A BLACKED-OUT MORTUARY van waited at the mouth of the alley as the swirling blue lights of a dozen response cars lit up the Soho night. Uniformed officers were still unreeling spools of blue and white crime scene tape across Shaftesbury Avenue and shoving back crowds hopeful of glimpsing fresh corpse.

I ducked under the tape.

The Airwave digital radios chattered and clacked. The SOCOs were putting on their head-to-toe white body suits while Mallory’s two detective inspectors, Gane and Whitestone, were already ripping off their protective gear. They were excited.

‘It’s a good body,’ Gane said to me. He was young and black, his head shaved fashionably clean, and under his protective clothes he was far better dressed than he needed to be.

I pulled on thin blue latex gloves. ‘A good body?’

‘A bad body is one that’s found by the public,’ Whitestone said. ‘Some drunk who needs a pee or a puke. A dog walker clomping through the gore before it’s had a chance to get cold. Destroying evidence, tampering with the scene before we’ve even confirmed death.’ Whitestone was in her middle thirties, a thoughtful-looking blonde woman with black-rimmed glasses. You might not have guessed she had more than ten years on murder investigation teams. ‘A good body is one that’s found by the police when it’s definitely dead. A good body keeps things simple. Saves us work.’

‘And this is a good body,’ Gane said. And then, ‘We read about you. You’re famous, Wolfe. What did they call you in court?’

‘Officer A,’ I said.

‘Officer A. You were in SO15?’

I nodded. ‘Surveillance officer, Counter Terrorism Command.’

‘You were a surveillance officer?’ he said, clearly underwhelmed.

I could see how a Homicide detective like Gane would think surveillance was life in the slow lane. It’s true there was a lot of hanging around, following people on foot and in cars and watching endless hours of CCTV footage, whereas Homicide and Serious Crime’s work is carried out by Murder Investigation Teams, the Metropolitan Police’s specialised murder squads, and is one of the Met’s elite units, investigating nothing but murder, manslaughter and the threat of murder. But Gane made it sound like I had spent my time asking people if they wanted fries with that shake.

‘I heard that it would never have detonated,’ he said with a grin. ‘Because the bomber ruined the cook.’

‘I heard that too,’ I said, flexing my fingers inside the latex gloves. ‘In court the tech guy said the perp didn’t distil the hydrogen peroxide to the correct concentration. Simmered when he should have stirred. Forgot to whisk his egg white. Maybe it’s true. Maybe they’re just trying to cheer us up. Anyone who makes a bomb in their old mum’s kitchen can’t be that bright, can they?’

‘And what did they give you?’ Gane asked.

‘The Queen’s Police Medal.’