“Thank you, I thought I’d lost it.” She took back the bag and instinctively drew Ryan to her side. The park had emptied now, and the evening felt suddenly cooler.

“It looks very nice here, very safe, but you must still be careful,” he told her. “Thieves come over the border from Italy, and there are Gypsies. They will take anything, especially during a saint’s parade.”

“I’ll remember that-‘

“Johann. My name is Johann Bellocq.” His smile faded, and he turned, walking away as abruptly as he had appeared.

“Let’s go and eat.” She patted Ryan on the head, but looked back at Johann Bellocq as they crossed the deserted main road.

The sky above the unit glowed with an eerie sulphurous light. Behind the cardinal tiles of Mornington Crescent station, the detectives had arrived for the start of a dark, miserable week.

“We’re a public service; you can’t just shut us down willy-nilly,” complained Bryant, cracking his briar pipe down on the mantelpiece in an effort to unbung it.

“I’m not doing this out of caprice,” Land told him. “Your IT chap, Mr. Banbury, wants to upgrade the PCU’s computer system and link it to the Met’s area-investigation files. Apparently it’s not going to cost anything because he’s downloading some dubious piece of software to do so.” He eyed the mountainous stacks of books bending Bryant’s shelves. “It all sounds very dodgy, but I harbour a fantasy about you running a paper-free office.”

Bryant blew hard into his pipe bowl, scattering bits of burnt tobacco onto Land’s head. “Come off it, Raymondo, you know there’s no such thing. Be honest, you just fancy a few days off with your feet up. I need another decent case for my biography. Just think how disappointed my readers would be to find an entry saying February nineteenth, all murder investigations stopped due to Acting Head Raymond Land’s need for a lie-down.”

“That’s another thing I’ve been meaning to speak to you about,” said Land. “Your biography. I read your account of the business you’ve chosen to call Seventy-Seven Clocks-‘

“What were you doing reading my notes?” asked Bryant, appalled. “That’s a work in progress.”

“Too right it is. Murderous barbers and starving tigers? You’ve made most of it up. You can’t go around doing that.”

“I may have ameliorated some parts for dramatic effect,” Bryant admitted, “a bit of creative licence. It would have been a rather boring case history otherwise.”

“But you’re passing it off as fact, man! All right, it’s true that a painting at the National Gallery was vandalised, and that an upper-class family was ultimately to blame, but the whole thing reads like some cod-Victorian potboiler, and to paint yourself as the hero of the hour is an outrageous falsification. We’ll become a laughingstock if anyone reads about this. What were you thinking of?”

“The royalties, obviously. You really shouldn’t take these things so seriously. The public likes a good story.”

“That’s all very well, but such fevered imaginings could destroy the credibility of the unit,” snapped Land. “You’d be lost without the PCU. You’ve nowhere else to go.”

“I say, that’s a bit below the belt. Actually, I have got somewhere to go, and I’m thinking of taking John with me.” Removing a packet from his pocket, he stuffed his pipe with a mix of eucalyptus leaves, Old Navy Rough Cut Shag and something that looked like carpet fibres from an Indian restaurant before waving Land from his office. “Off you toddle, play some golf, enjoy yourself, the place won’t burn down without you.”

“It did before,” Land reminded him as the door was shut in his face.

Moments later, John May arrived, flicking off his elegant black raincoat and dropping into the opposite chair. “What did Land want?” he asked.

“Oh, some rot about shutting down the unit for computer work, I wasn’t really listening,” Bryant replied nonchalantly. “You know how he’s been ever since he found out about his wife having an affair with the ball-washer at his golf club.”

“I don’t think you should make so many off-colour jokes about him becoming a cuckold. You’re only getting away with it because he doesn’t know what it means.”

“That’s the beauty of the English language. One can wrap insults inside elegance, like popping anchovies into pastry. You’re right, I shouldn’t mock, but it is such fun. Are you feeling all right? You’re as pale as the moon. I think you need a bit of a holiday.” Bryant tried to contain a mischievous smile.

“Oh, no, not me, I’m happy here.” May usually felt much younger than his partner, but today he was tired and out of sorts. He had always prided himself on his ability to embrace change, and had at least retained a walking pace beside the growth of modern police technology, adopting new techniques as they arrived. Bryant, on the other hand, loitered several metres behind each development, and occasionally drifted off in the opposite direction. As a consequence, his knowledge of the Victorians was greater than that of the present Second Elizabethan era. He knew about Bazalgette and the development of drains, the last night of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and the cracking of Big Ben, the cholera epidemic of 1832, the fixing of the first London plaque (to Lord Byron, in 1867), the great globe of Leicester Square and the roaring lion that had once topped Northumberland House, but could not remember his computer password, the names of any present-day cabinet ministers or where he had left his dry cleaning.

“You haven’t had a holiday in years,” Bryant persisted. “Unless you count accompanying your ghastly sister and her husband to traction-engine rallies. Raymond seems intent on closing the unit down for a few days, and Janice can run a skeleton staff for us, so how would you like to come on a jaunt with me, all expenses paid?”

May regarded his notoriously cheap partner with suspicion. “What do you have in mind?” he asked. “I still have hideous memories of that clairvoyants’ dinner-dance in Walsall where all the toilets overflowed. They didn’t see that coming, did they?”

“This will be more fun, I promise. A trip to the country. It will do you good to breathe something you can’t see for a change. Down to the Devon coast.”

“You detest the countryside. And it’s February,” May reminded him. “It’ll be freezing, and there’s supposed to be bad weather on the way. What do you want to go there for?”

“The International Spiritualists’ Convention at Plymouth Civic Centre. It should be more fun than it sounds. There’ll be talks, dinners, and demonstrations, not to mention the odd punch-up when the neo-Wiccans get plastered on porter at the free bar and pick a fight with the Druids. We have trade stalls and parties, an awards ceremony, and we always put on a spectacular show for the closing night.”

“Next you’ll be trying to convince me that the people who attend aren’t utterly barking.”

“At least they’re never boring, and they’re from all walks of life. We get judges, shopkeepers, call girls, all sorts. I’m conducting a panel on the incorporation of spiritualism in investigative techniques.”

“For God’s sake don’t let Faraday or Kasavian find out about that,” warned May. He knew how eagerly the Home Office ministers were looking for reasons to shut the unit down. “How are you intending to get there? Your old Mini Cooper’s not up to the journey, for a start.”

“I’m taking down the stage props for the closing show, so I’m borrowing Alma’s van. She uses it to ferry the North London Evangelical Ladies’ Choir around, and seeing as most of them tip the scales at eighteen stone, it should be up to the job. Janice and Dan can keep an eye on things here, just to make sure that Land doesn’t get up to anything underhand. We’d only be gone for a couple of days, you know.” He attempted to look pathetic. “It’s a long journey for a lonely old man. I could really do with someone to share the driving, or at least handle the map-reading.”