I placed my hand on his arm. ‘What happened to your daughter?’ I asked.

He took off his square glasses to clean them with a handkerchief from his pocket, and I saw his eyes properly for the first time, the wrinkled bags under them hanging from age and drink. He was struggling with the memory and I wanted to console him, but I could sense an old-fashioned pride in him that wouldn’t have it.

‘Wasn’t far from here, actually,’ he said eventually, still looking at the spectacles in his hand. ‘No, not far. There were rumours that NatSec wanted wider powers of arrest, but the police persuaded Blunt to refuse because we didn’t want the Secs stepping on our toes. Julie was on her way to work in her pub and got caught up in a demonstration against the government. Students. About the elections and the Party winning like they did. No better than the Nazis, they were saying. They didn’t know better back then.’ We knew better now. He slipped the glasses back on and his eyes became bigger and less distinct for me.

‘What then?’ I gently prompted him.

‘Some NatSec stooges, agents provocateurs, went into the crowd and started throwing stones at the police so the police charged at them. They knocked a few of the students about – not too badly, but enough to make the others start running, and Julie fell over.’ His voice was a whisper for the final words. ‘She’d had asthma since she was a kid.’

‘She had an attack?’ He nodded. I felt a deep mix of sorrow for him and outrage for all of us. ‘You’re sure they were NatSec people who started the trouble?’

‘Yeah. I did some asking around after, had a few words with some of the coppers who were there. The ones who started it were older than the students, dressed differently. All men. No girls. It was called a riot on the news and the Secs got their way because they convinced Blunt that these students were going to bring down the new state and the police were thugs. We knew what really happened, but we couldn’t say nothing. Just had to cut our losses.’

I didn’t know how to ask. ‘Were you there too?’

‘No,’ he sighed. ‘No, if I had been, I might have been able to do something.’

I gazed along the road. ‘Do you have other children?’

‘Just Julie. When I got a bit down with the job, I would think about her growing up.’

‘Your wife?’

‘Oh, Elsa’s gone too now. So the answer to your question,’ he said, ‘the one you haven’t asked me, is that I’m doing this because I’ll be put out to pasture soon and this is all I can do against them. Not much. But it’s something, isn’t it?’