“I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll drive you,” said the policeman, with careful politeness. “You don’t want another accident, do you?”

“ ‘Nother what?” asked Raeburn, thickly. “Never had an accident in my life! Clean record—hie.” He glared at the man, who began to push him to the other side of the car. “Oh, well, drive the dam’ thing if you want to.”

When the car pulled up outside Clapham Police Station, half an hour later, Raeburn was breathing heavily, and seemed to be asleep or in a stupor.

Chief Inspector Roger West, in shirtsleeves and without a collar and tie, was having breakfast in the kitchen of his Chelsea home. The kitchen was warm because the domestic boiler was roaring away while Roger read the Morning Cry and devoured sausages, bubble-and-squeak and scrambled egg. In the scullery, a daily woman was washing up; upstairs, Janet West was in the bedroom shared by their two sons, who had left for school half an hour ago.

West’s fair hair was untidy, and his careless, casual air gave an almost swashbuckling look to a face which earned him his nickname: ‘Handsome’. The telephone bell rang in the hall, and West finished a paragraph about a film star and her husbands, went out, and called: “I’ll answer it,” and went into the front room, where the telephone was on a table near his large armchair. It rang again as he sat on the arm.

“West speaking.”

“It’s the Yard, sir. Mr Turnbull would like a word with you.”

“Put him through,” said Roger.

He reached forward for a cigarette from a packet left on the table the previous night. He could reach the cigarettes but not the matches near them, and his lighter was in his coat pocket in the kitchen. He put the receiver down and grabbed the matches, and was striking one when he heard Turnbull’s powerful voice.

“Handsome?”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow? I promised myself a day off.”

“This won’t keep for five minutes.” Turnbull seldom allowed himself to be excited, but he did now. “We’ve got something you’ve been waiting for since the year Methuselah was born. Paul Raeburn’s under arrest.”