She was pretty in a calculated way, delicate cheekbones, olive skin, curly black hair that fell in ringlets on her shoulders. It wasn’t until she relaxed enough to sit up and the duvet fell away to reveal a smooth, hairless, and totally flat chest that I twigged that he wasn’t a she.

“Are you a guy?” I asked. Just to show that the sensitivity training at Hendon hadn’t been wasted.

“Only biologically,” he said. “How about you?”

I was saved from having to answer that by Ash, who swept back into the room and, stark naked, hunted out a pair of faded jeans and a Bra’ Anansi T-shirt that just had to have come from Effra. Pausing only to French-kiss the young man in the bed, he pulled on a pair of DM boots and out we went.

I waited until we were out of the hostel and heading for the Ford Asbo before asking about the guy in his bed.

Ash shrugged. “I didn’t know he was a guy until we got back to the room,” he said. “And I was having such a good time I thought, why not?”

For someone who’d never been in a built-up area larger than Cirencester all his life, Ash was turning out to be surprisingly metro.

“Where we going?” asked Ash as we got in the car.

“Your favorite part of town,” I said. “Soho.”

“You going to buy me breakfast?” he asked.

“Lunch,” I said. “Late lunch.”

We ended up eating fish-and-chips alfresco on Berwick Street, which has the offices of TV companies at one end, a street market in the middle, and a little furtive knot of sex shops at the other. It also has some world-famous record stores, strictly vinyl-only, the sort of places my dad would go to sell his collection—as if that were ever going to happen this side of him being dead.

I told him what I wanted him to do.

“You want me to hang out in Soho?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Going to pubs and clubs and meeting new people,” he said.

“Yep,” I said. “And keeping your eye out for a psychotic, possibly supernatural, killer female.”

“So, go to clubs and look for dangerous women,” he said. “What does she look like?”

“She looks like Molly but she may have changed her hair a bit,” I said. “I’m hoping she’ll stand out, you know, to you in particular, in a spiritual way.”

I saw Ash translate that one in his head. “Oh,” he said. “Got you. What do I do if I spot her?”

“You call me and you don’t get close,” I said. “This is strictly surveillance, is that clear?”

“Crystal,” said Ash. “What’s in it for me?”

“I bought you chips, didn’t I?”

“Tight arse,” he said. “Beer money?”

“I’ll reimburse you,” I said.

“You couldn’t front me?”