Marija was backed into the corner of the sofa with the screaming tot now held tight against her chest like a very soft human shield. She was trying to shush it as I stood over them and pointed my big hand down at her and said, 'Now I want some answers,' but she could hardly hear me over the baby, and in truth I probably wasn't that threatening. The bandages were so thick I looked like Winnie the Pooh with his hand stuck in a honey pot. Patricia would just have laughed at me. But Marija was a stranger in a strange land, and one with a guilty conscience to boot. I could see the fear in her eyes as she peppered the top of the baby's head with kisses. As it quieted, she whispered, 'Please . . . don't . . . hurt the child . . .'

I backed up a bit. I sat on the arm of the chair opposite her. 'Your name is Marija Gruevski. You are from Macedonia. Last time I checked, Macedonia was not in the European Union. That means that unless you are an undercover brain surgeon, you are here illegally. Of all the people you could have picked to work for, you first pick Jack Caramac, then Peter and Abagail Pike. The Pikes have built their careers on being whiter than white. If they discover that you are illegal, they will have you out of this country quicker than a very quick thing. If they find out you're a lesbian and illegal, which they would prefer to be one and the same thing, they will probably burn you at the stake.'

'Please,' begged Marija, 'I need job . . . money . . . please.'

'Then tell me what happened with little Jimmy, Marija, what happened with Jack's boy?'

'Nothing happened. Please, I . . .'

'You kidnapped him.'

'No. Yes. It was not like . . . All we do . . . we go for ride in my wife's car.'

'Betty.'

'Yes. Betty. She is drunk. She love the baby, cannot have her own. She wants to keep him, for us to go away, nobody will ever find us. Maybe to my home in Skopje. She does not know what it is like, it is poor country. I earn here more as nanny than home as teacher. I tell her no, I am happy here, we must take back. We fight. I am very angry. I tell her I am taking Jimmy home, and I am going to tell police. She threaten me. But I take him. I put him in garden and then hide until they find him. I did not hurt him. I am so sorry. Please.'

'You're forgetting about the note, Marija, the note, the shut the fuck up note. What about the note?'

'My wife write note. She drunk and angry, thought I was going to tell police. I was locked in room with Jimmy, would not let her in. She write lots of notes . . . threatening me, what she will do, what will happen, and puts them under door, but I do not see this one. Jimmy pick it up and put it in his pocket. Mr Caramac, he find, he thinks there is real kidnapper. There is not. This is the truth. Please do not tell. Do not send me home. I cannot go home. I love my wife. She will do nothing like it again. She does not drink any more. She promises.'

The tears were flowing down her cheeks. She was shaking. The tot began to wail again. He either sensed her distress, or he hadn't bounced that well.

I stepped outside. If I'd been a smoker, I would have lit one. Two, possibly. Her story was believable. I had the evidence of my right hand to know what Betty was capable of. Twenty years of journalism had taught me that there are very few criminal masterminds; that conspiracies are in the crossed eyes of the easily convinced beholder; that most crimes are domestic in origin; that the victim usually knows the perpetrator; that they are mainly committed with a staggering amateurishness; that the great majority are fuelled by drugs or alcohol. Betty's bungled kidnap fitted in with all of this quite nicely. And I wanted to believe her. It would allow me to walk away. I could stamp the file closed, or better still, solved. It didn't particularly matter to me if they got away without punishment. Jack and Tracey now knew to keep a better eye on their son. Marija had been given a scare. Betty was off the drink. Little Jimmy hadn't suffered. They say kids don't remember anything before the age of six. They could have kept him for a couple of months and kicked him up the arse every morning, and he still wouldn't recall it a year down the line. There were three hundred and sixty degrees of resolution. The problem was that it was all a little bit too much like Quincy.

It didn't explain Jack's sudden decision to fire me. Paranoid one day, upbeat the next. It didn't explain Tracey, flirty and ready for action one minute, incommunicado the next. It didn't explain Jack sending in a solicitor to threaten me with legal action, or recruiting Malone Security to warn me off when I'd done little more than ask a few questions and hang around a bit looking gormless.

