Lies Sleeping

17 First Century Mandem

‘Intelligence led’ is one of those dire phrases that police officers feel the need to include in their operational plans. This is either because they feel senior officers might otherwise assume that they are stupidity led, or because it’s an article of faith among the rank and file that everyone above superintendent has had their sense of irony surgically removed. Often the word ‘proactive’ is added at the front to create a kind of litany. O lead us intelligently into the valley of the shadow of limited resources so that we might make our crime targets before the end of the Home Office reporting period – Amen.

What intelligence led really means is trying to figure out what you’re doing before you actually do it. And that means being honest about what you do and what you don’t know.

And one of the things we didn’t know was the true nature of Mr Punch.

You’ve got ghosts. Occasionally you’ve got ghosts which can directly affect the material world. And you’ve got revenant ghosts which feed on other ghosts. Then you’ve got genii locorum, the spirits of places – ranging from the playful spirit that inhabited a bookshop in Covent Garden to the Goddess of the River Thames. The distinction, as far as we can tell, lies in where they draw their power from. Ghosts get theirs from the layers of vestigia laid down in the material fabric of old houses or the stone geology of some rural locales.

The genii locorum draw their power from the locality itself – although we’re still no closer to understanding where that power comes from. Since some of those localities include the entire watershed of the Thames above Teddington Lock you can see why we are careful to be polite around them.

Erasmus Wolfe wrote extensively about genii locorum in his ground-breaking and – at two thousand pages – wrist-breaking Exotica. He theorised that there was an upper limit to the size and power of an individual genius loci and, unlike many of his contemporaries, he provided some facts and figures to back himself up.

None of the really huge rivers of Europe – the Volga, the Danube or the Rhine – appeared to possess a single tutelary deity. Instead there were Rhine Maidens, plural, a French and a German Mosel, and at least ten recorded gods and goddesses of the Don.

And surely, Erasmus wrote, had the long length of the Volga possessed a single guiding spirit with loyalty to the people on its banks, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia would have foundered before it began.

Or the Mississippi when the foreign invaders tooled up there, I thought, or the Congo, or the Limpopo or the Ganges or the Amazon.

That is, if you assume a power so wide in scope would even be remotely human in conception or thought. But, relatively small as they were, I wouldn’t go up against either of the Thameses. And we already knew what happened to the last person who took a shot at Lady Ty.

Then there were the ghosts, or echoes or possibly past avatars, of genii locorum who possessed a strange half-life in the magical memory of the city.

Suddenly I had a cunning plan, but I’ve had too many of those in the past not to run this one past Nightingale first.

I found him in the mundane library working on a lesson plan for Abigail. He had Bassinger’s First Steps in Effective Combinations open in front of him and was taking notes.

I know for a fact that Nightingale thinks my training has been a bit rough-and-ready. And he seems determined that, between him and Varvara, our Abigail was going to get a more thorough grounding in the basics. To do this, both her teachers were going to have to up their own basics – so I had every intention of copying Abigail’s notes.

‘We need the real story on Punch,’ I said.

‘Agreed,’ said Nightingale, putting his pen down. ‘Are you thinking of asking Father Thames?’

‘I think we might end up paying more than we can afford,’ I said. ‘Oxley warned me there’s always a price.’

‘His sons are not going to speak on this without his permission,’ said Nightingale.

Not even Ash, who could generally be induced to do just about anything for a pony and a couple of free drinks.

‘I was thinking of closer to home.’

‘Mama Thames’s daughters are too young, surely?’ said Nightingale.

‘But they have long memories,’ I said.

Nightingale nodded.

‘You’re going to pursue Sir William.’

‘Who claims to have been around before the Romans,’ I said. ‘Which makes him the god on the spot.’

‘He only seems to appear when you’re in extremis,’ said Nightingale.

The first time while I was buried underground, and later when Martin Chorley launched his abortive attack on Lady Ty.

‘I think the trick is to alter your state of consciousness,’ I said.

Nightingale frowned.

‘I hope absinthe isn’t going to play a role in this,’ he said. Apparently some of the younger, more bohemian, wizards of Nightingale’s youth had tried that. ‘And sweat lodges and . . .’ He paused to search his memory. ‘Peyote.’

‘Did any of it work?’

‘I’m not sure they were entirely serious. Although I couldn’t fault them for diligence.’

David Mellenby, Nightingale’s friend and go-to guy for what passed for empiricism at the Folly, hadn’t thought much of these ‘experiments’.

