If a motorbike or scooter is the second fastest way to get around London, then a police armed response car with blues and twos comes a pretty close third. Unfortunately there’s no room for a chopper to set down by the New Annex or I’d requisition one, and fuck the budget. I spend the next twenty minutes in a weird hypnogogic state, eyes registering the blue highlights reflecting off the shut shop windows to either side as we hurtle along high streets like the proverbial chiropteroid making its exit from Tartarus. My mind’s a million miles away. All I can think is, Someone killed Angleton, which means they need me because I’m the next in line. Or maybe they need Mo with her instrument, but she’s in the North Sea right now. Funny: whatever killed Angleton will probably make short work of me. So she won’t even get to yell at me for getting myself killed—

My driver begins to slow down, and I realize I recognize the roads. We’re nearly there. Then I see more flashing lights, red and blue and white (which is worse), and we round the corner to see a small herd of ambulances drawn up, more police cars, and another OCCULUS truck setting up a mobile command center, outside a building with strange lights in one of the second-floor windows that make the skin in the small of my back try to crawl off and hide . . .

. . . And stop.

I’m clearly too late, which means I’m going to get to live a little longer.

Somehow it feels wrong.

• • •

IT’S THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING IN THE BACK OF THE OCCULUS truck parked outside the alleyway at the back of the New Annex. It’s chilly and winter-damp in the back of the truck. I’m cross-eyed with exhaustion as the Senior Auditor turns to me and clears his throat. There are bluish-purple bags under his eyes, highlighted by the flickering overhead neon tubes. I’ve never seen him look so frighteningly mortal before. “Nothing more to do here,” he says. “You should go home.”

“Thanks,” I say, then pause. “You’re sure?”

He stretches tiredly. “Colonel Lockhart will come in early, in about another half hour.”

“Lockhart’s a stuffed shirt.”

“Yes, but he can handle mop-up. And that’s what we’re down to. My colleagues will take over in the morning. You’ve done your bit, you’re covered in”—he hesitates momentarily—“stuff, you’re bone-tired, and you should get some sleep. We will be conducting debriefings all day tomorrow. Don’t come in until you’ve had at least six hours’ sleep. Preferably twelve.”

“Is that an order?” I jab.

He looks at me without the customary twinkle in his eyes. “You know better than to ask, Mr. Howard.”

Oh great. I stifle a yawn. “Okay, six hours’ sleep before the fatal incident enquiry. Check.”