The Least Interesting Case of Ernesto Klee

It had crossed his mind that being a security guard might be an easier life than being a murder detective.

But after a break-in on his first day, things aren’t going too well.

Someone has stolen something from Ernesto Klee - the trouble is, he’s not sure exactly what.

And he can’t call the police, because he’s fairly sure they are trying to kill him. His wife isn’t talking to him - mainly because of the whole police trying to kill him thing.

Worse still, his daughter is still talking to him, and she’s telling him things that no father wants to hear.

A novel written in May 2026, one chapter at a time, every weekday morning.

Chapter 1 — Prawns

You get to know someone very well on a stakeout. Sitting in a car with someone for twelve hours, sometimes, more. You get to know them. You get to know that their wife is taking Indonesian cooking classes. A fact that requires you to wind down the window to let in fresh icy air at three am for fear of actual suffocation.

You get to know who’s tidy. Actually, he’d never been on a stakeout with anyone who was even remotely tidy.

He’d thought it many times. Interrogation? It was one way of finding out someone’s character. Peering into their soul and deciding if they were capable of horrible things. Another way might just be to sit in an icy car with them for twelve hours and see what happened. What happened when there was nothing to do but sit there, chat and chat and chat, shiver and smell each other’s farts.

From freezing his balls off in cars all over London with Jackie Spanner, Ernesto Klee knew a few things about him.

He knew he was an untidy bastard. The number of half-eaten prawn sandwiches he’d peeled off his jacksie. Jackie would eat all the prawns and leave the crusts. And then absent-mindedly drop them on the passenger seat. The number of empty Lucozade bottles! He used to smack Jackie over the head with them. He would find himself playing footsie with them in the footwell. The crisps he’d brushed off his trouser legs. If Jackie was eating crisps and you were in a car with him, you were certainly part of that crisp eating experience. And you were probably at some point, trying not to be too obvious about it, wiping fragments of them off your face.

Because that was another thing about Jackie spanner, he was enthusiastic. He was enthusiastic about eating crips (always prawn cocktail if they had them). He was enthusiastic about the job. He wanted to catch villains. He got all emotional about it. He didn’t like it when they got away. It upset him. He was involved. The more we found out about a bad guy, the more he’d take it personally. He’d start to hate them. He’d expound about how outrageous it was that they were still getting away with it. He’d explain at length that villains should be caught, and stopped. Klee would stay serious and agree with him. And then point out it was maybe a bit unnecessary for Jackie to mention this, what with them both being policemen.

And Jackie often delivered these speeches while half-way through consuming a meal deal. Which meant Klee often found himself leaning back against the passenger window. Doing his best to avoid crumbs of half-eaten prawn-cocktail crisps. Crumbs that caught the streetlights from outside the car and rained down like snow. He often yelled at Jackie as he brushed them off the trousers of his off-the-peg suit.

Ernesto Klee knew that there was only one thing that Jackie Spanner hated more than villains. And that was the cold.

The first time you went on a stakeout, despite the warnings from the old hands, you made the mistake of not dressing for the occasion. Oh, you thought you’d dressed up warm.

You never made that mistake again. In the middle of the night it could be brutally cold. Even in summer it could be brass monkeys at three am. You were sitting still in a car with the heating off and nothing but Indonesian curry guffs to keep you company. You could be frozen to the bone. Klee himself had a wardrobe full of thermals. Normally an extra pair of thermal socks, and some long johns in a real emergency, did the trick.

Nothing ever seemed to do the trick for Jackie. He never seemed to be warm.

A tall bloke, with classic copper’s size twelve feet.

The business of him putting on an extra pair of socks in a confined space wasn’t quiet. It was likely to cause enough commotion to wake the neighbours. Maybe even alert the subject of their surveillance. What would they have guessed if they’d seen the boring coloured mid-range solution rocking in the middle of the night? They might have guessed something amorous was going on inside. Rather than the truth. The boring reality. A man too big for a mid-range saloon was kicking crisp crumbs, sandwich packets and plastic bottles in the air. He was sticking his head in the filthy footwell and trying to put on an extra pair of socks. A miracle pair of socks, that this time were really going to keep his feet warm.

“Look Ernie – they say that bloke Ranulph Fiennes uses these on his expeditions! These are the fancy ones. They’ve got like NASA technology in them.”

“Do NASA go on polar expeditions? Jackie?”

They never worked. Ten minutes later, when the crisp crumbs and sandwich packets and widely recycled PET bottles had settled. He’d be complaining again about his feet. And for the three hundred and fiftieth time, he’d be telling you the story of how Ranulph Fiennes had cut off his own toes. He’d cut off his own toes with secateurs in his garden shed because he couldn’t stand the pain of frostbite. Well then, why exactly are you buying socks on his recommendation? But Klee kept this observation to himself. He knew that that was exactly the kind of logical argument that pissed detectives off. It was actual deduction. Ranulph Fiennes, lost toes to frostbite. Therefore Ranulph Fiennes is shit at picking socks. Therefore?

Maybe don’t buy socks recommended flogged by Ranulph Fiennes.

This was what the cosplayers with the deerstalkers wanted to believe. They wanted to believe detective work was all about deduction.

Inductive reasoning was a lot of it.

Let’s say in the past Gobby Geoff has gone round his girlfriend’s in High Barnet for a shag. But only when he’s done a successful bank job. He goes straight home to his missus in East Finchley if there’s a problem and the blag didn’t work out. That’s the kind of reasoning that will send coppers running to High Barnet. That’s if they see Gobby Geoff on the CCTV and it looks like he got away with 40K. That’s inductive reasoning. The sun came up in the east yesterday, and all the days before that so tomorrow, it will probably do the same. If it came up in the west? Well, that would leave a lot of astronomers looking very embarrassed. But of course, it isn’t deductive reasoning. It’s not guaranteed. Gobby Geoff could have found a new squeeze in Highgate. The sun might have exploded, vanished. In the middle of the night sitting outside a block of flats in Shepherd’s Hill, it certainly seemed like it had disappeared for good.

Analogical reasoning, there was some of that. You know if there’s something annoying on the telly? Something too loud, that stops you from thinking? Well then, you turn the telly off. There was this bloke in Wood Green. Kept doing the same to his noisy neighbours. To be fair he’d asked them nicely. Once. Which is kind of where the analogy breaks down. You don’t politely ask your telly to keep the noise to a low roar. But if the neighbours didn’t pay attention to the polite request, if they made noise again? He’d turn them off. Not with a remote control. With a hammer. Thing is he had a job mowing the lawn in a graveyard. That meant he literally knew where the bodies were buried. And he also knew where they kept the mini digger that they used to bury them. Ironically, it was a complaint from the neighbours that was his undoing. It’s understandable. You buy a new build next to a graveyard. You expect a bit of peace and quiet. Let the dead bury their dead, they say. But in the middle of the night? With a digger?

Most of the reasoning that Klee did, he thought, was with his intestines. It was keeping turning something over, often in the middle of the night. It was the awful feeling, hovering somewhere in your bowels that you’d missed something. The worry that you’d cocked something up. That was most of detective work. What would you call that? Dyspeptic detection? Colonic cognition.

This Jackie Spanner thing? Straight forward deduction.

Jackie Spanner was untidy.

Jackie Spanner hated villains.

Jackie Spanner hated the cold.

So, the thing that Jackie Spanner absolutely did not do was walk out onto an icy patio barefoot. If he had been going out there, he would have definitely had on his giant shoes, and three pairs of socks.

What Jackie Spanner did not do was sit himself down in a lawn chair at 2:40 in the morning. And shoot himself in the face with a shotgun. On a night that hovered around 5 degrees.

And even if he did. And he didn’t, but even if he did - what Jackie Spanner definitely didn’t do, was tidy up after himself. He didn’t put the shotgun gently and neatly down on a picnic table, six feet away from his now bloody and lifeless body. Because if Jackie Spanner hadn’t tidied up after himself when he was alive, he certainly wasn’t going to do it after he was dead.

But Jackie Spanner hated villains this is another factor in this particular deduction. Why is that relevant? Here’s what Jackie had done. He texted Klee. He’d done it just a couple of hours before he was involved in this semi-naked charade on his frost-covered patio. “I had an idea. Made some enquiries and I think it checks out. The call’s coming from inside the house. Yeah we knew that, but now we’ve got the extension numnber. We’re nearly there, Ernie. Talk to you tomorrow.”

Do you know a thing that Jackie Spanner loved? Horror movies. Jackie Spanner loved retelling the plot of horror movies. Especially, he loved doing this to his stakeout partners at 3am. And when he was relating a particularly gory section, he was probably eating prawn cocktail crisps. Do you know the kind of villains Jackie Spanner hated the most? The ones that were hiding among the ranks of his own police force.

Jackie had been told many times to stop investigating the death of Aimee Finch. A journalist who had been beaten to death by someone, just out of camera shot, in the car park of the Isambard Kingdom Brunel pub in Muswell Hill. Jackie hadn’t listened. So this is what we’re supposed to believe, thought Klee. On that night, of all nights, the night when he finally thought he’d got to the bottom of what happened. The night when he knew who’d killed her. That’s the night he would waltz barefoot into his icy garden in inappropriate nightwear. And then, after shooting himself, he’d tidy up. That was even more ridiculous. Jackie Spanner never tidied up after himself when he was alive. Why would he start doing it after he was dead?

So, deduction told Klee that Jackie Spanner hadn’t killed himself. And, having established that, it didn’t require genius level deduction to go one step further. You didn’t have to be Socrates to twig that meant someone else did kill him.

