The Hanging Tree

7 The Intrepid Fox

I arrived back at the Belgravia Outside Inquiry Office to find everyone else working the Hammersmith stabbing.

‘Poor sod was standing outside a pub having a drink,’ said Carey. ‘And a bunch of guys just stroll up and stab him.’

There was already a row of white faces pinned to the whiteboard because, while they’d been sensible enough to wear hoodies to mask their identities from the CCTV, somebody in the pub had recognised them.

‘Had it away with one of the suspects’ girlfriends,’ said Carey. ‘We’re not sure which of the suspects’ girlfriend she was and, get this, two of the other suspects are her brothers. If they’d been Muslim I’d have said this was an honour killing.’

The media always calls this sort of thing senseless, but the motive made sense – it was just stupid, is what it was.

Still, this was the kind of case that Seawoll liked — simple, straightforward and easy on the clear-up rate. They were going to go in and grab all six suspects the next morning in a series of raids. Carey had been given responsibility for one of them, which was pissing Guleed off no end, because she was stuck on my Falcon case. You can always tell when you’ve pissed Guleed off because of the bland look of polite interest on her face whenever you speak to her. This was why when she announced that she was going to head over to St Paul’s School for the effortlessly posh to put the frighteners on the sixth form, I decided to stay where I was and work my way through Operation Marigold’s action list just to see if anything popped out.

What popped out was a cross-reference from Bromley Crime Squad who had busted someone with a suitcase full of Magic Babar pills. Not just the same brand but, according to the lab report, from the same batch as those found at One Hyde Park.

So the next morning I actioned myself to take a little trip across the river.

Bromley nick is, like Belgravia, a redbrick 1990’s build resembling an out-of-town Morrisons that was repurposed at the last moment and fitted with offices and a custody suite. A middle-aged PC from the local Case Progression Unit met me in the reception and walked me into the interview room where Aiden Burghley, wannabe suburban drug dealer, was waiting with his solicitor.

Aiden was a young white man, about my age, but smaller with a soft bland face, brown hair and watery blue eyes. He looked like he should be selling insurance or houses rather than drugs, but according to his nominal a sad second from Warwick University had landed him back in his parents’ semi in Bromley. No record of a job but he did own an ancient Vauxhall Vectra, so I could see he might be desperate enough to turn to crime.

You can understand the temptation – you pop over on the ferry to Holland, pick up some pills, drive around, visit a dope café, go clubbing, hop back on the ferry. It’s pills, so the dogs don’t smell them. You’re not buying in huge bulk, so your shipment’s not going to show up on police intelligence. Shit, you’re practically at personal use levels anyway, and the chances of a random search picking on you at customs are thousands to one, really hundreds of thousands to one.

Had Aiden Burghley been sensible enough to pop the pills himself or just share them with his friends he’d have been alright, but no – he had to try to flog them to a pair of surprised off-duty female police officers at Glitrrz, a club just off Bromley High Street. After weighing up whether an easy collar would be worth the stick they’d get for frequenting a notorious trouble spot, they went for the collar and now Aiden had spent a night in the cells and was looking at a long list of charges with words like ‘intent’ and ‘supply’ in the title.

He had an equally young and fresh-faced solicitor from the local Legal Aid specialist firm at his side. You always have to be careful around legal aid solicitors because not only do they spend more time in police interview rooms than you do, they’re also usually in a really bad mood because their clients are idiots and because the government is always cutting the legal aid budget. This one was a white woman with slate-grey eyes which she narrowed at me when I introduced myself.

One way or another Aiden was going up the steps. But, as a young white middle class first offender, if he pleaded guilty there was a good chance he’d walk away without a prison sentence. My strategy was simple – I threatened to add him to the suspect pool in the death of Christina Chorley.

‘The pills that killed her came from the same batch as those you brought back from Holland,’ I said. ‘And that puts you in the frame for manslaughter—’

And that was as far as I got before the solicitor objected to the evidence that Aiden’s drugs had been the same drugs that allegedly may have caused the death of Christina Chorley. Thank god she didn’t have access to the PM report yet. Had she known about Christina’s pre-existing condition it might have been all over. I waited for her to wind down, suspended the interview and then asked the solicitor if I might have a word in private.

