Compilation copyright © 2008 by Mystery Writers of America, Inc.

Introduction copyright © 2008 by Michael Connelly

“The Blue Religion: An Introduction,” copyright © 2008 by Michael Connelly

“Skinhead Central,” copyright © 2008 by T. Jefferson Parker

“Sack o’ Woe,” copyright © 2008 by John Harvey

“The Drought,” copyright © 2008 by James O. Born

“Divine Droplets,” copyright © 2008 by WLG Enterprises, Inc.

“Serial Killer,” copyright © 2008 by Jon L. Breen

“A Certain Recollection,” copyright © 2008 by John Buentello

“A Change in His Heart,” copyright © 2008 by Jack Fredrickson

“The Herald,” copyright © 2008 by Leslie Glass

“Such a Lucky, Pretty Girl,” copyright © 2008 by Persia Walker

“Friday Night Luck,” copyright © 2008 by Edward D. Hoch

“The Fool,” copyright © 2008 by Laurie R. King

“Burying Mr. Henry,” copyright © 2008 by Polly Nelson

“Oaths, Ohana, and Everything,” copyright © 2008 by Diana Hansen-Young

“The Price of Love,” copyright © 2008 by Peter Robinson

“Contact and Cover,” copyright © 2008 by Greg Rucka

“Rule Number One,” copyright © 2008 by Bev Vincent

“What a Wonderful World,” copyright © 2008 by Paul Guyot

“Winning,” copyright © 2008 by Alafair Burke

“Father’s Day,” copyright © 2008 by Michael Connelly

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Little, Brown and Company

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

First eBook Edition: April 2008

ISBN: 978-0-316-03201-8

ALSO BY MICHAEL CONNELLY

FICTION

The Black Echo

The Black Ice

The Concrete Blonde

The Last Coyote

The Poet

Trunk Music

Blood Work

Angels Flight

Void Moon

A Darkness More than Night

City of Bones

Chasing the Dime

Lost Light

The Narrows

The Closers

The Lincoln Lawyer

Echo Park

The Overlook

NONFICTION

Crime Beat

ALSO FROM THE MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

Death Do Us Part
(Edited by Harlan Coben)

The Blue Religion: An Introduction

A long time ago, when my first book was published, the first review it received classified the novel as a “police procedural.” This classification was news to me. I thought I had simply written a book, a crime novel, if it absolutely needed to be classified. Okay, a mystery, even. Sure, it was about cops and robbers and how the good guys work to catch the bad guys, but I never realized that I had ventured into what was called a “subgenre.” I soon learned that crime fiction is a world of genres and subgenres and even sub-subgenres.

Nearly twenty years later, I sit here writing the introduction to a book that celebrates one of those subgenres. Welcome to the world of the cop story. Welcome to stories that explore the burden of the badge.

One note on these stories, however. While this tome and its individual stories will fall under the classification of police procedural, they are anything but explorations of procedure. They are explorations of life. They are explorations of character.

In my observations of the blue religion as both a journalist and a writer of fiction, I have found that most people who carry badges believe they are part of a misunderstood breed. And I believe they have a point. How are we to weigh the burden of the badge if we do not carry the badge? In these stories, we do it by exploring the many facets of character of those who carry the badge. As you will find, procedure is only window dressing for our true focus. We learn what it is like to corner a murderer, to unmask a hidden killer. We walk the line between justice and revenge. We see what it costs to do the job both right and wrong. We find resolution and redemption.

There is an adage attributed to Joseph Wambaugh, the great writer of police stories, that informs our effort here. It is as simple as it is true. It holds that the best story about the badge is not about how a cop works on a case. It is about how the case works on the cop. In the subtlety of that distinction is the axiom that gave the writers who are gathered here all they needed.

I know a detective who works cold cases in Los Angeles. He works out of a windowless office, with his desk pushed up against his partner’s. He has a glass top on his desk. With such a basic setup in almost any other office in the world, one would almost invariably find photos of loved ones — children, wives, families — under the glass top. Smiling faces, reminders of what is good in life. Inspiration to do the job well.

But not this detective. He slips the photos of dead people under his glass. Photos of murder victims whose killers he still hunts. They are reminders of what is bad in life. Reminders of the job unfinished and inspiration to keep going and to do the job well.

To me, that gets to the heart of character, not procedure. And that is what this book is all about.

— Michael Connelly

Skinhead Central

By T. Jefferson Parker

So we moved up here to Spirit Lake in Idaho, where a lot of Jim’s friends had come to live. After forty years in Laguna Beach, it was a shock to walk outside and see only a few houses here and there, some fog hovering over the pond out front, and the endless trees. The quiet too, that was another surprise. There’s always the hiss of wind in the pines, but it’s nothing like all the cars and sirens on PCH. I miss the Ruby’s and the Nordstrom Rack up the freeway. Miss my friends and my children. We talk all the time by phone and e-mail, but it’s not the same as living close by. We have a guest room.

We’ve had mostly a good life. Our firstborn son died thirteen years ago, and that was the worst thing that’s ever happened to us. His name was James Junior, but he went by JJ. He was a cop, like his father, and was killed in the line of duty. After that, Jim drank himself almost to death, then one day just stopped.  He never raised a finger or even his voice at me or the kids. Kept on with the Laguna Beach PD. I had Karen and Ricky to take care of, and I took meds for a year and had counseling. The one thing I learned from grief is that you feel better if you do things for other people instead of dwelling on yourself.  

We’re living Jim’s dream of hardly any people but plenty of trees and fish.

There’s some skinheads living one lake over, and one of them, Dale, came over the day we moved in last summer and asked if we had work. Big kid, nineteen, tattoos all over his arms and calves, red hair buzzed short, and eyes the color of old ice. Jim said there was no work, but they got to talking woodstoves and if the old Vermont Castings in the living room would need a new vent come fall. Dale took a look and said that unless you want to smoke yourself out, it would. Two days later, Dale helped Jim put one in, and Jim paid him well.

