Problems, Problems

Bell Street, third floor, above a dry-cleaner whose steam came up through the floorboards at the same time every morning, like a rumour. The glass on the door had said VOSS SOCIAL INVESTIGATIONS for nineteen days, in letters you'd painted yourself, a little crooked on the S. In that time it had attracted one missing cat, one man who wanted a sociologist to prove his neighbour's hedge was a hate crime, and a surprising number of people who thought "social" meant something to do with weddings.

Jonah Pike, eighteen, three weeks into the only job that had ever asked what he thought, was trying to make the kettle boil by staring at it. The kettle had a personality disorder. Your overdraft had a personality too, and you'd stopped looking it in the eye.

Detective Sergeant Callum Rook knocked at twenty to nine with a polystyrene cup he wasn't drinking from. Inspector's board next month; he talked about it the way other men talk about dentists.

"Marian Teague," he said. "You knew her."

You had. A conference in Leeds, a panel where she'd asked the only question anyone remembered and made the room laugh while she did it.

"Found in the dock basin at six this morning, below the Customs House quay. Her power chair went in with her. Wet night, no railing on that stretch, a couple of glasses at the council's festival preview." He turned the cup a quarter-turn. "Council would like it written up as an accident by lunchtime. I'd like it looked at by somebody whose invoices the council doesn't pay. As of this morning, conveniently, that's you."