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I want to be able to walk round without fearing for my life.’
    ‘Do I call the leader of the council?’
    ‘To ask him what the hell he is playing at? Leave that to me if you don’t mind, Helen. Councillor Lynch has a right to reply on this,’ he glanced at his watch, ‘but not just yet. If we give him too long he’ll be making frantic phone calls to the owners of this newspaper and I’ll get the heavy brigade down here. Right now he probably doesn’t know who you’re working for. There’ll be nothing left of your story if our owners come under too much pressure from the vested interests in this city, and I won’t let that happen.’ Graham exhaled thoughtfully.
    ‘But how will we run this?’ Helen asked him.
    Her editor held up the photograph and looked at it closely. ‘You know what? I’m a firm believer in that old adage.’
    ‘Which one?’
    ‘That a picture is worth a thousand words.’
    ‘For fuck’s sake,’ hissed Michael Quinn, ‘do you have to use the front door?’ Before Bradshaw could answer, the burly man steered him into the shop then shut and locked the door behind them, turning the ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’.
    ‘You haven’t got any customers, Michael. I checked.’
    ‘You call it checking,’ said Michael, ‘I call it door-stepping where anybody could see you.’
    ‘Just tell them I was after a tattoo.’
    ‘You don’t look the sort.’
    ‘You see all kinds with them these days; perfectly respectable lasses getting little tattoos on their ankles or the small of their backs. I prefer the good old days when we used to call tattoos barcodes-for-criminals.’
    ‘Times change, Detective Constable.’
    ‘It’s Detective Sergeant, actually.’
    ‘Gone up in the world have we? Who did you nick to get that promotion?’
    One of my own colleagues
thought Bradshaw, but he didn’t tell Michael that, or the fact the man hadn’t lived to do prison time.
    ‘It’s alright,’ Bradshaw reassured him, ‘it wasn’t the case you helped me on.’
    ‘Could you not say that out loud, please.’ Quinn winced, even though there was no one else in the shop.
    ‘You did the right thing, Michael. You could have carried on covering up gangsters’ tattoos and done time for perverting the course of justice but, instead, you shopped them, retaining your liberty and the right to continue earning your livelihood.’
    ‘And those people on the inside still have friends on the outside. One careless word from you and I’m history.’
    ‘Is that right?’ said Bradshaw nonchalantly.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Then you’d better stay out of dark alleyways,’ said Bradshaw, ‘and on my good side.’
    ‘I don’t know nothing else. I swear it. I haven’t done any of those cover-up jobs since you blackmailed me.’
    ‘Blackmail is a very strong word, Michael. I just gave you the chance to do the right thing, but I’m not looking for you to shop anyone, at least not today. It’s your professional expertise I am after.’
    Bradshaw produced the photograph of the burned girl then and placed it face up on Quinn’s tattoo bench.
    ‘Jesus,’ said Quinn, ‘what the fuck happened to … it?’
    ‘
It
is a
she
, Michael, and the answer to your question is undiluted sulphuric acid.’
    ‘Oh my God.’
    ‘We are having a problem identifying the poor victim, which is where you come in.’ Bradshaw pointed at the photograph. ‘Take a close look at this,’ he ordered the man, ‘and tell me what you think.’
    Reluctantly Quinn bent lower and squinted at the area of the photograph Bradshaw had indicated. After a moment he said, ‘It could be.’
    ‘I know it could be but is it?’
    ‘Most of it has gone. It’s just a tiny smudge really,’ and he swung round a desk lamp with a magnifying glass attached to it so he could take a closer look. Bradshaw watched as Quinn turned on the lamp, peered through the glass and examined the light blue mark on the burned girl’s neck. ‘But it does form an angle.
    ‘I