What You Pay For

Book 0: DI Birch

by Claire Askew

Genres: Suspense; Mystery

Synopsis

Thirteen years ago, DI Helen Birch's little brother Charlie disappeared.

Two days ago, Birch was part of a raid on one of Scotland's most feared criminal organisations.

Yesterday, Charlie came back...

Now Birch has a choice: save her career, or save Charlie?

As she interrogates her brother, we see his story, in a brilliantly tense and clever story about what people will do to survive and the lines they'll cross to protect those they love.

Release date: August 22, 2019

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 352

Sample

Helen Birch watched as the red neon digits on her car’s clock clicked over from 0344 to 0345. Their dim light was the only illumination she had as she felt around for the cardboard cup of coffee she’d brought along, stone cold now, its edges worried by toothmarks.

‘Fifteen minutes,’ she said.

Beside her, DC Amy Kato stirred. They’d come together, Birch picking up a yawning Amy outside the stair door of her Tollcross flat at 3 a.m. The idea was that they’d keep each other company, but they’d mostly sat, fidgeting, in a thick silence.

‘Shit,’ Birch said. ‘Were you asleep?’

‘No.’ Amy twisted in the passenger seat. Birch heard the stab vest she was wearing creak. ‘Um. A little. Sorry, marm.’

Birch smiled. She was amazed DCI McLeod had allowed Amy to come with her in the CID Mondeo: she knew that he frowned on workplace friendships in general, and her friendship with Amy was doubly distasteful to him given their difference in rank. The other DCs and uniforms were packed into riot vans and manning panda cars, stationed in ill-lit backstreets around the set perimeter. Birch imagined them upright, alert, waiting for the go order. DCI McLeod was out there, too: his own dark-coloured, unmarked car parked somewhere on the other side of the harbour.

‘Don’t sweat it,’ she said. ‘Just be ready for the go.’

Birch and Amy had been stationed on the breakwater: a desolate spot far from the main road, beyond the high-rises and away from the lights and moorings of the yacht club. On Amy’s side of the car, the sea wall rose up like a shoulder. Above it, they could see the red pin-pricks on the struts of the Queensferry Crossing. In front of them, the vast darkness of the firth. At the end of the breakwater, a dim green light let boat traffic know the point at which the land ended.

The rest of Birch’s unit were in a riot van, parked round the corner on Hesperus Crossway. Tucked behind the land’s last stack of buildings, those officers couldn’t see what Birch and Amy could. Through the strait in front of them, a steady stream of boats trailed towards the harbour, the tops of their masts illuminated by the red and white lights of fishing vessels. Among the convoy, a handful had lit the beams of their stern lights, or cast a greenish glow across the inky water from their flanks. They were trying not to look uniform: to a passing night-bus driver or graveyard shift worker, these were just fishermen bringing home the night’s catch. On the eastern harbour wall, fishmongers’ vans had lined up. Men would be hanging around there, waiting to offload cargo from the hulls of the little boats.

‘God,’ she said. Her teeth were set on edge. ‘I really hope we’re right about this. There’s a whole lot riding on Glasgow’s informant.’

In the gloom, Amy smirked. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘All looks a bit fishy to me.’

Birch made a stifled snort. ‘Oh don’t. It’s too early for the fish jokes. Especially if this all turns out to be a hiding to nothing.’

Amy was still grinning. ‘On a scale of one to ten,’ she said, ‘how bad can it be?’

Birch closed her eyes.

‘Get it, marm? Scale? Like—’

‘Yes, Kato, I get it.’

The clock ticked over to 0350. The thick silence returned, filling the car like invisible smoke. Stop being such a humourless bitch, Helen, Birch thought. Snap out of the foul temper already. Amy was just trying to lighten the mood. What was this, anyway? Rage over the fact she’d been passed over to head this investigation? No: she didn’t want it, not really. It was just today. It was what today meant.

‘It should’ve been you.’ Amy’s voice still had a smile in it, as if she’d read her DI’s mind, and wanted her to know it.

Birch shrugged. ‘I guess it’s worth praying that it is all a wild-goose chase,’ she replied, trying to ignore what Amy had said. ‘Otherwise who knows what time we’ll all get home.’

‘You don’t think we will, then?’

Birch sipped her cold coffee, feeling the cup’s sponginess against her teeth. ‘Will what?’

‘Bring him in.’ Amy nodded backward, in the direction of the back-up vans, the perimeter. ‘Solomon. Folk seem pretty hopeful.’

