“Was anyone else involved?”

“Might have been,” said Talbot. “The chief constable himself might have been a regular at Mandeville’s parties, for all I know.”

“But no one you knew of?”

“No. I didn’t even know about Harris. Like I said, it just felt wrong. I just guessed from his attitude, his wording. It was only him and me in his office. Even by the time I got outside I was thinking I’d been reading too much into it.”

“What happened that day?”

“From the start?”

“Yes.”

“It was a warm Sunday morning, end of July or beginning of August.”

“It was the first of August,” Michelle said.

“Right. Anyway, I was by myself, not much on, I remember, when the phone call came and the switchboard patched it through to the office.”

“Do you remember anything about the voice?”

Talbot frowned. “It’s so long ago, I don’t…”

“Man? Woman?”

“It was a woman’s voice. I remember that much.”

“Did she sound upset?”

“Yes. That’s why I headed out there so impulsively. She said there’d been a party going on since the previous night, and she was convinced that some of the girls and boys were underage and people were taking drugs. She sounded frightened. She hung up very abruptly, too.”

“So you went?”

“Yes. I logged the details and drove out there like a knight in shining armor. If I’d had half the sense I have now, I’d at least have taken the time to organize a small raiding party, but I didn’t. God knows what I thought I was going to do when I got there.”

“Did you meet the woman who’d phoned?”

“Not that I know of. I mean, if she was there, she never came forward and admitted she was the one who phoned. But then she wouldn’t, would she?”

“Who opened the door?”

“A young man. He just opened it, glanced at my identification and wandered off. He didn’t seem interested at all. I thought he was on drugs, but I must admit I didn’t know much about them at the time. I’m not even sure we had a drugs squad back then.”

“What did you find inside?”

“It was more like the aftermath of a party, really. Some people were sleeping on sofas, a couple on the floor…”

“How many?”

“Hard to say. Maybe twenty or so.”

“What kind of people?”

“A mix. Young and old. Businessmen. Mods. One or two of the girls looked like swinging London types, miniskirts and what have you. There was a funny smell, too, I remember. At the time I didn’t know what it was, but I smelled it again later. Marijuana.”

“What did you do?”

“To be honest, I felt a bit out of my depth.” He laughed. “Like Mr. Jones in that Bob Dylan song, I didn’t really know what was happening. I wasn’t even sure if any of it was illegal. I mean, the girls and the men didn’t look underage to me, but what did I know? I talked to a few people, took names. A couple of the girls I’d seen before at Le Phonographe. I think they also worked for Fiorino’s escort agency.”