Borrowed Light by Graham Hurley

himself, whose forebears
     had scared the French shitless at Trafalgar, and nothing had changed since. Afloat or on dry land, they were programmed to
     get in your face.
    O’Dwyer, it seemed, had nicked the keys from the Tide Turn office in Albert Road, picked up a bunch of mates in Somerstown,
     made another couple of stops in Portsea and Buckland, and headed north. By the time the minibus demolished a garden wall in
     a pretty village on the West Sussex border, O’Dwyer and his crew had emptied the first litre bottle of vodka and were starting
     on the rest of the stash.When the police arrived, they were partying in a nearby graveyard, out of their heads on White Lightning and handfuls of
     assorted tabs.
    ‘The vehicle?’
    ‘I haven’t seen it. According to the police it’s a write-off.’
    ‘Baz’ll be pleased.’
    ‘I’ve told him already.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘He told me to leave it to him. I gather he’s got some ideas on the subject.’
    ‘You mean O’Dwyer?’
    ‘Yeah. He was after the boy’s address.’
    Winter nodded. O’Dwyer had form. At fifteen, he’d forgotten what it was like to go to a normal school, to get up at a respectable
     hour, to lift a finger in anyone’s interest but his own. After endless skirmishes with the criminal justice system, and now
     Tide Turn, he’d realised that most of what he wanted in life was there for the taking, a conclusion that no adult had yet
     to contradict. Maybe Bazza would come up with something novel, he thought. Before O’Dwyer was old enough to become a proper
     criminal.
    ‘So where is he?’
    ‘Still banged up at Central. Still waiting to shout at his social worker.’
    ‘I meant Baz.’
    ‘No idea, Paul. According to Marie, he’s got a lot on his mind just now.’ He pushed his empty mug towards Winter and nodded
     at the coffee pot on top of the filing cabinet. ‘Surprise, surprise, eh?’
    Meg Stanley was bent over her laptop in the Scenes of Crime caravan when one of the Crime Scene Investigators appeared at
     the door. He had a sheet of paper in his gloved hand. Part of the barn across the farmyard had been converted into a couple
     of rooms. One seemed to have served as a kind of bedroom while the other had been used as an office, chiefly by Holman. Before
     giving both spaces the full SOC treatment, the CSI had done a flash intel search, looking for anything that might,
in his phrase, give
Gosling
a kick up the arse.
    ‘And?’ Stanley was enjoying the thin sunshine through the open door.
    ‘I found this.’
    He passed it over. Stanley found herself looking at a photocopied advert for a private clinic offering a variety of sexual
     goodies from penis enlargement to wholesale deals on vaginal lubricants. Consultations were available for most forms of dysfunction,
     confidentiality guaranteed. The address put the clinic in north London, and someone hadscribbled a series of notes down the edge of the page.
    ‘That’s Holman’s handwriting. We found a couple of chequebooks in the same drawer.’
    ‘You’re sure?’
    ‘Ninety per cent.’
    Stanley returned to the advert. The handwriting was indecipherable but a date and a time caught her eye: 4 February, 14.45.
     She made a note of the contact details and then reached for the phone.
    Suttle and Lowe drew a blank at Robbie Gifford’s address.
    Local uniforms secured entry with a commendable absence of drama, and Suttle went through the property room by room. It was
     hard to be certain, but the general state of the place told him that Difford had been living here alone for at least a couple
     of days. The kitchen sink was piled high with unwashed plates and a cardboard box on the floor was full of discarded fast-food
     wraps. Half a pint of milk in the otherwise empty fridge was starting to go off and the pile of laundry at the foot of the
     stairs had yet to see the inside of the washing machine.
    Upstairs were two bedrooms. The one with a double bed appeared to belong to his mum: