Lying with Corinna in her dark bedroom, I’m smiling at how she took over the night. She picked me up. That was the oddest thing of all. She crossed the bar of the Wheatsheaf when she saw me, span me round by my elbow and insisted I buy her a drink. I didn’t think I was her type. Said I was too tall. Said my hair was too short and too square. Swore blind she didn’t fancy coppers every time I told her I wasn’t one, although I worked with them.

Maybe I’ve been out of the game for too long, all those years spent single and lonely. I’d begun to think solitude leaves more than just a psychological mark, that somewhere on my face was a secret symbol with the power to repulse, or that I’d carried a foul smell on my skin. I said as much to Corinna and all she did was laugh.

“Nah, mate,” she said. “just needed time to warm up to you, to be sure I liked you.”

Neither of us needed much convincing. Just a drink or two to give the cover of propriety and then she called us a cab, sharing dirty jokes with the cab driver. Outside her flat, with his brake lights receded into the night, Corinna beamed up at me. I took my cue, leaned down and pulled her into my arms. Somehow we got from out there to in here without breaking anything. She lay naked before me, smile on her lips and hunger in her eyes and there was no holding back, no second thoughts, just the unfolding of the moment like the unfolding of her body.

She forms the small spoon in front of me, her curves fitting my body the way wine fills a glass. The scent of her hair is in my nostrils. The silk of her skin under my fingers. I didn’t think I’d see her again, with her delicate nose and broad grin. Her tiny feet. The contrast between the milky skin of her breasts and the dark chocolate of her nipples makes my head spin, and it’s not even the best thing about her. That would be her laugh. She laughs like a sailor, like the last thing she heard was the funniest thing ever, until the next thing.

We lie there together until my phone rings at 6 a.m. when Zeus calls me back into the real world. I tell her it’s work and she frowns, says it’s always work with coppers. When I reach the front door, she surprises me with a kiss, a promise that this thing between us is unfinished business.

We all make mistakes, that seems to be the motto of this place. The first we heard of this case was in the evening news yesterday. Stabbings in upmarket districts of Cambridge play well in the media, especially when the victim was a mother stepping out to buy bread. Kirsty Watson, 34, mother of two. Her husband had identified her and wondered where on earth we were, her people. Turns out the Uniforms hadn’t bothered to check her purse properly, because if they had, they would’ve found her Registry Card and we would have got there eighteen hours ago while the trail was still fresh rather than this morning. Those idiots thought her death was a mugging gone wrong, as if a mugger would stab a person and run off without lifting the valuables.

Then again, if they’d found her Card, I would’ve spent the night with a dead woman rather than a live one.

Kirsty Watson, 34, mother of two, Cryogenic, murdered in a bakery in the afternoon of August Ninth. She was one of the majority of Talented who live their life out of the spotlight. She was a Physical, her codename referring to her ability to withstand cold. She’d made good use of her Talent, having served time with the British Antarctic Survey doing research. We’d called on her services a few times when incautious hikers got caught when the weather changed in the mountains. It’s hard to see who would want to kill her.

The Officer-In-Charge, Chief Inspector Clarke, has the case file clasped in his hand, fingers like sausages to match a porcine face complete with porcine stubble sweating at the top of a blubbery body. His office seems to match him too well, overfilled and disorganised. The desk is overcrowded, his PC clinging on to one end as a mound of paperwork threatens to avalanche from the other. The walls are lined with shelves groaning under the weight of box files. It’s enough to make you claustrophobic, the way years of oppression and crime emanate from those files, endless cases of pain, misery and failure. Perhaps it all starts and ends with the office’s incumbent who turned an ugly shade of pink when he ushered Zeus and I into the station.

Clarke’s padded chair seems short of comfort judging by all his squirming. I dig into the meat of the case file, Clarke’s splutterings an unpleasant soundtrack.

“Where are the crime scene photos?” I say.

“Ah, in the annex at the back,” he says, one finger pointing the way.

I tilt my head up and look at him. He closes his mouth with a click and does his very best to meet my gaze squarely, one hand opening and closing. Any humiliation and discomfort he’s experiencing are quite well-deserved. It’s hard to stare down an eyeless mask, your own face’s distorted reflection coming back at you. We should have been here yesterday. By now, the bakery floor and the street outside will have been scrubbed clean and any evidence destroyed when they scoured Kirsty’s blood into the drains. Almost a day wasted. The scorching tide of my anger subsides a little when I notice the thunderous expression on Zeus’ face. Clarke won’t meet Zeus’ eyes at all, making my helmet a safe haven for his gaze.

“We don’t have the murder weapon,” Clarke says.

“You are checking the sewers,” Zeus says. It wasn’t a question. Zeus isn’t and has never been a Police officer but here he is, jabbing away at Clarke.

“Of course.”

“You have CCTV.”

“Ready when you are.”

“But you didn’t check her bag for ID.”

“Commisioner, er, Zeus, we all make mistakes,” Clarke says, fanning his fat digits in front of him, begging for patience.

The SOCO people here appear to be organised at least. The Forensics annex to the file is complete and thorough, the photos clear. Kirsty lies on her side in the doorway of the bakery, arms across her stomach, curled up as though in agony. Her blood stains her elegant shirt and jeans. One shoe has come loose in the attack. Her purchase is clutched in her left hand, the bag of bread since claimed by Forensics and dusted for prints, just another piece of evidence. The witness reports match the photos. She was in the doorway of the bakery when the attack began.

