Amongst Our Weapons

2: Scalpel

If you’re dead, in England and Wales you belong to the local coroner. Invested with powers that predate the Magna Carta, they’re the ones that are charged with finding out what exactly did you in. Originally this was to determine whether the Crown had a right to hoover up your estate – royalty always being short of cash in those days. Nowadays, their job is to separate the accidents and illnesses from the acts of malice or despair. A combination lawyer and doctor, the job is a West African parent’s wet dream, and it amazes me my aunties never bring it up when discussing their plans for their kids.

My mum was different – she would have settled for jazz musician.

So, anyway, the coroner decides when, where and under whose scalpel you get unzipped. Which is why we let Thomas Nightingale, gentlemen wizard, war hero and posher than an afternoon tea at the Savoy, do the negotiating. He has an arrangement with the Westminster coroner and, as a result, Dr Abdul Haqq Walid and, more importantly, his better-qualified assistant, Dr Jennifer Vaughan, get first dibs on potential Falcon cases.

In addition, the Westminster coroner, who obviously has a thing for the macabre, has an agreement with the other London coroners that she, the coroner, gets first dibs on any Falcon cases that would normally fall outside her jurisdiction. Her colleagues are usually happy to surrender what often proves to be a complicated and frustrating case.

There are several ways into the Iain West Forensic Suite, and while our victim went in feet first via the loading bay, Guleed, Danni and me – after stopping off at Joe’s café round the corner for refs – went in via the back and trooped up the stairs to the observation room. This looks like every other institutional meeting room built since the 1990s, with magnolia walls and a genuine wood-effect conference table, except for the big flat TV screen upon which is broadcast a live feed from the lab below. There’s a little joystick thing so you can move the camera around, but if you wiggle it too much Dr Vaughan starts making sarcastic comments.

You are not allowed to record anything off the TV, on pain of the coroner’s displeasure. And given that she’s actually a judge, as well as everything else, that displeasure can be manifested in many legally prolonged ways.

Still, we were perfectly happy to sit upstairs drinking our coffees and working our way through our baguettes while watching Dr Vaughan do her work at one remove.

I should have known it wouldn’t last.

About half an hour in, Nightingale stepped away from the table and spoke in a voice loud enough that he could be sure it was picked up by the CCTV’s mic.

‘Peter, I’d like you and Danni to come down and see this directly.’

Danni pulled a face, but Nightingale wouldn’t have called us down if it wasn’t important.

‘Can I have your doughnut?’ asked Guleed as I quickly finished up my coffee.

‘No,’ I said and dropped it into my bag.

‘What does he want us to see?’ asked Danni as we changed into our PPE.

The big hole in the victim’s chest where his heart should be.

Cleaned up, I could see that it was the size and depth of my fist and smashed right though the ribcage. White shards of bone poked through red and grey tissue. No, not smashed … because the ends of the bone looked sheared rather than broken, and the sides of the wound cavity were horribly regular. It looked as if someone had cut out the man’s heart with an enormous ice cream scoop.

‘What the fuck,’ said Danni when she’d had a look, ‘does that?’

‘Nothing, in my experience,’ said Nightingale. ‘It would be difficult for a practitioner to cast a spell that would so overwhelm the human body’s defences that you could excise a portion of a victim’s chest.’

‘What defences?’ asked Danni, who’d been due to do that particular class next Friday. Part of the Identifying Falcon Incidents Unit III: Physical Injury. I’d been planning to finish writing it Thursday night – honest.

Still, nothing beats on-the-job training.

‘It’s hard to affect the human body directly,’ I said. ‘Anything with a central nervous system seems to generate a sort of anti-magic shield. You can knock people down or throw things at them, but you can’t reach inside with magic and mess with their guts.’

‘That’s a relief,’ said Danni.

‘At least not this crudely,’ said Nightingale, gesturing at the horrible gaping wound.

‘It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view,’ said Dr Walid. ‘Any species that couldn’t resist magic would be at a survival disadvantage over the long run.’

Danni shrugged.

‘But obviously,’ she said, ‘you can mess with someone’s guts.’

‘We’re sure there wasn’t some weapon involved?’ I asked – slightly desperately.

‘We did find a foreign object in the wound track,’ said Dr Walid.

