The Hanging Tree

4 Obligatory Audience Participation

The next morning it was my turn to slip out of bed leaving Beverley behind, invisible under the duvet except for a spray of dreadlocks across the pillow. I had a text from Stephanopoulos – My office @ 7 briefing TST Albertina Pryce.

The police are well aware of the subtle degrees of intimidation they can exert, from the veiled menace of the ‘friendly chat’ to turning up at dawn with a battering ram, a van full of TSG and a documentary TV camera crew. Being asked to show up at a nick first thing in the morning to ‘clarify a previous statement’ is a signal that the police have reason to believe that you are a lying little toerag, but are willing to give you a second chance to come clean. It’s also a signal that a sensible body would bring a brief – just to be on the safe side.

So it says something about Albert Pryce, multiple Booker Prize shortlistee and a man whose appearances on Radio 4 were so frequent that Broadcasting House had given him his own entry pass, that he decided that he himself would be an elegant sufficiency with regards to legal representation for his daughter.

Stephanopoulos and Seawoll, ever alive to the nuances of interpersonal dynamics as they pertain to screwing evidence out of potential suspects, decided to send me in alone.

Normally when you’re handling the rich and powerful you stick them in the ABE (Achieving Best Evidence) suite, which is fitted with pastel furniture and throw cushions designed to make vulnerable witnesses feel more comfortable. But either they were all in use or Stephanopoulos had actually read A Filthy Trade – Pryce’s Booker shortlisted novel of crime and punishment. Which, according to the Times Literary Supplement, beautifully inverted Dostoyevsky’s premise in its portrayal of a man who, having murdered his wife out of sheer exasperation, proves to have a higher degree of morality than the corrupt and degraded detectives who pursue him. By another completely unrelated coincidence we ended up in Interview Room Three which was usually reserved for Belgravia’s more fragrant customers. I’m not saying you were going to slip on sick when you walked in, but there was a marked old-hospital smell of disinfectant and wee.

We left them in there for half an hour while we – me, Stephanopoulos and Seawoll – discussed interview strategy. ‘Go in there and be your usual charming self,’ said Stephanopoulos.

‘We want the dad to stay nice and smug,’ said Seawoll.

So I made a point of carrying in a stack of papers and faffing with them for a bit before introducing myself and shaking their hands.

I was beginning to think that there must be a factory somewhere stamping out dangerously skinny white girls with good deportment and a nervous disposition. Albertina Pryce had long blonde hair framing a narrow face with a pointed chin. She wore a pink sweat shirt that was too big for her and skinny blue jeans. Her handshake was limp and I could feel the small bones in her hand under my fingers.

Mr Pryce was surprisingly short, but broad-shouldered. He had the same fair hair as his daughter but with a square, blunt face. He wore a well-tailored suit jacket over a crisply ironed white shirt but no tie, and his top two buttons were undone to reveal a centimetre of greying chest hair. When he stood to shake my hand I saw he was wearing pre-faded jeans. His shake was firm but the skin of his hand was soft. I knew from my notes that he was sixty-three, but he looked as if he were desperately clinging to fifty with both hands.

‘Grant, eh?’ he said as we settled. ‘Dad from the Caribbean, yes?’

He waited impatiently while I gave his daughter the caution plus two, and interrupted me before I had a chance to ask my first question.

‘Can’t we just get on with this?’ he asked.

‘I’m sorry sir. Legally we have to do these things,’ I said.

Albertina glanced nervously at my pile of papers and then off to the left – away from her father – as he gave me a sympathetic nod.

‘Bureaucracy,’ he said sagely.

‘Sir,’ I said, because Stephanopoulos wanted me to encourage him but not too much.

‘I know it’s hard, Peter,’ she’d said. ‘But if you could contain your erudition and ready wit for just a little while we’d be most grateful.’

‘Am I allowed to be cheeky?’ I’d asked.

‘No you’re fucking not,’ said Seawoll.

‘I’m afraid it has to be done, sir,’ I said to Albert Pryce.

‘Does it? Or do we just think it does?’ he asked. ‘Did you join the police to do paperwork? Of course you didn’t.’

I made a show of straightening my papers and looked at Albertina, who was resolutely staring at the point on the table where her phone would have been if we hadn’t asked her to leave it in her bag.

‘Would you say you were Christina’s best friend?’ I asked.

‘Maybe,’ she said.

‘Oh, come on,’ said her father, ‘you practically lived in each other’s pockets.’

