‘We won’t know until your suspect starts talking.’

Suarez sipped his coffee with surprising delicacy. ‘And then what?’

‘If it’s connected, you’ve got motive and we share information. If it’s not, you just had a rare experience.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ said Suarez. ‘What’s that?’

‘A free lunch.’

*

‘My man wants to make a deal.’

They’d hardly got back through the door of the Irving station house.

Suarez looked surprised, then glanced at Tom, who raised his eyebrows hopefully.

The old, baby-faced lawyer Charles (never Charlie) Lumsden had been around too long to play games. If Chuck Zhong wanted to make a deal, Suarez knew that meant there was a deal to be made. He led both men into an interview room cluttered with McDonald’s debris, which smelt, appropriately enough, of old fries.

Lumsden put his tatty briefcase on the table but none of them sat down. ‘He’ll confess to killing the girl but claims temporary insanity.’

Suarez squeaked out a snort of disdain. ‘Yeah, I know temporary insanity. Disappears as soon as you zip up.’

Lumsden came nowhere near the bait. ‘He says he was being blackmailed by a colleague.’

‘Why?’

‘He was stealing from the plant.’

‘Stealing what?’ Tom asked, ignoring Suarez’s slightly territorial glance.

‘Nothing much,’ said Lumsden. ‘Nothing of value.’

‘Then what’s the big deal? Bit of blackmail can’t have been enough to drive him crazy,’ said Suarez.

‘Seems this colleague was sexually assaulting my client in return for his silence.’

‘Sexually assaulting?’ Suarez plainly needed more.

‘He was being forced to fellate him,’ said Lumsden, stiffly.

There was a short, grease-scented silence while they all grappled with the unwanted mental image.

Tom recovered first. ‘For stealing nothing of value? Bullshit!’

‘My client has an aeronautical-engineering degree. It seems he had expected to get a job with WAE in a more illustrious capacity. Any allegation of theft – however small – would mean an end to his dreams.’

Tom made a face. ‘And blowing some guy wouldn’t? Sounds like it’d be the end of any dream I ever had!’

‘Anyway,’ said Suarez, ‘how come he takes it out on the girl? How does she fit in?’

Lumsden sighed. ‘Apparently he feels she filled the job that was meant for him.’

‘Now that’s what I call motive!’ Suarez said, with happy satisfaction. ‘Who gives a shit about who blows who, or why? I got him just on that!’

‘That’s true,’ said Lumsden. ‘But that’s where the deal comes in. In return for consideration … Mr Zhong feels that he may be able to help expose a bigger picture.’

‘Of?’

‘It seems the thefts from the plant were to order, and had been ongoing for quite some time. Years.’

‘Theft of what?’ Tom butted in again impatiently.

Lumsden looked uncertain, as if he was suddenly worried the cards he held might not take the pot after all.

He cleared his throat tightly. ‘Paperwork.’

Suarez threw up his arms and almost laughed. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me! He wants a deal on a cold-blooded murder and all he’s got to offer in return is fucking paperwork?’ He drew breath to pour further scorn on the deal, then stopped abruptly and looked at Tom, whose eyes had suddenly become quite feral, like those of a wildcat that’s spotted its prey.

‘Paperwork,’ said Tom, softly.

*

While Suarez and Tom were following Lumsden’s three-year-old Mazda towards Dallas and Chuck Zhong, that same Chuck Zhong was being summoned from his cell.

‘Zhong. Visitor.’ The guard pronounced it ‘Zong’. Chuck was used to it. He got up with a sigh and went to meet his parents.

But it wasn’t his parents.

It was the man with the gun and the bad skin. He was sitting on the other side of the polycarbonate barrier on the nasty hard-backed chairs they provided – like visitors deserved punishing, too, by association.

Of course, he didn’t have a gun right now, but Chuck still stopped dead and stared when he saw him. The guard gave him a nudge between the shoulder-blades to get him going again.

Chuck felt goose-bumps flare on his chilled skin as he sat down. It took him a half a minute to get up the guts to look the man in the eyes and pick up the phone.

The man slowly picked up his phone but said nothing.

‘Hi,’ Chuck said stupidly, like they were buds.

The man’s eyes were dark and cold.

‘I wanted to show you an old friend,’ he said.

‘Sure,’ said Chuck, nervously – as if the guy needed his permission.

Without looking away from Chuck, the man reached into his pocket and brought out a photograph. He pressed it against the barrier with his big hand and Chuck cocked his head to look at it.

For a second he couldn’t quite make it out.