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Peach stiffly. ‘I hope someone hasn’t purloined it whilst you’ve been out and about on the tasks of your arduous day, sir. People are light-fingered everywhere now, sir. Even in police stations, it appears.’ He was standing erect in the military ‘Attention’ position, his eyes rigidly fixed not upon Tucker’s face but on the wall three inches above the chief’s head, a pose he adopted for no other reason than that he knew that this stance of exaggerated deference irritated and disconcerted his chief.
    Tucker said, ‘I always prefer the informality of a verbal exchange when it’s possible, you know.’ He waved in exasperation towards the chair in front of his wide and uncluttered desk. ‘Do sit down, Percy. We have things to discuss.’
    Peach noted the use of his first name with dismay. Attempts at intimacy from Tucker were always a danger sign. He positioned the chair very carefully, as if its exact proximity to the figure in charge of Brunton CID was a matter of supreme importance in some unwritten but important ritual. Then he sat upon it as if it might at any moment explode beneath him.
    â€˜Yes, sir. Nothing remarkable this weekend. Bit of violence in the town centre on Saturday night. Routine stuff, I’m afraid to say.’
    â€˜We mustn’t just accept these things, you know.’ Tucker was suddenly at his most sententious. ‘My policy is to charge these ruffians, if at all possible.’
    â€˜Yes, sir. Zero tolerance, sir. Like Mayor Giuliani, sir.’
    â€˜Pardon?’ Tucker looked like a low-IQ rabbit stricken with incomprehension. His eyes contrived to be at once devoid of understanding and full of suspicion, a combination which his DCI found wholly intriguing.
    â€˜Late Mayor of New York, sir. Zero tolerance was one of his watchwords. The policy worked well there, apparently. Might work well in Brunton, if the individual-rights lobby would think of the victims instead of the criminals, for once in a while.’
    â€˜Ah!’ For a moment, these two very different men found their enmity removed by the thought of a common foe. Tucker nodded his agreement and added a salvo against a second police
bête noire.
‘And even when we make out a good case against some young thug, the bloody Crown Prosecution Service won’t take it on.’
    â€˜Indeed, sir. The CPS want a cast-iron case before they’ll consider taking things to court.’ Peach brightened a little. ‘Which is what I’m trying to give them, with one of the toughs from the weekend.’
    â€˜That’s the style, Percy. Give ’em hell, eh! Well, at least you know your Head of CID is right behind you.’ Tucker jutted his chin aggressively and set his head in his ‘leading the troops’ position.
    â€˜Good to know that, sir. Wouldn’t like to come downstairs and question Mr Atwal yourself, would you?’ Percy Peach raised his eyebrows in optimistic encouragement, although he already knew the answer to his question.
    Tucker’s scalp prickled as Peach had known it would at the mention of the name. ‘Atwal? Are you telling me that you are questioning a member of the immigrant community?’
    Peach wrinkled his brow as if asked to deal with an extremely complex question. ‘Difficult to pronounce on that, sir. No doubt the man he was hitting with the baseball bat regarded him as an immigrant, but Mr Atwal assures me that he was born here and has lived in this area for every one of his twenty-four years.’
    â€˜There are racial overtones to this, Peach.’
    And you’re wetting yourself again, thought Percy. He was glad to hear his forename removed from Tommy Bloody Tucker’s address and enmity re-entering the chief’s tones; you knew where you were when there was a little formality in the exchanges. ‘You’re on to it as usual, sir. Nothing slips past you, as I constantly emphasize to