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He would have taken such feelings as penance, were it not for that moment, that flicker of recognition, that caused the councillor’s grin to lock in fleeting falsehood.

McAvoy came here in the hope of unearthing something to vindicate his instincts. Hoped to find a whiff of something that meant he was not wasting his time. For a moment, here in the heat of tired irritation and embarrassment, he feels he may have found it.

The rain is less furious as McAvoy lets himself out of the doors and into an ankle-deep puddle. He barely pays it any heed. He pulls his phone from his pocket. Calls Roisin.

“Darling,” he says, when she answers on the eighth ring. “I’m on my way home. I’m so sorry.”

They talk for five minutes. Her apologizing. Telling him she understands. Him begging forgiveness for his remoteness. His uselessness. Telling her, excitedly, about his five minutes in the home of Councillor Hepburn, and his suspicions that the man knows more than he is willing to admit. That there is a case here. A real investigation.

He is still talking when his phone beeps, and he tells Roisin he will have to go. He will see her soon.

“Sergeant McAvoy,” he says. “Serious and Organized.”

“Sergeant. This is Assistant Chief Constable Everett. I want you in my office right away. There has been a complaint that you are harassing a senior member of Hull Council.”

The color drains from McAvoy’s face. He closes his eyes.

He can already hear the tears in Roisin’s voice.

•   •   •

THE MAN
in the tan leather jacket is losing his temper. Suzie is no expert in body language, but from the shape of his shoulders and his white-knuckled grip on the counter, she senses an imminent explosion of anger.

“Am I speaking a different language here?”

Suzie, sweating despite her damp clothes and beginning to feel a little feverish, shares his pain.

She looks at her own cashier. Tries her sweetest smile. Hopes her exasperated grin will find a kindred spirit. Gets nothing in response. The lady behind the glass is younger than her, but has the sour face and unmoving expression of a lifelong doctor’s receptionist.

“It was eighteen p,” says Suzie, again. “Eighteen p! That’s how much I was overdrawn by. You charged me for the letter you sent to tell me that, and then charged me for three days of unauthorized overdraft use. I would have cleared the eighteen p, but the charge put me fifteen pounds into the red, and then the extra charges . . .”

She stops. It is the fourth time she has tried to persuade the cashier behind the glass that she is being treated unfairly. She can feel the back of her neck getting hot and prickly. The injustice of it is making her words catch in her throat. Misery sits in her stomach like a snowball.

“It’s my money,” says the man in the leather jacket, and his voice has increased in volume. “You look after it for me. That’s your job.”

The neighboring cashier is equally intractable. “Without a passport or driving license, we can only give you five thousand pounds.”

“But it’s my money!” he shouts.

Both debates have been going on for some time, and the lengthening queue in the bank is watching the two exchanges with a mixture of impatience and interest.

Suzie stands in silence, shaking her head and trying to think of another collection of words that might make the cashier change her mind. She fears that her eyes are on the verge of filling with tears.

“It’s an issue of your security,” says the adjacent cashier.

“The charges are all explained on the website,” says Suzie’s tyrant.

The man in the leather jacket is looking around, as if for an ally who can help explain to him the workings of this insane and alien world. He looks at Suzie. Their eyes meet. He is a handsome enough man, pushing forty, and his clothes are casual but expensive. His face softens a little as he takes in her red face and sodden hair, damp clothes, and watery eyes.

“Can you believe this?”

Suzie shakes her head. Turns to the cashier.

“I’m having a bad time,” she says softly. “It was eighteen p. And now it’s pushing a hundred pounds. Just with charges. Can I give you the eighteen p? Or a token gesture, or something. I can’t get back into credit until payday . . .”

“The charges are all explained on our website.”

Tears come. Unbidden, Suzie realizes her eyes have overflown.

Salt water runs down her powdered cheeks and her shoulders start to shake.

“I’m sorry,” says the woman behind the glass, with the same expression she has worn since Suzie reached the front of the queue and asked for a little leniency.

