But I noticed he arranged to spend the shift in the custody suite. Which meant I got sent off to fetch refs, make a formal note of our actions and catch up on the paperwork. David Carey asked if I wanted to go to the pub to celebrate his successful raid which had netted two butcher’s knives, a bag of slightly doubtful skunk and, the reason for the celebration, three thousand quid in used readies that had ‘intent to supply’ written all over them. Beverley was babysitting her sister Brent that evening so a bit of moderate police boozing seemed appropriate . . . right up until FBI Agent Kim Reynolds rang me on her disposable pay as you go.

‘I thought I’d finally take you up on that kebab,’ she said.

It actually took me a couple of seconds to process that. To remember Shepherd’s Bush Market in the snow, Zach having the snot kicked out of him and me knocking Kimberley down with impello because I thought she was reaching for a gun.

Then we’d gone round the corner for a kebab – or at least I did – Kimberley had stuck to Coca Cola despite the fact that the coffee hadn’t actually been that bad.

‘There’s always time for a cheeky kebab,’ I said. ‘When are you going to be hungry?’

‘About an hour,’ she said.

‘Kebab it is then,’ I said, and then popped down to tell Nightingale where I was going.

The Uxbridge Road was full of hunched figures hurrying for the Tube station as I found a rare parking space down a side street and hunched my own way through the irritatingly persistent rain to the other side of the bridge.

It was your classic Kurdish kebab place in that it looked exactly like the Greek kebab places I’d grown up with, only now the meat was guaranteed halal. Just to shake things up, Kimberley had gone for the coffee while I, as a mark of respect to the late Aiden Burghley, had a falafel.

Kimberley had eschewed the mandated FBI agent-in-a-suit look for a pair of off-duty black jeans, an orange and grey sweatshirt with OSU embossed across the front, a blue quilted jacket and, as far as I could tell, no shoulder holster.

‘You stopped dyeing your hair,’ I said.

‘Since I was already knee deep in The X-Files, I gave up trying to hide the colour,’ she said.

‘So the X-Files are real?’

‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you? But I’m sorry to disappoint you,’ she said.

‘What, no UFOs?’

‘Not yet,’ said Kimberley and sipped her coffee with every sign of pleasure. ‘I’ll be sure to let you know if they turn up.’

I asked what had dragged her back across the Pond.

She waved her hand around at the worn Formica and easy-clean plastic interior of the kebab shop.

‘This is all your fault,’ she said.