Rhyme grunted.

“Nothin’ on any Russians peeking out from that case of yours, the expat. Friend I got in MI5 was wondrin’ you ever run a case here that might’ve wandered into Brit organized crime or politics? With the brogue, they were thinking, you know, the Troubles. Unionists versus nationalists.”

Rhyme thought back over his long, long tally of cases. He supposed there might’ve been one or two that had a connection to the British underworld. But it would be tangential at best. As for the Irish-English issue, he knew with certainty he’d run no investigations touching on that conflict. He told Dellray this.

“And all my snitches and CIs, anything with a lick of connection to the UK, not a single word. I know Lon was corralling some of the departments’ folks. But . . .”

His arrested sentence and shrug were meant to convey that NYPD had far fewer international connections than the FBI did.

Thom Reston had been enlisted to help too. He now reported to Dellray, “I’ve been through about four hundred emails Lincoln received—Amelia too, some—and there’s plenty of threats. But I couldn’t find anything credible or specific. And none of them had any connection to the UK.”

Lon Sellitto stepped into the parlor. He had been supervising the installation of extra security cameras covering the front and the back doors of the town house—as well as some complicated contraptions in the front hall: sensors that were the size and shape of file cabinets with analyzing chambers in the center. They were an X-ray unit and an explosives detector. The technicians, who’d been vetted, explained to Dellray, Rhyme, Thom and Sellitto how they worked. The controls were simple.

“All deliveries to the town house,” Sellitto was saying to Rhyme, “and all the evidence Amelia brings back from the scenes? It all goes through them. And I’ve told the precinct, no parking in front of your building. Worried about car bombs. Any vehicles there, other than Amelia’s, they call the Six House.”

That precinct was the site of the NYPD Bomb Squad.

He nodded to Thom and Rhyme. “When’ll Amelia be back?”

“Shouldn’t be long. An hour?”

She had gone to Spanish Harlem on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to run a crime scene.

“K. I’ll text her to check out her car for explosives, if it’s been out of sight.”

Dellray said, “You know, Lincoln, I was having a thought. Remembering this slugfest I got myself into the other day.”

Sellitto frowned. “A fight?”

“Oh, you betcha. Nasty. Was all about Fyodor Shcherbatskoy.”

Rhyme, who was perhaps more used to Dellray-speak than his former partner, smiled. “I think Fred is talking metaphorically. No fisticuffs were involved.”

Dellray nodded. “Ex-actly. Was a debate is what I’m talking about.”

“Shcherbatskoy’s this scholar in modern Buddhist philosophy. His thing is presentism, you know.”

The bedraggled detective scoffed, “Of course I don’t.”

Fred Dellray was not only a brilliant undercover agent but was a talented amateur philosopher as well. Rhyme had never known one could pursue philosophy as a hobby like golf or stamp collecting until he met Dellray.