But are you sure about this Klee? It sounds great as a theory. But does it really hang together? What about abductive logic? What’s abductive logic? Abductive logic is horses not zebras. You hear the sound of clippity clop, many, multiple, clippity clops? That’s probably horses. It’s very unlikely to be zebras. Jackie’s wife left him. Jackie was in a deranged state. He’d just been suspended. Evidence for this? He was wearing his wife’s dressing gown! And sitting in the garden at 2am!

OK, Jackie didn’t put the gun down nicely and neatly two to three metres from the body. But who was first on the scene? The neighbour who heard the shots. Then the first copper on the scene was a sprog who had been out of Hendon just a few weeks. If either of them had moved the gun, then realized that was a bad idea and wiped it of prints, do you think they’d own up to it?

Horses Klee, not zebras and definitely not a herd of satyrs or unicorns.

But here’s why Klee was certain the “simplest” explanation of Jackie’s death wasn’t the right one. Here’s why Klee thought the evidence didn’t suggest zebras or unicorns. It suggested something far less mythical. The evidence suggested bent Met coppers trying to cover their arse.

At 11:29 on the night of his death, Jackie Spanner phones the Crystal Palace Tandoori and Grill. Since his wife had left, he’d done this most nights. This, he knew, was the absolute latest point at which Mohammed Hossain, owner of his local Indian takeway would take his order. He also knew he’d get the delivery just after midnight. And Mr Hossain delivered the order himself. He’d got into the habit of doing it on his way home. He chatted to Jackie for a few moments.

What had Jackie ordered? What had Mr Hossain delivered? A king prawn biriyani. So, we’re back to deduction. What did Jackie love more than anything else in the world? More than anything in the world that was, apart from his wife who’d left him and justice? Prawns.

I am a prawn. Socrates likes prawns. Socrates is going to eat me.

Well, in this case, Jackie. But you get the idea.

OK, Jackie might have lost his mind and started putting on his wife’s lingerie. OK, he might have decided that suffering the cold was as nothing now he was saying goodbye to this cruel world. And yes, some concerned neighbour or a moron on probation might have moved the gun.

But one thing was absolutely certain. If Jackie had decided to give himself a shove and barefoot shuffle off this mortal coil, he would have eaten all his prawns first.

Chapter 1.5 — Pigeon

Mrs Petaloudes, she was the only other person on his street at that time of day. It was mid-morning. The commuters had gone and the school runs had been done.

That was maybe why Mrs Petaloudes was there on the street at that time. She liked to feed the birds. Ever since he’d lived in the street, he’d seen her around. But he used to see her feeding the birds in the park. She was banned from the park now.

What had happened to the attitude to feeding the birds? Somehow, in an age where attitudes to everything seemed to be hardening, the attitude to feeding birds had gone the same way. Especially the attitude to feeding bread to ducks. There were even signs now in the park explaining in vivid detail the damage to the gastrointestinal tract of your average mallard that a chunk of white sliced could do. The sign might have even included diagrams.

Anyway, the result of all this raised awareness was that Mrs Petloudes was grouped along with the man who insisted on turning up pissed and naked at three in the morning and putting cat food through his ex’s letter box. She was in the same metaphorical, legal. boat as the youths who decided they wanted to play football in the street next to his neighbour’s house. His neighbour whose car was so expensive he’d had to broker his own insurance deal on the Lloyd’s markets. The man naked with cat food, the boys playing football and the lady in black who fed the birds, all of these terrible threats to society had got the same anti-social behaviour orders. Orders telling them to stop it. So Mrs Petaloudes, actually it was probably her son-in-law had stopped her feeding birds bread in the park. Yes, she wasn’t alone she had a daughter, and grandchildred. She just preferred the company of ducks, homicidal Canadian Geese and pigeons to her own family. It had been mentioned to her by her son-in-law that if she fed birds grain in the street, rather than ducks bread in the park, it would require another, different, antisocial behaviour order to stop her. Because the street, not having as many bylaws as the park, she might not have as much legal trouble. And by the time the local neighborhood watch got around to that, there’d been a change of government and locking up your neighbours for being mildly annoying had gone out of fashion and destroying your own country because our bananas weren’t the right shape was all the rage.

Something like that.

He was watching his own house. From across the street. He was actually watching it from behind a rhododrendron in the garden of a house that looked like it was abandoned.

Would they be watching his house? He guessed if they were going to come after him, they probably would be. But were they coming after him? All that dancing in the street he’d done, smashing his phone and buying a new one, was that really necessary?

Mr Petaloudes was followed by a flock of pigeons, two enormous seagulls, and a few ducks that must have somehow got the message that she had taken her act on the road and away from the pond in the park. She waddled, head down along the pavement, clad entirely in black with a black headscarf dragging her black shopping cart behind her. She reached a spot on the pavement where there parked cars cleared because there were two driveways next to each other. Sitting out on the drive – for the pidgeons to poo on - was the Pendeli PX 432, Klee’s neighbour’s nearly uninsurable supercar. And next to that, over a low wall was Klee’s car – a VBMS – a Very Boring Mid-range Saloon. He always went to his favourite second-hand car dealer, Div Patel. And asked him for the most boring car that he had.

Klee wished for a moment that he could just go and sit in his kitchen and have a cup of tea. Out the back of Klee’s house was a garden. By some amazing stroke of luck, it was a garden that he could see better than anyone else even though it wasn’t his! It was a brilliant arrangement – he could look it at, but he didn’t have to garden it.

There was a large bush, nearly a tree, which he didn’t notice much for the rest of the year, but which in the autumn was covered in red berries. At some specific point, these berries must be ripe, and when they were, the bush was suddenly covered in pigeons. But not ordinary pigeons, big, fat wood pigeons. Not the Trafalgar square bad boys. Wood pigeons were their lardier and most slow-moving bigger cousins.

At a particularly tricky point in Klee’s life. “Which point hadn’t been tricky?” He could hear his wife saying sharply. Well, this tricky point of the many tricky points had been when he was suspended, looking like he was going to be fired without his pension. In a career of points that had been less than marvellous, that hadn’t been a great point. At that point, he’d often sat at his kitchen table and looked out over the garden. And that autumn he’d watched the wood pigeons. Often, he’d watched them with Jackie, who would could round whenever he got the chance.

Somebody at a party had asked him once what his soul animal would be. Not used to being the one on the business end of an interrogation, and then mostly being used to being asked where the hell his accent came from, and so, slightly surprised, he’d said “wood pigeon.” Almost without thinking. Maybe it was just the thought of being able to eat enormous amounts without getting any grief for it. He also, for some reason, quite liked the idea of swaying around upside down, eating the cotoneaster berries. The reason he was thinking about this now was that there were also wood pigeons in Mrs Petaloudes retinue. Not getting to the grains as fast as the other pigeons, getting pushed out of the way by the seagulls. Discretely avoiding the ducks, but quietly, still getting fed.

Mrs Petaouldes delved deep into her shopping trolley and in a single movement, like the sower in the parable of the sower she spread wheat and dried sweetcorn grains across the bonnet of his car, and his neighbour’s super car. She spread the grain in a giant arc. The parabola of the sower?

A few wood pigeons landed on the bonnet of his car. Somehow making it to this particular round of grain before any of the others in the mixed company of fowls.

Klee was starting to think that this was stupid. His flat wasn’t being watched. He could go in and make himself a cup of tea. He didn’t need to be hiding behind this rhododendron. Then the two wood pigeons, his soul animals, evapourated his car exploded.

This was a big bomb. And it had bewilderingly condradictory effects. For Mrs Petaloudes, the effect was like she’d been, not so much fired out of a cannon, but bowled, like a bowling ball across the road. She had happened to be bending over her trolley with her back to the blast. And had ended up, yes, covered in a little bit of leaf mould and debris for the gutter, but otherwise unscathed. She was sitting, blinking facing away from the explosion. The effect for Klee, who had been further away was to be sucked in towards the blast which pulled him through the rhododendron bush that he was hiding behind. He was left upside down on the pavement in front of her.

Klee had never said much to her, before, perhaps the odd “hello.”

He could see that she was still conscious. She didn’t look like she was too badly hurt? “Are you alright? Mrs Petaloudes?” He tried to say as he righted himself. “I’m allowed to feed them here. There’s nothing you can do copper!” How did she know he was a policeman? He supposed everybody probably made it their business to know if their neighbour was a policeman.

“I’m not a police office anymore Mrs Petaloudes.”

“Well, then leave me alone!”

He realized he’d put a hand on her shoulder. She shook him off and he noticed, to his surprise, that she didn’t feel weak or frail, but actually quite solid. He wondered how old she was. But looking her directly in the face always seemed to be a struggle. He caught just a glance of her pale brown eyes.

She didn’t struggle to her feet, so much as she sprang to them. Walking back into the middle of the road where her shopping trolley had been left by the blast had spilled its contents in a broad slick. Surveying the grains for a moment and then and then deciding, obviously, not to try to pick them up.

When they’d bought the house, one of the things that the estate agent had made much of, was the off-street parking. The patch of gravel in front of the house. Klee could now see that the bomb had turned this off-street parking into on-roof parking – he could see at least one wheel up there. It had also managed to put the engine block of his grey-blue mid-range saloon on the bonnet of his neighbour’s car. And it had put out all of the windows.

Chapter 2 — Mr Muscle

Klee later thought about what anyone would have seen if they were watching him that bright April afternoon. If they happend to be watching when, in the space of about 30 seconds, he decided that he was on the run. They would have seen a man walking down the street, walking down the Archway Road. And then…

There’s probably a name for this move. You’d know the name if you forked out for a mime class. And Ernesto Klee was in North London. That was the kind of thing that many people in North London seemed to do. Mime classes, improv classes, comedy classes they happen in North London.

