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the smile before anything else, then the blonde hair and the blue eyes.
    ‘Elsie. She’s eight. Keeps me grounded. Her and her mother. Trouble, both of them. Trouble you get to love.’
    ‘Elsie. That in real life?’
    ‘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.
    ‘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.
    ‘Talk of the devil.’ Kemp turned away from the water and leant on the railings, his back to the action. ‘That’s Redmond.’
    ‘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 large bow wave washed across and rocked the little yacht and the man hung onto the backstay for balance. He returned Redmond’s gesture with interest, the single finger held aloft followed by a string of obscenities.
    A rigid inflatable boat appeared from between the pontoons with two Mayflower staff on board. They nosed up to the yacht and began to guide the disabled vessel back to the marina.
    ‘Cocky fucker, isn’t he?’ Riley said.
    ‘All on the surface,’ Kemp said, watching as the white hulk of Redmond’s boat glided up the pool to the Tamar Yacht pontoons, leaving behind a swirling vortex of water. ‘Underneath he can barely hold it together. The business is on the rocks – excuse the pun – and Kenny Fallon has him by the bollocks.’
    With the boat gone, Kemp turned to Riley, hand outstretched.
    ‘Well, I’m off, back up the motorway. Pity I won’t be here for the bust, but Mr Kemp needs to stay low in case he’s needed again. I’ll be seeing you. In court, I hope. When it’s all over we’ll have some more beers and you can introduce me to your girl. She must be sweet if she can make you smile like you did just now.’
    He shook Riley’s hand and walked away without looking back, disappearing round the corner of the pub and into another life.
    ‘Cocky fucker,’ Riley said again.
    Durnford Street was in the Stonehouse area of the city, on an odd-shaped piece of land reached by an isthmus running between the ferry terminal and the Royal Marine Barracks on one side and a creek on the other. Surrounded by water on three sides, and accessible only across the isthmus, the location had risen in affluence relative to the rest of Stonehouse. The latter had acquired a reputation for vice, hardly helped by the presence of Union Street and its array of nightclubs at its centre.
    ‘We’re too late,’ Savage said to Calter as they parked