“I’m on my lunch,” sobs Suzie, as if this might make a difference. “I normally sit in a little garden . . .”

She cries openly into her hand. She hates the pathetic picture she knows she must be presenting. Hates being so feeble. Wants to turn and run, to hide until somebody finds her and promises that it will all be better soon.

She has still not had the courage to turn on her telephone. Has heard nothing more about the man she left to die.

“We own you anyway,” says the man in the leather jacket, turning his attention from his own cashier to Suzie’s. “The taxpayers. You belong to us.”

He looks around at the queue behind him, as if trying to drum up support for a revolution. He gives a sigh as he takes in the collection of damp shoppers and office workers, shivering in wet clothes and waiting for their turn to go and shout impotently at the staff.

“The rules are there on the website.”

Suzie stiffens as the man moves closer. He ducks down to place his face in her line of vision. He is looking into her eyes. It is a caring stare, devoid of malice or threat. He wants to see if she’s okay.

“They won’t listen,” he says to her quietly. “Charges, is it?”

Suzie tries to smile. She feels wretchedly miserable.

“How much to get back in credit?” he asks, leaning in close enough for his words to tickle her wet earlobe and neck.

“Nearly ninety pounds.”

The man gives a nod. He puts a hand in his pocket and takes out a roll of notes. “Take it,” he says, handing her five twenty-pound notes.

“What? No . . . !”

Suzie’s chest constricts. She begins to protest. To tell him that it’s not his problem. That he has problems of his own.

The notes have found their way into her hand. A damp smile has made its way to her face.

“Please,” says the man softly. “Let me.”

“I don’t—”

“I don’t want these bastards taking another penny off anyone. Please.”

Suzie, flustered and unsure, turns to the cashier, who is struggling to keep the grimace off her face.

“Here,” she says, through a face of tears and snot. “I’d like to make a deposit.”

The man does not return to his own cashier. He leans against the counter, and looks at Suzie with amused affection.

He looks her up and down. Likes the view.

“Does that buy your phone number?” he asks.

Suzie freezes. Gives a girlish, embarrassed smile that Simon would have mocked her for.

“I know,” says the man, raising his hands. “It spoils the selfless gesture.”

“I’m not sure . . . ,” she begins.

“Take mine,” he says, and writes a scrawl of digits on the back of a deposit slip. “No pressure.”

Suzie looks up again and finds herself blushing.

“I don’t know if I’ll call,” she says, picking up the number.

“I’ll be hoping,” he says, and turns away.

“Bye,” she says, shocked and embarrassed.

“Bye, Susan,” he says, and is gone.

Suzie stays at the counter for a few seconds, wishing she had somebody to share this odd moment with. She wonders whom she will tell about the handsome man who came to her rescue. Whether she will log on to Facebook and tell her friends. Thinks of pulling out her phone.

Freezes, as paranoia strikes.

Her name. He knew her name!

She turns from the counter and pushes through the crowd, down the half-dozen steps and through the double doors onto Whitefriargate. She looks this way and that, squinting in the rain, trying to make out the shape of the leather-jacketed man.

Cautiously, taking care in her flip-flops on the cobbles, she splashes through a puddle and runs up the street.

“Hey,” she shouts, and finds herself giving a peculiar little laugh at the indignity of the scene. “Hey!”

Up ahead, outside the store where she and Simon had bought the
Twilight
box set and then argued over custody, she spots him. She half falls into his back, clumsily grabbing his shoulder.

He turns. Surprised at first, then pleased.

“How did you know my name?” she asks, breathlessly. “You said, ‘Susan.’”

The man rubs a hand over his face and screws up his eyebrows.

“What?”

“My name. You knew my name.”

He looks around him, almost as if searching for a hidden camera crew. When he finds none, he looks at her and closes one eye as he speaks, as if wincing at the words.

“It’s on your bank card,” he says, gently but confused. “What’s wrong?”

Suzie breathes out, hard. Fresh tears prick her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she says, looking down at the ground.

