She gave me the Duchess look, the old money stare that footballers’ wives never get the knack of, and for a moment it rolled off her, the stink of the sewer and money and the deals done over brandy and cigars. Only, Tyburn being modern, there was a whiff of cappuccino and sun-dried tomatoes in there as well. ‘Have you got what you came for?’ she asked.

‘The TV’s mine,’ I said.

She said I could pick it up whenever I liked. ‘What did he see in you?’ she asked, and shook her head. ‘What makes you the keeper of the secret flame?’

I wondered what the hell the secret flame was. ‘Just lucky, I guess.’

She didn’t dignify that with a reply. She turned her back on me and returned to rummaging in the trunks. I wondered what she was really looking for.

On my way out through the coach yard I heard a muffled barking behind me and looked back. A pale, mournful face was watching me from a second-floor window – Molly, holding Toby tightly to her chest. I stood and gave them what I hoped was a reassuring wave, and then headed off to see if Nightingale was still alive.

There was an armed police officer stationed outside Nightingale’s room. I showed him my warrant card and he made me leave my bags outside. A modern ICU can be surprisingly quiet: the monitoring equipment only makes a noise when something goes wrong, and since Nightingale was breathing on his own there was no Darth Vader wheezing from a respirator.

He looked old and out of place among the polyester bed covers with their crisp, easy-to-clean pastel colours. One limp arm was exposed and hooked up to half a dozen wires and tubes, his face was drawn and grey and his eyes closed. But his breathing was strong, even and unaided. There was a bowl of grapes on the sideboard, and a bunch of blue wildflowers had been stuffed, a bit randomly I thought, into a vase.

I stood next to the bed for a while, thinking that I should say something but nothing came to mind. Checking first to make sure that no one was likely to see me I reached out and squeezed his hand – it was surprisingly warm. I thought I felt something, a vague sense of wet pine, wood smoke and canvas, but it was so faint I couldn’t tell whether it was vestigia or not. I caught myself swaying on my feet, I was that tired. There was an institutional armchair in the corner of the room. Made of laminated chipboard and polyester-covered fire-retardant foam, it looked far too uncomfortable to sleep in. I sat down, let my head flop to one side and was gone in less than thirty seconds.