‘Sure,’ Birch said. ‘We all want the big prize, right? I do, too, as much as anyone. But I don’t think it’s likely. This is a guy who’s dicked us around for donkey’s years. He’s always been a step ahead. It looks pretty impossible.’

Birch felt, rather than saw, Amy’s raised eyebrow.

‘Well okay,’ she said, remembering her internal pep talk: enough of the attitude, Helen. ‘Nothing’s impossible. But it’s borderline, you know?’

Amy nodded.

‘Not that I’ve been telling anyone that.’ Birch jerked her head, the same way Amy had. ‘It’d be like telling them there’s no Father Christmas.’

They were quiet again. 0353.

‘You’d do it,’ Amy said.

‘What?’

‘You. If you were in charge of this investigation, you’d bring him in. No question.’

Birch smiled. ‘Quit brown-nosing, Kato.’

‘Nope.’ Amy took a chug of her own cold coffee. ‘I mean it. I don’t get why you’re not heading this up. McLeod’s decisions make no sense.’

‘DCI McLeod,’ Birch said, keeping her voice level, ‘is the SO on the scene. And I was just up on a disciplinary. You can’t possibly have forgotten.’

Amy looked away. Amy knew fine well: she had been asked to give evidence as part of the hearing.

‘That made no sense either,’ she said.

Birch arranged her face into the well-shit-happens expression she’d practised in the mirror. ‘Oh, I deserved it,’ she began, but the thought was lopped off by a flash of excitement as her phone buzzed: once, twice. Was it McLeod? Was there a development?

As she scrabbled at her hip and grabbed the phone she felt Amy lean in, wondering the same thing. But no: the name that appeared across her unlocked screen was ‘Anjan C’. Birch flinched the phone out of Amy’s immediate eyeline.

‘What’s the deal?’ Amy said.

Birch glanced at her, then back at the phone as she thumbed in the unlock code. ‘False alarm,’ she said. ‘Non-work text. Stand down, officer.’

She waited until Amy sighed and tipped the coffee cup up over her nose before opening WhatsApp to read the text in full.

Morning. Can’t sleep, making tea. Mind if I use the last of your milk? Then, below: Caught yourselves a mob boss yet?

Birch tried to prevent herself from blushing. She side-eyed Amy, then typed back: No word . . . will tell you when. Help yourself to anything. She looked at the message for a few seconds before adding a reckless x, and hitting send.

‘You didn’t,’ Amy was saying.

Birch shoved the phone back into her pocket. ‘Hmm?’

‘Deserve it,’ Amy said. ‘The disciplinary. It was bullshit. And besides, you were cleared.’

Birch looked down at the steering wheel. She’d tried the tack that Amy was taking: tried it in her own head, late at night when she couldn’t sleep for thinking again and again about the Three Rivers case and what she’d done right, done wrong. She’d really tried for this is bullshit, tried to feel hard done by. But it was true: she’d deserved it, because she’d been stupid, and stupid cops are bad cops. She’d broken all her own rules, too: once upon a time she’d have rolled her eyes at police dramas in which the protagonist threw away the rule book and rode off into the crime scene solo. Who did she think she was?

‘No,’ she said, letting her gaze hang in the middle distance, the steering wheel’s Ford logo swimming, refocusing. ‘It was what needed to happen.’

Something buzzed. At first, Birch thought it was her phone again, and she smiled, imagining Anjan. Maybe he was climbing out of the shower – her shower! – to text and say how impressed he was with the water pressure. Maybe he’d add a kiss back this time. Maybe he’d tell her he’d had a great evening, and could they do it again soon? He’d wanted to stay over in spite of her early start – well, middle of the night start, really, but—

Birch had to snap out of the daydream. The buzz was her radio, and McLeod.

‘Landside units stand by,’ he said. ‘Five minutes till Operation Citrine is go. Marine unit, move to go position. That’s five minutes till go. Over.’

The coastguard and accompanying police patrol boats were anchored, unlit, on the other side of the sea wall from Birch and Amy’s position. As the fishing vessels’ radar passed them, they’d have looked like moored, static craft. Now they were chugging – still without lights – across the harbour mouth in formation. If all went to plan, there’d be no escaping the net of police personnel, by land or by sea.

‘Ready?’ Birch asked.

Amy nodded. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be, marm.’

‘You nervous?’

There was a pause. ‘A little.’

Birch gave a short nod. ‘Good.’ Leaning forward in her seat, she patted herself down to check for kit: clip-on radio, baton, cuffs. The kevlar casing of her vest made a weird, hollow sound. ‘Nervous is good. Keeps you on your toes.’

