The Hanging Tree

8 Uninvited Guests

So I headed back to the improbably named Woronzow Road in St Johns Wood, home of the mysterious Phoebe Beaumont-Jones. On the way Stephanopoulos called me.

‘You haven’t disappeared a suspect have you?’ she asked.

We better not have, I thought.

‘Not that I know of,’ I said in the vain hope that Stephanopoulos wouldn’t notice the plausible deniability aspect.

‘Only Bromley Crime Squad have lost track of a minor little scrote called Aiden Burghley who they said was talking to you this very morning,’ she said.

I assured her that not only hadn’t I disappeared him, but the last time I saw him he was in the care of said Crime Squad and in the presence of his lawyer.

‘His brief says she took her eyes off him for five seconds and he was gone.’

‘Wasn’t me, boss,’ I said.

‘Was it your boss?’ she asked because she’s police and had spotted the plausible deniability bit.

I said it wasn’t him either because, au contraire, he was bringing in Reynard the chicken worrier even as we spoke. In that case, Stephanopoulos decided, Aiden Burghley had gone walkabouts on his own recognizance and it was Bromley’s problem not ours.

It was a couple of hours past the school rush and the sun was setting and the four by fours were nestled up against the pavement. I spotted the Asbo hiding amongst them two doors down from the Beaumont-Jones house and headed over. I saw Guleed’s face reflected in the wing mirror as she clocked my approach – nobody sneaks up on the Muslim ninja.

I climbed in beside her and traded the chicken kebab I’d picked up from a Halal café in Tufnell Park for her tablet. After a slow start the police have taken to mobile technology in a big way – mainly because it means you can pretend to work anywhere: at home, the canteen, the local boozer. Senior officers favoured using iPads because the find function allowed them to track how much time you spent in the boozer, and to find lost tablets before they’re picked up and their contents sold to the Guardian newspaper.

So, even sitting in the car, Guleed had been busy collating.

‘It turns out the father is really rich,’ she said.

‘What’s he do?’

‘Invests,’ she said.

Jeremy Beaumont-Jones had been lucky enough to be born rich. He wasn’t in the mad oligarch class but once you’re past a certain point, the sheer weight of your money sucks in wealth like a financial singularity. If you’re sensible enough not to blow it on race horses, cocaine or musical theatre, then it becomes a perpetual-motion money making machine.

He’d also been to Oxford, although he wasn’t on any of the Little Crocodile lists.

‘Where is he now?’

‘The Bahamas,’ said Guleed. ‘Business convention.’

‘Do you think he’s on his way back?’ I asked. Having the daddy arrive with a legal posse would put a crimp in the investigation. Since Lady Ty had all but shut us down, I really didn’t think we wanted another pile of influence landing on our heads.

‘He’s at least five hours away,’ said Guleed. Although apparently there was a private jet.

I eyed the, it had to be said, fairly nondescript late Victorian terrace – even in this area it couldn’t have been worth more than three million, four million pounds tops.

‘This is a bit pokey for someone with big money,’ I said.

‘It’s one of five,’ said Guleed. ‘Oh look, there goes the maid.’

A thin, washed-out white woman with sandy hair opened the front gate and headed up the road towards Swiss Cottage. Probably Polish or Romanian. Mum said the rich private clients always preferred to use white cleaners rather than Africans. Actually they’d prefer Filipinos or Vietnamese or, well, anyone really rather than Africans. Mum said she preferred offices anyway, because you didn’t have to deal with some posh woman standing over you and telling you your business.

And the way she said it was a lot ruder in Krio – trust me.

Guleed hadn’t spotted anyone else going in or out, and if it turned out Phoebe was currently residing at one of the other four properties – Lombardy, Ireland, the Cotswolds or Santa Barbara – then there was no point us sitting outside like muppets.

We were just gearing ourselves up to leave the car when Crew Cut from Harrods arrived.

I recognised him immediately and so did Guleed, who was calling for back-up before I’d finished swearing.

Crew Cut had come with friends, three other white guys with the same army-surplus muscularity and haircuts. They all wore off the peg black suits cut baggy for comfort, and all the better to cover any concealed weapons.

En masse they couldn’t have stood out as Americans more if they’d painted their faces red, white and blue. They went up the steps and paused in front of the door; two kept watch while a third bent over to do something to the lock. I couldn’t see what, but I doubted it was anything legal. Whatever it was, it was quick. The door opened and the whole group slipped inside with a practised lack of fuss.