Albertina glared at him, but either long exposure had rendered him immune or, more likely I thought, it didn’t even register. Seawoll had told me not to be cheeky, but there’s cheeky and then there’s cheeky.

‘Did you see a lot of Christina Chorley, then, sir?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, very clever,’ he said. ‘Middle aged man, young girls, let’s have a little dig, see what we can find? Is that it?’

‘We’re merely looking to establish a timeline,’ I said.

‘Interesting that you refer to the collective “we” there,’ he said. ‘Is that why you joined the police? To find an identity? You’ve got an old fashioned working class London accent, so I’m betting your mum was a native, south of the river, maybe Deptford, maybe from an old Southwark family.’

God help me, but I couldn’t stop myself saying, ‘Pretty much.’

‘So there you were, growing up stuck somewhere between black and white,’ said Mr Pryce. ‘Never really one thing or the other. I mean . . . absent a father figure for you to build your black identity around and, being a proper working class bloke, not comfortable with your feminine side. I’ll bet you didn’t do well at school – right? Bit of a rebel, acting up.’

‘I had my moments,’ I said, thinking of the time me and Colin Sachlaw borrowed a lump of dry ice from the chemistry lab and slid it into the girl’s toilets. I didn’t mind the week of detention, but they called mum at work. And that didn’t end well.

‘So, hello police,’ said Mr Pryce. ‘A nice uniform identity, a little authority and, god knows, after Macpherson they’d be desperate enough to recruit you to overlook any educational deficiencies.’

That, as they say, is fighting talk. But, as Nightingale once told me during boxing practise, the best blow is the one your opponent doesn’t even notice until he keels over.

‘I don’t blame you,’ said Mr Pryce, not noticing his daughter’s look of disgust. ‘Scrabbling for some structure in the wreckage of the permissive society to make a meaningful connection with other people. But we don’t do that anymore, do we? Listen to other people. The mighty Self has obliterated our ability to communicate.’

‘Dad,’ said Albertina.

‘You’re lucky, though,’ he said. ‘It could have been Islam, couldn’t it? The siren song of the mad mullahs, or the rough fellowship of the gang. Did smiting the infidel not appeal? Did you have something against drugs?’

‘Dad!’ screamed Albertina. ‘For god’s sake shut the fuck-up.’

Her dad’s mouth closed with a click and he looked guiltily at his daughter in a way that suggested to me that things like parent-teacher conferences and the like might have followed a similar pattern.

Albertina turned to me, controlled her breathing, and asked whether it was alright if she could choose her own responsible adult – thank you very much.

Her dad was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. So the next responsible adult was a suspiciously competent criminal solicitor whose parents might have been from the Kashmir but who spoke with a Bradford accent. He also slicked his thick black hair back with gel and, I suspected, wished he could wear his aviator sunglasses indoors. We got on famously.

Stephanopoulos took the opportunity to get a separate statement from Albert Pryce and sent in Guleed to do the honours. I wondered what she was going to make of the mad mullahs.

‘I’m sorry about my dad,’ Albertina said as soon as we sat down.

I’d fetched in some coffee for me, a bottle of iced tea for her and a plate of biscuits to add to the whole we’re just having a chat vibe and Stephanopoulos gave me permission to take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves.

‘Mine always talks about jazz,’ I said.

‘You have it easy,’ she said and we both turned to the solicitor who gave a little shake of his head.

‘Can I remind you that we’re conducting an interview here,’ he said.

‘Come on,’ said Albertina. ‘You have a go, too. Then we can get all serious.’

‘Politics,’ said the solicitor finally. ‘He goes on and on about the partition.’

Albertina asked what partition that was.

‘The partition of India,’ said the solicitor. ‘Now can we get on?’

Albertina sighed and asked me what I wanted to know.

‘When was the last time Christina stayed the weekend at your place?’ I asked.

‘Three weeks ago,’ she said. I looked up the dates and confirmed them.

‘And before that?’

Albertina had to think about it, but she thought it was probably three or four weeks before that.

‘Do you know if she was telling her father that she was staying with you, but then staying with somebody else?’ I asked.

‘Definitely,’ she said. ‘I had to cover for her.’

‘Do you know who Christina was staying with?’

‘Some man,’ she said with a definite emphasis on the word man – as opposed to a boy.

I asked if this man had a name.

‘Raymond,’ she said. ‘No wait. Reynard – like he was French.’

‘Did you ever meet him?’

She shook her head.

