I smelt him before I heard him, the copper smell of fresh blood and old sweat, wood-smoke and wet dog.

‘You should listen to your master,’ said a voice by my ear. ‘He’s a cunning man. And by the way, did you see that sick cast – right through the neck. Never saw it coming. Worth a song right, bit of an impromptu beat box maybe.’

‘What’s with the woad?’ I asked. ‘Last time we met you were all medieval.’

Out in the mist the trees had multiplied and the straight London planes and lime trees were sharing space with the shadowy ghosts of oak, beech and poplar.

‘Just being true to my roots, fam,’ said the former incarnation of the god of the River Tyburn – or maybe a hallucination brought on by way too many supernatural wankers messing with my head. Or possibly both at the same time.

I kept my eyes on my targets ahead and my hoodie was as effective as any pair of blinkers, so I almost screamed when I felt him slip his arm around my shoulders, the spare javelins in his left hand clacking against my arm, the tips pushing into my peripheral vision. I felt my balls and my stomach tighten, the anticipation of action as when you run down a deer in the King’s Forest or jack a motor from outside a gaff in Primrose Hill. The defiance of power making the meat taste so much sweeter, the slip into first gear and away so much sweeter.

‘I saw your father,’ I said. ‘He seemed a happy little Roman.’

‘And so he was,’ said the voice. ‘But we are not always the sons our fathers dream of – as you should know.’

As I did know, and all the things sons do to make their fathers proud until you learn to choose your own life for your own reasons. Have your own money, your own car, your own job, you own place, your own life and fuck everybody else.

What have they ever done for you?

But I had felt this seduction before. Or something like it. On a tube train between Camden and Kentish Town when old Mr Punch tried to recruit me for Team Riot, and I knew how well that had turned out in the end.

‘Lady Ty must be a real disappointment,’ I said.

The arm squeezed my shoulders and relaxed its grip. ‘Why don’t you ask her about the Marquee in ’76, the bin bag dress and how she couldn’t quite bring herself to push the safety pin all the way through,’ said the voice. And before I could reply he was gone.

With him went the concealing mist and suddenly I was standing by the Boris Bike stand at the far end of Green Park and listening to the angry traffic fighting its way around Hyde Park Corner.