A couple of days later, I went to dig out my little jewelry bag from the moving box where I’d kind of hidden it, but it was gone. I’d labeled each box with the room it went to, but the movers just put the boxes down wherever — anyway, it was marked “bedroom,” but they put it right there in the living room, where Dale could get at it when I went into town for sandwiches and Jim went outside for a smoke or to pee in the trees, which is something he did a lot of that first month or two. Jim told me I should have carried the jewelry on my person, and he was right. On my person. You know how cops talk. Said he’d go find Dale over in Hayden Lake the next day — skinhead central — what a way to meet the locals.

But the next morning, this skinny young boy shows up on our front porch, dark bangs almost over his eyes, no shirt, jeans hanging low on his waist and his boxers puffing out. Gigantic sneakers with the laces loose. Twelve or thirteen years old.

“This yours?” he asked.

Jim took the jewelry bag — pretty little blue thing with Chinese embroidery on it and black drawstrings — and angled it to the bright morning sun.

“Hers,” he said. “Hon? What’s missing?”

I loosened the strings and cupped the bag in my hand and pressed the rings and earrings and bracelets up against one another and the satin. It was mostly costume and semiprecious stones, but I saw the ruby earrings and choker Jim had gotten me one Christmas in Laguna and the string of pearls.

“The expensive things are here,” I said.

“You Dale’s brother?” asked Jim.

“Yep.”

“What’s your name?”

“Jason.”

“Come on in.”

“No reason for that.”

“How are you going to explain this to Dale?”

“Explain what?”

And he loped down off the porch steps, landed with a crunch, and picked up his bike.

“Take care of yourself.”

“That’s what I do.”

“We’ve got two cords’ worth of wood and a decent splitter,” said Jim.

Jason sized up Jim the way young teenagers do, by looking not quite at him for not very long. Like everything about Jim could be covered in a glance.

“Okay. Saturday.”

Later I asked Jim why he offered work to Jason when he’d held it back from Dale.

“I don’t know. Maybe because Jason didn’t ask.”

THE WAY JJ died was that he and Jim were both working for Laguna PD — unusual for a father and son to work the same department — but everyone was cool with it, and they made the papers a few times because of the human interest. “Father and Son Crime Busters Work Laguna Beat.”

If you don’t know Laguna, it’s in Orange County, California. It’s known as an artist colony and a tourist town, a place prone to disasters such as floods, earth slides, and wildfires. There had been only one LBPD officer killed in the line of duty before JJ. That was back in the early fifties. His name was Gordon French.

Anyway, Jim was watch commander the night it happened to JJ, and when the “officer down” call came to dispatch, Jim stayed at his post until he knew who it was.

When Jim got there, JJ’s cruiser was still parked up on the shoulder of PCH, with the lights flashing. It was a routine traffic stop, and the shooter was out of the car and firing before JJ could draw his gun. JJ’s partner had stayed with him but also called in the plates. They got JJ to South Coast Medical Center but not in time. One of the reasons they built South Coast Medical Center forty-seven years ago was because Gordon French was shot and died for lack of medical care in Laguna. Then they build one, and it’s still too late. Life is full of things like that, things that are true but badly shaped. JJ was twenty-five — would be thirty-eight today if he hadn’t seen that Corolla weaving down the southbound lanes.  They caught the shooter and gave him death. He’s in San Quentin. His appeals will take at least six more years. Jim wants to go if they execute him. Me too, and I won’t blink.

THE NEXT TIME we saw Jason was at the hardware store two days later. I saw his bike leaned against the wall by the door, and I spotted him at the counter as I walked through the screen door that Jim held open for me. He had on a knit beanie and a long-sleeve black T-shirt with some kind of skull pattern, and his pants were still just about sliding off his waist, though you couldn’t see any boxers.

“Try some ice,” the clerk said cheerfully.

Jason turned with a bag of something and started past us, his lips fat and black. His cheeks were swelled up behind the sunglasses.

Jim wheeled and followed Jason out. Through the screen door, I could hear them.

“Dale do that?”

“No.”

Silence then. I saw Jason looking down. And Jim with his fists on his hips and this balanced posture he gets when he’s mad.

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing. Get away from me, man.”

“I can have a word with your brother.”

“Bad idea.”

Jason swung his leg over his bike and rolled down the gravel parking lot.

The next evening, Dale came up our driveway in a black Ram Charger pickup. It was “wine thirty,” as Jim calls it, about six o’clock, which is when we would open a bottle, sit, and watch the osprey try to catch one of the big trout rising in our pond out front.

The truck pulled up close to the porch, all the way to the logs Jim had staked out to mark the end of the parking pad. Dale was leaning forward in the seat like he was ready to get out, but he didn’t. The window went down, and Dale stared at us, face flushed red, which with his short red hair made him look ready to burst into flames.

“Dad told me to get over here to apologize for the jewelry, so that’s what I’m doing.”

“You beat up your brother because he brought it back?”

“He deserved every bit he got.”

“A twelve-year-old doesn’t deserve a beating like that,” said Jim.

“He’s thirteen.”

“You can’t miss the point much further,” said Jim.

Dale gunned the truck engine, and I watched the red dust jump away from the ground below the pipe. He was still leaning away from the seat like you would back home in July when your car’s been in the sun and all you’ve got on is a halter or your swimsuit top.  But this was Idaho in June at evening time, and it probably wasn’t more than seventy degrees.

“Get out and show me your back,” said Jim.

“What about it?”

“You know what it’s about.”

“You don’t know shit,” said Dale, pressing his back against the seat. “I deal with things.”

Then the truck revved and lurched backward. I could see Dale leaning forward in the seat again and his eyes raised to the rearview. He kept a good watch on the driveway behind him as the truck backed out. Most young guys in trucks, they’d have swung an arm out and turned to look directly where they were driving. Maybe braced the arm on the seat. JJ always did that. I liked watching JJ learn to drive because his attention was so pure and undistractible. Dale headed down the road, and the dust rose like it was chasing him.

“Someone whipped his back,” I said.

“Dad.”

“You made some calls.”