‘So you never met him?’ I asked this to avoid the whole for the record Miss Pryce has shaken her head, which can come back to bite you in court.

‘I never met him,’ she said.

‘But you knew he was an adult?’

‘It’s not like Christina ever shut up about it,’ said Albertina. ‘Although, to give her her due, unlike Dad, she didn’t feel the urge to write it all down and publish it for everyone to see.’

Albert Pryce’s last book but one, An Immovable Subject, had been a semi-autobiographical account of how he’d left his second wife – Albertina’s mother – after falling in love with an American intern half his age.

‘You’re sure his name is Reynard?’

‘Oh, definitely,’ she said.

‘Was there anything unusual about him?’

‘Like what?’

‘Did anything Christina said about him strike you as unusual?’

‘She said he was a prince,’ said Albertina.

I asked whether Christina had said where Reynard was a prince of.

‘Not that kind of prince,’ said Albertina. ‘Chris said he was a fairy tale prince.’

‘Interesting,’ I said, and asked if Albertina knew how Christina and her ‘prince’ had met. While I did that, I wrote the word NIGHTINGALE on my pad in large enough letters to be picked up by the camera and then I underlined it twice.

The word ‘bollocks’ is one of the most beautiful and flexible in the English language. It can be used to express emotional states ranging from ecstatic surprise to weary resignation in the face of inevitable disaster. And Seawoll was definitely veering towards the latter when we all sat down in his office to talk about Reynard Fossman.

‘Bollocks,’ said Seawoll.

‘And he came to see you last night?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

I read them in on my brief encounter with Reynard at the gig and his message to Nightingale.

‘This can’t be a coincidence,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘Him turning up just as he becomes a person of interest.’

‘Bollocks,’ said Seawoll, allowing a tinge of melancholy to enter his tone. ‘I was hoping to wrap MARIGOLD up – I’ve got a nice stabbing in Fulham which would be much better use of our Miriam’s professional time.’

‘Then I suggest that we apprehend him as swiftly as we can,’ said Nightingale. ‘So we can rule him in or out of your inquiry.’

Stephanopoulos glanced down at her tablet where I knew she had the latest IIP on Reynard Fossman. I also knew there were some things in there she didn’t like, because she’d actioned Guleed to get the information and Guleed had glared at me until I’d handed over the file I’d already compiled on the red-headed little toerag.

‘Fossman,’ said Stephanopoulos, ‘from the German fuchs for Fox, so Foxman,’ she caught my eye. ‘Reynard the Fox.’

‘Nasty little sociopathic trickster who turns up a lot in fourteenth century French literature, sort of like Brer Rabbit but without the redeeming sense of humility,’ I said.

Reynard Fossman had a string of convictions, the most serious of which was ABH for biting the ear of a member of the Old Berks Hunt during an anti fox-hunting demonstration, and a couple of assaults against similarly hunting-orientated gentlemen. Beyond that it was all trespass, public order offences – also hunting protest related – and an alleged indecent exposure when he was found running naked across Wimbledon Common which, according to Reynard, was a prank gone wrong. The arrest report was a fun read and the arresting officers had lent him some trousers and dropped him off at his house.

‘So he’s a French fairy tale,’ said Seawoll and turned to look, thank god, at Nightingale instead of me. ‘Is he?’

‘That’s a difficult question, Alexander,’ said Nightingale.

‘I know it’s a difficult question, Thomas,’ said Seawoll slowly. ‘That why I’m fucking asking it.’

‘Yes, but do you want to know the actual answer?’ said Nightingale. ‘You’ve always proved reluctant in the past. Am I to understand that you’ve changed your attitude?’

‘You can fucking understand what you bloody like,’ said Seawoll. ‘But in this case I do bloody want to know because I don’t want to lose any more officers to things I don’t fucking understand.’ He glanced at me and frowned. ‘Two is too many.’

‘Well, he’s definitely associated with the demimonde,’ began Nightingale.

‘The demi-monde?’ asked Seawoll, who didn’t appreciate being unhappy and liked to spread it around when he was.

‘It’s what we call all the people involved in some way or the other with weird bollocks,’ I said, in an effort to head them both off. ‘Some of them are just people that know things and others are people who are a bit strange in themselves.’ Out loud it sounded even weaker than it had in my head. But Seawoll nodded.

‘Individuals like Reynard are not uncommon,’ said Nightingale. ‘And it’s hard to tell whether they have, consciously or unconsciously, sought to mimic a figure from folklore or myth, or whether they are indeed an incarnation of that figure.’