He produced a stainless-steel specimen tray. On it rested something that looked like a short ceramic tube, just wide enough that I could get my little finger inside. It was an iridescent blue-grey colour, and one end had clearly snapped off leaving irregular shards, but the other looked like it had been fashioned into a hollow point, like that of a bamboo spear.

I assumed that it was this, rather than the hole in the chest, that Nightingale wanted me to sense.

‘Shall I?’ I asked, and extended my hand towards the tray.

Nightingale nodded and I let my gloved fingertips rest on the tube. Even through the nitrile the surface felt rough and gritty. At first I thought it was as devoid of vestigia as the empty space back at the Silver Vaults. But then, like a coin at the bottom of a well, I felt it.

I stood back and let Danni have a go.

‘Nothing,’ she said after touching the tube. ‘The same nothing we felt at the scene.’ Despite the mask and safety goggles, I could see her frowning. ‘No, wait – there’s something very faint, like a sort of light or a musical note.’

I looked over at Nightingale, who was nodding.

When you train someone, I thought, you don’t muck about.

A light like what you get when you hit your head, Phillip Arnold had said.

‘I believe the object is a piece of worked fulgurite,’ said Dr Walid. ‘Otherwise known as lightning glass.’

Which happened when lightning struck sand and fused it into a glass tube. Although, Dr Walid pointed out, if it was the same then the exterior had been smoothed or polished in some fashion.

‘I’ve heard of something like this,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I can’t remember where. I’ll need to check the libraries at the Folly.’

Guleed was waiting for us in the changing room.

‘We’ve found the ex-wife,’ she said.

Danni was due a training session with Nightingale back at the Folly so, after clearing it with Stephanopoulos, me and Guleed headed over to Richmond to have a chat. While me and Danni had been fondling lightning glass, Stephanopoulos had persuaded Samuel Arnold & Co to access their sales records and this got us an address.

‘She only came in last week,’ said Guleed, as we walked out to the nasty Hyundai she’d snagged from the MIT pool. ‘And she didn’t sell any rings, just some antique candelabras.’

It had started to rain as we negotiated the traffic on the Brompton Road. Shoppers and tourists were hunched under umbrellas, heads down and walking quickly. As we passed it, I saw that the Harrods windows were tastefully minimalist displays of bicycles and dummies dressed in what looked like 1920s flapper dresses.

I wondered if they’d fixed the consumer electronics hall. It had been over a year, and the management hadn’t sued the Met yet, so I figured the damage must have been covered by their insurance. We never had figured out how Lesley May had rigged her iPhone to create the magical explosion which sanded every upmarket plasma screen TV and ruinously expensive Bang & Olufsen entertainment centre within twenty metres.

That had been easily as powerful as whatever had knocked out the CCTV in the Silver Vaults, but hadn’t been nearly so clean.

‘I wonder where she is?’ said Guleed, and I knew she was thinking about Lesley, too.

‘Somewhere without an extradition treaty,’ I said. ‘Probably with better weather.’

By the time we’d crossed the Chiswick Bridge, the inside inquiry offices had texted us some of the results of their integrated intelligence platform (IIP) check. I summarised for Guleed as we picked our way through the leafy backstreets of Richmond looking for the address.

Her maiden name had been Althea Emma Synon, born 1984, married one David Moore at Camden Town Hall in August 2005.

‘Aged all of twenty-one,’ said Guleed. ‘How old was he?’

According to his side of the marriage certificate, David Moore had been forty-four, having been born in Handbridge, Chester, wherever that was, went to Manchester University and described himself on his social media as a social entrepreneur, whatever that was.

‘Professional freelance charity worker,’ said Guleed.

‘Does that make us Social Cohesion Entrepreneurs?’ I asked.

‘Depends on the shout,’ said Guleed. ‘Doesn’t it?’

Althea Emma Moore, née Synon, lived in the basement flat of a semi-detached Victorian villa on Onslow Road, whose owners, like most of the local residents, had concreted over the front garden the better to create off-road parking for their 4 × 4. Guleed mercifully found a space one house down and we parked up while the inside inquiry office finished texting us the remains of the IIP report.

We’d only been there for five minutes when an IRV pulled up beside us – which was a record even for me and Guleed. Now, personally, I just flash my warrant card, give a ‘we’re all comrades together’ grin, and let them drive on. But Guleed always feels the need to make a production out of it. I reckon it’s because she’s a sergeant and feels beholden to set an example.

