Macek glared across the table. “You get stuffed,” he said viciously.

Miller nodded. “All right, Jack, take him down and book him. Make it abduction of a minor and rape. With any luck and his record, we might get him seven years.”

Macek sat there staring at him, horror in his eyes, and Jack Brady’s iron fist descended, jerking from the chair. “On your way, soldier.”

Macek stumbled from the room and Miller turned to the window and pulled the curtain. Rain drifted across the glass in a fine spray and beyond, the first light of morning streaked the grey sky. The door opened behind him and the young probationer entered, the tea and cigarettes on a tray. “That’ll be six bob, sarge.”

Miller paid him and slipped the cigarettes into his pocket. “I’ve changed my mind about tea. You have it. I’m going home. Tell Detective Constable Brady I’ll ’phone him this afternoon.”

He walked along the quiet corridor, descended three flights of marble stairs and went out through the swing doors of the portico at the front of the Town Hall. His car was parked at the bottom of the steps with several others, a green Mini-Cooper, and he paused beside it to light a cigarette.

It was exactly five-thirty and the streets were strangely empty in the grey morning. The sensible thing to do was to go home to bed and yet he felt strangely restless. It was as if the city lay waiting for him and obeying a strange, irrational impulse he turned up the collar of his dark blue Swedish trenchcoat against the rain and started across the square.

For some people the early morning is the best part of the day and George Hammond was one of these. Lockkeeper in charge of the great gates that prevented the canal from emptying itself into the river basin below, he had reported for duty at five-forty-five, rain or snow, for more than forty years. Walking through the quiet streets, he savoured the calm morning with a conscious pleasure that never varied.