I had a horrid feeling I’d just met the ‘gentlemen visitors’ that Kim had warned me about.

Where had they come from? I doubted they’d sauntered here from the tube station. I glanced up the road and spotted a black Ford Explorer hiding amongst the other Chelsea Tractors. It had the traditional tinted windscreen but we could still make out the figure of a white guy in the driver’s seat.

‘Can’t leave him there,’ said Guleed.

She was right. If we went in after the goon squad, their man in the Explorer would tip them off. So we quickly concocted one of our better plans – better insofar as that just for once it went as planned.

I approached on the pavement while Guleed strolled up the middle of the street and caught the driver’s attention. As soon as she had it, she pulled out her warrant card and held it up as she advanced. We’d both decided that when dealing with a possibly armed American it was better to avoid any potential ambiguity.

‘Especially since I’m the one being ambiguous,’ said Guleed.

The driver might have sussed me for police as well, but it didn’t matter. He hesitated for long enough for me to slap a car killer into the bonnet of the Explorer and that’s all she wrote for that particular electronic ignition system. I kept it low key enough to avoid frying any phone he might be carrying – just in case we might need it later.

Because he was American, he instinctively kept his hands on his steering wheel where we could see them.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said Guleed. ‘Would you step out of the car, please?’

And that was that.

He got out and we conducted a search in full compliance with Code A, Paragraph 3.1 of the Code of Practice – to whit, that all searches must be carried out with courtesy, consideration and respect for the person concerned.

Apart from, sensibly, keeping his mouth shut he cooperated with the search. Which was just as well because he was tall and fit and carrying a semi-automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. He also had a Samsung Galaxy with a retro modded hard ‘off’ switch not entirely unlike the phones me and Nightingale carried. And when I checked his wrist I saw he had a wind-up diver’s watch. It was practitioner’s gear and, coupled with the absence of anything identifiable on his person – not even a driver’s licence – pretty much confirmed that these were magic spooks. They might even have some legal standing in the states.

But not in London, so Guleed arrested him for carrying a firearm, driving without a licence and being suspiciously foreign in a built-up area. By the time we had him cuffed, the first IRV had arrived and we cheerfully handed him over to be tucked up in the back.

And I was quite happy to wait for back-up at that point – up to and including SCO19, the SAS and/or Nightingale in full tank-destroyer mode – except I got a blast of vestigia from the house. Nothing I could identify beyond a whiff of oily water and a chill across my back.

According to the Human Rights Act (1998) as interpreted in my dog-eared copy of Blackstone’s Police Operational Handbook: Practice and Procedure, I had a ‘duty of positive action’ with regards to protection of the public. This meant I had to at least make a token attempt to make sure Phoebe Beaumont-Jones was not this moment being waterboarded by the Jack Bauer wannabes I’d watched walk in not five minutes previously.

Assuming, of course, that they weren’t in league with our Phoebe and even now sitting down for a nice cup of tea and conspiracy. And assuming that she was inside the house in the first place.

Normally the Metropolitan Police frowns on its officers rushing in without a risk assessment and/or the appropriate specialist unit. Unfortunately in this case I was the appropriate specialist unit, and the firearms officers who were on their way were unequipped to deal with a Falcon scenario. Not least because the first draft of Procedures Relating to Serious Falcon Incidents a.k.a. How to Deal with Weird Bollocks was currently sitting as a half-finished Word document on my hard drive back at the Folly.

I called Nightingale, who said he was fifteen minutes away and asked him to authorise a little look.

‘Yes,’ he said immediately. ‘But carefully, Peter.’

I told Guleed that it was standard procedure for a second officer to stay outside the immediate Zone of Potential Magical Effect (ZPME) in order to facilitate communications should my Airwave and personal phones be compromised. Guleed was rightly suspicious.

‘Is that true?’ she asked.

Just as soon as I get back to the Folly and add it to the Word document, I thought.

‘Just make sure nobody rushes in,’ I said. ‘Especially you.’

‘And when things start to explode?’ she asked, but I didn’t dignify that with an answer.

‘I’m coming at least as far as the door,’ she said.

As we approached the front door I saw that there were strips of thick perspex or glass embedded into the front lawn – skylights for a basement. I pointed them out to Guleed, who frowned.

