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According to my therapist, attaching conditionals to your past is a classic distancing technique indicating an unwillingness to face your memories directly. Or, I pointed out, it could be a rhetorical device designed to add a humorous note to enliven a story. To which she said, “Or both.” You can’t win with therapists, you know. And even if you do, they just tell you it’s part of the process.

After that I was up and ready for action. It might have been a Saturday, but below the rank of chief inspector weekends are an entirely notional concept.

There were a couple of mentions of drones, but the assumption was that they were operated by the police, the gangs, space lizards or all three at once. The media were continuing their comforting lack of interest in things that didn’t fit their various agendas.

He’d obviously wanted to tell someone about it for a long time and I was a convenient ear.

I get that a lot. Stephanopoulos calls it my secret weapon.

“It’s that vacant expression,” she said. “People just want to fill the empty void.”

“But I want you to be cautious.”

“Hey,” I said. “Cautious is my middle name.”

“But your first name is Never Knowingly,” said Stephanopoulos. Which got all the laughs it deserved.

He didn’t have “instincts”, he had thirty years of experience—which was much more reliable.

Nothing beats a long wait at a bus stop as a reality check.

And what they don’t want you to know, you definitely want to know.

Policing is about moving from the unknown to the known and then further—to the provable.

“Are you smarter than me?”

“I’ll answer that when you give me a working definition of intelligence.”

“I’m interested in history,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

“Why would a young man like you be interested in history?”

“So I can avoid repeating it.”

“Unless you believe it was a coincidence that Melvin the Rat turned up at a party we were hosting.”

Actually I thought it probably was, but I found that when people are nursing a grievance it’s a waste of time trying to explain the ubiquitous nature of coincidence in the universe. People always want things to happen for a reason.