Jim nodded. Cops are curious people. Just because they retire doesn’t mean they stop nosing into things. Jim has a network of friends that stretches all the way across the country, though most of them are in the West. Mostly retired but a few still active. And they grouse and gossip and yap and yaw like you wouldn’t believe, swap information and stories and contacts and just about anything you can imagine that relates to cops. You want to know something about a guy, someone will know someone who can help. Mostly by Internet but by phone too. Jim calls it the Geezer Enforcement Network.

“Dale’s father has a nice jacket because he’s a nice guy,” said Jim. “Aggravated assault in a local bar, pled down to disturbing the peace. Probation for assault on his wife. Ten months in county for another assault — a Vietnamese kid, student at Boise — broke his jaw with his fist. There was a child-abuse inquiry raised by the school when Dale showed up for first grade with bruises. Dale got homeschooled after that. Dad’s been clean since ’93. The wife sticks by her man — won’t file, won’t do squat. Tory and Teri Badger. Christ, what a name.”

I thought about that for a second while the osprey launched himself from a tree.

“Is Tory an Aryan Brother?”

“Nobody said that.”

“Clean for thirteen years,” I said. “Since Jason was born. So, you could say he’s trying.”

Jim nodded. I did the math in my mind and knew that Jim was doing it too. Clean since 1993. That was the year JJ died. We can’t even think of that year without remembering him. I’m not sure exactly what goes through Jim’s mind, but I know that just the mention of the year takes him right back to that watch commander’s desk on August 20, 1993. I’ll bet he hears the “officer down” call with perfect clarity, every syllable and beat. Me, I think of JJ when he was seven years old, running down the sidewalk to the bus stop with his friends. Or the way he used to comb his hair straight down onto his forehead when he was a boy. To tell you the truth, sometimes I think about him for hours, all twenty-five years of him, whether somebody says “1993” or not.

That Saturday Jason came back over and split the wood. I watched him off and on from inside as he lined up the logs in the splitter and stood back as the wood cracked and fell into smaller and smaller halves. Twice he stopped and pulled a small blue notebook from the back pocket of his slipping-down jeans and scribbled something with a pen from another pocket. The three of us ate lunch on the porch even though it was getting cold. Jason didn’t say much, and I could tell the lemonade stung his lips. The swelling around his eyes was down, but one was black. He was going to be a freshman come September.

“Can your dad protect you from your brother?” Jim asked out of nowhere.

“Dale’s stronger now. But mostly, yeah.”

Jim didn’t say anything to that. After nearly forty years of being married to him, I can tell you his silences mean he doesn’t believe you. And of course there were the broken lips and black eye making his case.

“If you need a place, you come stay here a night or two,” he said. “Anytime.”

“You’d be welcome,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, looking down at his sandwich.

I wanted to ask him what he wrote in the notebook, but I didn’t. I have a place where I put things for safekeeping too, though it’s not a physical place.

Later that night, we went to a party at Ed and Ann Logan’s house on the other side of Spirit Lake. It was mostly retired SoCal cops, the old faces from Orange County and some Long Beach people Jim fell in with whom I never really got to know. I’ve come to like cops in general. I guess that would figure. And their wives too — we pretty much get along. There’s a closedness about most cops that used to put me off until JJ died and I realized that you can’t explain everything to everybody. You have to have that place inside where something can be safe. Even if it’s only a thought or a memory. It’s the opposite of the real world, where people die as easily as leaves fall off a tree. And the old cliché about cops believing it’s them and us, well, it’s absolutely true that that’s what they think. Most people think that way — it’s just the “thems” and the “usses” are different.

A man was stacking firewood on the Logans’ deck when we got there. He was short and thick, gave us a level-eyed nod, and that was all. Later Jim and I went outside for some fresh air. The breeze was strong and cool. The guy was just finishing up the wood. He walked toward us, slapping his leather work gloves together.

“I apologize for Dale,” he said. “I’m his dad. He ain’t the trustworthiest kid around.”

“No apology needed,” said Jim. “But he’s no kid.”

“He swore there was nothin’ missing from that bag.”

“It was all there,” I said.

Badger jammed the gloves down into a pocket. “Jason says you’re good people. But I would appreciate it if you didn’t offer him no more work. And if he comes by, if you would just send him back home.”

“To get beat up?” said Jim.

“That’s not an everyday occurrence,” said Badger. “We keep the family business in the family.”

“There’s the law.”

“You aren’t it.”

Badger had the same old-ice eyes as Dale. There was sawdust on his shirt and bits of wood stuck to his bootlaces, and he smelled like a cord of fresh-cut pine. “Stay away from my sons. Maybe you should move back to California. I’m sure they got plenty a’need for bleedin’ heart know-it-alls like you.”

WE LEFT THE party early. When we were almost home, Jim saw a truck parked off in the trees just before our driveway. He caught the shine of the grill in his headlights when we made the turn. I don’t know how he saw that thing, but he still has twenty-fifteen vision for distance, so he’s always seeing things that I miss. A wind had come up, so maybe it parted the trees at just the right second.

He cut the lights and stopped well away from our house. The outdoor security lights were on, and I could see the glimmer of the pond and the branches swaying. Jim reached across and drew his .380 automatic from its holster under the seat.

“We can go down the road and call the sheriff,” I said.

“This is our home, Sally. I’m leaving the keys in.”

“Be careful, Jim. We didn’t retire up here for this.”

I didn’t know a person could get in and out of a truck so quietly. He walked down the driveway with the gun in his right hand and a flashlight in the other. He had that balanced walk, the one that meant he was ready for things. Jim’s not a big guy, six feet, though, and still pretty solid.

Then I saw Dale backing around from the direction of the front porch, hunched over with a green gas can in one hand. Jim yelled, and Dale turned and saw him, then he dropped the can and got something out of his pocket, and a wall of flames huffed up along the house. Dale lit out around the house and disappeared.

I climbed over the console and drove the truck fast down the driveway and almost skidded on the gravel into the fire. Had to back it up, rocks flying everywhere. I got the extinguisher off its clip behind the seat and walked along the base of the house, blasting the white powder down where the gas was. A bird’s nest up under an eave had caught fire, so I gave that a shot too. Could hear the chicks cheeping. I couldn’t tell the sound of the extinguisher from the roaring in my ears.