The very rich, having fundamentally missed the point of urban living, have long been frustrated by the fact that it’s impossible to squeeze the amenities of a country mansion – car showroom, swimming pool, cinema, servants’ quarters etc. – into the floor space of your average London terrace. Those without access to trans-dimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery, have had to resort to extending their houses into the ground. Thus proving that all that stands between your average rich person and a career in Bond villainy is access to an extinct volcano.

They are also a bugger to raid, because you need twice as many bodies to secure the premises. Stephanopoulos once told me that it was like watching a clown car in reverse. Once, during a raid in Kensington, she said that after waiting outside for half an hour she went in herself to make sure none of the entry team had got lost or, worse, been distracted by the bowling alley that reputedly occupied the bottommost level.

The front door was ajar – the lock had been drilled.

Not a friendly visit, then.

I put the Airwave in my pocket on open mic. Before I could move, the door was opened from the inside. They’d left someone to guard the perimeter – of course they had.

He was shorter than the driver, blond haired, oval faced with a surprisingly weak chin. He only opened the door half-way and he kept his right hand hidden behind it so I didn’t think trying to nut him was a viable tactical option.

‘Hi,’ he said brightly. ‘Can I help you?’ I’m not that good at American accents but I guessed East Coast.

For a mad moment I was tempted to ask him if he had a personal relationship with Jesus and, if not, would he like one? But I think that was the adrenaline talking. The pistol I suspected he was concealing behind the door was weighing heavily on my mind.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘My name’s Peter Grant. I’m with the police. Is Phoebe Beaumont-Jones available for a chat?’

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Come on in.’

He opened the door wider and stepped to the side to let me in.

Guleed, who’d slipped to the side and out of sight when the door opened, tapped her fingernail twice on the wall to let me know that she wasn’t happy – but she stayed out of sight.

There was no sign of a pistol in either hand when I stepped inside. I figured he might have stuck it into the back waistband of his trousers, but I couldn’t be sure. And, from an operational standpoint, you generally want to avoid uncertainty about where a firearm is before you do anything stupid.

I asked for his name and he said ‘Teddy’, which made him a bloody liar.

Inside, the house had obviously been gutted, stripped down and rebuilt in the last five years. The narrow stairway typical of a London terrace had been replaced by the spiral staircase with marble risers so beloved of people who don’t have to lug their own furniture up to the floors above. It also extended down into the basement and I caught a whiff of chlorinated water that indicated a pool. I’m not very fond of the combination of underground and water, so of course down we went.

It wasn’t that super, by the standards of London super-basements, being mostly swimming pool, fitness centre and wine cellar. And it wasn’t that big a pool either, since it had to fit into the narrow footprint of a terraced house – less than ten metres long and three wide. It was lit by underwater lights that cast ripples on the ceiling and pale red marble walls. The designer had probably been going for Turkish Bath but had hit Czech Porn Shoot instead.

There was a tiled space at the near edge of the pool which sported a couple of white plastic chairs, a matching round table and, redundantly, a sun lounger. A young white woman in a blue string bikini was reclining on the lounger. I recognised her face from the pictures on Olivia’s wall – Phoebe Beaumont-Jones. One of Crew Cut’s buddies, jackets unbuttoned, hands loosely held ready by their sides stood on either side of her.

Crew Cut was sitting at the table as if expecting a waiter at any minute.

‘This is unfortunate,’ he said. He still had a wicked bruise across the side of his face – it was going a nice mottled purple and must have really hurt.

I considered telling the lot of them they were under arrest, but even I’m not that stupid. Phoebe was staring at me with a fixed expression but I could see her legs trembling.

‘Hello Phoebe,’ I said. ‘How are you doing?’

She bobbed her head nervously but she couldn’t seem to open her mouth to speak.

‘Why don’t you have a seat?’ said Crew Cut. His accent was Southern-ish but not the caricature I’d heard on TV – it was the deliberately cultured accent of someone working hard to convince you they were a reasonable and civilised man. I was immediately on my guard. Well, even more on my guard, given the room full of armed men.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Let’s not worry about that for the moment,’ said Crew Cut.

‘What should we worry about instead?’

Crew Cut tilted his head slightly.

‘I’d say we’ve managed to get ourselves into one of those unfortunate situations,’ he said, ‘where two parties that should be allies find themselves in a confrontation.’