I patted my pocket and took out the envelope Abagail Pike had given me. One hundred pounds. There was something not quite right about that either. I could see why she would pay a tradesman in cash, but a security company? In the age of internet banking, or failing that, direct debit and standing orders? I'd walked up to the home of one of our leading politicians, and his wife had stuffed cash into my hand without me having to ask for it. Cash meant off the record, off the books, tax free. Marija was off the books, an illegal alien, that meant tax free. Jack had brought me in instead of going to the police; he had paid me with an envelope of cash, off the record, tax free. Jack spent every day of his working life questioning the integrity and honesty of important people. Times were hard, the economy was screwed, everyone was holding on to what they could, but it still didn't feel right for the Pikes and the Caramacs to be paying cash.

For all I knew, Marija was the greatest actress in Macedonia, or the only one. Her story might be true, in so far as she was telling me exactly what had happened with Jimmy, but I was sure there was something more lurking in the background, something whose significance she mightn't even be aware of. I needed more detail, not just about her and Betty, but the Caramacs as well, and for the hell of it, the Pikes.

I was just turning back inside when the first Malone Security Range Rover pulled into the driveway. I say first, because it was swiftly followed by a second and a third. Out of these vehicles six men emerged. They gathered together, and advanced.

Fuckety fuck fuck fuck.

I said, 'You'll be wanting your motor back.'

I removed the keys and tossed them forward. Nobody tried to catch them. They landed on the ground with a pleasant jangle. In their eyes it probably meant that I had just attacked them with a deadly weapon. In response they withdrew expandable batons from within their zip-up jackets, the jackets with Malone on one side of the zip and Security on the other. They then proceeded to expand them.

I said, 'Those are classified as offensive weapons under the Prevention of Crime Act 1953.'

For some reason, even though I was right, it did not deter them.

They advanced. I would have retreated into the house and locked the door against them and they could have laid siege, quite possibly for months; I could have survived on baby food and Calpol. Could have, if the door had not been unceremoniously slammed in my face by Marija, with the tot in her arms. Given the time frame, she would have had to press an alarm button while I was inside talking to her, but unless it was located in the back of the baby's head, I was fairly certain she hadn't. It made more sense that Malone Security had some means of keeping track of their vehicles, and that once Paddy Barr and the cruiser had reported it stolen, it was a simple matter of following the bleep.

'Is it too late to apolo-'

As ever, I was too late with the sorrys. The blows began to rain down on me, and I fell to the ground. Getting a hiding is the same virtually everywhere. Lenny's husband and his mates had adopted a similar approach, possibly because it worked. They beat me, and they beat me, and they beat me. And when their arms were sore, they rested them, and instead kicked me, and kicked me, and kicked me.

When they were finished, they picked me up and threw me into the back of the lead car, although not before they put down a plastic sheet to collect the blood. They were talking at me, but I couldn't hear them. One of them sat beside me and held me upright when I threatened to keel over. My head rested against the window. I blew misty red bubbles on to the glass. We pulled out of the driveway in convoy. Through the red haze, just a few metres along from the gates, arms folded, leaning against her Porsche, stood Abagail Pike.

33.

Someone who sounded a lot like Patricia was saying, 'We should get him to a hospital.'

Someone else who didn't was saying, 'There's no broken bones, and I know how to cure him.'

'You're not a doctor and he's not a ham.'

'I've performed more operations than any thirty surgeons in Ulster combined.'

'On cows.'

'Pigs, lambs, rabbits, three ostriches and a kangaroo. It's still surgery.'

'It's not surgery when you're just cutting them to shreds.'

'There's an art to it, you know.'

At last Patricia's lovely face swam into view and she said, 'Awwww, darling, you awake, how you feeling?'

And I mumbled without anything resembling words coming out.

Another face appeared over her shoulder. 'Hey, there, you okay?' asked Joe the butcher.

I grunted. My mouth was dry as bone, and my nose stuffed with blood.

A third face: Bobby Murray. He just looked at me, shook his head and turned away.

I said, 'Harp . . .'

Patricia smiled and gently set the rim of a bottle of water against my fat lips and tilted; I coughed and spluttered and dribbled.

'There you go, easy now, babe . . .'

I was on a single bed, in a small, neat room. There was a TV in one corner, a two-ring cooker in another. There was a shower, with an open curtain, a small sofa.

'Where . . .?'

'My humble abode,' said Joe.

'I . . . how . . . Trish . . .?'

'Whoever did this to you dumped you outside your office. Lucky Joe was in his shop at the time, came out and got you.'

'Joe? You live . . .?'

