And the Little Crocodiles had spawned Albert Woodville-Gentle, otherwise known as the First Faceless Man, who’d done unspeakable things to people in Soho during the 1960s and then in turn helped another man who kept his face hidden. I’d met the new boy on a couple of occasions and he’d nearly killed me on both. And Nightingale, who I knew for a fact had gone toe to toe with a pair of Tiger tanks, was worried about which of them would come out on top in a straight fight.

Not that we had any intention of letting it come to a straight fight – us being coppers and all.

The connections so far were pretty bloody tenuous. Victim’s posh dad and victim’s best friend’s posh dad both went to a posh university – hold the press. Someone was going to have spend some time drilling into the data to see if there was a deeper connection – guess who that was going to be. But not tonight.

‘Are you sure I’ve got time for that?’ I said to Nightingale.

‘I assured your mother that if you failed to arrive it wouldn’t be my fault,’ he said.

‘You talked to my mum?’

Nightingale grinned – he has a surprisingly mischievous grin.

‘As your . . .’ he paused, he always does at this point. ‘As the one responsible for your apprenticeship, it is expected that I keep your parents informed as to your progress.’

He saw the look on my face.

‘Only in the most general terms,’ he said quickly. ‘For the purpose of reassurance.’

‘Did you talk to my dad as well?’

‘I have spoken to your father, yes,’ said Nightingale.

‘And?’

‘I never knew that Tubby Hayes was also a virtuoso on the vibraphone. In fact, he once played with Charles Mingus in that capacity.’

I was relieved – at least my father was reliably uninterested in my career.

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What exactly did you talk about with my mum?’

‘She evinced a great interest in the Thames family,’ he said.

I resisted the urge to curl up and hide under Stephanopoulos’ desk.

‘I suppose some emergency overtime is out of the question?’ I asked.

‘And cross your mother?’ said Nightingale. ‘Not likely.’

If you live beside the river, Beverley says, you’re going to get flooded – that’s the cost of doing business, the price you pay for the blessing of the waters. A lot of the London Borough of Barnes sits inside a northern loop of the Thames that stretches from Putney Bridge to where the railway crosses the river. One day, says Beverley, she and her Mama are going to pinch it off at the base and make one big island. I asked her when she thought this was going to happen and she just shrugged.

‘Sooner or later,’ she said.

There’s nothing like having your girlfriend talk in geological time to make you feel insignificant.