Now, thinking back on the moment, Klee could hear the voiceover – was that a real French accent – did anyone really talk like that? Klee could imagine the instructor in a full body leotard.

“This move is called ‘le mur de verre.’ In French that means ‘the glass wall’ so we’re walking along, we loosen the shoulders.” The last syllable of shoulders drawn out like some melty stinky cheese. “We roll the hips.” No aitch at the front of “hips” but a little jazz move with the pelvis.

“Relaxed” The “a” drawn out.

“And then BAM! It’s like our whole body has smacked into a wall. But it is a wall of glass! It is invisible, it is not there!”

Ernesto Klee had never been near a mime class. Actually he’d once talked to a Belgian improv instructor who was a suspect in a murder, whose BO was like walking into a glass wall. Actually, it felt more like an invisible pair of stinky feet had just booted you in the face.

He liked to think that he was at the liberal, cuddly, fluffy end of the political spectrum of policemen. But that didn’t mean you were getting him to put on a leotard.

But there he was, within sight of the drinkers sitting out in the sun in front of the Bent Horseshoe pub. There he was performing his own perfect “mur de verre.” No leotard required. It was exactly as if he’d walked straight into a glass wall. An unexpected, solid object had stopped him in his tracks.

The solid object he’d walked into - smack! - the one that seemed to rattle every bone in his body, as if it had been an unexpected, invisible wall, was a realisation. And the realization was this - Jackie Spanner had been murdered. That man had never met a prawn he didn’t like. Even if topping himself was on the agenda for later, he’d never would have left a king prawn behind.

What you would have seen next might have seemed even more peculiar. The slightly unkempt, slightly shabby man, throw the phone that he’d just been looking at down onto the pavement.

Apparently worried that he hadn’t punished this phone enough for whatever it had done, he then picked it up again. Looked around him and walked to a pedestrian crossing, where traffic was queuing for the lights to change.

What was he doing now? He was bending down, as if to pick something up, but in fact, he was putting something down. He was dropping his partially broken phone into the gutter. And then deliberately kicking it under the wheels of a large truck. The kind that has it’s own crane on the back, and appeared to be loaded with huge bags of sand, or gravel. You may have seen this man inspect the remains of his obliterated phone. Right after the gravel truck had sailed on up the hill, along the A1 towards Highgate and beyond to the North.

Then you may have seen the man turn around. You’d have seen him looking surprised that the shop he needed to visit was right in front of him. Ok, the establishment he really needed to visit was the Bent Horseshoe just two doors down. But, regretfully, he knew he needed to be sober and awake for at least the next 24 hours.

So, you would have seen this man go into the shop. The shop next-door-but-one to the Bent Horseshoe. This was a shop with a sign that said “Baz’s Phone Bits” and showed an image of some kind of cartoon mammal. What was that? A wombat? A marmot? A blue capybara? Zoologically it was confused. But whether it was a rodent, or a marsupial, it was talking into a mobile phone. And it looked very happy about it.

If you’d managed to get a close up on his face what would you have seen? You would have seen that this man, walking into the unidentified blue mammal phone shop, wasn’t happy about anything.

A few minutes and over a hundred pounds later, this dialogue happened.

“Div? It’s Ernie.”

“Ernie? I wasn’t going to answer, it said ‘number withheld.’”

“It’s a burner. I need a car”

“We’ve got some lovely ones on the forecourt.”

“Don’t fuck about Div. This is serious, they killed Jackie.”

“Fuck. So you want that kind of car. Any special requests?”

“Nothing expensive. Nothing too noticeable. Nothing that will be missed. And I’ll be round in about twenty minutes.”

“Not here.” Div thought for a moment. “In the car park of the Greenhouse.”

“You’re taking the piss right?”

“Why not? It’s the last place they’d look.”

“I suppose you’re right about that.”

Klee surveyed the vehicle Div had brought him.

“I said nothing too noticeable.”

“The colour’s just a bit bright. Key Lime Pie, it’s called.”

“That’s Hollywood horror movie green. That’s ectoplasm green. And are those flames down the side?”

“Nav said it was bright,”

Nav was Div’s wife. She was the reason he wasn’t in jail. When Klee first met him he was a rising star in the car theft community. Which had brought him to the attention of the police, but also to the attention of local hoods.

“It’s throbbing, pulsating.”

“I’m colour blind, so I can’t tell.”

“And it sounds like what is it? Why is it growling?”

“It’s what they call a muscle car. You said something that won’t be missed. Trust me, he won’t miss it. He’s in the Whittington beeping – has been for six months.”

Now he was on the road. Out of London. It had only taken him a couple of hours.

He realised it wasn’t much of a cypher if they were on to him. He made the comment on the agreed YouTube video. He checked to make sure that he’d encoded the whole phone number.

Five minutes, and he was checking. Making sure he’d got it right. Maybe Pausing didn’t check it anymore. Come on. Even if he didn’t check it every minute. He’d be checking it now.

This motor was a beast. Entirely manual and no cruise control. The horror! Keeping it under seventy wasn’t easy. And you couldn’t exactly just tuck in behind a Nissan Micra and do fifty-five.

Then his brand-new burner phone rang. It was a number he didn’t recognise.

“It was the prawns right?” It was the voice of his former sergeant, Yannick Pausing. Klee didn’t realise how tense he’d been until he felt himself relaxing that Pausing had found the message on the video site and made contact.

“Of course it was the prawns.”

“Do you think it’s meant for us?”

“What do you mean ‘us’ white man? It’s for me. You’re out there in plain sight. And no one’s bothering you. No one has bothered you. You look like you’ve moved on. Accepted the verdict. It’s meant for me.”

“If they’re going to kill you, what’s the point in warning you Ernie? Maybe they’re just trying to scare you.”

“Well, they’ve succeeded.”

“Where are you?”

“Somewhere on the M4 doing ninety – pissing off a dude in a black BMW”

“Type this into your satnav – actually no – that’s probably… Get to Birmingham and then ask.”

“Birmingham.”

“Yes, Birmingham.”

“Who the fuck goes to Birmingham?”

“Well, exactly.”

“Is it a long job?”

“It’s ideal cover. Could take months. Maybe by then this whole thing will have blown over.”

“Eight years? How many investigations? It’s going to make the papers again…”

“It has made the papers. Let’s talk when you’re somewhere safe. I’ll text you the address and the keys are with the neighbour – a Mrs Ting.”

“Mrs Ting?”

Chapter 3 — Keys

Number 45a?

Klee looked up and down the street – it was the only new build on Pachelbel Road. All the other houses looked, to his eye, to be Victorian.

Unusually, there was a name on the bell. It said “Ting.” A bell. With “Ting” written on it.

He rang the bell.

“Go away! I haven’t left the gas on!” shouted somebody from behind the glass.

“Mrs Ting? Is that Mrs Ting?”

“It’s them foreigners at 45! It them German curries they make they’re always making them German curries. Stinks like gas!”

“Er, my name is Ernesto Klee.”

There was a slight pause. “Are you a German?”

“Er no.”

“Where was you born then?”

“Pontefract. West Yorkshire. Mr Pausing sent me.” There was a longer pause.

“Well, I didn’t leave the gas on.”

“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Klee. He glanced next door at number 45 – where he’d nearly knocked until he noticed the “a” in the address.

It shared a wall with Mrs Ting’s house. If she had left the gas on, a spark would have probably taken out 45 and 45a. That would at least have solved one problem for whoever it was who decided how to number the houses.

Having been interrogated by Mrs Ting for about a minute, his instincts told him she had left the gas on.

There was a new voice and a new shadow behind the obscured glass. “Mother, come away love, I’ll deal with this.” The door opened slightly.

Klee wasn’t expecting what he saw. It was a woman of about 35. With a lot of red hair. She’d obviously just got out of bed – possibly at the sound of her mother’s persistent denials about the gas. A lot of red hair and a lot of pale skin. She was just about covering herself in a dressing gown. Noticing that Ernie was noticing, she tried to cover herself. It had the unhelpful effect of getting Klee to focus on what she was trying to cover up. Her cleavage. Yes, he was definitely focusing on that more than he should.

Then she looked up. Then there was eye contact.

No, don’t be stupid. It wasn’t love at first sight. But it was… Well it was something.

“You’re Mr Klee? I have a key for you.” She laughed again at the rhyme, he guessed. For Klee, it sounded absolutely glorious. Even that wasn’t how you pronounced his name. Actually it was how nearly everybody pronounced his name. But he pronounced it “Clay.”

A hand, and an arm, again, barely clad in a dressing gown came out through the gap in the door.

Klee took the offered keys.

But didn’t move. He didn’t want to move because, really, he would like a bit more local knowledge about the house he was moving into. Okay, that was one reason. The other one was that he didn’t really, straight away, want to end the conversation.

“Did you know Mr Boht?”

The red-haired woman seemed to be struggling to keep her dressing gown together and also hold the door ajar.

“I did, I used to know him quite well when I was a little girl.”

“Listen. I’ve just finished a shift.” He didn’t feel she needed to explain why she was wearing no clothes in the middle of the afternoon. But she had.

“Could you maybe give me a chance to – to put on some clothes. And you can look round the chapel and then perhaps come back and have some tea?”

“And don’t be cooking any curries!” shouted Mrs Ting.

“Mother!” The tone wasn’t exactly annoyed, but more “we’ve talked about this before.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” said Klee, “Erm?” That was of course the only polite way to ask her her name. To say “you know my name, so what’s yours?” would somehow seem slightly rude. To say “Madam! You have the advantage of me!” would be downright weird. “Lillian.”

“Lillian Ting?”

Again the laugh! “It used to be, but not for years. Lilly Jones is my married name. About the only good thing I got from my husband was his name.”

