After that, he began on Alison’s report over a sandwich and tea. As usual she’d gone down the rabbit hole, far deeper than the EA Unit, but Alison Matchell had a good track record of catching rabbits. She’d picked up activity on three more online boards, highlighting a claim that White would sort out Khan, and soon. All hearsay, but Alison had linked the commentator to foreknowledge of a handful of violent attacks in the past.

Alison had proceeded to analyse these previous incidents. Then she extrapolated her conclusions. Billy White wasn’t just an ambitious right-winger. She believed he had a handler, though who this was or why they’d want to use Billy this way, she couldn’t say. Recent incidents had been written off as steam by the unit—faecal matter had been posted to Khan’s new workplace at UCL, and someone had lobbed a brick through a window at her previous address. Alison read it differently.

Alison was simultaneously an excellent and a terrible analyst. Terrible because analysts were rigorously trained out of relying on gut feeling, which opened the door to unexamined prejudice and guesswork. Excellent because her guesswork was extremely good—as was her analysis. She had something of a sixth sense that Julian had come to rely on, and he appreciated that she was never anything but honest about the fact that she ended up pulling on some very tenuous threads.

On the other hand, Operation Glassknife, as he called it, had a budget. Unless he was certain White was going to be a problem, he’d been instructed to leave it to the police. Julian stared at Alison’s report, rereading paragraphs at random, juggling priorities and outcomes. The thing about James Bond, when you got down to it, was that he had carte blanche to go and do stuff. And M didn’t ride him about budgetary overspend.

Julian tapped a number into his phone.

“DI Royce speaking.”

“Kier, it’s me.” Julian waited to see what kind of a mood the man was in.

“Oh shit, what now?” Still with Royce’s faint aftertaste of Caernarfon, despite the fact the man had been based at the Met for twelve years.

“Nothing, nothing, just calling to catch up,” Julian said, devoid of sincerity. “How’s the wife? Kids?”

“Still not speaking to me,” Royce said flatly. “Dog’s still dead, too, before you ask. What do you want, Jules?”

“Got any lads sitting on their hands near Primrose Hill?”

In the staticky quiet he could almost hear the man thinking that through. “Not so’s you’d notice, not right now. All quiet on the northern front, isn’t it though? And I know you’ve not called to tell me otherwise because we have channels for that, Jules.”