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Crime Incident Management Unit had indicated a definite pattern to the shop blags. Tuesdays and Thursdays, early afternoon, were favourite. Last month or so, you could practically set your watch by them, just one of the reasons Asian shopkeepers were threatening to take things into their own hands. The latter threat, all too credible, had sent Hartigan scurrying for cover. Racial incidents figured importantly in the Home Office performance tables and Asian heavies laying into local white kids could spark all kinds of trouble. The last thing the newly promoted Chief Supt wanted on his precious CV was any kind of race riot.
    ‘You don’t get lucky every time,’ Lamb insisted. ‘You know that.’
    ‘So we do it again? And again? Just tuck ourselves up and wait? How much budget are we talking here?’ Winter’s derisive gesture took in the spreadsheet on the desktop PC. ‘You’re telling me there’s money to burn?’
    Lamb fought the urge to turn the computer off. Lately, she’d noticed a change in Winter. For a while, after he’d lost his wife, he’d beaten a tactical retreat, spending far too much time trying to maintain Joannie’s precious garden, but the Bradley Finch job had rekindled the old spirit, revived the old trademark deviousness, and lately he’d taken to playing the elder statesman. With five years to serve, the guarantee of a decent pension and absolutely no prospect of promotion, he could afford to offer a suggestion or two. Like now.
    ‘Suppose you let me talk to a couple of people …’ he began.
    Lamb shook her head.
    ‘Suppose we ask ourselves about this afternoon. Just whose house was this?’
    ‘The OP? A woman called Doris Ackerman. Used to be married to an ex-stoker before he fell under a bus. Nice as you like.’
    ‘And you took her through the paperwork?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘So she knew what you were up to?’
    ‘She knew we were in her front room with a camera.’
    ‘Pointing at Patel’s?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘So who did she phone?’
    ‘No one.’
    ‘How do you know?’
    ‘Because the phone was in the hall and I pulled the jack out.’
    ‘Mobile?’
    ‘She wouldn’t know the meaning of the word. She’s eighty-seven.’
    Cathy gazed at him for a moment. It didn’t really matter whether it was true or not about the phone. The only point of pursuing the argument any further was to test Winter’s footwork. Could he still match you move for move? Anticipate the traps? Box you in with his case-hardened experience and cheerful contempt for procedure? The answer, she knew, was yes. Banging on about Doris Ackerman would get them nowhere.
    ‘So what’s the big idea?’
    She waited for Winter’s slow smile. It didn’t happen. Perhaps, she thought, he’s started taking recently-promoted female DIs seriously.
    ‘There’s a guy I know runs charlie and smack for Bazza Mackenzie. He’s not near the top of the food chain. He’snot even halfway up. But he shifts a lot of gear and he’s extremely pissed off.’
    Lamb reached for a notepad. Bazza Mackenzie had the local Class A drugs market by the throat. Put in a call for cocaine, or heroin, and it was ninety-five per cent certain you’d be buying from him. Not directly. Nothing as silly as that. But the cash you swopped for doing your head in would, one way or another, almost certainly end up in one of Bazza’s many bank accounts.
    ‘Go on.’
    ‘I’m due a meet with this guy. He’s talking next week but he can be ever so flexible if he tries.’
    ‘You thinking earlier?’
    ‘I’m thinking tonight.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘We have a chat.’
    ‘But why? What’s he got to do with kids wrecking corner shops?’
    ‘I dunno but there’s a name he keeps using, crops up all over. This kid’s fifteen, Cath. And Tuesday lunchtimes, I bet he doesn’t go to school.’
    Bev Yates and Andy Corbett sat in Faraday’s office in the Major Crimes suite. After a punishing fifteen-minute wrangle with Willard, who was less than