Madam prodded the corpse with her cane and blood fountained messily from the severed neck. The copper promptly spilled his guts again.

‘Well, good night, Officer,’ said Madam, turning away. ‘Hope you get your man.’ She winked at me – and I took the copper’s arm.

‘Come on, love,’ I said to the poor kid. ‘I’ll sort you out. You know, I thought you boys went round in pairs?’

‘Yes,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘Gerald usually does this with me but he’s poorly … ’

Ten minutes or so later, I met Madam on the street corner. ‘Well?’

For answer she unfolded her gloved hand, revealing a screw of bloodied paper. ‘Got this from the corpse’s pocket,’ she whispered.

I flattened it out. On it was scrawled a bold message:

‘MORTLOCK IS NOT WHAT HE SEEMS’

*

The next night found us at the Pom itself, having purchased two thruppenny tickets for the main event. The whole place was humming with life, a blur of light and colour and laughter and stray fights, like one of them pictures by Sickert, heaving with patrons, right up to the Gods, singing their lungs out, spitting and hawking and chucking peanuts across the aisles at each other. Drink was plentiful, guzzled down from flat brown bottles and a man with a sloshing tin-can roamed round the place crying ‘Portaaaaar! Portaaar!’ Lots of the crowd was waving home-made banners proclaiming ‘The best of luck to Mr Winthrop!’, ‘We love you, Anne!’, ‘Huzzah for the Boneless Wonder!’ and things like that. As the orchestra tuned up in the pit the crowd yelled, ‘Now then, you cat-gut scrapers! Let’s have a ha’p’orth of liveliness!’

On stage, as we come in, a Chinese knife-throwing act was taking a bow. There was whoops of appreciation and applause and as we pushed our way past the well-oiled patrons, the ruddy-faced, one-armed Chairman, Billy Skittles – the brass buttons on his old, red soldiering coat polished to buggery – staggered to his feet in his little box by the side of the stage and banged his gavel. Behind him was a painted back-drop proclaiming ‘THE ALL-BRITANNIA APTITUDE CONTEST’.

‘Pete and his Tongs, ladies and gentlemen! All the way from the H’imperial Palace at Peking! Via Camden Town, that is!’

The boozy crowd laughed.

‘Ave I seen anyfink so h’illustrious? Never in all my puff!’ continued Billy. ‘Not since the Battle of Inkerman! Inkerman where I lost this!’ Here he patted his empty sleeve. ‘Which ’as left me feeling … ’

‘ALL RIGHT DOWN ONE SIDE!’ joined in the crowd.

Old Billy beamed at this, then turned to the Royal Box (or what would have been the Royal Box had not the Old Pom been such a heinous dive). ‘Now then, and what did our wenerable judges make of them, eh?’