Max found her shoes behind the other sofa—four-inch stiletto open-toed strap sandals which I didn’t really think went with the dungarees. “I’ll say so,” she said. “That’ll be Mickey. He’s one in a million.”

“Do you know where they were going after the gig?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just going with the groove.” In her heels she was almost as tall as I was. The dungarees gaped at the sides to reveal a strip of pale skin and a frilly line of scarlet silk knickers. I turned away—I’d lost the vestigium when I entered the room and Peggy wasn’t helping my concentration. I got flashes of other stuff: the smell of lavender, of a car bonnet left out in the sun, and a ringing sound like the silence that comes after a loud noise.

“Who are you?” asked Peggy.

“We’re the jazz police,” said James.

“ ’He’s the jazz police,” said Max, meaning me I suppose. “We’re more like the Old Compton Street irregulars.”

That made me laugh, which shows how drunk I still was.

“Is Mickey in trouble?” asked Peggy.

“Only if he’s been dripping his spit valve on someone’s shoulder,” said Max.

I didn’t have any more time for banter. There was a second door in the room, marked as a fire exit, so I headed for that. On the other side there was another short, bare, gray brick corridor half blocked with stacked furniture, crates, and black plastic bags in spectacular contravention of Health and Safety Regulations. Another fire door, this one with push-bars, led to a staircase up to street level. The push-bars on the door at the top of the stairs were illegally fastened with a bicycle lock.

Nightingale has this spell which can pop a lock right out of its socket but apparently I’m at least a year away from learning it—I had to improvise. I stopped a safe distance away and dropped one of my unsuccessful light bombs on the lock. What they lack in finesse they make up for in ferocity. I had to take a step back because of the heat and, squinting, I could see the lock sag within the little rippling globe. When I figured the lock was good and soft, I let go of the spell and the globe popped like a soap bubble. Then I made nice basic impello forma in my mind. It was the second forma I ever learned so it’s something I know I’m good at. Impello moves things about, in this case the center line of the double doors. It smacked the doors open, breaking the lock and slamming them hard enough to knock one off its hinges.

It was impressive stuff, even if I say so myself. And certainly the irregulars, who’d come up the stairs behind me, thought so.

“What the fuck was that?” asked James.

“Thermite chewing gum,” I said hopefully.