In a unit consisting of one chief inspector and one constable it is not the chief inspector who is on call in the middle of the night. After accidentally burning out three mobiles I’d taken to leaving mine turned off while inside the Folly. But this meant that in the event of a work-related call Molly would answer the phone downstairs and then inform me by silently standing in my bedroom doorway until I woke up out of sheer creepiness. Leaving a ‘please knock’ sign on my door had no effect, nor did locking it firmly and wedging a chair under the doorknob. Now, I love Molly’s cooking but she nearly ate me once. So the thought of her gliding into my room uninvited while I was kipping meant I found myself getting very little in the way of useful sleep. So by dint of a couple of days of hard work and with the assistance of a curator from the Science Museum I ran a coaxial extension up into my bedroom.

Now when the mighty army for justice that is the Metropolitan Police needs my specialist services it sends a signal up a jacketed copper wire and sets off an electromagnetic bell in a bakelite phone that was manufactured five years before my dad was born. It’s like being woken up by a musical jackhammer but it’s better than the alternative.

Lesley calls it the bat phone.

It woke me up just past three o’clock in the morning.

‘Get up, Peter,’ said Detective Inspector Stephanopoulos. ‘It’s time for you to do some proper policing.’

Monday

Monday

2. Baker Street

2

Baker Street

I miss the company of other police. Don’t get me wrong, my assignment at the Folly has given me a shot at Detective Constable at least two years ahead of schedule, but what with the current unit complement being me, Detective Inspector Nightingale and, possibly soon, PC Lesley May it’s not like I go about my duties mob-handed. It’s one of those things you don’t miss until it’s gone, the smell of wet waterproofs in the locker room, the rush for a terminal in the PCs’ writing room on a Friday morning when they put the new jobs on the system, grunting and joking at the six AM briefing. That feeling of there being a lot of you in one place all mainly caring about the same stuff.