The solicitor, whose name was Patricia Polly – seriously, Patricia Polly – said she needed a cigarette anyway, so we repaired to the car park.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t want your boy for this, but it’s a high profile case and someone is going to get done for it. Even if I walk away now, any review team that comes in is just going come to the same conclusions I have.’

Which, while not an out and out lie, was probably at the far end of wishful thinking.

Ms Polly took a deep drag of her Silk Cut and nodded.

‘So what do you want?’ she asked.

‘I know he claims that he did the run for his own personal use and that he wouldn’t have sold any except he was unexpectedly skint,’ I said. ‘But I reckon he sold a big bag to somebody else – I just want to know who.’

‘I’m not going to have him admit to that,’ she said. ‘Even if it is true.’

Wait for it.

‘Unless there was a bit of mutual consideration.’

‘Why don’t you ask him in confidence if he can help,’ I said. ‘Because if there’s somebody else, not only will he be volunteering vital information but he’ll be making sure somebody else steps into the frame for the manslaughter.’

I could tell she was doubtful, but I reckoned she’d figure it was worth a punt.

I gave her my card and had time for a full English in the canteen before she called me back.

Apparently there’d been this posh girl.

‘Did she have a name?’ I asked – we were on the record because he was still under caution, and I might need the evidence for court. There’s no point knowing who done it if you can’t prove it.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Aiden.

I asked what she looked like.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Curly hair and . . .’ Aiden made chest expanding gestures with his hands. ‘You know.’

‘Black or white?’ I asked.

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe?’

‘Maybe tanned?’ said Aiden. ‘I really wasn’t looking at her face.’

I asked if he’d seen her car.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘BMW X5, the one with the three litre turbo diesel.’

‘What colour?’

‘Imperial blue.’

‘Imperial blue?’

‘That’s what that colour is called – Imperial Blue,’ said Aiden.

‘Can you remember what she was wearing?’

‘No, mate. Sorry.’

Which is a good demonstration of why eyewitnesses have all been a caution since Marc Anthony said ‘I dunno mate, they were all wearing togas.’

‘Did you notice the year on the plate?’ I asked.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It was a 63.’ But crucially he didn’t remember the area code or the rest of the index. Some things are more important to some people than they are to others. 63 meant the car was registered between September 2013 and February 2014 – which might narrow it down a bit.

I terminated the interview and gave him back to Bromley CID and told them what a good boy he’d been – for whatever good that might do him. Then I headed back across the river and settled back at my corner of the desk at Belgravia nick. Carey grumbled and shifted over, but he was too busy doing the metric ton of paperwork involved in organising a raid to chat. Guleed was out – presumably still terrorising the sixth form at St Paul’s.

As soon as Aiden Burghley had mentioned the blue BMW, there’d been a little tickle in my brain. And when I logged into HOLMES and a did a word search through the Marigold nominals there it was – a blue 63 reg BMW X5 registered to George Thames-McAllister. On the off-chance I ran an ANPR sweep on Bromley and there was the right BMW, tooling down the A21 towards the town centre and then back again. Exactly the right time window for Aiden Burghley to sell its occupant some MDMA.

I hesitated before I added this to HOLMES – I didn’t want to firm up the case against Lady Ty’s wayward daughter, but the whole point of a collation system is that you feed in information to collate. Still, with her mother’s influence putting the brakes on the investigation I figured that Olivia was safe for the moment. With a bit of luck that would give me time to sort things out using the time-honoured tradition of exploiting family connections.

In days of old, a stout yeoman would set out from Aldgate along the road to Colchester in the full knowledge that just a mile up the road was a small hamlet where he could stop for a pint and a cheeky pie. This rest stop was called Mile End from Le Mille End which is your Norman French for a hamlet a mile up the road. The road from Aldersgate was called Aldgatestrete and then, because that was considered too on the nose, the Mile End Road. It’s where young Richard II signed the peasants’ charter with his fingers crossed behind his back and the first ever V1 cruise missile to land in London hit. It’s also where Queen Mary University teaches Environmental Science, so it was there that I had lunch with Beverley Brook.

Now, just up the road are some of the best curry houses in London. But no. Bev, who’s gone all outdoorsy since Herefordshire, wanted to go picnic up on the Green Bridge. This is a foot and cycle bridge that crosses the Mile End Road linking the two halves of Mile End Park. Since the bridge was constructed this side of the year 2000 it has a ton of retail space built into its base and one of these places was called Rooster Piri Piri, where you can get a reasonably priced double chicken burger and chips. Even if me and Beverley both agreed that their extra hot Piri Piri sauce was a bit mild by our standards.

