Laura looked angry as she walked towards me. I'd received her text message just a few minutes before, saying that she had some information for me. She had parked in the town centre, just down the road from the court, where her police car wouldn't look out of place.

But there was someone else in the police car.

Laura saw me looking. *That's Thomas. Don't worry about him. He's too busy enjoying the buzz of a murder.'

*What's wrong?' I said.

She stared straight ahead, but I could see the tension in the way her jaw clenched.

*I've always kept my work from you, you know that,' she said. *I've been your source when it helped me, but I've never given up a secret.'

*And I've never given up a source,' I replied.

Laura laughed, but it was a bitter sound. *You wouldn't need to,' she said. *All the signs will point back to me.'

*So don't say what you're about to say.'

Laura shook her head, and then I saw her wipe her eye. I reached forward, put my hand on her shoulder tenderly, but she shrugged me off.

*I don't do this,' she snapped at me. *I'm a police officer, and I've promised to uphold the law, to keep the secrets that shouldn't get out, but whatever you're involved with keeps coming into my house, where I was asleep. Where Bobby was asleep. That changes things.'

*My story brought that on, not anything you did,' I said. *I love what you do. It makes me proud. No, you make me proud. Don't compromise yourself.'

Laura shook her head and looked back at the car. *It changes me,' she said. *It makes me fight back.'

I said nothing until Laura turned to me again, and part of me was willing her to stay quiet, but I needed to know what she was going to say. Perhaps I needed to know it so much that I didn't think enough of how it might affect her.

*You want Mike Dobson,' she said. *Here are his details.' She handed me a Post-it note with an address written on it in her neat script.

*How did you get this?'

*Detective work,' Laura said. *It's what I do.'

*So why are you giving it to me?'

*Because that uptight bitch who camped on our sofa last night went through your things. She's laughing at us. And now she's sent pictures of me around the station, taken by that little pervert.'

I didn't need to ask what sort of pictures they were; I wished I had told Laura about them.

I looked at the piece of paper, and then at Laura. *Can you prove Rachel took my papers?'

She scoffed. *Of course I can't, but I know. So I've swapped sides for today.'

I held up the piece of paper. *You could get in trouble for this.'

*I thought you said you don't reveal your sources.'

*I don't.'

*So who will know?'

I gripped her arm. *You will know, Laura, that's the point. You're crossing a line here, leaking information to me.'

*It's a one-off. Just do your best to keep me out of it.' She looked at the piece of paper between my fingers. *Are you going to do anything with it?'

*I've no choice. I'll go speak with him.'

*Be careful, Jack.'

I leant forward and kissed her on the cheek. *I will.'

Mike Dobson's house wasn't difficult to find, just a short cruise around the town centre and then into an estate of typical new housing, with open-plan lawns and raised brick planters. It was the sort of place my father would have aspired to, with the bricks standing out brightly against the worn-out fronts of the terraced houses that lined the hills behind.

Dobson's house stood proudly at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, with the curtains in the window neatly pulled back and tied up, the vase of flowers on the sill perfectly centred.

I rang the doorbell and waited.

There was a long pause before anyone answered, but there was a car on the driveway, and so I was determined to wait. Eventually a face appeared on the other side of the glass and the door opened.

My mind moved fast as I looked at the man in front of me, trying to compare him to what little I had seen in Frankie's photographs, but it was impossible. Twenty-two years had passed and most of those hung around his cheeks and jawline, with the colour in his hair now coming from a bottle.

*Mr Dobson?'

He nodded slowly.

*I'm a reporter,' I said. *I want to talk to you about your job.'

He looked surprised. *My job? I sell guttering and plastic fascias.' He looked down the drive. *Is this some kind of consumer special?'

*It's not about the job you've got now,' I said. *It's a job you used to have. Twenty years ago, maybe a little more.'

I saw him stiffen. *I can't talk about my customers,' he said, his voice wary.

*Why do you think it's to do with a customer?'

He cocked his head and his eyes narrowed. *Tell me what you want.'

*Claude Gilbert was one of your clients, wasn't he, Mr Dobson?' I said.

I knew I'd hit the mark. His hand gripped the door frame and he paled and swayed.

*Mr Dobson?'

He turned to go inside. I regarded the open door as an invitation. Dobson walked down a short hallway and then into his living room. I followed him in to see that he had slumped onto a long brown sofa that took over the room, opposite a mock-Victorian fireplace. He glanced at the view outside, towards the other houses that crowded around the turning circle at the end of the cul-de-sac.

*What do you mean?' he asked, although his voice sounded faint, as if he wouldn't be able to listen to my answer.

*I'm writing a story on Claude Gilbert, just checking that the official version is the right one-that it was Claude who killed his wife. I came across some photographs.'

He turned to me when I said that. *Photographs?'

I nodded.

*Of what?'

*Of someone with Mrs Gilbert, in her bedroom,' I said. His jaw clenched as he looked at me. *It seemed that there was a local voyeur who had taken a shine to her, and in the photographs it wasn't Claude having sex with Mrs Gilbert.'

Dobson looked down and ran his hands over his face. *So what do you want with me?' he said, his voice muffled through his fingers.

*I want to speak to the other person in the photograph,' I said, and watched for the reaction.

He looked at me and swallowed, as if his mouth had gone dry. *Do you still have the photographs?'

