He stepped over and around the potholes and made his way across to the opposite side of the road, and turned right onto a service road that separated the police station from the neighbouring restaurant. He hurried along, keeping close to the wall that divided the two plots. The restaurant had a handful of patrons inside, so he walked on until he was beyond it. He passed a ramshackle outdoor smoking shack with a couple of locals sitting at plastic tables under a corrugated tin roof, both men staring at their mobile phones as he passed. Milton doubted they’d even registered his presence, let alone looked at him. The heavy drumming of fat raindrops on the tin roof would hide the sound of his footsteps, so he picked up his pace a little.

Victoria had suggested that the cells were at the rear of the building. Milton couldn’t see over the wall, but the GPS on his phone placed him just beyond the police station. With the reservation that his position would not be shown with any particular accuracy, he checked behind him and, happy that he was not being watched from the restaurant, he clambered up and over the concrete wall and crouched down behind it.

Milton took a few seconds to examine his surroundings. He was in a small yard dominated by the building he had seen by the road but punctuated with a series of smaller buildings. There was a gate a little way further down the wall that looked as if it would open out into the restaurant’s parking lot.

He examined the rear of the police station. The money, such as it was, had obviously been spent on the public-facing elevation, because this side was run-down and basic. The ground was littered with trash and weeds, and several chest-high bushes had taken root. He focused his attention on the rear wall. As he had expected, it was made of blockwork coated with a cement render, cracked in places. There was some bowing in the wall and cracks radiated out; there was efflorescence around the cracks. Milton saw that the wall had not been built properly, and that constant water ingress had weakened it. He knew just how to exploit that.

Milton counted three windows, each of them no more than narrow, barred slits. The window on the left had a faint light shimmering through the rain, so he made his way toward it.

He looked up at the window. It was eight feet from the ground. He looked around to see if there was something for him to stand on, but saw nothing. He could retrace his steps and see if there was anything in the yard that he had just left, but he didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary. There was a bright flash of lightning above his head, followed a split second later by a crack of thunder. The rain fell even more heavily.