We found ourselves queuing behind a bunch of young men with matching beards and black framed Malcolm X glasses who were making a complicated bulk order. Their fathers might have been from Bangladesh or Pakistan, but their accents ranged from local London to Glasgow with, I noticed, a side trip to France on the way.

‘Engineering students,’ said Beverley as they argued about how to divide up the bill.

Once they’d finished constructing their order we got ours and took it up the steps to the bridge and then across to where there was a decent bench and, importantly, we couldn’t see the Grand Union Canal.

‘It’s bad manners for me to sit too close to the canal,’ said Beverley, ‘without asking Mrs Canal’s permission.’ Which Beverley reckoned was more trouble than it was worth, given that she didn’t think it was that scenic a canal.

‘There are swamps with a better flow rate than hers,’ said Beverley.

Now, I’ve met the Goddess of the Grand Union Canal. And she’s perfectly nice, you know, providing you bring her a banana – preferably free trade.

So once we’d stopped fighting over the remaining chips I asked Bev whether she could maybe see her way to facilitate an off the record meeting with her sister.

‘Can’t you just go around and talk to her?’ asked Beverley.

‘Even if I make an unofficial visit,’ I said, ‘she won’t talk to me without her brief present.’

If she’s sensible, I thought, which she is.

‘I am not getting involved in this,’ said Beverley.

‘I’m not asking you to get involved,’ I said.

‘Yes you are.’

‘Okay, yes I am.’

‘And I’m not going to get involved.’

‘Olivia’s your niece,’ I said. ‘And she’s sleepwalking her way into a serious drugs charge.’

‘And Tyburn is my sister,’ said Beverley. ‘My older sister, and she holds grudges forever. And I mean forever. Besides, it’ll never get to that – Tyburn will fix it.’

‘And how will she do that?’

‘If it comes to it you know she’s going to march to Fed HQ and tell your boss to lay off – who’s going to stop her?’

‘I’m going to stop her.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s my job – that’s what the Folly is about.’

‘No,’ said Beverley. ‘That’s what you’ve decided the Folly is about. I wonder if the Nightingale thinks the same as you do.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But that’s not the point.’

‘Really?’ asked Beverley. ‘You can’t let this case go – not even for a quiet life?’

There was a long pause while Beverley looked me right in the eye and I was suddenly worried that she was going to ask me to cease and desist as a personal favour to her. And if she did, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. But then she shook her head and waved her burger at me.

‘Alright, I’ll do it. But it’s going to cost you,’ she said.

‘What is it this time?’

‘Maksim’s putting in some baffles where I run across the common,’ she said. Maksim was the administrator and sole employee of the Beverley Brook Conservation Improvement Trust. He was also a terrifying former Russian mobster who’d come into Beverley’s ‘service’ via a complicated and morally ambiguous route. ‘He needs a hand.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘As long as you come and watch.’

Beverley grinned. ‘You know I like it when you do improvements,’ she said.

I know she liked to get me in the water with my clothes on – I blame Colin Firth for that.

I had a sudden brainwave while driving back west, so when I got to Belgravia I hunted down Guleed, who was typing up that morning’s statements from St Paul’s school for girls with rich parents. I showed her the picture I’d taken of the collage on Olivia’s wall, with the young curly haired woman who had cropped up so frequently.

‘Spot this one?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Guleed and checked her notebook. ‘Phoebe Beaumont-Jones – shared a couple of classes with your Olivia.’

I thought of the picture of them standing together in France, arms comfortably around each other’s waists.

‘Not best friends?’ I asked.

‘Nobody said anything,’ said Guleed. ‘Least of all Phoebe herself.’

‘They definitely look like friends in the picture,’ I said.

‘Do you think she was at the party?’ asked Guleed.

None of the witnesses had identified her, but if she was Olivia’s friend rather than theirs they might have overlooked her. Or were they scared of Olivia, or of Phoebe Beaumont-Jones?