She was thwarted this time because, before the PC on the passenger side got a chance to ask Guleed why she was loitering while wearing a hijab in a built-up area, the driver leant forward to get a look at us and recognised me.

‘Is that you, Peter?’ she said. ‘You on a job?’

Her name was, I kid you not, Tiffany Walvoord, and she had been part of the emergency response team that helped extricate me from that unfortunate business in Kew.

‘Don’t worry, Tiff,’ I said. ‘Just a notification and statement.’

‘Promise?’ said Tiffany.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘If it gets interesting, do you want me to call you?’

‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘I want you to wait half an hour until I’m off shift.’

I said I’d see what I could do, and Tiffany drove off. Which was a lucky escape for her mate.

‘You’re far too easy about this sort of thing,’ said Guleed, but she left it there while we pieced together Althea Moore’s life from the random driftwood of her electronic presence. Once we thought we had enough for an interview strategy, we climbed out of the Hyundai and headed for the steps down to the basement.

As we did, I caught site of a pale face in a first-floor window of a neighbouring house. This was probably the person who’d reported our presence earlier, but they pulled back before I could get a good look.

Because it was a Victorian town house it had a half-basement, which meant that the original denizens, usually servants, could have a bit of a view. Although, in this modern enlightened age, that view was of the recycling bins and the rear end of a Toyota Land Cruiser. It also meant that the occupant got a good view of us clambering down the narrow tradesman’s steps to the front door, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when it was opened as soon as we arrived.

‘Have you heard the good news about Jesus?’ she asked.

She was a tall, hippy white woman in a green tracksuit bottom and black T-shirt with an anthropomorphised half-peeled banana in dark glasses on the front. Her blonde hair was half hidden under a red and white polka-dot scarf. She had wide-set blue eyes and a big, patently fraudulent, smile. We both recognised her from her social media pictures as Althea Moore.

‘No,’ I said as I showed her my warrant card. ‘I am the servant of a higher power.’

‘You’re police?’ asked Althea cautiously.

‘Yes,’ said Guleed, and she gave me a dirty look. ‘I’m DS Guleed. I work at Belgravia Police Station, and this is DC Grant. Are you Althea Moore?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry, but I thought you were Mormons.’

‘May we come in?’ said Guleed. ‘I’m afraid we have some bad news.’

Althea remained steadfastly in the doorway and narrowed her eyes.

‘What kind of bad news?’

‘The kind you might want to sit down for,’ said Guleed.

‘Oh dear,’ said Althea, and she turned and led us inside.

The basement flat was a bog-standard London conversion, with what had once been the kitchen and the servants’ quarters knocked through into two rooms separated by a wooden shutter screen, kitchenette in one corner, bathroom and toilet in an extension out into the back area.

‘Watch out for the carpet,’ said Althea.

The non-kitchen area had been carpeted at some point in the Neolithic, but it was impossible to tell what colour the shag pile was because it was smothered in foam. A three-piece suite had been piled up against the wall with a coffee table, TV, cheap turntable, amp and speakers piled on top.

Guleed was about to say that Althea might want to sit down, but it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen in the front room.

‘Yeah,’ said Althea, looking around. ‘You’ve kind of caught me doing a bit of a spring clean.’

And not a bad job for an amateur, I thought, although she needed to get into the corners with a J-cloth on a stick. We ended up in the bedroom with Althea perched on a bare and, I guessed, recently flipped-over mattress. She had to move a roughly folded pile of freshly laundered bedding and a plastic bag full of jumble to make enough room. Me and Guleed tried to stand back so we wouldn’t loom. As police, we have nothing against looming in principle. But you’re not supposed to do it during a notification.

‘I’m afraid we have some bad news,’ said Guleed again – just to get us back on track.

‘Oh,’ said Althea, and because she’d watched the same police dramas as everyone else, ‘Who?’

‘David Moore,’ said Guleed. ‘Who we believe is your former husband.’

Althea stared up at Guleed and repeated, ‘Oh.’

You never know how someone is going to react to a notification, so we gave her about a minute of staring blankly before trying to move the conversation on.

‘I’m afraid he was found dead this morning at the London Silver Vaults,’ said Guleed.

We were watching carefully for a reaction, but not a sausage.

Althea shook her head as if trying to clear her thoughts.

‘How?’ she asked.

‘He was murdered,’ I said.