The man stands there for a moment.

Suzie is a statue. Looking down at wet cobbles and her own soaking, dirty toes.

Then she feels his arms around her.

Her shoulders shake and she weeps against his chest, clinging to a stranger in the pouring rain.

IT IS PUSHING
eleven p.m. when McAvoy opens his front door.

Home
, he thinks gratefully.
Thank you.

He is so tired he can barely lift his feet. Too drained to notice that the rain has stopped or to comment on the brightness of the near-f moon, which hangs like a disk of crumpled parchment in a blue-black, cloudless sky.

Too exhausted to remark upon Roisin’s absence. She is normally here, smiling in the doorway, waiting for him. Waiting to kiss him home and slide herself into his embrace.

“Roisin?”

He finds her in the darkened living room, curled up on the sofa. Finlay is wrapped around her, face-to-face, snoring softly into her open mouth. He is wearing a woolen hat, pulled down over his ears. McAvoy takes it as a sign that his eldest child has grown tired of his sister’s cries.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers, and hopes that it will cover his multitude of sins.

Quietly he heads upstairs, avoiding the creaking steps.

Lilah is lying spread-eagled in his bed, prisoner in a rectangle of pillows. She is healthily pink-faced and her sleep looks a lovely and peaceful thing. He wants to kiss her. To smell her head. To say sorry for not being what she needs. He persuades himself not to wake her. Tiptoes back downstairs.

Roisin is disentangling herself from Fin. She looks up as he appears at the door.

“Hi.” She smiles drowsily. “What time is it?”

“Too late,” says McAvoy, crossing to her. “I’m so sorry.”

He bends down and crushes her in an embrace.

“Aector, easy . . .”

He is holding her too tightly. Lets go. Tips her face upward with his index finger and stares into her eyes. Again. “I’m so sorry.”

Her smile, though tired, is warm and genuine. She kisses him.

He tastes the sleep in her mouth. Tastes the black currant juice she and Fin have shared. The tang of hand-rolled cigarettes.

The last few hours have been torture, made worse by the cold agony of separation.

Everett swallowed his story about wanting to warn Councillor Hepburn about the newspaper investigation. McAvoy had even been commended by the tall, ferrety man for his diplomacy and foresight, and had managed to keep his mouth shut about Simon Appleyard. He had been starting to let himself think he could still make it home in time to bathe the little ones when he had been asked to cast his expert eye over a speech Everett was due to present. It took hours. McAvoy has many times rued the day he first put together an expenditure report for a committee briefing. It had been coherent, simple to follow, and correctly spelled. In Everett’s eyes, it had marked him out as a borderline genius and the go-to guy for any job that required somebody who doesn’t move his lips when he reads.

“How was it?” Roisin asks quietly, leading him into the kitchen so as not to wake Fin. “You a naughty boy?”

McAvoy manages a little laugh. “I think Hepburn has friends in high places,” he says.

“Let’s hope they’re going to jump,” she replies, setting to work making him a sandwich with fresh bread and homemade jam.

“I can’t have been out of there thirty seconds before he made a call,” he says, taking a swig of the glass of milk she hands him. “He was okay when I was there.”

“Arsehole.”

She hands him his sandwich. Watches him take a bite. Seems pleased with his grunt of appreciation.

McAvoy notes she is wearing the same clothes she had on this morning.

“I could bathe you,” he says through his dinner. “Candles. Wash your hair. Shave your legs. Paint your nails.”

Roisin grins. “Sounds lovely,” she says. “But let’s just go to bed. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

McAvoy wonders if he has the strength to keep pace with whatever surprise she has planned. He is about to suggest they just hold each other when she gives a bright smile. “Wait here,” she says, and runs from the kitchen.

Puzzled, McAvoy finishes his sandwich. Drains his drink. Takes a chocolate biscuit from the tin by the microwave and polishes it off in a bite.

Like a deflating bouncy castle, he folds himself into the kitchen chair and drops his head to the table. He closes his eyes. Treats himself to a moment devoid of thought.