‘And in any case I’m not authorising any operation involving hallucinogens without permission from Dr Walid first.’

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘What I’m proposing is going to involve some elbow grease, a bit of ritual humiliation, about four litres of bleach, one of Hugh’s staffs, and the best possible bottle of wine you can prise out of Molly.’

The River Tyburn, which we must never call a repurposed storm drain if we mean to carry on walking around on two legs, splits into two branches downstream of Buckingham Palace. The northern branch flows to either side of the Palace of Westminster, marking the ancient outline of Thorney Island. The southern branch outflows just upstream of Vauxhall Bridge. Upstream the Tyburn can be pretty narrow and, let’s face it, encrusted, so I wanted somewhere downstream where it’s wider. The problem is if you start poking about underground near the Houses of Parliament armed guys from CTC turn up to ask you questions. This is because Counter Terrorism Command has an institutional memory that goes all the way back to Guy Fawkes.

Fortunately on the southern branch, once known as the Tachbrook, there’s easy access through the manholes on Tachbrook Road. Right next to the Tachbrook Estate. Because Lady Ty may be underground, but she makes her presence felt.

So I drove down to Tachbrook with a ton of gear in the back, including my heavy-duty waders, filter mask, goggles, four litres of bleach, a plaque that I’d had made up against just this sort of need, a variety of cordless DIY tools, a bottle of 1964 Romanee Conti Grand Cru burgundy and the one present that I knew would really get her attention.

I met my Thames Water contact, Allison Conte, on the corner of Tachbrook and Churton Street, because you don’t go in the sewers without asking Thames Water first, and even then they weren’t happy about me going down alone.

‘We’re not happy about you going down alone,’ said Allison, a small, wiry white woman in her thirties who claimed she had her job on account of her small size. ‘Things can get tight further up,’ she’d said. ‘They needed someone who can fit into the two foot pipes.’

At least she couldn’t fault my gear, which I’d updated, at my own expense, since my last visit to the sewers. This included an eye-watering yellow PV oversuit, a wetsuit, boots, gloves, eye protectors and a gas detector – because these days canaries are not allowed.

‘I’m not going to do anything stupid,’ I said as she used a metal lever to pry open the rectangular manhole cover.

I was going down a side access because, unlike the lifting shafts that run down the centre of the street, they lead to a vestibule with its own built-in ladder.

‘That’s not what I heard,’ muttered Allison.

I pretended not to have heard that as I helped her set up the public safety barrier around the open manhole. Once I was down she passed me the jet wash gun and fed the hose down behind me as I moved into the drain proper.

At this point in her course the Tyburn is actually a bricked up canal. Like many of her sisters she was swallowed up by the city, first serving as an open sewer and then buried out of sight. About four metres across and three metres high, she’s relatively clean but there’s no getting away from the smell of old shit mixed in with the disturbingly meaty scent of old fat. Which was worse in that this far downstream it’s pervasive rather than overpowering – sneaking up on you in waves when you least expect it.

Once I’d found a suitable spot I went back to the manhole and had Allison pass down the rest of my gear.

‘Are you sure you don’t want me down there with you?’ she asked.

‘If I’m not back up in two hours, come and look for me,’ I said.

Allison made a sour face, but nodded.

First I used the water jet to scour the brickwork, good solid nineteenth-century London brick I noticed, with superior mortaring. Then I got out the bleach and my mum’s cordless scrubber and went over it again. Then I got a brush and scrubbed like mad for an hour. In the end I had a section of tunnel that was, possibly, marginally cleaner than the rest.

Still, I thought, it’s the thought that counts – literally.

Then, being careful to get the measurements right, I used a masonry drill to install brackets so that I could mount the plaque. I’d had it made up specially on a ‘break glass in case of spiritual emergency’ basis the year before and it read:

Ìya wa, òrìsà wa,

Ìya wa, tí ó ní olá

Ìya wa, tí ó ní ewà

Ìya wa títí láilái.

Which basically translated as Our mother deity of bounty and beauty. Because if you’re going to propitiate your actual original orisa, it’s go hard or go home.

To avoid additional DIY, the plaque came with its own shelf upon which I placed a couple of vanilla scented candles I’d nicked out of Beverley’s bathroom – one at each end. As my most valuable offering I hung one of my two genuine World War Two army surplus battle staffs between the candles. These had been a gift from Hugh Oswald, one of the few surviving veterans of the final battle at Ettersberg.

I took a moment to check my handiwork.

