'And it is my department, but I'm not on it,' said Hood.

'But you know.'

'Of course I do.'

'Sharing is caring.'

'What's in it for me?'

I smiled at Maxi. 'The boy's learning,' he said.

'Well then, I'll have to make it worth his while. What would you say to, say, half a German biscuit?'

I indicated the plate. I turned it seductively. Hood studied the biscuit. Then me. He glanced at Maxi, who gave a non-committal shrug.

'The whole biscuit,' said Hood.

I faked a sharp intake of breath.

'And playing hardball,' I said.

'Sweet tooth,' said Hood.

I gave it some more contemplation before pushing the plate closer to him.

'Deal,' I said.

He made no attempt to pick up the biscuit. I suspected that it was in fact a symbolic biscuit. Instead he swept one hand across the table, pushing crumbs over the edge into his other hand, which he then didn't quite know what to do with. He began to rub them between his palms. He may have been trying to reduce them to the size of subatomic particles, but he only succeeded in creating a worse mess than the one he'd been trying to clear up in the first place. Eventually he scraped the residue on to the floor, cleared his throat and said: 'Well, we picked up the Millers first thing this morning, and if Jack Caramac had bothered to do any research then he'd know that. But they'll be out by this afternoon. It's not likely they set the fire themselves, is it? Someone will have seen who actually did it, and if they cared to tell us then maybe we could link it back, but we're not holding our breath.'

'She had security cameras. If they poured petrol through the front door, then they must be on tape?'

'Yeah, you would think that. Just a couple of problems there. One, cameras melt under extreme heat. Two, you might think that maybe before they melted, some of that footage was transmitted elsewhere first? Well, for that to happen, we would have been needing the cameras to work in the first place. It's the same everywhere, cameras and burglar alarms on the outside of a house, most of them are just there for show. Cheap shit that fools no one. As for the neighbours, well they're all suddenly afflicted with blindness. And our regular cast of weasels, snitches and gossips are keeping it well zipped. So we have nothing yet. Maybe we'll get there, maybe we won't. That's about it, for now. But early days. Unless, of course, you have something to contribute, you being about the last person to see her alive.'

He raised a speculative eyebrow.

'What's in it for me?' I asked.

Hood smiled knowingly. He pushed the German biscuit back across the table to me.

I studied it. After a while I picked it up. I licked it. Then I put it down on the plate and pushed it back to him.

'You think I'm going to risk my hard-won reputation for that? Wise the scone, wee lad.'

I got up, pulled on my jacket, and walked out of the cafe. Even as the door was closing, I could hear Maxi laughing.

14.

I parked about thirty metres beyond Comanche Station. I watched McDowell and Hood saunter back up Snugville Street and into their work. They were a mismatched couple he the burly uniformed copper who took no prisoners and inspired equal amounts of respect and fear in the local community, and he the plain-clothed, clean-cut young detective fresh on the job but whose mild accent suggested that working-class west Belfast wasn't his natural environment. I'd hung out with enough police in my time to know that there were pretty strict demarcation lines between uniformed and plain clothes, between beat cops and CID. Hanging out socially was virtually unknown. Of course, we weren't exactly social, and they were using me as much as I was using them, but still, there was something odd about their match-up. I suspected that Maxi had spotted Hood struggling and had decided to take him under his wing. Not so much his protege as the runt of the litter.

I sat there for a long time. Nobody was actually blaming me for anything, but I still felt responsible. Everything in life has a knock-on effect. If a butterfly beats its wings, and all that cack. You can't go back to the butterfly and pull its wings off for daring to beat them in the first place. I could have just driven away, gone back to my office and waited for the next case to come through the door, or, more probably, retired to the Bob Shaw to contemplate love and life and lust. But I didn't. I sat on, The Clash on the iPod, watching Comanche Station, debating what to do. Maxi was right, I was already in, and all I was really waiting for was someone or something to drag me even further down a dark road.

Ahead of me, outside the entrance to the station, where there might once have been concrete barrels to deter car-bombers getting easy parking, where there might once have been huge security grilles and armed cops keeping watch out of security towers, but which was now open-plan and carefree, half a dozen men in various denims and tracksuits were gathered, smoking and yakking and waiting.

I glanced at my phone. It was three fifteen. I'd been sitting there for two hours. I'd left a message for Boogie Wilson not long after I'd heard about Jean, but as yet, no response. I tried the number he'd given me again, but it went to voicemail.

I switched off the music and phoned Patricia.

I said, 'When you pass a certain age, you can't sit in a car all day without having to pee about six times. I've a Diet Coke bottle I could do it in, but what if I want a number two? You never see that in the frickin' movies, do you?'

She said, 'What do you want? I'm at work.'

'Just wondering how you were.'

