Nightingale caught my attention, pointed, and then put two fingers against his throat. As he watched the balcony I scuttled over to do a first aid assessment. I recognised the guy. He was the dark-skinned man in the good suit I’d seen the first time I’d visited. I’d had him pegged as security, and indeed he was holding a compact digital walkie-talkie as used by police, film crews and paramilitary death squads the world over. I shifted my staff to my left hand and found a pulse in his neck. There were no other obvious injuries, so I gently rolled him into the recovery position.

I picked up his walkie-talkie and shook it. It sounded like a rainmaker, with loose bits and sand rattling around inside.

Nightingale signalled Guleed, who spoke quietly into her Airwave then nodded to me. I trotted over to the main entrance to make sure it was open. Then I retreated back to Nightingale and maintained watch while a trio of TSG guys in full riot gear clattered in with a pair of London Ambulance paramedics in tow. The paramedics were public order specialists and had their own riot gear, only their helmets were painted green – presumably to confuse rioters for long enough for them to do their jobs. As the paramedics went to work Nightingale signalled to two of the TSG to take position behind the reception desk while the third escorted the paramedics.

The TSG were under strict instructions not to engage anyone but to contain and report.

Satisfied that the foyer was locked down, Nightingale led us up a set of grey marble stairs and onto the first floor. Here there was another curved hallway linking the pavilions and the access towers. The flats on these levels were all one- or two-bedroom and mainly owned by shell companies and investment portfolios. What Seawoll called ‘corporate jolly pads’, and he really didn’t need to emphasise that ‘jolly’ much to illustrate his meaning. Still, they had to be cleared just like the shops. Me and Guleed held the stairwell again while Nightingale did his witch sniffing thing, before signalling Stephanopoulos that her people could go door to door.

Now, I’d wanted to go straight downstairs to the underground car park because, apart from the thought that Reynard might have stashed his car down there, each flat came not only with its own parking space but with an underground storage locker the size of a standard shipping container. But Seawoll and had pointed out that we still had a duty of care to people in the building and that had to be our priority.

‘And strangely, Peter, we fucking thought to check it during the investigation.’

‘It’ being the storage space associated with Martin Chorley’s flat.

But not for the Renault 4. Because we didn’t know about Reynard’s car then.