Luckily I managed to drag him away before Foxglove convinced him to strip off and pose for her. We convened in the upstairs reading room, where a frighteningly cheerful Molly brought us tea and cakes.
‘So, where do we think Martin Chorley plans to make his sacrifice?’ said Nightingale.
‘St Paul’s Cathedral remains the obvious choice,’ said Postmartin. ‘Given what we know of the history of Mr Punch, the next highest probability, I would say, is the true location of the Temple of Mithras. Why else would he have John Chapman encourage his banker friends to conduct their bacchanalia there?’
‘That’s assuming Punch is the determining factor,’ said Nightingale.
‘Our problem,’ I said, ‘is that Martin Chorley isn’t concerned with evidence – it’s the truth of the heart, isn’t it? Now that I’ve had a chance to chat to him, I think he really believes in it.’
‘Believes in what?’ asked Postmartin.
‘All of it,’ I said. ‘Arthur, Camelot, a British golden age, or at least the modern equivalent.’
‘A romantic,’ said Nightingale. ‘The most dangerous people on earth.’
‘For all we know he could be looking for Arthur back up at Alderley Edge,’ I said.
‘In Cheshire?’ asked Nightingale. ‘Whatever for?’
‘There’s a rather fine children’s book set there,’ said Postmartin. ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, and a sequel too – The Moon of Gomrath.’
‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘We should not confuse a mistaken belief with a general incredulity. He may be no true scholar but it seems to me he has always followed the forms. The places that interest him will be those that present him with the most respectable “evidence”.’
‘If we’re talking Arthur, then it’s quite a long list,’ said Postmartin. ‘The hill fort at Cadbury. Camlann, which is in the Welsh sources. Badon Hill likewise. Tintagel and Glastonbury, if we stretch the scholarship somewhat.’
‘All out of London, I notice,’ said Nightingale. ‘We can at least ask the local constabulary to keep an eye on the places we can identify.’ He looked at Postmartin. ‘If you had to pick your most likely target, which would it be?’
‘Oh, Glastonbury,’ said Postmartin. ‘Without a doubt. If you’re a romantic then the Isle of Avalon is always going to appeal.’
‘I don’t like splitting our forces,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I can reach Glastonbury in just over two hours, give the area the once-over and be back by nightfall.’ He looked at me. ‘I’d like you to kit up and be on immediate standby. If Chorley makes his move in London, God forbid, I want you to get in and disrupt him. I think we’ve eliminated most of his mundane assets, so just do what you do best and frustrate the hell out of him.’
I understood the logic. We already had St Paul’s covered, ditto the Bloomberg building. Seawoll had booked up a couple more vans’ worth of TSG and I’d noticed a couple of Frank Caffrey’s ‘associates’ in the breakfast room that morning. It would be just like Chorley to wait until we were fixed on London and then make his move out in the country. Postmartin would already be working on a potential target list and no doubt having enormous fun in the process. Meanwhile Nightingale was the only one of us with a chance of going up against Chorley without backup, so it had to be him that went.
I still didn’t like it. But what are you going to do?
To my surprise, I found Seawoll downstairs, sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs in the atrium, the remains of an elaborate morning tea spread out on an occasional table beside him. He beckoned me over and I asked why he wasn’t at Belgravia nick.
‘I’m keeping a bloody eye on you lot,’ he said. ‘Plus this is closer to the City and that’s where the action is. Which reminds me . . .’
He pulled out an envelope and shook it under my nose – coins jingled inside. Not that there were many coins. It seemed to be mostly full of tenners.
‘Whip-round for Miriam,’ he said.
I handed over a tenner and asked how she was.
‘Serious, but not life-threatening. No bones were broken and the bullet went straight through so she should make a full recovery.’ He tucked the envelope back in his jacket pocket. ‘I can’t remember the last time a detective inspector got themselves shot. Do you think our Lesley went for non-lethal on purpose?’
I said I thought she had, and Seawoll nodded grimly.
‘You’ve been right all along. Whatever our Lesley’s reasons for going to the dark side she still thinks she’s straight. That’s why she’s protecting you and went for the leg shot with Miriam. There’s still a little bit of the old Lesley in there.’ Seawoll jabbed a finger at me. ‘You must not hesitate to use that against her. I want this business finished, Peter. I want you to promise me that if you have to go hard to get the job done, that’s what you’ll do.’
I nodded, which seemed to satisfy him.
Go hard, I thought as I headed for my room. What did that even mean in this context?
Kitting up consisted of me climbing into a pair of jeans, my public order boots, utility belt and keeping my Metvest with me at all times. I considered borrowing a taser. But you know, despite Stephanopoulos’ good example, I’d never had that much luck with them.
I ended up in the atrium trying to finish the copy of The Silmarillion I’d downloaded onto my phone. Fuck all else happened, except that Foxglove turned up and did some preliminary sketches for the now famous Hither Came Peter, the Librarian which is currently hanging in the National Portrait Gallery.
Around five o’clock I took Toby out for a walk and then I did paperwork until seven.
Go hard – but I felt soft, mushy, as if I was walking around on a thick carpet of pink polyurethane foam. I wanted to cross the river and climb into what I realised I now thought of as our bed – mine and Bev’s. Instead I let Seawoll know where I was and lay down fully dressed in my room upstairs.
It was dark when I was woken up by Nightingale’s call from Glastonbury.
‘He’s definitely been here sometime in the past,’ he said. ‘He bought a farmhouse nearby and he’s practised magic in St Michael’s Tower at the top of the hill – I recognised his signare.’
‘Recently?’ I asked.
‘Hard to say,’ said Nightingale.
It always was with vestigia, which faded or were retained according to a complex set of interactions with material, environment and source, and whether something supernatural had been subsisting off them. Nightingale had sensed no trace of Lesley’s signare, so the magic could have happened any time in the last twenty years.
‘He might have regarded it as his country retreat,’ I said.
‘Quite. I’ve checked for booby traps and handed it over to the local boys. Alexander is sending a search team tomorrow.’
He asked after Stephanopoulos and I passed on the assurances that Dr Walid had given me. I asked if he was heading back tonight and he said he was.
‘Anything else to report?’ he asked.
‘A creeping sense of existential dread,’ I said. ‘Apart from that I’m good.’
‘Chin up, Peter. He’s on his last legs – I can feel it.’
Once Nightingale had rung off I called Guleed, who’d been arriving as a nasty surprise to bell foundries and metal casting companies from Dudley to Wolverhampton all that day.