I’ve done my share of notifications. I’ve been shouted at, cried on, and on one memorable time a relative broke into song. But this was the flattest response I’d ever seen. I wasn’t sure the news had sunk in yet.

Or, said the little policeman in my head, she’s trying to work out what lies to tell.

Althea told us that they’d separated ten years ago, and got divorced largely by post. There weren’t any kids or property worth talking about, so nothing to fight over.

‘He went his way and I went mine,’ she said in the same tone she’d described moving into the basement flat – which she’d inherited from her grandmother.

It wasn’t until Guleed asked her when she’d last seen her ex-husband that Althea reacted. Not much of a reaction, just a bit of a start and quick look around as if checking to see if we were being overheard.

‘He came over last night,’ she said.

Given that she hadn’t seen him for years, it had been a bit of a surprise to find him ringing her doorbell – Althea hadn’t even been sure that he had her address.

‘How did he seem?’ asked Guleed.

‘What?’

‘Was he upset, happy, calm?’ said Guleed. ‘What was his mood?’

‘He started calm,’ said Althea. ‘At least, calm for David, which was never very calm. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean he was neurotic, but he always had plenty of spare energy. A sort of boundless enthusiasm. It was one of the things I fell in love with.’

Her face had grown more animated as she spoke and I saw the moment when the reality of David Moore’s death hit. The mouth pinched in and the eyes squinted and moistened. It looked genuine, but I’ve been wrong before.

We gave her a moment and then Guleed asked a few routine questions to calm her down: When did he arrive? When did he leave? Do you know whether he drove or came by foot?

Once we had those, she asked Althea if she knew why David had chosen to visit her that evening.

‘He wanted his silver back,’ she said, and her lips twisted. ‘Not that he said that straight away. No, he was all, “I’ve been thinking of you and I was in the neighbourhood, why don’t we have a drink and we can catch up.” And I fell for it because I’m stupid that way.’

They’d had a glass of wine – he’d brought a bottle with him – and he had sat on the sofa and leant forwards and asked Althea where his silver was.

‘Just like that, he looked me in the eye and said, “What have you done with my silver?”’

‘And what did you say?’ asked Guleed.

‘I told him I’d sold it,’ said Althea. ‘Said I’d taken it down the Silver Vaults and cashed it in years ago.’

‘Is that true?’ asked Guleed. ‘Because according to the shop, you were in last week.’

‘I wanted him to think he was ancient history,’ said Althea.

‘How did you know about the Silver Vaults?’ I asked.

‘I’d been there loads of times,’ she said.

Back in the good old days of the 2000s, when she’d being working as an intern for a PR firm.

‘A friend of Dad’s got me the gig,’ she said.

She’d been sent there with one of the partners to vacuum up a tonne of antique silver as gifts for valued clients. It had been fun randomly selecting things that took her fancy.

‘I remember one time we gave everybody silver animals – foxes, owls, bears, tigers. It was like being a kid again.’

‘How did he take the news?’ asked Guleed. ‘Was he angry?’

‘No,’ said Althea. ‘Not really. He sort of … I don’t know, crumpled … Like his face crumpled and he started to cry.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Guleed.

‘I moved away,’ said Althea and shrugged. ‘I thought he was angling for a pity fuck and I didn’t want anything to do with that.’

Guleed asked what happened next and Althea said that David had asked whether she’d sold the ring as well.

‘And I told him I had,’ she said.

And David Moore had looked at her for a long minute before standing up and leaving the flat.

‘He was walking strangely,’ said Althea. ‘As if he was drunk. But we hadn’t even finished the wine. I made sure to bolt the door after he’d gone.’

Guleed glanced at me and narrowed her eyes, which meant I was playing, if not bad cop exactly, then definitely insensitive male cop with a side order of plodding.

‘But you didn’t sell the ring, did you?’ I said, and stepped forward so I could loom a bit.

‘What makes you say that?’ she asked.

‘We have the sales records from the shop,’ I said.

‘It’s mine,’ she snapped. ‘He gave it to me.’

Me and Guleed exchanged looks.

‘We’re not disputing that,’ said Guleed.

‘He gave it to me on our first anniversary,’ said Althea.

According to our checks, the marriage had lasted less than two months more.

‘May we have a look at it?’ asked Guleed.

‘Why?’ asked Althea.

