“Dr. Slomon, sir. Mind that step… it’s a bit dodgy.”

“Slomon!” exclaimed Frost. “That snotty-nosed little bastard? He’ll want everything done by the book. I reckon I can kiss the party goodbye.” He moved his foot down to the next step only to give a startled yell as something cold and wet leaped up and licked its way inside his shoe. “Flaming hell, Shelby, it’s awash down here. You might have bloody warned me.”

“It wasn’t as bad as this before,” said Shelby. The reflections from his torch beam danced in the rippling water which lapped at the bottom step. “One of the cisterns is overflowing and the body’s blocking the drain.”

“This gets better and better,” the inspector observed bitterly. “So where is he?”

Shelby swung his torch and illuminated a sodden shape huddled in one corner. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to get our feet wet, sir.”

They splashed over, the water finding holes in Frost’s shoes he never knew existed and reminding him of the pair of Wellington boots lying idle on the back seat of his car. The heap in the corner looked like a mess of wet rags, but the light of the torch revealed it to be a man. A dead man. He lay on his back in the flooded guttering of the urinal stalls, his long, matted hair bobbing in the rising water, wide-open, sightless eyes staring unflinchingly into the burning glare of the torch. The mouth was agape and dribbling, the beard and ragged overcoat filthy with vomit that stank of stale, cheap wine. The body of a derelict, a tramp who had crawled into some dark corner to die.

Frost stared at the tired, worn-out face, a face long unwashed, grimed and greasy with dirt. “Good God, it’s Ben Cornish!”

“You know him, sir?” Shelby asked.

“I know him,” Frost replied grimly. “And so would you bloody know him, Constable, if you spent more time on your job and less on looking for crumpet.”

In the dark, Shelby flushed. He believed his woman ising was a well-kept secret, but nothing seemed to escape the seemingly unobservant Frost.