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wearing women’s clothing other than in a pantomime? It made his blood boil. It was like most things these days. He felt like he had become an angry old man and it didn’t feel good.
    Instead he meandered down to the HQ canteen and was just in time to rescue two sausages and wrap them in bread before breakfast time ended. Then, with a strong coffee he found a table in the corner of the room, and sat, observed and pondered as the food and drink calmed his soul.
    With the dubious expectation that he was about to meet and be treated to the tale of woe of a man who had undergone a sex change operation and been discriminated against as a result – boohoo, Henry thought – he made his way back to the training centre with a heavy heart, wondering in a very un-PC way where they managed to unearth such people who were happy to be wheeled out in front of a class of cynical cops to face a barrage of nooky questions. He guessed a nice, fat daily rate helped to grease the wheels.
    The footpath across the sports pitch carried on through the pleasantly wooded grounds of the centre, past the FMIT block, which he had no intention of visiting. Even his training course had more allure than that.
    As he rounded the corner of the block, he ran into Dave Anger emerging from the front door, pulling on his jacket. They almost collided face to face, but managed to stop a foot apart.
    Henry’s heartbeat moved up a pace.
    â€˜Henry,’ Anger said. At least the guy looked as rough as a dead badger, with dark circles under his eyes, his skin a deathly pallor, his lips drawn and scrawny.
    â€˜Dave.’ Henry didn’t bother with a ‘sir’ or anything approaching respect. ‘I’ve just been to see the chief.’
    â€˜I know – that’s where I’m going now.’
    â€˜To discuss yours truly?’
    â€˜Don’t think you’re that important, pal,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll get round to you if we need a laugh.’
    â€˜Funny about those tapes going missing,’ Henry said.
    Anger’s eyes narrowed behind his small round glasses. ‘Nothing to do with me,’ he said with a twitch of his shoulders which looked like someone had just walked over his grave.
    â€˜Course not.’
    â€˜Anyway – excuse me.’
    â€˜Certainly.’
    Anger grimaced a tight smile and eased past Henry on the narrow path.
    â€˜By the way,’ Henry couldn’t resist calling. Anger’s shoulders drooped visibly. He turned, a hateful expression on his face.
    â€˜What? You want to rub it in? How good she was?’
    Henry crinkled his nose. ‘Nah … I don’t even remember it … is that worse?’ he asked, although he was fibbing. One could hardly forget having sex with a randy young policewoman on the bonnet of the commandant’s car at the regional training centre. Not an experience easily erased from the mind. ‘No, it’s not about that.’
    â€˜What then?’
    â€˜D’you think I’d be daft enough not to have a copy of the tape?’ With a smirk of triumph, Henry continued his journey back to the classroom, hoping Anger would stew, even though it was a lie. He didn’t have a copy.
    The graphic details of the sex change operation – including a toe-curling PowerPoint presentation – made Henry squirm and cross his legs like most of the other guys in the room. The ladies seemed to be revelling in the male discomfort, whilst the speaker, the one who had undergone the op, was very blasé about the whole thing.
    When the lunch break came, Henry knew there was no way he could ever eat anything after watching such a gruesome spectacle, so he decided on a stroll around the grounds.
    He mulled over whether his career as a detective was truly over as he walked past the slimy duck pond in the direction of the huge building which housed the firing range. The deal he had hatched with the chief was that if Henry