‘We think it may be the target of a robbery attempt,’ I said. ‘We need to determine whether it is your ring that was targeted, or whether a different ring was involved.’

She bought it, but it took a bit more coaxing to bring out the ring, which she kept on a silver chain around her neck. She even dropped it into my palm after I promised not to throw it down the nearest volcano.

I felt it even before it touched my hand – old and complex and faint, like an orchestra playing in the distance. There was the scent of lemons and dust and a sad lament sung in a language I thought I should recognise but didn’t.

It was heavy and ornate and obviously sized for a larger finger than Althea’s.

‘It opens up,’ said Althea, who had relaxed once she realised I wasn’t about to bolt for the door with it. I removed the chain and under her direction opened the ring until it formed a tiny armillary sphere with symbols incised on every surface. Some I recognised as alchemical symbols, others as Greek. Some I wasn’t sure about.

‘Is that Arabic?’ I asked Guleed.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And that’s Hebrew, but they don’t seem to make out any words.’

‘It’s not valuable,’ said Althea. ‘You can buy them on Amazon for thirty pounds.’

I doubted that. I wasn’t sure it was silver, either.

While Althea fretted, I used the back of my notebook to provide a neutral background while Guleed took pictures with her phone. Once we were done I handed it back and she quickly restrung it on the chain and hung it around her neck, making sure it was tucked out of sight under her T-shirt.

Guleed asked some winding-up questions and asked Althea if she could come in and make a formal identification of the body and record an official statement. She didn’t want to do either, but we said nobody else was available for the identification and that the statement was just routine. We arranged to have a car pick her up in the morning and then, before she changed her mind, we made our farewells and left.

‘Now I lack your extensive erudition,’ said Guleed once we were out of sight of the basement, ‘but that struck me as being just a little bit Lord of the Rings.’

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘She didn’t call it her precious – it doesn’t count if you don’t call it your precious.’

‘But there was something weird about the ring,’ said Guleed. ‘I saw it in your face.’

‘It was definitely enchanted,’ I said, ‘but that doesn’t mean that’s the cause of her behaviour.’

Although I bet it is, I thought. Just like the lightning glass.

‘Let’s hope she brings it to the identification tomorrow,’ I said, ‘so Nightingale can have a look.’

‘Oh, she’ll bring it all right,’ said Guleed. ‘I’ll bet she wears it in the shower.’

Since it was past six by the time we’d written up our notes, I had Guleed drop me off at Richmond Bus Station and caught the 65 back to Kingston, where I changed to a 57. Starting at the bus station meant I got to sit down on the long crawl down the Richmond Road and read up my OSPRE sergeant’s material, which I kept on my Kindle for just these occasions.

When I got back to Beverley Avenue there was an unfamiliar Range Rover sitting in the driveway. I gave it the automatic police once-over as I passed – tyres, index, lights, back and front seats. Unusually for a Chelsea tractor, it was splattered with mud up to its wheel arches and there were dings and scrapes along the underside of the doors. It actually looked like it might spend some time off road – perhaps it came from upstream, where they laugh at roads and pour scorn on the very notion of indoor plumbing. But it seemed a bit posh for Ash, Oxley rode a Triumph sidecar combination, and on the rare occasions that Father Thames drove himself, it was in a Morris Minor Traveller estate.

So I wondered who it could be.

It turned out to be a white woman in late middle age, dressed in a tan tweed skirt and matching jacket. She had a cap of iron-grey hair, small hazel eyes and a severely thin mouth offset by a mischievous smile.

She was wearing a pair of stethoscopes which she was using to take Beverley’s blood pressure in the old-fashioned way, with a manual pump and a stopwatch. I felt a sudden wash of panic – we weren’t due any medical bollocks until the big day, which was any time now. And that, I knew for certain, would not involve tweed.

Or a mischievous smile.

‘Ah,’ said the woman, turning the smile on me. ‘You must be the father.’

Beverley, the love of my life, languished on the sofa, the bulge naked and proud and serving as a convenient pedestal for a small bowl of something red and crunchy. Curried shrimp, by the smell.

‘Hi, babes,’ she said when saw me. ‘This is Dr Crosswell. The Old Man of the River asked her to pop by.’

‘Haven’t done a house call for yonks,’ said Dr Crosswell.

‘How is the old man?’ I asked.

