His eyes drifted round the police canteen. He found it a cheerless place. The formica-topped tables, wood and metal chairs combined with the pale and peeling lemon paint on the walls to create an ambience that would depress a saint. It was a place he truly loathed and normally avoided at all costs. He had finished his real work, but was now facing the prospect of tackling a mountain of paper. He enjoyed being a detective. Even as a child it was what he always wanted to be. What he hated was being a clerk. These days police work involved so much bureaucracy and paper that he sometimes felt personally responsible for the felling of half the pulp forests of Finland.

At the end of the night shift, he just wanted to go home for breakfast, a shower and a change. Nineteen years’ police service, during which he had steadily but rapidly risen to the rank of Detective Superintendent, had failed to harden him to the scenes of crime he witnessed on a daily basis. He could view a dead body dispassionately, but would touch one only if absolutely necessary. He had never been able to understand why so many people were prepared to live their lives surrounded by filth and squalor. Many of the homes he visited would offend the proprietor of a below-average hovel.

He had all but given up on the tea and was steeling himself for the three hours of pen-pushing which lay ahead. At least when that was done he had the prospect of three days off to savour – three very special days.

Today he was in a police canteen but tomorrow he was off to Milan. For the first time ever he was going abroad – to a football match. McAllister, like many of his colleagues, was a supporter of Glasgow Rangers. He had been a regular at Ibrox since his father bought him his first season ticket when he was sixteen years old. If detection was his passion, football was his obsession.

Work permitting, he would never miss a domestic game, but he had never been able to travel abroad. Now the prospect of Inter Milan against Rangers in the San Siro stadium was more than enough to make him forget the lack of breakfast, the horrendous state of the tea and the prospect of the paperwork. By this time tomorrow he would be on his way to Glasgow Airport and a flight to Italy and not just any old flight but the club’s own charter. Thanks to a good friend who was the club doctor, McAllister would be travelling with the official party, players and all. Even a hard-nosed Glasgow detective could become quite excited at the prospect of being in the same company as Richard Gough and Ally McCoist.