I gave them a nod. They were all fit-looking middle-aged men with short haircuts and while they were dressed in a variety of civvies their manner suggested that uniforms were a very real possibility. Molly had supplied them with afternoon tea, but slung under the occasional tables and stacked beside their armchairs the men had sturdy black nylon carryalls. The ones with the reinforced straps and handles allowing you to carry small, heavy metal objects around in safety and relative comfort.

I asked where Nightingale was.

“On the phone to the commissioner,” he said. “We’re just waiting for the word.”

The “word” made me cold and sweaty. I doubted this word was to extend Simone and her sisters an invitation to tea. I managed to keep the fear off my face, gave Caffrey’s mates a cheery wave, and headed through the back door and across the yard and out the coach house gate. I reckoned that I had at least ten minutes before Nightingale figured out I’d gone, twenty if I left the car in the garage. He knew me well enough to know what I was going to do next. He’d probably thought he was trying to protect me from myself, which was ironic because I thought I was trying to protect him from himself.

Twenty minutes to notice I was gone, ten minutes to tool up and pile into whatever nondescript van the paras had brought with them, ten minutes to reach Berwick Street. Forty minutes, tops.

A black cab was turning the corner as I stepped out on the pavement and shouted “Taxi.” I stuck my hand out, but the bastard pretended he hadn’t seen and cruised right past me. I swore and memorized his license plate in case an opportunity for petty but deeply satisfying vengeance came along later. Fortunately a second cab came around the corner immediately and dropped off some tourists outside one of the hotels on Southampton Row and I slipped in before the driver could experience any problems with his night vision. He had the cropped hair of a man too proud to cover his bald patch with a comb-over. Just to make his day I showed my warrant card.

“Get me to Berwick Street in under ten minutes and I’ll give you a free pass for the rest of the year,” I said.

“And the wife’s car?” he asked.

“Same deal,” I said and gave him my card.

“Done,” he said and demonstrated the amazing turning circle of the London black cab by doing an illegal U-turn that threw me into the side door, then accelerated down Bedford Place. Either he was insane or his wife really needed help with the traffic tickets, because we did it in less than five minutes. I was so impressed I even paid him the fare as well.