Cairns told the dog handlers they could stand down, explaining to the one looking for explosives that this possibility had now been ruled out.

The other dog wasn’t quite ready to jack in its shift. It was now sniffing enthusiastically around the base of another locker, one that it had rather astonishingly managed to open.

Upon closer inspection, this was down to the lock having been damaged and the door rendered unlockable. The locker itself was empty, as anything unlockable was bound to end up around these parts.

‘There’s been drugs in here at some point,’ the dog handler said of the broken locker. ‘I’d guess that isn’t the first suitcase full of gear that’s been stored here.’

‘No,’ agreed Cairns with a grin. ‘But I’m willing to bet it’s the last.’

He let out a sigh that turned into a laugh, a combination of relief and elation. It proved infectious. Catherine laughed too. This was a result. A hell of a result.

The suitcase was escorted out by two Drug Squad officers and driven off in a van with a couple of motorcycle outriders for added speed and security. Catherine gave clearance for the trains to resume and the cordons to be dropped, with the shop staff allowed a head start as agreed.

As they marched on to the concourse, she saw the jeweller’s manageress suddenly up the pace and streak through the pack into the lead. She was outstripping the rest despite the encumbrance of her stiletto heels, like the fastest yummy mummy at a sports-day parents’ race.

It was Catherine’s guess that this was whose alarm was still reverberating around the station. On another day, she might have been inclined to go over and issue a rap on the knuckles for blatantly ignoring police instructions, but she thought she’d let it slide. It felt like a good morning to be a police officer, and there was no pressing reason to sour the mood.

The manageress disappeared into the shop but the alarm failed to cease ringing. She re-emerged only a few moments later, looking as shocked as she was angry, and hurried across to where Catherine stood next to Cairns, subjecting them both to a breathless, spluttering and livid rant, the gist of which proved that even on a day like today, every silver lining had a cloud.

Her name was Maraidh Morgan, and it turned out she had followed police orders unquestioningly and hadn’t set her security system. Inside Coruscate, however, there was a permanently alarmed cabinet displaying their stock of ultra-high-end watches, and the reason it had gone off was because somebody had taken a power saw to the thing and cleared out the lot.

The Abandoned