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Lunka and he saw Kate Jenkins’s red Mini parked badly, half on the kerb, a couple of doors down. She was heading for the gates, her slight frame bent as she lugged a silver case two-handed, banging it against her thigh.
    ‘You want some help with that?’
    ‘It won’t get the job done any quicker,’ she said, but let him take it. ‘Buggered my back up at the gym.’
    Two of her team were already at work in the garden, androgynous figures in baggy blue plastic coveralls inching through the long grass where the shed’s window had been blown out by the fire. In the doorway the photographer was squatting down, getting some good tight shots of the dead man’s head.
    ‘Is it safe for you to go in there?’ Zigic asked.
    Jenkins looked up at the clouds gathering overhead. ‘If the wind picks up we could be in trouble. We’ll throw a tent over it, hope for the best.’
    ‘The roof’s collapsed already.’
    ‘That’s something, I suppose.’
    The photographer moved tentatively into the shed.
    ‘Watch yourself, Tony,’ Jenkins said.
    ‘Yes, Mum.’
    ‘If you were my son you wouldn’t have that bolt through your nose.’
    ‘But I could keep the one in my dick?’
    Jenkins smiled faintly. ‘I didn’t need to know that, did you?’
    ‘Not really,’ Zigic said. ‘Call me when you’ve got something?’
    ‘Always do.’
    He went round to the front of the house and rang the Barlows’ doorbell, held it down and heard an amplifier echoing inside. Nobody could have slept through that.
    Ferreira let him in and he followed her into the living room.
    The Barlows sat close together on the sofa. Neither looked like they’d had enough sleep. There was thick grey stubble on his cheeks, bags under her eyes.
    Phil Barlow stood up as Zigic went in.
    ‘Are you in charge?’
    ‘DI Zigic.’ He stuck his hand out and Barlow hesitated a moment before he shook it with a strong grip. ‘I’d like you both to come down to the station and give us a formal statement.’
    ‘Can’t we do it here?’ Gemma said. ‘I don’t want to go to a police station.’
    ‘We’ve done nothing. What d’you want statements from us for?’
    ‘A man’s died in your garden shed, Mr Barlow.’
    Barlow drew himself up to his full five eight, six inches shorter than Zigic, but he was broad and powerfully built and Zigic knew he’d have to be quick if the man was stupid enough to throw his bulk around.
    ‘I can’t imagine any good reason why you wouldn’t want to help.’

4
     
    WHEN PAOLO FIRST arrived here he would wake with a sense of dislocation, a few seconds of confusion, thinking he was still at home, expecting to look across the bed and see the familiar curve of Maria’s back, the dimples above her buttocks and the constellation of small brown moles on her shoulder. Before he opened his eyes he would reach for her and only then, when his hand found nothing but cold air, would he finally realise he was alone.
    Not alone, of course, he was never actually alone.
    Three other men shared the caravan with him, one in this small room, on an identical camp bed pushed hard against the opposite wall, two of the new Chinese out in the main body of the van, sleeping on the benches either side of the table they ate from.
    The other man, Jakub, was less than a metre from him, close enough that Paolo could smell the rot on his breath as he snored. At night he talked in his sleep, speaking a language Paolo couldn’t understand, and so close he was forced to listen to every groan in the darkness, every shuddering orgasm he brought himself to, needing comfort or release as he thought of the woman he had left behind.
    Outside an alarm sounded, three shrill blasts from an air horn.
    Jakub stretched and scratched his stomach, kicking off his duvet cover. Paolo turned towards the wall, not wanting to watch the other man rise from the mattress and dress himself in the small space between their beds.
    He stared at the wall, orange-and-brown paper in a