Royston Hargreave

Royston Hargreave is 61 and has spent thirty of those years at night, in a reflective vest, guarding things that sleep. Born in Hounslow, the son of an airport baggage handler and a canteen cook, he left school at 16 and worked as a baker's helper, a hotel doorman and a construction site watchman before ending up at the warehouse. He speaks slowly, with the weary courtesy of someone who learned early that the night shift belongs to people nobody asks about.

He lives alone in a two-room apartment in a low building in Hounslow, overlooking the back of a parking lot, with a worn armchair turned toward the radio and a two-burner stove where he boils tea every morning on arriving. On the living room wall, an old photograph of his team's stadium, the only luxury in the house. He sleeps by day, with the radio tuned to an oldies station, and eats whatever is left over from supper.

He is tall and stooped, with a long, wrinkled face, sagging cheeks, thick eyebrows and thin white hair combed back. He wears the dark blue security uniform with a yellow reflective vest over it, the radio clipped to his shoulder, and rarely lets go of a chipped tea mug, which he fills and empties all night. He is tired, polite and leans on thirty years of service without a complaint, repeating it in a low voice.

About the night of the crime, his account is the one in the rounds book: at midnight, at 1 and at 2, all three bays, everything quiet, just rain on the roof, in his handwriting. He says the trunks were in bay 4, outside the valuables cage, because on Friday at 5 p.m. the day supervisor stacked them there, under the skylight, saying the cage was to be painted over the weekend. He also noticed an Italian lady, on Saturday at 8 p.m., who photographed the labels and left in a hurry, without signing the visitors' book.

Royston knows the night guard is the one asked how someone passed under his eyes. When the detective says he switched off the sensors for the thieves, he fills the chipped mug once more and answers that it's thirty years in uniform without a complaint and that he doesn't even know the panel password. The hurt of an old guard at the end of his career, or a book as a rampart: the steaming tea doesn't reveal which.