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'I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date,' sang Detective Constable Peter Pascoe.

In moments of stress his mind still trawled through the movies in search of a proper reaction.

'It's an immature tic you may grow out of when you've had enough Significant Experience of your own,' an irritated girlfriend had once forecast. 'Ring me when it happens. '

He hadn't rung yet. Surely his move to Mid Yorkshire where they sold Significant Experience by the bucketful would work the cure? But a fortnight into his new job, when he woke to discover he'd slept through his alarm, the section house boiler had failed, and there were three buttons missing from his only clean shirt, he'd immediately dropped into a Kenneth Williams panic routine straight out of Carry on Constable.

Sod's Law was confirmed when he got to the station. No time to grab a bite in the canteen, of course; hardly time to grab the essential file from the CID room: then the phone had rung just as he was passing through the door. Not another soul in sight, so like a fool, he'd answered it.

It had been some snout urgently requiring the DCI and not about to push something useful towards a mere DC. Five minutes getting that sorted. Then the Riley reluctant to start; every light at red: traffic crawling at sub-perambulator speeds (did they have different limits up here?); one side of every road dug up (water, or burial of the dead – which had finally arrived?).

And now, in the courts' car park, not a space in sight except one marked recorder.

Sod it, thought Pascoe. Little high-pitched instrument played by some geezer in a ruff couldn't need all that much room.

He gunned the Riley in, and was out and running up the steps before the Cerberic attendant could bark more than the first syllable of 'Hey-up!'

Why did the natives need this ritual exordium before they communicated? he wondered. Not properly a greeting, a command or even an exclamation, it was entirely redundant in the vocabulary of a civilized man.

He burst through the swing doors, and thought, 'Hey-up!' as he spotted a familiar face.

'Sergeant Wield,' he gasped.

'Constable Pascoe,' said Wield. 'Now we've got that out of the way, you're lost. '

'You mean I'm late,' said Pascoe. 'Sorry but -'

'Nay lad. Mr Jorrocks, the magistrate is late, which means you'll not be called for another half-hour. What you are is lost. Magistrates' court is in the other wing. This is where the big boys play. '

With that face it was impossible to tell whether you were being bollocked or invited to share a joke. And what was Wield doing here anyway? Checking up? If so he was in the wrong place too…