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his way back to the restaurant, took the opportunity to slip into the kitchen. He could always say he took a wrong turning.
    He found the dark-haired girl standing just inside the doorway of a walk-in fridge, humming along to some discordant Polish rap on the radio. She was reaching up to stack vegetables onto a shelf, her shirt riding up to reveal the curve of her waist. Sensing someone behind her, she whipped around, hand flying to her throat. He grinned an apology and held out his card. She took it without speaking, a guarded look in her brown eyes.
    “Call me”, he said over his shoulder, leaving her gazing after him, fingering the gold cross she wore around her neck.

FOUR
     
    Kershaw was super-respectful to DS Bacon on her return to Tower Hamlets nick. Fair play to Streaky, he seemed to have forgotten the ruck they’d had that morning; in fact, he was surprisingly cheery as she drew a chair up to his desk, probably because she’d had the foresight to bring him a mug of tea and a chocolate Hobnob first.
    “The PM is this afternoon, Sarge, down at Wapping Mortuary. I’ve not got anything else on and I’d like to go, if it’s ok with you.” She knew that it usually fell to Crime Scene Investigators to attend post mortems these days – but she couldn’t bear to wait for the pathologist’s report to find out if there were any signs of injury on DB16, the girl with the Titian hair.
    Raising his eyebrows, Streaky leant back in his tatty swivel chair like it was a throne. “Well, well. Keen to see a slab butcher at work, are you? My old Sarge used to call it a poor form of entertainment.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “All right, I’ll let you go this once, purely for educational purposes,” he said, pointing his biscuit at her. “But try not to let the side down by chucking up on the Doc’s shoes, there’s a good girl.”
    She gave him a big grin. “Thanks Sarge, I’ll do my best. Can I tell you what else I’ve got on the floater?”
    He checked his watch. “Make it quick, I’ve got a pressing appointment at the Drunken Monkey at two o’clock. Crucial meeting with a CHIS.”
    CHIS? It took her a moment to translate. Covert Human Intelligence Source – aka, criminal informer. Yeah, right, she thought, more like three pints and a dodgy pie with your dinosaur mates. All the same, she was beginning to realise she could learn a lot from an old-school throwback like Streaky. The other Detective Sergeants at Newham nick were younger, and mostly of the new breed. Smartly dressed and professional, they wouldn’t dream of drinking while on duty, but they seemed to her more like bank managers than real cops. So what if Streaky liked a few jars at lunchtime? Everyone knew he had a better clear-up rate than any of them. Which was probably why he hadn’t been shuffled off with a full pension years ago.
    “Get on with it then,” he said, blowing steam off his tea.
    Kershaw checked her notes.
    ‘IC1 Female, I’m guessing in her twenties. Could have gone in the river anywhere up to Teddington Lock. No clothing or jewellery, but she’s got a tattoo with her name, Ela, and a boyfriend’s, Pa-wel,” she said, struggling with the unfamiliar name. “Polish, according to the internet.”
    “It’s Pavel, like gravel,” said Streaky. “Pawel Janas, played for Poland in the Seventies – tidy left foot as I recall. I was only a tiny child at the time, of course. Any injuries?”
    “Need the PM results for that, Sarge, body’s all messed up.”
    “So you’re thinking: lover’s tiff, the boyfriend strangles her, stabs her – whatever the ethnic tradition demands – strips her to get rid of any clues, dumps her in the river in the wee small hours, goes off to drown his sorrows in vodka?” That brought an appreciative ripple of laughter from the guys – her fellow DCs Browning, Bonnick, Ben Crowther, all in their late twenties, plus Toby, a middle-aged civilian officer, were all at their desks