It hits him then. Just how reckless he has been. How disloyal and vain. He has been pursuing proof of his own instincts. He has been trying to vindicate a feeling. While he has been trying to prove that he can sense a crime the same way his father can smell the nearness of snow, a real investigation has gone tits up, and the only colleague who truly believes in him has been attacked by dogs.

Simon Appleyard.

He decides it’s time to make the case more official. He will approach one of the detective superintendents in regular CID tomorrow. Tell him there is a case to be looked into. Take the withering looks and jaded sighs and simply insist that the investigation is carried out, and properly.

“Don’t be cross.”

Roisin is standing in the doorway. She is smiling and has changed into a silkier nightdress. Her hair is piled high on top of her head, exposing her dark, scented neck.

McAvoy blinks a few times, muzzy-headed. He smiles as he takes her in.

She holds out her hands.

On her left palm is a mobile phone.

“You got him one, did you . . . ?” begins McAvoy, then stops, his smile freezing, as a picture surfaces in his addled memory.

“I’m sorry I was so mean,” she says, and walks toward him, waiting for her hug.

McAvoy’s mouth falls open and the color bleeds from his face.

His wife is holding an unfamiliar mobile phone.

He doesn’t know whether it is instinct, or simply the hopeful, helpful look on his wife’s face, but he knows at once it belongs to Councillor Hepburn.

•   •   •

“THAT’S HIM,”
says Suzie, pointing through the railings. “Trevor, say hello.”

Beside her, in the dark, she can hear Anthony smiling. It is an odd feeling. She can sense him staring. Grinning at the side of her face. He has been looking at her with affectionate bemusement much of the evening, and now appears to be enjoying the note of sleepy drunkenness that has entered her voice.

“That’s where I sit,” she adds, pointing at the bench in the courtyard garden. “Every day. Me and Trevor, setting the world to rights. I do most of the talking but he’s a great listener.”

Anthony scratches his stubbly chin and gives her an encouraging smile.

“He’s a lovely tree,” he says, and then has to stifle a little grin. He has never really imagined having to use such a phrase, and wonders what his mates would think of this strange, colorful girl. He finds himself hoping they will find out.

Their date has gone relatively well. Suzie called him from the work phone midafternoon to apologize for being weird and to reassure him that she wasn’t mental. He had laughed and insisted she could only make it up to him if she met him for a drink.

It is now just gone eleven, and they have the Old Town to themselves. The endless rain seems to have swept the city clean, and there are no raised voices or passing cars to break the perfect silence that exists here in this darkened pocket of Hull.

Suzie is wearing a long blue dress onto which she has embroidered a large felt heron. She is wearing a beret and her earrings are owls in cages. It took her a long time to get ready. She was excited and scared, and wished she had somebody standing behind her telling her she looked nice, would have a good time, and that there was very little chance of having to jump out of the way of a speeding four-by-four while mid-fuck.

The alcohol in her system coupled with the bracing night air is making her feel teary and tired. She is overemotional. Confused. She has talked endlessly. Managed to keep the conversation away from one-night stands and casual sex without really knowing why. She wonders if she is ashamed. Or simply cautious about driving away this nice man by revealing who and what she really is.

She had been pleased he wanted to meet Trevor.

“I tried to persuade myself he was Simon,” she says suddenly. “But he couldn’t be, could he? Trevor’s been here for years. Simon hasn’t been dead long. What do you think? Could it have sucked up his soul?”

As she asks the question, she leans her forehead on the damp brick. She closes her eyes. She has drunk too much, eaten nothing, and feels truly intoxicated on the newness of this evening. She has enjoyed talking. Letting her mouth run away. Unburdening herself. She feels somehow free tonight. Anthony is nice. He seems to find her interesting.

Anthony puts an arm around her shoulders and gently pulls her back from the wall. He bends down a little to better look into her eyes.

“I’m sure he’s happy, wherever he is.”

