He got out and approached smiling. Dalziel ignored him and tried the engine again. It roared impotently.

He tapped on the driver's window. Dalziel's head turned. His leathery lips formed two inaudible words. If Pascoe had not known it to be impossible, he would have guessed the words to be 'Fuck off'.

He tapped again. The man with the polished head spoke. Dalziel slowly wound down the window. His gaze met Pascoe's with a force that almost straightened him up. And the lips were moving again, still inaudibly but this time unmistakably.

'Fuck off!'

'Sorry, sir,' said Pascoe. 'Just thought you were having a spot of bother…'

'He one of yours, Dalziel?' growled the man in the passenger seat.

The DCI's expression seemed to suggest the idea gave great pain. Piqued by this response, and also encouraged by the passenger's tone in his suspicion that he might be brass, Pascoe said brightly, 'Detective Constable Pascoe, sir.'

'Right. Out! Jildi! Move your fat arse!'

Peter Pascoe had become aware very soon after joining the police that the rules of civilized social intercourse no longer applied. But did Chief Constables really speak to Chief Inspectors like this?

Perhaps he'd made a mistake. In fact as the Fat Man slid out of the car and the bald man followed him via the same door, the pointers to error began to mount up.

No reason perhaps why a Chief Constable should not be fluent in the patois. But surely no Chief Constable would wear khaki trousers, heavy black boots, and a sweat-stained green shirt whose rolled up sleeves revealed the word mum tattooed on a brawny forearm, the letters wreathed in roses and all enclosed in a ragged fillet of black?

It occurred to him that he was concentrating so much on the specific gravity of the milk, he was ignoring the trout.