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regained consciousness. So he’d sat there, his bulk awkward on the low chair, legs at all angles, watching various other Rajus as they were shepherded in and out, whispering and wailing. The one time he wandered off in search of the WVS canteen and a decent cup of tea, one of the staff nurses came out looking for him.
    â€œHe’s come to, then, has he?” Divine asked when finally she found him.
    As well as the plastic cup of tea, which was threatening to burn a hole in his fingers, he was trying to balance two chocolate cupcakes and a lemon puff.
    â€œConcerned about your sugar levels?” the staff nurse asked, raising an eyebrow in the direction of Divine’s one-handed juggling.
    â€œNot as I know of,” Divine said cockily.
    â€œWell, perhaps you should be.”
    One of the cupcakes fell to the floor and rolled underneath the nearest chair. “Don’t worry,” she said, “the cleaners will find it. Why don’t you put the rest of them down on the table over there and come through?”
    â€œYou mean now, like? This minute?”
    â€œYou do want to see him, don’t you?”
    â€œYes, but …”
    â€œAsk him some questions?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen I should do it before they take him down to theater.”
    Divine took a large bite from the lemon puff, risked burning his tongue on a swig of tea, and followed the staff nurse through the double set of doors towards the ward. Nice arse, he thought, wonder if they’ve got any mistletoe strung up in Intensive Care?

    Resnick arrived back in his office after a brisk thirty minutes with the superintendent, to find a large parcel stuffed into his waste basket. Brown paper and string inside a pair of plastic bags. Around ten pounds, he thought, weighing it in his hands. One of the plastic bags contained quite a little puddle of blood. He hadn’t realized Lynn Kellogg was due back in the office so soon.
    The files detailing the night’s events, messages and memoranda, the movement of prisoners in and out of police cells, still lay on his desk barely touched. Half-a-dozen men and one woman drunk and disorderly; Resnick recognized most of the names. Likely by now they’d been cautioned and pushed back out on to the streets. By noon most of them would be drunk again, winding themselves up for the night. After all, it was Christmas, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that what Christmas was about?
    In the outer office two phones began ringing almost simultaneously and Resnick switched them from his mind.
    Considering the possibilities—so many homes left empty, all those expensive presents ready-wrapped—the increase in burglaries was less than might have been expected. Even so, enough people would have returned from their firm’s annual pre-cooked Christmas dinner, the ritual risque jokes and innuendo, to find the golden goose had flown. All those expensive tokens of status and admiration liberated in under fifteen minutes by eager hands using a pair of the homeowner’s socks as gloves.
    The phones were still ringing. Resnick pushed open the door to his office, ready to shout an order, and realized there was no one there. A filing cabinet with the drawer not pushed fully back, mugs of tea staining deeper and deeper orange, typewriters and VDUs all unattended. Resnick picked up the nearest receiver, identified himself and asked the caller to hold while he dealt with the second. A postman had been cycling to work at the sorting office off Incinerator Road when a taxi had turned past him, heading for the bridge; he’d got a pretty good sight of the two youths in the back. A woman on her way back from the garage shop with a packet of cigarettes and a carton of milk had nearly been knocked off her feet by two lads rushing past. Resnick made a note of their names and addresses, was still arranging for the postman to come into the station, when Lynn Kellogg came backwards through the