Then I pulled the cork on the 1964 burgundy and, after taking a sip to make sure it wasn’t corked or something, poured a generous measure into what passed for water flowing down the central trough.

‘O great Goddess of the River Tyburn, spirit of the Hanging Tree – I call on thee.’

I splashed some more in – not too much; I didn’t know how long I was going to have to keep this up.

‘O Lady of the Parliaments – I call on thee.’

Splash.

‘O Warden of the Palace – I call on thee.’

Double splash.

‘O Queen of Mayfair – I call on thee.’

‘If you pour any more of that on the floor,’ said a voice behind me. ‘I will not be responsible for the consequences.’

I turned to find the Goddess of the River Tyburn standing behind me with her hands on her hips. She was wearing a black neoprene wetsuit with TYR on the chest. Her hair was carefully wrapped in a matching bathing cap, but her feet were bare.

‘And “thee” is the singular informal,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t use words when you don’t know what they mean.’

She held out a hand.

‘Give it here,’ she said, and I handed over the bottle.

She sniffed it and sighed, and with that sigh the stink of the sewer was blown away by a fresh breeze from the chalky hills of Hampstead.

‘The 64 Romanee.’ She gave me a reproachful look. ‘This is so totally wasted on you.’

‘That’s why it’s a gift,’ I said.

Lady Ty took a sip from the bottle and swirled it around her mouth a bit before swallowing.

‘You have no appreciation of its value,’ she said, and paused to take a good solid swig. ‘So it doesn’t count as a gift.’ She waved the bottle in the general direction of the plaque. ‘And that borders on the ironic. If not openly mocking.’

‘Not intentionally,’ I said.

She gave me a sceptical look and took another couple of swigs.

‘I appreciate the cleaning, though,’ she said. ‘The effort involved, your valuable time expended in, let’s be honest, a futile gesture. Next heavy rain and this will be hip deep in shit once more.’

Another swig.

I said nothing because I knew she wasn’t finished.

‘It’s not the intrinsic value of the gift that makes the sacrifice. It’s what it’s worth to you personally.’

‘Well, I was going to bring Toby,’ I said. ‘But Molly would have objected.’

Lady Ty gave a dismissive wave with her left hand while draining the last of the bottle. When she was sure it was empty she waved it at the staff where it hung below the plaque.

‘Now that is a different matter,’ she said. ‘Pass it over.’

She smiled when I hesitated – a wide lazy grin.

‘I want it from your own hand,’ she said and dropped the bottle, which bounced rather than smashed. ‘Come on, chop-chop, the goddess is in.’

I lifted the staff from the shelf and, turning, went down on one knee. I held out the staff to Lady Ty as if it was a sword. She looked down at me and her smile became crooked and she shook her head.

‘You’ve always got to push it, haven’t you?’ she said, and put her hand on the staff.

Her eyes closed and her mouth turned down.

‘Who do you think I am – Athena?’ she said, but her hand curled around the staff and she lifted it from my hands. ‘Still, this is a proper gift for all that you don’t appreciate its true value, either.’

As I got to my feet she shifted her grip to the end of the staff and held it upright so that the iron-shod tip rested on her shoulder.

‘So what is all this in aid of?’ she asked.

‘I want to talk to Sir William,’ I said.

‘Really? What for?’

‘Intelligence gathering?’

Lady Ty snorted.

‘Sir William?’ she said. ‘He’s not what you’d call plugged into the mainstream.’

‘Historical witness,’ I said.

‘What makes you think I can help you with that? Our relationship’s not what you’d call close.’

‘Close enough that he put half a metre of imaginary sword through that sniper,’ I said. ‘You might not be on talking terms, but I reckon you’re still family.’

‘Where is it you think you go when you talk to him?’ she asked.

‘I think I stay right where I am. I think I’m tapping into the memory of the city.’

‘You think too much for a policeman,’ she said. ‘Do you know that?’

‘I get that a lot.’

‘I’ll bet you do.’

‘Can you grant my boon or not?’

‘Why not,’ she said, and – as fast as an old-time preacher fleecing his flock – she leapt forward, slapped the palm of her right hand against my forehead and pushed.

Have you ever had that sensation, just as you’re going to sleep, that a bomb has gone off inside your head? It’s a real medical phenomena called, I kid you not, exploding head syndrome. It’s what’s known as a parasomnia, which is Greek for ‘we don’t know either’. Anyway, that’s what it felt like as I pitched backwards into the black – like a big painless bomb going off in my head.