You can’t go by appearances – I once helped put away a gang of steamers who’d been working Oxford Street at the behest of an OAP with a dodgy hip and pipe cleaner arms. They were so terrified of him that not one of the gang would grass him up. I asked one of them why – off the record – and he told me that the geezer had no off switch, and once he started in that was it. You were dead meat.

It was just possible that her fellow Paulinas feared to mention Phoebe. Was she the one who supplied the drugs?

I looked at Guleed, who was obviously thinking the same thing.

So we called up Bromley and sent them Phoebe’s picture to show to Aiden Burghley.

Less than an hour of paperwork later, Bromley called back and said that it was just possible that Phoebe might be the young woman he’d sold the drugs to – maybe. We passed Phoebe’s details on, but asked Bromley to let us know before they took any action.

‘Follow-up?’ asked Guleed, meaning let’s go find Phoebe and put the frighteners on her, on the off-chance she might cough right there and then. It’s always a good tactic – turn up like a horrible surprise. But since she was seventeen we’d have to faff about getting her a responsible adult and everything, and that would take the edge off.

‘What do you think?’ I asked.

Guleed bit her lip.

‘Let’s see if we can’t lean on Olivia a bit more first,’ she said. ‘If Phoebe was supplying the drugs, I wish we knew why Olivia is covering for her.’

‘Perhaps she doesn’t think there will be consequences,’ I said. ‘Maybe she thinks her mum’s going to get it sorted.’

Guleed sighed.

‘She’s a fool if she relies on that,’ she said.

‘Her mum seems to be doing quite a good job at the moment,’ I said.

‘When I was a little girl,’ said Guleed, ‘I lived in a great big house with marble floors and servants to clean them. I remember the marble floors because you could get a rug, do a run up and slide all the way down the hall and into the dining room. There was a garage with five cars including a beautiful bright green Mercedes and every morning my father would climb into the back of that Mercedes and be driven to work.’

Guleed tugged at her hijab, adjusting the fit slightly.

‘Then one morning my mother woke all us children up and bundled us into the back of that green Mercedes and my father drove us to the airport. The next day I woke up in a B&B off the Euston Road. There were seven of us in two rooms and the toilets smelled.’ She made a note in her daybook. ‘My father was somebody important right up to the day he was nobody at all,’ she said. ‘Power in the material world is fleeting.’

‘And yet you became a police officer,’ I said.

‘I said it was fleeting,’ said Guleed. ‘Not that it wasn’t important.’

‘So what did your dad do that was so important?’ I asked.

Guleed snapped her daybook shut. ‘Are we going to lean on Olivia or not?’

‘Just waiting on a location,’ I said, which was sort of true. ‘Where’s David?’

‘He’s out doing a recce on his target,’ said Guleed. ‘He managed to dig out floorplans on Zoopla, of all places, and now is checking to make sure he’ll have all the exits covered.’

‘Pays to be thorough,’ I said.

Guleed shrugged and I could see that she was going to push the Olivia issue again when I was saved by my phone ringing – it was Beverley.

‘You so owe me for this, babes,’ she said and gave me the details.

When she was finished I hung up and told Guleed. Who was not happy.

‘Just you?’ she said.

‘If you’re there, then it becomes sort of officially official,’ I said. ‘This might be our best chance to find out who supplied the drugs.’

‘And if it turns out to be Olivia Thames-MacAllister?’

‘Then at least we won’t be wasting our time looking for someone else.’

‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I’m sitting outside while you’re in there.’

So, back to Mayfair where the constant flow of money keeps the streets clean and free of unsightly poor people. It was just as well one of us was staying in the car, because we couldn’t find a legal parking space.

‘Be careful,’ said Guleed as I got out.

‘Hey, if I’m not back in an hour,’ I said, ‘call the President.’

Lady Ty met me at her front door and for once she wasn’t wearing a suit. Instead she wore a pair of jeans and a loose green Arran jumper. Her hair was wrapped in a faded green and gold African print scarf which meant that either she was between hair conditionings or she was reverting under stress – neither was a good omen.

Her gaze flicked over to Guleed and then back to me.

‘I see you’ve left the secret policeman’s daughter in the car,’ she said.

‘Ty,’ I said, ‘you’re better at sarcasm than I am – I concede. Whatever. Can we just get this done?’