Pause.

Awkward pause.

Slightly more awkward pause.

“Right!” said Klee in the way that would have involved smacking his hands on his knees if he’d been sitting down. It was a tone that indicated to anybody English that he was trying to bring the coversation to an end.

“So, where is number 47?”

Another laugh. “It’s just there!” her arm extending further beyond the door than it had so far. Freckles, Klee noticed.

Oh yeah, that giant chapel. Blocking out the sky! How could he not have noticed that?

He turned round to give it a good look. And told himself that this might be one of those times that he’d heard Americans call a “teachable moment.” Wasn’t that what he was always telling his sergeants? Getting blinded by just one way of seeing things. That was how you got stuck. That was the main problem with being racist, or homophobic or supporting Arsenal. Okay, of course it wasn’t the main problem.

But seeing things through just one lens as a copper was a bad idea. Getting stuck with just one way of seeing was self-defeating. It could kill a case.

Even being a snob. Or an inverse snob. It stopped you seeing a different angle, the bigger picture. The bigger picture like a giant Unitarian Chapel.

On the drive across country to Kings Norton he’d formed a picture in his mind. It sounded like a cutesy country village. Then it changed a bit when he started to drive through it. It didn’t look like a fancy neighbourhood. As he’d got more of a measure of the area, he’d imagined a detached, or semi-detached Victorian villa.

Yes, Pausing had said it was a house an old guy had used as a warehouse. But he hadn’t imagined it would actually be bigger than a lot of warehouses. He was completely lost thinking about this. It was a few seconds, before he realised that he still hadn’t quite finished the conversation with the redhead. The redhead he felt he could now call Lilly. He turned back quickly wondering if they might have shut the door while he’d been staring and revering – that can’t be the right word.

The door was still ajar. And Lilly was still smiling and looking out of it.

“Shut the door and come on in girl. Standing on the doorstep with no knickers on.” Any first meeting between two English people was going to be awkward. Especally two who immediately found each other attracive. And recognised the attraction. But Mrs Ting’s intervention had made quite a lot more awkward.

Again the laugh. But perhaps a bit more strained now.

“Good luck, Mr Klee. Perhaps we’ll see you for tea a bit later!”

And now the door was shut.

Although through it, he could hear Lilly say just one irritated word, “Mother!”

Chapter 4 — Tent

The place was huge. He supposed the key was a clue. A giant thing. Rusty except for the bits that had been used and worn smooth. Worn smooth by turning it in a giant lock in a giant door.

He always liked this moment in his new career. The moment when he let himself into a new home. For how long? He wasn’t sure. He was rarely sure,

Let’s face it, he liked most things about this job that he’d been forced into. Fallen into? Begged to be forced into?

Let’s face it, he liked most things about this job that he’d been forced into. Fallen into? Begged to be forced into? OK, it was, like most things about his life, a bit complicated.

This had been the conversation with Pausing.

“I need somewhere to stay.”

Awkward pause.

“Well, I suppose you could stay here for a few nights and sleep on the couch. But Maggie’s going to complain eventually.” “Who’s Maggie? Have you found yourself another woman?”

“Maggie is the corgi the previous one left behind.” “I can’t keep up.”

“To be frank, neither can I.” “Anyway, it can’t be your house. Not safe for you, not safe for me, not safe for Maggie.” “You’re right, Maggie would never tolerate your snoring.” See? The stakeout. Klee had spent more twelve-hour sessions in an ill-smelling car with Pausing than he had with anyone, even Jackie Spanner. And yes, although they were supposed to both stay awake, if there was really nothing going on, they’d let each other take a nap through the silent watches of the night.

“Look, I’m doing a favour for a mate. And I’m taking over his live-in security guard business.”

“A favour for a mate? That sounds – legal.” “It’s kosher – in fact, he’s kosher. Anyway, long story, his wife divorced him”

“There’s a lot of it about.”

“You’re telling me. But somehow Jewish Kevin…”

“Kevin? A Jewish bloke called Kevin?” “He rediscovered his heritage when he – look, that’s not the point. The point is, he got divorced, then he came into some money. Wrong way round for the ex-wife, but right way round for Kevin. And so, Kevin went on holiday in the south of France, met someone.”

“This is very touching. What has it got to do with me? Or even you?” “Kevin is planning on being away for a while. And he asked me to run his house sitting, live-in security guard business. And I was thinking, you need a place to stay, with no direct connection to anyone you know and…”

…and that’s how Ernesto Klee found his second career. After a Welsh hill farm, a hangar for airships and a lighthouse! He thought he was ready for anything. If he’d been in the lighthouse when he’d heard about Jackie’s suicide, he would have probably just stayed put, and he would have been safe.

But instead, here he was standing in the chapel, not getting married. Still technically married, although who knows where she’d gone.

A Unitarian Chapel. A chapel, that had – from what he figured out from the internet, been working as exactly that until thirty years ago.

“The old boy died. And the place is full of stuff – according to his nephew.”

Yes, the place was full of stuff.

This was apparently a classic design for a chapel of the period. The downstairs bit – “The nave” with rows of pews. And then an upstairs balcony. All the benches on the balcony were filled with china, ornaments, statues, doodads and whatchacallits. Except the ones that were filled with paintings. Landscapes mostly from what he could see, except the occasional “portrait of a lady” type. Klee didn’t know much about art – but he knew he didn’t like most of these.

“He lived in a converted Chapel and filled it with books and antiques. The nephew doesn’t want to send the house clearance people until he’s had a chance to have a look himself. But he’s a banker in New York and he’s working on some deal. So, it might be months before he gets a chance to come over.”

On the floor between the benches, mostly in boxes, but sometimes just stacked in the open were whole sets of china. And in and amongst them figurines.

“I don’t know how he made his money, but his nephew seems to think he had enough of it. Enough anyway to spend on the roof which was the main thing he talked about. Apparently, whenever they talked. He talked about the roof”

Cigarette cards. Framed and then the frames stacked, tightly, again tucked in between the pews. Football players from the thirties and forties. Cricketers. World War One biplanes.

“He’s converted the chapel into a house.”

No he hasn’t. Thought Klee.

Not really. There were two sets of stairs up to the balcony. And on the way up the stairs on one side was a tiny room – no bigger than a cupboard with a sink, a fridge, and a hotplate sitting on a microwave.

Off the same landing on the other side was a toilet. In some of the hastiest plumbing Klee had ever seen, someone had built a ledge just inside the toilet door – he’d discovered it by tripping over it. They’d gouged a hole in the floor to expose the drain. And plumbed in a shower head to create the least glamorous wet room you had ever seen. Not something that would ever make it onto the cover of House and Garden. It really, really, wasn’t much, but the mould creeping up the walls seemed to like it.

So, primitive kitchen, primordial bathroom. But where did he sleep?

In the giant tent of course.

He’d slept in indoor tents before. A hangar for airships.

Another hasty dialog with Pausing.

“Where the hell am I going to sleep? This thing is ten thousand square metres?”

“Put up a tent, that’s what the last guy did.”

“What happened to the last guy?”

“Well, he died of…” “What?”

“Pneumonia. Apparently, Kevin kept telling him to make sure he wrapped up well. But he didn’t.”

Three layers of socks, two of them thermals. He thought again about Jackie. It was murder, and it surely was murder, why did they kill Jackie and why hadn’t they killed him? Was it really because he was so good at not being found? Or was it specifically something that Jackie had done? What was it he could have done that meant they couldn’t even let the man finish his prawns.

So, in the airship hangar – he never asked where the airship had got to - Klee had got himself a tent, and a camp bed, and a mattress and two sets of thermals. And he’d been fine. Yes, it was a trek to the loo.

“Why don’t you pitch the tent near the loo, rather than in the middle.” “I don’t know. I really don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.”

So, he would probably be fine in this chapel. But this wasn’t that kind of tent. This tent was made of – carpets!

Klee could pointed his burner smart phone at the carpet-tent-thing that took up most of the space in the centre of the chapel. The space called the nave so called because it is the same shape as a boat, from the latin nave, ship, like navy, nautical (he’d looked that up on the internet too). Klee could pointed his smart phone at the tent thing. He snapped a few pictures and then asked the all-important question:

“What the fuck is this?”

A tent. A Berber tent apparently. Well, not quite a Berber tent. More a Victorian fantasy of what a Berber tent might look like. Probably not woven in the east, probably woven somewhere in the UK, like Axminster. There was one in the V&A. The stately home, Castle Howard in East Yorkshire had one. Even in a house with 80 or so rooms, they had nowhere to put it, so most of the time it was in storage. It had been put up in a couple of exhibitions. No other extant examples were known. Well, there was another one known now.

Klee walked around the tent for a few minutes. Finally, he untied a rope that was fastened around a peg that had clearly been attached to a column for this specific purpose. One corner of one of the carpets lifted to reveal an entrance.

Chapter 5 — Baltazar

It was strung right across the chapel. Tied to the columns. Making him worried about them again. Was it OK to fill the whole balcony with all that stuff?

“What happened to Klee? Did Banks and his boys finally catch up with him?”

“No, he was hiding out in some derelict chapel in Birmingham and the balcony fell on him.”

He’d cleared a space on a pew to look at the tent.

It was really the first chance that he’d had to sit down, quietly, since he’d heard about Jackie’s death.

Bayt al-sha’ar – “House of hair.” The traditional ones were woven from the hair of their enemies. No they weren’t! Racist. They were woven from goat hair. A super smart material, apparently. Warm if it’s cold, cool if it’s warm.

But this probably wasn’t goat hair. It was probably top quality wool. Not from the desserts of Arabia, from the green fields of Sussex.