Generally speaking Exploding Head Syndrome is harmless, but should you experience the further symptoms of finding yourself talking to the avatar of a river goddess, please contact Dr Walid, who collects that sort of data as a hobby.

‘Bruv!’ cried William Tyburn as he dragged me to my feet and hugged me.

He smelt of kebab and wet wool and hunting and woodsmoke.

He let go of me and held me at arm’s length.

‘I knew you couldn’t stay away.’

I was standing on the bank of a river, too narrow to be the Thames proper and choked with reeds. It was a warm overcast day and away from the water the land rose up to be crowned by a couple of thatched roundhouses. Around them spread a confusion of herb gardens, drying racks, woodpiles, small animal pens and stretches where the ground had been worn away to dusty brown tracks.

On the far bank of the river the reeds gave way to trees that might have been oak and ash and alder, and all the other varieties that Beverley says would cover the lowlands of England if given half a chance.

‘Welcome to Thorney Island,’ said William Tyburn. ‘Much better without that pseudo-Gothic monstrosity, isn’t it?’

Not as monstrous as his yellow and red check trousers, I thought, although the matching red and brown check tunic had faded to the point where it no longer hurt the eyes. He had grass stains at the elbows and his front was wet with sweat. The lowly man of the soil look was undone by the torc around his neck – a thick braided coil of gold terminating in clusters of what might have been snakes, or perhaps ropes or tangles of tree roots.

‘Checking the bling, right?’ said Tyburn. ‘Nice, isn’t it? Got it totally tax free too.’

The humidity was stifling and I tried to catch my breath.

‘I’d offer you a beer. But since you’re not actually here that would be a bit of a waste, wouldn’t it?’ He grinned and stepped back and opened his arms. ‘How else may I serve you, or are you stuck under another pile of rubble?’

‘I was looking for some information,’ I said.

‘Indoor plumbing,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be big.’

‘And you wonder why no one takes you seriously.’

‘Seriously enough that you’re willing to pony up to have a chat.’

‘What did you think of my gifts?’

He cocked his head at an angle and then shook it slowly from side to side.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But giving what it must be costing Mrs High and Mighty Muckity Muck to send you here, they must have been princely gifts indeed.’

Which was interesting – it never occurred to me that transporting me here, wherever here really was, would cost Lady Ty any effort. Something to think about later.

I still felt out of breath and tried to inhale deeply a few times to clear the feeling. As I did, I noticed a young white woman in a garish blue and red check skirt and a loose linen tunic emerge from one of the roundhouses. She paused to glance curiously at me before nodding and smiling at Tyburn. They exchanged pleasantries in a language that could have been Ancient British, or gibberish for all I knew, before she headed off over the rise in the land.

A pale young white man emerged from the same roundhouse, and gave me a similar once-over to the woman before waving a greeting to Tyburn and heading down the slope towards the river a few metres downstream of where we stood.

This man was dressed only in what were obviously his last chance trousers, the pattern faded to a light yellow and orange check and held up with a rope at his waist. He was shirtless and torcless and carried a metre-long spear over his shoulder. The tip, I noted, had a sharp point and double barbs and, judging from the whitish yellow colour, was carved from bone.

‘Do they know who you are?’ I asked, as we watched the young man wade into the river with his spear.

‘Of course they do,’ said Tyburn.

The young man took position a couple of metres out into the current with his spear held ready to strike.

‘Who you really are?’ I said.

‘They have a much better idea of who I really am than you do.’ He held up a hand for silence. ‘Wait for it,’ he said softly and then – ‘Fish!’

The spear darted down and I saw it tremble as it struck. The young man leant on it to make sure of the kill before squatting down to pick the fish up with both hands. It took both hands because the thing was half a metre long and thrashing around vigorously. The young man wrestled it through the reeds and up the slope to dry ground, where he plonked the fish down, picked up a rock and gave it a good smack. Then again, to be on the safe side.

Once he was satisfied that the fish was thoroughly dead the young man hoisted it to his shoulder and, pausing a moment to nod respectfully at Tyburn, carried it up towards the houses.

‘What, no tribute?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Tyburn. ‘What do I want with a bit of raw fish?’

‘Really?’

‘Really. I’m going to pop up later and have it when it’s cooked.’

‘Cushy,’ I said. ‘What does he get out of it?’

‘He got a fish, didn’t he?’ Tyburn grinned. ‘A big fish.’

‘And you arranged that. How?’

Mysteriously,’ he said. ‘Have you ever considered becoming a god?’

‘I don’t fancy the hours.’ I wondered if he was being serious.