Amy was checking herself over, too. ‘McLeod said at the briefing we should expect them to be armed. That they’ll have guns.’

Birch could detect a tremor in her colleague’s voice. ‘Most likely some will,’ she said. ‘But just stay focused. We outnumber them, and they’ll see that pretty fast. We’ve got an armed response unit on standby. Plus, they’ve probably all been educated on how stupid an idea it is to shoot a police officer.’

Touch wood, Birch thought. Don’t tempt fate. And then, yet again, Stop it, Helen. It’s all going to be fine.

‘It’ll go like a Swiss watch,’ she added, as much for herself as for Amy.

Quiet again: an unnerving quiet. Birch pictured her uniformed colleagues sitting stiffly in their hidden vehicles, holding one long, collective breath. Some had come through from Glasgow, wouldn’t know the terrain, might not know what name to call if they needed help from a colleague. 0358. Birch imagined she could hear the chug of the marine units, the slap of their wake against the breakwater. 0359. Their informant – the person this whole raid was riding on – was in the wind, vanished. They were acting on blind faith in their Glaswegian colleagues, who seemed to know little themselves and had disclosed barely any of that.

Fish, she thought. These boats are going to be full of fish. There’s going to be no sign of Solomon. We’re all going to be—

The radio crackled.

‘All units go,’ McLeod shouted, making the speaker fizz. ‘This is your go order. Repeat, this is your go order.’

Birch turned the key in the ignition, and the car lit up. The air came alive with sirens. In the harbour mouth, the police boats’ prow floodlights flicked on almost in formation. The harbour became a ring of white light.

Birch gunned the engine and peeled right, away from the sea wall. Her job was to command the unit that would block off one possible escape route: a rough-hewn bay area to one side of the harbour, too shallow for moorings but once used as a slipway. If any of the fishing vessels’ crew decided to try to swim for it, this would be where they’d wash up. She knew she’d been all but benched: this wasn’t exactly the thick of things. But still, adrenalin made her head pound as she drove the short stretch, tyres kicking up grit, Amy bracing one spread palm against the dashboard.

They neared the harbour edge, the boats and, beyond them, the fishmongers’ white vans, now surrounded by panda cars with flashing blues. Men had begun to scatter in all directions, jumping overboard or pelting along the slippery harbourside, flinging cargo into the water.

‘Guess it’s more than just fish after all,’ Birch yelled as the car skidded to a halt in the agreed position. But Amy was already halfway out of the door: it seemed she was eager to show that the nerves she’d felt weren’t going to stop her pitching in.

Outside the car, a cacophony. Birch’s own siren rang in her ears: the many others blaring around the perimeter felt like echoes bouncing back off the buildings and the breakwater. In the prow of his boat, the leader of the marine unit was roaring into a bullhorn. ‘Police! You are surrounded!’ Birch could hear Russian voices: everyone was shouting. She decided she might as well join in.

‘Right, lads,’ she bellowed, as uniforms half jumped, half fell out of the back of the van that had squealed up a few feet away. ‘I want a nice orderly line on this slipway, okay? Close to the waterline as you can. Eyes peeled.’

The officers fanned out, a collective yes marm passing between them.

‘Everyone ready? First one to bring me a bad guy gets a gold star.’

Across the water, Birch could see men being cuffed: pressed against the flanks of vans chest first while their rights were read. The van drivers were easy, though: on the fishing boats, and in the water around them, there was still chaos.

‘Two o’clock!’ one of Birch’s officers yelled.

‘Yep, eyes on him,’ shouted another, along the line.

Birch could see it now herself: a thrash of white water nearing the shore. She jogged along the line. ‘Let’s get some light over here!’ she shouted, and almost as she said it, she saw Amy – on the far end of the formation – had swung round her flashlight to oblige.

In the water were two men, kicking strongly, pushing a wooden crate. The uniformed officer who’d got eyes on them had broken from the line and begun to wade in down the stone slope.

‘Police!’ he yelled, up to his knees in water. More torch-beams swung in his direction. Birch could see the men were white, wearing dark clothing. They were big guys, powerful swimmers. They looked mean.

‘Police!’ the uniform bawled again. ‘Come ashore!’

The men were still in fairly deep, treading water now, sizing up the situation. The uniform moved in further, now up to his waist.