‘And the difference being?’ asked Seawoll.

‘The first is relatively innocuous,’ said Nightingale. ‘But if Reynard is the story made flesh, then he’s as dangerous an individual as you are likely to meet.’

‘More dangerous than you?’ asked Seawoll.

‘Perhaps we shall find out,’ said Nightingale.

Stephanopoulos heaved a sigh that they probably heard upstairs in the Outside Inquiry Office.

‘Not that I’m not enjoying the spectacle, lads, but what if we drag this back down to the practicalities,’ she said. ‘Reynard had a message for you – one he was sure you’d be interested in.’

I checked my notes to make sure I got the phrasing right – ‘He said he could put us in touch “with a certain someone who has an item he might well like to purchase”. I asked him what, and he said Jonathan Wild’s final ledger.’

You can’t be a London copper and have any interest in history and not know the story of Jonathan Wild – neither Stephanopoulos or Seawoll had to ask who Wild was. But, being police, they did want to know exactly why it would be of interest to the Folly.

‘Aside from its obvious historical value, the ledger is thought to reveal the whereabouts of some of Sir Isaac Newton’s lost papers,’ said Nightingale. ‘The ones that Keynes couldn’t get hold of.’

‘Are you telling me that Sir John Fucking Maynard Keynes was one of your lot?’ said Seawoll.

‘An associate,’ said Nightingale. ‘Not a practitioner.’

‘And Isaac Newton is significant to the Folly why?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

‘Because he founded it,’ said Nightingale.

Because, back in the go-ahead post-Renaissance pre-Enlightenment days of the seventeenth century there was no science or magic as such – it was all Natural Philosophy and people hadn’t quite got round to deciding which was which. Back then chemists hadn’t had that dangerously foreign ‘al’ removed and Sir Isaac Newton wanted all the answers to everything – how long the universe was going to last, the exact date of god’s creation, how to make the Philosopher’s Stone, and why do things that go up have to come back down again.

In those days the idea that large celestial bodies might influence the trajectory of other bodies without an actual material connection of some kind was the stuff of magic, not rationalist thought. Vast, invisible spheres of crystal – it was the only rational explanation. Next you’ll be claiming diseases aren’t caused by bad smells – a lavender nosegay, that’s your friend.

Sir Isaac Newton legendarily wrote the famous Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which gave us principles that a couple of hundred years later were good enough to land a man on the moon. Then he wrote the slightly less well known Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis, which codified the magical techniques that allow me to inconvenience paper targets and Nightingale to demolish small agricultural buildings.

‘There are suggestions that there might have been a Third Principia,’ said Nightingale. ‘This one dealing with alchemy.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ said Seawoll. ‘Lead into fucking gold?’

‘He was Master of the Royal Mint when he wrote it,’ said Nightingale. ‘He might have considered that a viable way of revaluing the currency.’

‘No wonder Keynes was a fan,’ said Stephanopoulos.

‘Quite,’ said Nightingale. ‘However, if Wild’s ledger does exist, and if it does contain details of Newton’s lost papers, then we have to acquire it.’

Seawoll narrowed his eyes.

‘Why’s that?’ he asked.

‘Because we are the rightful owners,’ said Nightingale. ‘And if it really does contain the secret of transmutation or, god forbid, of the philosopher’s stone – then it has to be kept out of the wrong hands.’

‘That’s as may be,’ said Seawoll. ‘You want Wild’s ledger. We need Reynard because he’s a material witness. What you do with him afterwards is your business. Can we agree to that?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Nightingale.

‘I don’t suppose we have a current address for Mr Fossman?’ said Seawoll.

I told him nothing more recent than five years old, and he nodded absently.

‘In that case I suggest we set up a meet as soon as poss, and arrest the little fucker before this case gets any more fucking complicated,’ he said.

The rule of thumb in this kind of negotiation is that the negotiator stays as junior as you can get – that way you have somewhere to escalate for extra leverage – so I made the call.

‘Are you ready to do a deal?’ asked Reynard.

‘I’m ready to talk,’ I said.

‘Do you know the Montreux Jazz Café in Harrods?’

‘Not really,’ I said.

‘Yeah, well, it’s a café in Harrods,’ said Reynard. ‘Meet me there at ten tomorrow morning. Just you, nobody else.’

I agreed and he hung up before I could wangle anything else out of him.