After that I walked around, stamping out little hot spots on the ground and on the wall of the house. The wind was cold and damp, and it helped. My heart was pounding and my breath was caught up high in my throat and I’m not sure I could have said one word to anyone, not even Jim.

An hour later Jim came back, alone and panting. He signaled me back into our truck without a word. He put the flashlight and automatic in the console, then backed out of the driveway fast, his breath making fog on the rear window. There was sweat running down his face, and he smelled like trees and exertion.

“He’ll come for his truck,” Jim said.

Then he straightened onto the road and made his way to the turnoff where Dale’s truck waited in the trees. We parked away from the Ram Charger, in a place where we wouldn’t be too obvious.

WE SAT THERE until sunrise, then until seven. There were a couple of blankets and some water back in the king cab, and I’m glad we had all that. A little after seven, Dale came into view through the windshield, slogging through the forest with his arms around himself, shivering.

Jim waited until Dale saw us, then he flung himself from the truck, drawing down with his .380 and hollering, “Police officer,” and for Dale to stop. Dale did stop, then he turned and disappeared back into a thick stand of cottonwoods. Jim crashed in after him.

It took half an hour for him to come back. He had Dale out in front of him with his hands on his head, marching him like a POW. Their clothes were dirty and torn up. But Jim’s gun was in his belt, so he must not have thought Dale was going to run for it again.

“You drive,” Jim said to me. “Dale, you get in the backseat.”

I looked at Jim with a question, but all he said was “Coeur d’Alene.”

Nobody said a word to Coeur d’Alene. It wasn’t far. Jim got on his cell when we reached the city and got the address for army recruitment.

We parked outside.

“Tell Sally what you decided to do about all this,” said Jim.

“I can join the army or get arrested by your husband,” said Dale. “I’m joining up.”

“That’s a good thing, Dale,” I said.

“Name me one good thing about it.”

“It’ll get you out of trouble for a few years, for starters,” I said.

We walked him into the recruitment office. There were flags and posters and a sergeant with a tight shirt and the best creased pants I’ve ever seen in my life. He was baffled by us at first, then Jim explained that we were friends of the family, and Dale had decided to join up but his mom and dad weren’t able to be here for it. Which didn’t explain why Dale’s and Jim’s clothes were dirty and more than a little torn up. The sergeant nodded. He’d seen this scene before.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“Nineteen.”

“Then we’ve got no problems. Notta one.”

There were lots of forms and questions. Dale made it clear that he was ready right then, he was ready to be signed up and go over to Iraq, try his luck on some ragheads. He tried a joke about not having to cut his hair off, and the sergeant laughed falsely.

Then the sergeant said they’d have to do a routine background check before the physical, would take about half an hour, we could come back if we wanted or sit right where we were.

So we went outside. The wind was back down and the day was warming up. Across the street was a breakfast place. The sun reflected off the window in a big orange rectangle, and you could smell the bacon and toast.

“I’m starved,” said Dale.

“Me too,” said Jim. “Sal? Breakfast?”

We ate. Nothing about Dale reminded me of JJ, but everything did. I hoped he’d find something over in that blood-soaked desert that he hadn’t found here.

And I hoped that he’d be back to tell us what it was.

Sack o’ Woe

By John Harvey

The street was dark and narrow, a smear of frost along the roof of the occasional parked car. Two of a possible six overhead lights had been smashed several weeks before. Recycling bins — blue, green, and gray — shared the pavement with abandoned supermarket trolleys and the detritus from a score of fast-food takeaways. Number thirty-four was toward the terrace end, the short street emptying onto a scrub of wasteland ridged with stiffened mud, puddles of brackish water covered by a thin film of ice.

January.

Tom Whitemore knocked with his gloved fist on the door of thirty-four. Paint that was flaking away, a bell that had long since ceased to work.

He was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and sweater, a scuffed leather jacket — the first clothes he had grabbed when the call had come through less than half an hour before.

January 27, 3:17 a.m.

Taking one step back, he raised his right leg and kicked against the door close by the lock; a second kick, wood splintered and the door sprang back.

Inside was your basic two-up, two-down house, a kitchen extension leading into the small yard at the back, bathroom above that. A strip of worn carpet in the narrow hallway, bare boards on the stairs. Bare wires that hung down, no bulb attached, from the ceiling overhead. He had been here before.

“Darren? Darren, you here?”

No answer when he called the name.

A smell that could be from a backed-up foul-water pipe or a blocked drain.

The front room was empty, odd curtains at the window, a TV set in one corner, two chairs and a sagging two-seater settee. Dust. A bundle of clothes. In the back room there were a small table and two more chairs, one with a broken back; a pile of old newspapers; the remnants of an unfinished oven-ready meal; a child’s shoe.

“Darren?”

The first stair creaked a little beneath his weight.

In the front bedroom, a double mattress rested directly on the floor; several blankets, a quilt without a cover, no sheets. Half the drawers in the corner chest had been pulled open and left that way, miscellaneous items of clothing hanging down.

Before opening the door to the rear bedroom, Whitemore held his breath.

A pair of bunk beds leaned against one wall, a pumped-up Lilo mattress close by. Two tea chests, one spilling over with children’s clothes, the other with toys. A plastic bowl in which cereal had hardened and congealed. A baby’s bottle, rancid with yellowing milk. A used nappy, half in, half out of a pink plastic sack. A tube of sweets. A paper hat. Red and yellow building bricks. Soft toys. A plastic car. A teddy bear with a waistcoat and a bright bow tie, still new enough to have been a recent Christmas gift.

And blood.

Blood in fine tapering lines across the floor, faint splashes on the wall. Tom Whitemore pressed one hand to his forehead and closed his eyes.

HE HAD BEEN a member of the Public Protection Team for nearly four years: responsible, together with other police officers, probation officers, and representatives of other agencies — social services, community psychiatric care — for the supervision of violent and high-risk-of-harm sex offenders who had been released back into the community. Their task — through maintaining a close watch; pooling information; getting offenders, where applicable, into accredited programs; and assisting them in finding jobs — was to do anything and everything possible to prevent reoffending. It was often thankless and frequently frustrating — What was that Springsteen song? Two steps up and three steps back? — but unlike a lot of police work, it had focus, clear aims, methods, ambitions. It was possible — sometimes — to see positive results. Potentially dangerous men — they were mostly men — were neutralized, kept in check. If nothing else, there was that.

