It was an obtrusive, bristling moustache, so absurdly over-large for his face that it made Aaron’s own face itch just to look at it, and aggressively ginger. If one could look past it, his hair gleamed copper under the gaslight; he had eyes of so light a brown they were somewhat unsettling, thick eyebrows the same shade as the moustache, and a roundish face that probably made him appear slightly younger than he was. Aaron guessed late twenties. He might have looked like a curate or a clerk if it wasn’t for the moustache; given that self-inflicted disfigurement, he looked like nothing so much as a dishonest bookie.

Aaron took his time to hang up his coat and hat, digesting his impressions as he looked around the room. It was a small bedsit, with a kitchenette consisting of a single gas ring and a sink, a bed in the corner behind a screen, a little gimcrack wardrobe, two threadbare armchairs, a small table with a single kitchen chair. The table bore a scrawled-upon notepad, a pen, and some sort of metal device with leather straps and a hook that couldn’t possibly be what it looked like. There were no pictures on the walls, no photographs, nothing personal. It was bleak.

“Have a seat. Tea?” Wildsmith asked.

Lower half of the middle class, Aaron thought. “Thank you,” he said, on the grounds that a sensible officer never refused tea.

Wildsmith managed the making of it with great efficiency, using his elbow to turn on the tap via the lever attached. He lit a match for the gas by holding the matchbox to his side with the same elbow, and striking the match with his right hand. It all looked very practiced. Aaron glanced again at the thing on the table.

“Prosthetic,” Wildsmith said from the gas ring.

Aaron hadn’t realised he’d been observed. “I beg your pardon?”

“That contraption. It’s a prosthetic. If I strap it to my arm, I can crank the hook affair tight to hold a pen or what-have-you. I can’t say it makes writing particularly easy, but here we are.”

“You’ve still got your right hand.”

“Everyone says that,” Wildsmith said. “It was the first thing the doctor told me in hospital, actually: ‘Good job it wasn’t the right, eh?’ I’m left-handed.”

Aaron had known a few cack-handers at school and in the Navy, but they rarely announced it quite so assertively; Wildsmith sounded almost belligerent. It seemed particularly forceful for a man who visibly wasn’t left-handed any more. “Ah. Rotten luck.”

Wildsmith made a noncommittal noise of response. It was a very familiar noncommittal noise to a police officer, or to anyone after the war. Yes, it is, isn’t it? Dreadful, actually. Close to unbearable. Still, mustn’t grumble!