The idea that I was more reluctant to meet up than she was threw her off long enough for me to get inside the house, and we were back in the kitchen where the wheels had come off the first time. Olivia was waiting for us in the same seat as before, but there was no caution this time, plus two or otherwise. This was off the books – I was not here, this never happened – the spice must flow.

Since she was sitting, I stayed standing – so did her mum.

‘We know about Phoebe,’ I said.

A little jerk of the head as Olivia tried to hide her reaction, not helped by having her mum ask, ‘What about Phoebe?’

I looked at Lady Ty, but made sure I could still see Olivia’s reaction.

‘Your husband George drives a blue BMW?’ I said and quoted the licence number.

‘What about it?’ asked Lady Ty who had probably been planning to hold my feet to the fire but now had something else to worry about – thank god.

‘Do you know its current whereabouts?’

‘George has a space at the car park at Marble Arch,’ she said. ‘He always leaves it there when he’s away working.’

‘A car matching its description was used to buy the drugs that killed Christina Chorley,’ I said.

‘That’s not possible,’ said Lady Ty and strode across the kitchen to where a surprisingly unbranded clutch bag was sitting on the counter beside the microwave. From it she pulled a set of keys and dangled them at me. ‘There are only two sets of keys,’ she said. ‘George has the others.’

‘Then it must have been you who drove down south to buy drugs,’ I said.

‘That’s absurd,’ she said. ‘You know that’s absurd.’

‘I have a dealer who can identify your car and I can prove that it was in the right place at the right time – I’ve got the CCTV,’ I said. Which was a total lie. At best there was a fifty-fifty chance that should I spend five days tracking down cameras I might find one that had recorded the event. ‘If it wasn’t you, who was it?’

‘I’ve told you,’ said Olivia from behind me. ‘It was me.’

‘Olivia can’t drive,’ said Lady Ty. ‘I offered to pay for lessons, but she can’t even be bothered to apply for a provisional licence.’

This I knew – just as I knew that Phoebe Beaumont-Jones had a brand spanking new driver’s licence, issued just a month previously. Obviously she was better motivated than our Olivia.

‘So it must be you,’ I said to Lady Ty, who raised an eyebrow in reply. I drew myself up and said in my most serious voice – ‘Cecelia Tyburn McAllister-Thames I—’ It’s a long name and I drew it out as much as I could, but you’ve got to wonder what might have happened had Olivia been made of sterner stuff.

‘Fine,’ said Olivia. ‘Fine, okay, I wasn’t alone.’

Lady Ty met my eyes before I turned to face her daughter, and her gaze was cool and ironic and terrifying.

‘Was it Phoebe?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Olivia.

‘Did she buy the drugs?’ I asked.

Olivia hesitated.

‘Did she?’ said her mother.

‘Yes.’

Lady Ty asked if buying the drugs had been Phoebe’s idea and, when Olivia hesitated again, asked the question again in a tone I recognised from my own mum. The one that says: Yes there’s going to be trouble, but that is as nothing to the trouble you are about to be in if you continue to cross me.

‘Yes,’ said Olivia. It had been Phoebe’s idea because Phoebe was fun and exciting and didn’t spend her whole life trying to conform to other people’s expectations. Phoebe was a rebel.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Lady Ty. ‘She’s a rebel, good for her. And you’re planning to go to prison on her behalf why?’

‘You forget I’ve seen you at work,’ said Olivia. ‘I knew you’d get me out of it.’

‘I understand that,’ said Lady Ty. ‘What I’m asking is why you’re even risking it for this girl. God knows I’ve got close friends, but I wouldn’t go to prison for them – not for a packet of dodgy E’s.’

I’ve seen enough of these rows to know that we were winding up to DEFCON 1 and that my window for getting any coherent information out of either of them was small.

‘Whose idea was it to go to the party at One Hyde Park?’ I asked.

Mother and daughter turned to look at me.

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ asked Olivia.

‘You said you weren’t friends with Christina, so was it Phoebe that suggested you go to the party?’

‘I don’t have to answer that,’ she said, but I was pretty certain she already had.

‘Why are you doing this?’ demanded Lady Ty, turning back to Olivia. ‘What could you possibly owe this . . . girl.’

‘I love her,’ said Olivia quietly.

‘What?’