And yet his wife hated it. Hated it for the people it brought him into contact with, day after day — rapists, child abusers — the scum of the earth in her eyes, the lowest of the low. She hated it for the way it forced him to confront over and over what these people had done, what people were capable of, as if the enormities of their crimes were somehow contaminating him. Creeping into his dreams. Coming back with him into their home, like smoke caught in his hair or clinging to the fibers of his clothes. Contaminating them all.

“How much longer, Tom?” she would ask. “How much longer are you going to do this hateful bloody job?”

“Not long,” he would say. “Not so much longer now.”

Get out before you burn out, that was the word on the Force. Transfer to general duties, Traffic, Fraud. Yet he could never bring himself to leave, to make the move, and each morning he would set off back into that world, and each evening when he returned, no matter how late, he would go and stand in the twins’ bedroom and watch them sleeping, his and Marianne’s twin boys, five years old, safe and sound.

That summer they had gone to Filey as usual, two weeks of holiday, the same dubious weather, the same small hotel, the perfect curve of beach. The twins had run and splashed and fooled around on half-size body boards on the edges of the waves; they had eaten chips and ice cream, and when they were tired of playing with the big colored ball that bounced forever down toward the sea, Tom had helped them build sandcastles with an elaborate array of turrets and tunnels, while Marianne alternately read her book or dozed.

It was perfect: even the weather was forgiving, no more than a scattering of showers, a few darkening clouds, the wind from the south.

On the last evening, the twins upstairs asleep, they had sat on the small terrace overlooking the promenade and the black strip of sea. “When we get back, Tom,” Marianne had said, “you’ve got to ask for a transfer. They’ll understand. No one can do a job like that forever, not even you.”

She reached for his hand, and as he turned toward her, she brought her face to his. “Tom?” Her breath on his face was warm and slightly sweet, and he felt a lurch of love run through him like a wave.

“All right,” he said.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

But by the end of that summer, things had changed. There had been the bombings in London for one thing, suicide bombers on the tube; an innocent young Brazilian shot and killed after a bungled surveillance operation; suspected terrorists arrested in suburbs of Birmingham and Leeds. It was everywhere. All around. Security alerts at the local airport; rumors that spread from voice to voice, from mobile phone to mobile phone. Don’t go into the city center this Saturday. Keep well away. Stay clear. Now it was commonplace to see: fully armed in the middle of the day, a pair of uniformed police officers strolling down past Pizza Hut and the Debenhams department store, Heckler & Koch submachine guns held low across their chests, Walther P990 pistols holstered at their hips, shoppers no longer bothering to stop and stare.

As the Home Office and Security Services continued to warn of the possibility of a new terrorist attack, the pressures on police time increased. A report from the chief inspector of constabulary noted that, in some police areas, surveillance packages intended to supervise high-risk offenders were now rarely implemented due to a lack of resources. “Whether it is counterterrorism or a sex offender,” explained his deputy, “there are only a certain number of specialist officers to go round.”

“You remember what you promised,” Marianne said. By now it was late September, the nights drawing in.

“I can’t,” Tom said, slowly shaking his head. “I can’t leave now.”

She looked at him, her face like flint. “I can, Tom. We can. Remember that.”

It hung over them after that, the threat, fracturing what had held them together for so long.

Out of necessity, Tom worked longer hours; when he did get home, tired, head buzzing, it was to find her turned away from him in the bed and flinching at his touch. At breakfast, when he put his arms around her at the sink, she shrugged him angrily away.

“Marianne, for God’s sake . . .”

“What?”

“We can’t go on like this.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Then do something about it.”

“Jesus!”

“What?”

“I’ve already told you. A hundred times. Not now.”

She pushed past him and out into the hall, slamming the door at her back. “Fuck!” Tom shouted and slammed his fist against the wall. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” One of the twins screamed as if he’d been struck; the other knocked his plastic bowl of cereal to the floor and started to cry.

THE TEAM MEETING was almost over when Christine Finch — one of the probation officers, midfifties, experienced—raised her hand. “Darren Pitcher. I think we might have a problem.”

Tom Whitemore sighed. “What now?”

“One of my clients, Emma Laurie, suspended sentence for dealing crack cocaine, lives up in Forest Fields. Not the brightest cherry in the bunch. She’s taken up with Pitcher. Seems he’s thinking of moving in.”

“That’s a problem?”

“She’s got three kids, all under six. Two of them boys.”

Whitemore shook his head. He knew Darren Pitcher’s history well enough. An only child, brought up by a mother who had given birth to him when she was just sixteen, Pitcher had met his father only twice: on the first occasion, magnanimous from drink, the older man had squeezed his buttocks and slipped two five-pound notes into his trouser pocket; on the second, sober, he had blacked the boy’s eye and told him to fuck off out of his sight.

A loner at school, marked out by learning difficulties, bullied; from the age of sixteen, Pitcher had drifted through a succession of low-paying jobs — cleaning, stacking supermarket shelves, hospital portering, washing cars — and several short-term relationships with women who enjoyed even less self-esteem than he.

When he was twenty-five, he was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for molesting half a dozen boys between the ages of four and seven. While in prison, in addition to numerous incidents of self-harming, he had made one attempt at suicide.

Released, he had spent the first six months in a hostel and had reported to both his probation officer and a community psychiatric nurse each week. After which time, supervision had necessarily slackened off.

“Ben?” Whitemore said, turning toward the psychiatric nurse at the end of the table. “He was one of yours.”

Ben Leonard pushed a hand up through his cropped blond hair. “A family, ready-made, might be what he needs.”

“The girl,” Christine Finch said, “she’s not strong. It’s a wonder she’s hung on to those kids as long as she has.”

“There’s a father somewhere?”

“Several.”

“Contact?”

“Not really.”

For a moment, Tom Whitemore closed his eyes. “The boys, they’re how old?”

“Five and three. There’s a little girl, eighteen months.”

“And do we think, should Pitcher move in, they could be at risk?”

