‘So how come it doesn’t feel easy?’ he asked out loud, just as the toaster finished toasting. He took everything – newspaper included – through to the living-room sofa. There wouldn’t be much on the TV this time of day, but there was always the BBC news. His gaze shifted to the mantelpiece. There were framed photos there. One showed his mother and father, probably on holiday in the mid-sixties. The other was of Fox himself, not quite a teenager, with his arm around his younger sister as they sat together on a sofa. He got the feeling it was an aunt’s house, but didn’t know which one. Fox was smiling for the camera, but Jude was interested only in her brother. An image flashed into his mind – she was tumbling down the stairs at her home. What had she been carrying? Empty mugs maybe, or a basket of washing. But then she was at the foot of the stairs, unharmed, and Vince was standing in front of her, bunching a fist. It had happened before, Jude arguing that she’d struck first, or had given as good as she got. It won’t happen again…

Fox’s appetite had gone, and the tea smelled as if he’d put too much milk in it. His mobile phone sounded an alert: incoming text message. It was from Tony Kaye. He was in the pub with Joe Naysmith.

‘Get thee behind me,’ Fox said to himself.

Five minutes later, he was looking for his car keys.

Monday 9 February 2009

2

Monday morning, Malcolm Fox spent almost as much time finding a parking space at HQ as it had taken him to drive there in the first place. Tony Kaye and Joe Naysmith were already in the office. As the ‘junior’, Naysmith had brewed a pot of coffee, and provided a carton of milk to go with it. Come Friday, he would ask the others to chip in. Sometimes they would and sometimes they wouldn’t, and Naysmith would continue the pretence of keeping tabs on what he was owed.