They worked through the night. They took a lot of meth. They managed to find an Armed Response Unit in central London who, while they didn’t want to be blacklegs, were relieved to be rounded up for an operation that would be going down an hour before the strike. Lofthouse got her call to Forrest answered at 6 a.m. ‘You’re getting in under the wire,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you need to do this now?’

‘I am. Operation Fog will of course report back to you with everything it finds.’

Ross got an email at nine o’clock that made her heart sink once again. The fingerprints that had been taken at Anna Lassiter’s flat didn’t match those of anyone in the records, and certainly weren’t a match for those left at the murder scenes. There were some glove marks, but no DNA other than that of the resident. Ross supposed Lassiter didn’t get many callers.

*   *   *

At 10.55, on a brilliantly sunny morning, where the light seemed only to illuminate how nervy and strung out the city felt, an unmarked van pulled up on double yellow lines on a side road near the Keel occult shop that Sefton had visited undercover. This was the place that a ‘customer seeking urgently to sell some items’ – actually Costain – had been told he could find Mr Keel. Costain had seen from the windows of the van as they drove through the centre of London how quiet the streets were, how many businesses were boarded up or operating through side doors or had private security standing there already. The strike had put fear into the metropolis. He felt that tension in his head alongside a thumping in his heart from where he’d partaken again of his supply. London seemed to be as on edge as he was.

A traffic warden banged his knuckles on the side window. Costain pulled down the window and shoved his warrant card in his face. The warden just raised his eyebrows and wandered off: strange to meet a copper on the streets these days. ‘We cut them off from the back of the shop,’ said Sefton from the back of the van. ‘That’s where the serious shit is.’

‘Right,’ said Ross. ‘Okay. Okay.’

Costain didn’t like her looking as focused as this. It was as if she was slowly getting less and less range of expression. She finally saw him looking and managed a deliberate … well, it wasn’t quite a smile. It seemed that she was already forgetting how to do that. Sefton opened the rear doors and got out, headed off on his part of this mission. Costain leaned in and kissed Ross, then she too got out and headed off.