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another officer, was on him, knocking him to the floor and banging his wrist against a chair leg to force him to drop the blade. As it clattered to her feet Alex grabbed it and flung it through the open window, hoping another policeman would pick it up. ‘You need to come with me, Daniel,’ she told the boy sternly. ‘You know the procedure ...’
    ‘Fuck off,’ he spat, his face still pressed to the ground.
    ‘Don’t talk to the lady like that,’ Paul Bennett snarled, his fist tightening on the boy’s hair. ‘Now, when you’re ready to be nice ...’
    ‘You can fuck off too,’ the boy seethed through his yellowed teeth.
    His mother guffawed loudly. ‘You’re a bunch of fucking wankers,’ she rasped crudely. ‘You got no business forcing your way in here like this. We ain’t done nothing. You got the wrong people, as usual, you waste of fucking spacers.’
    ‘Must be making you wonder what your old man’s been telling us,’ Carroway jeered at her. ‘Do you reckon he’s grassed you, Laura? We know you were with him when the arcade job went down. Driving the car again, weren’t you? And without a licence. You’re a bad girl, Laura Crowe. No supper for you tonight – and think of the example you’re setting for your little boy there ...’
    ‘Get your effing hands off me, you dickhead,’ she snarled at him. ‘You’re filth, the lot of you. That’s why we call you the filth ...’
    ‘Where’s your sister these days, Laura?’ Alex butted in, trying to steer things in another direction. Inside she was every bit as unnerved by this woman as she’d been the first time their paths had crossed, but she’d never let it show.
    Laura’s snake eyes blazed with malice.
    ‘She got sent down last month,’ Paul Bennett informed Alex. ‘So if you were thinking of taking the boy there ...’
    Alex had been, but clearly it wasn’t an option. It didn’t matter; Family Placements had already arranged a backup. ‘You’re going to have to come with me,’ she said to Daniel.
    ‘I told you not to touch him,’ Laura hissed. ‘He’s a good boy. He ain’t done nothing wrong ...’
    ‘A good boy who’s been taught to pull knives on social workers,’ Paul Bennett scoffed. ‘That’ll get him through his SATs nicely, won’t it?’
    As Laura’s fury erupted again, so viciously that it seemed to stain the very air, the arresting officers tightened their grip and bundled her roughly out to the waiting car.
    These sorts of scenes were always made more difficult by regular CID who, unlike their child protection colleagues, had scant interest in whatever child was being taken into care. They were only concerned with the parents, who in this case had apparently been behind the armed robbery of an amusement arcade in the centre of town a few days ago. Knowing there was a possibility the boy would be inthe house when they came to arrest the mother, someone had thought to contact social services to tip them off, so Alex, accompanied by her colleague Ben, had hotfooted it over here. Ben was still outside in the car, no doubt starting to feel faint at the sight of a gathering crowd. Everyone dreaded coming into the Temple Fields estate, though Alex kept reminding herself that no social workers had ever actually been harmed here, in spite of the threats and abuse that were so often hurled their way.
    As the foul-smelling room emptied of officers, Alex’s attention remained fixed on Daniel. He was a slight boy with oily hair that straggled into his eyes, and such a bony frame that it was no wonder his clothes appeared far too big for him. He was doing his best to look pissed off, mean, ready to carve up whoever took him on. His defences were bristling so fiercely that Alex knew already how unlikely it was she’d get through them to make him understand that she meant him no harm.
    He should know it, given that this was far from their first encounter, but mistrust of authority was inbred in him.
    For several minutes