I’m standing at the edge of a motorway outside Brighton. The corpse of a Mercedes lies at the side of the road, a pile of blackened, twisted metal. It sits at the end of a long track of skidmarks and torn tarmac, the victim of the laws of physics and thermodynamics working together, assorted fragments of metal and glass littering the carriageway. The safety barriers are scarred where the car impacted them like a comet.

The Police have cordoned off and screened the crash site, which reduces the motorway to the innermost lane only. Traffic crawls by, the occupants hungrily looking over the scene, eager for ghoulish titbits to compensate their lost time. A handful of Police officers and forensics techs pick over the road surface, photographing and cataloging.

Bloodhound is with me, stamping his feet and pacing around, trying to shield himself from the chemical stink hanging in the air. Even I can pick out the acrid stench of burned plastic and metal through my helmet’s filters. Bloodhound won’t get within five metres of the wrecked car, a handkerchief clamped over his nose and mouth. His movements are more bird-like than doggy, head bobbing and toes tapping.

“You always bring me to the best parties, boss,” Bloodhound says through the handkerchief. “Are we sure it’s Powerhouse’s?”

“It’s his number plate.”

“Are you sure he was inside? Shit, it stinks.”

“Someone was inside. The paramedics pried a body out of the driver’s seat but we can’t be sure it’s Powerhouse until the DNA comes back.”

Bloodhound blinks in the sunlight, or maybe he’s blinking tears out of his eyes.

“Did you know him?” I say.

“Shit, even the Normies said he was one of the good ones,” he says, searching the toes of his boots for imperfections. “Ah, shit, Jimmy, Jimmy.”

James Aaron, Powerhouse. I suppose his reputation is - was - accurate. He spent most of his days working for charities, doing promotional stuff, roadshows and the like. Every year, he spent a month on a project in some god-forsaken poor country, building this or hauling that. He was always so shy and apologetic around his Talented colleagues, as if his merely being a Physical was something to be ashamed of.

“He was a friend?” I say. Bloodhound nods.

“Can I see him?”

“You don’t want to.”

“What if I do?” he says, grimacing.

“Between the crash and the fire…”

He nods and blows out a breath.

“Yeah, yeah. I suppose you’re right.”

“I won’t stop you,” I say. I suspect he won’t go to view the body. He’s an essential member of our team but certain smells are too intense or offensive to him. Putrescence lies at the top of that list, which I can’t disagree with. Bodily smells come second, which makes him prickly to work with.

I stride over to the wreckage. Bloodhound watches me go, hands on hip. I can’t detect anything untoward in the remains of the car. I’m not sure what to look for. Everything seems to be broken. It looks like a dragon had its way with the car. The tyres have melted in the fierceness of the flames and there are huge rents in the frame and roof where the firemen tore at them so they could get to the person inside. It must have been one hell of a crash.

When I get back to Bloodhound, he’s clearing his nose with a hard sniff and wiping the tears from his eyes.

“The Uniforms are waiting for us, yeah?” he says.

“Traffic cam footage.”

“Give us a lift, then.”

I raise my arms into the air and he steps in close to my side, reaching around my body for the handhold on the far side. I hold his slight frame close and lift us both into the air. I set us down near the local Police HQ. The entrance is thronged with reporters and photographers, drawn by the scent of blood and scoops. A few of them notice us and soon the whole pack is coming our way. Bloodhound hands me his handkerchief to wipe his tears off my armour.

“He was a friend,” he says. “He knew my children, they thought he was the best. What am I gonna tell them?”

“Might be good to start with the truth,” I say

He snorts.

“You don’t have much experience with children, do you?”

He bustles off towards the entrance. He pushes his way through the gaggle of reporters as they enclose us. Photographers snap away, flashbulbs flaring, and a host of microphones get shoved in his face.

“No comment, no comment,” he says. “Jesus, try a new aftershave or something, huh?”

He makes it inside and the hyenas turn their attention to me. The palms of my hands itch at the prospect of being surrounded. I’m on duty and therefore on show, on show and therefore on best behaviour. As much as I want to scatter the mob, take off and land in the yard behind the station, this is part of my job. The scrum forms around me, microphones bounce off my faceplate and questions are barked at me from all corners. There are at least six different TV news teams here in addition to the usual scandal rag gossip mongers.

