It still seemed unnecessarily flashy. And why Downham Fields, when there were half a dozen open green spaces further south – much closer to Bromley and Aiden Burghley’s old stamping ground?

‘There’s a chance that this may have very little to do with Mr Burghley at all,’ said Nightingale. ‘At least nothing personal, per se.’

‘Shit,’ I said, because if there was something the Faceless Man liked better than a dismemberment then it was creating a distraction in one place while he sneaked in and murdered whoever his real target was.

I looked at Nightingale, who frowned back.

‘Reynard,’ I said.

It’s amazing how fast you can cross London in a vintage Jag if you put on blues and twos and your governor drives like a maniac. Although there’s still nothing to be done about the gridlock on Vauxhall Bridge in the evening, except invest in a Sherman tank. We’d called ahead to Belgravia to tell the custody sergeant to put the custody suite on lockdown and I mentally added ‘Falcon Lockdown Procedures’ to the ever-growing consultation document.

I had the Jag’s Airwave set to Belgravia’s channel and Nightingale drove in silence through the grey drizzle as we listened out for screams and lamentations. But these didn’t start until we arrived back to find half a busy Monday night’s customers piling up in the corridor, and the shift duty inspector waiting for us with a dangerous gleam in his eye and a metaphorical rolling pin in his hand. After him was the custody sergeant who pointed out that her duty of care extended to all the prisoners in her cells, thank you. She’d heard the rumours of collapsing houses, burning markets and what really happened at the Saville Row nick a couple of years back. She wanted a pretty comprehensive risk assessment or, failing that, we could take our suspect somewhere else – thank you very much.

We couldn’t take Reynard to the Folly because, never mind that we weren’t PACE compliant, we didn’t even have any cells – although I suppose we could have put him in one of the disused servant’s rooms in the attic. The custody sergeant suggested that Paddington Green, it being where we lock up the terrorist suspects, would be a more suitable location. But Nightingale didn’t agree.

‘A prisoner’s always most vulnerable when he’s being moved,’ he said. ‘And, in any case, if our adversary was truly planning an attack I believe he would have done it by now.’