Anthony has not followed her stories perfectly. Suzie is not the most linear of narrators. He understands that her best friend died some months ago and that, since then, she has felt isolated and alone. He is not sure how to ask more without prying, or what he would do with the answers.

“Do you think?”

He nods as solemnly as he can.

“You’re nice.”

She wonders if this is what dates are usually like. Her life has not been like this. She was with her first boyfriend from childhood, and segued into promiscuity at the relationship’s end. She has never been romanced. Tonight, sharing a couple of bottles of wine in the attractive Russian vodka bar at the bottom of Whitefriargate, has felt pleasantly bizarre. She feels more nervous, here and now, than during her countless trips to sex clubs. In that environment, she has never found herself timid or unsure. Each patron came with one goal in mind.

Here, on a regular date, with a nice man who wants to know more about her, she feels twitchy and confused. She doesn’t understand what he wants.

“I’m nice?” he asks, pretending to be offended. “Just what every man wants to hear.”

Suzie smiles. She is feeling tired. “Nice in good ways, I mean. You wanted to see my tree . . .”

“It’s a grand tree.”

“He.”

“He’s a grand tree.”

Drunkenly, impulsively, she leans forward and kisses him. She catches him just below the lips, and presses too hard, hurting both of their faces.

“I’m sorry,” she says as she pulls back.

“Don’t be,” he replies, laughing and rubbing his lips.

They look at each other, awkwardly, for a moment. Anthony is thirty-nine years old and, up close, it is clear he shaves his head because he is balding anyway. He is wearing the same tan leather jacket he had on in the bank, and smells faintly of some kind of aftershave balm. He is an attractive man, and had looked embarrassed while telling her that he makes his living hiring out play equipment for children’s parties, and renting out mobile discos. He has two children from a failed marriage, and lives alone in an apartment on Victoria Dock. They are walking distance from his home.

“I’m sorry I’ve prattled on,” says Suzie, suddenly unsure what to say next.

“I like the way you talk. It’s soothing.”

Suzie looks at him again and wonders what to do. If this were a club night, she would simply take him by the hand and lead him to a private room. She is willing to have sex with him. But this feels different. She would quite like to kiss him, too. Wants to know how it would feel to have his arms around her and her head on his chest.

“I have more wine at home,” he says with a slight smile. “It’s not far . . .”

Suzie looks down at her feet. She is wearing her flip-flops and is standing in a puddle. It feels nice. If she wriggles her toes, she can feel grit on the soles of her feet.

The sensation feels familiar.

She is suddenly back on the rest stop at Coniston. She is being fucked over the bonnet of a car by a stranger, while somebody slams his foot down on the accelerator . . .

She is at the sex club. She is on the floor; one man inside her, three more waiting their turn. Simon, leaning against the wall with a rolled-up cigarette, talking to a handsome man with gray hair and a flamboyant shirt, open to the waist.

She is crying into her phone, unable to hear Simon’s auntie’s words of condolence as she tries to digest the news that her best friend is dead and had never trusted her enough to share his pain . . .

Suzie flops back against the wall. Her eyes fill with tears. She does not know what she wants or who to be. She just knows she misses her friend and that her life has felt empty and lonely ever since he hanged himself in his kitchen.

“Nobody understands,” she murmurs.

She needs to feel alive. She needs to close her heart and open her legs. She does not need love, she tells herself. Does not need to be held, or kissed, or praised, or romanced. She needs to take her pleasures and please those who want her, and she needs to close herself down to all the anguish that threatens to spill in and out of her if not controlled.

“Suzie?”

“I’m sorry,” she says, with her eyes closed. “I’m not ready for a relationship.”

Anthony’s face flashes with confusion. “I didn’t think I was offering one,” he says, and when he realizes how harsh that sounds, adds, “I just offered a drink.”

Suzie cannot really hear his words. The blood is rushing in her head, and she is feeling dizzy. Sick, suddenly. Her whole sense of self has become a finger painting; all intermingled swirls of contradiction and insecurity.