It’s going to be an awfully long weekend. I head over to the BTP offices and, as I do, Inspector Barker pulls into one of the two parking spaces at the front in an unmarked car. There’s a ukulele case on the passenger seat. I’m guessing he’s on his way to his rehearsal and is popping into the office to pick something up.

I’ve heard him and Tom talk about ukuleles, or ukes as they call them. They rehearse with a band every Saturday afternoon, although they add on a couple of evenings during the week leading up to the Beer Festival in July and the Christmas concert. I know that they both started off on Vintage Sopranos, which is what most of the band use, but Inspector Barker has recently splashed out on an Uluru Concert. He’s talked about it quite a lot but hasn’t shown it to Tom or anyone else in the band as yet. He knows that when he does, they will want a go on it – a moment that has to come, but for a little while he wants it to be his and his alone. They’ve all been asking, though, and today is the day he has promised to bring it to rehearsal. He’s bringing in his mahogany Luna Pearl too, just in case his nerve fails him when it comes to taking the Uluru into the pub.

I follow Inspector Barker inside. He turns left into the mess room and immediately the two PCs sitting at the table, Akash Lockhart and another young man I don’t know, look up in alarm. There is a family packet of Hobnobs on the table between them. It’s been ripped open and the biscuits lie like fallen dominoes. There are crumbs everywhere. Lockhart reaches out a hand to brush the crumbs away because his boss has walked into the room and Barker feels a rush of nostalgia for the days when junior officers would jump to their feet when someone of his rank came through the door.