‘Watches over there,’ he points to the corner cabinet. ‘Swiss clocks downstairs. I have to keep a selection of haute horology pieces in for the Edlunds in case they drop in.’

‘Swiss clocks, please.’

He looks at the ‘Clock Museum’ sign attached to a chain hanging across the stairs down to the basement. ‘You want a Swiss clock for your… I’m afraid they’re very––’

‘Just been promoted,’ I say. ‘It’s burning a hole in my pocket.’

He removes the chain and says, ‘I’ll need to lock the main door and close up if you want to go down there. No telling who’d come in if I left the shop unattended.’

I swallow and check the stungun in my handbag. All present and correct.

‘Sure.’

We walk down.

It’s not as I expected. There’s a wall of clocks on pillars and in glass cabinets, but otherwise it’s a mess down here. A kids street-map rug and a Bamse bear jigsaw, half completed. An iPad charging by the wall. A blackboard with a picture of a smile.

‘Squatters?’ I say.

‘The kids play down here when I’m working sometimes. I can’t close the shop when the schools close for the day – I’d go bankrupt within six months.’

‘Are these for sale?’ I ask, pointing to the clocks.

‘Would you ask that in the Louvre or the Metropolitan Museum of Art?’

The Louvre, this is not, mate.

‘Sorry.’

‘All of the clocks on this wall are museum-quality artefacts. I act as caretaker and so, I hope, will my family one day. But the clocks on that table are for sale to the public.’

I take a look but they’re all boring gold-plated carriage clocks and wall clocks. It’s the museum pieces that catch my eye.

I point to one.

‘A sealskin clock from Norway,’ he says. ‘Baby seal. I have to keep it oiled.’

I point to another.

‘Early example of a Jaeger LeCoultre Atmos clock. Almost perpetual – it derives its energy from changes in atmospheric temperature.’

I pass by a sundial and a pendulum clock and a wooden cuckoo-type clock covered in hair.

‘Hair?’

‘Ponyskin. Rough hair.’

I approach a clock in a glass case, pointed away from me.

‘Ah, that’s a rare tusk clock. One of the finest ever made.’

I walk around the container. Its corners are the tusks of a walrus. The clock is framed by the sharp incisors of a big cat, I’m not sure which kind. ‘What are they?’

‘Hippo tusks and then horse teeth inside.’

‘And around the clockface itself?’

‘Two complete mouthfuls of human teeth. All mid-eighteenth-century peasant teeth.’

I stare at him.

‘They’re two-hundred-year-old teeth. Call your policewoman girlfriend if you’d like her to inspect them.’