‘Allies?’

‘We are both the heirs to Isaac Newton,’ he said. ‘A product of the same enlightenment.’

Which made them, after Lady Helena, the second lot of heirs we’d met this week. Now personally I didn’t think of myself as the great man’s heir so much as somebody who’d wandered into his house to borrow his lawnmower, but as Stephanopoulos has indicated, on more than one occasion, sometimes my cheek is inappropriate in a modern policing context.

‘Just to be clear,’ I said, ‘you’re the American wizards?’

Crew Cut shook his head slowly.

‘Specialists, son,’ he said. ‘Our job is to deal with the problems, not create new ones.’

That was bollocks from where I was standing, but I was perfectly happy to keep Crew Cut chatting shit until Nightingale turned up to put him out of my misery. But Crew Cut had to guess back-up was on its way by now, and that it was only a matter of time. He looked a bit too relaxed to me, and it was making me nervous.

‘I think you’re a little bit out of your jurisdiction,’ I said.

‘The whole world is our jurisdiction, son,’ said Crew Cut. ‘And I have the executive order to prove it.’

I looked over at Phoebe who was still shivering – it was noticeably chilly down here and I wondered if the heating had been turned off.

‘I’m going to take off my jacket,’ I said. ‘Nice and slowly.’

Crew Cut told me to go ahead and then he let me pass it to one of his men who passed it to Phoebe who put it on. She was much smaller than she looked in the pictures and seemed even more childlike as she tried to tuck her legs up inside the jacket.

‘Pity,’ said Crew Cut as Phoebe stopped visibly shivering. ‘Another fifteen minutes and she might have told us something useful.’

I told him I thought it might be better if Phoebe were allowed to leave.

‘Better for who?’ he asked.

I wondered again what he was waiting for – what did he think was going to happen?

‘Better for her,’ I said. ‘And, in the long run, better for you.’

Crew Cut made an elegant shooing gesture at Phoebe, but she just stared at him.

I told her that it was going to be all right and was amazingly convincing, all things considered.

Phoebe hopped up smartly and, keeping an eye on Crew Cut, edged past me.

‘Go out the front door,’ I said. ‘And keep going until you see someone in uniform.’

She nodded and headed for the stairs. Just to try my luck I turned to amble after her, but Crew Cut shook his head.

‘Not you, Peter,’ he said and then lifted his wrist to his mouth and spoke into his sleeve. ‘Teddy – we’re letting the shade go.’

That he knew my name pretty much confirmed that these were Kim Reynolds’ visitors, but I did wonder what a ‘shade’ was – and how come this lot were so relaxed. Crew Cut didn’t strike me as stupid. He had to know we would have the house surrounded, and that an armed breach would be next – if they were lucky. If they were unlucky, one of the Met’s highly trained negotiators would turn up and be aggravatingly reasonable to them until the Americans a) surrendered or b) shot themselves in the head in an effort to make it stop.

‘What’s a shade?’ I asked.

‘A creature that looks like a man but walks in the shadows,’ said Crew Cut.

Police doctrine is, even if you’re waiting for someone to do something violent to your suspect, you should deescalate the situation because at the very least a peaceful resolution produces a ton less paperwork.

‘Am I a shade?’ I asked.

‘The jury’s still out on you, son,’ said Crew Cut, and then spoke into his sleeve again. ‘Okay Teddy – time we were leaving.’

I wondered what the hell they thought they were going to do – was there a rear exit, a helicopter on the roof, or had they contracted with International Rescue to lease The Mole and drill their way out?

I never did get to find out, because about then was when the lights went out.

All at once.

I dropped to the floor, on the basis that I was in a room full of excitable men with guns, and I thought it might not be a bad idea to get my centre of mass out of the line of fire. As I went down I heard a cracking noise, a muffled grunt and a rushing sound. A terrible and familiar smell rolled over me, the liquid shit stink of the sewers. Something slapped my leg so I pulled it in under me.

I heard the Americans shouting and something heavy – I hoped it wasn’t a body – hitting the pool with a splash. I needed some light, but I wasn’t stupid enough to want it anywhere near me. So I cast a werelight over at the far end of the basement where it wouldn’t blind or illuminate me. Even as I released the spell I lined up the formae for a shield and had that ready to go.

The werelight popped up, strangely blurred and wavering.

