I took another gulp of coffee, which was definitely the good stuff, and casually brushed my fingers along the rim of the bowl. There it was, fainter than the shard, heat and charcoal and what I realised was the smell of pig shit and … I wasn’t sure what.

I emptied the fruit and cards from the bowl and traced my fingertips across the smooth curve of its interior. It seemed beautifully shaped but I couldn’t say why. A circle is just a circle, after all. But it was as beautiful as Lesley’s smile. At least how Lesley’s smile used to be.

I realised that the others had fallen silent.

‘Where did this come from?’ I asked Zach.

He looked at me like I was bonkers, so did Guleed and Carey.

‘The bowl?’ he asked.

‘Yes the bowl,’ I said. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘It’s just a bowl,’ he said.

‘I know,’ I said slowly. ‘Do you know where it came from?’

Zach looked at Carey in consternation, obviously wondering if we were using the rare good cop/loony cop interrogation technique. ‘I think he got it from the market.’

‘From Portobello?’

‘Yeah.’

Portobello Market is at least a kilometre long and must have at least a thousand stalls, not to mention the hundred-plus shops that line both sides of Portobello Road and spill out into the side streets.

‘Any chance of you being bit more specific?’ I asked.

‘Top end I think,’ said Zach. ‘You know. Not the posh end, the other end where the normal stalls are. That’s all I know.’

I picked up the bowl, cupped it in my hands and brought it level with my eyes.

‘I’m going to need to package this,’ I said. ‘Has anybody got any bubble wrap?’

4. Archway

4

Archway

The answer to that question turned out to be, surprisingly, yes. Apparently, art students often have to transport fragile bits of work around and so a cupboard in the kitchen turned out to be not only full of aging spaghetti and dubious packets of cup-a-soup but bubble wrap, tissue paper and masking tape.

It was also where Zach kept his stash, a ziploc bag of yellow-looking leaf that Carey suggested constituted a seasoning rather than a controlled substance. Nonetheless Carey unofficially confiscated it until it was decided whether we needed to use it as a pretext to arrest Zach or not.

The bowl went into an evidence bag with a white sticky label with my name, rank and number on it sealing it closed. I then, awkwardly, wrote in the time, address and circumstances of seizure in very small writing. I’ve always felt that the lack of a penmanship course in the basic training at Hendon is a major oversight.