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wasn’t her fault they had grown apart. But then he had met Joanna and everything became instantly different. It had plunged him into a tornado of troubles, doubts and self-loathing as he tried to square his sense of duty towards Irene and the children with the visceral conviction that his life lay with Joanna. Well, they had been through some difficult places on the rocky road to divorce, Irene’s remarriage, and the present blissful state of Joanna’s expecting their first child, but in all the turbulence the one thing that had never wavered was his conviction that he and Joanna were meant to be together and would get through it somehow.
    ‘Where are you?’ he asked, hearing sounds of conversation in the background.
    ‘The Spotted Dog,’ she said. ‘I’ve taken Mum and Dad out for a pub lunch. Madly gay, isn’t it? I love the way they’ve branched out since Dad retired. Eating out was completely unthought of when I was a kid.’
    ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.
    ‘They’re still agitating about the wedding,’ she said. ‘I keep telling them that it’s a matter of finding the time to do it, but they narrow their eyes and look sceptical. They think you’re trying to wriggle out of your responsibilities.’
    ‘If only they knew, I’m desperately trying to wriggle in,’ Slider said sadly.
    ‘I know. I tell them that. They’ll understand one day,’ she said. ‘They want us to call the baby Derek after Dad’s father.’
    ‘Oh my God.’
    ‘I thought that would prove a nice counter-irritant,’ she chuckled.
    ‘What if it’s a girl?’ he asked flinchingly. Did he have a vague memory that the paternal grandmother had been named Gladys?
    ‘Rebecca,’ said Joanna.
    ‘Oh. How come?’
    ‘Heroine in a book Mum’s reading. She thought it was a pretty name. They can’t understand why we don’t want to know which sex it is, given that we can.’
    ‘Very modern of them. Look, I can’t really chat, I haven’t got long.’
    ‘I know, you must be busy.’ The shout had come in before she left. ‘Is it awful?’
    ‘I’ll tell you about it when I see you. But, listen, something else has come up.’ And he told her briefly about Trevor Bates ringing him.
    When he had finished she said, ‘Is it serious? I mean, is he really likely to do anything?’ Slider hesitated before answering, only so as to assemble his words carefully, but she misunderstood and said, ‘Please don’t just tell me not to worry. I want to know the truth. We’re in this together, you know – all three of us.’
    ‘I wasn’t going to hide anything from you,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s just that I really don’t know how serious it is. He wants to frighten me, that’s plain enough. Whether he’d go any further I simply don’t know. But I don’t want you to worry, and I do want you to be careful.’
    ‘Careful how?’ she said. She sounded a bit bleak. It was not a nice thing to have dumped on you – and she had the baby to worry about as well. The world had become hostile and comfortless, and who was to help them now?
    ‘When you come back today, come to the station first, and we’ll go home together.’
    ‘Oh. It’s that bad, is it?’
    ‘I don’t know ,’ he said, frustrated. ‘I wish I did.’
    She heard the strain in his voice and hastened to take up the slack. ‘All right, I’ll see you later. Don’t worry about me – you’ve got enough to be going on with.’
    Out in the main office, DS Hollis was back and was marking up the whiteboard. He was a laconical Mancunian with a scrawny moustache and pale green eyes like bottled gooseberries, but despite his odd appearance – or perhaps because of it – he had a wonderful way of getting witnesses to trust him and tell him All. He was always office manager by default, because he didn’t mind doing it and everyone else did, but Slider sometimes thought it was a bit of a waste of his talents.
    Swilley and Atherton had their heads together in a serious