‘Here at Mum’s,’ she said. ‘Hiding under Lea’s bed.’

‘I don’t suppose Tyburn’s popped in for a visit?’ I asked.

Beverley said no and told me whatever I thought I was going to do next I was to be careful.

‘Always,’ I said.

‘I mean it,’ she said.

‘Tyburn’s probably in there as well,’ I said, after I hung up.

‘Full house,’ said Guleed.

We’d escalated up to having a mobile control room, codenamed Broadway, which was parked on South Carriage Drive with a good view of the back of One Hyde Park. The key advantage of a mobile control room is that it gave Seawoll a place to shout at us while sitting in a comfy chair with a cup of tea.

Luckily for us, the postmodern obsession with transparent walls meant that in One Hyde Park nobody could move around the access stairs or lifts without being seen by the spotter teams Nightingale had positioned in the buildings opposite. We’d closed off South Carriage Drive and pushed a perimeter back twenty metres to the south, but Seawoll was reluctant to close Knightsbridge and Old Brompton because the rush hour was still tailing off.

We had about twenty to thirty minutes before the media twigged that a major police operation had descended on the most expensive bit of real estate in London.

Guleed suggested that we leave them in there and arrest the survivors, which earned her a pleased smile from Seawoll. But then he shook his head.

‘Somebody,’ he said eyeing Nightingale, ‘is going to have go in there and clean up the mess.’

‘Quite,’ said Nightingale and looked at me. ‘Peter?’

‘Noisy or quiet?’ I asked.

‘Oh, quiet,’ said Nightingale.

And so it was decided. But not before me and Guleed climbed into our PSU overalls and, after a bit of an argument, donned the shin and elbow guards. We didn’t bother with the helmets, but Guleed swapped her hijab for a fire resistant hood that made her look like she was about to climb into a Soyuz rocket.

‘Practical and modest,’ I said and she grinned.

Needless to say we both put our metvests on and loaded ourselves down with CS spray, speedcuffs – I even considered packing a taser which I’m now authorised and trained to carry – but they just tend to complicate things.

Finally Nightingale handed me a stave of varnished wood, the size and shape of a pickaxe handle, one end wrapped with canvas strips, the other capped with iron. Branded into the side was a six-digit number and the hammer and anvil sigil of the Legendary Sons of Weyland.

As I gripped it I felt the hum of the hive and sunlight amongst the hills and hedgerows.

Once more into the breach, I thought.