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The sun was just coming up and the grass at the front of Colindale station was starting to emerge from beneath its blanket of frost. With the cacophony of the rush hour still an hour or so away, the only soundtrack came courtesy of birdsong, the footsteps of early morning commuters on their way to the underground and the growl of an occasional vehicle turning in or out of the car park.

The scene inside the station was predictably noisier and way more hectic; as hectic as any crime scene would be with the dust yet to settle, but with rather more police officers in situ.

The custody suite itself had been sealed off, as had the corridor in which the cell most recently occupied by Alex Brightwell was located. Every other cell in that and the adjacent corridors had been cleared and all those detained within them hurriedly transferred to other stations.

Thorne had to show ID three times before finally being allowed access.

The first person he saw was DCI Jeremy Walker talking to a shell-shocked custody sergeant.

Then he spotted Brigstocke, grim-faced and deep in conversation with DI James Greaves and several others who Thorne immediately marked down as officers from the Directorate of Professional Standards.

He wasn’t remotely surprised that the DPS were already on site in numbers.

The men and women from the Dark Side could move quickly enough when they really had to.

While Thorne was waiting for Brigstocke, he drifted around; exchanging cursory greetings with those he knew, shaking his head when necessary to acknowledge the seriousness of the situation, but largely for the purpose of earwigging.

There were half a dozen or more informal interviews being conducted, though he couldn’t tell if any of those officers making statements had been on duty overnight; if any could be classed as witnesses.

He watched still photographers and others with video cameras recording at the booking desk and in the open office area behind, and saw others emerging from one corridor in particular, having presumably finished documenting the scene in and around Alex Brightwell’s cell.

He had a hundred questions, but knew he was unlikely to find anyone willing to answer them.

Finally, Brigstocke stepped away from the CCU officer and Thorne caught his eye. Brigstocke nodded towards the door leading out to the yard, then walked towards it, waiting for Thorne to follow. The implication was obvious.

They needed to talk privately.

As soon as they were both outside in what was earmarked as an exercise area, but was basically smokers’ corner, Brigstocke stepped close.

‘We are in major trouble,’ he said. ‘Not us , specifically but . . . well, all of us.’ He looked around quickly to make sure there was nobody indulging in a crafty cigarette who might be able to overhear. ‘He didn’t kill himself.’

‘How d’you know?’ Thorne asked. ‘Have you seen the footage?’

‘I know because there isn’t any footage.’

Thorne stared. He had studied footage from custody suite cameras on countless occasions and knew that in addition to a standard CCTV set-up in the booking area, or bridge , there was a high-tech system monitoring every inch of the corridors and, crucially, the interior of each cell.

There were audio and visual recordings of all these areas 24/7.

In fact, the only places where there wasn’t unfettered coverage were the toilets, and even then the cameras had been programmed in such a way as to black out only the faces of those using the facilities. ‘How’s that possible?’

‘Well, there is footage, but not covering the seven minutes during which Alex Brightwell met his death.’

‘You’re having me on, right?’

‘All the cameras covering the corridor he was on and those inside the cell itself were switched off for just over seven minutes.’

‘Switched off?’ Thorne’s mind was already starting to race, ideas careering wildly, until he suddenly found himself thinking about fridges; about ‘malfunctions’.

‘The system shut down . . . someone shut it down.’

Thorne thought for a few more seconds. ‘OK . . . but even if all the cameras went off for whatever reason, why didn’t the custody assistants notice there was a problem? Weren’t they a bit concerned about the fact that suddenly they were staring at a bank of blank screens?’

‘They were . . . distracted,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Some kind of major fracas on the bridge.’

‘According to who?’

‘According to everyone who was there at the time. A couple of PCs brought a drunk in around two a.m. A drunk or a junkie . . . but either way he started to kick off big time, going properly berserk. Lashing out, you know, smacked a few people. It was all hands to the pump by all accounts, with every available body dragging this bloke kicking and screaming on to the corridor and finally, into a cell. A cell which happened to be on a different corridor to the one Brightwell’s cell was on. ’

‘That was convenient.’

‘Yeah, wasn’t it?’

‘So, this . . . fracas means nobody’s looking at the monitors and, more importantly, gives someone enough time to access the other corridor,’ Thorne said. ‘Enough time to get into Brightwell’s cell and out again.’

‘That’s what it looks like,’ Brigstocke said. ‘Then whoever turned the cameras off switches the system back on again. By which time . . . ’

‘How was it done?’ Thorne asked.

‘The cameras? Not a clue, mate.’

‘No, how was Brightwell killed?’

‘Oh . . . well, I’ve heard whispers, but we won’t know anything else until Hendricks has finished the PM, so best not to speculate.’

Thorne leaned against a wall, trying and failing to process it, any of it.

‘For obvious reasons he’s been told it’s a rush job.’ Brigstocke took the spot against the wall next to Thorne and let out a long, tired breath as he leaned back. ‘Phil was not happy about being woken so early.’

By mid-morning they were back at Becke House, having left the station once Brigstocke had rightly pointed out that there was little more they could usefully do at the crime scene.

Now, having been joined by Dave Holland, they were gathered around a laptop in an empty office, waiting for Nicola Tanner.

‘She’ll get what we need,’ Thorne said.

‘Let’s hope so.’ Brigstocke was reading through an email that had arrived on his phone a few minutes before.

Holland nodded. ‘Nic can be very persuasive when she wants to be.’

Brigstocke put his phone down and removed his glasses. ‘The DPS want to talk to us this afternoon.’ He looked at Thorne. ‘You and me.’

‘Why? What happened at the station’s got nothing to do with us.’

‘They’ll want to make sure our interview with Brightwell had no bearing on his death.’

