‘I’m sorry to hear that. What’s the nature of your complaint?’ The assistant was genuinely eager to please. They must get a lot of mad shit in here.

Ross lifted the cage she’d brought in onto the counter. ‘It’s about this.’ She pulled off the cloth covering it and revealed the stuffed bird therein. It had been the weirdest London-related thing they could find in the dusty corners of the Hill’s evidence room in the early hours, though it didn’t actually have anything of the Sight about it.

‘Is that … a crow?’

‘A crow!’ Ross was following through on an agreed-upon script, not feeling it herself. But what she did have flowing through her veins was the feeling that she was onstage and wowing the crowd. It didn’t make her happy, although it clearly should, and that disconnect was yelling at her continually, but it was certainly keeping her awake. She thought she probably looked and sounded more like a homeless person than anything else. ‘This, young fellow-me-lad, is a raven. One that has recently departed the Tower of London. Much as it has departed this mortal coil.’ She glanced across the shop and saw that other assistants were already looking over, taking an interest, amused. She wished she could feel the same. If it had been Jimmy doing this, he’d have enjoyed it, part of the great Met tradition of taking the piss. The assistants were probably getting overtime pay to come in today, with the strike about to break; besides, this place was most likely something like a home to them, somewhere they’d run to rather than away from. Again, she wished she was part of such a community. They’d be up for a bit of light relief.

The shop girl had got the joke, was trying not to smile. ‘And did you purchase it here?’

‘Well I wouldn’t be coming to you to complain if I’d bought it elsewhere, would I?’ She realized she was trying to sound like Quill.

‘So … what’s the problem?’

‘The problem is that when you sold it to me, you did so on the basis that it was a live Corvus corax, beloved of Bran the Blessed, kept by the Yeoman Warders to ward off the destruction of the British Isles. Does this look live to you?’ She gave it a poke and it fell sideways off its perch. ‘This is an ex-raven!’

The other shop assistants had come and gathered round, forming an audience to what they were sure now was a deliberate performance, and not an embarrassing or threatening one, for once. Despite the staring demeanour of the performer. Ross looked the assistant in the eye and hoped she’d go for it.

She did. ‘But it’s got lovely plumage.’

‘I demand,’ said Ross, ‘to see the manager!’