Someone had left a copy of the Sun on my desk. It had a good photograph of some TSG officers milling about under the Harrods awning – the headline read HARRODS HORROR. A quick flick through indicated that they didn’t have the faintest idea what had happened, but that wasn’t going to stop them from devoting six pages to it. It turned out to be the lead with most of the papers except for the Express which went with UKIP TO ROCK WESTMINSTER.

I knew Stephanopoulos and Seawoll were shielding me from a ton of shit already, but after the mess at Trafalgar Square Seawoll had admitted that my career’s strange ability to survive its excursions into major property damage owed more to the fact that – should the Met actually get rid of me – they couldn’t guarantee my replacement wouldn’t be worse.

‘Nightingale is fucking untouchable,’ Seawoll had said. ‘And you’re the lesser of two evils.’

Still, I happened to know for a fact that the whole of Belgravia nick were running a pool on how long I would last and how I would go – the options being death, medical discharge (physical), medical discharge (psychological), indefinite disciplinary suspension, sacked for misconduct, secondment to Interpol and, with just one vote, ascension to a higher plane of existence.

I suspected the last one was a bit unlikely.

Guleed turned up a few minutes later wearing her leather jacket, the Hugo Boss she said her mum had bought her, which meant she’d been out doing some serious police work.

‘Entry codes,’ she said when she saw me. According to their statements, the kids had gained access to One Hyde Park via the underground staff tunnel that ran from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel next door. Two of them had identified James Murray, the victim’s official boyfriend, as the one who’d possessed the passkey and security codes. There had been multiple actions including one to re-interview James Murray re: where he got the codes, but it was still pending until Guleed preempted it that morning.

‘Christina Chorley gave him the codes,’ said Guleed. ‘And the passkey.’

Since James didn’t know where Christina had got them, and she was seriously dead, Guleed decided to work the other side of the problem and find out who owned the flat.

‘I thought all those things were actioned already?’ I said.

‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed but just about everyone else is off working that murder in Fulham,’ said Guleed. ‘It’s basically you, me and whatever time we can bully out of David.’

‘I hadn’t noticed,’ I said, although it did explain where everyone else was that morning.

‘Not surprising,’ said Guleed. ‘You were too busy blowing up Harrods.’

‘Are we getting leaned on?’ I asked.

‘What do you think?’ asked Guleed.