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‘That’s all I’m asking. If you still feel like it’s a waste of time, fair enough.’
    â€˜I will.’
    â€˜Meaning you’ll go, right?’
    â€˜I thought you were just misguided this morning,’ Thorne said. ‘Now I think you’re misguided and pushy.’ He looked down at the slip of paper. An address in Seven Sisters.
    â€˜You got changed.’
    Thorne looked up. ‘What?’
    â€˜This morning,’ Anna said, pointing, ‘you looked like you couldn’t wait to get out of that suit.’
    Thorne suddenly felt rather self-conscious in his rattiest jeans, socks and T-shirt; even more so when he sensed Louise at his shoulder. He opened the door a little wider, so that she and Anna could see each other, made the introductions.
    â€˜I’m really sorry to disturb you,’ Anna said. ‘I’m just being pushy.’
    â€˜It’s OK,’ Louise said, not really getting it. ‘And you’re welcome to come in, you know. I might go to bed, but if the pair of you have got stuff to talk about . . .’
    Anna mumbled a thank-you and looked at her feet.
    â€˜It’s fine,’ Thorne said. ‘We’re about done.’

FIVE
    For a few uncomfortable seconds, before reaching into his pocket for his warrant card, Thorne could only stare at the woman who had opened the door. She had short, bottle-blonde hair and a blank expression, her face thin and hard in spite of the bronze foundation and dark brown eyes.
    Thorne was trying to keep the reaction from his face, the amazement that Donna Langford could have changed quite so much, when a second woman appeared from a doorway a few feet down the hall. Realising his mistake, Thorne nodded his recognition and she did the same. She said, ‘It’s OK,’ and the woman at the door stepped back, her face finally softened by a sly smile, to let Thorne inside.
    â€˜You haven’t changed much.’ Donna said.
    The flat was in the middle of a two-storey block on a busy road between the stations at Seven Sisters and South Tottenham. There were ornamental plastic animals – rabbits, turtles, herons – lined up along the path to the door and scattered around a front garden almost completely cast into shadow by a giant satellite dish. The orthodox Jewish community of Stamford Hill lay half a mile away, with the up-and-coming middle-class enclave of Stoke Newington a few minutes further south, but Donna Langford was living in one of the few areas in London where you could still buy a place for less than six figures and the pound shops outnumbered the Starbucks.
    As comedowns went, it was steeper than most.
    Donna introduced the blonde woman as Kate and asked Thorne if he wanted tea. While Kate went to the kitchen to fetch the drinks, Donna led Thorne into a smoky living room. As Thorne took it in – a small leather sofa and matching armchair, a plasma TV that all but filled the wall above the gas fire – Donna sat down and reached for the pack of cigarettes lying on a low, glass-topped table.
    â€˜Housing association,’ she said. ‘Kate found it.’
    Thorne nodded. He could still hear the working-class Essex upbringing in her voice. If anything, it was stronger now than it had been before, the result of ten years inside trying to pretend she was tougher than she was. He thought about the last time he had visited this woman at her home – a surprisingly tasteful mock-Tudor pile in the Hertfordshire countryside. ‘You couldn’t even fit your old kitchen inside this place,’ he said. He remembered the echo and the gleaming, dust-free surfaces. ‘Never seen so much marble in my life.’
    Donna blew out a plume of smoke and tossed the disposable lighter on to the table. ‘I probably cooked in that kitchen three times,’ she said. ‘Never knew where anything was.’
    â€˜What happened to the house?’
    â€˜Gone. Same as