Do not stand around and try and talk about it – trust me, it won’t end well. I took my own advice and backed away. Tyburn’s black eyes watched me go, and as soon as I was safely in the side passage I turned and legged it as fast as I could. I didn’t exactly run down the hill to Swiss Cottage, but I did make it a brisk walk. There was a payphone near the bottom which I needed since the battery had been in my mobile during my statue demolition. I called the operator, gave my identification number and got a call routed to Lesley’s mobile. She wanted to know where I’d been because apparently it had all gone pear-shaped without me.

‘We saved the blind guy,’ she said, ‘no thanks to you.’ She refused to give me any details because ‘your boss wants you down here yesterday.’ I asked her where ‘here’ was and she told me the Westminster Mortuary, which made me cross because we may have saved the blind man but some poor bastard had still lost his face. I told her I’d be there as soon as possible.

I caught a lift in the local area car down to Swiss Cottage tube and hopped a Jubilee Line train into town. I doubted that Lady Ty had the manpower or the inclination to have the stations covered, and one of the few advantages of blowing out my phone was that it couldn’t be jacked, ditto any trackers she might have stashed about my person. I’m not being paranoid, you know. You can buy those things off the internet.