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darling?’
    â€˜It?’
    â€˜Now don’t be coy with me, Peter Maxwell,’ he heard her say. ‘I know you too well. For all your bonhomie, you’ve been shitting yourself for days over this Ofsted thing. I repeat – how did it go?’
    â€˜Rather odd, really,’ he told her. Policewoman Carpenter was actually a Detective Sergeant. More than that, she was Jacquie, a flame-haired girl who could nearly have been Peter Maxwell’s daughter, had he been a true child of the Free-love generation he grudgingly admitted was his. More than that, she was his Jacquie and he loved her.
    â€˜How?’
    â€˜Well, I haven’t been grilled yet. Just a gentle ice-breaker , cosy chat thing with the Pastoral Person. Who by the way is also the Humanities Honcho. Who by the way enjoys sex in public places.’ 
    â€˜What?’ Jacquie felt she had to check, in case Maxwell’s cordless was playing up as usual. ‘Say again.’
    â€˜I kid you not, Policewoman.’ He rested his crossed ankles gingerly on the top of the bookcase, a move he’d had cause to regret on more than one occasion. ‘We all went out for a little drinky tonight ….’
    â€˜Well, thanks for asking me,’ she whined, mock-hurt.
    â€˜I knew it was your night for giving asylum seekers a good smacking down the nick,’ he explained. ‘Anyway, it was a Teacher Moment. “We who are about to die” – that sort of thing.’
    â€˜Hmm,’ she snorted. ‘I might consider letting you off this time. And?’
    â€˜And, there we were in the Vine, when who should walk in but the Pastoral Person and the Chief Inspector.’
    â€˜That’s Chief Inspector in your sense,’ she reassured herself, ‘not mine.’
    â€˜Indeed. Bloke by the name of Whiting. Anyway, they were all over each other. Smooching at the bar.’
    â€˜Really? How old are they?’
    â€˜Well, that’s just it. Fortysomething, both of them. But it gets odder – or better, depending on whether you write for the TES or the Daily Sport . They were at it later – in the Vine loo.’
    â€˜At it?’ he heard her say.
    Maxwell sighed. ‘Well, you see, my dear, when your mummy and daddy decided to have you, they planted this gooseberry bush …’
    â€˜God, you mean, actually, at it?’
    â€˜With girls in blue like you, my darling, we tax-payers can sleep sound in our beds.’
    â€˜But that’s bizarre. How do you know?’
    â€˜Yes, that’s what Paul Moss said and he didn’t see the half of it. I happened upon them. Answering nature’s call, minding my own business, as it were. Not quite in flagrante , in that they mercifully had the decorum to get on with it in a cubicle rather than on the urinal floor. I could have stepped over them, I suppose.’
    â€˜Did they know you were there?’
    â€˜Oh yes. She came out adjusting her clothing, grinning like a sixteen-year-old.’
    â€˜What about him?’
    â€˜Hugely embarrassed, I’d say. If it had been me, I’d have wanted the ground to swallow me up.’
    â€˜If it had been you?’ she growled. ‘What number are you in the queue, Mr Maxwell?’
    He laughed, quoting, as he often did, from his favourite film, The Charge of the Light Brigade , ‘They say her pitcher hath been too often to the well.’
    â€˜So what are you going to do about it?’ she asked.
    â€˜Nothing,’ he shrugged. ‘It’s not a criminal offence … is it?’
    â€˜Lewd behaviour in a public place. Yes,’ she told him.
    â€˜Well, that’s as maybe,’ he said, ‘but with all due deference to Ms Sally Meninger, I think I’d better let sleeping dogs lie.’
    â€˜Who else have you told?’ she asked him.
    â€˜Just you, dear heart. Oh, and Martin Bashir of course.’
    â€˜How can they face you tomorrow?’ she