He held the paper out. Darby didn’t take it. “You got that off the handwriting.”

“Yes. It’s what I do.”

“Off a letter to my mother.”

“Yes, it—” Joel stopped short. “Uh. That was your hand?”

“That’s right.”

Joel opened his mouth, moved it soundlessly, then said, “Excuse me,” grabbed the glass of beer, and took a hefty gulp. The laugh exploded around him, and he was relieved to see Darby looked as amused as anyone.

He hoped to God he’d judged that right. It had been a reasonable punt that Darby had produced his own writing: for one, he probably wasn’t surrounded by literates, and for another, it was an aggressively pigheaded thing to do, and aggressive pigheadedness had been clear on the page. Joel had carefully skipped the other observations that came to mind, such as vicious and self-centred as a spinning top, in favour of what he knew about Darby Sabini from Clerkenwell gossip.

Broadening of the vowels indeed. Aaron would laugh, assuming Joel lived through this to tell him about it.

“A good friend and a bad enemy,” Darby mused. “Well, I’d like to think it. What do we reckon to this, boys?”

There was a chorus of mostly approbation from the watchers, but one man said, “So what’s the trick? How’d you know all that?”

“I don’t know anything,” Joel said. “Certainly not about Mr. Sabini. But the way a man writes tells you a lot, or it does me. I bet you can judge a man pretty well?” he appealed to Darby. “You look at his eyes, the way he holds himself, the way he talks back, and you know what you think, yes?” He waited for the nod he knew would be forthcoming; people rarely said, No, I’m a terrible judge of character. “Well, I do it off handwriting, not faces. That’s all.”

“Useful,” Darby said. “Sounds like something the coppers would like.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t stand up in court. I’ve been assured of that.”

“Have you, now. Let’s talk about that. All right, you lot, clear off.”

The hangers-on vanished, leaving them alone, although Joel didn’t feel any less threatened for it. “So,” Darby said. “Eddie Twigg told you what I want.”

“He said you wanted to talk to me about Detective Sergeant Fowler. May I ask why?”

“No. So I hear you and Mr. Fowler are pretty close, he takes you out to dinner, that sort of thing. Tell me about that. And I know what you did time for, Mr. Joel Wildsmith, so don’t mess me about.”

“Sorry, what?” Joel said blankly. “Are you implying— Oh, come on. He’s a policeman.”

Darby Sabini’s jaw hardened. “I know that. Now you tell me all about you and him.”