Birch reached for her radio. ‘This is CA38, Birch,’ she said. ‘I’m on the western flank, two suspects and cargo in the water. Requesting marine unit assistance, repeat, requesting marine unit assistance, over.’

The radio crackled.

‘If you don’t get out here,’ the uniform was shouting, ‘I’ll charge you with resisting arrest.’

The other officers dithered.

‘CA38, Birch.’ The radio was loud with cross-channel interference. ‘Repeat, requesting marine unit—’

‘This is McLeod.’ He was panting, she could tell even through the static. ‘No can do right now, Birch. Either hold them there for now or get in and fish them out, over.’

Birch blinked, and came off the channel.

‘Thanks a fucking bunch, sir,’ she muttered. Her team were looking round at her, waiting for her order.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘I trust you’re all good swimmers?’

A couple of the uniforms glanced at each other.

‘Good. Everyone between DC Kato and me, fall back. Keep eyes on the water – where there’s one, there may well be more. The rest of you, it’s time to get wet. I want a V formation . . .’ Birch stretched her arms out to show the vague gist of what she meant, but some of the officers were already wading in. In the torchlight – wavering now, as Amy moved to her new position – the men seemed to have conferred, and were making to swim backward, into the centre of the harbour, dragging their box of tricks with them.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ The uniform already in the water lunged forward, and began swimming towards the pair.

‘In formation, I said!’ Birch yelled, but the other officers were still a fair way behind. Amy was nearest to her now, shining her torch onto the churned water.

‘Kato,’ Birch barked. ‘Who is that?’

Amy turned, and the torchlight flicked away. ‘I believe it’s Malton, marm. PC Jaden Malton.’

Someone in the water yelped, then – a sort of wet, strangled noise. Someone else shouted, ‘Light!’

Amy flicked the torch-beam back up.

PC Malton had reached the two men in the water, but one of them was now wrestling him, holding his face under the surface as the other perp clung on to the box, drifting, a gap opening between them.

‘Shit,’ Birch hissed, and grabbed her radio once again.

‘This is CA38, Birch. I’ve got an officer in difficulty on the western flank, we need that marine unit, sir!’

Nothing. McLeod must have been busy. PC Malton’s legs kicked, his head still pushed under, his swimming colleagues closing in on the wet fight.

‘Does anyone copy?’ Birch cried. ‘I repeat, I have an officer in difficulty—’

Finally, another swimmer reached PC Malton. Amy’s torch wavered, but Birch watched as the newly arrived officer reared back in the water and kicked the perp square in the face. PC Malton surfaced: Birch could hear his grateful first gasp even over the din of the raid.

‘DI Birch,’ the radio said. ‘This is Marine Unit One. I copy, but we’re—’

Birch wasn’t listening. She ran past Amy, down onto the loose shale and into the water. She instantly regretted her plain-clothes choice of thick trackpants, which became lead weights around her legs. The V formation she’d ordered had broken up in the water: PC Malton and the perp who’d held him down were now being pulled to shore, while two other uniforms manhandled the wooden crate, its keeper still trying to stay attached to it. Birch waded in to her waist. The water felt thick and stank of boat fuel. She held out both her arms and PC Malton clawed up at them, falling against her so she staggered. His breath sounded like cloth being torn.

‘Okay, Jaden,’ Birch said. ‘You’re okay. Can you put your feet down for me? Can you stand?’

A few feet away, Malton’s perp was resisting arrest, flailing in five feet of water.

‘Fucksake,’ Birch muttered. Then, to the officers in the fray, ‘Someone get some cuffs on that scumbag, will you, please?’

PC Malton hooked his arms over her shoulders, and steadied himself against her frame. Once he’d found his footing, she realised he was around five feet eleven, the same height as her, but also very young – he could have been twenty-one.

‘Okay, Constable,’ she said, meeting his eye. ‘I suppose that’s one way to do things.’

Malton clearly couldn’t speak: his chest heaved. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw three of her team finally drag the first perp upright and wrestle his hands behind his back. The second, it seemed, had decided to come quietly: he’d surrendered the crate, which was now being carried ashore.

Birch began to wade backward, keeping a hand on Malton’s arm. ‘Mind how you go, son,’ she said, ‘we’ve got all the time in the world.’

It wasn’t true, of course: Birch glanced behind her at the ragged line of officers still on the shore. ‘Kato,’ she yelled, turning her head away from Malton so as not to deafen him. ‘Any more sightings in the water?’

There was a pause.

‘Negative, marm,’ Amy called back. ‘The eastern flank seems to’ve hoovered them up.’

