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There is a legend that after Lucifer had been cast into hell, God granted him the one wish to make up for what must have been a severe disappointment.

Satan thought long and hard, then averred that he would wish to grant mankind the gift of desiring power.

God could see no harm in that: He Himself had possessed supreme omnipotence for all eternity and see the good job He’d made of it.

So, God granted the wish.

And Satan has been laughing ever since.

I have reached my third coffee. The cup has left a yellow ring at the top of the page where I write but nothing is perfect. Not even myself.

I am James McLevy, inspector of police. I record in this wee book what the French call my ‘pensées’, or what the Scots would term ‘whatever passes through a body’s mind’.

My existence is a struggle between personal human frailty and the desire to serve justice. An exactitude forever compromised by the very people who framed the laws they now wish to bend.

I look back to see the anguish and pain I have caused for others and caused to myself by the unyielding pursuit of justice. I look ahead and see much the same prospect. So be it.

Break the law, high or low, I’ll bring ye down. Suffer injury, high or low, I will avenge ye. To the best of my compromised ability.

I’m down to the dregs now. Coffee is like blood in my veins.

Out of my attic window, I can see a thousand torches flickering in the sky from the direction of Waverley Market.

They light the way to power. Politics. The dunghill upon which many a cock has crowed.

I turn the other way and look out over my kingdom.