From what he’d found online, from the pattern, he thought this was one that was commissioned for an international exhibition. And the carpets were British. Axminster in fact. Showing off British industry.

He knew why he was sitting down and having a pause. He didn’t want to go in the tent. Baltazar! That’s what he could call it. Was that a Hobson Jobson? He wasn’t quite sure and couldn’t be bothered to look it up just now. Hobson Jobson was a word that you took from another language, but didn’t get quite right. He thought about how the French seemed to have done this with English – “Le footing” instead of jogging. He couldn’t go around saying “bayt al-sha’ar” it didn’t fit in English, he’d sound like a dick and he didn’t, despite his name, speak any other languages. But Baltazar! He could say that!

It took him only two circumnavigations before he found a way in. And realised that there was a draw rope – in fact an entire mechanism, with a wooden handle, and a peg, the only one, conspicuously attached to a column. As people often seem to say when talking about tents – and claim falsely when talking about bedsits they’re trying to sell – the tent was deceptively spacious.

There was room in there for a single bed. And an armchair. And a telly. He was very relieved to see the telly. Even with the light, spilling in from chapel – which was itself weak – it was almost completely black inside Baltazar. But shining around inside, with the torch from his phone he saw another rope with a wooden handle. For a moment, he wondered if there was some mechanism that meant he could close the “door” from inside, having opened it from outside. Even though he couldn’t imagine how such a mechanism could work.

But no, he pulled the rope and the lights came on.

What had he been expecting to see?

Not this. He’d been expecting to see a sad old man’s final retreat – that was what the kitchen and the damp cupboard that doubled as a bathroom had led him to expect.

But this was, well it was opulent. There were carpets on the floor – and carpets – actually, no they were of some lighter material – he guessed it was some kind of specific material for bedcovers. And he guessed he could look up the name and he guessed that he wouldn’t be able to remember it. And a vibrant green armchair – again upholstered in some kind of material.

Here’s the thing though. Outside in the chapel, everything looked old. Baltazar looked her age. The balcony was filled with antiques. There was an occasional table next to the armchair and a footstool in front of it. Klee sat down.

He tried to turn on the telly. And his first attempt worked.

Klee had sensed himself tensing. Because he knew that that was one of the major trials of modern life – everybody’s telly was different. But this one hadn’t been that much of a struggle. Yes, there were three remote controls. And yes, he’d only so far used two of them.

But then suddenly, there he was, sitting in a fake Bedouin tent, in a deconsecrated protestant chapel watching Countdown.

Outside was a stolen “lime green” – limes aren’t that colour, it was more “cartoon alien ectoplasm” – car. That he’d used to escape the city he’d lived in, loved in and worked in all his adult life.

Because maybe, the people who had killed his best friend and colleague – a policeman who had made the cardinal mistake of trying to actually catch bad guys, maybe those people, just maybe they were going to try to murder him as well. Oh, and the neighbour? Well not actually the neighbour, the racist neighbour’s daughter? From what he could see of her through the three or four inches that she’d been willing to open the door, was hot.

No part of this wasn’t weird. It was far from an ordinary day.

And in all the kerfuffle. He hadn’t really given Mr Boht, Mr Ulysses Boht, that much thought up to that point. But now he was giving him a little bit more. Walking around in the chapel, he’d assumed that Boht was some kind of crazy hoarder. Looking at the kitchen, and then at the bathroom, he’d imagined someone in a string vest and porridge-coloured Y-fronts. Nobody wears string vests anymore, do they? Not that kind of string vests, anyway.

And now Ernesto Klee realised he hadn’t eaten anything, hadn’t drunk anything, since he’d left London.

He knew that there was the offer to go next door and get a cup of tea from Lilly – although he didn’t know what the mother would make of that.

But he also knew that a crucial part of moving into a new place and making yourself at home was making that first cup of tea in the new place that you were staying. He realised he hadn’t bought any of the necessary ingredients. So, for the first cuppa, he had a choice, either set out on an expedition or be dependent on whatever Boht had left behind. When did Boht die? How many days ago?

Fifteen minutes later he was back in the armchair with a passable cup of tea. In the single cupboard in the kitchen he’d found a fairly recent-looking box of teabags.

In the fridge, and in the freezer he’d found – nothing. That was very odd. But he had found little sachets of UHT milk. It was disgusting. But for some reason, not as disgusting as tea without milk. So now there he was sitting in another man’s armchair. Inside another man’s fake Victorian Bedouin tent, watching some TV show about antiques.

Did Boht deal in antiques? Were those things out there actually antiques? He’d heard that cigarette cards were collectibles. He knew nothing about paintings, maybe some of the paintings were valuable.

If he called Henry, Henry would tell him. But then if he called Henry, Henry would tell everybody where he was.

Chapter 6 — Dust

Whoa! Boo! Ah! He tended to shout those things when it happened. He’d woken up at his favourite time in the middle of the night. 4.44am. Oh yes. That is his “favourite” time. The time when, no matter how well things were going in his life, he was convinced they were about to turn shit. 4.44am. The time of night, when if things were really going badly, he was convinced that they were going to get worse.

4.44. His wife was never coming back. What little money he had was going to be spent on fleeing, on evading these people who were supposedly chasing him. Or maybe he was an idiot. No one was chasing him. He was running around the country, crazy, running from nobody.

Who he think he was? Man hunt? Surveillance. Bollocks. No one was chasing him. He was running from shadows and ghosts.

Shadows and ghosts? Was it a shadow or a ghost who interrupted Jackie Spanner in the middle of king prawn biriyani and made him walk out on the icy patio? In his wife’s silky dressing gown? That dressing down detail? What was that? Was Jackie eating his king prawns in the nip?

Was it a ghost that shot him and then gently laid down the shotgun on the picnic table?

But talking of ghosts, what about the chapel he was in now? Who was cleaning it? Why wasn’t there any dust? He hadn’t found a hoover – although it wasn’t the first thing he looked for in a new house. It was about the fifteenth thing he looked for – when he’d been in a place about a week. Yes, that’s it – about a week.

This place was spotless. Someone was coming in and cleaning. They’d been in. Certainly, in the last week. It was probably them who emptied the freezer and the fridge. Who?

Klee tried to breathe. Sometimes breathing worked.

He knew the 4.44 thing was always worse in a new place.

“So, what do I have to do? Do I have to stay in the place the whole time.” “No. In fact, coming and going is part of the idea. If people see there’s someone in the house, going out to the shops, they’re there day and night. Oh, you know this. Villains are cowards. They’re only going to burgle a place if they think there’s no one in there. Except for the psychos who get off on beating up little old ladies.”

“So just come and go, like I live there?”

“Exactly.”

“And is there a wage?”

There was a pause from Pausing. Even though he couldn’t see Pausing, he could see the face he was pulling on the other end of the line. Maybe like a comedian reacting to a bad joke.

“Fucking tight wad Yorkshireman! I can pay you – but it’s not much. And I’d have to route it round the houses. And you know what we always say about following the money.” “I’m yanking your chain. I don’t need paying. I’m just wondering. If I were really doing this job for real, for really, real, what would I look like? It’s like a security guard job right? So, I’d be broke, or on the verge of broke.”

“Yeah, you’re going to have to cut down on that lavish lifestyle, and leave the designer suits in the wardrobe. Maybe stick to the supermarket brand sausages and stay off the fancy export lager. You still got that blue suit with the mustard stains down both trouser legs? That would be OK.” “Fuck off Pausing.”

He did, as a matter of fact, still have that suit.

Pausing laughed. You could take it out and get it dry cleaned – that would be an errand.

“Let me know if you need anything Ernie. And stay safe.”

After his 4.44 panic, he awoke late – after nine and ravenous. He decided that even before he shopped for groceries, he needed a proper breakfast. A brief look on his burner phone showed him that there was a breakfast place around the corner.

But as he locked the door, with the enormous key and wondered if it was going to fit in his trouser pocket, he caught sight of the bright green monstrosity that Div had given him. Was it stolen? Technically, it was stolen.

Certainly, if the chap whose name was on the logbook managed to ascend the Glasgow coma scale to double figures (Eye opening, spontaneous – 4, Verbal response 5 – oriented, physical response 6 – obeys commands). One of the questions that he might ask after answering to “How many fingers am I holding up?” might be “Where’s my fucking car?” And his second questions might be “I didn’t leave it in the hospital car park!”

Then again, this guy was plumbing the depths of the Glasgow coma scale. Eye opening? 1 - None. Verbal response? 1 - None. Physical response? 1 - None. And according to Div, the reason was that he’d taken an unplanned journey through the windscreen of his lime green sex machine and had been found – after quite a lengthy search – upside down in a hawthorn bush about 20 feet away from the verge of the North Circular.

Even so, maybe there were some other people a bit further up the Glasgow coma scale, although Klee thought bitterly in the Met, he hadn’t known that many. And they, or some of their mates in the West Midlands police, even if they didn’t open their eyes to sounds or commands, might open them and check the number plate of a retina-splitting lime green muscle car.

It was only now, he noticed, right next to the chapel there was a garage. But his heart sank. He was tired of trying to make sense of piles of junk that might not be junk. There was a lock on the garage. A conventional Yale lock. And next to the huge, mostly rusty key for the chapel side door, on the same ring was a Yale key. He tried it. And the door opened.

The garage was completely empty.

Completely empty!

On the floor was sawdust. And a few oil stains. And the sawdust was reasonably fresh.

A car had been here. Until very recently. And now that car was not here. Where the hell was that car? Did whoever did the dusting take the car? Did the cleaner take the car?

