The lorry itself looked no different to the convoy of lorries that were lined up bumper to bumper all down one side of Gerrard Street, making their early morning deliveries to the shops and restaurants of Chinatown. But half up on the pavement and parked at a random angle, this lorry looked dumped, as if the driver couldn’t get away fast enough, and that makes our people think only one thing.

Bomb.

Under the bobbing red lanterns that hailed the lunar new year, Chinatown was abandoned apart from armed response officers in their paramilitary gear, paramedics from half a dozen hospitals, firemen from the station on Shaftesbury Avenue, uniformed officers from New Scotland Yard, detectives from Counter Terrorism Command, dogs and their handlers from the Canine Support Unit, and our murder team from West End Central, 27 Savile Row, a short walk from Chinatown.

It was actually a lot of people, all wound up tight, and our breath made billowing clouds of steam in the bitterly cold air. But there was nobody who was not meant to be there.

The public – the deliverymen to Chinatown, the early workers cutting across Soho to their offices in Mayfair or Marylebone or Oxford Street – had scarpered as soon as the police tape went up and the word went out. Only one local was still here – the elderly Chinese man who had seen the lorry and dialled 999. He was a short, sturdily built man who had probably spent a career carting crates of Tsingtao beer into the stores and restaurants of Chinatown, and there was a hard-earned toughness about him despite the modest frame.

The weak winter sun was still struggling to rise above the rooftops. January’s feeble attempt at a sunrise. Without looking at my watch, I knew it must be around eight by now. I sipped a triple espresso from the Bar Italia, my eyes on the abandoned lorry, as DC Edie Wren interviewed the Chinese man.

‘So you didn’t see the driver?’ Edie asked him.

The man shook his head. ‘As I believe told you, Detective, I saw no sign of the driver.’

His accent was a surprise. He spoke with the buttoned-up formality of a BBC radio announcer from long ago, as if he had learned his English listening to the World Service.

‘Tell me again,’ Edie said. ‘Sir.’

‘Just the lorry.’ He gestured towards it. ‘Parked on the pavement. The driver was already gone.’

‘Was the driver Chinese?’

‘I didn’t see the driver.’

Edie paused.

‘You’re not protecting anyone, are you, sir?’

‘No.’

Edie stared hard at the old man.

‘Do you have permission to be in this country, sir?’

The man, never tall, straightened himself up to his full height, his back stiffened with wounded pride.

‘I have had a British passport for many years. But what’s that got to do—’

Edie’s pale face did not look up from her notebook.