Last time I’d felt anything like this had been in the decaying grandeur of the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau, when Nightingale had done his IED routine. It was so strong I could turn my head to face the direction it came from.

So could at least two thirds of the denizens of the nazareth, including Hyacinth. I couldn’t be certain, but I had a sick feeling that we were all facing across the river towards the City and Shakespeare Tower. Where Nightingale had gone to interview Woodville-Gentle.

‘Demon trap,’ I heard someone whisper. ‘Demon trap,’ it was repeated fearfully around the garden.

And then everybody turned to look expectantly at me and Lesley.

Lesley looked back with as much of a curled lip as her injuries would allow.

‘Oh, now you want the police,’ she said.

12. Barbican

12

Barbican

when you need to get somewhere fast you go blues and twos. It’s just like TV. You turn on your siren and stick the spinner on the roof of your car so that the average driver knows to get the fuck out of the way. What they don’t show is that the spinner keeps falling off the roof and usually ends up dangling by its wire from the passenger window and that there’s always someone on the road in front of you who think the rules apply to someone else. A sheet of glass, a pile of empty boxes, an inexplicable fruit stall – I wish. I nearly rear-ended a BMW on Borough High Street and had to swerve around a Toyota with a Blind Driver on Board sticker in its rear window, but I had her up to sixty as we crossed London Bridge. There was a strange random gap in the traffic and we sailed over an iron-grey Thames in a weird bubble of peace.

Because I went via Moorgate we couldn’t see Shakespeare Tower, despite its height, until we were as close as Chiswell Street. I don’t know what I’d expected, streets littered with broken glass and fluttering paper, a gaping hole in the side of the block. We’d felt the concussion six kilometres away – surely there must be something. But we didn’t even find a police presence until we turned into the underground car park and found a City of London Police van waiting for us.

A uniformed sergeant clambered out of the van as we drew up.

‘Grant and May?’ he asked.

We showed our warrant cards and he said that we were expected and that Nightingale had said we’d know our way up to the flat.

‘He’s okay?’ I asked.

‘He looked just fine to me,’ said the sergeant.

Me and Lesley, being both English and police, managed to avoid any outward sign of the massive sense of relief we felt. Madame Teng would have been proud.