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“Nice,” said Abigail. “Very plausible.”

“Yeah, but just because it’s plausible doesn’t mean it’s true.”

I’ve always believed that my dad is right about one thing—your life is your solo and whatever song you choose to sing you only get to do it once.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” I said. “I was gathering intelligence.”

Guleed went home because she has, she says, a deep and mystical understanding of the work-life balance. A concept I once tried explaining to Nightingale with the aid of the big whiteboard in the visitors' lounge. I think he grasped it in the end, and said he was all in favour as long as I understood that this in no way applied to apprentices.

After a slow start the police have taken to mobile technology in a big way—mainly because it means you can pretend to work anywhere: at home, the canteen, the local boozer.

A promise is a promise, or as Nightingale put it, “either your word is good or it’s worthless.”

There’s nothing like having your girlfriend talk in geological time to make you feel insignificant.

It’s a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.

The Daily Mail had the scoop but the media had caught the smell of blood in the water and twenty-four-hour news outlets were running the bulletin every half an hour, with a teaser on the quarter in case your attention span was that short.

Dedication: This book is dedicated to all the people who get up and do something about it, whatever it is and however small the thing is they do.

Nightingale had taught me to be cautious of the early sources. “A great deal of it is accurate,” he said. “And a great deal is less so. Unfortunately it can be difficult to determine which is which.”

I’ll say this for the Queen. She was brave—or possibly stupid. It’s easy to mistake the two.