked past. ‘Wagwan?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘It’s what young people say, Grandma. It means “what’s going on?” ’

  ‘So, why didn’t you just say that?’

  ‘I’m down with the kids, what can I tell you? Well . . . ?’

  Xiu shrugged, like there was nothing to get excited about. ‘Some kind of S&O cock-up yesterday afternoon. A major cock-up by the sound of it.’

  ‘Ah.’

  That would explain why so many of the funny looks had been thrown in Miller’s direction. S&O. Serious and Organised. The unit responsible for investigating gangland activity in the town and, crucially, the one for which Miller’s wife Alex had been working when she’d been murdered five months before.

  ‘Details,’ Miller said. ‘I need details.’

  ‘I don’t have any.’ Xiu took a step away from Miller’s desk, then turned. ‘Somebody said something about a briefcase. Oh, and toilets . . . ’

  To call Miller’s knock at the door of DCI Susan Akers cursory would have been generous. He did not wait to be invited in. Or to close the door behind him and sit down.

  ‘Come on then, Susan. Spill! What have Serious and Disorganised been getting up to in the bogs?’

  Akers looked up from her paperwork, her half-smile making it clear that she was pretending not to have heard him.

  Miller was well used to it.

  ‘Nice job with the Goodys this morning,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Miller sat back, frustrated, but guessing he’d have to be patient. ‘It was hardly the most taxing piece of detective work I’ve ever been involved with. They were bragging about it in the pub, Josh Goody left his wallet at the scene and there were two blood-stained machetes poking out from under the settee. A monkey could have put it together.’

  ‘All the same—’

  ‘Or even Tim Sullivan.’

  Akers said, ‘Declan,’ but the half-smile was still there.

  ‘Please, Susan.’ Miller could not wait any longer. He leaned forward, his hands pressed together. ‘Tell me the story and I’ll buy you and your missus dinner. You can’t say fairer than that. I pick the restaurant, though . . . ’

  He waited, watching his boss weigh up the offer.

  S&O might have been Alex’s old unit, but it was extremely unlikely that whatever had happened could have anything to do with her murder. That case was being investigated by a homicide squad based on the floor directly above them, though investigated might be to overstate the effort they appeared to be putting in. Five months on and they were precisely nowhere. There was virtually nothing in the way of evidence, zero credible suspects had been identified and the investigation’s ‘murder book’ would be more accurately described as a pamphlet, its contents typed in a very large font.

  ‘I’m really not sure that we should be wasting our time with tittle-tattle,’ Akers said.

  ‘So, don’t waste time and tell me quickly,’ Miller said.

  Susan Akers was an honest and loyal officer, not one given to scabrous comment on the activities of colleagues. Unity was important and the maintenance of decorum was part of that.

  But good gossip was good gossip.

  ‘It was a sting operation at the railway station,’ Akers said. ‘They’d been tracking a man named Draper who was a prime suspect in a murder they believe to have been sanctioned and paid for by Wayne Cutler.’

  Miller tried not to react, but could not control the sharp breath he sucked in or the muscle that worked in his jaw for a few seconds afterwards. Wayne Cutler’s . . . organisation was one of those being investigated by Miller’s wife at the time of her death. Miller remained convinced that Cutler – like his main rival Ralph Massey – knew more about Alex’s murder than they were letting on.

  If Akers noticed, she didn’t say anything.

  ‘According to their intel, Cutler was set to hand a sizeable amount of cash to Draper in return for a briefcase. Nobody’s letting on what its contents were.’

  ‘I’m guessing it wasn’t a copy of the Financial Times and a big bag of boiled sweets.’

  ‘Well, whatever was in it, the briefcase has gone missing and Cutler ended up in hospital.’

  ‘Please tell me it was nothing trivial.’

  ‘Well, they’re keeping him in overnight, but I don’t think it’s particularly serious.’

  ‘Shame,’ Miller said. ‘So, how did this operation go so tits up, then?’

  ‘By all accounts there was some kind of incident in the Gents.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard.’ Now Miller was trying not to smirk, but not very hard.

  ‘The briefcase was pinched by a couple of lads who I very much doubt had any idea what was in it. So there we are: the transaction between Cutler and Draper never actually happened, which is why no arrests were made and why there’s a lot of red faces on the top floor. Actually, this bloke Draper ended up in hospital as well. Tried to chase the lad who pinched his case and got his penis caught in his zip.’ Akers saw that Miller was about to chip in. ‘Yes, I know . . . shame that wasn’t what happened to Wayne Cutler.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve imagined far worse things,’ Miller said. ‘Lots of them.’

  Akers took off her glasses and leaned back. ‘How are you doing, Declan? We haven’t really caught up for a while. You look a bit tired.’