“I think we have to,” Christine Finch said.

“Ben?”

Leonard took his time. “We’ve made real progress with Darren, I think. He’s aware that his previous behavior was wrong. Regrets what he’s done. The last thing he wants to do is offend again. But, yes, for the sake of the kids, I’d have to say there is a risk. A small one, but a risk.”

“Okay,” Whitemore said. “I’ll go and see him. Report back. Christine, you’ll stay in touch with the girl?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Let’s not lose sight of this in the midst of everything else.”

THEY SAT ON the Portland Leisure Centre steps, a wan sun showing weakly through the wreaths of cloud. Whitemore had bought two cups of pale tea from the machines inside, and they sat there on the cold, worn stone, scarcely talking as yet. Darren Pitcher was smoking a cigarette, a roll-up he had made with less than steady hands. What was it, Whitemore thought, his gran had always said? Don’t sit on owt cold or you’ll get piles, sure as eggs is eggs.

“Got yourself a new girlfriend, I hear,” Whitemore said.

Pitcher flinched, then glanced at him from under lowered lids. He had a lean face, a few reddish spots around the mouth and chin, strangely long eyelashes that curled luxuriantly over his weak gray eyes.

“Emma? That her name?”

“She’s all right.”

“Of course.”

Two young black men in shiny sportswear bounced past them, all muscle, on their way to the gym.

“It serious?” Whitemore asked.

“Dunno.”

“What I heard, it’s pretty serious. The pair of you. Heard you were thinking of moving in.”

Pitcher mumbled something and drew on his cigarette.

“Sorry?” Whitemore said. “I didn’t quite hear . . .”

“I said it’s none of your business . . .”

“Isn’t it?”

“My life, yeah? Not yours.”

Whitemore swallowed a mouthful more of the lukewarm tea and turned the plastic cup upside down, shaking the last drops onto the stone. “This Emma,” he said, “she’s got kids. Young kids.”

“So?”

“Young boys.”

“That don’t . . . You can’t . . . That was a long time ago.”

“I know, Darren. I know. But it happened, nonetheless. And it makes this our concern.” For a moment, his hand rested on Pitcher’s arm. “You understand?”

Pitcher’s hand went to his mouth, and he bit down on his knuckle hard.

GREGORY BOULEVARD RAN along one side of the Forest Recreation Ground, the nearest houses, once substantial family homes, now mostly subdivided into flats, and falling, many of them, into disrepair. Beyond these, the streets grew narrower and coiled back upon themselves, the houses smaller, with front doors that opened directly out onto the street. Corner shops with bars across the windows, shutters on the doors.

Emma Laurie sat on a lopsided settee in the front room; small-featured, a straggle of hair falling down across her face, her voice rarely rising above a whisper as she spoke. A wraith of a thing, Whitemore thought. Outside, a good wind would blow her away.

The three children huddled in the corner, watching cartoons, the sound turned low. Jason, Rory, and Jade. The youngest had a runny nose, the older of the boys coughed intermittently, open-mouthed, but they were all, as yet, bright-eyed.

“He’s good with them,” Emma was saying, “Darren. Plays with them all the time. Takes them, you know, down to the forest. They love him, they really do. Can’t wait for him to move in wi’ us. Go on about it all the time. Jason especially.”

“And you?” Christine Finch said. “How do you feel? About Darren moving in?”

“Be easier, won’t it? Rent and that. What I get, family credit an’ the rest, s’a struggle, right? But if Darren’s here, I can get a job up the supermarket, afternoons. Get out a bit, ’stead of bein’ all cooped up. Darren’ll look after the kids. He don’t mind.”

THEY WALKED DOWN through the maze of streets to where Finch had left her car, the Park & Ride on the edge of the forest.

“What do you think?” Whitemore said.

“Ben could be right. Darren, could be the making of him.”

“But if it puts those lads at risk?”

“I know, I know. But what can we do? He’s been out a good while now, no sign of him reoffending.”

“I still don’t like it,” Whitemore said.

Finch smiled wryly. “Other people’s lives. We’ll keep our fingers crossed. Keep as close an eye as we can.”

Sometimes, Whitemore thought, it’s as if we are trying to hold the world together with good intentions and a ball of twine.

“Give you a lift back into town?” Finch said when they reached her car. It was not yet late afternoon, and the light was already beginning to fade.

Whitemore shook his head. “It’s okay. I’ll catch the tram.”

Back at the office, he checked his e-mails, made several calls, wrote up a brief report of the visit with Emma Laurie. He wondered if he should go and see Darren Pitcher again but decided there was little to be gained. When he finally got back home, a little after six, Marianne was buckling the twins into their seats in the back of the car.

“What’s going on?”

She was flushed, a scarf at her neck. “My parents. I thought we’d go over and see them. Just for a couple of days. They haven’t seen the boys in ages.”

“They were over just the other weekend.”

“That was a month ago. More. It is ages to them.”

One of the boys was marching his dinosaur along the top of the seat in front; the other was fiddling with his straps.

“You were just going to go?” Whitemore said. “You weren’t even going to wait till I got back?”

“You’re not usually this early.”

“So wait.”

“It’s a two-hour drive.”

“I know how far it is.”

“Tom, don’t. Please.”

“Don’t what?”

“Make this more difficult than it is.”

He read it in her eyes. Walking to the back of the car, he snapped open the boot. It was crammed with luggage, coats, shoes, toys.

“You’re not just going for a couple of days, are you? This is not a couple of fucking days.”

“Tom, please . . .” She raised a hand toward him, but he knocked it away.

“You’re leaving, that’s what you’re doing . . .”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re not?”

“It’s just for a little while . . . A break. I need a break. So I can think.”

“You need to fucking think, all right.”

Whitemore snatched open the rear door and leaned inside, seeking to unsnap the nearest boy’s belt and failing in his haste. The boys themselves looked frightened and close to tears.

“Tom, don’t do that! Leave it. Leave them alone.”

She pulled at his shoulder and he thrust her away, so that she almost lost her footing and stumbled back. Roused by the shouting, one of the neighbors was standing halfway along his front garden path, openly staring.