We spent a happy couple of hours that afternoon working through the logistics of the meet, after which I might have managed to slope off to see Bev that evening if Nightingale hadn’t reminded me that I owed him some practise and a translation of Pliny the Younger.

‘I don’t trust this situation,’ said Nightingale. ‘I want you to be sharp.’

Bollocks, I thought, or testiculi or possibly testiculōs if we were using the accusative.

Established in 1851, Harrods is the world’s largest family owned corner shop. Although I suspect it’s pretty unlikely that any of the Qatari Royal Family are doing a stint behind the counters. It covers twenty thousand square metres of some of the most expensive real estate in the world and, I couldn’t help but notice, was less than three hundred meters down the Brompton Road from our crime scene at One Hyde Park. Even at ten o’clock in the morning it was going to be full of members of the public. Rich, influential members of the public, many of them foreign, a lot of them with some level of diplomatic immunity.

‘What I’m saying here,’ Seawoll had said, ‘is try to limit the amount of damage you do to none fucking whatsoever.’

I don’t know where I got this reputation for property damage, I really don’t – it’s totally unfair.

Harrods has ten public ways in and out, not counting staff and goods entrances – providing a potential fugitive with a wide selection of rapid getaways at an affordable price. Inside, it was a warren of showrooms, staircases and escalators, making it a good place to meet if you’re up to no good, and in our estimation the only question was what kind of no good Reynard Fossman was up to.

I went in, as we had agreed in the planning, through the main entrance on Hans Crescent. The morning clientele was mostly well dressed white women with the occasional upmarket burka thrown in for variety.

Following the route we’d thrashed out the night before, I went straight up two sets of escalators – past zig-zag mirrors and wall-sized adverts for Dolce & Gabbana and Jimmy Choo’s Eau de Parfum – and a couple of big rooms full of expensive furniture. Most of which was cheaper and nicer than the stuff in One Hyde Park, but still a bit out of my price range. I’ve worked in retail, and I’ve got to say that the Harrod’s staff were all ridiculously attractive, well dressed and happy. Either the management were paying them way over the odds, or their HR department had been outsourced to Stepford, Connecticut.

A scary white waitress was waiting by the ‘Please Wait Here To Be Seated’ sign. Behind her was a blasphemously bad sculpture of Aretha Franklin that would have caused my father to have a word with the management.

I told her that I was meeting that guy over there and she waved me cheerfully past.

Inside were rough grey walls, interspersed with black and white tiles, stainless steel shelves and counters, with round PVC chairs at the tables. There were antique Revox reel-to-reel tape machines randomly placed on shelves. It really wasn’t authentic enough to be a Disney theme park version of a jazz café.

A pair of wide screen TVs mounted on the walls were showing clips from the Montreux Jazz Festival. They were playing Mélissa Laveaux doing a live set, so they couldn’t be all bad.

Reynard was the only customer, sitting at a six person table that gave him a view through the café to the corridor and gift wrap department opposite. He was wearing the same tweed jacket, only this time over a black T-shirt with MY SPIRIT ANIMAL IS A GOTH TEENAGER printed in white on the front. I couldn’t see a bag on the table or by his chair, but then we’d all thought it unlikely he’d bring the ledger with him.

He stood when he saw me and waved at a seat opposite. This left me, I noticed as I sat down, with my back to the entrance.

‘Where’s the Nightingale?’ he asked.

‘He’s working,’ I said. ‘Have you got the ledger with you?’

‘Now, that would be foolish of me, wouldn’t it?’

The waitress asked if I wanted to order anything.

‘Black Americano,’ I said and looked at Reynard. ‘You?’

‘I’m good,’ he said and watched the waitress’ bum all the way back to the counter. ‘A bit mature for my taste,’ he said.

‘We get it,’ I said. ‘You’re a class act.’

‘I am what I am,’ he said.

‘How much do you want?’

Reynard raised an eyebrow.

‘That’s your opening position?’ he asked. ‘Hardly a sound negotiating tactic.’

‘This isn’t a negotiation,’ I said. ‘I’m not a private individual or some covert spy or something. I’m police and you’re in possession of stolen material of considerable value which we want to return to its rightful owners – that being us.’

‘You have no evidence that it’s stolen,’ said Reynard.

‘No. But then you are what you are,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you? At the moment, you see, it would be more effort to arrest you, statement the information out of you, seize the ledger and then throw you in prison.’

‘Arrest me for what?’

‘There’s bound to be something,’ I said. ‘You and Christina were not being particularly law abiding, that’s for certain.’

