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tell the middle-aged convict that it was in his interests to talk to them; to point out that his employers had lost money, and face, because of his decision to drive at 53 mph on the bend of the A63. She wonders if Jackson will learn the hard way.
    Tremberg turns her head away from the cake shop as she passes, avoiding the temptation to stop and drool. Across the busy street, an attractive, pink-haired woman is hanging a special offers poster up in the window of a nice-looking hair salon. Inside, a pretty young blonde looks as though she may eventually stop talking for long enough to cut some hair. Next to it is a smaller shop that looks as though it has not been open long. ‘Snips and Rips’ says the sign, and the lettering on the large front window declares it to be a specialist in clothing repair, dressmaking and curtain alterations. Tremberg, who has a nasty habit of pulling buttons off shirts and snagging the turn-ups of her trousers on chair legs, makes a mental note to remember that it is there.
    ‘It’s Helen, isn’it?’
    Tremberg turns, startled. Police officers are rarely pleased to be taken by surprise.
    ‘It is! Jaysus, how are you?’
    The girl is stunning, in a mucky kind of way. Petite, tanned and toned, she is wearing a purple bikini top, jogging trousers and Ugg boots, and is pushing a stroller in which a dark-haired baby is chewing on a sunhat. She has a tangle of golden necklaces at her throat, and several earrings in each ear.
    Tremberg tries not to frown as she struggles to remember where she knows the girl from. Is she one of the travellers from the Cottingham site? Has she tipped them the wink on some stolen goods, maybe. But
Helen
? Not ‘Detective Constable’? Who the bloody hell …
    ‘Roisin,’ says the girl, helpfully, in an accent tinged with Irish. ‘Roisin McAvoy.’
    Tremberg finds herself flustered, suddenly embarrassed at not having remembered her sergeant’s wife. They have only met once, and then only briefly, but McAvoy had once opened up to her about the circumstances of his meeting Roisin, and Tremberg hopes her face does not betray her as the memories flood in. This is the traveller girl that McAvoy saved. The girl who suffered agonies at the hands of attackers when not yet a teen. Whom McAvoy revenged, and to whom he later gave himself completely.
    ‘Roisin, of course, I’m sorry, it must be the heat. How are things? Warm isn’t it? And goodness, who’s this little thing? Lovely, lovely.’
    If Roisin finds Tremberg’s gabbling amusing, she hides it well. She smiles at the constable and then crouches down by the stroller. ‘This is Lilah,’ she says, proudly. ‘Our youngest. Seven months now. Hasn’t she got her daddy’s eyes?’
    Tremberg is never comfortable around children, but as she bends down she does at least appreciate the sloppy, gummy grinthe child turns her way. Lilah’s eyes, as promised, are brown and innocent, looking out at the world in confused fascination.
    ‘She’s a stunner,’ says Tremberg, and then winces as she hears Archer honk the car horn.
    ‘That for you?’ asks Roisin. ‘Tell them to hold their horses.’
    ‘It’s my boss. Well, one of them. Bit of an incident at the prison this morning.’ Tremberg holds up the packet of wipes by way of explanation. ‘She needs these, fast.’
    ‘Have an accident, did she? Scary places, prisons. There’s some Sudocrem in my bag if she thinks she might get a rash …’
    Roisin says it with a smile, but her accent is pure traveller, and Tremberg finds herself wondering how difficult it must be for this young girl to be married to a policeman when she grew up thinking of them as the enemy. There must be times when the worlds collide, she thinks, and remembers the night Ray and Archer put the cuffs on the drugs outfit’s enforcers up at the traveller site. There had been rumours that McAvoy was there too: bloodied and dirty, his great fists grazed to the bone.
    There is another angry blast