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personally. We’re in a position to be able to offer you the services of a highly qualified family liaison officer and—’
    She stops him with a smile that makes her look suddenly pretty. Somehow vital and colourful. ‘There’s no need for that now.’ She frowns. ‘I’m sorry, what was your name?’
    ‘Detective Sergeant McAvoy.’
    ‘No, your real name.’
    McAvoy screws up his face. ‘Aector,’ he says. ‘Hector, to the English. Not that there’s much difference in how you say it. It’s the spelling that matters.’
    ‘Heads will be rolling for this, won’t they?’ she asks suddenly, as if remembering why this man is standing, in stockinged feet, in her kitchen. ‘I mean, we didn’t want himto go, but he said they would take care of him. He must have been planning it from the moment they got in touch with him. I mean, we knew the tragedy had affected him, deep down, but it still came as a surprise. I didn’t expect them to find him, but …’
    McAvoy frowns and, without thinking about it, pulls one of the chairs from under the table and sits down. He is suddenly intrigued by Mrs Stein-Collinson. By her brother, the dead rocker. By the lady from the TV and the Norwegian tanker that plucked the inflatable from the grey sea.
    ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Stein-Collinson, but I’m only familiar with the vaguest of details about this case. Would you perhaps be able to clarify the nature of the tragedy that your brother was party to …’
    Mrs Stein-Collinson lets out a sigh, refills her glass and comes across to the table, where she removes a pile of laundry from a chair and sits down opposite McAvoy.
    ‘If you’re not from around here, you won’t have heard of the
Yarborough
,’ she says softly. ‘It was the fourth trawler. The one that went down last. Three others went down in 1968. So many lives. So many good lads. The papers were full of it. Catching on to what we already knew. It was bleeding dangerous work.’
    She picks a pen from a pile of paperwork and holds it like a cigarette. Her gaze settles on the middle distance, and McAvoy suddenly sees the East Hull girl in this middle-class lady of a certain age. Sees a youngster raised in a fishing family, brought up amid the smog of smokehouses and the stink of unwashed overalls. Barbara Stein. Babs to her mates. Married well and got herself a pad in the country. Neverreally settled. Never felt comfortable. Had to stay close enough to Hull to be able to phone her mam.
    ‘Please,’ he says softly, and there is suddenly no affectation or falsehood in his voice. He will tell himself later that it is presumptuous, but in this moment, he feels he knows her. ‘Carry on.’
    ‘By the time the
Yarborough
went down the papers had had a bellyful of it. We all had. It didn’t make the front page. Not until later. Eighteen men and boys, pulled down by ice and wind and tides seventy miles off Iceland.’ She shakes her head. Takes a drink. ‘But our Fred was the one who survived. Worst storm in a century and Fred walked out of it. Managed to get himself into a lifeboat and woke up in the back of beyond. Three days before we heard from him. So I suppose that’s why I’m not crying now, you see? I got him back. Sarah, his wife. She got him back. Papers tried their damnedest to get him to talk about it. He wouldn’t have a bit of it. Didn’t want to answer any questions. He’s only a couple of years older than me and we were always close, though we knocked lumps out of each other as bairns. It was me that took the phone call to say he was alive. The British consul in Iceland hadn’t been able to get Sarah so he called our house. I thought it were a joke at first. Then Fred came on the line. Said hello, clear as day, like he was just in the next room.’ Her face lights up as she speaks, as if she is reliving that moment. McAvoy notices her eyes dart to the telephone on the wall by the cooker.
    ‘I can’t even imagine it,’ he says. He is not serving her an