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heard what happened. Take a statement from the bloke Graham spoke to; might come up with a little more this time.”
    Divine nodded and hurried away.
    “Checked the registration,” Millington said. “Reported stolen from that car-park out at Bulwell, sometime between twelve and two.”
    “Doesn’t sound as if they bothered with gloves at the robbery,” Resnick said. “If this is down to them, likely be prints on the car as well.”
    “I’ll make sure they go careful shifting it, see it gets checked thoroughly soon as it gets back.”
    Resnick had stepped away and was staring down the narrowing street. “Ought to be a reason they came this way.”
    “Throw us off the scent?”
    Resnick shook his head. “Everything we know about them this far, that kind of thinking seems a bit out of their league.”
    “Heading for home, then?”
    “Could be.”
    “Run it through the computer. Likely got a bit of form anyway. Live round here, shouldn’t be too difficult to find.”
    Resnick pushed his hands down into his pockets. Evenings like this, the temperature dropped as soon as the light began to fade. “Hope you’re right, Graham. Quick result here’d be a good thing. Concentrate our energies where they’re more needed.”
    “Back among the big boys.”
    Resnick nodded. “It needs sorting, Graham. Before somebody gets killed.”

Seven
    The way Keith felt about his old man, one of those old jossers get on the bus in the morning and suddenly you’re staring out the window, hoping against hope they won’t lurch over, sit down next to you. Clothes that reek of cider and cheap port wine. Open their mouths to speak and the next you know, they’re dribbling uncontrollably.
    An exaggeration, of course, but not much of one. The way his dad had gone since the divorce, starting his drinking earlier and earlier in the day, not finishing till the money or the energy to lift the bottle failed him. Last time Keith had called at the house, two in the morning, unannounced, his father was curled asleep on the kitchen floor, arms cradled around the legs of an upright chair.
    It hadn’t always been like that. As a young kid, Keith remembered his dad getting smartened up of an evening, loading his gear into the van, swinging Keith round by his arms till he screamed with excitement. Early hours of the morning, Keith would wake to the sound of car doors slamming in the street outside, called farewells, his dad’s footsteps, less than steady, on the stairs, his mother’s warning voice, “Don’t wake the boy.”
    His father would sleep till two or three, wander down for a sausage-and-egg sandwich and pots of tea. Wash, shave, do it all again.
    He had been drinking, Keith realized, even then; more, probably, than had been clear at the time. Clear to Keith, at least, though he could still hear his mother’s shrill sermons echoing up and down the narrow house. And as the work had dried up, the bottles and the cans had appeared on every surface, lined the chair where his dad would sit, not watching the TV. “One thing,” he would say, over and over, “one thing, Keith, I regret—you never knew me when I was big, really big. Then you might’ve felt different.”
    Keith fished the key from his pocket and turned it in the lock. Found the light switch without thinking. Strange how long this had been home.
    “Keith, that you?”
    No, it was Mick jagger, Charlie Watts’d finally decided to jack it in, old Mick couldn’t think of anyone better to take his place.
    Around when Keith had been twelve and thirteen and you didn’t have to be a genius to see how far things had fallen apart, that was the kind of guff his dad would sit him down, make him listen to. How he could have played with the Stones, back in the early days, Eel Pie Island, before Mick started on the eye makeup, all that poncing about. Back when they were playing real music.
    Playing the blues.
    “Keith?”
    “Yeh, it’s me. Who d’you think?”
    All the bands his