"I'm afraid I'm probably beyond help . . ." I advance on the traffic cones, PDA held in front of me. It begins to bleep and warble immediately. Edging sideways, I look round the canvas screen. There's a workbench bearing a stack of black metal boxes, wires dangling, needles and dials glowing eerie blue—blue? Glowing? I check my PDA and swear under my breath. If this was a radiation leak I'd be backing away and reaching for the lead-lined underwear right now: but it's not, it's just thaumic resonance, albeit at levels you don't usually see outside of a summoning grid—what the ignorant persist in calling a pentacle. "Scratch that. Do you have any conductive tape? A soldering iron? Some blue chalk?"

"You're going to exorcise it," states Hastings. "Right?"

"Right—"

"Got a field exorcism kit in the mess hut. Squadron issue, rev three, and I keep everything in date. Want me to fetch it?"

"I think that would be a very good idea," I say with feeling, thinking, Field exorcism kit? Squadron issue? "By the way, what was the Squadron's unit number?"

Hastings stares at me. "Triple-six. Didn't they tell you anything?"

HERE IS HOW YOU GO ABOUT EXORCISING A HAUNTED JET fighter, latterly operated by the more-than-somewhat-secret 666 Squadron, RAF:

* You can explosively disassemble the airframe, if it's in the middle of a desert and there are no neighbors within a couple of miles.

* You can violate any number of HSE directives and outrage public opinion by dumping it at sea—shallow waters only, we don't want to annoy the owners by violating the Benthic Treaties—and wait for time (and electrolytes) to wash the memories away.

* You can truck it to a special hazardous waste certified recycling site in Wales, where they have a very special degaussing coil for exactly this purpose.

* Or, if you believe in living dangerously, you can do it with a soldering iron, a stopwatch, a grounding strap, and a good pair of running shoes in case you screw up.

Guess what Muggins here does?

Look, it's a museum piece. They don't exactly grow on trees: blowing it up and drowning it aren't on the menu; shipping it to Wales would cost . . . Well, it wouldn't fit on my discretionary expense worksheet: too many zeros (more than two). That leaves the grounding strap and the running shoes. So if you were in my place, what would you do?