“Red Line! Red Line!” shouts a familiar voice. Liam Turner, the self-styled ‘Talent Spotter’, peddler of exaggerations, half-truths and outright lies about my community. The sight of his pale, moon-shaped face and ridiculous flat-top haircut puts me on my guard immediately.

“Red Line! RL!” he shouts again. “What brings you to Brighton? Is it anything to do with the big fireball on the A23?”

“No comment,” I say, my speakers turned up high.

“Is the driver dead? Was the driver Talented?” Questions pour in at me from all sides.

“I cannot comment on this matter,” I say. “We are here to help the Police at their request.”

“Was it Powerhouse?” Turner says, a sneer curling in his face.

“No comment. I’m sure there will be a briefing later.”

I push my way through the throng and enter the station. Bloodhound is waiting for me alongside two senior uniforms, one a grey-haired woman with a face on like she’s sucking lemons and a handsome younger man who seems dizzy.

“Boss, this is Chief Inspector Schofield and Inspector Gray,” Bloodhound says.

“Red Line,” says Schofield, her frown a network of deep rills and valleys across her face, “we’re ready to brief you in our situation room. Your two colleagues are waiting.”

“Lead the way,” I say.

Schofield swipes us in through the security door and leads us through the warren of corridors into a briefing room. Every expense was spared when they equipped this place. Bare white walls, the cheapest of institutional tables and ugly plastic chairs cluttered together in front of a pop-up screen, one corner of which is sagging drunkenly from its support arm. The projector bolted to the ceiling is whining like an jet engine at take-off in its attempts to display a computer desktop and I’ll be stunned if we’ll be able make out any details on the screen. There’s barely enough room to move around for all the furniture and the computer is perched on a desk in one corner. Frequency and Wavelength are both here. I expect Zeus is upstairs with the Chief Super, sipping on a brandy and making polite conversation. He’s protective of Wavelength, currently sat in the corner of the room furthest from the projector, who says Zeus leaks so much electrosmog it gives him migraines.

Gray pushes past the front row of tables, shoving a few aside as he heads to the computer. He keeps glancing at me, eyes bouncing onto and off my helmet. His face is flushed, flustered rather than furious. Fanboy. There are still a few of them around, awkward and fumble-fingered. Maybe he’s in awe of the outfit, intimidating and iconic in its simplicity. Or maybe he grew up obsessed with the tales of my deeds, back when British people felt proud of their Talented.

“The Mercedes is en route to our lab for forensics,” Schofield says, crossing her arms. “You can have a look when my people are done with it.”

“It’s the other way around,” I say.

She goes pale and pulls her lips tight until there’s nothing left but a thin line.

“I beg your pardon,” she says, hard and cold as ice.

“It’s the other way around, as per the Talent Crime Act of 1990. Investigation of any criminal act involving a Talented person is the sole responsibility of the TCIU, who may be assisted by the relevant civil authorities.”

“Until we receive confirmation that the deceased is a Talented, and that a crime was committed, I remain in charge,” Schofield says, veins on her forehead giving the lie to her calm tones.

“Your leaker seems confident it was Powerhouse in the car,” I say.

Her eyes go wide.

“My leaker?”

“Your leaker. Somebody in your chain of command let it slip to Liam Turner, yes, that Liam Turner, that Powerhouse was involved and now Turner is outside, happy as a pig in shit.”

“That is not my responsibility,” Schofield snarls.

“Neither is this case,” I snap back. “We don’t have time for pissing contests, Chief Inspector, and you don’t have the standing.”

She stands and fumes, one finger tapping against her arm.

“Fine. Your case, as per. Gray?” she nods at her colleague.

“Thank you, Ma’am,” Gray says, stammering. “Lady, gentlemen, this is what we know so far. Approximately two hours ago, a white Mercedes SLK registered to James Aaron, the Talented known as Powerhouse, crashed and caught fire on the south-bound carriageway of the A23 just north of Bolney. The Fire Brigade attended the scene and extinguished the fire. They assisted the ambulance service in removing the driver from the vehicle. The driver could not be revived and was pronounced dead at the scene by the attending doctor.”

Gray looks up at me. I nod at him. He flashes me a brief, weak smile.

