There was a pause while a nervous female voice asked for directions to the Underground and Kumar responded. The train companies had finally put their snow countermeasures into effect and people were belatedly flooding into London to do their last-minute shopping. One of my morning emails had been a general alert to this effect, warning of the inevitable increase in theft, road traffic accidents and disgruntled northerners.

‘Only if some complete wanker makes an incident out of it,’ said Kumar.

‘How can one avoid such total wankery?’ I asked.

‘Easy,’ said Kumar. ‘By following basic safety procedures with regard to the transport infrastructure and making sure that next time you get the urge to go walkabouts on the tracks you call me first.’

‘Deal,’ I said. ‘I owe you one.’

‘A big one,’ said Kumar.

The Murder Team was bound to ask why I hadn’t statemented Ryan Carroll while I had him there in front of me at the Tate Modern, so I generated a memo indicating that I’d been called away to handle an aspect of a case exclusive to the Folly. Then I popped over to the training lab to get Nightingale to initial it.

When I got there Lesley had three, count them three, apples doing slow circuits in the air of the lab. Nightingale beckoned me over and, after barely glancing at the clipboard, signed the memo.

‘Excellent,’ Nightingale told Lesley, before turning to me and adding, ‘That’s what happens when you don’t allow yourself to become sidetracked and focus on the task at hand.’ Her hair was damp with sweat.

‘I see,’ I said and retreated to the open doorway before saying, ‘But can she make them explode?’ And ducked out of sight. Two of the apples slammed into the wall behind me at head height and the third actually made the right turn to whoosh past my ear and down the length of the corridor.

‘Missed,’ I called and hurried away before she reloaded. She was getting much better.

I sent off the copy of the form, duplicated everything four times and put the duplicates in a series of A4 envelopes, to stop them getting mixed up, and dumped them next to the fruit bowl ready to go back to AB. Then I went downstairs to the shooting range for my own workout.