I collected up the trail of plastic food containers, bowls, plates and empty Jaffa cake boxes. The twins were obviously going through an eclectic craving phase. I dumped them on the kitchen table for later,

‘Oh, you know him,’ said Dr Crosswell. ‘As wonderful as ever.’

She let the cuff deflate and Beverley lifted her arm so it could be unwrapped.

‘Well?’ asked Beverley.

‘Oh, you’re just perfect,’ said Dr Crosswell. ‘As, of course, you should be. Although if these two wait much longer you might want to consider induction.’

‘They’ll be along soon enough,’ said Beverley. ‘They’re just arguing about who gets to go first.’

Dr Crosswell had rounds in Oxford first thing the next morning and so, after packing her gear away in a very modern black nylon carryall, she bid us farewell.

‘Senior Consultant Obstetrician at John Radcliffe,’ said Beverley after I’d shown Dr Crosswell out. ‘I expected Mum to go wavey … but Father Thames?’

She patted the sofa next to her. But, before I could sit down, she changed her mind and sent me back to the kitchen for another bowl of curried prawns. I took the opportunity to ensure the backup rice cooker was filled and ready to go and check the dishwasher was properly loaded before turning it on.

‘We’re starving in here,’ called Beverley from the living room.

I opened the fridge and sorted through the contents.

‘We’re out of prawns. Do you want the jellied eels instead?’

‘Yes please,’ said Beverley in what was practically a growl.

This was another ‘gift’ from the fishmongers of Billingsgate. And while I’m willing to assert, through my dad’s family, my claims to honorary Cockneyhood, there are limits … however much hot sauce you cover them in. Still, Beverley liked eels even before she hit the weird craving stage, and part of a successful relationship is learning to live with your beloved’s questionable taste. I decanted the horrible mess into a bowl but took the bottle of God Slayer chilli sauce separately – Bev preferring to add it to taste.

While I was at it, I microwaved a mountain of rice topped with my mum’s famous bone-free beef knuckle soup, put the whole lot on a tray and carried it into where Beverley languished, weak from lack of food. She had a pained expression, and by the way she held her hand on the bulge the twins were kicking up a fuss.

Before I could sit down, Beverley grabbed my hand and placed it on her belly. I felt a kick against my palm.

‘Tell them to be quiet,’ she said. ‘They’re not listening to me.’

‘Shush, you two,’ I said. ‘Give your mum a rest.’

I got an extra-hard thump and then the bulge was quiet, although not the owner of the bulge, who loudly demanded her jellied eels and a glass of milk. Once she was nomming her way through the gruesome mass, I sat down beside her and started on the rice and soup.

Once she’d finished the eels, she sequestrated my leftovers.

‘So, could you rip someone’s heart out?’ I asked.

Beverley finished chewing and swallowed before asking, ‘Literally or metaphorically?’

‘Literally,’ I said.

Beverley held up her free hand and made an experimental clawing motion. I thought of the neat hole in David Moore’s sweatshirt and the ice cream scoop smoothness of the wound tract.

‘Not like that,’ I said. ‘With your …’ I paused to try and think of a phrase that wouldn’t make me sound like I was in a superhero film – and failed notably. ‘Your power.’

‘My power?’ said Beverley, her lips twitching.

‘Yes, your power.’

‘Don’t know. Never tried,’ she said. ‘It’d be hard work. Much easier to shoot them or something.’

‘Could any of your sisters do it?’ I asked.

I strongly suspected that Bev’s older sister Lady Ty had killed a would-be assassin from across the street by thrusting a metre of ghostly sword through his heart. Hard enough that it left a hole in the assassin’s shirt – front and back.

‘Again,’ said Beverley, ‘why would you? Is there something you’re not telling me? Is one of my sisters a suspect?’

‘Not really,’ I said, and explained about the death of David Moore, the hole in his chest and the lightning glass.

‘I’m not saying Mum couldn’t do it. And if Mum could do it then Father Thames could do it, but …’ She dragged out the ‘but’ and then burped. ‘It’s not their style, it’s not how we work. At least not these days. We’re thoroughly modern goddesses, aren’t we?’

An old god, maybe? I was thinking.

I doubted it, but it was, as they say, a line of inquiry. And it wasn’t like we was overrun with those. Bev passed me the empty plate to put next to her bowl on the coffee table, and I lay down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders.

She sighed and rested her head on my shoulder.

‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ she said. ‘I’m going to need a wee in about sixty seconds.’