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wrong-headed about a suspect and nearly missed catching the real murderer as a result. Not my finest hour.
    ‘He said you were intuitive and brave. He said you’d go to the ends of the earth to catch someone who needed locking up.’ Derwent looked at me, trying to see if I was embarrassed. ‘He said you were getting an award for something that happened last year. You saved another officer’s life.’
    ‘Only by chance. That was nothing to be proud of.’
    ‘Yeah, he said you’d say that.’
    ‘Did he?’
    ‘I think he wanted me to understand why he’d put you on this case.’
    ‘And why is that?’
    ‘These aren’t the most attractive victims, are they? Convicted criminals. And not just any criminals – the lowest of the low. Perverts. There are plenty of coppers who wouldn’t bother their arses trying to find whoever’s killing nonces. They’d be more likely to celebrate the fact that someone’s cleaning house in this neighbourhood. You’ve got too much empathy to be like that. I saw you in Palmer’s house. You were upset by what happened to him.’
    ‘Wasn’t everyone?’
    ‘In a basic I’m-glad-that-wasn’t-me kind of way. You were imagining what his life was like and how he felt when he was being attacked. You care.’
    He sneered the last two words like an insult and despite myself the colour came into my cheeks. Having got a reaction, Derwent seemed to relax.
    ‘I’m just taking the piss. It’s a good thing to be able to imagine yourself in the place of the victim, even if the victim is a forty-something freak with child abuse convictions.’
    ‘Let’s get one thing straight, okay? I’m not that different from other coppers. I’m not a fan of paedophiles. But from what his sister said, Palmer could have been somewhere on the autistic spectrum even if he was never formally diagnosed. He was vulnerable to being accused of all sorts of deviant behaviour. That sort of allegation is difficult to face down even if you are articulate and able to cope with life, which, according to his sister, he wasn’t.’
    ‘Yeah. Poor bloke didn’t have much of a chance.’
    ‘Vera was pretty convinced he was innocent, but he was found guilty. You know more about him than I do. What was the truth of it?’
    He grunted. ‘I spoke to the officer in the case earlier, before we left the nick. The whole thing was bullshit. Fair enough, Palmer got convicted, but the trial was during a massive scare about paedophiles, just after a little girl got raped and murdered by a neighbour in Lancashire. Juries were convicting everyone who was on trial for sex crimes, no matter how flimsy the evidence was, and the sentences they were getting … well, none of the judges wanted to be on the front page of the Daily Mail for letting them off lightly. They threw the book at them.’
    ‘If the case was bullshit, what was he doing in court in the first place?’
    ‘The CPS were scared to drop it. It was all political – no one wanted to make the judgement that the alleged victims were lying so they passed it along the line all the way to the Crown Court. The two kids had totally different stories, although the abuse was supposed to have happened to them when they were together. They kept changing their accounts, even when they were giving evidence in court. The prosecution barrister had to do some fancy footwork to make it look as if what they’d said matched up with what he’d promised in his opening speech.’
    ‘And they wouldn’t have been given a hard time by Palmer’s brief.’
    ‘No. Too young for a tough cross-examination and the jury would have hated it anyway. You heard what Vera said – it was video-link testimony. Ever been in court when kids are giving evidence about abuse? No? It’s embarrassing. Wigs off. Gowns off. The barristers and judge cooing, all gentle and understanding. Everyone pretending like there’s nothing strange going on, nothing to worry about. Give me strength.’
    ‘Don’t tell me