Miller took the girl gently by the arm, but before he could speak, she started to tremble violently. She managed to raise her right hand, pointing at the prisoner who stood number one in line, a great ox of a man, his right cheek disfigured by a jagged scar. She tried to speak, something rattled in her throat and she collapsed against Miller in a dead faint.

He held her close against his chest and looked up at the stage. ‘Okay, Macek, let’s be having you.’

A thick-set, fourteen-stone Irishman with fists like rocks, Detective Constable Jack Brady had been a policeman for twenty-five years. A quarter of a century of dealing with human wickedness in all its forms, of walking daily in squalor and filth and a gradual erosion of the spirit had left him harsh and embittered, a hard, cruel man who believed in nothing. And then a curious thing had happened. Certain villains now serving collectively some twenty-five years in one of Her Majesty’s Prisons had thrown him down a flight of stairs, breaking his leg in two places and fracturing his skull, later leaving him for dead in a back street.

Most men would have died, but not Jack Brady. The priest was called, the last rites administered and then the surgeons took over and the nurses and physiotherapists, and in three months he was back on duty with a barely perceptible limp in his left leg.

The same, but not the same. For one thing he was noticed to smile more readily. He was still a good tough cop, but now he seemed gifted with a new understanding. It was as if through suffering himself, he had learned compassion for others.

The girl painfully signed her name at the bottom of the typed statement sheet and he helped her to her feet and nodded to the woman P.C.

‘You’ll be all right now, love. It’s all over.’

The girl left, sobbing quietly, and Miller came in holding a teletype flimsy. ‘Don’t waste too much sympathy on her, Jack. I’ve just heard from C.R.O. She’s got a record. Four previous convictions including larceny, conspiracy to steal, breaking and entering and illegal possession of drugs. To cap that little lot, she’s been on the trot from Peterhill Remand Home since November last year.’ He dropped the flimsy on the table in disgust. ‘We can certainly pick them.’

‘That still doesn’t excuse what Macek did to her,’ Brady said. ‘Underneath that surface toughness she’s just a frightened little girl.’

‘Sweetness and light.’ Miller said. ‘That’s all I need.’ He yawned, reaching for a cigarette. The packet was empty and he crumpled it with a sigh. ‘It’s been a long night.’

Brady nodded, applying a match to the bowl of his pipe. ‘Soon be over.’