In the indifferent old days a proper coppers’ bar would have had a linoleum-covered floor, nicotine-stained wood paneling, and brass furnishings that were antique only by virtue of the fact that nobody could be bothered to replace them. But times had changed because now you could get a passable Cumberland sausage in onion gravy with chunky chips upstairs in the dining room, very nice with a Scrumpy Jack cider and just the thing after a hard morning’s interrogation. Stephanopoulis had the leek soup with a side order of rocket and a single-malt. I noticed a karaoke machine in the corner and asked whether it got a lot of use.

“You should be here for competition nights,” said Stephanopoulis. “Clubs and Vice versus Arts and Antiques gets very heated—they had to ban ‘I Will Survive’ after there was a fight. Tell me about your investigation.”

So I told her about the dead jazzmen and my efforts to track the person or persons unknown who seemed to be feeding off them.

“Jazz vampires,” said Stephanopoulis.

“I wish I hadn’t started calling them that,” I said.

“What do you think the magician wants with them?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “To study, to enslave—we need to know more.”

That was the cue for a minion, in the form of a rather sour-faced DC, to enter with the search warrant and present it to his boss. Stephanopoulis was careful to wait for him to leave before asking me how I thought we should handle the raid.

Unless you’re going to knock and ask nicely there are basically two ways to execute the search warrant. The first is the traditional rush: smash in the door and run in screaming “Police” and “Clear” and giving a swift kicking to anyone who doesn’t lie down on their face as soon as you tell them. The second has no formal name but involves sidling up to the front door in plainclothes, knocking it in, and diving in like a posse of really persistent door-to-door salesmen. I suggested the latter, considering that we didn’t know what we were blundering into.

“Keep some people on standby,” I said. “Just in case.”

“Easy for you to say,” she said. “It’s not your overtime budget.” She finished her scotch. “Who goes in first?”

“I do,” I said.

“Not going to happen,” she said.

In the end we compromised and both went first.