‘He’s not very happy, but that doesn’t matter,’ Tibbot said as he descended the stairs. ‘It’s a bigger problem that either he doesn’t know who this woman is or won’t tell us.’

‘So what do we do?’ I replied, annoyed not by Charles’s attitude – I couldn’t have cared less about what he thought of me at that moment – but by the fact that it had been a waste of precious time.

He rubbed his jaw. ‘I can try a friend in the Transport Division. It might be Liberation Day, but if I know Kenneth he’ll be in the office enjoying the peace and quiet while everyone else is out jumping up and down for Comrade Blunt. He never really goes in for Liberation Day, if you know what I mean. Always prefers to be the one minding the shop.’

‘Will he help us?’

‘I think he’ll try. That might not be enough, though. A lot of the records went up in smoke thanks to the Luftwaffe. Of course the Party has more than made up for it with those new files in Somerset House.’ It was strange to hear a policeman talk that way. The scepticism was almost dissident. I knew what sort of files he was talking about. ‘But we might have a record of the registration plate.’

‘The telephone is in the hall,’ I said.

‘Better from somewhere else.’

A vagrant sat sleeping inside the call box across the road from our house, slumped against the glass walls. His legs, which were bare below the knee, were covered in a damp film of soot, and he had strange bumps under the skin on his nose and cheeks. ‘Wake up, mate,’ Tibbot said. The man stirred and, without a word, hauled himself up and staggered away.

‘What was wrong with his skin?’ I asked.

‘See it quite a lot with the vagrants. Caused by a social disease they have. One of the ones that doesn’t exist.’

He reached into his pocket and drew out a little leather-bound notebook. Inside, in tiny slanted handwriting, there were lists of telephone numbers and he ran a stubby finger down one page, then the next, until he found what he was looking for. He picked up the receiver and gave the operator the number.