“Tom, please,” Marianne said. “Be reasonable.”

He turned so fast, she thought he was going to strike her and she cowered back.

“Reasonable? Like this? You call this fucking reasonable?”

The neighbor had come as far as the pavement edge. “Excuse me, but is everything all right?”

“All right?” Whitemore shouted. “Yeah. Marvelous. Fucking wonderful. Now fuck off indoors and mind your own fucking business.”

Both the twins were crying now: not crying, screaming.

The car door slammed as Marianne slid behind the wheel and started the engine.

“Marianne!” Whitemore shouted her name and brought down his fist hard on the roof of the car as it pulled away, red taillights blurring in the half-dark.

Whitemore stood there for several moments more, staring off into the middle distance, seeing nothing. Back in the house, he went from room to room, assessing how much she had taken, how long she might be considering staying away. Her parents lived on the coast, between Chapel St. Leonards and Sutton-on-Sea, a bungalow but with room enough for Marianne and the twins. Next year they would be at school, next year would be different, but now . . .

He looked in the fridge, but there was nothing there he fancied. A couple of cold sausages wrapped in foil. Maybe he’d make himself a sandwich later on. He snapped open a can of lager, but the taste was stale in his mouth and he poured the remainder down the sink. There was a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard, only recently opened, but he knew better than to start down that route too soon.

In the living room, he switched on the TV, flicked through the channels, switched it off again; he made a cup of tea and glanced at that day’s paper, one of Marianne’s magazines. Every fifteen minutes, he looked at his watch. When he thought he’d given them time enough, he phoned.

Marianne’s father came on the line. Soft-spoken, understanding, calm. “I’m sorry, Tom. She doesn’t want to speak to you right now. Perhaps tomorrow, tomorrow evening. She’ll call you. . . .  The twins? They’re sleeping, fast off. Put them to bed as soon as they arrived. . . . I’ll be sure to give them your love. . . . Yes, of course. Of course. . . . Good night, Tom. Good night.”

Around nine, Whitemore called a taxi and went across the city to the Five Ways pub in Sherwood. In the back room, Jake McMahon and a bunch of the usual reprobates were charging through Cannonball Adderley’s “Jeannine.” A Duke Pearson tune, but because Whitemore had first heard it on Adderley’s Them Dirty Blues — Cannonball on alto alongside his trumpeter brother, Nat — it was forever associated with the saxophonist in his mind.

Whitemore’s father had given him the recording as a sixteenth-birthday present, when Tom’s mind had been more full of T’Pau and the Pet Shop Boys, Whitney Houston and Madonna. But eventually he had given it a listen, late in his room, and something had stuck.

One of the best nights he remembered having with his father before the older man took himself off to a retirement chalet in Devon had been spent here, drinking John Smith’s Bitter and listening to the band play another Adderley special, “Sack o’ Woe.”

Jake McMahon came over to him at the break and shook his hand. “Not seen you in a while.”

Whitemore forced a smile. “You know how it is, this and that.”

McMahon nodded. “Your dad, he okay?”

“Keeping pretty well.”

“You’ll give him my best.”

“Of course.”

Whitemore stayed for the second set, then called a cab from the phone alongside the bar.

DARREN PITCHER MOVED in with Emma Laurie and her three children. October became November, became December. Most Sundays, Whitemore drove out to his in-laws’ bungalow on the coast, where the twins threw themselves at him with delight and he played rough-and-tumble with them on the beach if the cold allowed and, if not, tussled with them on the living room settee. Marianne’s parents stepped around him warily, keeping their thoughts to themselves. If he tried to get Marianne off on her own, she resisted, made excuses. Conversation between them was difficult.

“When will we see you again?” she asked one evening as he was leaving.

“When are you coming home?” he asked. Christmas was less than three weeks away.

“Tom, I don’t know.”

“But you are coming? Coming back?”

She turned her face aside. “Don’t rush me, all right?”

It was just two days later when Christine Finch phoned Whitemore in his office, the first call of the day. Emma Laurie was waiting for them, agitated, at her front door. She had come back from work to find Pitcher with Jason, the eldest of her two sons, on his lap; Jason had been sitting on a towel, naked, and Pitcher had been rubbing Vaseline between his legs.

Whitemore and Finch exchanged glances.

“Did he have a reason?” Finch asked.

“He said Jason was sore, said he’d been complaining about being sore . . .”

“And you don’t believe him?”

“If he was sore, it was ’cause of what Darren was doing. You know that as well as me.”

“Where is Darren now?” Whitemore said.

“I don’t know. I don’t care. I told him to clear out and not come back.”

Whitemore found Pitcher later that morning, sitting cross-legged on the damp pavement, his back against the hoardings surrounding the Old Market Square. Rain was falling in fine slanted lines, but Pitcher either hadn’t noticed or didn’t care.

“Darren,” Whitemore said, “come on, let’s get out of this rain.”

Pitcher glanced up at him and shook his head.

Coat collar up, Whitemore hunkered down beside him. “You want to tell me what happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Emma says . . .”

“I don’t give a fuck what Emma says.”

“I do,” Whitemore said. “I have to. But I want to know what you say too.”

Pitcher was silent for several minutes, passersby stepping over his legs or grudgingly going round.

“He’d been whinging away,” Pitcher said. “Jason. How the pants he was wearing were too tight. Scratching. His hand down his trousers, scratching, and I kept telling him to stop. He’d hurt himself. Make it worse. Then, when he went to the toilet, right, I told him to show me, you know, show me where it was hurting, point to it, like. And there was a bit of red there, I could see, so I said would he like me to put something on it, to make it better, and he said yes, and so . . .”

He stopped abruptly, tears in his eyes and shoulders shaking.

Whitemore waited.

“I didn’t do anything,” Pitcher said finally. “Honest. I never touched him. Not like . . . you know, like before.”

“But you could have?” Whitemore said.

Head down, Pitcher nodded.

“Darren?”

“Yes, yeah. I suppose . . . Yeah.”

Still neither of them moved, and the rain continued to fall.

