Mercifully, a southbound train arrived within a minute. At Victoria he made his way through the homebound commuters and reached the racks of grey metal lockers, locating number 12 at the end nearest the platforms. Four minutes to seven.

As he fumbled with the key, he checked about him, but it was hopeless. Everyone looked suspicious. Scanning the station forecourt, he noticed more tiny black lenses peering down at him from the steel superstructure, more robot periscopes jutting from shadowed corners. Now that he thought about it, the city was filled with cameras. Traffic, security, safety. Who was watching?

The key turned smoothly, raising tumblers. Inside the locker was another envelope, identical to the first – nothing else.

He tried to tear it open, but his bitten nails would not catch under the flap. Slow down, he told himself, take it easy. You made it here in time. The station clock read 6:58 p.m. He managed to rip open the envelope and partially tore the letter inside. You've got about thirty seconds to memorise the letter before it starts falling apart.

There were two sheets of paper inside, folded in half. The first read:

Dear Vincent,

The ten members of the Inner Circle of the League of Prometheus have been allowed to set you one problem each.

Welcome to your starter challenge, posed by our youngest member, the Hon. Barnabus Hewlett. I trust you will find it easy enough to afford you some small enjoyment, and you are allowed an apéritif upon reaching its solution.

Good luck, and may the best man win.

In God And Honour,

– Sebastian

He turned to the second sheet of paper. At the top were a few neatly printed lines, three quotes, and beneath them, a piece of poetry. My God, he thought, I'll never be able to retain so much information before the paper starts to self-destruct. He hastily scanned the page.

The Challenge Of Outraged Society

'I don't want any music. My husband has threatened to kill me tonight.'

'She made one great mistake, possibly the greatest mistake a woman of the West can make. She married an Oriental.'

'A person who honestly believes that his life is in danger is entitled to kill his assailant if it is the only way he honestly and reasonably believes he can protect himself.'

'Mine are horrible, social ghosts -

Speeches and women and guests and hosts,

Weddings and morning calls and toasts,

In every bad variety:

Ghosts who hover about the grave

Of all that's manly, free and brave:

You'll find their names on the architrave

Of that charnel house, Society.'

Time Allocated: 1 Hour

There was nothing else.

He could smell the bitter chemicals rising from the pages. Clutching the envelope and its desiccating contents, he slammed the locker door shut and set off across the crowded concourse. His mind was swimming. He could not think lucidly, not in the way they expected him to. What if he did nothing? Would they really carry out their threats? He needed a place to sit, to clear his head.

He found an empty bench in a relatively quiet corner of the station and watched the commuters streaming past to their trains, their homes, their loved ones, oblivious to his ludicrous dilemma. They would think him deranged if he reached out to ask them for help. Everyone was guarded these days. It was absurd – how could he suddenly find himself so alone in such an immense city?

And that, Vince realised, was what Sebastian and the other members of the League had intended for him. They aimed to render him as helpless as if he had been stranded on a barren moor without a map. They planned to make an example of him, to show him up for what they felt he was, vulgar, uneducated, stupid, blind, paralysed.

Obviously, he had no choice but to thrash them. Working-class men had more logical minds, better intuition, firmer resolve, everyone knew that. Perhaps the news hadn't filtered through to Sebastian and his friends yet.

If only he believed it. Vince turned his attention to the second sheet of paper and reread the quotes, reminding himself that he was seeking a location somewhere within the city. Sebastian's personal note had already crumbled through his fingers, but the clue sheet appeared to have been treated with a milder solution. It was drying out and starting to crack, but at a much slower rate. He concentrated on the words.

'My husband has threatened to kill me…' The site of a female victim, then, something prescient she might have said, just prior to her husband attacking her, perhaps.

No 'music'. Were they in a public place? Not talking to her husband, but about him to another. A lover?

'She made one great mistake… She married an Oriental.' A piece of hindsight, this one, uttered by whom, a judge, a lawyer, a biographer?

'She married an Oriental.' The language was pompous. Old. Victorian, perhaps? It was impossible to tell.

'Entitled to kill…' This had to be advice from a judge, a bit of a lecture after the conclusion of a case. It was no good, though, he had nothing more. He turned to the poetry, not his strong point, to say the least. The verse had to be tied to the quotes, but how? The ghosts of society. Outraged society. Above him, the station announcements burbled incomprehensibly, blurring echoes. Indistinct people rushed past. A train was pulling out.

Could this female victim have been a lady of society? Speeches, weddings, hosts, toasts. She hadn't wanted any music. She was upset by her husband's threat. 'A person who honestly believes that his life is in danger is entitled to kill his assailant.' But it was a woman whose life had been in danger. So she hadn't been the victim, she had been the murderess, and she had been acquitted; she had honestly believed her life to be in danger. 'My husband has threatened to kill me…'

A society murder case, an act of violence that had possibly been committed in public. There had to be something more. Who had made the quotes, who had authored the poem? He started with the latter, speaking it aloud. An elderly woman standing nearby gave him a filthy stare and moved away.

It sounded like more of a song than a poem. A touch of iambic pentameter. There was an air of familiar jauntiness. Vince rose and crossed the concourse to the station bookshop, hoping to find something, anything that might point him in the right direction. He checked the time, 7:12 p.m.

He had no idea where to start in the small poetry section, so he turned to the crime books instead, and began checking the shelves.

True Crime and Criminals. Famous Cases of the Old Bailey… Great Crimes of the Twentieth Century.

He could hardly start buying books indiscriminately. He only had a few pounds in his pocket, and his current account was so empty that his cashcard would be no help, so he was forced to thumb through each volume looking for clues. A shop assistant with a face like an unpopular root vegetable stood watching with his arms folded, ready to weed out browsers. The shop was waiting to close. The Murder Club Guide to London. The Trials of Marshall Hall. The Encyclopaedia of Modern Murder… Ghosts of the City.

He had barely started thumbing through the indices when the assistant shuffled over to the entrance and pulled a steel shutter down with a bang.

It was impossible. He suddenly saw how difficult it would be uncovering information in the city after dark. There were no other bookstores likely to be open now, and most libraries would soon be closing their doors. One solution presented itself; he could gain access to the Internet. Sebastian had said nothing in the charter about that. He needed to find one of the cyber-cafés dotting the city like electronic beacons, and run some information searches. The man at the station information counter was mystified by his request, but the young girl refilling the brochure holders was not, and directed him to a street behind the coach station where a smart new cafeteria called Blutopia waited beneath a sign of flickering cobalt neon.