Nigel Fairweather

Nigel Fairweather is 54 and has spent thirty of those years in uniform, first in the army, then at the gates of valuables firms. Born in Reading, the son of a bus driver and a shop assistant, he joined the army at 18 and left a sergeant, with a bad knee and a voice that admits no reply. For eleven years he has been shift chief of the Carrow guards, and the warehouse, to him, is an extension of the barracks.

He lives with his wife in a semi-detached house in HounslowHounslow Suburb of west London, near Heathrow airport., with a living room papered in flowers, a backyard garden kept by the ruler and a tool shed where he grows tomatoes in lined-up pots. He wakes at 4:30, shaves to the radio, polishes his boots in the kitchen and reaches work before any subordinate. He says lateness is merely disrespect for other people's clocks.

He is heavyset, with a thick neck and a deeply furrowed red face, gray hair cut military style and a mustache trimmed to the millimeter. He wears the gray guard uniform, tie always in place, and keeps in the kitchen drawer his sergeant's beret, which he takes out now and then just to be sure it still fits. He speaks formally, chin raised, and each sentence ends like an order carried out.

About the warehouse, he says the thieves came in through the front door, with a key, without scratching the lock, like someone clocking in. He says the last to arrive was Dennis, who clocked in at 6:35, late for the first time in fourteen months, and that the door had barely closed before the hooded men came in. About the safe combination, he maintains that he resisted as long as he could and only spoke when the lit match came near his face.

Nigel knows the shift chief, the only one who holds the safe's combination, is the one asked how someone opened what he locks. When the detective says he handed over the combination on a plate, he straightens his tie and answers that he has thirty years of uniform and still smells of gasoline. The humiliation of an old soldier, or a uniform used to avoid showing the rest: the straightened tie doesn't say.