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING Whitemore rose early, scraped the ice from the windows of the secondhand Saab he’d bought not so many weeks before, loaded up the backseat with presents, and set out for the coast. When he arrived the light was only just beginning to spread, in bands of pink and yellow, across the sky. Wanting his arrival to be a surprise, he parked some houses away.

The curtains were partly drawn and he could see the lights of the Christmas tree clearly, red, blue, and green, and, as he moved across the frosted grass, he could see the twins, up already, still wearing their pajamas, tearing into the contents of their stockings, shouting excitedly as they pulled at the shiny paper and cast it aside.

When he thought they might see him, he stepped quickly away and returned to the car, loading the presents into his arms. Back at the bungalow, he placed them on the front step, up against the door, and walked away.

If he had waited, knocked on the window, rung the bell, gone inside and stayed, seen their happiness at close hand, he knew it would have been almost impossible to leave.

EMMA LAURIE APPEARED at the police station in early January, the youngest child in a buggy, the others half-hidden behind her legs. After days of endless pestering, she had allowed Pitcher back into the house, just for an hour, and then he had refused to leave. When she’d finally persuaded him to go, he had threatened to kill himself if she didn’t have him back; said that he would snatch the children and take them with him; kill them all.

“It was wrong o’ me, weren’t it? Letting him back in. I never should’ve done it. I know that, I know.”

“It’s okay,” Whitemore said. “And I wouldn’t pay too much attention to what Darren said. He was angry. Upset. Times like that, people say a lot of things they don’t necessarily mean.”

“But if you’d seen his face . . . He meant it, he really did.”

Whitemore gave her his card. “Look, my mobile number’s there. If he comes round again, threatening you, anything like that, you call me, right? Straightaway. Meantime, I’ll go and have a word with him. Okay?”

Emma smiled uncertainly, nodded thanks, and ushered the children away.

AFTER SPENDING TIME in various hostels and a spell sleeping rough, Pitcher, with the help of the local housing association, had found a place to rent in Sneinton. A one-room flat with a sink and small cooker in one corner and a shared bathroom and toilet on the floor below. Whitemore sat on the single chair, and Pitcher sat on the sagging bed.

“I know why you’re here,” Pitcher said. “It’s about Emma. What I said.”

“You frightened her.”

“I know. I lost my temper, that’s all.” He shook his head. “Being there, her an’ the kids, a family, you know? An’ then her chuckin’ me out. You wouldn’t understand. Why would you? But I felt like shit. A piece of shit. An’ I meant it. What I said. Not the kids, not harmin’ them. I wouldn’t do that. But topping myself . . .” He looked at Whitemore despairingly. “It’s what I’ll do. I swear it. I will.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Whitemore said.

“Why the hell not?”

Whitemore leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “It’s hard, I know. And I do understand. Really, I do. But you have to keep going. Move on. Look — here — you’ve got this place, right? A flat of your own. It’s a start. A new start. Look at it like that.”

He went across to Pitcher and rested a hand on his shoulder, not knowing how convincing his half-truths and platitudes had been.

“Ben Leonard. You talked to him before. I’ll see if I can’t get him to see you again. It might help sort a few things out. Okay? But in the meantime, whatever you do, you’re to keep away from Emma. Right, Darren? Emma and the children.” Whitemore tightened his grip on Pitcher’s shoulder before stepping clear. “Keep right away.”

IT WAS A little more than a week later when the call came through, waking Whitemore from his sleep. The voice was brisk, professional, a triage nurse at the Queen’s Medical Centre, Accident and Emergency. “We’ve a young woman here, Emma Laurie, she’s quite badly injured. Some kind of altercation with a partner? She insisted that I contact you, I hope that’s all right. Apparently she’s worried about the children. Three of them?”

“Are they there with her?”

“No. At home, apparently.”

“On their own?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe a neighbor? I’m afraid she’s not making a lot of sense.”

Whitemore dropped the phone and finished pulling on his clothes.

THE HOUSE WAS silent — the blood slightly tacky to the touch. One more room to go. The bathroom door was bolted from the inside, and Whitemore shouldered it free. Darren Pitcher was sitting on the toilet seat, head slumped forward toward his chest, one arm trailing over the bath, the other dangling toward the floor. Long, vertical cuts ran down the inside of both arms, almost from elbow to wrist, slicing through the horizontal scars from where he had harmed himself before. Blood had pooled along the bottom of the bath and around his feet. A Stanley knife rested on the bath’s edge alongside an oval of pale green soap.

Whitemore crouched down. There was a pulse, still beating faintly, at the side of Pitcher’s neck.

“Darren? Can you hear me?”

With an effort, Pitcher raised his head. “See, I did it. I said I would.” A ghost of a smile lingered in his eyes.

“The children,” Whitemore said. “Where are they?”

Pitcher’s voice was a sour whisper in his face. “The shed. Out back. I didn’t want them to see this.”

As Pitcher’s head slumped forward, Whitemore dialed the emergency number on his mobile phone.

Downstairs, he switched on the kitchen light; there was a box of matches lying next to the stove. Unbolting the back door, he stepped outside. The shed was no more than five feet high, roughly fashioned from odd planks of wood, the roof covered with a rime of frost. The handle was cold to the touch.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, loud enough for them to hear inside. “I’m just going to open the door.”

When it swung back, he ducked inside and struck a match. The three children were clinging to one another in the farthest corner, staring wide-eyed into the light.

DARREN PITCHER HAD lost consciousness by the time the paramedics arrived, and despite their efforts and those of the doctors at A & E, he was pronounced dead a little after six that morning. Sutured and bandaged, Emma Laurie was kept in overnight and then released. Her children had been scooped up by the Social Services Emergency Duty Team and would spend a short time in care.

Tom Whitemore drove to the embankment and stood on the pedestrian bridge across the river, staring down at the dark, glassed-over surface of the water, the pale shapes of sleeping swans, heads tucked beneath their wings. Overhead, the sky was clear and pitted with stars.

When he finally arrived home, it was near dawn.

The heating in the house had just come on.

Upstairs, in the twins’ room, it felt cold nonetheless. Each bed was carefully made up, blankets folded neatly back. In case. He stood there for a long time, letting the light slowly unfold round him. The start of another day.