And, however deep the hangover, the wise and drily humorous reprimands of the Justice were always remembered and boringly trotted out verbatim after a passage of decades. One of Joe’s own uncles, he confided, had worked up a hilarious party piece concerning his own incarceration and release, one Ascot week.

The patient professionalism of the arresting officers as well as the understanding of the magistrate presented a comforting image of an England sadly passing and surely to be admired in these dark days, Joe was suggesting. He wondered at his emphasis. A bleaker version of the Vine Street ethos had reached his ears, though much detail was deliberately filtered out before reports were presented to the upper ranks. Unsure what awaited them, he thought it wise to draw a blind of good-hearted humour and irreverence over it for the moment.

The softening up continued as they sped down Piccadilly. Lily nodded and smiled and maintained a polite silence. Her own judgement of the station and its officers had been coloured by a closer experience and from the inside. She had admitted to no one that, on more than one occasion in her year on patrol, she’d held back from calling her colleague to arrest a suspect, out of pity and concern for the latter’s safety in what Sandilands seemed to want to present as a jolly gentlemen’s club. The young, the elderly, the feeble, the first time offenders, Lily reckoned had no place in that brutal environment. No one had caught her pulling her punches and releasing suspects with no more than a flea in their ear and now, she realized with a surge of elation, it was too late for her lapses to be discovered. She was resigning after all. At the end of the day.

‘Prattle on, Sandilands. Who do you think you’re kidding?’ Lily said, but she said it to herself.

Their car dropped them on Piccadilly and Lily set off to the station a few steps ahead of Joe, who paused to give instructions to his driver. She was greeted by the constable on duty at the door. PC Hewitt recognized her and hailed her from a distance with the joviality of a man looking forward to relieving his boredom with an exchange of police banter. Lily was known at the station for giving as good as she got and bearing no grudges. She didn’t look down on the men the way some of those toffee-nosed women did. She could take a joke.

‘Wotcher, Lil! On yer tod today, then? No scrapings from the park to offer us? Just as well. We’re a bit busy – it’s standing room only in there. Bedlam!’

‘Hello, Harry. No, I’m not alone.’ She waved a hand to indicate the presence of Sandilands, who was striding up the side road after her. ‘Not Halliday – he’s gone north. Instead, I bring you the commander. Or he brings me. Not quite sure. But we seem to be together.’

‘Gawd! That’s all we needed!’ PC Hewitt gritted out of the corner of his mouth. ‘What’s Young Lochinvar doing riding up again? Can’t they give him a desk to sit at? And what the ’ell’s ’e want with you?’ Hewitt gave her a look both salacious and speculative.

‘Oh, the usual,’ Lily said lightly. ‘I’m here to provide a little female insight.’

‘Lucky devil! I wonder what you can show him that we can’t?’

Smiling affably, Lily squared up to him. ‘Watch it. How’d you like to greet the boss hopping on one leg? These boots aren’t good for much but they’re damned good kneecappers.’

Hewitt grinned and, playing the game, jumped back, clutching his crotch. The girl had form. There was a sergeant in C division who had the limp to prove it, and gossip had it that the target zone had been some degrees north of kneecaps. He went into a smart salute as Sandilands approached and with a wink for Lily made a play of opening the heavy door with the panache of a hotel commissionaire.

But before they reached the charge room, the oppressive atmosphere of rage, pain, anger and despair had stopped even Sandilands in his tracks.

Chapter Eleven

The hubbub was punctuated by a top note of banshee screams of female outrage and a bass note of drunken singing. Somewhere a Scotsman was growling out the chorus of ‘Loch Lomond’. In the background, cell bells rang every few seconds and the heavy doors to the cell block creaked opened and clanged shut.

Sandilands presented himself to the elderly charge officer, who appeared insulated from the cacophony around him by three feet of shining mahogany counter. He waited for the sergeant to put down his mug of coffee and drop his newspaper to the floor.

‘Afternoon, sergeant. I’m surprised you can concentrate on the racing results with this hullabaloo going on. Stop it, will you?’

‘Sir! Yes, sir! I’d be only too glad to oblige, but, sorry, sir. I can’t, sir.’

There was steel in the commander’s tone as he responded to the affected servility. ‘You’re in charge here, are you not? If you have a superior officer about the place, produce him.’

The sergeant was not easily subdued. He’d seen commanders come and go. ‘Sorry, you’ve got me, sir. Best we can do for you this afternoon.’ His voice revealed a London man secure on his own patch and resenting the intruder. It was only just sufficiently deferential. ‘Nothing I’d like better than a bit o’ peace and quiet like what you ’ave at the Yard,’ he offered blandly. ‘But we’ve got our hands full today, what with the little bit of extra you sent us – those lads requiring a bit of special attention, like. The other prisoners have been backing up. We’re using the common space as an extra charge room.’ He pointed to a second room where a row of six young men sat disconsolately along the wall awaiting interrogation while a pair of constables filled in their details on forms at a large polished table, barking the occasional question at them.

All this was making an unfortunate impression on the commander. His spine straightened to an alarming degree, his height, already impressive, seeming to increase by a couple of inches. He had taken on a sinister stillness.

At last the sergeant became aware that he was running into danger and adjusted his tone. ‘Sorry about the din, sir. That caterwauling’s been going on since the constable arrested her.’ He pointed to a small and dishevelled prostitute who was attempting, between yells, to bite out the throat of the meaty lad holding her stolidly at arm’s length. ‘She’s gone bonkers. Name’s Doris. Tart. Has her beat along the Strand. Regular customer. Bit barmy, but this performance is unusual even for her.’

‘Sarge,’ Lily said, ‘give me a minute with her, will you? I’ve had dealings with Doris before – she knows me. I might be able to sort it out.’

She waited for his nod before making her way over to the wrestling pair. Gently she eased the constable’s grip, inserting herself between the two struggling figures. She leaned and whispered in Doris’s ear. After a stunned silence, Doris’s screams turned to sobs, then sniffles and whimpers. Finally she spoke to Lily in a torrent of words that Sandilands and the sergeant could make neither head nor tail of. It seemed to consist of no more than a list of names: ‘Our Alice, little ’erbert, Georgie …’ Lily nodded, whispered a further question and listened to the outpouring of emotion and fear that followed.

Lily turned to the arresting constable. ‘Tom, fetch me a glass of water, would you?’ While he went off to fetch one, Lily spoke again to the dejected figure before her. ‘I can see what needs to be done, Doris. And the sooner the better. Look – leave it with me, love. I’ll find them, see they’re all right and alert Rhoda. She’s still living in Bradman’s Court, is she? Right you are then. Here, have a drink. Thank you, Tom. Now – you know the routine, Doris. Just go through to the charge room with the constable and do what you have to do. Tom’s new around here – you’ll have to show him the ropes! It’ll be faster in the end. And for Gawd’s sake, gel, keep the squawking bottled.’