‘We’d put ’em in the Lost Property cupboard,’ said the sergeant promptly. ‘And then ring up the King. If his name was in them, of course. Look, it’s a good thick door and there’s only one key and I’ve got it.’

‘All right, take out what’s in there and put it in your cell and put the box in the cupboard,’ said the captain.

‘Chief Inspector won’t like that. Very important stuff, Lost Property.’

‘Tell him we can co-operate in a very friendly fashion now or if he prefers he can take a call from the Chief Constable in two minutes,’ said Captain Harris, putting his hand on the phone. ‘One way or the other, hmm?’

The sergeant looked worried. ‘You serious about this, sir?’ he said.

‘Oh, yes.’

‘That stuff’s not going to go off bang or anything, is it?’

‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so.’

Five minutes later the sergeant walked down to the cells with his arms full of the contents of the cupboard, and a put-upon expression on his face. He put them on a bench in the corridor and fished out his keys. Then he pulled aside the hatch in a cell door.

‘You all right, old girl?’

‘That’s what you think. Talk about a blue pencil! You can tell he’s a lad, can’t yer, Mister Shadwell?’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the sergeant, opening the door.

The old lady sat on the bed. She was so short that her feet swung several inches above the floor. And there was a cat on her lap. It growled when it saw the sergeant – a slow, rising growl which suggested that, if there was any attempt to pick the cat up, it was all going to end in claws.

The sergeant had long ago stopped worrying about how the cat could get into the cells. It happened every time. There wasn’t room via the windows and it certainly couldn’t have got in through the door, but every night the old lady was in the cells, the cat would be in there, too, in the morning.

‘Finished your breakfast, have you?’

‘Millennium hand and shrimp,’ said Mrs Tachyon happily.

‘Good. Then you just come along with me. It’s a nice day outside,’ said the sergeant.

‘Beam me up, Scotty,’ said Mrs Tachyon, standing up and following him obediently. The sergeant shook his head sadly.

She trailed behind him into the station yard where, under a bit of canvas the sergeant had thrown over it the night before, there was a wire trolley loaded down with bags.

Mrs Tachyon looked at it.

‘No one nicked anything?’ she said.

She was like that, the sergeant thought. Mad as a hatter most of the time and then suddenly a sentence’d come out at you like a razor blade in candy floss.

‘Now then, old love, as if anyone’d touch that lot,’ he said, as kindly as possible.

‘Points win prizes. Hats.’

The sergeant reached under the trolley and produced a pair of boots.