“We, er, we’ve just finished compiling the traffic camera footage. I must warn you it was a bad crash. Ma’am, the lights.”

Schofield stomps to the switch and the room darkens. Gray taps on his computer and the projector displays a paused video of an almost empty road, the kind of bleached footage you get from a lowest-bidder traffic monitoring project. Three-lane motorway, broad daylight.

“The SLK will enter the frame in the off-side lane, travelling at an estimated 70 mph.”

In the rightmost lane, a car appears. It races along until it whips hard to the left, tyres spewing smoke. I can hear the brakes screaming in my head. The Mercedes charges uncontrolled across the motorway, inches away from broadsiding a hatchback, until it smashes headfirst into the roadside barrier. The force of the impact is horrific, the tail of the car flying up and sending the car into a mad pirouette, spinning and rolling six, seven times, spewing bodywork and glass. The car rocks and settles in the leftmost lane, broken-backed but square on all four wheels. Steam leaks from the bonnet. A wet explosion follows, black-tinged orange erupting from under and within the vehicle.

“Huh,” Bloodhound says.

“That’s what we thought too,” Gray says.

“Since when do cars just explode?” Frequency says.

The footage keeps rolling. The Mercedes burns and a few drivers pull over to help. Some rummage through their boots, looking for a fire extinguishers, only to be beaten back by the flames. Others mill around.

“Since never,” I say, “not even after rolling like that, not without help. Rewind to just before the explosion and pause, please, DI Gray.”

Gray cues up the video, pausing just as the Mercedes squats into place.

“You want frame-by-frame?” he says.

I ignore him and step closer to the wall. I turn and look at the computer screen.

“There’s no fuel leaking,” I say. “Could you smell unburned fuel at the point of impact, Bloodhound?”

“No more than the usual for a motorway,” he says. “Lots of incomplete combustion products in the air, what I’d expect from a vehicle fire.”

I turn back to Gray. “Yes, frame by frame, please.”

The video creeps forward in fractions of a second. My stomach knots as the flames flash outwards again.

“Can you roll back and forth at the start of the fire?” Frequency says.

Gray nods and the video loops, the flash of light as the flames burst out and withdraw again, over and over.

“That’s not right,” Frequency says.

“Go on,” I say, turning to her.

“Where’s the fuel tank located in that car, Red Line?” she says.

“No idea. Inspector?”

“Um, I think inside the boot, just behind the firewall.”

“So why doesn’t the fireball leak out around the bottom of the car? Why does the explosion begin in the driver’s compartment?” she says. “That’s the job of the firewall, right?”

I watch the footage tick backwards and forwards. She’s right.

“Bloodhound, how up to date are you with explosives?” I say.

The Mercedes is a sad sight in the forensics lab. We waited two hours for it to arrive, for it to be man-handled into position. I argued for almost an hour with the head of forensics to let us work. Once he relented, I needed ten minutes to persuade Bloodhound to get close to the thing and it’s taken him ten seconds to do his job.

“There’s definitely something here,” he says. “More than one something, too.”

He’s inching his way around the sides of the car, pausing to take in the smells, like a master perfumier.

“Yeah, two devices,” he says.

“Two?”

He nods.

“Bigger one at the back. Smaller one at the front, left side, near the wheel. Different explosives too. Can you lift the car onto its side?”

The head of forensics shrugs, exasperated, and shakes his head.

“Of course.” I squat down next to the left side of the vehicle and grab hold of the underbody. I extend my legs and raise the car. The left front wheel hangs down, swinging on its suspension, the axle sheared. Bloodhound gets in close. He darts to the back, to the firewall. The back of the car is a mess of scorch marks and soot. He takes nosefuls of air. Not many Talented live up to their assigned name, but in this one regard Bloodhound does. He revels in it. Some people call him The Nose behind his back.

“D’you think a gang of rogue miners hated Powerhouse, boss?”

“Miners?”

“Miners or the IRA. The miner’s friend, gelignite.”

He moves to the front, millimetres away from the dangling wheel.

“There, there,” he pants, pointing, excited. “Where the axle is shattered. Not miners, not the IRA.”

He sniffs and snorts, gulps in the air.

“RDX on the axle, C4,” he says. “Take it to court, this is murder, this is assassination.”