I nodded. Luckily, they hadn't been with the laptop when the papers were taken.

He sat back and exhaled loudly.

*This is going to print, Mr Dobson, and so this is your one chance to give your side of things,' I said. It was the usual newspaper blackmail-that the story was already there and was going to be published, and so an exclusive interview was damage limitation. I leant forward and spoke quietly, unsure who else was in the house. *It was going on when she died, I know that, and that it was your little secret.' I paused. *And hers.'

He didn't move for a few seconds, but then he looked at me and said, *What does it matter now?'

*You can tell your side,' I said. *Something's going on with the Claude Gilbert story and unless you want to get sucked into it, you need to come out now. It's the only way you can control it.'

He shook his head. *I can't.'

*You must.'

*I mustn't,' he said, angrier now. He put his head back and took some deep breaths. Then he said, *Thank you for your concern, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave.'

I took out one of my business cards and put it down on the arm of the sofa next to him.

*This is going to print, Mr Dobson,' I said firmly. *Call me if you want your version to go in there with it.'

He didn't respond. As I clicked the door closed, I could sense him still watching me as I went back to my car.

Chapter Fifty-One.

Laura and Thomas stood some distance from the spot where the woman's body had been found, by the edge of the police tape that had been strung around the streetlights. Laura had taken bunches of flowers from three sets of well-wishers who had approached the scene and placed them against a lamp post but, apart from that, they were well out of the action. Thomas's attention kept on drifting back to the crime scene.

*I'm sorry about the photographs,' he said, not looking at Laura.

*Why are you sorry?'

*I tried to get them all back, but I couldn't, and it upset you.'

Laura sighed. *I needed to know,' she said. When Thomas blushed she added, *You're itching to go down there,' and pointed towards the officers in jump suits who were assembled in a line fifty yards beyond the tape, ready to bend to their knees for the fingertip search.

*No, it's okay,' he said, although he didn't sound convincing.

*Don't worry,' Laura said. *That's how it should be. What did you have yesterday? Petty thefts and drunkenness. There's a dead body now, and so you're bound to be interested.'

Thomas nodded and gazed back towards the crime scene,more openly than before. *They seem to know what they're doing.'

Laura followed his gaze. *Murder cases bring out the best in us. The money and manpower gets found.'

And that's how it should be, she thought to herself. Crime priorities might get shifted around by the prevailing political wind, but taking another person's life should always get top billing. Laura knew that murder cases were handled well in Blackley, that the officers on the Major Incident Team were methodical and thorough, always ready to do whatever it took to find the killer.

*Before we came out, the sergeant said that our job today was to be seen,' Thomas said. *What did she mean?'

*Hazel was a prostitute, and so most of her friends will be,' Laura said, *but the other street girls will tell you nothing if you go knocking on their door, or if you interrupt them when they're working. But they will be angry about what's happened and, if we hang around, make ourselves visible and approachable, we might hear whispers that would never make it as far as the police station.'

*What do you mean, angry?'

*Last night they will have been upset about Hazel, but it will have been mixed with relief, that it isn't them on the mortuary slab,' Laura said. *The relief will have slipped now, and they will be angry that someone just like them, whose life was probably one long kick in the teeth, has been dumped like old rubbish.'

*Would we want them as witnesses, these prostitutes?' Thomas said.

Laura raised her eyebrows. *In a murder case, you take any witness you've got, and prostitutes tend to be good ones.' When Thomas looked confused, Laura explained. *The courtroom doesn't frighten them. If the defence barrister is a woman, any attempt to browbeat them makes the lawyer look like a bully picking on someone who's had fewer life chances. The jurors start to see them as people, not just prostitutes, so they get an easy ride from the female barristers, just to keep them from losing the jury.'

*And the male barristers?'

*The street girls just treat them with contempt. Remember that they've usually spent years grubbing around in the front passenger seats of other people's cars, and so the pompous arsehole in the wig is just another pervert to them, upstanding one minute, panting dirty the next. No, there's nothing wrong with people like that as witnesses, because they'll tell their stories in blunt and simple terms, and juries like that.'

Thomas shook his head. *I thought I knew about stuff,' he said, *but there's so much more to all this.'

*You'll pick it up, don't worry.'

*So, what do you think?' Thomas asked.

*It's a sad case,' Laura replied. *Beyond that, I have no idea.'

*But she was a prostitute,' Thomas said. *She was always going to be a magnet for weirdos, and then one day, boom, she meets the biggest one of all.'

Laura looked at Thomas and saw his naivety and prejudice.

*So we write it off, do we, just a bad day at the office?' she said, her eyes wide, questioning. *You'll meet some lowlifes doing this job, but never stop seeing them as people. That's not a popular view, but it will save you, if you remember it.'

Thomas blushed an apology. *What do you mean, save me?'

*Police marriages fail,' Laura said, *but you can forget all that crap about the bad hours. We're not the only job with shift patterns. No, it's because too many coppers stop being human and become rigid in how they see people, where everything is either right or wrong, and only one side is acceptable, so life becomes one big judgement. That's why marriages fail, because not everyone can be perfect, no one can do the right thing all the time-and who wants to live their lives being judged?' Laura shook her head. *Not me.'

*What's that got to do with a dead prostitute?'