“You turned a blind eye sometimes?”

“I told you. I went to school with Billy Marshall, grew up the next street over. Only difference was, he was thick as two short planks, but he could fight, and me, well, I had the smarts and the stealth, but I wasn’t much of a scrapper. Enough to survive. And believe me, you had to have that much or you were a goner. Any trouble and I’d talk my way out of it, and if that didn’t work, I’d leg it. Mostly I’d talk my way out. Is it any wonder we went our different ways? Thing is, it could’ve gone either way for me. I ran a bit wild when I was kid, got into a scrape or two. I knew exactly where people like Reggie and Ronnie were coming from. We lived in the same poor neighborhood, in the shadow of the war. I could think like them. I could’ve easily used my street smarts for criminal purposes like Reggie and Ronnie, or…” He let the sentence trail and ate some more roast beef.

“You’re saying morality doesn’t come into it?” Michelle asked. “The law? Justice? Honesty?”

“Words, love,” Lancaster said when he’d finished eating. “Nice words, I’ll grant you, but words nonetheless.”

“So how did you choose? Toss a coin?”

Lancaster laughed. “‘Toss a coin.’ Good one, that. I’ll have to remember it.” Then his expression turned more serious. “No, love. I probably joined for the same reasons you did, same as most people. There wasn’t much pay then, but it seemed a decent enough job, maybe even a bit glamorous and exciting. Fabian of the Yard, and all that stuff. I didn’t want to be a plod walking the beat—oh, I did it, of course, we all did, had to do—but I knew I wanted CID right from the start, and I got it. What I’m saying, love, is that when it came right down to it, when you stood at the bar of your local, or took your usual table in the corner, the one your father had sat at all his life, and when someone like Billy came in, someone you knew was a bit dodgy, well, then it was just a job you did. Everybody knew it. Nothing personal. We mixed, tolerated one another, hoped our paths never crossed in a serious way, a professional way. And remember, I was working out of West End Central then. The East End wasn’t my manor. I just grew up there, lived there. Of course, we were all aware there was a barrier between us, at least one we’d better not breach in public, so it was all, ‘Hello, Billy. How’s it going? How’s the wife and kid?’ ‘Oh, fine, Bob, can’t complain. How’s things down the nick?’ ‘Thriving, Billy boy, thriving.’ ‘Glad to hear it, mate.’ That sort of thing.”

“I can understand that,” said Michelle, who thought she took policing a bit more seriously and wouldn’t be caught dead in the same pub as known villains, unless she was meeting an informant. It was the same thing Shaw had said. The lines between them and us weren’t so clearly drawn as they are today, mostly because many cops and criminals came from the same backgrounds, went to the same schools and drank in the same pubs, as Lancaster had just pointed out, and as long as no innocent bystanders got hurt…no harm done. Nothing personal. Different times.