Whispers Under Ground

could be used by the Murder Team to double-check the official statements.
    After that, Nightingale sent me and Lesley back to the Folly for a sleep. By that time in the morning the slush-covered streets were empty and cold. As we turned into Charing Cross Road Lesley put her hand on my shoulder and said; ‘You did some proper policing there – Merry Christmas.’
    Late Christmas morning one of Lesley’s sisters turned up to drive her out to Brightlingsea, where I was informed there would be the traditional turkey, crackers and family squabbles. Nightingale reported that Agent Reynolds had been invited home by an evangelical family at the embassy for much the same experience, only with more cranberries and hopefully fewer arguments. Kumar and Zach spent Christmas delivering Christmas presents to, and taking medical samples from, the Quiet People, and voilà another unwritten ad hoc arrangement was added to the metaphorical book in which we presumably keep them.
    Nightingale presented me with a small package neatly wrapped in silver paper. He stood waiting with suspicious casualness but I wasn’t fooled. I was tempted to pretend I was going to open it later but you shouldn’t be that cruel on Christmas. Unwrapped, it turned out to be an original stainless steel Omega, antique, black and silver, automatic winding and therefore magic-proof and worth about seventy to eighty times what I’d bought him. Which was a slim-line Nokia, modified to have a battery interrupt and preprogramed with every relevant number I could think of including the Commissioner, the Mayor and his tailor, Dege & Skinner of Savile Row.
    I caught up with my parents at Aunty Jo’s. She’s not really my aunty but my mum and her go back all the way to when they were at school in Kambia together. She has a big house off Holloway Road and a large number of kids, all of whom went to university, that she likes to show off every Christmas. Notice the ‘whom’ there – who says I don’t know my grammar? Anyway, me and my parents go there every year and essentially eat and drink until we explode. I invited Nightingale but he said he said he couldn’t leave Molly alone on Christmas day and it wasn’t until I was squashed onto the sofa and watching the Christmas episode of Doctor Who that I realised he hadn’t said precisely why.

27
    Tottenham Court Road
    W e went in mob-handed, Nightingale in front, backed by me and Lesley in our riot gear. Behind us was a stream of backup including some reliable TSG guys, Guleed, Kumar and right at the back Stephanopoulos – so that if something went wrong, we’d have someone responsible to clear up any mess. Nightingale didn’t say, but I suspected that even further back was a nondescript Transit van filled with former members of the Parachute Regiment. I didn’t worry about them, though, because in the event that they had to be involved I was likely to be past caring.
    I’d been right about the Faceless Man relocating his base under cover of the Crossrail works. It’s amazing what you can come up with when you’re buried under a ton of concrete, although I don’t recommend it as an aid to memory. Kumar and Nightingale cruelly interrupted Christmas dinner for Graham Beale and several other engineering contractors and compared their plans until they found an anomaly. An excavation at the end of Dean Street that only appeared on one set of plans.
    Kumar and Nightingale made that discovery at about just the same time my mum squared off for the traditional Christmas row with her sister. My dad’s usually nodded off by this point and me and all the other nieces, nephews and cousins pile into the kitchen to eat the leftovers and pretend to do the washing up. One thing you never get with my relatives is leftover turkey, but that year there was some serious smoked ham which I had with French mustard. I was thankful that they held off for twelve hours before organising the raid, because I doubt after that much Christmas dinner I would have moved too fast.
    Access was via the basement of an International Money Transfer shop on Dean Street. We didn’t wait and use a ram. Instead, Nightingale employed a nifty spell that caused all the hinges and attachment points on a reinforced fire door to simultaneous pop out of the frame so that the door itself toppled slowly backward into the corridor. He signalled me to wait before darting through – there was a long moment and then he told us to follow on.
    It was a