But Reynard had started at Christina’s name and I really don’t think he heard the rest of the sentence at all.

‘That had nothing to do with me,’ he said.

‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, and I was just about to say something clever when a white woman sat down next to Reynard. She was dressed in a pastel yellow blazer over a white blouse and black leggings. Her face was very familiar.

‘Hey Peter,’ said Lesley May. ‘What’s up?’

Reynard had gone as pale as semi-skimmed milk – I swear his hands started shaking.

It was her old face, from before the Royal Opera House and Mr Punch.

‘So,’ she said. ‘You wearing a wire or not?

‘Hello, Lesley,’ I said – slightly louder than I meant to.

‘Well, that answers that question,’ she said. ‘I’ll bet you’re surprised to see me.’

Twenty seconds, I reckoned, that’s all I needed.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

Lesley smiled and I saw the skin of her face was smooth and clear, like that of a child.

‘Got my face fixed,’ she said.

‘So I see.’

Ten seconds.

‘You didn’t think it was possible,’ she said.

‘Obviously I was wrong,’ I said.

‘So the question is,’ said Lesley, ‘did Nightingale lie to you, or is he just ignorant?’

‘This is nothing to do with me,’ said Reynard and started to stand.

Lesley balled her fist and I felt the little flicker that warns you that a practitioner is summoning up a forma. If you want to do the counter spell, then you have to guess the forma and then cast faster. This is what Nightingale calls the lutte sans merci and surviving one requires sensitivity, foresight and lightning fast reflexes.

Or you can lean back in your chair, brace yourself against the wall, get both feet up against the table and shove with all your strength. The edge caught Lesley in the stomach and Reynard across the thighs. Lesley went with the blow – I saw her allow herself to be pushed backwards, finishing her spell as she tipped over. Not an easy thing to do, I can tell you. Reynard screamed with pain and then did a neat little standing jump that left him crouched on the table.

On the sound principle that whatever Lesley had cast I didn’t want to be in front of it, I threw myself diagonally across the table top and while I slid down it I conjured a couple of delayed action fireballs that I call, much to Nightingale’s annoyance, skinny grenades and lobbed them in the Lesley’s general direction. John Woo would have been proud.

I made a half-hearted grab for Reynard but he sort of bounded off the table, through the slot in the wall, and out into the corridor. I let him go – Lesley was my priority now. But before I could roll off the other side, the bloody table lurched and shot straight upwards. I flattened myself as the ceiling came rushing towards me, but there was a bright flash, like a professional standard flash gun, and the table lurched to the left and tipped me off.

I hit something with my shoulder – I think it was Aretha – and smacked face first onto the floor tiles. What with one thing and another, I didn’t think having a rest was a good idea, so I rolled in a random direction and scrambled to my feet. Just in time to see Lesley vault through the slot in the wall and tear after Reynard who was vanishing up a cross corridor marked HARRODS’ TECHNOLOGY. I went after them, but I had my shield up because I really didn’t think this was going to have a happy ending.

It might have been a Wednesday morning, but there were enough punters around to give a working copper conniptions. There are rules about putting the public in danger during a chase – the principle one of which is don’t put members of the public at risk.

‘Police,’ I shouted as a member of the public bounced off my shield. ‘Everybody out.’

Which had the effect of making some people stop, some people reach for their phones, and the rest to carry on shopping regardless.

I shouted again – which at least cleared enough of a hole for me to spot Lesley turning left into the next room. I followed and felt my shield ripple as I veered past a triple-screened games console with built-in racing car controls. There was a smell of burning plastic and I hoped it hadn’t been me.

Just ahead Lesley and Reynard were in a three-way struggle with a solidly built white man in a beige raincoat. He had an army surplus crew cut and narrow little eyes. He didn’t look like store security and I felt a flash of irritation because have-a-go heroes are all very well until they get themselves killed, and then guess who’s left explaining themselves to the subsequent inquiry.

At least this room was narrow, with Spyware counters on the right and Vodafone on the left – small enough that all the potential collateral had had the good sense to clear out.

I was less than two metres from the struggle when something hit me in the back and knocked me forward on my face. There was a sudden smell of candle wax and hyacinth and a rope of crimson smoke shot overhead and smacked Crew Cut in the face. As he reeled backwards, the smoke fluttered like silk in the wind before slapping Lesley in the chest hard enough to knock her backwards over a counter top. I winced as I heard glass break under her back and saw fashionably black spy gear scatter behind her.

