When I get home — white, shaking — I plunge into the extremely good excuse that my wife thinks is bull. But when my guests suggest that perhaps the reason the woman didn't flee was because I had disrupted a prostitute and her pimp merely haggling over tips or, worse, stumbled across a West London human-trafficking ring, I pour myself another whisky. My only consolation: at least the baddie's behind bars. Or at least that's what I thought.

A week later PC Lightning Strike came to my office to take a statement.

"Well, sir, first let me say, this is hugely embarrassing."

"How's that?"

"It really is, very unfortunate."

"What is?"

"Well, Wandsworth's pace clock-"

"Huh?"

"Well, see, sir, it ran out."

"What's a pace clock?"

"When you're arrested, right, you have to be charged within 24 hours. But that night, the only jail space was in Wandsworth. And he was so drunk they couldn't speak to him straight away. Thing is, they didn't tell us when they started his clock."

"So?"

"It didn't leave us enough time." 

OMG. They've released him into the wild. 

While I'm imagining the man and his posse marauding the streets of West London in search of me, PC Lightning Strike pulls out a tatty questionnaire. 

"What immediately strikes you about this, sir?'

All the text was in black and white apart from two little words in red: "ADDRESS: UNKNOWN." 

 "And you let him go?" 

"Don't you worry yourself, sir. I promise you," PC Lightning Strike reassures me, "when he turns up we'll be ready."