Hawkins watched the Peugeot and the Maserati turn off as they crossed a junction. ‘Our minds can play tricks on us sometimes.’

She hesitated, making sure her explanation didn’t reveal anything too personal from her ongoing therapy sessions with Brian Sturridge. ‘They say everything we ever see is stored away in our brains forever; the only difference is how much of it we’re able or willing to recall.’ She glanced over, noting that Chris looked rapt. ‘Maybe you saw the road name in a TV show you’ve forgotten all about, but your subconscious retrieved it for the dream.’

He stared into space. ‘Why didn’t I dream before the accident?’

‘Who knows?’ Hawkins shrugged. ‘A tiny chemical shift can change someone’s whole personality. Perhaps the crash knocked your … dream switch?’

A smile ghosted across Chris’s features. ‘My dream switch.’

She winced, then smiled back. ‘Best I could do at short notice.’

‘Nice try, ma’am.’ He studied the roof lining briefly before settling back. ‘I’ll give it some thought.’

They drove on in silence until the buildings ahead withdrew, and the sat nav told Hawkins to turn left. She breathed a sigh of relief as she swung on to Cavendish Square, skirting the walled garden to join another queue for underground parking.

By the time they’d made it down the ramp into a clinically white bunker, left the Alfa between an electric Nissan and a Ferrari, added a king’s ransom to her credit card, and taken a glass lift to street level, they were fifteen minutes late.

‘Come on,’ Hawkins commanded, leading Chris across the road and along the square’s west perimeter, conscious that more than a few minutes in the light rain still falling around them would turn her hair to a tangled mess. Checking address tags on grand stone edifices as they went.

Their destination was the last building on the left, a brick and dark plaster three-storey, slightly less grand than its immediate neighbours, but still no doubt with a price tag that made pound signs flash in its owner’s eyes. Hawkins took the steps to the chequerboard landing two at a time, relieved to find a polished brass plaque beside the burnished black door: The Paranormal Society, est. 1987.

She rang the bell.

38

For a moment, there was nothing but the background murmur of a busy London intersection. Engines; the muted clatter of distant building work; a passer-by shouting into his phone.

Hawkins was about to ring the bell again, when the sound of a heavy lock being released changed her mind. She stepped back as the oversized door swung inwards to reveal a pool-cue thin man in his twenties, wearing a mohair waistcoat and a pressed white shirt. Hawkins glanced at Chris before discreetly checking the square for signs of a local Dickensian evening.

She turned back, waiting for the man to speak, unsettled to find him simply staring back at her.