‘You get a free fish supper.’

There was a tightness in my chest that no amount of breathing seemed to help. I had to fight not to pant – soon I was going to have to fight not to panic.

‘You can’t catch your breath,’ said Tyburn, ‘because you’re asphyxiating. Sooner or later Her Sewership will have to pull you out – hopefully before you go into cardiac arrest.’

‘You could have told me this earlier,’ I said.

He smiled and opened his mouth but I cut him off – I’d wasted enough breath already.

‘Mr Punch,’ I said. ‘Where did he come from?’ I held up my hand. ‘And if you try to tell me he has roots in the sixteenth-century Italian commedia dell’arte you’ll be amazed at how long and painful the comeback will be.’

‘Are you sure?’ he said. ‘It’s a sad story.’

‘I’m the police, Ty – they’re all sad stories.’

‘Imagine this geezer,’ said Tyburn. ‘Let’s call him Cata. He’s like the fifth living son of an Atrebates sub-chief, a bit weedy, raised to ride a chariot and handle a spear but you know, heart’s not in the family business. Only a teen when the Romans turn up and his old man goes, “Fuck me, underfloor heating? That’s the shit for me!” and they all go Roman faster than a Basildon girl in an Italian discotheque.

‘Now you’re thinking about the glories of Rome and all that painted stonework, but back at the start London’s essentially a bridge with a shanty town attached. Not that it stayed that way with all the silver denarii flooding in to pay the legions. There’s three legions, remember. That’s fifteen thousand men, plus the same again in auxiliaries. And these are professional soldiers, so they like to get paid. And they like to get fed too. Anyone with a couple of acres, a plough and some manpower is going to be coining it. Hence docks and warehouses and some tasty new dwellings. Still wattle and daub, but in the modern rectangular style where you get separate bedrooms and don’t have to shag in front of the rest of the family.’

‘And what were you doing when all this was going on?’ I asked.

‘I was pretty incoherent with rage at the time,’ said Tyburn, ‘but this isn’t about me, this is about our boy Cata, who’s sharing a Greek tutor with his brothers and learning reading, writing and rhetoric. Now, his brothers spend their lessons dreaming of their chariots and the thunder of the hooves. But Cata finds being Roman is the dog’s bollocks. He loves the poetry, loves the gear, loves the not-having-to-literally-fight to maintain your position. Rest of the family, they’ve got the house and the togas but it’s still all piss-ups, hunting and mistreating the servants.’

‘So our boy hightails it up the brand new road to Londinium back when, like I said, the place is still basically a muddy field with a bridge attached to one end. Rents some land cheap, builds a house and pops down the market to buy himself a foreign wife from Alexandria. Sets himself up as a middleman between the clueless Roman importers at the docks and the dangerous barbarian-infested hinterland that is Britannia. Foreign wife speaks Latin and Greek and drops four sons and two daughters into his lap.

‘Ten years later he’s holding literary salons with guests from Alexandria, Ephesus and the Capital itself.’

A band was tightening around my chest but I didn’t dare break the flow.

Tyburn gave me a fierce look. ‘He liked being a Roman and he was good at it,’ he said. ‘Loyal, but not too loyal, to his patron. Generous with his largesse, diligent in his religious observance. He was a true believer in law and order and all the benefits that brings a man born without a taste for violence.

‘And then one day it all came crashing down. Queen Boudicca lost her rag and led an army of seriously pissed-off Trinis and Iceni down through Camulodunum and ground the useless fucks of the Ninth into dog meat – literally, in some cases.

‘Londinium is next. But Suetonius, the governor, doesn’t fancy his chances so he buggers off with what troops he has and leaves the city to its fate.’

I’ve read my Tacitus – I knew what was coming next.

‘The gentry always buggers off when London’s in danger. Have you noticed that?’ he said. ‘One whiff of the plague, some social unrest, a bit of light bombing and the Establishment’s nowhere to be found.’

Like your dad, I thought. But darkness was seeping into the corners of my eyes so I told him to get on with it.

‘But our boy Cata still had faith. That the army would defend him and his family. That civilisation would save him.’ Tyburn spat on the ground. ‘He ended up there in the Temple of Jupiter with the rest of the schmucks when the Iceni rolled up and murdered the lot of them.

‘The story is that they killed his wife and his kids in front of him to force him to reveal where he’d buried his treasure. Slowly and painfully, and one by one, because they didn’t believe him when he said nothing was buried. Because he believed in truth, justice and the Roman way – so why would he need to bury anything? By the time they were working on his youngest they say he was laughing like a madman. And this started to freak them out, those big, brave Iceni child-killing warriors, so they slit his belly and left him to die.’