Some things weren’t adding up. Klee tried to avoid them. He knew he had enough trouble in his own life, without bothering with trouble that might have been in Boht’s life. He tried to tell himself that this was great news. The chapel was reasonably clean – apart from the mould in the bathroom. The garage was empty, he could drive the great green monstrosity in there, right now. And stroll out for breakfast. It was fine. It was fine. He kept trying to tell himself. Fine.

But a voice that was also him. A voice closely related to the 4.44 voice. A voice that he knew was the voice that had kept him alive this long. The voice that, even when he tried to ignore it, even though he could put it off until after breakfast, he would finally have to listen to. That voice. Said this.

This is not fine.

Chapter 7 — Spanner

Aimee Finch was found beaten to death in the car park of the Isambard Kingdom Brunel pub in Muswell Hill. The pub’s set up was a survival from the days, long gone, when people drove to the pub, drank all night, and then drove back, dinging a few cars and the odd pedestrian on their way.

Those days were long gone. But the pub still has the same set up today.

The car park is huge. Roughly sixty yards wide, and about 80 yards deep. The landlords have been trying for years to get planning permission to build on it. But the council and the surrounding residents were having none of it. As a result, its dark corners, furthest from the “conservatory” that occupied the whole of the back of the pub, became the place where all kinds of surreptitious meetings took place.

Now, these furthest corners were bleached with floodlights and CCTV, but thirty years ago, it had been an area that prostitutes worked, and others who were more romantically involved. Lovers whose wives and husbands might object to them bringing back their new close friend. Especially between the hours of ten and two, it wasn’t uncommon for there to be two or three rocking cars, discreetly placed.

But before that, in the seventies and eighties, it had already been established as, not just a place to get illicit sex, but also – information.

Coppers met their sources there. Journalists met their sources there. Coppers met journalists. All in and among the hookers and the “romantic”, Jesus, he couldn’t really imagine any “romance” happening there.

Aimee Finch was four feet eleven inches tall. On her passport it said 150cm, but that was rounding up. She weighed seven stone – 44 kilos. Whenever Klee read that statistic, he shifted uncomfortably, thinking about his weight. She was tiny. About the weight of his belly. But by all accounts, certainly all the accounts that Klee had either read, or heard first-hand, she was exceptionally good at looking after herself. She avoided situations where she might be in danger. It wasn’t – no, no cliched blackbelt in martial arts bullshit. But he had talked to a couple of blokes that she’d poked in the eye, and one that she’d kneed in the balls. So, what was she doing in the darkest corner of the Bommie Brunel Boozer? Did she think she was meeting a friend? Because up to that night, she’d proven that she was capable of looking after herself.

Yes, she had managed to look after herself. Right up to that night. When someone smashed her skull in. Smashed her skull in with a really unusual spanner.

“Don’t start on the spanner again Ernie.” “It’s a special gauge.”

“I know”

“And bound with string and glue.”

“I know”

“So, it’s hard to get fingerprints off it.” “But still, if we still had it, we could – I’m sure there’d be DNA in the glue.”

“Ernie. It’s over.”

The discovery of Aimee Finch’s body by the pub cleaner at 6:15am or so the following morning started the most expensive, most investigated, and still unsuccessful murder investigation in the history of the Metropolitan police, and so, in the history of English, and United Kingdom policing. He wasn’t sure about Europe. Maybe there was a case in Lichtenstein that had cost more and been covered up / fucked up even more badly. Maybe there was a case in Italy that was more obviously a corrupt cover up. He doubted it.

But that day, 17th July 1996, was special in another way for Ernesto Klee. It was his first day on the job.

“The largest black coffee you can give me – with an extra shot.” “That’s four shots,” warned the girl behind the counter.

“I know. That’s fine,” he smiled. “Name?”

“Ernie.”

He’d given it before he could really think. Bah! This was why he’d never been even suggested to go undercover. He absolutely didn’t know how to be anyone but himself.

It was mid morning on a Monday. The commuters who were grabbing a coffee before they got on the train, or sticking it in a cup holder and sipping it as they drove, they were gone.

Right at the back was a man with a blonde shock of hair and a full ginger beard whose clothes didn’t look that clean. When Ernie looked in his direction he returned a slightly aggressive stare. But nobody else in the place seemed to be bothered by him. And the staff didn’t seem to be giving him a second thought.

He’s always in here, thought Ernie.

There were a couple of people, a beautiful thin young – what Indian? Asian – woman wearing a pink top, typing into a rose gold laptop. Protected from the world by a large set of pink, over-ear headphones. “Is your favourite colour pink?” thought Ernie and smiled.

And a huge young man. Sitting at the same sized table as all the others. But in front of him, it looked tiny. Similarly with the laptop. Looking from table to table, Ernie realised that it was, in fact an out-sized laptop. It was nearly twice the size of the “rose gold” girl’s laptop. But in front of him, it looked tiny.

He found a seat somewhere where he could see Rose Gold and Mr Enormous. The décor was clean, bright and deliberately uncomfortable. To encourage you to avoid doing, exactly what he, and the other customers, who clearly didn’t intend to slurp down their coffee and go, were doing. Sitting for hours in a cafe.

“You didn’t manage to come back for that tea.”

Lilly Jones, nee Ting was standing in front of him. Clutching a large coffee cup.

“Er, no. Well, first day. You know. A lot to do.”

“Are you settling in?”

“Getting there. Actually I did have one question.”

“Fire away.”

“Is there – does someone come and clean? I understand Mr Boht has been dead more than two weeks – but the place seems to be spotless.”

“Oh, yes, I should have probably told you about that – and she’s due in today. The cleaner, well, the cleaner is my mother.” “Mrs Ting?”

Chapter 8 — Books

“And that was the Bee Gees with ‘Tragedy’, it’s the greatest hits of the seventies and eighties all morning long, here at Those Were The Days FM.”

Klee had tried the key in the lock, but the door was open. And music from the seventies and eighties was blaring out from a portable stereo that he hadn’t noticed before, but could see from its slot on the pew, surrounded by a pile of audio cassettes – audio cassettes! And CDs. CDs! He could see that that was its spot. Mrs Ting hadn’t brought it with her.

Mrs Ting was in the balcony. Singing along to a song that he remembered that for some reason had a French chorus “Chanson pour les petits enfants.” Singing at the top of her voice, over the sound of the hoover.

He didn’t know quite what to do with himself. It seemed too peculiar to go and sit in his tent. Just that phrase was pretty odd.

He didn’t want to go up into the balcony and startle her. So he tried to clear some space on a pew, lifting up a box full of crockery and placing it gently on the floor.

“Who’s there? Who is it?”

Mrs Ting was peering over the balcony. Klee looked at the portable stereo – he remembered when these were all the rage, and figured out how to turn it down.

“It’s me, Mrs Ting.” “Oh, Mr Klee! I wondered when you’d be back.” She was in a tabard. And her hair was in a scarf. Somehow she looked much younger. Or maybe now she looked her age. Which Klee realised, uncomfortably, was about his age. And she was much friendlier.

“Just a moment Mrs Ting.”

Klee found looking up at her a tad awkward. Like just about every conversation between two English people who didn’t know each other well, and, actually, like many conversations between English people who did know each other well. And of course, through his entire career, as soon as anyone knew you were a policeman, in their heads, he realised, even the most innocent, law-abiding citizens, they did this thing. They thought of the thing that they didn’t want a policeman to know.

Did they have marijuana plants in the attic – they looked up at the ceiling. Were they worried that the car’s tyres were bald - they actually went out of their way to look at it in the driveway. Had they killed their abusive partner and really struggled to know what to do with the body? They stared really hard at the uneven paving on their patio.

Maybe Mrs Ting didn’t know yet that he was a policeman. Because when he, slightly breathlessly, made it to where she was standing in the middle of the balcony, she was all smiles. If she had killed anyone, she clearly didn’t think Ernesto Klee had any chance of finding them.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, smiling again. “I wanted to ask, Mr Boht had me do his laundry. Do you want me to do your laundry?

Laundry. Klee didn’t want to admit that he only had the clothes he stood up in. Not to self. Order t-shirts and pants online. “I don’t have anything for you just now.”

“That’s fine,” said Mrs Ting. “Anything you do need washing – just leave it in the back in the basket next to the machine.”

“What machine?” “The washing machine.”

“There’s a washing machine? Where is it? In the kitchen? I didn’t see it.” “Ha kitchen! Oh, that horrible pokey little place where he has his hotplate? No, it’s in the back. In the big back room.” “In the back?”

“Behind the books.”

In their first meeting, it had crossed Klee’s mind that Mrs Ting had some kind of cognitive deficit. Now it crossed the mind of both Mrs Ting and Ernesto Klee that maybe it was he who had the cognitive deficit. Klee had another go – but he sensed he wasn’t on firm ground.

He gestured at the pews behind them.

“These are the books.” “Yes,” said Mrs Ting, a little shortly. He could see that the temper he’d seen when he’d knocked to get the keys was never far from the surface. “But they’re only the picture books and the books that won’t fit on the shelves. Most of the books are in the back room.”

The back room?

He’d missed an entire room! And, in the nature of this building. It wasn’t just a normal sized room. It was the Sunday school room at the back of the building. And it was the same size as the chapel but without any of the fixtures and fittings. Was it bigger? It might have been bigger. No pulpit, no organ. No balcony. Just a rectangular box. A rectangular box, about the size of a tennis court. Filled with books.

And Klee, at one point, rumoured to be the best detective in the Met, had missed it. But Klee excused himself a little bit when he saw that, essentially, from the chapel anyway, it had a secret entrance. The door was part of a dark wall, panelled in dark wood which had been stained and varnished a dozen times. And it was made to look like the rest of the wall. The only clue that there might be something behind it was a lightened patch on what turned out to be the door. The place where hands had for years worn the stain and the varnish away. Although Klee realised it might have been a clue if he’d taken the time to walk around the outside of the building he would have discovered that he’d been placed in charge of a building that was twice the size he’d originally thought. He’d tried to make that a rule when he was responsible for the airship hangar.

