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out here, anyway?’

      ‘I’m on Four-Beat. Where else am I supposed to be?’

      ‘You still must’ve walked two miles from the nick to get up here.’

      ‘That’s what you do midweek, isn’t it?’ She munched contentedly.

      Heck pondered that. If you liked a bit of action, midweek on nights could be a chore. Even in Salford, combine a midweek night shift with winter weather, and you were looking at tedium personified. One way to deal with that on foot patrol – in fact the only way to deal with it – was to slowly, systematically plod every street on your beat, no matter how far flung they were. Best to keep your eyes peeled and your ears pinned back, of course, but on the whole the emphasis should be on pacing yourself, because you might have nothing else to do but pound those pavements for the entire eight hours. Not that it was much of a problem for Heck. Increasingly these days, he was on mobile patrol. As a young, able-bodied bloke, his ability to arrive promptly at violent incidents was deemed desirable. As such, he generally didn’t have time to get bored.

      He wasn’t bored now if he was honest; the main problem with quiet moments like this was the time it gave him to brood. Official police adviser at Granada TV. Yeah … right.

      ‘How come you’re not having your grub back at the nick?’ he asked.

      ‘Too conscientious,’ Shawna replied.

      ‘You’re entitled to a refs break.’

      ‘So what? Settle your arse on one of them armchairs at this time of night, and it’s difficult getting off it again.’ She yawned. ‘Doesn’t matter how many jam butties you’ve scoffed. What’s your excuse anyway?’

      ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘You’re on the same refs as me, and I don’t see you skedaddling back to the nick.’

      He shrugged. ‘Not hungry.’

      ‘Good answer.’ She crammed the last scrap of sandwich into her mouth, chewed it thoroughly and swallowed. ‘Bollocks too. So what is it really?’

      Heck and Shawna were both twenty-one. They’d come through basic training together at Bruche and at GMP’s own establishment, Sedgley Park, and had both been assigned to the F Division at roughly the same time. Though they’d only known each other for that relatively short period, it had been an intensity of experience that had created a real sense of familiarity among all those participating. He ought to have realised she’d detect that something was bugging him.

      ‘You’re not your usual piss-taking self,’ she added somewhat unnecessarily.

      ‘It’s nothing,’ he replied.

      ‘Trouble with your mum and dad again?’

      ‘Well … there would be trouble with Mum and Dad, but as I’m not living with them anymore, it can’t be that, can it?’

      ‘Yeah, I forgot … you’ve got a flat in Hag Fold now, haven’t you? Awesome.’

      ‘It’ll serve.’

      ‘Till when?’

      Heck sighed. ‘Excellent question.’

      He pondered the crappy new place he was now being forced to live in, and perhaps unsurprisingly, wondered again about his chosen path in life. It was all very well telling himself this was his career. He loved the job for sure; two years in, and he couldn’t picture himself doing anything else. But he’d sort of sidestepped into it. And even now the perverseness of that decision perplexed him. Okay, after years of messing around at school, his qualifications weren’t exactly mind-blowing, so his career options had been limited. However, the police hadn’t been looking for academics, and they’d offered a lot – good money, a unique kind of camaraderie, a guaranteed job for life unless he really fouled up in some way. None of that was to be found in the normal workplace. But his mum and dad, and even his older sister, Dana, had been floored by the decision – and with more than a little justification. Heck’s brother Tom, a drug addict, had died in prison in 1992, having committed suicide after suffering unbearable brutality and sexual abuse at the hands of fellow inmates. He was serving life at the time for a series of violent burglaries for which he’d been framed by a lazy CID unit. The fact that Tom was exonerated shortly afterwards made no difference to the Heckenburg family; nor did the generous compensation they later received. Though a law-abiding clan, from that moment on the police had been their ultimate enemy, their nemesis – and not just the officers responsible, all officers.

      And then Heck had gone and joined them.

      It didn’t take long for family bewilderment to transform into a sense of anger and betrayal. His garbled explanations hadn’t helped much – all that stuff about it being his only career option, and even less convincingly, that he’d wanted to show the bastards how the job should really be done. He’d used that latter explanation so many times since, and the truth was he didn’t know if he believed it himself. Needless to say, he was shown the door of the family home. He’d opted briefly for police housing; he’d even lodged for a time with his uncle, a local Catholic priest, but that had caused further family disruption. So in the end he’d got his own place, a flat in the aforementioned Hag Fold, which was such a rundown district that it was never likely to satisfy for long.

      Only yesterday he’d made yet another cap-in-hand approach to his parents, which was wordlessly rejected. So he now felt he’d reached the end of that particular tether. Quite clearly, there was nothing for him in his hometown of Bradburn. There was no reason ever to go back there, in fact it was worse than that. Bradburn was eight miles from Hag Fold and thirteen from Salford. But suddenly even that felt too close for comfort.

      So what was the next stage, he wondered. A departure from Manchester. A not-so-fond farewell to the North West itself. He’d recently seen an article that the Metropolitan Police in London were looking to start recruiting again. An experienced constable would almost certainly interest them. That would be another massive rift in his life, but it wasn’t like he’d be saying goodbye to lots of things he’d miss. Sergeant Crawford, for one. Yep, the guy’s arsey attitude earlier this shift had come at just the right time for Heck.

      ‘Don’t tell me this is all down to that spat you had with Don Crawford,’ Shawna said, again almost able to read his thoughts.

      Heck sniffed. ‘By “spat”, you mean that humiliating lecture he subjected me to, which everyone on the Division also overheard?’

      ‘Hey, it was instructive … he’s a sergeant, you’re a PC. What do you expect?’

      ‘He’s a shithouse. Did you hear what he said?’

      She snickered. ‘He’s Sergeant of Comms, Heck. Obviously I heard him. But I didn’t hear you. What did you say to set him off?’

      Heck bit his lip. He didn’t mind being shouted and bawled at. That went with the police constable territory. If it wasn’t the yobs on the street after you’d collared them for something, it was their mums and girlfriends when you were searching their drum afterwards, or the gaffers back at the nick when they’d found out you’d filled in a form incorrectly. But this incident earlier hadn’t involved any raised voices, no red-faced effing and blinding. Just a slow, syrupy piece of condescending advice – which, as it was delivered over the divisional radio – would ensure everyone on duty that night was listening.

       ‘For future reference, 1415 …, the correct verbal procedure, as you’d know perfectly well if you ever behaved correctly, or even like a professional, is as follows. “Can I check a body on our beloved Police National Computer … please?” Followed by your location, then his surname, then his first name, then his age, then his ethnic status – IC1 for example – then his gender, then his place of birth, and so forth.’

      Typical of Don Crawford, that ridiculously over-preened twonk up at Comms. Apparently he had twenty years in the job but most of it he’d

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