These officers were not local. There was a huge fellow with small hands who stood at the back and didn’t speak, and I recognised him as the implicit threat. I am old, but I did not get this far without the occasional dust-up, especially in my early London years, and I found myself looking from each to the next and wondering how I would fare if I must fight them. The big one caught me at it and shifted pointedly in his seat. I gave him an unrepentant look and settled to a more dignified appraisal, but no man likes to be made to feel second in his own house.