suddenly loath to do so. They had offered him unexpected support at a time when his career could have been destroyed.
Faraday was clearly disappointed that this was all he could offer, but was forced to accept the meagre information. Renfield signed off wondering how long he could hide the truth.
As the sergeant sat on the corner of Delaney’s bed in the gathering gloom, he thought about his hopeless situation. If he lied to Faraday, he would be exposed when the PCU failed to deliver. If he told the truth, news of his secret disclosures would soon reach the unit. If he asked Longbright on a date and she discovered that he was ratting on his colleagues behind her back, she would never talk to him again.
He had always wanted to do the right thing, but how many times had it placed him in a spot like this? It was the wayward guys who made friends, the womanizers, the hard drinkers, the ones who bent the law around themselves. The officers at his old station had nicknamed him Captain Bringdown because of his determination to play by the rules. The PCU had merely made a harmless literary joke out of his name before accepting him for who he was. Yes, he wanted to do the right thing, but perhaps this time the right thing was something different.
¦
Meanwhile, DS Longbright found herself opposite the great letters sculpted in white concrete that spelled out the team named ‘Arsenal’. The new football grounds filled the skyline of the street like a great spaceship. Opposite, the remaining rows of shabby Victorian terraces stretched away uphill, from Drayton Park toward the horrors of North London’s crack-addled Blackstock Road.
Longbright checked the ID card, but spotted the builders’ outlet before needing to search for street numbers. She could hardly have missed it; picked out in the Gunners’ shades of red and white, K&B Decorating stood in homage to the team grounds that had existed in the area since 1913. A muscular boy with strong Grecian features was carrying in a delivery of planks and dropping them noisily inside the store. The ground floor was a confusion of sawdust and shouting.
“It’s funny,” the Greek boy told her. “Terry ain’t been in for more than a week, ‘as ‘e? Nobody knows where he is.”
“Can you give me an exact day when you last saw him?”
“Monday before last, something like that. It’ll be on his work sheet.”
“Didn’t any of you think to talk to the police?” she asked, already knowing the answer.
“The police?” He almost laughed in her face. “Listen, love, the blokes here go a bit mad every now and again, then come back and pick up where they left off and nobody mentions it. Not worth going to the police about.”
“They get paid by the number of days they do?”
“Yeah, so if they don’t come in, it’s up to them, innit.”
“Anyone been around to Delaney’s flat to check on him?”
“Terry don’t like people going round there. His missus kicked him out of the house and I think he’s a bit ashamed of the place he’s renting. I told him he wouldn’t get back on his feet if he kept taking time off.”
“So he’s done it before. Has he been here long?”
“About four years. He had a couple of days off the last week he was here. Is he in trouble or what?”
“You could say that. I need to know everything you know about him. If you can’t remember right now, that’s fine, call me first thing tomorrow morning.” Longbright gave him one of the cards Bryant had printed up for everyone at Mornington Crescent, an odd little art deco number in black and silver that looked more like a calling card for an antiques store. She had crossed out the old address and hand-written the new one.
“He’s not been hurt, has he?”
“Why, you think he’s done something to deserve it?”
“Terry? You’re joking.” The young man called over his shoulder. “Oi, Jess, tell this lady what Terry’s like.”
“One of the nicest blokes I’ve ever met,” replied Jess. “If he was a bird I’d marry him.” They all laughed.
“Keeps his nose clean, does he?” asked Longbright. “Stays out of trouble?”
“Honest as the day is long. Always helping other people. That’s Terry’s trouble, if anything. Does charity work in his spare time. One of the best.” It seemed that everyone in the shop agreed with that sentiment.
“What did he do here?”
“Painting, decorating, some building work, welding, a bit of demolition.”
“Do you have a list of his most recent jobs?”
“They’ll be in the book,” said Jess. “Come with me.”
¦
Dan Banbury was in many ways the PCU’s least likely member, in that there seemed to be nothing wrong with him. He was the married one who lived with a loving wife and a well-adjusted ten-year-old son in the suburbs of South London. He was the unit’s voice of common sense, and had been selected for precisely this reason. However, he possessed a skill that singled him out as unusual: He had an almost preternatural ability to understand what had happened in a vacated room. He followed standard procedures, establishing a three-dimensional grid pattern at a crime scene to mark off prints and collect fibres for analysis, but above this he had an understanding of the way in which frightened humans confronted one another. He saw the shape of their fears and passions, the psychology of their actions, the way in which they translated their emotions into physical movement. The ghosts of violence were visible to him.
The extraordinary thing was that, until being asked to join the PCU, he had been entirely unconscious of this sensitivity. Bryant had found such a skill present in only a handful of forensic experts, and had campaigned for Banbury’s inclusion in the unit. He needed people who saw more deeply than those around them.
When Banbury entered Delaney’s flat, he quickly recognised four people: Terry Delaney, his girlfriend, his daughter and a stranger. Terry was the most noticeable. Signs of his occupancy were everywhere, from the newspaper he had folded back to read over breakfast, to the whiskers rinsed from his razor and imperfectly cleaned from the sink, to the toothpaste that had dried on his brush. The bed had been occupied by one, but there were magazines, titles that would be read by a woman in her mid-twenties, thrown onto the bedside table beside a half- emptied tub of makeup remover and a brush containing long hairs. She was a dyed blonde, untidy, and her habits had annoyed Terry. He kept his territory tidy and separate. The little girl had slept on the couch in the neutral zone of the lounge. A single duvet was stored beneath it, together with her pyjamas, pink slippers, a jewelled hair clip.
But it was the stranger who interested Banbury most. Judging by the faint oily striation on the front door lock he had first tried to use a simple burglar’s tool to gain entrance, but had been defeated by the London bolt set in place on the inside of the door. He had gone down the hall and climbed out of the window, reaching around to the apartment’s bathroom casement. The carpet tiles at the end of the hall were rarely walked on, but the pile was slightly flattened at their edge, as if someone had reached out on tiptoe.
The conversion of the house into flats had placed the bathroom sill in a shaded corner behind a tree, and had left the second floor vulnerable. The window was awkward to access, but easy to open if you recognised the type of catch. This had been no ordinary burglar. He had not been looking to steal a CD player or a television. Anything heavy or awkwardly shaped would have proven difficult to manhandle across the building’s exterior. This thief was after something that he could pocket. He had ransacked the place without bothering to put anything back, but had not been able to avoid precision. He wanted Delaney to know that someone smart was onto him.
But then the householder had unexpectedly returned. He had unlocked the door from the hall, stepped inside, let the door swing shut behind him and stopped, confronted by his dismantled apartment.
And in the next room, the stranger had stopped, too. His search had suddenly ceased at this point. It had not been a good idea to wear workman’s boots because they had steel inlays, and were so heavy that they were easily discernible from any other marks on the carpet. Some criminals kept a specific pair of shoes to burgle in. Banbury would have liked to be able to access FIT, the Footwear Intelligence Technology system that catalogued over 14,000 images of shoe print types. He crouched on the floor and looked for pattern, wear, size and damage features, but could not see enough detail with his naked eye.
The prints led to behind the door, where the intruder must have waited – they were heavier here – before
