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going through the list of recently released prisoners, and he’s the one who definitely fits the bill.’
    ‘What bill?’
    ‘The job, sir. Coughlin …’
    For the first time, an edge of uncertainty crept into Corbett’s voice. He’d just produced a rabbit from the hat. Where was the applause?
    ‘And?’
    ‘Davidson was one of the guys who’d been getting a hard time from Coughlin. There’s a lot of stuff about his conviction. Basically, he never held his hands up to being guilty and Coughlin wound him up. It’s a long story. I’m not sure this is the time and place …’ He tailed off, folding the pocketbook and returning it to his jacket.
    It was Dave Michaels who broke the ensuing silence. As Receiver, he took first bite at all incoming information.
    ‘You’re going to let me have that?’
    ‘Of course, skip.’
    ‘See me afterwards, yeah?’
    The briefing broke up within minutes, stalling on the hard shoulder after a blow-out in the fast lane. Corbett’s showboating would doubtless earn him closed-door bollockings from both Willard and Michaels, but the fact remained that Coughlin’s prison was an obvious place to find a prime suspect. Whether or not Ainsley Davidson was the name to put in the frame was anybody’s guess but for the time being it was Willard’s priority to establish a time-line for Coughlin’s final hours. He wanted to know where the guy had been, who he’d met, who might have clocked him. A receipt retrieved from the premises already indicated a fifty-pound withdrawal from an ATM at 18.46 on Monday evening, and Coughlin appeared to have spent most of it by the time he met his death. Pubs were an obvious place to start. The city’s web of CCTV cameras was another. Willard added the usual health warnings – explore every option,keep an open mind, work like bastards, and always but always think
court
– while afterwards it fell to Faraday to take care of the routine bits of housekeeping.
    Only at the end, amongst the closing rustle of papers, did Willard add a final footnote to the briefing. He was off tomorrow on a five-day course up at Centrex. The course had been booked for the best part of a year and he was buggered if he was going to miss out on it. Naturally, he’d be available on the end of a mobile, but he was lodging the Policy Book with DI Faraday, and he had every confidence that the DSIO would drive the investigation forward. With luck,
Merriott
would be sorted by the time he got back. Otherwise, they’d doubtless get to know each other a great deal better.
    He glanced across at Faraday.
    ‘OK, Joe?’
    A couple of miles away at Highland Road police station, Cathy Lamb was doing her best to make sense of the quarterly overtime allocations when Winter appeared at her open door.
    Promotion to DI on division had earned Lamb a first-floor office of her own, accommodation entirely in keeping with the rest of the building. The police station had once been the headquarters of the pre-war bus company, an organisation keen to establish a certain architectural tone, and the oak panelling and lead-light window above Cathy’s ample desk had survived acquisition of the premises by Hampshire Constabulary. Indeed, with its heavy oak staircase and imposing boardroom, Highland Road had become one of the county’s showpiece stations, living proof that state-of-the-art policing could march hand-in-hand with delicate and painstaking conservation.
    Winter wanted to talk about the Somerstown kids.
    ‘We’re never going to sort them this way.’ He settledinto the armchair Cathy kept for important visitors. ‘We’re wasting our time.’
    In her heart Lamb felt the same, but the last thing you did with Winter was agree with him.
    ‘You found yourself an OP, then?’
    ‘Couldn’t have been better placed. But they never showed, did they?’
    Lamb, irritated by the ease with which Winter had put her on the back foot, refused to take the bait. Analysis by one of the field DCs in the