“Show us the CCTV,” Zeus says. He settles back in his chair, the stress of the last three days lending more wrinkles to those earned through old age. He folds his arms across his chest, one hand reaching up to stroke his neat, white goatee. His eyes flicker back and forth from the screen - he doesn’t want to see this, to watch one of us die.

Clarke clicks through the files on his computer. A video opens, the camera behind the counter of the bakery. Such an everyday scene. Kirsty standing in the bakery with the young shop assistant and another older woman. Kirsty chats with the assistant, chooses a loaf, smiles a thank-you, turns, walks to the door. She opens it and then there’s someone in front of her, dressed in dark clothing, face indistinct. Kirsty shudders, dropping her handbag, staggers and sinks to her knees. The attacker vanishes. Blood begins to pool on the floor. The other woman kneels down next to Kirsty, places a hand on her shoulder. Her other hand pulls a phone from a bag, places a call for an ambulance which arrives too late. The eyewitnesses and ambulance dispatcher all reported how Kirsty wailed with pain. The young lady comes out from behind the counter and watches, hands clasped to the sides of her face, mouth a horrified O. Kirsty clutches at her wounds, arms pressed against them, tipping over onto her side.

“There is a second camera,” Clarke says.

A new video begins, lower resolution, higher angle. One of the council’s street cameras. Clad in a hoodie and jeans, hood pulled up over his head, the attacker waits in the street outside the bakery, apparently browsing the goods in the window. He steps towards the opening door, a long knife emerging from a concealed sheath in his jeans. He blocks Kirsty’s way and his right arm comes up and thrusts, thrusts, thrusts, thrusts, four blows under the ribcage. The knife is still in his hand when he runs off, out of frame. The commotion draws a swelling crowd to the bakery.

“Do you have where the killer ran to?” I say.

Clarke shakes his head.

“Witnesses said he ran into a side street from which a blue Transit van emerged a few moments later. The van headed west out of the town before taking a minor road. We haven’t found it yet.”

“That’s it?” Zeus growls.

“Yes.”

“That’s all you have? No photofit, no fingerprints, no number plate?”

“That’s all.”

“And now I have to go and comfort a grieving family and soft soap them, promise them we’ll do all we can, after you hamstring us like this?”

The air prickles with static. The strands of Zeus’ ponytail lift and spread. Clarke finds the resolve somewhere in his corpulent mass to look up and meet Zeus’ rage.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says.

“Everyone’s fucking sorry,” Zeus shouts. He rises and barges through the door, slamming it behind him.

Zeus is waiting for me in the corridor, hands on hips.

“What do you think,” he shouts, waving towards Clarke, “is it incompetence or evil?”

“Let’s go,” I say, reaching for his elbow. He twists out of my grasp.

“Well, what do you think?”

“Not here, Zeus.”

Zeus throws his hands in the air, pushes me away, dismissing the Normies with a shrug. He storms out of the Police station and I catch up with him in his car. He must’ve been swearing in German again given the naked discomfort on his driver’s face.

The ride to Watson’s home is silent. Zeus stews in his anger, a seventy year old man reduced to a sulky teenager. Then again, I’ve seen him in full flow, ringed with lightning. Rage manifested as thunderbolts, controlled and directed, ethereal and beautiful and deadly. Extrinsics have that power in them, that art to be drawn out, the inherent danger of their Talent always inches from being unleashed. Today marks the first day in years that I’ve seen Zeus at the precipice. He hasn’t used his Extrinsic at all since Pyro.

The car glides to a halt outside an ordinary mid-terrace home north of the town, the kind where the front garden is a collection of plant pots in the three foot gap between the house and the wall, and where the fact that the back garden has grass at all is a fist shook in the face of shadow. The door opens, framing the figure of Chris, Kirsty’s husband. Grief has shrunk him, his clothes hanging from his body, his face drawn and ashen, dark circles around his eyes. A girl peeks out from behind him. She can’t be more than three years old.

My insides turn to water. Caught in the moment when the thing you dreaded would happen is here and happening to you. Of course her children are here. Grieving kids is something I can’t do. It’s something I’ve never been able to do. Walled in with them and their unending misery, no way out but through. Zeus can do it. Bloodhound can. The shame is blooming inside me like a poison mushroom. My fists ball at my thighs. All the air in the car has been replaced with vacuum. Throw me into a bear pit. Face me off against Brute. Just don’t leave me with a heart-broken child. I don’t have the courage.

“Red!” Zeus says. How did he get out of the car so fast? “Mr Watson is waiting. Won’t you come in?”

Zeus opens the door for me. Now I remember how my legs work. They conspire to drag me from the car and carry me up the path. My hand somehow grips Watson’s in greeting as Zeus gives the condolences.

“We are both so sorry for your loss,” Zeus is saying.

The little girl, Clara, is staring up at me.

“Thank you for coming,” Mr Watson says. “Please, come inside. Come on, Clara.”

Mr Watson pushes the door open. There’s a boy standing in the hallway, clutching a teddy bear. Alex. In the half-light, he is the spit of his mother and the haunted look in his eyes matches his father’s and this is a threshold I can’t cross.

“Zeus,” I say.

“Yes,” he says. He knows. We’ve done this dance once or twice before.

“I’m needed at the lab.”

Zeus nods, hooded eyes hinting at his disappointment. I take three steps down the path and throw myself into the air. Anywhere will do but here.