‘Okay. Hold your positions though, eyes open.’

Birch felt first one foot, then the other, splash out of the water.

‘Dry land,’ she said into Malton’s ear. ‘You made it.’ She let go of the young officer and he folded onto the ground, coughing hard.

‘This is CA38, Birch.’ She crouched down next to Malton, one hand on his shoulder as he vomited water. ‘Requesting a medic to our position, repeat, requesting a medic. Western flank, north of Hesperus Broadway, over.’

‘All right, Birch.’ McLeod was back, and sounding irritable. ‘Medic’s on her way. Now do me a favour, would you?’

‘Sir?’

‘Arrest whatever you’ve got there and then get your team over here. It would seem we’ve just nicked Solomon Carradice.’

More than anything, I remember my sister.

I suppose that’s the way when you’re the youngest kid. My sister was nearly five when I was born. She’s probably seven or eight in my earliest memories. We got on okay sometimes, but mostly I remember us fighting. Mostly I remember her doing things I wasn’t allowed to do yet, because I was small. I remember her getting things I wasn’t allowed to have, and hating her for it.

She was always there, though. One day we went to Glasgow. No idea why . . . there must have been some important or official reason for Maw to schlep the two of us all the way on the train, and me still in the buggy. I was pretty wee. I remember we were on Gordon Street, because we’d come out of the train station. I’d laid back in my buggy and watched the glass roof of the station portico sliding by overhead, giving way to this tall red stone building across the street, towering up. You don’t get that red stone in Edinburgh. Anyway, we stopped there, on Gordon Street, and Maw let go of the buggy for a second. There’s a postbox at Central Station, so I always imagine she nipped to post a letter. Or maybe something dropped and she had to pick it up: a toy or a blanket or one of my socks. And my sister was there, of course. She used to walk alongside the buggy with one hand low down on the handle. When we got older Maw would tell people stories about how my sister always wanted to push the buggy: she wanted folk passing by to think that I was her baby, that she was taking care of me. They were designed to embarrass my sister, but I hated those stories, too. They made me realise that she must have seen me the same way as her baby dolls: something to dress up and carry around. Something make-believe.

But next thing, we were flying down Gordon Street, vaguely downhill, towards God knows what, and people were shouting. Women were shouting. I remember the dizzy feeling, watching those tall red buildings blur past overhead, seeing pigeons rattling up between them. As soon as Maw’s back was turned my sister had grabbed both handles of the buggy and run. We went zigzags. We must have crossed two big roads, and she can’t have stopped to look for the traffic because I don’t remember us slowing. I remember hearing Maw behind us belting out both our names and stop and stop her, which she must have yelled at other people as we clattered by. I probably loved it at the time. I probably laughed and squealed as little kids do when they’re zoomed about in the air by their granda or strapped into the baby swings and swung up high. Maw says we got as far as the Royal Exchange Square before someone tackled my sister to the ground. She always claimed to have no memory: of the day, of the act, of being skelpit raw right there by the Royal Exchange with half of Glasgow stopped to watch. I remember it all. My first real memory of anything.

Nella, I called her. That wasn’t her name but it was as close as I could get with my gummy kid-mouth, and it stuck. Maw called her it too. Da was gone before I can remember: long before Glasgow and the buggy and the skelping. Maybe before I ever spoke, so it might be that she was never Nella to him.

Nella the elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus. That’s what Maw and I used to sing to her. When I got a bit older I’d make fart noises as Maw sang the trumpety-trump line, and Nella would swat at me or go off in a huff. We fought about everything and nothing. We shared a room. I used to throw stuff at her over the curtain that Maw had rigged up between our beds. She used to hide my toys in her half and then scream at me for going past the curtain to find them. We nicked each other’s pocket money, such as it was. We bit and scratched. But she was always there. Whatever we did, we did together.

There was one night when she admitted to remembering the buggy incident, or at least she didn’t deny it. We were both at this party and I’d got profoundly stoned and was lying on a sofa – whose sofa? Whose party? It feels like a million years ago. The grass was really good, but I’d overdone it like I always used to. Someone could have come and sawn my legs off and I’m pretty sure I’d have let them. And Nella sat down next to me. She had a coffee mug in her hand, a Star Trek mug. I remember that so clearly: it had a bad screenprint of Quark and Odo from DS9 running all the way round. I remember fixating on it as we talked. I remember saying, NellaNellaNellaNella, over and over – her name running into itself like a weird circular chant – I remember enjoying how it felt to make the sound. And then I said, ‘Why did you try to steal me from Maw that time? In Glasgow?’

