Dedication: This book is dedicated to all the people who get up and do something about it, whatever "it" is and however small the thing is they do. - Ben Aaronovitch

It’s a bland box of a building built in the 1970s; it was considered to be so lacking in architectural merit that there was talk of listing it so that it could be preserved for posterity as an awful warning.

Nobody had a clue what had happened, so the pundits were out in force, explaining how the riot was caused by whatever sociopolitical factor their latest book was pushing. It was certainly a searing indictment of some aspect of modern society—if only we knew what.

The ABC of policing literally goes: Assume nothing, Believe no-one, Check everything.