The simple fact remained that Land was a bureaucratic phantom working in a highly unorthodox specialist police division, which made him redundant, the kind of man who needlessly checked his e-mails on trains and complicated things by interfering. He appreciated order, hierarchy, structure, accountability. What he got was a unit that behaved with the unruliness of a backpackers’ hostel. The PCU got away with murder because few of their suspects ever did. In short, they achieved results, and so long as the statistics continued to add up, they would continue to be funded in spite of their procedural irregularities. Thus, Land found himself paying for a success he had never wanted, while the engineers of his fate continued their wayward course through London’s criminal world, causing indignation and admiration in equal measure.

‘On Bryant’s insistence we worked right through Christmas,’ he told his wife, who had actually enjoyed the unusual yuletide peace in the house, ‘because he thought he’d found another victim of the Deptford Demon, a case that was supposedly solved in 1968! So now I feel entirely within my rights to do what I’m about to do.’

‘And what is that, dear?’ asked his wife, who was only half listening and longed for him to return to the office so that she could get on with painting the kitchen a disagreeable shade of heliotrope that she had spotted in the latest issue of Homes & Gardens.

‘I’m closing the unit down for a week,’ he explained in irritation. ‘A compulsory holiday. We’ve no outstanding investigations under way at the moment. It’s the perfect time to reorganise our operational systems.’ Land loved the idea of reorganising things. He fantasised about clean paper-free offices where colour-coded computer files were backed up and alphabetised, as well as being catalogued by subject, theme, date and importance. Arthur Bryant was as likely to arrange papers by the colour of his correspondents’ eyes as by a nationally recognised system. Sometimes he wrote up his notes in naval code or medieval cryptograms. Land was convinced he did it just to be annoying.

‘I don’t think Mr Bryant will like that very much,’ replied Mrs Land, eyeing the kitchen cabinets with ill-concealed impatience. She knew that if her husband stayed home, they would never get painted. ‘You’ve always said he only manages to stay alive because of his work. You can’t shut down the unit without his approval.’

‘Bryant isn’t the only important member of staff, Leanne. We can all be conscientious. We each have our part to play. No-one is more valuable than anyone else.’