I suggested that we make our way back-up to the end of the corridor, and as we did Wanda became noticeably calmer. She asked if we’d seen everything we wanted to?

I suggested that perhaps I might borrow her key ring, just to do a security check you know, for advice purposes you understand, can’t be too careful, can you, don’t worry about it, it’s all part of the service.

Guleed rolled her eyes, but I got the keys and Wanda got to stay at the end of the corridor where things were less likely to disturb her. I left Guleed with her and walked back to the door, carefully, with all my electronic devices switched off and my tray in the upright position.

After a build up like that, the old wooden door was bound to look a bit sinister. But even up close I wasn’t sensing anything unusual.

There’s a device that Nightingale calls a demon trap, a sort of magical IED but with added animal cruelty. The Faceless Man has made use of them in the past, often to deadly effect – just another in a long list of things that my Governor would like to have a word with him about. A demon trap can be set to have a number of effects ranging from dead to really wishing you were dead via spending time at the secure mental institution of your choice.

Nightingale has taught me the basics of demon trap detection – the magical equivalent of carefully sliding the blade of your knife into the ground and waiting to see if it goes ‘ting’.

The visual inspection divulged nothing, no circles or enclosed shapes incised into the surface of the wood, no disguised metal plates inlaid underneath. The lock itself, a heavy iron thing, revealed no intaglio or pattern when I brushed my fingertips across it.

But there it was . . . just at the cusp of sensation, a whiff of gunmetal and the strop strop strop of the straight razor against smooth leather. It was a signum I had come to recognise as belonging to the Faceless Man.

It felt dusty and airless, like an old garden shed. Certainly I wasn’t feeling anything that would explain Wanda’s obvious psychological aversion to opening the room. Perhaps it only worked on fae . . . perhaps that’s why Wanda had been employed in the first place. That part of my mind that is forever a total bastard wondered if we could recruit some fae and map out all the places that they didn’t want to go. In the interests of science and public safety.

The lock was the obvious seat for any defence so, after a moment to warn Guleed to stand clear, I sheared the hinges and, nipping up the corridor myself, knocked the door in with impello.