Despite the blow Crew Cut hadn’t let go of Reynard and he quickly regained his balance, tightened his grip on the young man and started dragging him away.

I tried to scramble to my feet, but another blow on my back put me down. A second crimson rope rippled overhead like a vintage special effect from the 1980’s.

‘Is Nightingale doing that?’ yelled Lesley from somewhere to my right.

Hyacinth and candle-wax? I thought, not likely.

Nightingale should have arrived by now, though, and I suspected the delay was something to do with whoever was flinging ropes of magic smoke around. Still, I doubted he was going to be long.

‘Stay down,’ I shouted.

‘You first,’ she shouted back.

I rolled left through a gap in the Vodafone counter to see if I could avoid another smackdown and found myself face to face with a very well dressed but terrified Asian guy. I motioned frantically for him to stay down and he nodded.

The counter I was behind had a transparent top which gave me a chance to see out without getting my damn fool head blown off. The rope of crimson smoke had wrapped itself around Reynard’s neck and was dragging him back-up the aisle despite Crew Cut’s best efforts to pull him the other way. Even as I looked back to see if I could spot where the rope was coming from, a pulse of light raced up its length in a blaze of petrol bomb yellow, vaporising the crimson smoke as it went. It roared past me and then, as it reached Crew Cut and the struggling Reynard, the pulse slowed and dissipated the last of the smoke with a gentle pop, leaving the pair temporarily frozen – and staring in amazement.

Now, that was Nightingale.

Reynard recovered first, and with a snarl buried his teeth in Crew Cut’s neck. The man screamed and beat at Reynard’s head with his fists. Lesley hadn’t emerged from hiding yet. And she was still my priority, so stalemate suited me. Every second of status quo meant more members of the public evacuated, a tighter containment perimeter, and more chance that Nightingale was going to arrive to back me up. And if Reynard got a bit of a smacking in the meantime, I could live with that.

Unfortunately, this plan went to shit when Crew Cut fumbled inside his jacket, pulled out a compact semiautomatic pistol and bashed Reynard on the head with it.

From a policing point of view, guns are a pain. Once someone is known to be tooled up, your operational priorities are suddenly fucked up. It all becomes about managing whoever was stupid enough to pull a gun in central London and your number one priority is public safety, followed closely by officer safety and then, not so closely, by the safety of the moron with the gun. Any other operational considerations, such as arresting former colleagues, don’t enter into it.

‘Gun!’ I shouted as loud as I could.

Crew Cut whirled to point his gun in my direction in a professional, albeit one handed, firing stance. I crouched down and threw up my shield – but he didn’t fire. While he was aiming at me, Lesley launched herself out of her hiding place at him.

He was fast. Before Lesley was half-way to him he’d turned and fired – a flat loud popping sound – and then again and again. There was ripple in the air in front of Lesley’s chest and something small and fast whistled over my head.

He didn’t get in a fourth shot because Lesley swung at his wrist with what I recognised as a police issue extendable baton. There was a crack and the pistol fell out of his hand. He gasped at the pain and Lesley followed up with a sharp blow to the head then a third to his face – another crunch and a spray of blood from his mouth.

I used impello to flick the gun as far up the room as I could, and then I jumped up and yelled, ‘Armed police, stop fighting and drop your weapons.’

All three of them stopped and turned to look at me – and for a moment I thought they might actually comply, if only out of sheer incredulity. But then Reynard gave Crew Cut a swift knee in the bollocks, wriggled free and legged it.

Traditionally, the weapon of choice for a classically trained wizard is the fireball – I’m not kidding. And in some respects, from a policing point of view, it’s not a bad weapon. Being by definition a soft and low velocity projectile, you can loose them off in the knowledge that it’s not going to blast through your target, the wall behind them and the bus queue of blameless OAPs behind that. However, this means that – unless you’re Nightingale – the bloody things can be stopped by modern ballistic armour, my metvest and, in some cases, a thick woolly jumper. At the same time, they remain potentially lethal, which means you’ve got to be careful who you lob them at.

So I water bombed Lesley instead.

It’s a harder spell, third order, based on two formae – aqua, impello – and a couple of extras we call adjectivium which modify the way other formae work. The result generates a ball of water the size of a party balloon which, when properly applied to a suspect’s face, often causes them to cease and desist in their activities – whatever these might be. Fireballs are much simpler and easier to cast under pressure, but I’d been practising the water spell by playing dodgeball with one of Beverley’s younger sisters and, trust me, if you do that with a hyperactive nine year old river goddess then you pick up the skills fast.