There was a series of painfully loud bangs as the Americans opened fire.

The light flickered and cast rolling shadows across the walls and ceiling.

‘Cease fire,’ I yelled. But, just in case they didn’t, I put up my shield.

A cold and stinking wind struck me in the face, and with it I realised what was wrong.

My werelight had materialised inside a rolling wall of water stretching from the base of the pool to the ceiling. It was racing down the length of the basement towards me, and that’s what was causing the wind.

Oh shit, I thought as I raised my shield. Wrong spell.

I noticed the shield did slow the water down a fraction before it swept me, the Americans, and the cheap plastic garden furniture down the remaining the length of the basement.

Which, incidentally, saved our lives.

Not that I appreciated it at the time, you understand.

My shield bought me enough time to take a breath, but then it was a cold, wet, spinning darkness enlivened only by the occasional violent blow and the constant distraction of my own screaming terror. My shoulders hit something and, despite having my chin tucked into my chest, my head snapped back and slammed into a hard surface. I lost my air, and my werelight, darkness crashed in and I heard a voice from far away, shrill and terrifyingly cheerful, start to chant.

Right fol de riddle loll

I’m the boy to do ’em all.

Breathing – it’s an autonomic function and, past a certain point, your body is going to take a breath whatever your consciousness says and regardless of what you’re actually going to be breathing in.

I saw light – pale strips wavering in the darkness – the skylights embedded in the front garden. I needed a way out and I didn’t have time to be subtle.

Here’s a stick!

Magic is not about passion or anger or the power of friendship. Magic is about control, focus, and being able to concentrate when you’re drowning to death.

To thump Old Nick!

Training helps, as does experience. But the key is preparation. I’d once spent a fun afternoon buried under the eastbound Central Line platform at Oxford Circus and subsequently made a point of getting Nightingale to teach me something simple and effective for breaking architecture. It’s an impello variant with a lot of complicated little twists and curlicues. Not a spell – Nightingale said – normally learnt by apprentices. It’s also a bit limited in its applicability to everyday policing.

I picked a spot half-way along one of the skylights.

If he, by chance, upon me call.

I’d done a lot of practise – and I was motivated.

And anything to get Mr Punch to shut the fuck-up.

Only it didn’t work.

There was enough light for me to see the puffs of dust across the ceiling. Fine cracks shot out in a star shape from the focal point I’d picked, but the basement was well built and the ceiling held. I tried to gather up the formae for another go, but my mind was filled with the need to breathe and a long ululating laugh of triumph.

Suddenly there was a terrible pain in my ears and a burst of light from above and the section of the ceiling I’d been casting at seemed to blow upwards. I kicked and swam towards the light. But when I was almost at the lip, the water suddenly dragged at me as if I was caught in an undertow. And back down I went.

There was a thudding hollowness in my chest and I figured I had seconds before I took an evolutionary step backwards and tried to breathe water, but my feet hit solid floor and I kicked as hard as I could back-up towards the light.

The water around me boomed and rumbled and suddenly I was flying upwards. I burst out into the air and took a breath before I could stop myself and choked on a face full of water. Somebody grabbed my arm and held me up while I coughed desperately and took a second, proper, breath.

I blinked and saw brown eyes framed by black cloth, blinked again and saw that it was Guleed with the bottom of her hijab pulled up to cover her nose and mouth. I figured out why she’d done that when I took another breath and started coughing again. The air was so brown with brick dust that I couldn’t see the street lights.

I was at the edge of a surprisingly smooth-sided hole in the garden about a metre and a half across. Dirty water was welling up over the edge in rippling pulses. Obviously my spell had weakened it before something had raised the water level with enough force to punch it out.

I’d have liked to ask what that something had been, but just then I was too busy breathing.

But not too busy to yell when something grabbed my leg and tried to drag me down. I kicked frantically as Guleed tightened her grip on my arm and shoulder and attempted to heave me up over the lip of the hole.

A head broke surface next to me and did the whole emergency air sucking thing. It was one of Crew Cut’s boys. A second head bobbed up, retching and gasping – that was two.

‘I need some help here,’ shouted Guleed, bending over our impromptu garden pond as she tried to keep all of us afloat at once.

A pair of uniforms appeared out of the dust and helped pull me out.

‘That way,’ said one and pushed me gently towards the street.

