She had some trouble finding the public entrance to the police station. It wasn’t the nice timber and glass doorway that she thought they had on TV at Sun Hill, but a brutal aluminium job with wired glass and a closed-circuit television camera mounted overhead that looked as if it had been designed to keep out the IRA or gangs of teenagers.

Inside there was a kind of waiting room with metal seats but no counter, and no friendly desk sergeant. No one at all, in fact. In the far wall was another door with wired glass and no handle. Beside the door was a notice: ONE PERSON AT A TIME ONLY PERMITTED IN THE INQUIRY AREA.

Mrs Vlasich looked through the wired glass and saw an elderly man in a cap leaning on a counter, deep in conversation with a uniformed officer on its other side. She tried to push the door, but it was firmly locked and the two inside didn’t notice her. She stepped back and saw a button mounted on the wall with a sign: PRESS FOR ATTENTION . She pressed, and heard a buzz beyond the locked door. Nothing happened. The two men continued with their conversation, the man with the cap gesticulating to elaborate a point.

She pressed the buzzer again, and this time the door clicked open. She pushed at it, but was stopped in her tracks before she could step inside by the policeman’s voice.

‘Please wait out there until I’m finished with this gentleman,’ he said to her, quite sharply, before she had a chance to say anything.

She hesitated, then began to explain how urgent her problem was, but the door had clicked shut again in her face.

She sat down and waited. Five minutes. Ten minutes. The room was extremely depressing, bare but not what you’d call clean. There was a large stain of some brown liquid that had dried under a chair in the corner. She didn’t see how people could have had coffee in here. Unless the regulars knew the score and came equipped with vacuum flasks.