‘She’s my girlfriend,’ she said and then, to clear up any semantic confusion, ‘My lover,’ and then, because her mum was still staring at her with a stunned expression on her face, ‘we have sex, we’re lesbians, queer, dykes, we get out of the left side of the bed, we dance the face fanny fandango—’

‘All right,’ said Lady Ty. ‘I get it – you’re a lesbian.’

By this point I was eager to emulate Guleed and merge unobtrusively with the imitation French farmhouse fitted cupboard and counter unit behind me.

Lady Ty took a deep breath.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Since when?’

‘Since about I was eleven.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’ Lady Ty turned to glare at me. ‘Does he know?’

‘Why the fuck would he know?’ asked Olivia.

‘Why the fuck don’t I know?’ said Lady Ty.

‘Because I thought you might react like this,’ said Olivia and, when her mum continued to just stare at her dazedly, continued, ‘Aunty Fleet said I should tell you.’

‘Fleet knows?’ said Lady Ty. ‘Of course Fleet knows! Why am I not surprised?’

‘I had to tell someone,’ said Olivia and then stopped mid-sentence to stare at me. Her mum turned to face me as well.

‘You’ve got what you wanted,’ she said in a strangely distant tone. ‘Now piss off.’

And off I pissed.

I found Guleed still in the car reading something off her phone. She’d taken the opportunity to change her hijab, the new one being electric blue with silver and black details. Hijabs, Guleed once told me, were like T-shirts – you could choose ones that uniquely expressed your personality. But, unlike a T-shirt, you could wear them with the sort of conservative suit that was de rigueur for serving police officers.

‘Do you get the impression that this Phoebe is more involved with the dead girl and Reynard than Tyburn’s daughter is?’ asked Guleed, once I’d filled her in.

‘Just a bit,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to ask.’

We were already heading for Phoebe Beaumont-Jones’ address in St Johns Wood. She lived just west of Primrose Hill, part of that band of posh that runs down from Hampstead Hill in the north to Mayfair in the south. Along the line, I couldn’t help notice, of the hidden river Tyburn. My dad says that when he was younger these areas used to have all sorts of people, but the artists, musicians and other undesirables had been leached out by London’s continuous house price boom.

I was pretty certain that, ten seconds after I’d left her house, Olivia would have phoned or texted Phoebe to let her know we were on our way, and we needed to at least have the house under surveillance in case she tried to leg it.

But before we got there Nightingale called and said that he and Lady Helena had found Reynard Fossman.

‘Where is he?’ I asked.

‘He’s gone to ground in Archway – at the Intrepid Fox.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Nightingale, ‘he felt that its very obviousness would be deception enough.’

Obviously not very experienced with the police then – we like obvious. Obvious is our middle name.

Since this was going to be an all-Falcon, plus ambiguous auxiliaries, operation Nightingale needed me immediately. Guleed promised she’d sit on Phoebe’s house until I had a chance to get back.

‘It’s all go in the Isaacs, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Where’d you get that name from?’ I asked.

‘Isn’t that what the Folly is called?’ said Guleed. ‘I’m sure I heard that somewhere.’

‘You’ve been talking to Bev, haven’t you?’

‘That would be telling,’ she said. So, yeah, she’d been talking to Bev.

God, I hoped it was Bev. Because if it was someone else—

Guleed dropped me off at Warren Street so I could get the tube to Archway.

When I was a kid, the Intrepid Fox was called the Archway Tavern, a notorious pub that stood at the centre of the Archway circulatory system and was definitely not a place where a well brought up Kentish Town boy would go drinking. The original Intrepid Fox was a famous metal pub stroke music venue which was driven out of Soho as an early casualty of the blandification of the West End. The venue moved briefly to St Giles and then to the unlamented Tavern and proceeded to paint the inside and outside as black as a teenager’s bedroom and stuck a ton of Goth iconography on the walls in the hope that Marilyn Manson would pop round for a pint. It actually closed down not long after we raided it, but just for once I can say with a clear conscience, it wasn’t my fault.

Archway is where the post-war dream of the urban motorway died in the teeth of local opposition and the inability of the designers to answer basic traffic management questions. Thus the A1 remained unwidened and what was then the Archway Tavern stood proudly like a combination tank trap and brick shithouse in the way of progress. Famously, the planning inquiry got so unruly that the Planning Inspector fled through a fire escape to escape the protestors.

