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court until midnight, accompanying sobbing teens and their disbelieving mothers into the family room, a bare reception room with fixed seating where parents could say goodbye to their kids before they were carted off to a cell somewhere in London for who knew how long.
    By the end of his shift the reporters had begun to annoy him, pressing their cameras and microphones into the faces of grinning looters as if they were celebrities, and asking banal questions; “How do you feel about the damage you caused?” “Did you realise people could have been killed?” “What sente nce do you think you will get?”
    Daryl Trasker, dressed in the wh ite fatigues given to him forty-eight hours earlier when his own clothes were confiscated by Forensics, was the last defendant of DS Scott’s shift. A regular in the magistrates’ courts, Daryl had been remanded on Sunday night for sentencing in the Crown Court. Either his lawyer had been too busy to tell him, or he was too stupid to understand -either one was possible - but Daryl had not been sent to the Crown Court to be let off lightly again. The clever ones, the middle class student rioters, had twigged early on that if the magistrate could send you to jail for six months and he still referred you to the Crown Court for sentencing, you were likely to get a year or more.
    With the bravado of the ignorant, Daryl confidently speculated that “The prisons are full, man, I’m only just eighteen, I’ll get an ASBO. I can handle that, man.” The cameras greedily sucked in his arrogance for tomorrow morning’s news bulletins, as his mother advised him to be respectful. Angered at her intervention, Daryl turned to the woman who bore him and uttered a string of expletives which, when translated, told her to shut up. DS Scott accidentally punched Daryl in the kidneys.
    An hour later a shocked Daryl, white as a sheet and crying for his mother to do something, was being guided towards the prison van that would deliver him to an adult prison, where he woul d spend a minimum of two years.
    DS Fellowes, on loan from the City of London Police, tapped his old friend on the shoulder.
    “There’ s a celebrity in the house. He’s waiting downstairs in room 1.111. Are you coming, or are you topping up your beauty sleep?”
     
    “Give it a rest, mate, I only had six hours’ kip,” Scott replied, standing up anyway.
    ***
    Ben Fogarty had arrived at Heathrow at 5am and by six thirty the chauffeur had dropped him at his hotel, Saint Ermin’s, which was conveniently placed for his visit to Scotland Yard. The hotel was worthy of its four stars and his room could have been in any hotel in Hong Kong, Dubai or Oz. The room had magnolia walls, lots of dark wood, and designer furniture. Ben showered, changed and walked over to Scotland Yard, taking advantage of the warm sunshine.
    The door to ro om 1.111 opened and two men, both similar in stature to himself, walked in. Both were smiling, although their faces showed signs of fatigue. The slimmer of the two detectives held out his hand and introduced himself as DS Fellowes.
    “Ben Fogarty. I never thought I would get to meet you. I saw your three tries at Twickenham in 2009. Steve Borthwick’s guys made it difficult for you, but you were terrific. It was a great match.” Ben smi led as he shook Fellowes’ hand.
    “Bloody egg chasers!” DS Scott muttered under his b reath as the other two laughed.
    “I guess you’re a football fan. Do you support Chelsea?” Ben asked as he shook Scott’s hand.
    “I do, as it happens. How did you guess?”
    “Well, as you walked in behind Fellowes here, I guessed you were used to coming second.”
    Fellowes bellowed with laughter, and even Scott managed a wry grin.
    “Ha, bloody, ha. What brings one of the All Blacks eleven thousand miles to New Scotland Yard, then?”
    “Vastrick Security suggested that I speak to you. I can identify the man who put that poor WPC into a coma.”
    Fellowes and Scott fell