‘More than an hour,’ I told him. ‘It’s incomprehensible to me,’ he said. ‘Something’s happening.’ We listened to the sound of running feet and a voice shouting with an edge of panic. ‘I never imagined it would be like this,’ the man said. There is something wrong about uncontrolled noise in a police station. You associate police stations with discipline. If anyone does anything violent, you expect it to be done quietly and off-stage. My mind shied off images of violent policemen. Thoughts like that are weakening when you sit waiting in an interview room. ‘To the police, of course,’ Brond had said. I had been astonished. ‘Where now?’ I had asked, desperately casual, watching the vast shoulders of Primo as he steered the car through the morning traffic. ‘To the police, of course.’ He had turned on me a look of mild reproach.
