“See you!” Roger called.

“Thank you, darling,” she said breathlessly, and was carried with the crowd, dark-haired, neat in a plain grey suit, young for her forty-odd years, and at that moment, not thinking of him at all.

Roger got back into the car, restarted the engine, and was soon caught up in the stream of early morning traffic. There had been a time when he had arrived at Scotland Yard morning after morning with a sense of excitement and expectation, but now he knew what to expect. Crime had a thousand variations, and he seemed to know them all. For a Detective Superintendent, murder cases had lost their stimulating effect. The paperwork and routine of a senior Criminal Investigation Department officer kept him at the desk more and more, and there were times when the pleasant office was like a jail; or like a cell at the squat grey building of Cannon Row Police Station, which looked as if it were in a corner of the Yard premises, but in fact was not. All the small windows were barred. Big Ben could look down on its slate roof from the tower of the Houses of Parliament, but couldn’t make the drab grey look bright even on this fine warm summer morning.

Roger parked his car and walked up the steps. Good morning, good morning, “morning, “lo, Handsome; such greetings had become a ritual. Calling him “Handsome” West had, too. So had sitting at his desk and looking through mail and reports. But today it depressed him. Glancing through the dossier of an old lag, due at Great Marlborough Street Court on a charge for the thirteenth time, Roger knew exactly what he would say, what the magistrate would say and what he would look like, peering over his spectacles; what lies the accused would utter, forlornly, what the magistrate’s clerk would intone, and what everything and everybody would be like. He lit a cigarette, yawned, scribbled a few pencilled notes, and the telephone bell rang.