‘If we can get hold of some specialist tools, like maybe a temperature sensor that I could actually risk inside this stuff, then I’d do better. But that’d only get us so far. Only we can see this material. It’s too plastic for mercury, too metallic for some sort of oil by-product, and it’s keeping itself and the things around it cold, like a fridge, but without being plugged into a socket. If it’s an element, it’s one we’ve discovered.’

‘Seftonium,’ said Costain.

Sefton used a teaspoon to put the goo back in the phial. ‘So-called spirit mediums used to pretend to be able to project something they called ectoplasm, which usually turned out to be glue and other gunk. Maybe the original idea for that came from this.’

‘Like in Ghostbusters,’ said Costain.

‘It reminds me of what I saw inside those “ghost ships” on the Thames,’ said Ross. ‘They had a sort of silver skeleton inside.’

Quill went to the corkboard which served this team as an Ops Board. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘we’ve got enough to start building the board, to list the objectives and to name this mother.’ All the board still had on it – the artefacts of the other half-arsed would-be operations they’d considered lately having already been consigned carefully to drawers – was the PRO-FIT facial description picture of the Smiling Man and the concepts list, which now was just a series of headings referring to files on their ancient computer (and the phone number of the Smiling Man, which Quill had labelled ‘the number of the Beast’). At the very top of the board was a card with a question mark on it, over which Quill now pinned a new blank card because the name of the operation was about to be decided. Beneath all that Quill added a picture cut from a newspaper. ‘The victim: Michael Anthony Spatley, Liberal Democrat MP for the constituency of Cheadle. Chief secretary to the Treasury, which is a cabinet position. Jewish by birth, atheist by inclination. Forty-six years old. Wife: Ann. Daughter: Jocelyn. Son: Arthur. I’ve put in a request for us to search his home and offices too, which, judging by the tone of voice of the PA I spoke to, will be regarded with incredulity by those who’ve already had the main op through. But we shall persist.’ He attached a red victim thread upwards from the picture and pinned a sheet of white paper above it, on which he drew a very rough cartoon of the Toff figure.

Ross took a new square of paper and added ‘Brian Tunstall’ to the suspect area, also attaching a victim thread between him and Spatley. She drew a dotted line beside both threads, indicating uncertainty. ‘Two suspects,’ she said.

‘Despite the fact that only one of these “suspects” was observed fleeing the scene,’ noted Costain.