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suburb at the eastern end of the Central Line.
    ‘Anything interesting today?’
    ‘Not really.’ Prentice nodded towards a sickly-looking man in chinos and a white shirt, sitting on one of the benches. ‘That bloke,’ he whispered, smirking, ‘says
some schoolgirls tried to beat him up in the National Gallery.’
    Carlyle looked at the guy. There wasn’t a mark to be seen on him. ‘Where are the schoolgirls?’
    ‘They did a runner.’
    ‘Stands to reason.’
    ‘But the guy insists on making a complaint,’ Prentice sighed. ‘What a tosser. He can sit there for a while. Anyway, did you hear about Dog?’
    ‘No. What’s he done now?’ Carlyle asked. Walter Poonoosamy was a regular nuisance in the neighbourhood. His nickname came from his preferred way of chiselling tourists, asking
them for cash to support his fictitious pet Labrador which went by the name Lucky.
    ‘He was found dead last night in a pew in the Actors’ Church,’ Prentice explained. ‘The rector came across him there when he was closing up. Gave him quite a scare,
apparently. They reckon it was a heart attack. He was only forty-four, which is amazing considering he looked well north of sixty.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ Carlyle conceded. ‘But at least he beat the odds.’
    Prentice looked at him quizzically. ‘How do you mean?’
    ‘I read somewhere that the life expectancy for homeless guys is forty-one. If he made it to forty-four, Dog beat that by almost ten per cent.’
    Prentice shrugged. ‘Tough old world.’
    ‘Yes,’ said Carlyle, ‘it sure is.’
    Upstairs, Joe was waiting for him. He was munching a chicken sandwich while watching a couple of men in suits record the space between the desks with metal tape measures.
    Carlyle gave his sergeant a questioning look.
    ‘Estate agents,’ explained Joe softly, sticking the last of the sandwich in his mouth.
    ‘What?’ asked Carlyle. ‘Are we selling the station?’
    ‘Buying it.’
    ‘Huh?’
    ‘Apparently,’ said Joe, ‘the station building was sold to a hedge fund or something as part of a job lot several years ago, in a sale and leaseback deal. The cash paid for a
black hole in the pension fund. Anyway, now that the property market has collapsed we’re going to buy it back. According to the Police Review , the Met is going to make a fifty million
pound profit.’
    Carlyle watched as the two men disappeared round a corner, in search of other things to measure. ‘Better than the other way round, I suppose. But when did we become property developers
rather than coppers?’ He scratched his head. ‘Is Henry Mills downstairs yet?’
    ‘Yeah.’ Joe had now turned his attention to a chocolate doughnut which then disappeared in three rapid bites. ‘He’s in interview room six. We’re ready to
go.’
    Riddled with prevarication, Carlyle was more interested in food. ‘I’m going to get a bite to eat,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll go and have a chat with him. In the meantime,
round up all the reports, so we can go through everything this afternoon.’
    ‘Will do.’
    ‘Anything from Bassett yet?’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Joe. ‘He emailed through his preliminary findings. Nothing we don’t already know. The force used in killing her was more than you might expect from an old
guy like Henry Mills, but in these type of domestic situations you never know.’
    ‘Quite.’
    ‘It looks like the skillet was the murder weapon. They found some hair and skin in the dishwasher pipes.’
    ‘Any fingerprints on the machine?’
    ‘His and hers – some smudges. But no others.’
    ‘Good. Nice and quick.’
    ‘Yeah, looks like we caught Bassett on a good day.’
    ‘Lucky old us. Anything else?’
    ‘Not really,’ Joe shrugged. ‘They found some other unidentified prints in the kitchen, but that’s about it.’
    ‘You’d expect that,’ Carlyle said.
    ‘Yeah, but some of them were on the window frame.’
    Carlyle thought about that for a second. ‘Inside or