‘That’s crackers,’ Holland said.

‘What kind of bearing?’

‘I know, it’s ridiculous,’ Brigstocke said. ‘But they’ll need to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s, however pointless it is.’

‘Why do they need to talk to us?’ Thorne asked. ‘Can’t they just look at the interview room footage?’

‘Oh, I’m sure they’ll be doing that, too.’

Thorne shook his head. ‘Yeah, definitely best to check we didn’t wink knowingly at Brightwell, or slowly draw our fingers across our throats before we left.’

‘We don’t have a lot of choice,’ Brigstocke said.

They sat in silence after that and watched the door, waiting and hoping that the conversation Nicola Tanner was having elsewhere would give them the chance to look at a more recent recording.

A private viewing. This was footage that definitely did have a bearing on the death of Alex Brightwell and to which they knew they would not be granted immediate access were they simply to ask.

The look on Tanner’s face when she came through the door was enough to let them know they were in business. She sat down and moved her chair to give herself a good view of the laptop. ‘He’s sending a link. Should just be a couple of minutes.’

Tanner had spent the last twenty minutes on the phone to Greg Hobbs, ostensibly to get his opinion on how the CCTV system in the Colindale custody suite could have been taken down remotely.

Once he had explained how it might have been done, she’d then asked if he’d use his own expertise to access the footage from the custody suite immediately before the cameras had been turned off.

Yes, it was unorthodox, she’d explained when Hobbs had asked the understandable question, but she wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important, besides which they’d see the footage eventually anyway.

It was just a question of needing to move fast, she’d said, because things would inevitably slow up now the DPS was involved.

It was evidence they urgently needed to see.

‘He took a bit of persuading,’ she said. ‘We definitely owe him several drinks, and I had to promise that if it comes to it we won’t be letting on how we came to view the footage.’

‘What did he say about the cameras?’ Brigstocke asked.

‘Well, he said quite a lot that was way over my head. I started to zone out when he was on about “overwriting the host server”, but he thinks it’s a straightforward backdoor hack, whatever the hell that is.

Not massively difficult, that’s what he was basically saying.

Told me he could take control of the entire system remotely inside five minutes. ’

‘Bloody hell,’ Holland said.

‘Basically, somebody paid somebody.’

‘Yeah, and we all know who that first somebody is—’ Thorne stopped when an alert from his laptop signalled the arrival of an email. ‘Here we go . . . nice one, Greg.’ He leaned forward to open the link Hobbs had sent and they sat back to watch.

They fast-forwarded through the minutes leading up to the fracas; a few minor comings and goings, some inane chat between the custody sergeant and his colleagues. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Then the drunk was brought in; shouty in the way some drunks can be, but seemingly manageable.

He was led to the desk by a pair of uniformed PCs, both grumpy enough to suggest that he’d already given them a hard time.

He started to resist when he was instructed to empty his pockets, and all hell broke loose when one of the PCs moved forward to grab his arm.

He lashed out, catching the PC in the face, and when others moved from behind the desk, it quickly escalated. The man kicked and spat, and by the time he was trying to bite the custody sergeant there were half a dozen officers and civilian staff attempting to restrain him.

‘Doesn’t look like he’s acting to me,’ Holland said. ‘He’s definitely pissed.’

‘Yeah, but someone got him pissed,’ Thorne said. ‘Told him to kick off.’

‘Easy enough,’ Tanner said.

‘Probably just bunged him twenty quid, same as Brightwell did with that bloke at Archway station. Gave him some cash and a bottle and promised him a night in a nice warm cell.’

‘We’ll find out once the DPS have talked to him,’ Brigstocke said.

Thorne watched. ‘I don’t think they’ll get very much.’

There was only another fifteen seconds after that as the prisoner, still flailing and loudly threatening to ‘kill every one of you cunts’, was hauled up from the floor and dragged out on to the corridor towards the cells.

Then the screen went black.

Thorne scrolled back so they could watch it all again.

Half a minute in, just after the drunk had hit the PC in the face, Thorne paused and went back. He pressed play, then quickly hit pause a second time and pointed to one of the uniformed officers who had brought the prisoner in. ‘ Him .’

‘What?’ Tanner leaned forward to peer at the screen. ‘You know him?’

‘His name’s Healey,’ Thorne said. ‘He was one of the uniforms working the perimeter at Hendon Park, the night of the Callaghan murder.’

‘So were a lot of other coppers. I don’t see—’

‘What are you thinking, Tom?’ Brigstocke asked.

Thorne wasn’t thinking anything. He knew without needing any further information that they were looking at the man who had murdered Alex Brightwell at Colindale station eight hours earlier.

He quickly told Brigstocke and the others what Healey had said to him that night at Hendon Park; the suggestion that he – and others like him – were ready and more than able to fight back against anyone who targeted police officers.

How else are we supposed to react?

Thorne leaned down to move the footage on a few seconds. ‘ There . . . see him turning round, see his hands? It looks to me like he’s doing something on his phone.’

‘Like he’s sending a text or something,’ Tanner said.

‘He’s messaging whoever has control of the CCTV system, letting them know it’s time to hit the off switch.’ He jabbed at the screen. ‘There’s your killer, and even the useless twats in the DPS shouldn’t have much trouble proving it.’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ Brigstocke said.

‘Come on, they’re going to find his DNA in Brightwell’s cell, aren’t they? All over the body, likely as not.’

‘I’m sure they will.’ Brigstocke shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, it’s not going to mean anything, because Healey was still there when they found Brightwell’s body.’

Thorne swore quietly, knowing what was coming.

‘He was one of the officers who rushed into that cell and checked for vital signs. His DNA isn’t going to prove a thing.’