Nobody was fighting upstairs, or at least not with magic. But beyond the fire door I could feel a little tickle, like mouse claws scrabbling in the wainscoting of the material world. It wasn’t Martin Chorley. I know the razor strop of his signare. This was more familiar, like listening to an echo of my own voice.

Lesley.

The question was, did she expect me to come through that door? If I went straight in I might be able to catch her off guard while she was concentrating on whatever it was she was doing. Or she might be doing the low level magic to draw me out.

Or, I decided, I could be over-thinking things again.

I pushed open the fire door and stepped into the garage proper.

There were lift doors opposite and an opening to the right. I could smell old petrol and fresh carbon monoxide. Echoing off the clean concrete walls were periodic metal crunches as Lesley used impello to rip car doors open. I tucked myself behind a section of dividing wall and tried to work out where the noise was coming from.

Once I had narrowed it down to the left I had a quick look.

On the other side of the garage was a long row of parking spaces, each filled with a couple of tons of high status metal. It was mostly Chelsea tractors interspersed with midlife-crisis-mobiles including an Aston Martin Vanquish Volante that I wouldn’t have minded for myself. And two thirds of the way down the line, practically hidden behind an honest to god white Humvee, was Reynard Fossman’s ugly red Renault.

Judging by the three cars with their doors open, smoke still rising from the back of one, Lesley was methodically working her way down the line. Currently she had her back to me as she wrenched open the rear door of a Jaguar F-Pace.

I didn’t think she’d be that casual about her blind side if she was working alone, so I risked sticking my head out for a quick look left and right. Nobody else was in sight, but even so I started easing myself back towards the fire door and the stairs.

I figured that what with this being a basement and us having all the possible exits covered, it was probably not a bad idea to back off and await reinforcements. If only Nightingale could finish off whatever he was doing upstairs.

I caught movement in the corner of my eye and jumped left on general principles and suddenly found myself suddenly lying on my back with a ringing in my ears and the round white light in the ceiling above me going alarmingly in and out of focus. In policing it’s not a good idea to lie down on the job so I tried to roll over, but I’d barely shifted when a blow to my chest pinned me back down.