He picked up his bacon sandwich for a last bite before they had to go and meet the man in charge of the Spatley case and glanced to his team, trying to keep the wryness out of his voice. ‘Good to have you onboard, ma’am,’ he said, ‘as always.’

*   *   *

Detective Chief Inspector Jason Forrest had a body like a rugby player’s, wore a bespoke suit and had an old scar down his left cheek. He looked as if he’d been persuaded at gunpoint to let Quill and Lofthouse into his office this morning. He asked a lot of questions about the exact purpose of Quill’s ‘special squad’ and rolled his eyes at the imprecise answers he received. ‘Come on, why should I ask you lot to help with my investigation?’

‘Because if there are features you find hard to explain—’ began Lofthouse.

‘How do you know that?’ He sounded bemused to the point of anger.

Lofthouse looked to Quill. Quill told him about Ross’ search strings.

The DCI’s expression grew even more nonplussed. ‘Why are you interested in words like “impossible”?’

Quill had his explanation prepared. ‘Following the Losley case, we’ve been specializing in crimes with an occult element to the motive.’ The look on Forrest’s face suggested that Quill was barking up the right tree. ‘We’ve been given access to … advanced sensor … techniques, the details of which we can’t go into. It gives us a bit of an edge.’

‘You jammy buggers. We could do with that technology for the riots.’

‘We’re trying it out. Maybe other units will get it soon.’ ’Cos you’d really enjoy that.

Forrest considered for a moment longer, looked again to Lofthouse and finally gave in. ‘All right, I’ll formally request that your team assist in the investigation. You’ll get access to the crime scene after it’s been forensicated, and to witness statements and evidence. I’ll be overjoyed for you to help out my very stretched staff by interviewing persons of interest. I’ve already lined up searches at Spatley’s offices, both in Whitehall and the Commons, but if you can think of anywhere else to search, I’ll okay that too.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Quill. It was already occurring to him that his lot would not need just to find different places to search, but to go over the same places, given their advantage of having the Sight.