But the story of the owl man had my attention for the present. He had worn the bird on his wrist, ‘like a watch’, and when asked what he was about had said the owl was his companion, and went everywhere with him.

‘I told him it was against the by-laws,’ Scholes was saying, at which Flower, who had the Police Manual on his knee, gave chapter and verse: ‘It’s against company by-law number eleven.’

‘Exactly,’ said Scholes. ‘So the bloke… Which number did you say again?’

‘Eleven,’ said Flower. ‘No wait, that’s “Entering or Leaving a Train in Motion”.’ He turned the pages of the book. ‘Here we are: by-law fourteen. “Carriage of Animals in… a Carriage.” Let’s see what he would have been liable for.’

‘It makes no odds, since I don’t have his name and address,’ said Scholes.

‘Forty shillings maximum for a first offence,’ said Flower, ignoring Scholes, ‘or five pounds if he’s done it before.’

‘I never took his name,’ Scholes repeated. ‘I said to him, “You’ll get off at York, and you’ll walk quickly out of the station and you’ll not come back with that thing.” He said, “Will I now?” I said, “Yes, you flipping well will.” He said “Well how do you expect the owl to get back to Leeds?”’

‘It could fly,’ Flower put in. ‘It was a bird, after all.’

‘It was attached to his wrist by a leather strap.’

‘And what happened then?’ asked Flower.

‘He got off the train and went through the ticket gate.’

The interesting part of their conversation was over, so I looked up from the cards and said, ‘Where’s the Chief?’ at which Scholes climbed off the desk. (The word ‘Chief’ was enough to make him do it.)

‘Old station, I think,’ said Flower.

The old station, which was across the way from the new one, had been taken over by the military, and the Chief was very thick with that lot. I looked down at the papers relating to Read. Without paying attention to the detail of the case (he seldom did that) the Chief had expressed surprise that I’d arrested a bloke on this charge. ‘I’ve never run a fellow in for indecent exposure,’ he’d told me, seeming to take a pride in the fact, and the Police Manual did urge that the greatest care be taken in such cases, since ‘the charges are sometimes made by nervous or hysterical females on the most slender evidence’.