His shaft appeared to have hit home, since the superintendent glowered and said, “That’s enough of your bloody cheek! I say again—it’s a Sunday. I’m not supposed to be here. Nor are you. I just dropped in to get out from under the wife’s feet. We’ve got roast beef, and her mother’s helping in the kitchen. And if you detain me any longer with your exploits, I shan’t get it rare.”

“Sorry, sir! I’ll think of you tucking into the pink sirloin and the horseradish in an hour’s time when I’m down at the dissecting table, examining the contents of the murdered man’s stomach,” Redfyre replied with an easy smile. It was a lie. He was attempting—unsuccessfully—to prick the super’s conscience. His arrangement to attend Beaufort’s autopsy was for Monday morning. But he’d noted that his boss, despite the bluff and bluster, was intrigued. He’d expected to find him at the station. On a Sunday morning, his warm, wood-panelled office on the first floor of the ugly building in St. Andrew’s Street regularly became MacFarlane’s redoubt. A swift visit to the next-door off-licence to buy drinks for lunch had become a ritual. Redfyre let his gaze drift without emphasis over the array of bottles lined up on the superintendent’s desk. He noted six half-pints of India pale ale to wash down the Sunday roast, along with two bottles of Mackeson’s stout on the side in recognition of a mother-in-law visiting day.

MacFarlane sighed. “Go on, then! Help yourself to one of those glasses and pour yourself one of these, why don’t you?” he invited his inspector. “No? Well, make it quick. So, the doc reckons it’s a case of murder, does he? Strangulation? Funny, that . . . Not many blokes get themselves strangled. Bashed over the head, shoved off a height, shot with grandpa’s old rifle, lynched even. But a hands-on throttling . . . nah! One chap with his hands around another chap’s neck?” MacFarlane grimaced at the uncomfortable thought. “That’s not natural!”

“In Cambridge perhaps, sir, but not unknown in a military situation. Trench raiding, overcoming a sentry, an occasion where silence is necessary or where no other weapon is . . . er . . . to hand. I believe it to be an aggressive combat technique now taught to His Majesty’s troops as a matter of course. I rather think the handbooks refer to it as a ‘self-defence skill.’”

MacFarlane grunted. “A gross euphemism, but none the less effective for that. Still, why would anyone waste their time and energy topping a down and out?”

“Down on his luck, certainly but I’m not sure about ‘out.’”