I slid into the seat opposite Parminder, trying to look as at ease in the posh environment as she did. We’d both come from working-class roots, but she’d deliberately honed an air of sophistication that I could never match. It helped, her being an elf. I wondered for the millionth time why she’d joined the Star and chosen homicide. Probably for the intellectual puzzle. She’d prod at a case until she cracked it, no matter how much skull sweat and overtime it took. And then, having satisfied her own curiosity, she’d let it be buried. Saving the world didn’t interest her the way it did me.