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villages of the Tyne Valley commuter belt.
    ‘Detective Superintendent Anderson thinks a great deal of you,’ Vos says. ‘She tells me you were hand-picked to join my squad.’
    ‘It was a surprise,’ Ptolemy admits. ‘I didn’t even know I was on a shortlist.’
    ‘You could have said no.’
    ‘You don’t say no to a detective superintendent, sir.’
    Ptolemy sees a half-smile on Vos’s face.
    ‘Good answer, Ptolemy,’ he says. ‘You’ll go far.’
    They’re out beyond the city now. Though it’s only six o’clock, ahead of them the sun is already starting to sink with the depressing inevitability of early autumn.
    ‘
You
could have said no, sir,’ she says.
    ‘No to what?’
    ‘To me joining your squad. I assume you’ve read my file. I’m not very experienced.’
    ‘I haven’t read your file, Ptolemy,’ Vos says. ‘And I don’t intend to.’
    He indicates left and turns onto the slip road marked Heddon-on-the-Wall. Soon they come to a pub called the Three Tuns, positioned on a crossroads. Vos swings into the car park and he and Ptolemy go inside. It’s the calm before early doors; just a handful of regulars at the bar. Vos buys a pint of bitter and a lime and soda and then leads Ptolemy into a quiet corner, away from the inevitable TV screen.
    ‘Can I ask you something, sir?’ Ptolemy says.
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘What do
you
think happened? To the victim.’
    Vos says nothing for a while. ‘To be honest, I don’t know what to think,’ he says presently. ‘But I will soon enough.’
    ‘Well, thanks for including me,’ Ptolemy says. ‘I won’t let you down.’
    ‘I’m not including you, Ptolemy.’
    ‘I don’t understand, sir.’
    ‘There’s more to Major Crime than murder investigations. There’s something else I want you to do for me.’
    The main door opens and a man comes in. He is skinny, with unkempt dark hair and a couple of days’ growth on his pale face. He is wearing drainpipe jeans and a battered biker jacket. He orders a pint of lager and a bag of crisps and then, to Ptolemy’s surprise, comes over to where they are sitting and pulls up a stool.
    ‘Who’s this?’ he says. His eyes are hooded, with dark circles underneath.
    ‘The new recruit,’ Vos says. ‘Kath Ptolemy, meet DC Sam Severin.’

FIVE
    Nobody ever asks Mayson Calvert for a drink after work. They know he’ll just look at them through his glasses, with his head cocked quizzically to one side as if they’re some sort of microbial species, and then he’ll give a shy, almost embarrassed smile and shake his head; and then he’ll say ‘No, thank you,’ and walk away, and in that instant he’ll have forgotten you ever asked. It’s not that Mayson is rude, or even antisocial, and he doesn’t have OCD or ADHD or Tourette’s or any of the other syndromes that Huggins and Fallow think he’s got. Mayson Calvert is just, well,
singular
.
    People who meet him – other policemen – wonder how the hell he ever got to be a detective. When they discover he’s part of Theo Vos’s Bug House squad they are astonished. But there’s more to Major Crime than swagger and physicality. The big-time thugs with shaven heads and steroid-enhanced muscles make up a very small percentage of those who are classified as Major Criminals. Looking and acting like a villain is a distinct disadvantage if you’re really serious about crime. The criminal who succeeds in making a living at it, who runs it as a business, is the one you never see or suspect. He is the next-door neighbour who walks his dog round the block every night, the twinkly-eyed old gent enjoying a quiet half of bitter in the pub, the family man who takes his wife and kids to Greece once a year on easyJet, who stays in modest three-star hotels and drinks inexpensive local wine at the local taverna.
    These are the Major Criminals.
    These are the people Mayson Calvert is employed to catch. Mayson lives alone, but he lives in some style. He has a two-bedroomed