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a reliable second-hand banger for sale do you?’
    ‘Not off hand, guv, but I’ll keep my eyes open,’ he said obligingly.
    Hillary thanked him as they set off for the car park, where it turned out that Jimmy Jessop owned a dark green five-year-old neat hatchback, which he drove with casual but impressive skill.
    ‘Something about the way you walk and talk reminds me of the military, Jimmy,’ she said as they headed out onto the main road.
    ‘Yes, guv. I joined the army when I was twenty, and then got turfed out when I was thirty-five. They like their grunts young and fit. I joined the police force straight away. Left when I was sixty.’
    Hillary nodded. ‘Married?’
    ‘Was, guv. The wife died a few years ago.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    Jimmy Jessop shrugged. ‘That’s life, I suppose. Anyway, after retiring with all these plans – me and the missus were going to go on a cruise, get an allotment, you know, all that sort of thing.’ He sighed and touched his brakes as a prat in a Mazda cut him up at the traffic lights. ‘I suddenly found myself on my own in a nice little flat out by the canal, with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs all day long. Turns out I can’t grow a cabbage to save my life, so I gave up the allotment, and when I saw CRT advertising for us old codgers, I jumped at the chance.’
    ‘Regret it?’
    ‘Not so far, guv,’ Jimmy said cautiously and Hillary grinned. As she’d suspected, he was a man after her own heart.
    In the pub, Hillary began to pump him gently for information about Pickles and Tyrell and – even more delicately – about Crayle.
    ‘Sam’s going to be all right, guv, I reckon,’ Jimmy said, over his ploughman’s lunch. ‘Bright lad, a bit green still, but he’s got enough stuffing in him to make a go of it. The little madam’s another matter. She’s one of these butterfly types, must have had a dozen jobs since leaving school and can’t stick at any of them.’
    Hillary grinned. ‘Not a Vivienne fan then, hmm? I thought those big brown eyes of hers would melt butter at fifty paces.’
    Jimmy Jessop grinned and bit into a lump of cheddar. ‘I dare say they could at that. But she’s been wasting her time trying to melt the super and not having much luck, which has come as a bit of a nasty shock for her. Still, better that than her trying it on with Sam. She’d have that lanky loon in a puddle at her feet before you could spit.’
    Hillary nodded. ‘What’s Crayle like to work for?’ she asked neutrally, and trying not to feel too pleased at the fact that Steven Crayle, unlike most men, seemed able to resist temptation when it was flaunted under his nose.
    Jimmy Jessop leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his half a shandy. ‘Clever, I reckon. And ambitious, of course, that goes without saying. But he knows what he’s doing. In spite of his looks, he’s been a decent enough thief-taker in his time. Divorced now for a few years, with a couple of kids, nearly fully grown. He’s straight with you, I’ll say that for him, but I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side. All in all, I’ve worked for worse.’
    Hillary snorted. ‘Tell me about it.’
    Jimmy Jessop said nothing. He knew that she and a certain superintendent had crossed swords in the past, with the Super in question now licking his wounds up in Hull, and his career prospects in tatters.
    He looked at her over his drink and thought that here was another one that he wouldn’t want to cross either. Not that she wasn’t a totally different kettle of fish from Crayle. Steven Crayle would make a great muckety-muck one day, but give him a copper like Hillary Greene any day. He was still looking forward to working with her, and the more he got to know her, the more relaxed he felt.
    ‘So, what case has he given us?’ Jessop asked, picking up a cherry tomato with nicotine-stained fingers and munching it thoughtfully.
    ‘Anne McRae. I’ll let you have the file when we get back – you can have