The pain in my chest had driven me to my knees, but it was the waves of panic that made it hard to concentrate.

‘You’ve met Oberon and the Old Soldiers like him,’ said Tyburn. ‘You know what can happen when a lot of people get slaughtered in the same place. All that life has to go somewhere.’

Sometimes, about one time in a hundred thousand, it goes into some poor sod dying slowly of something long and terminal . . . and he becomes something else. What, we haven’t worked out. But something stronger, tougher and very long-lived. Only I didn’t think that’s what Tyburn was talking about.

There are some people who believe that if you spill enough blood you can make yourself a god. They’re right, if you don’t mind dying yourself. I had a horrible feeling that I knew where this story was taking me.

‘So up he sprang. A thing full of hatred and mad laughter, capering through the ashes of the city. Because order did not save his children. Law did not save his wife. And, for all his faith in the gods, they did nothing.

‘But London is London, because of the bridge and the river and the north and the south. And so, almost before the ashes were cool, the Romans were back with their groma and their chromates – drawing their straight lines across the world. Cata set about them – waylaying them in the dark places, whispering in the ears of the drunk and foolish, rocking the boats and kicking over amphorae full of fish guts.

‘But they were a canny people, the Romans. The Greeks would have debated and written a play. His own people would have abandoned the city and made it a place of sacred fear. What do the Romans do?’

‘They made him a temple,’ I whispered.

‘They did more than that,’ said Tyburn. ‘They made him a god. They were clever that way, the Romans. They could do things you modern boys can’t even dream of. And they weren’t afraid to slit the occasional throat to do it.’

And suddenly it all made sense: the bloody awful screenplay, the bacchanalia, that terrible unfocused rage, and the reason I was able to pin him to the bridge. Or at least pin his memory to the memory of London Bridge.

And then I thought of the skulls that the archaeologists had pulled out of the Walbrook. The ones they thought might be victims of the Boudiccan sack of Londinium. And I thought of a seemingly young woman with the sort of light brown complexion and features you might inherit if your dad was an ancient Brit and your mum was Egyptian.

Older, Beverley had said.

I used the last of my willpower to pull myself upright and face Tyburn.

‘What happened to his youngest?’ I asked.

‘You what?’

‘You said they killed his wife and kids but they were just starting on the youngest when Cata went mad,’ I said. ‘So what happened to the youngest?’

Sir William grabbed me by the shoulders and pulled me close so he could whisper in my ear.

‘They slit her pretty little neck,’ he said. ‘And threw her in the Walbrook.’

He pushed me away and I fell into darkness.

And blinked and opened my eyes in an ambulance.

Allison Conte was riding with me and the paramedic – she didn’t look happy.

‘I don’t care who you think you are. None of you lot are going down alone,’ she said. ‘Ever again.’

She’d found me in the side access alcove, sitting up against the ladder and totally out of it. She’d had to get some help and a rope to drag me out.

The paramedic wanted to know if I’d smelt or ingested anything prior to losing consciousness.

‘Woodsmoke,’ I said.

‘Could have been carbon monoxide,’ said the paramedic, because medical professionals are willing to spout total bollocks in order to maintain their air of authority. Nothing like us police, who always tell it how it is.

Generally speaking, if you’ve fallen unconscious for any length of time it’s best to go to a hospital for blood tests and shit. So I asked them to take me to UCH. Then I called Guleed and arranged to have her pick up the Hyundai, and then go ahead to the hospital so Dr Walid could meet me in casualty. They were used to our ways there by then, and the casualty registrar didn’t blink when Dr Walid ordered up a ton of phlebotomy. He’s hoping to get an understanding of the biochemical consequences of my ‘encounters’, as he calls them. He’d have popped me in the MRI, but it was solidly booked with emergency cases that day.

Bev called me and asked if I wanted her to pick me up. But my mind felt heavy and slow, as if it was waterlogged, and I wanted time to myself. I fell asleep in one of the treatment cubicles and didn’t wake up until after midnight, when the first wave of closing time casualties arrived and the unit needed their cubicle back.

I let them check my pupil reaction and blood pressure and then I walked back to the Folly.

I was walking past the quiet darkness of the park in Russell Square when the full implications of what I’d learnt sank in.

Mr Punch was a god.

And Martin Chorley wanted to sacrifice him.