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‘That’s a nasty scar you’ve got on your back, Sir Wilfred.’
    ‘So I believe,’ I said, controlling my temper again. ‘I don’t see a lot of it.’
    A man doesn’t spend much time watching his back. Perhaps he ought to. The scar in question dated from when I was thirteen and running wild in the Cumbrian fells. I slipped on an icy rock on Red Pike and tobogganed three hundred feet down into Mosedale. By the time I came to a halt, my clothing had been ripped to shreds and my spine was clearly visible through the torn flesh on my back. Fortunately my fall was seen and the mountain rescue boys stretchered me out to hospital in a relatively short time.
    First assessment of the damage offered little hope I would ever walk again. But gradually as they worked on me over several days, their bulletins grew cautiously more optimistic, till finally, much to their amazement, they declared that, while the damage was serious, I had a fair chance of recovery. Six months later, I was back on the fells with nothing to show for my adventure other than a firm conviction of my personal immortality and a lightning-jag scar from between my shoulder blades to the tip of my coccyx.
    Was it legal for Medler to take a photo of my naked body without my permission? I wondered.
    Whatever, I was determined not to let him think he had worried me, so I carried on dressing and when I was finished I said, ‘Right, now I’d like to phone my wife.’
    ‘First things first. Sergeant, bring Sir Wilfred along to the charge room.’
    Things were moving quickly. Too quickly, perhaps. Arrest, questioning, police custody, these were stages a man could come out ofwith his reputation intact. There were time limits that applied. Eventually that moment so beloved of TV dramatists would arrive when a solicitor says, ‘Either charge my client or let him go, Inspector.’
    But Medler was pre-empting all that.
    Foolishly when I realized I was being charged with assault on a police officer in the execution of his duty, I felt relieved. I took this to mean they were still uncertain about their child pornography case. I’d passed through disbelief and outrage to indignation. Either the cops had made a huge mistake or someone was trying to drop me in the shit. Either way, I felt certain I could get it sorted. After all, wasn’t I rich and powerful? I could pay for the best investigators, the best advisors, the best lawyers, and once they got on the case I felt confident that all these obscene allegations would quickly be shown for the nonsense they were.
    After the formalities were over, I was about to re-assert my right to call Imogen when Medler took the wind out of my sails by saying, ‘Right, Sir Wilfred, let’s get you to a phone.’
    He took me to a small windowless room containing a chair and a table with a phone on it.
    ‘This is linked to a recorder, I take it?’ I said mockingly.
    ‘Why? Are you going to say something you don’t want us to hear?’ he asked.
    He always slipped away from my questions, I realized.
    But what did I expect him to say anyway?
    I sat down and Medler went out of the door. It took a few seconds for me to recall the Nutbrowns’ Essex number. I dialled. After six or seven rings, a woman’s voice said cautiously, ‘Yes?’
    ‘Pippa? Is that you? It’s Wolf.’
    She didn’t reply but I heard her call, ‘Imo, it’s him.’
    A moment later I heard Imogen’s voice saying, ‘Wolf, how are you?’
    She sounded so unworried, so normal that my spirits lifted several degrees. This was not the least of her many qualities, the ability to provide an area of calm in the midst of turbulence. She was always at the eye of the storm.
    I said, ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry, we’ll soon get this nonsense sorted out. How about you? Is Ginny with you? How is she?’
    ‘Yes, she’s here. She’s fine. We’re all fine. Pippa’s being marvellous. There’ve been a couple of calls from the papers. I think that once they realized I’d