I was scheduled to have an interview with him today, at which we would ‘discuss’ my future career prospects. Theoretically this was part of an integrated career development process that would lead to positive outcomes with regards to both the police service and me. After this discussion a final decision as to my future disposition would be made — I strongly suspected that what I wanted to do wouldn’t enter into it.

Lesley, looking unreasonably fresh, met me in the squalid kitchenette shared by all the residents on my floor. There was paracetamol in one of the cupboards; one thing you can always be certain of in a police section house is that there will always be paracetamol. I took a couple and gulped water from the tap.

‘Mr Headless has a name,’ she said, while I made coffee. ‘William Skirmish, media type, lives up in Highgate.’

‘Are they saying anything else?’

‘Just the usual,’ said Lesley. ‘Senseless killing, blah, blah. Inner-city violence, what is London coming to, blah.’

‘Blah,’ I said.

‘What are you doing up before noon?’ she asked.

‘Got my career progression meeting with Neblett at twelve.’

‘Good luck with that,’ she said.

I knew it was all going pear-shaped when Inspector Neblett called me by my first name.

‘Tell me, Peter,’ he said. ‘Where do you see your career going?’

I shifted in my chair.

‘Well, sir,’ I said, ‘I was thinking of CID.’

‘You want to be a detective?’ Neblett was, of course, a career ‘uniform’, and thus regarded plain-clothes police officers in much the same way as civilians regard tax inspectors. You might, if pressed, concede that they were a necessary evil but you wouldn’t actually let your daughter marry one.