How would she feel if she knew he was watching her? Angry, of course. She would say he had no right to spy on her. He could well imagine the look of implacable reproach she would turn on him.

He would never forget her stinging words, or the force with which she had insisted upon them: ‘I can’t ever, ever love you!’

But in those words, in the utter denial of hope that they represented, hope had paradoxically been born. Until that moment he had never imagined that she could contemplate such a circumstance, even if only to dismiss it as an impossibility.

It was ridiculous, of course. A man like him, brutal and contaminated, a man whose business it was to delve into the darkest, vilest recesses of the soul, to dip his fingers into the filth of human psychology. A man besmeared in gore, who knew himself to be capable of far worse a crime than any committed by the villains he hunted down …

He was aware of figures moving between them, intermittently blocking her from his view. Clerks and secretaries, the civilian staff of the Metropolitan Police Force. Perhaps occasionally one of these busy people would stop and glance inquisitively at him, before following the direction of his stare and then, taking it all in, move on, perhaps with a sly smile of understanding.

At last she looked up and saw him. The colour rushed to her cheeks. Her eyes stood out in indignation.

He hastened to her desk.

‘Sir Edward asked to see me.’

‘What were you doing?’ Her tone was sharp and suspicious.

‘I wasn’t doing anything. Sir Edward asked to see me,’ he repeated pointlessly. ‘I wondered if he was free. His door is closed, I see.’

‘You were looking at his door? Is that it?’ Scepticism was etched in the curve of one eyebrow.

‘Y-yes.’ Quinn flashed a glance towards the door, as if to prove it. ‘Who is in with him? Is it … DCI Coddington?’

‘I am not obliged to tell you.’

‘But I will see them. When they come out.’

‘It is not DCI Coddington.’

‘But DCI Coddington has been to see him?’

‘If Sir Edward wishes you to know the answer to that question, then I am confident he will divulge it himself.’

Quinn nodded. ‘I wasn’t …’ He had intended to say, ‘I wasn’t spying on you.’ But, of course, the denial was a lie. ‘I wasn’t sure you had seen me.’ That was true, but meaningless.

She frowned in distaste, recoiling slightly from his suddenly intimate tone.

‘You looked so … busy.’ Not the word he had wanted to say. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you. I was hesitating because I thought my intrusion would be unwelcome.’

‘As you have pointed out, you have an appointment with Sir Edward. Therefore you have an excuse, I suppose.’

The door to Sir Edward’s office opened. So surprised was Quinn to see the tall, frock-coated gentleman who came out that he could not help saying his name: ‘Sir Michael Esslyn!’

Esslyn paused and contrived to look down the length of his patrician nose at Quinn.

Quinn held out his hand. ‘It’s Quinn. Detective Inspector Silas Quinn.’

Esslyn frowned as though the name meant nothing to him. He ignored the proffered hand.

‘I interviewed you in the course of a recent investigation. The case of the exsanguinated renters.’

Esslyn’s frown deepened. At last he shook his head, as if he was shaking off the memory of an unpleasant dream. He brushed past Quinn without a word, though his step quickened eloquently.

Quinn glanced at Miss Latterly. ‘He cannot have forgotten. It was only …’ But Quinn had no sense of how long ago it had been. A matter of days, or a lifetime. He could not say.

Miss Latterly had resumed her typing with the heavy, overdetermined energy that she always used when she knew she was being observed.

Quinn presumed he might go in now.

Sir Edward Henry, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had his head bowed over a file. Quinn recognized it as that he had just submitted on the House of Blackley murders.

‘Please be seated, Quinn.’ Sir Edward did not look up until he had finished reading Quinn’s report. Of course, Quinn understood that this was for effect. Sir Edward would have already acquainted himself with the contents of the file. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Sir?’

‘Coddington. You needn’t worry about him any more. I’ve had him transferred back to … wherever it was he came from.’

‘South Kensington, sir.’

‘If you say so.’ Sir Edward winced suddenly. The old wound troubling him, no doubt.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘What? Eh? Oh … Don’t thank me. The man was a bloody idiot.’

Quinn was taken aback by the force of Sir Edward’s language. It was more the commissioner’s style to indulge in a bland biblical homily than a profanity when moved.

For some reason, Quinn decided to supply the shortfall. ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’

‘Are you suggesting that I’m a bloody idiot too, Quinn?’

‘It’s from the Bible, sir.’

‘Is it, by Jove?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t blame you, if you did. I put him in charge, after all.’

‘I know you had your reasons, sir.’

Quinn kept his satisfaction under restraint. Victories were only ever temporary. Vindication, a provisional state. If it wasn’t Coddington, it would be someone else. There was always someone, or something, set against him, or to set himself against. ‘Was that Sir Michael Esslyn I saw leave your office, sir?’

‘What? Eh?’

‘Sir Michael Esslyn, sir. I saw him outside. The strange thing was he pretended not to know me.’

‘Know you? Why should he know you?’

‘He was involved in the renters case, sir, if you remember.’

‘That doesn’t mean he knows you.’

‘I interviewed him, sir. Several times.’

‘Dear God, Quinn. You presume to think that that entails a man like Sir Michael Esslyn’s knowing you? There is a vast, yawning gulf between you and him. A chasm of immeasurable expanse. If he appears to look at you from the other side of it, you must understand that what he is seeing is a tiny speck. I had not thought it would be necessary to explain such things to you, Quinn.’

‘I understand, sir.’

‘Of course, he is a horrid man. I do not approve of him. I suspect him of being a Satanist.’

‘I see, sir.’

‘Or at the very least, a pagan. But he is very important in the Home Office. He has the ear of the Home Secretary, you know.’

‘Yes, sir. I remember your mentioning it once before. May I take it, sir, that I have command of Special Crimes restored to me?’

‘I’m not putting anyone else in over you, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I have been thinking, sir. While Coddington was in charge, the rank of the commanding officer of the Special Crimes Department was Chief Inspector.’

‘What of it, Quinn?’

‘My own rank is Inspector, sir. I wonder if there isn’t an anomaly here.’

‘You’ve got the department back, Quinn. Don’t push it.’

‘Thank you, sir. And the Home Secretary? Can I count on his confidence?’

‘The Home Secretary is minded to let you continue. For the time being, at least.’

‘Do we have a new case, sir? Is that why Sir Michael was here?’

‘What my business was with Sir Michael Esslyn is none of your business, Quinn.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘There is no specific new case, Quinn. Though you and your men are to be given what I might call a watching brief.’

‘With regard to what, sir?’

‘I take it you read the newspapers?’

‘I try to be selective, sir, in those I look at.’

‘Tired of seeing yourself depicted as some kind of penny dreadful villain, eh?’

‘I rather think I am generally seen as the hero, not the villain, sir. Either way, my brush with the gutter press has taught me not to believe everything I read in the papers.’

‘You are wise not to. You may be aware that some of the papers have been trying to whip up anti-German sentiments for years now. In the past, we might have taken the threat of the Kaiser invading our shores with a pinch of salt. Well, now it seems that the Admiralty is taking it seriously. Spy fever is nothing new, of course. But something has changed.’