'I'm fine. What do you really want?'

'Can't I phone you for a pleasant chat? Has it really come to this?'

'Dan, I'm not here to entertain you when you're bored.'

'Who says I'm bored? And why not?'

There was a long silence.

Eventually I said, 'It's very quiet. Are you sure you're at work?'

'Yes.'

'Can you prove it?'

'Dan, will you stop it?'

'So you can't prove it?'

'Dan, for fuck-'

'You're getting very defensive. Where are you really?'

'I'm in work, Dan. Swear to God. Who do I share an office with?'

'Uhm. Mindy?'

'Cindy. Now listen carefully. Cindy, will you assure Dan that I'm in work and not in bed with my lover?'

A woman's voice, slightly removed, said, 'Dan, this is Cindy. Trish is right here with me in work and not in bed with her lover. Today, anyway.'

Patricia giggled. So did Cindy.

'Proves nothing,' I said. 'Especially if Cindy is your lover.'

'That's right, Dan, now I swing both ways. Protestant and Catholic.'

I sighed.

She sighed.

Four more men sauntered past my car and approached the others in front of the station. It was an al fresco meeting of the Miller Support Group. The brothers were still inside being lightly grilled.

She said, 'What is it, Dan?'

'I got fired. By Jack.'

'What'd you do wrong?'

'I didn't do anything wrong, but I like that it's your natural assumption.'

'It's the voice of experience.'

'Well on this occasion I was fired because Jack reckons he got the threat thing all wrong and there was never actually a problem.'

'Dan, that doesn't sound like you were fired. That sounds like he changed his mind, like he's entitled to do. Did he pay you?'

'Yes, I suppose.'

'So, what's your problem?'

'I don't know.'

'You probably do.'

'It's the whole Jean Murray thing. You know.'

'I don't know. What are you talking about? What did you do to her?'

'I . . . didn't . . . Trish, you have heard the news?'

'What news?'

'I thought you listened to Jack's show?'

'Yes, sometimes, but I have a job as well, unlike certain people I could mention. Now what's wrong with her apart from being annoying?'

'Trish she's dead.'

'Fuck off! I mean seriously dead?'

'No, Trish, she's dead in a somewhat comic way. Yes. Christ.'

'Oh, Dan, I'm sorry, I thought you were . . . Dan, I really hadn't heard. What happened?'

'A fire. Petrol poured through the letter box.'

'That's terrible. Horrible. There was a son . . .?'

'He's disappeared.'

We were quiet.

'What, Dan?'

She was good at reading the silences.

I said, 'The thing is, I think it might be my fault.'

'No, Dan. Don't be daft. It's the fault of whoever poured petrol into her home and set fire to it.'

'But I-'

'You're not responsible, Dan. I know you. You're always on the side of the good guys. Invariably you make matters worse before they get better, but that just goes with the territory. You went out there to bat for her, and it's not your fault if someone takes the bat off you and beats her to death with it. I mean . . . you know what I mean. You can't be faulted for having your heart in the right place and for trying to fix things when everyone else stands by doing nothing.'

'That almost sounds like a compliment.'

'Yeah, well.'

'Does that mean there's the possibility of sex?'

A pause, and then, almost whispering, she said: 'Wanker,' and hung up.

She was not, I feared, a million miles from the truth.

I switched the music back on and returned my attention to the station. The iPod shuffle brought me to 'Police and Thieves'.

Twenty minutes later, a cheer went up, and what had now become a baker's dozen crowded forward to meet two men emerging from the station. One burly, in a smart suit Windy. One stick-thin, in T-shirt and baggy shorts Rab. I already had slightly blurry Google photos of them on my iPhone. The head-and-shoulders shots emphasised their similarities; the reality encouraged the thought that they were brothers from a different mother. They were grinning and high-fiving. Their followers punched the air and sang, 'No, no, no surrender!'

They began to move en masse up the middle of the road in my direction. No need for transport home; this was their patch, their kingdom. I already had the window down and my elbow out. The temptation was to wind one up and the other in. There was always one idiot at the safari park who thought he was perfectly safe. But there was really no reason to be afraid. I was just a civilian in a nice car, no reason why they should pay any attention to me other than the PEDOFIAL scratched into the side they were approaching on. Even in my pomp, in my big-mouth days, and plastered, I wouldn't have considered getting out of the car and confronting them about Jean Murray.

Walk on by.

They passed, singing still. One, at the back, thumped his fist into the side panel of my car, and I jumped, but he was only beating out the rhythm. He did it with the next car, and the next. Then their chants were drowned out by the roar of a motorcycle coming up the street behind them. They turned defiantly to stop its progress, and only then saw the pillion passenger lean around the driver and raise something, and the judder of automatic gunfire rang out, spraying the Miller boys and their flock.