'Yep, on the premises, all on me ownio.'

I raised my hand. 'I'm Dan.'

'I know that.' He shook it. It hurt. 'Hope you don't mind, went through your phone and by a process of elimination found your wife's number.'

Patricia loomed over me. 'Who's Lenny?'

'What . . . who?'

'Lenny, there's a number you've been calling repeat-'

'Trish, I need some painkillers, my head . . .'

'I'll get them,' said Joe.

'About twenty calls . . .'

'Trish . . . this isn't . . .'

'I met Lenny,' said Bobby. He was back standing beside her, looking down, unreadable. 'He came to your apartment. You were working on some case, you wouldn't tell me about it.'

I nodded. It hurt. 'Just a case, Trish, just a case . . .'

I pretended to drift away.

Joe came back in with pills. He poured six into my hand.

'Six?' said Trish.

'More,' I said.

I got up on one elbow, wincing, and swallowed them down, two at a time. I lay back down.

Trish said, 'What happened?'

'What always happens?'

'You said something stupid and you got beaten up.' I nodded. It hurt. 'When are you ever going to wise up?'

It was a rhetorical question.

'Malone Security,' said Joe. 'Roared up, tossed you out, sped away. If it wasn't for their nice cars and pretty uniforms, you'd almost think we were back to the bad old days.'

'Have you come across them before?' Trish asked.

'Sure I have. They call round once in a while trying to interest me in their services. They're quite insistent. Then I show them my very large collection of butcher's knives and they reconsider.'

'Insistent in a Jehovah's Witness kind of a way?' Trish asked.

'No,' said Joe. He shook his head at me. 'I've only known you a few days, yet I've seen you with your eye closed over, your hand up like a bap, and now this. You can annoy some of the people some of the time and get away with it, but you seem to be annoying all of the people all of the time, and clearly not getting away with it.' He turned to Trish. 'How do you put up with him?'

'I don't,' she said.

He looked from her to me, and me to her. 'Well,' he said, 'I'm sure you two have things to talk about. Hey, Bobby?' Bobby grunted. 'Have you ever plunged a knife into a dead body?'

Bobby looked puzzled. 'Wuh . . . why?'

'It's not a trick question,' said Joe. 'Come on, I'll show you how it's done.'

He shepherded Bobby towards the door. Bobby went, but not before glancing at Trish and giving her a helpless kind of a shrug.

When they were gone, I said, 'I think you're bonding with him.'

Trish said, 'Shut up, you stupid bastard.'

Then she kissed me on my sore lips.

It's funny how sympathy and concern can turn to sarcasm and misunderstanding in the laboured blink of a swollen eye. She wanted to take me home and nurse me back to health, and I said no, I'd be better off in my own place; I didn't know what kind of a hornets' nest I'd stirred up, and why take the chance of attracting more trouble to her place, particularly when she was supposed to be sheltering Bobby from harm. I was trying to do the right thing, but she took it as a personal slight. We got to bickering, and then some yelling, which only stopped when Joe came back in with Bobby.

Joe said, 'Guess what? This young man has agreed to come in and work as my apprentice. I think he's a natural. Give it to him.' Bobby stepped forward. He handed me a large and bloody steak. 'Perfectly carved. Though if he cuts them that size for my customers, I'll be out of business in a week.'

'That's great,' I said.

'It is,' added Trish.

'It'll mean an early start,' said Joe.

'I can drop him off on the way to work.' She grinned at Bobby. She was halfway to ruffling his hair; he took a step back; she hesitated, and then the moment was gone.

Joe looked at our faces and said, 'So what did you two lovebirds decide?'

'I want to take him to my place,' said Trish.

'I'd rather go home,' I said. 'Safer.'

'He shouldn't be alone,' said Trish. 'But he never listens to anyone but himself.'

'Then he can stay here,' said Joe. 'I can keep an eye on him.'

'No, really,' I began, 'I'll be fine . . . Anyway, you only have the one . . .'

'I'm not suggesting we share a bed, you halfwit. There's another room behind this, perfectly good bed in there. Believe me, you don't want to be moving around for a while. Besides, I've this treatment will help with the bruises, my mum used to swear by it. One part cayenne pepper, five parts Vaseline. I'll light a few candles, get you relaxed, I can rub it on you later.' He left it for fully five seconds before saying: 'You should see your face.'