A quarter of a century of dealing with human wickedness in all its forms, of walking daily in squalor and filth and a gradual erosion of the spirit had left him harsh and embittered, a hard, cruel man who believed in nothing. вЂњOkay, Macek, letвЂ™s be having you.вЂќДЄ thick-set, fourteen-stone Irishman with fists like rocks, Detective Constable Jack Brady had been a policeman for twenty-five years. He held her close against his chest and looked up at the stage.

She tried to speak, something rattled in her throat and she collapsed against Miller in a dead faint. She managed to raise her right hand, pointing at the prisoner who stood number one in line, a great ox of a man, his right cheek disfigured by a jagged scar. Miller took the girl gently by the arm, but before he could speak, she started to tremble violently. A hard white light illuminated a stage at the far end of the room and a moment later, a door opened and half a dozen men filed in followed by two constables who marshalled them in line. вЂњLetвЂ™s have them, Jack.вЂќД«rady nodded and pressed a red button on a small control panel on the wall. Another couple of minutes and itвЂ™ll be all over.вЂќ He turned to Detective Constable Brady. He smiled and his whole personality seemed to change and the warmth reached out to envelop her so that sudden, involuntary tears sprang to her eyes. Compassion did not come easily at five oвЂ™clock on a dark February morning, but there was fear on this girlвЂ™s face and she had suffered enough. inspector, of a house near the docks where they had found three children huddled together like animals, almost naked, showing all the signs of advanced malnutrition, squatting in their own dirt in a windowless boxroom that stank like a pigsty.ДЄnd now this. This had been followed almost immediately by a particularly vile case of child cruelty which had involved forcible entry, in company with an N.S.P.C.C. In the ten hours he had already spent on duty, he had served as investigating officer at two burglaries, a factory breakin and a closing-hours brawl outside a pub near the market in which a youth had been slashed so badly across the face that it was more than likely that he would lose his right eye. He paused, noting her condition with a sort of clinical detachment, and the girl shrank back slightly from the strange young man with the white face and the eyes that seemed to stare right through her like dark glass.Дetective Sergeant Nicholas Miller was tired - more tired than he had been in a long, long time. He tapped his companion on the shoulder and Miller stubbed out his cigarette and went to meet her. Miller and Brady were sitting on a bench at the far end of the room and Brady saw her first. She hobbled painfully into the Line-Up room supported by a woman P.C., a pathetic, broken figure with a blanket over her shoulders to conceal the torn dress. Her right eye was almost closed, the cheek mottled by livid bruises and her lips had been split by the same violent blow that had knocked out three teeth.

The girl was young and might have been pretty once, but not now.

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