Nightingale says that one of the prefects at his old school claimed there was a variation that created a ball of gin, but try as they might nobody ever found the spell or worked out how to recreate it.

‘And, as you can imagine,’ Nightingale told me, ‘a great deal of effort was expended in that direction by the sixth form.’

Water was fine for my purposes, and I’m sure Lesley appreciated the elegance of my approach when it smacked her in the face. She went down swearing and I ran forward, flicking out my baton as I closed the distance.

I didn’t make it because, when I was almost there, Lesley threw Crew Cut at me. It was impello, of course, but that didn’t make 140 kilos of bad suit any less painful when it sails through the air and hits you in the chest – especially when you also have a duty of care and have to catch the bastard. So, while I was putting Crew Cut in the recovery position, Lesley went haring after Reynard.

Not far away I heard shouting and the sound of things breaking and, because I’m police, that’s the direction I ran in.

Guleed met me in the next room, running in with David Carey and a bunch of uniforms. He peeled off to deal with a member of the public who’d obviously been knocked down.

Guleed pointed to a ramp.

‘That way,’ she shouted.

‘Unconscious suspect on the floor back there,’ I said to one of the uniforms. ‘White male, cheap suit. Non-life-threatening injuries. Had a firearm but now disarmed, check for other weapons, hold him for assault and check welfare.’ I told him he needed to find and secure the firearm so an AFO could bag it. He nodded and sensibly grabbed a mate before heading back the way I’d come.

Me and Guleed advanced cautiously up the ramp – there was a short corridor at the top with entrances to the public toilets.

‘They didn’t stop,’ said Guleed.

‘Where’s Nightingale?’ I asked.

‘Back at the café,’ she said. ‘Dealing with something Falcon.’

Presumably whoever had been throwing the crimson smoke around.

We navigated the corridor and looked out onto a long, wide room filled with flat screen televisions lined up like the suspiciously convenient cover in a third person shooter. It was empty of staff and customers and Guleed said that Stephanopoulos had moved her troops in from the other side as soon it all went pear-shaped.

‘We should have a security perimeter,’ said Guleed, which meant that Reynard and Lesley were somewhere in there amongst the Panasonics and Toshibas.

‘Was that really Lesley?’ asked Guleed.

‘Large as life,’ I said. ‘And twice as beautiful.’

‘How is that possible?’

‘You grab Reynard,’ I said. ‘I’ll grab Lesley and then we can ask her.’

Which is what we in the business call an operational plan.

‘Okay,’ said Guleed. ‘Slow and quiet, or fast and loud?’

‘Loud,’ I said.

So we marched out amongst the televisions bold as brass, although both of us had our batons resting on our shoulders and left arms extended in the recommended manner. Around us the big LCDs showed Jeremy Kyle getting self-righteous with Sharon and Darren, although a couple near the end of a row were showing Alpha and Omega 2. I couldn’t tell which was worse.

‘Lesley,’ I shouted. ‘You know how this works, you know you’ve lost your opportunity to escape, so you might as well put the fox down and show yourself.’

Guleed snorted quietly.

‘Come on, Lesley – do us a favour.’

A couple of uniforms appeared in the archway opposite, but Guleed signalled them to stay put. Others took up positions at the remaining exits. Near the centre of the room where the aisles from one exit to another formed a crossroad was an old fashioned jukebox, which I noticed wasn’t turned on. As we approached the centre, me and Guleed let the distance between us widen. I swear I could almost hear Lesley breathing.

In the corner to my left I noticed that one of the TVs was off. So was its power indicator and that of the Bluray player below it.

‘Hey, Peter,’ called Lesley from behind the TV. ‘Heads up.’

Something small, flat and metallic flew through the air to land where I’d have been standing if I hadn’t immediately jumped backwards. It was an iPhone, and from its screen came a little wisp of blue flame. I opened my mouth to shout ‘Get back!’ But of course by then it was too late.

The phone exploded in a most peculiar way.

I actually saw the pressure wave, a hemisphere of distorted air that expanded out in a lazy, unstoppable fashion. And, as it did, everything with a microprocessor blew out. And then the wave reached me and knocked me on my back.

There was a sensation like static electricity and the smell of ozone and the taste of lemons.

Fuck me, I thought, she’s weaponised her iPhone.

And then the lights went out.