A slim, unexpectedly elegant, paramedic pounced on me as I cleared the dust and threw a space blanket over my shoulders. He wanted to know if I was in pain and I told him I was just happy to be breathing.

He wanted to drag me away to his ambulance and do medical things, but I waited until Guleed emerged from the dust cloud trailed by the two uniforms and, suitably searched and handcuffed, the two Americans.

I asked Guleed if she’d seen ‘Teddy’ or Crew Cut himself.

‘I jumped Teddy as soon as Phoebe cleared the front gate,’ she said, pulling her hijab off her lower face.

‘We’d better get back in there and find their leader,’ I said.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ she said.

The dust was clearing and I looked back at the house and saw it wasn’t there anymore. The whole front had collapsed into the basement, leaving the floors open and exposed like a vandalised doll’s house. It looked like something from the Blitz, with broken floorboards and haphazard piles of brick. One room near the top had cheerful yellow wallpaper – a cot teetered precariously on the edge of what was left of the floor.

The weight of the initial collapse must have caused the pressure wave in the water which blew out the hole I’d being trying to magic in the skylight. A second collapse had squirted me out.

Barring a miracle, Crew Cut was probably under that lot.

Uniform was pulling back to be replaced by the Fire Brigade. They’d have the dogs and thermal sensors out as soon it was safe.

‘Oh, shit,’ I said.

Guleed looked at me, at the remains of the house, and then back at me.

‘Not one word,’ I said. ‘Not one.’

The Custody Sergeant sighed when she saw the remains of Crew Cut’s crew.

‘I should have known when I was well off,’ she said.

The Americans all maintained a stoic silence, which bothered the Custody Sergeant not all. She just wrote ‘refused’ in every box, made sure they were all DNA’d and live scanned and banged them up. To avoid confusion they were marked up on the electronic white board as Male: anon – ‘Teddy’; Male: anon – blond; Male: anon – eyebrow scar.

The Americans were all adults, foreigners, and had been caught red-handed – so they could wait. Phoebe Beaumont-Jones being seventeen and – since we didn’t have direct evidence of her drug dealing yet – a witness rather than a suspect, had to be interviewed immediately. So, after I’d pulled some dry clothes from the emergency bag I keep under the shared desk in the Outside Inquiry room, I joined Guleed in the Achieving Best Evidence suite to do just that. Anyone looking for a place to kip tonight was going to have to snooze at their desk like everybody else.

Phoebe had refused her stepmum as her responsible adult.

‘Frankly I’d rather go to prison,’ she’d said. And her dad was still abroad, so we ended up with a young solicitor from the local criminal law specialist. The solicitor was white, presentable and spoke with an affected South London accent that didn’t fool anyone, except maybe Phoebe.

After caution plus two we could have gone straight to the business with the drugs. But our priority – as determined by the senior officers even now monitoring us from the video suite – was to find out what the fuck the Americans had wanted.

Phoebe said she had no idea.

‘I was downstairs by the pool,’ she said. ‘And they just appeared.’

‘They’ being Crew Cut, who finally identified himself as Dean, and his merry men.

They’d asked her about her eBay activities.

‘What about your eBay activities?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I never use eBay.’

‘Do you have a PayPal account?’ asked Guleed.

‘No, I have a credit card,’ said Phoebe, who was perfectly happy to buy online and perfectly happy to buy second-hand – just not at the same time.

‘It’s so much more fun getting clothes from charity shops,’ she said. ‘I once almost grabbed a genuine Nicole Farhi jacket in a charity shop in Chelsea but this woman beat me to it.’

She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to have done on eBay, but Dean, formerly known as Crew Cut, seemed to think she’d tried to sell a book.

We asked what kind of book.

‘An old book,’ she said. ‘Really old, like centuries old. A ledger – that’s what boss American called it.’

‘Did he mention a title?’ I asked.

Phoebe said not, but when we pressed she thought that Dean might have referred to it as the ‘Last Ledger’. This all seemed a bit pat to me – suspects often can’t resist dropping in little bits of detail in the hope that it adds veracity to their statement, when all it actually does is make us more suspicious. I made a note to pursue this question in a later interview and we retraced the timeline leading up to the Americans’ arrival.

‘I was in the kitchen getting a drink and—’ Phoebe frowned. ‘Then I went downstairs. Somebody knocked on the door.’

