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Increasingly he got the impression that Elizabeth Rice resented his superior intellect. It was a shame, because she was no slouch herself, but lately – since he’d been the boss – she hovered between two standpoints: questioning him or ignoring him. Both got under his skin. Today she’d been in a particularly bad mood because her digging into the background of the Piper Parents had turned up nothing and made everybody hate her. Reynolds had told her that it went with the territory and she’d replied, ‘Maybe your territory,’ in a tone he would have corrected if she’d been a man.

Reynolds had always felt he had a great kinship with women. Men were threatened by his brains and often responded with hostility. DCI Marvel had been a case in point. But women were generally far happier to let him do the thinking for them, while he encouraged them to shine in supporting roles.

‘There’s no I in team,’ he was fond of telling them. It went down terribly well.

Most of the time.

Lately Elizabeth Rice had greeted the homily with stony silence.

Pity. There’d been a time a few years back when he’d thought Rice might be girlfriend material. Even wife. But then they’d spent time together on cases and he’d seen all the things that were wrong with her. It wasn’t just the toast and the baked-bean juice. She often wore jeans, she laughed too loudly, and she sang in the shower. She didn’t have a bad voice but she had no taste in music – or consideration for those who did, and who might be trying to work just the other side of the Travelodge wall.

Slowly those faults had eroded any ideas he might once have harboured about a possible future together, and her burgeoning intellectual jealousy was very unattractive.

Kate said she would contact Steven Lamb’s old therapist.

‘Excellent,’ said Reynolds. ‘Keep me informed.’ He hung up and turned to Rice, who immediately held up two thin, white-bread sandwiches in plastic boxes – a barrier to his victory.

‘Chicken or ham?’ she said.

They both looked like the antithesis of nutrition. He thought of DCI Marvel and felt a single solitary pang of guilt. No, not guilt – empathy. It was tough at the top.

‘Chicken.’

They ate in the hot car. He was halfway through his sandwich before he realized it was, in fact, ham. He grimaced and sighed loudly but Rice didn’t ask him what was wrong.

Reynolds hoped his new hair made her realize just how badly she’d blown it.

* * *

The big one’s not eating, but the youngster’s settling in. Didn’t want either of ’em, but what’s to be done? The big one come sneaking up on me just as I’m winkling the first bay out from under the car. Grabs me hard and so I hit him with the stick. I know him too – and he knows me – so I had to bring him with. And right when I’m getting him in the car, here come another one trying to steal the first! It were Piccadilly Circus in the middle of Landacre Wood. Lucky they’re both scrawny.

But it fills up the yard again. That’s the main thing. Bin empty too long; made me itch with the emptiness. Every one I filled made the others look even emptier. Now I look at the runs, all full of life, and it’s like a sigh of relief in my head.

They’re still searching, but I’m not bothered. Let ’em come. I got my hiding places. Serves all them folk right. Teach ’em to value what they got, be it children or traditions. You can’t get ’em back. Once they’re gone they’re gone for good.

Still, I don’t like the big one. Something not right with that one, I always thought. Reminds me of a hound I had once off the Beaufort – Bosun. Huge brute, he were. A demon in the field, Jim Wetherall said when he offloaded him, but the wily old bastard never mentioned him were mazed in the yard. Bit a horse once. Imagine that – a bloody foxhound biting a horse! Not a nip either – a right proper chunk out the belly and I had to whip him raw before him let go.

Only dog I were ever wary of, Bosun, and the only one I ever shot and was happy to do it. Mostly him was as waggy as the rest, and that’s what made him so dangerous, see – the way he’d turn, sudden like.

The big one’s like that, I reckon – pretending to be weak, not eating, not moving. But I never had a hound fool me twice and I won’t be starting now.

So the big one’s chained up. Because of Bosun.

The others are free in the runs, like the old ones. They get hungry when they hear the knife like the old ones too! Already come running to the gates, slavering – specially the smallest bay – he’s a hungry one! The maids are little charmers, too. Make daisy chains in the meadow! Like a storybook.

They’re not as noisy as the old ones, but maybe that’ll come with time. They can make all the noise they like up here and no one to hear ’em for miles.

I miss the noise. That quiet made me mazed.

Maybe I can walk ’em too, some time. At night maybe, and coupled up like pups to keep ’em from darting off all over. It would be good for ’em, and good for me. Watching ’em get fit and strong and biddable.