‘Don’t worry,’ Mrs Murphy told me. ‘Your daughter will love you for your heart, not your housework.’

29

‘Where’s the kill room, Hitch?’ I said.

It was still early enough for the last of the dawn mist to drift across the rooftops of Mayfair and we were all standing before the massive map of Greater London that covers one wall in MIR-1, West End Central, 27 Savile Row.

Whitestone. Edie. Billy Greene. Tara Jones. Dr Joe. And the history man, his great egghead frowning with concentration.

‘It can’t be far,’ I said. ‘I bet it’s a ten-quid black cab ride from where we’re standing. Where did they take me, Hitch?’

‘You were somewhere in the darkness, Max,’ Professor Hitchens said, his huge head nodding at the map. His nicotine-stained fingers reached out for that great urban sprawl of green and grey and ten million souls. ‘Down in that other London that exists below the surface. Ackroyd is very good on that subterranean city in London Under: “Tread carefully over the pavements of London for you are treading on skin,” Hitchens said, closing his eyes to recite from loving memory, “a skein of stone that covers rivers and labyrinths, tunnels and chambers, streams and caverns, pipes and cables, springs and passages, crypts and sewers, creeping things that will never see the light of day.”’

‘But it was real,’ I insisted, touching the welt around my neck, feeling the way it ran up to just under my ear. ‘It wasn’t some mythic underworld. It wasn’t a fantasy. It’s there. And I can’t believe it’s impossible to find.’

‘The search teams are still down there,’ Whitestone said. ‘The sniffer dogs are having a lovely time chasing rats. But they’re drawing a blank and the Chief Super is going to wind it up at the end of play today.’ My SIO was staring at me. ‘And I still don’t understand how you walked away.’

‘Me neither,’ I said.

‘And another thing I don’t understand . . .’

I waited.

‘Why didn’t they record it?’ she said. ‘Why aren’t you up there on YouTube?’

‘Maybe they thought that killing a cop would not play well with the #BringItBack brigade,’ Edie suggested. ‘They might have lost a few followers on Twitter if they had done our Max. A few people might have unfriended them on Facebook or started a petition on Change.org. Maybe they were afraid of the trolls.’

‘I don’t think they’re that sensitive to public opinion,’ I said. ‘I saw a red light just before it all kicked off. They were planning to film it. I don’t think they have any qualms about killing a cop. They think we protect the people they hate.’ I looked at Hitchens. ‘You really don’t have any idea where they took me?’