She didn’t know the exact time, but it wasn’t that long before the cleaner left. We’d had the door under observation by then and definitely hadn’t seen anyone. Nobody sneaks past Guleed – she says it’s a talent you acquire if you’re the eldest child in a big family.

‘Was the knock at the front door?’ asked Guleed.

‘Must have been,’ said Phoebe, but she didn’t seem so sure.

‘Did you answer it?’ asked Guleed.

‘No,’ said Phoebe.

‘Was it a knock or the doorbell?’ I asked.

‘It was a knock,’ she said hesitantly and then, with more confidence, ‘definitely a knock.’

So it could have been the back door, not the front – perhaps that’s how Dean and co planned to make their escape.

‘What did you do next?’ asked Guleed.

‘I went downstairs,’ said Phoebe.

‘Did you go for a swim?’ asked Guleed.

‘I must have done,’ said Phoebe. ‘Why else would I go down there?’

She’d looked bone-dry to me when I’d seen her.

‘What were you wearing when you were in the kitchen?’ asked Guleed.

‘Is that important?’

‘Helps us establish a timeline,’ said Guleed.

‘Jeans,’ said Phoebe. ‘Or maybe tracksuit bottoms and a sweatshirt.’

‘Not your bikini?’

‘No,’ said Phoebe.

‘Not under your other clothes?’ asked Guleed.

Phoebe looked at me and rolled her eyes at Guleed.

‘No,’ she said.

‘Do you keep it downstairs by the pool?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Phoebe. ‘It’s a Sofia by Vix – Ollie bought it for me in Nice – I wouldn’t leave it downstairs where she could get her hands on it.’

‘She’ being Victoria Jones – Phoebe’s stepmother.

‘So you must have gone upstairs to your room before you went down to the pool,’ I said.

Phoebe shrugged.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Must have.’

Memory is unreliable, and it isn’t unusual for a witness to forget big chunks of the events that led to them answering your questions – even when things were fresh. Still, the obvious hole in Phoebe’s timeline was beginning to worry me.

‘Before the Americans turned up,’ I said, ‘was anyone in the basement with you?’

‘Like who?’

‘Like anybody.’

Phoebe frowned. ‘I was talking to someone,’ she said.

‘Do you remember who?’ asked Guleed.

‘Someone from school, I think,’ she said.

‘A school friend?’ asked Guleed.

‘No,’ said Phoebe and bit her lip. ‘An old person.’

‘Man or a woman?’

‘Man.’

‘A teacher?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Phoebe firmly. ‘Not a teacher. You know, it’s funny, but I think he was a parent . . .’ she said.

‘What makes you think that?’ asked Guleed.

‘He was familiar – like I totally knew him from somewhere – but definitely not a teacher.’

‘And yet you didn’t recognise him?’ I said.

‘I did, but not so I could tell you who he was.’ She made a waving motion with both hands. ‘It’s like when you’re half-way to school and you can’t remember what you had for breakfast. You know you had breakfast, you know what you usually have for breakfast, but you cannot for the life of you remember what you actually had today.’

Doing a two-hander during an interview is all about rhythm; you and your partner shift backwards and forwards to keep the interviewee ever so slightly off balance. If they don’t have time to think about their answers, then they are more likely to blurt out the truth. Or at least contradict themselves enough for you to figure out what they’re lying about. Good cop/bad cop is the Hollywood version, simplified and sexed up for maximum drama in minimum screen time. Me and Guleed had spent a year, off and on, interviewing everyone from mad mechanics to surly bouncers – not to mention the thing with the police horse which I’ve promised never to bring up on pain of ninjutsu – so she knew that the next line was mine, which would have probably been me asking what his voice sounded like.

But my mind, ironically, went blank. Because all at once I knew who had been in the basement swimming pool with us that evening.

‘What did his voice sound like?’ asked Guleed.

If Phoebe answered I wasn’t listening, because I was thinking that the subset of St Paul’s parents that Phoebe knew personally was going to be finite. Maybe as low as ten to twenty males, and they’d all be on a list at the school. And that list could be cross-referenced with the list of Little Crocodiles and whittled down by finding out who had a reliable alibi for certain important dates. He’d been good at covering his tracks. But like Nightingale had said, he’s not Moriarty. He’s just another criminal and sooner or later he’s going to make a mistake.

And I was fairly certain that the Faceless Man had just made it.