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somewhere. South of the river?’
    â€˜Good, Marty. Postcode?’
    â€˜Given enough time I can come up with the colour of your first fuck’s knickers. Still thinking about my original question though. Why?’
    â€˜Nosey, aren’t you?’ Riley said, taking a mouthful of noodles before considering his answer. ‘Let’s just say circumstances.’
    â€˜Oh, those. Plenty of the buggers around. Work related?’
    â€˜Yeah, work related.’
    â€˜Enough said. I’ll not intrude on your misery any further.’ Kemp took a drink of his beer. ‘You settled down here? Got a girlfriend? Plans?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Riley said, thinking of Julie Meadows, the woman he’d met a couple of months ago and had been seeing ever since. Julie worked for NeatStreet, a charity dealing with deprived youngsters on some of Plymouth’s worst estates, and at the tail end of last year she’d wangled him into taking a group of boys from North Prospect up to London to watch his beloved Chelsea play. From that day on he’d been smitten. Now he was unable to prevent a smile forming and, embarrassed, he looked away and out through the pub window. On the far bank of the river Plymouth shone gold in the light from the low winter sun. He turned back to Kemp. ‘For the first time in a long time I suppose I do feel settled. I guess it’s not having to do what you do any more. You know, undercover. I’m not sure I could deal with the crap any more, the fear. Getting settled is easier now I’m away from all that.’
    â€˜Here,’ Kemp reached into his jacket, pulled out his wallet and slipped it across to Riley. ‘My little girl.’
    â€˜Thought you were offering to pay for a moment there.’ Riley opened the wallet, saw the smile before anything else, then the blonde hair and the blue eyes.
    â€˜Elsie. She’s eight. Keeps me grounded. Her and her mother. Trouble, both of them. Trouble you get to love.’
    â€˜Elsie. That in real life?’
    â€˜Not the name, but the picture, yes. Makes it easier to play the part, doesn’t it?’
    Easier to play the part, Riley thought, his mind slipping back to his time in London again. Sometimes playing the part was all too easy. You forgot who you were in real life, you went native. And when that happened the inevitable followed: circumstances. He shook his head as he passed the wallet back to Kemp, and bent to his food again.
    After the meal they went back outside so Kemp could have another smoke. They watched as a tiny sailing yacht nosed its way out from the Mayflower Marina and into the main channel, one of thousands of boats of all sizes that used Plymouth Sound as a base.
    â€˜If Gavin Redmond had kept a low profile, stuck to something like that, we might never have known.’ Kemp waved his cigarette at the boat. ‘It’s those bloody gin palaces. You can smell the illegality in the fumes whenever one passes. From Russian oligarchs to small-time dodgy car ringers, they all want the same thing: a tanned blonde and a penis substitute.’
    As if in response to Kemp’s statement, a loud parp from an airhorn caused them both to look to their right. The sailing boat was drifting in the channel as the skipper fought with a line which trailed behind the boat. Blue language drifted across the water and Riley guessed the rope may have fouled the prop. The horn came from a large motor boat, forty foot or more, moving up the main river and into the pool. On the flybridge a man gestured at the little boat and it wasn’t the friendly greeting of one seafarer to another.
    â€˜Talk of the devil.’ Kemp turned away from the water and leant on the railings, his back to the action. ‘That’s Redmond.’
    â€˜He’s got other things to worry about than spotting us,’ Riley said as the motor boat spurted forward, lifting its nose and sweeping round the sailing boat. A