  ‘Yeah, things are . . . good,’ Miller said, eventually.

  They weren’t.

  ‘I’m moving on.’

  He wasn’t.

  Whether Akers believed him or not, she seemed content not to dig any further. ‘You’d best go and write up the Goody arrest . . . ’

  Miller stood and stretched. He bent to check that the plant on the DCI’s desk had been given enough water.

  ‘I will take you up on that promise of dinner, you know.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you?’ Miller trudged to the door and opened it. ‘Oh, and just to avoid any embarrassment on the night, it’s a fifteen pounds a head maximum and that does include wine.’

  THREE

  Wayne Cutler had a splitting headache. The truth was, he couldn’t remember when he hadn’t had one, what with some of the halfwits he had working for him, Justin – his eldest – acting up and his wife Jacqui crying and moaning all the time. To be fair, there’d been a lot more crying and moaning since Adrian – his younger son (and his favourite, what was the point in pretending otherwise?) – had been shot and killed a few months before.

  He closed his eyes. Muttered, ‘Rest in peace, son.’

  Problem was, he hadn’t been able to deal with all that the way he might usually have done. He hadn’t been able to react . . . appropriately. If that slimy sod Ralph Massey or anyone else had been responsible for what had happened to Adrian, Wayne would have known exactly what to do and someone would have suffered, big time. As it turned out, it hadn’t been business at all and his silly bugger of a son had been killed just because he was playing hide the sausage with someone else’s wife.

  So, Wayne just had to suck it up.

  Grieve, like any normal father.

  Now, on top of all that grief – as in proper ‘waking up in the night and weeping’ grief, plus bog-standard ‘people are bloody useless, pain in the arse’ grief – he had an actual headache to contend with. A right royal, blinding, buggering headache.

  He reached up and gingerly fingered the lump behind his ear. He couldn’t actually remember anything between walking into Blackpool North station that morning and waking up in hospital (quite normal with concussion, according to one of the nurses), but one of the coppers he was ‘friendly’ with had popped by to visit and filled him in on exactly what had happened in those toilets and at the turnstile immediately afterwards.

  It was downright embarrassing.

  Wayne Cutler had been swung at with a crowbar and been hit twice with a baseball bat and he’d not come off as badly as he had after being smacked in the head with a sodding briefcase. There certainly hadn’t been any need for chuffing hospital. Once he was out, he would do everything in his power to make sure this was kept as quiet as possible.

  He had an image to maintain, after all.

  At least his collarbone wasn’t broken. It was flipping sore, though, and they’d put his arm in a sling just to keep him comfortable. He closed his eyes again, dog-tired, feeling heartily sorry for himself and trying his best to zone out the sound of the old man whimpering in the next bed. If he’d been able to move without feeling sick, Wayne would have been over there to give the old git something to whimper about.

  He settled for shouting.

  ‘Keep it down, would you, pal?’

  Jacqui would be in a bit later, which he supposed was something to look forward to. Not that he particularly needed her fussing and jabbering at him when all he really wanted was to go home, but she had promised to bring in his favourite pillow from home and a couple of Creme Eggs.

  ‘Time like this, you need a bit of pampering, love . . . ’

  He shifted himself a little higher in the bed and it felt like there was a small person clog-dancing inside his head. He thought for a second or two that he might chuck up his lumps, but thankfully the feeling passed.

  A few minutes later, just when Cutler had begun drifting towards sleep and things seemed a bit better, the nurse pulled back the curtain to announce that he had a visitor and things suddenly got very much worse.

  Dennis Draper (or whatever his real name was) stepped into the cubicle brandishing a brown paper bag. He sniffed and whipped out a bunch of grapes, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

  ‘Grapes,’ he said.

  ‘Over there.’ Cutler nodded towards the cupboard by his bedside. He watched as Draper walked across and reached down to open the cupboard itself. ‘No. Just leave them on the top.’

  Draper did as he was told, moved back to the other side of Cutler’s bed and pulled up a chair. He was extremely tall with long dark hair that hung in greasy curtains on either side of his face. Cutler decided that anything that masked the man’s wholly unappealing features even a bit was to be applauded. The man had a gob like a depressed greyhound.

  ‘I thought you were being treated in here as well,’ Cutler said.

  Draper had his coat on. ‘I was, and I’m all sorted, but I thought I’d pop in to see how you were before I left.’

  ‘Well, you’ve done that, and how I am is knackered, so now you can just pop away again.’

  ‘Righto,’ Draper said.

  Cutler closed his eyes for a few seconds, but when he opened them again Draper hadn’t moved. ‘Why are you still here?’

  ‘Why d’you think?’

  ‘I haven’t got the foggiest.’

  ‘I’m waiting for you to pay me what I’m owed.’