I couldn’t argue with that.

Nightingale’s rugby finished and he thanked me for the beer and left. I switched over to the news to see whether a certain hijacked ambulance was still rotating around the twenty-four-hour news cycle but it had been knocked off by some serious flooding around Marlow. Lots of nice pictures of cars hydroplaning down rural roads and pensioners being ferried about by the fire brigade. For a moment I had a horrible suspicion that the floods might have been a reaction by Father Thames to Ash being injured but when I Googled for the details, I found that it had all kicked off during the following night when I’d been cavorting on the roof with Simone.

That was a relief. I was in enough trouble already without inadvertently flooding part of the Thames Valley.

A woman from the Environment Agency was asked why they hadn’t issued a flood warning and she explained the Thames had a complex watershed made even more complicated by the interaction of human development.

“Sometimes the river can just surprise you,” she said. There’d been a second unexpected surge late the night before and she was refusing to rule out a repeat later that day. Like most Londoners, my attitude was that only rich people could afford to live next to a river, so I could withstand their discomfort with fortitude.

I finished up on HOLMES and shut everything down. Stephanopoulis had found no connections among our two and a half victims. Worse, St. John Giles and Sandbrow had visited the clubs where they met our mysterious killer on impulse. In her notes attached to the nominal reports Stephanopoulis argued, and I agreed, that two young men had been targeted at random, but that the attack on Jason Dunlop felt more like a hit. If only because the Pale Lady, as I now thought of her, had made contact with her victim in a public place and in front of potential witnesses. Maybe it was a work–life balance thing. Maybe the two nightclub boys were recreational and Jason Dunlop was work.

Mum phoned me and reminded me that I was supposed to be introducing Dad to the irregulars that afternoon. I pointed out that this was her third phone call to remind me, but as is usual with my mum she didn’t take a blind bit of notice. I assured her I would be there. I considered calling Simone and inviting her along, but I decided that I was onto far too much of a good thing to want to risk having her meet the family—especially my mum.

I called her anyway and she assured me that she was languishing without me. I heard female laughter in the background and some comments pitched too low for me to hear. Her sisters, I suspected.

“Definitely languishing,” she said. “I don’t suppose you could pop around later and ravish me at your convenience.”