‘Yes, but in politics you’d normally need to gather allies, put a gang together – that was the feeling I got from every civil service bod we talked to. Spatley, paranoid as he was, hadn’t told anyone what he was about to do, as far as we can tell. We got into the business of Spatley’s phone with SO15, Counter-Terrorism Command. They have serious hackers, and they took his mobile apart. There was nothing.’

‘And what about your phones?’

He smiled. He was always pleased when she worked something out. ‘Them too. And again, a clean bill of health. We had SO15 sweep the Portakabin for bugs while they were at it. That caused a few raised eyebrows. Nothing found there, either.’

‘So let me get this straight. You talked out loud about reinter-viewing a witness while you were in the Treasury, a place which is, security-wise, presumably as safe as the proverbial Bank of England, and the witness you talked about interviewing is killed the next morning.’

‘With us having only talked to each other about it, on phones which have definitively not been hacked.’

‘But, dear God, somehow you’re being listened in on.’

‘It looks that way, yeah.’

‘Maybe whatever evil shit you’re up against this time is all seeing and all powerful?’

‘Let’s hope so. Then we can just retire and leave them to it.’ He looked a little happier now. ‘I always like it when we talk things through like this. We should have an Ops Board at home.’

‘Really,’ she said, ‘no.’

*   *   *

Ross stood on her balcony, listening to the summer sounds of her suburb: the distant music, the cars racing by with conflicting tunes blaring from them, nearby laughter, the pubs, ambulances over the hill. Distant sirens spoke of continuing violence, which hadn’t yet reached Catford. She’d stopped watching the news. It was all uniforms with shields and helmets and the surging of huge masses of people, and then fires and running kids with looted televisions. She’d thought there was a limit to how long it could go on; seemingly there wasn’t. It was turning out to be a long summer. The Summer of Blood. Whoever had coined that phrase had – if what Gaiman said about ostentation was true – helped in a tiny way to make it happen.

She was dressed for the underworld again, in costume. The only advantage she had tonight was that, unless he’d looked it up – and he might well have done – Costain didn’t know where her dad was buried. If she got the Bridge of Spikes, she’d have to get there fast and activate it, without Costain following her, she hoped. She didn’t have any idea how the device actually worked. Presumably, if it was in the auction, it would come with instructions. She hoped Costain was also uncertain about that.