I’ve often wondered if such ‘awkward’ spots in London are somehow sacred to Mr Punch – the spirit of riot and rebellion – and maybe that was why I thought I heard him laughing the afternoon we nicked Reynard the Fox.

Or it might have been carbon monoxide poisoning because me and Caroline were stuck on a strip of pavement thirty centimetres wide with nothing but a safety barrier between us and three lanes of congestion. We were there because this was where the Intrepid Fox had its back door, and where we expected Reynard to make his egress, at some speed, about two minutes after Nightingale and Lady Helena went in the front.

‘Whatever you do,’ I told Caroline, ‘don’t put your hands on him – if you physically touch him it gets legally complicated. If you think he’s going to get away see if you can trip him up with your magic rope trick and I’ll go sit on him.’

‘Do you like being a policeman?’ asked Caroline.

‘Love it,’ I said. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You’re a bright guy – it just seems like a waste.’

‘You think I should be a stockbroker instead,’ I said. ‘Or a celebrity chef or something constructive like that?’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’re an idealist.’

I asked Caroline what she planned to do with her skills, then.

‘I’m going to teach myself to fly,’ she said.

‘With magic?’

‘Of course with magic,’ said Caroline. ‘I already have a pilot’s licence.’

‘And when you learn to fly,’ I said, ‘what are you going to do with that?’

‘What am I going to do,’ said Caroline, ‘is I’m going to fly.’

I felt rather than heard a thump from inside the Intrepid Fox and caught the scent of candlewax.

‘That was Mum,’ said Caroline.

I motioned her to stand to one side of the doorway while I took the other.

‘It pays to be careful,’ I said.

There was the distant crash of breaking glass that was definitely not vestigium and then a series of high pitched barks.

‘Reynard?’ said Caroline.

I shrugged.

There was a sound like somebody running the tape of a Michael Bay action sequence backwards and something thumped into the door with enough force to make the frame rattle.

‘Nightingale,’ I said.

Then it went suspiciously quiet and we both tensed, and then forced ourselves to take deep breaths to clear our minds. Nothing fancy, I thought. Water balloon in the face and then knock him back into the arms of Nightingale, who would likely be just behind.

We waited what seemed like a long time while the congestion roared past and the carbon monoxide infiltrated our red blood cells – then the door opened and Nightingale stuck his head out.

‘You can come in now,’ he said. ‘We’ve got him.’

Reynard was not a happy fox as we manhandled him through the gloomy halls of Gothdom and out the front door to where Nightingale had left the blue Asbo, the Jag being a bit conspicuous, and plonked him in the back. Then, once he was sure Reynard was safely hand-cuffed, Nightingale cautioned him – using the proper modern caution, I noted.

To give him his due, Reynard looked like he was going to go for defiance – before suddenly deflating and dropping his chin onto his chest.

‘So where you taking him?’ I asked – while technically the Folly is a nick, it bears the same relationship to basic human rights legislation as Camp X-Ray.

‘Belgravia,’ said Nightingale and, smiling, held up an honest to god sky blue Metropolitan Police issue Evidence & Actions Book and flipped it open to the PERSONS CONCERNED/ARRESTED page to show me where Reynard Fossman’s name had been filled in in nice clear capitals.

I wondered what Reynard was going to ask to put in the self-defined ethnicity slot – there wasn’t enough room for ‘anthropomorphic fairy tale animal’.

‘Stephanopoulos said she wanted to be present for the interview,’ said Nightingale.

I glanced over to where Lady Helena and Caroline were standing, just within not-too-obvious eavesdropping distance.

‘And our friends?’

‘They’re waiting for Harold, who’s making haste from Oxford even as we speak,’ said Nightingale.

‘So you found it?’ I asked. If Harold Postmartin was abandoning his Oxford comforts it could only be for The Third Principia.

‘We’ve found something that might be it,’ he said. ‘With luck Harold can verify it.’

‘You seem to have everything sorted,’ I said.

‘You don’t need to sound quite so disappointed,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’ve always been a quick study, Peter. But if you wish to keep an eye on my progress you’re welcome to come along.’

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I promised Guleed I’d be back before dinner.’ I explained where we were on Phoebe Beaumont-Jones and her upcoming involuntary stint helping the police with their inquiries.

‘In that case,’ said Nightingale, ‘would you like any assistance with that?’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I think we can handle it.’

Famous last words.