
Good thing I keep late hours. Twenty past one last night my doorbell rings loud and long. “Oh, this had better be good,” I tell the intercom.
“It’s the police,” it replies.
“Ah,” I say, and go down to let them in. They look me over, decide I’m not their quarry and storm upstairs. They bother the Finns who live there for a few minutes, persuading them to roll up their sleeves to see if they have any tattoos, then come clumping down again when one of them remembers that I mentioned a basement flat.
“Someone came out of your address,” a policewoman tells me, “and had an altercation with one of the workmen outside.” Enough of an altercation, that is, to warrant at least eight uniform and a police van. The detection side of their job has been made slightly easier by the news that the assailant is tattooed.
The workman will have been working for Tube Lines, who are given to parking their vans on the stretch of pavement outside on the odd occasion when there’s major Underground maintenance going on overnight. They had been there in force the previous night, and around midnight yesterday evening I was aware once more of the familiar revving engines and shouty banter.
The police hammer on the door of the basement flat. I hear it answered. They are instantly in no doubt: “Could we talk to you, sir?” His tattoos must be showing. Then a lot of voices talk at once, until I hear one of the men who share downstairs saying “There’s no need, I’m not under arrest,” followed shortly by an incredulous “Am I under arrest?”. He’s under arrest.
My guess is that the workmen have turned up, as has the volume for anyone whose bedroom is out front, and our hero, incredibly drunk as I have occasionally encountered him, has resented this and popped out to have “a word”. This is only wild surmise on my part, however; I wasn’t able to ask him, as he disappeared into the night in the back of a van.