Mrs Ting looked back at him. She was putting the key to the secret door back on its ledge. “Sorry, love, I thought you knew about the books. The washing machine is on the other side. First time you probably need to follow me. It’s a bit of a…” “A maze?”

“Yes! That’s exactly right! That’s what it is! A maze.”

As he followed Mrs Ting, who set off at the pace of someone who had walked through a maze of bookshelves many times and no longer thought it that strange, he looked at the titles of the books.

It was definitely an eclectic selection.

Mass market paperbacks. Hard back novels. Antiquarian. He wondered if there was any system to their order on the shelves.

But it also looked like there might be sections were there were just lots and lots of copies of the same books – remaindered books?

Chapter 9 — Maze

For a moment Klee wondered if he knew anything about exploring mazes. He’d heard – what was it? – you keep a hand on one wall and just keep walking? But then he realised, all he had to do, for now, was follow Mrs Ting.

“I just follow the fire extinguishers,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

“The fire extinguishers. I used to get lost – I mean it’s like a maze in here.”

“Er, yes.”

“So Mr Boht, he put fire extinguishers at all the junctions.”

“Was Mr Boht in the book trade?”

“Ooh, I don’t know, he never said.”

“When did he move here?”

“Must have been, well, it was just after our Lilly was born. And my Jimmy was still alive.”

“Jimmy?”

“My husband. He was an awful man, and I’m glad he’s dead.”

“Right.”

“1995 he died. So before that. A little before that.”

All the time they were talking they were walking. Mrs Ting was moving at a pace. She didn’t seem to be looking at the fire extinguishers. But he noticed that she was following their logic. Always taking a turn where one was placed.

They came out into what was clearly the middle of the maze. A large leather-topped desk and a chair. A sideboard. With a drinks tray and all the equipment to make tea and coffee, a kettle and the water container.

An enormous space, thought Klee. With just two chairs. Both of them for Boht. It didn’t look like he ever expected company.

He was following Mrs Ting at speed. But he was ready for a sit down. He was also interested to have more of a look around at the things on the shelves in front of the books that surrounded Boht’s desk – this was his office, wasn’t it?

But Mrs Ting didn’t seem to want to stop. She was sort of lightly jogging on the spot. “I was going to show you the back.”

“The back?”

“Yes, there’s a back door. He didn’t use it much. But if you’re staying here, you probably need to know where the back door is – you know, like, in case of” – she searched for a word and he realised that he didn’t have any good idea what that word might be – “emergency,” she said, eventually.

And off she went – past another fire extinguisher to her left. In the middle, he could see the roof. He realised that up to that point, he hadn’t seen it. The corridors of the bookshelves were covered in some kind of semi-translucent material – he guessed it was to protect the books. But it added to the murky experience of trying to find your way around the maze. Because there was no ceiling. There was just a roof. Mostly glass.

Now he was pretty comfortable that he’d got the fire extinguisher system for finding his way down. He didn’t feel the need to chase after Mrs Ting quite so closely, but he increased his speed when he heard her scream.

“Them bastards.”

“Mrs Ting.”

“I bet it’s them bastards next door. Them Germans!”

Of course he quickened his pace. The final corridor of books and bookshelves led him to an entrance hall. And to a set of double doors, which had clearly been jimmied or smashed open from the outside.

What was even weirder was that it looked like it had happened very recently. The splintered wood on the door jamb was bright and clean. That was one clue. Another clue was the two men clad in black who were running across the large lawn that the emergency exit doors led out to.

Ridiculously, they were in “Full burglar outfit.” Black tracksuit bottoms, black body warmers. Black balaclavas.

And climbing over the wall at the very end of the lawn.

Maybe Ernesto Klee hadn’t learned much from his time in the Met. But he had learned that if you were going to chase someone, it was a very bad idea to shout and let them know. They had been gently trotting across the lawn – yes, the sound of Mrs Ting talking had probably spooked them. But it was only when Mrs Ting shouted “We’ll get you, you German bastards!” that they realised they’d actually been spotted and picked up their pace. Klee realised that his chances of catching them were now pretty slim. Especially because he realised, he knew the area hardly at all. He was also alarmed to see how quickly they were getting over the wall at the end of the garden. It was only when he reached it himself that he noticed there were stone steps, like those in a stile, built into the wall. But – and he only really understood this when he reached the top – only on one side. Getting down the other side meant he was going to have to jump.

“I wondered what happened to you,” said Mrs Ting.

What had happened to him was that he’d taken the time to walk along the wall to a point where he thought he might have a chance at a soft-ish landing. He’d paused again. When landed, he realised immediately that he was wrong about the soft landing. Trying to console himself that he probably didn’t need both hips, he’d managed to struggle into an upright position and looked both ways down the road that he’d found himself in, covered in soil and leaf mould down one aching side, standing on. It was suburban semis in both directions. With no sign of any movement but in the middle distance the sound of the accelerator being floored in the kind of car that had deliberately not silenced exhausts.

Chapter 10 — Armour

“I fucked up.”

It was a long sigh. “Jesus Ernie, you’ve been there ten minutes.”

“Somebody tried to break in.” “Did they succeed?”

“No, but they tried to do it in the middle of the day. Most of the locks are feeble.” “Well, you’re the security consultant.” “Will it be OK with the nephew if I get something a bit more – well a bit more anything – fitted? Something with a bit more oomph.”

“I’m guessing so. But maybe you should talk to him yourself.”

“Mr Pausing assured me that you’re the best man for the job. And that paying you to stay in my uncle’s house is the best way of keeping it, and all of its things safe Mr Klee” “That’s very kind of him.”

“But now, I hear that on the first day, that my uncle’s house has been burglarised – in broad daylight.”

Clients. That was one thing at least about being a copper. You didn’t really have clients. Well, when you were on the murder squad. There was this idea I suppose that you were avenging the death of the victim. And so, you could, possibly say that person, the dead person, was the client. But as a client, they were great. Because they didn’t interfere. They didn’t tell you how to do your job.

And of course, every now and then, a member of the public would tell you that they were paying your wages – as if they were the first person who’d thought of it. And yes, of course, in some sense, technically, you did work for them. But not in a sense that meant that you couldn’t, mostly, tell them to hop it, or, possibly something stronger if they were getting on your nerves.

But Jonathan Terpsichore – what the hell kind of name was that? Pronounced “Turps – ick – o’ree!” When you spelled it out like that, it sounded like the name of a cartoon leprechaun. Anyway. Mr T was a client and so, Klee couldn’t tell him to hop it.

“I understand Mr Terpsichore, it is very disappointing. I was talking with Mr Pausing. And he thought that it might be better if I talked to you personally.”

“What time did this break-in happen?” “Around mid-day.” There was a pause. “So, that’s what? Seven a.m. New York Time?”

“Yes.” Why on earth did that matter? There was another pause. “Okay.” As if that made sense – why did that make sense?

He knew what he wanted to do to make things a bit more secure. And he knew who he wanted to do it. And if it were his own house. Or if it were a place that they’d been trying to look after on the job, it would have been sorted by now.

“And you don’t think we should call the police?”

Terpsichore looked frail. Klee realised that he must be about the same age as him. Ten years older at most. It was difficult to get the measure of anyone over a video link, and he’d turned on a fake background – so there was no context. He imagined that his skin, if you were to touch it would be papery. He had blue eyes and sandy hair. The resting place for his mouth didn’t seem to be in a straight, symmetrical, neutral expression. He was wearing a business suit and a tie. On his top half, anyway, who knew what anyone was wearing under the desk these days. Wet suit? Stockings and suspenders – suit – of armour? Klee’s thoughts were drifting, wondering if ordinary chinos often caused him a rash, and he’d only ever tried leather trousers – once! What the hell would iron pants be like?

“Mr Pausing said that he’d leave that to your judgement, and of course, if there were insurance, involved and we wanted to claim we’d need to. But my uncle – my uncle didn’t believe in that kind of insurance. Even though insurance isn’t involved, I wonder if we should at least report it to the police?”

“Sweet Jesus holy fuck no! We’re not calling the police! That’s the whole point of this gig, is to avoid the police!” Is what Klee wanted to say.

But what he did say was.

“I wish it were the case that the police would pursue a matter like this Mr Terpsichore, but having been a policeman myself, I’m afraid, that all we’d really get out of the process is a crime report number.”

“Yes, I understand, it’s rather the same here in New York. So, what do you propose.” “I have an associate. Who specialises in securing,” - a pause – “addresses” – he was going to say crime scenes, murder scenes.

“But of course” he continued. There’s a cost.

“Yes, of course. How much are we talking about?”

“It might be several thousand.” Now there was no pause, “I think, given the circumstances, that would be very a good idea. What kind of thing would this involve.” “Well, decent locks – probably a bolt for this back door, and some surveillance cameras.” “If we had all of that, why would we need you?” “Well…” He had a point, why did they need him? What good had he been so far? There he was pointing his phone at a massive villain-shaped hole in a door that – some security guard he was – he’d only found out about half an hour before. Not the hole! The door! Actually, the hole and the door!

But Klee didn’t have to put together a justification for why Mr Topsy Turvey – oh Jesus, he couldn’t let that stick, or he’d never remember the real name. Because before he managed to say anything else, Terpsichore interrupted.

“My apologies Mr Klee, it’s the nature of my business to have to deal with aggressive and confrontational people all day long. And the temptation is to become – well, aggressive and confrontational.

