“His life had been disrupted, but not his billing cycles.”

“Bill Harper was a lucky guy. Bill Harper had got Diane and then he had been killed.”

“Shafiul's English, it must be said, is limited (although as one wag pointed out, not as limited as his interrogators' Bengali). So when he was asked whether he had deliberately tried to disrupt Trott's elongated guard-taking procedure by aborting his own run-up, he insisted there had been no plan. Pushed moments later on whether [Jamie] Siddons had spoken to the team about the need to disrupt Trott's elongated guard-taking process, Shafiul nodded jubilantly. We were left none the wiser.”

“He had made a series of foolish decisions in his life. He had not planned well. He had not had courage when he needed it. His decisions had been short sighted. The decisions of his peers had been short sighted. These decisions had been foolish and expedient.”

“He had been granted his life's wish-but conditionally.”

“The story is even Bill Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, couldn't overcome the sex monkey on his back, and spent his sober life cheating on his wife and filled with guilt.”