We paraded round the back of the mobile control centre. Seawoll rolled his eyes at the sight of us, but said nothing. Nightingale was dressed in a leather sapper’s coat but thank god not the breeches that went with them. He had donned a pair of serious army boots that had probably only not perished with age because Molly wasn’t going to let any of his clothes die on her watch – dammit!

He caught Guleed’s eye.

‘Sahra,’ he said, ‘things are likely to get somewhat esoteric before the end, and this is not something you’re trained for. I can’t, in all conscience, ask you to join us.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, sir, I think I’m going to have to see this through,’ she said. ‘Inshallah.’ As God wills it.

‘Good show,’ said Nightingale.

This is it, I thought. We’re all going to die.

15 State Six

15

State Six

A risk assessment is a key part of modern policing. Before diving into whatever crisis is at hand, the modern plod is expected to ask themselves: given the modalities of the current situation would any intervention by myself help promote a positive outcome going forward? And what are the chances of this going well and truly pear-shaped? And, if it does, how likely is it that I will get the blame?

Some people think this makes us risk averse, but I like to point out that a risk assessment is what blonde teenagers don’t do before heading downstairs into the basement in a slasher movie. Now, I’m not saying I wouldn’t go down to investigate . . . but I’d bloody well make sure I was wearing a stab vest first, and had some back-up. Preferably going down the stairs ahead of me.

I reckoned that Seawoll and Nightingale’s risk assessment was sound for several reasons. We couldn’t just let them kill each other, tempting though that was, because we didn’t know how many members of the public were currently in the complex. The owners might not be in residence, but there could still be staff inside – and they counted as people too. That said, there was no point sending in TSG or even SCO19 because Martin Chorley would just hand their arses back to them. That made it a Falcon job. And, since Nightingale was the most Falcon-capable officer in the Met, I was the second and, god help her, Guleed was the third, we were the logical people to deal.

So in we went, through the back garden past the statues of the two flattened empty heads and entered the wrong way through an emergency fire exit at the base of one of the towers.

Now, personally, I’d have been happier driving an armoured personal carrier in through the front door. But since we’re the Met, and not the police department of a small town in Missouri, we didn’t have one.