They’d made punch at that party. They’d filled the bathtub with as much alcohol as they could find, all mixed together, and then sloshed in carton after carton of orange juice. It was disgusting, strong as rocket fuel. Nella had dipped the coffee mug in and was sipping this bathtub punch with a hard face. I expected her to say, You’re so fucking stoned or It’s fifteen years ago or You know I don’t remember that, but instead her eyes went sort of distant and she was quiet.

‘I wanted to take care of you,’ she said, after a while. ‘I didn’t want to hurt you or anything like that. I wanted a shot at taking care of you. That’s all.’

I was falling asleep by then, she’d waited so long to say it. But she said it: I remember, I heard. She reached her hand out and put it on my head, and weaved her fingers into my hair. I slipped off into sleep then, fast. Out like a light. Out like a thief in the night.

‘DI Birch.’

Birch was dreaming. It was one of those dreams where she knew that it was a dream, but she was going along with it anyway. It was night. She was standing on the Portobello promenade, outside the front gate of her own house. She was looking towards the city – looking along the little terrace of houses that, in the daytime, had neat square gardens with bedding plants and friendly cats. Her terrace was a good place, a place she loved, and she’d longed to live there ever since she was a tiny child. But the dream had changed it. The houses were in darkness. Birch knew, somehow, that no one lived in any of them. She was the only one there.

‘DI Birch.’

There was a storm. The streetlamps along the prom were dimmed, like old gas-lights, and in the tarry sky above, lightning whip-cracked in giant arcs. She felt herself jostled by a hard wind. She could hear the sea – up close by the prom like it got at high tide – but it sounded violent. Beside her, the salt-crusted bars of her garden gate chattered in their fixings.

‘Birch.’

Someone was walking towards her, up the prom. He began as a tiny doll of a figure, and moved slowly, but she knew who he was. As he got closer, she could see the wind yanking his hair around, though his face was indistinct. She realised his coat was tattered, the bottoms of his trousers scuffed, and his feet were bare. He must be cold, she thought. He must be so cold. He was still young: the age he’d been when he’d walked out of her life and vanished, though thirteen years had passed. No, fourteen. Fourteen years ago today: even in the dream, she corrected herself. At last, he reached her. He stopped about four feet away and they stood there, looking at one another, as the sea hissed beyond the railings and ridiculous Hammer Horror lightning opened up the sky.

She opened her mouth to say Charlie, but there was a colossal crash, right beside her head, as though someone behind her had thrown something.

‘Helen!’

Birch flinched awake. DCI McLeod had brought his palm down hard on the desk, where about half an hour ago she’d put her head down – just for a minute, just to rest her eyes. Now he was standing over her: watching as she jolted upright in her chair, aiming for nonchalance and missing by a country mile.

‘Sir.’

It was the first time that night that she’d looked at him properly, and she realised McLeod looked strange. His usual bespoke suit had been replaced by a black turtleneck and dark grey jeans. They looked wrong on him. He’d had his massive stainless-steel watch on throughout the raid though, no doubt a subtle hint as to who the commanding officer was. He just oozed authority, somehow, like background music he hadn’t worked out how to switch off. No matter what had gone down, Birch doubted he’d have been willing to dive into the harbour.

‘Sweet dreams, DI Birch?’

Birch could feel herself turning red. ‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She raised one hand to her cheek to check she hadn’t drooled, or sat up with a Post-it stuck to her face. ‘I just nipped in here, to – um. I mean, I was up at two thirty.’

McLeod made a snort sound. ‘We were all up with the lark this morning, Helen.’

Yeah, all right, she thought. Crossed off the shortlist for Cop of the Year once again, I get it.

McLeod raised an eyebrow, and for a hot, panicked second Birch thought she might have actually spoken out loud.

‘Not getting much sleep at the moment?’

There was the cruel hint of a smile on his face. Oh God. Did he know about Anjan? No, surely – there was no way he could know.

Birch lifted her chin, began to right herself. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary.’ She thought for a half-second and then added, ‘Congratulations, sir. You ran quite the operation.’

It worked. She saw McLeod let go of his annoyance and push out his chest, just a little.

‘Thank you, Helen,’ he said. ‘There was a fine team at work this morning. I take no credit on a personal level.’

Liar, Birch thought, but she said nothing more. She rolled out what she hoped was a genuine-looking smile.

‘Okay.’ He’d lost interest in her nap now.