‘Them half-pint ponces?’ shrieked her friend, Jean, joining us at the tea-stall. ‘They’re all mouth and no muscle, if you know what I mean. Anyway, they wouldn’t try it on round here. Mr David’s well liked in the market, a proper young gentleman he is.’

‘Not too young to make a girl happy,’ cackled Ava, and I wondered what happiness he had sought from these tired old comfort stations on their nightly beat. My mind flashed back to the broken cadaver on a bombsite and I wondered how much I knew of Dovidl’s darker urges.

Hurriedly, I left the whores and descended to the Tinkerbell where two croupiers and the hat-check girl, four punters and a wholesale costermonger had heard nothing untoward. The girl at the door, who had kissed him deeply, said to give him her best. I looked around, on leaving, to make sure I was not being followed.

The blanks I drew boosted my confidence when, days later, two short men in Borsalino hats turned up at Blenheim Terrace looking for Mr David. I assured them that Mr David had gone away – grateful that, wherever he was, he had eluded his shady creditors.

‘Blank,’ declared Mabel, back in the washroom. ‘Not a dicky-bird. My pals had a bit of a ruck with your Maltesers, leaving one of them in need of a National Health nose-job, but none of my nasties have come up with a sniff of his droppings, worse luck.’

‘So what do we do now, Auntie?’

‘We try and put your poor parents back together again, that’s what. Forget about the boy, he’s not worth a tinker’s. I can’t think why Violet’s so upset when she’s got such a fine son of her own. You’re doing a good job, Mart. We’ll get through this together as a family, got that?’

Inspector Morgan summoned me to another interview, my third. ‘An assessment of where we have got to so far,’ he said, pointing to the bare metal table. ‘It’s been three weeks, hasn’t it?’ His interrogative tone made me uneasy. Two constables entered the room, standing either side of the door, hands behind their backs. The walls had been freshly painted in washable olive-green. The smell was faintly acidic.

‘Mr Simmonds,’ said the inspector, in sardonically gentle tones,

‘when a young fellow goes missing, we keep an open mind if there is no ransom note or body. For the first week, we assume the man maybe lost his way home or met a nice young lady and nipped down to Brighton. The second week, we check out the better-organised parts of criminal society. If nothing seems suspicious, in the third week we start worrying that maybe someone is making a monkey of us, not telling us the whole story, get my drift? Now, Mr Simmonds, are you sure you have told me absolutely everything I need to know?’