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Australia. He's looked at some clips on YouTube and has not come away with any feeling as to why anyone could get excited enough about it to get a club motto tattooed on their leg. An Australian thing, clearly.
    Harris has discovered some potentially useful stuff. St Kilda is a seaside suburb in Melbourne, the support for Aussie Rules being particularly virulent in that part ofthe country. That helps narrow things down a little but, as Ronnie Rimmer, another of the detective constables in Keane's syndicate, points out, it only narrows it down to the male population of Australia.
    'And there's nothing to guarantee he's an Aussie,' says Em Harris. 'Could be an immigrant wanting to fit in? A South African? English?'
    Keane shakes his head. 'An Englishman wouldn't get a tat like that. I just know it.'
    Harris looks unsure, but Keane knows he's right.
    'We need to talk to an Australian,' he says to no-one in particular.
    At the morning briefing, Keane and Harris, while being clear to the team that they are to keep an open mind, express the view – one shared by everyone in the room – that this is a drug case. It isn't a giant leap of intellect to make the assumption and the officers greet the notion with well-worn sarcasm.
    Keane still feels it's worth going through the reasons why. The level of violence used, the logistics involved in transportation, in bedding the pole in the sand, all point one way. This case isn't a domestic, or a crime of passion, or something that has been covered up. It is cold and it is public.
    'Whoever did this was making a point,' Keane says.
    'Like the Barry Haines hit,' puts in DC Rose. He's referring to the recent lunchtime assassination of one of the city's biggest drug barons outside a gym in Speke. The word is, so far unproved, that an East European hit man was hired. After the hit he melted back into his homeland without a trace.
    Keane acknowledges Rose's contribution. 'Perhaps, but this is at another level. Haines was all business. This has alevel of sadism we haven't come across before. Someone is upping the ante.'
    'Could there be a Colombian connection? It's got that Faraway Place feeling. Sort of Scarface, like.' The bass voice of DC Scott Corner booms out from somewhere up near the ceiling. Corner is the tallest in the MIT team. The 'Faraway Place' was the term used by an infamous Liverpool dealer to refer to Colombia. Fond of using nicknames, the 'Flat Place' had been Amsterdam. Corner is pointlessly using the term to show off and Harris chops him down.
    'The old Australia-Colombia connection, eh? I think you're looking in the wrong direction, Scott.'
    A few of the team suppress smiles. 'Tim-
ber
,' says someone with a smirk. Scott Corner is a decent enough copper but prone to bouts of pomposity. It's good to see him cut down to size now and again. Corner flushes and looks at his toecaps.
    Keane has already moved on.
    'It's one of the big boys. I can feel it. This message is being sent to someone about a deal currently in progress – why go to all the trouble otherwise? If it's a new outfit, some thrusting young Turk, I'll be staggered. It's the usual suspects.'
    Keane begins counting them off on his fingers. Boyd. The Norris Greens. Kite. Azwallah. 'Maybe the Mancs taking their beef to an away ground, although my feeling is that that's the least likely prognosis.'
    There are nods from the team. They all know this is local. It's not Manchester, not unless there's been a sudden acceleration of the cross-city rivalry; something that can be effectively discounted. Manchester and Liverpool are less than forty miles apart but from the drug trade pointof view it might as well be four hundred. Trade is brisker between Liverpool and Amsterdam, between Liverpool and Spain, between Liverpool and half a dozen other markets than it is with Manchester. The vicious local turf wars are just that: local. Everyone at the MIT meeting suspects it's very likely to be one of the three or four really big