And, sad to say, I seem to spend all of my days, and most of my nights engaged in my business. And this tends to spill over into family matters. It’s become a serious source of grievance for my wife.”

“That’s quite all right.”

Klee was very glad that he hadn’t been asked to justify his presence. Because wasn’t sure that he would have been able to.

But then he’d started to get worried that “Turps” was going to start sharing his domestic problems. And that was something he hardly ever wanted anybody to do – even when it was his job to listen to them.

“So, it’s ok for me to bring in my – associate? And fit some locks and some surveillance cameras.” “Yes, it’s quite alright. In fact, I think it’s the right thing to do.” “Righto, I’ll get right on it.” “Oh Mr Klee” “Yes, Mr Turps” he realised that might not be a great idea just calling him that in his head “– ick – O’ree?” he finished. “Would it be possible to send me the links to the feeds from the surveillance?”

Oh great. A boss watching him at all times. Having to make sure he didn’t walk anywhere in just his pants, or in a wet suit. Or a suit of armour. “Yes, of course. That will be fine.”

Chapter 11 — Pine

A bar lock on the back door – so it could only be opened from the inside.

A bar lock on the front double doors of the chapel. It took a while picking and pulling through the pews to reach it. That was the door Klee thought, that you’d walk through if you were walking down the aisle and getting married here – people must have done that.

A new lock and an extra lock on the side door to the chapel. And cameras. Cameras on the balcony in the chapel. He hung the enormous key that had been used for the side door in the cupboard where Mrs Klee had found the key to the secret door.

And then cameras in the organ loft. There was an organ loft! A different set of stairs behind a different, what looked like just a panel. Cameras in the organ loft pointing across at the balconies and down at the pews.

But what about the school room? The book maze? That’s what it was, wasn’t it? A maze of books. A labyrinth of books. Well, one pointing tight on the back door – the one that had just been pretty much barred with a giant locked bar. The jimmied hole patched.

“I’ve had a bit of a walk around. It’s going to be big job. I’ve rigged night clubs, I’ve rigged, football grounds bruv. I’ve never rigged a maze before. To be honest with you.”

Like all tradesmen that Klee used, Preston Vanz came recommended by the London criminal fraternity.

It just took one call.

“Big G” “Mr K” “You used to have clubs in Birmingham didn’t I hear.” “I have many regrets, in a long life.”

“And that’s one of them?” “It is. They should have a giant sign at the Watford Gap services ‘Turn round now mate, you’re making a big mistake.’”

“How did it happen?” Bernie Gersten let out a long, low sigh.

“It’s a long story. It involved a woman, a poker game. And a bloke who fell in a canal – twice.”

“Did he get out of the canal?” “Well, he did the first time.” Nothing weird happening here. Just one of Klee’s best mates kind of confessing to a murder. But if you didn’t want to hear that kind of talk, well, then you didn’t really want to be talking to Bernie G.

Klee knew he’d be sitting in his office. Possibly one of the darkest spaces he’d ever been in his life. Although his memory of how dark that space had been might be closely connected to that time. You know, that time when it had looked like Bernie was going to have throw him in the canal. That was all a misunderstanding. They’d sorted it out. They’d laughed about it later. Well, Bernie had laughed.

He imagined that long sigh out of Bernie, sitting in his office. Was Bernie still smoking actual cigarettes. Now it seemed as antiquated as well – wearing a suit of armour. Was it smoke he was blowing out on that sigh? Or was it a vape now? No longer tobacco scented.

“When you needed locks changing, or cameras fitting, who did you use?”

“Dalton Vanz – I’ll send you a number. But he’s long retired. It’s his boy now. A right techno whizz kid. They had to put him in high security ‘cos he kept breaking out of the open prison. And he hacked into the screws cctv. Oh God! What’s his name. Preston! Another place that should have a warning label on the outside.”

“Not a big fan of the North then Mr G.”Bernie Gersten let out a long, low sigh.

“In London, you know where you are.” And so does everybody else, thought Klee.

“You’re not setting up outside the M25 are you Mr K?” “Don’t be daft.” Something happened in Klee’s chest, as if he’d just swallowed something icy and vinegary at the same time. Don’t worry, Bernie wasn’t going to tell anyone.

“It’s my old auntie, she still lives in a bungalow in Stirchley. Some junkies just tried to do over her place. In the middle of the night. She fought them off with the Hoover – actually a Henry – but she doesn’t want to have to sleep with it next to her bed.”

What was the point of lying to Bernie G? One of the smartest villains he’d ever met.

“Well.” He said, obviously, now more curious, because he’d been lied to. Achieving, Klee realised the opposite of what Klee had intended. “You can’t be too careful.”

So, Preston Vanz had essentially tripled the security of the place. And links to the new system had been sent to Mr Turps. But what to do about the maze?

“Tomorrow, I can bring you a camera for every corner,” he said tucking into a piece of cake nearly the size of his dreadlocked head. Mrs Ting had taken an instant shine to Preston. Which made Klee question his original idea that she was a racist. Maybe it was that she really just didn’t like Germans? Or people she suspected of being Germans. Or maybe the people next door really were awful people.

As Preston had worked, she’d pestered him with unrequested cups of tea. Getting the milk and sugar combination so exactly right on the second go that Preston had exclaimed on the first sip!

“Oh, that’s a good cup of tea Mrs Ting!” Ensuring the appearance of further cups and also cake.

What a day! Klee could see from the way that the sun was streaming in through the chapel windows that it was starting to set.

“I was thinking just for tonight Mr Klee, we could put just one three sixty camera above.” Preston pointed up through the mesh. He was sitting on the arm of the armchair at the centre of the maze, eating his cake.

“And then tomorrow I can put cameras, I don’t know – at every junction?”

“That sounds great,” said Klee. “But I don’t know how you’re going to get up there” “Well can’t he take the stairs?” Mrs Ting was taking away Preston’s plate and mug.

Klee was getting a bit sick of saying things like “What door? What stairs? What labyrinthine library?” But he said it again. “What stairs?”

In yet another cupboard was a wrought iron spiral staircase which led up to a walkway. A wrought iron spiral fucking staircase! In a cupboard! Here’s where the lights were that lit the maze. And from up here, he could see the pattern of the maze. And the mesh that covered it.

It occurred to him that he could draw himself a map of the maze. Which somehow, made him feel more comfortable than relying on the fire extinguishers. The mesh was kept in place, along the top of every bookcase by a line of bricks. They weren’t house bricks. They seemed to be covered in rubber. They reminded Klee of something that he hadn’t seen in maybe forty or so years. The rubber covered bricks that they used to dive down to the bottom of the pool and retrieve as part of their personal survival medals at the swimming baths.

Chapter 12 — Burger

A good night.

Maybe because he felt he could sleep a little more soundly after installing the locks and the cameras. Maybe because he was getting used to living in a tent, in a chapel, next to a maze. Maybe because the day preceding that night of uninterrupted unconsciousness had been absolutely exhausting. When was the last time he’d actually chased villains like that?

When was the last time he’d chased villains and jumped off a wall? One of the advantages of being in the Met was that there was always someone in uniform who you could send off to do the chasing.

No four forty-four wake-up call from his deepest, darkest fears. And there was even more good news. He’d found the shower! Not the dank mouldy cupboard on the stairs up to the balcony. No, beyond the library, there was a wonderful new bathroom and also a kitchen.

So, this morning, he’d walked through his maze – his maze! And showered, and then, making himself a coffee, he’d walked back as far as the centre of the maze. He’d sat in the single armchair and taken a minute to take stock.

You’re on the run from the Met. Or at least you think you are. The bomb was a bit of a clue and hey? Aren’t you a detective. There’s only one way to know for sure, and that would be to give them a chance to catch you.

You’ve been put in charge of a chapel full of STUFF! Paintings, cigarette cards, French art deco glass. And you’ve also been put in charge of a maze of books.

He had to spend most of the morning waiting in. For deliveries. One of the aspects of fleeing for your life in a, slightly-stolen, lime green car in fear for your life from Europe’s, largest and supposedly most efficient police force, is that you don’t have any time to pack.

So, Ernesto Klee, in the quiet evening after all the kerfuffle the day before had ordered himself some pants and some socks and some t-shirts.

He didn’t trust on-line to deliver a pair of trousers that fitted. So, he looked up the nearest Luke and Fletcher. Luke and Fletcher was the store where he always bought his trousers. When he’d been on the force, it was the place where he’d always bought his suits.

There was an out of town store one, on an industrial estate, not far from the chapel. But for some reason, that didn’t interest Klee.

There was a store in the centre of town. And he knew why he wanted to go there.

He wanted a bus ride, and he wanted a burger.

Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and his violin and therefore, it is to be deduced, my dear Watson, his despairing neighbours. Morse had his opera. Poirot had his tisanes, and his extremely peculiar sexual practices. Oh come on! Nobody with a moustache like that has a plain vanilla sex life.

Klee had buses and burgers. He’d seen an interview once with a professor, some Nobel prize winner. And it was on some kind of youth show. Maybe what they call now an “Ask me anything” and, of course, somebody had asked this guy “Where do you get your ideas from?”

And, because obviously the kind of person who wins a Nobel prize, well, there’s a chance that he’s a bit of a nerd. He was very serious about the answer.

“Well for me, it’s the three B’s” and he held up three fingers “Bus, bath and…” and Klee wondered if the third would be burger. But no, in this particular genius’s case, the third magic B was “Bed.”

Klee wasn’t sure he had any good ideas in bed. He had bad ideas in bed. Yes, he knew how that sounded. And it was probably right. Terrors? Oh yeah. He had those. Frequently at four forty-four. Bad ideas? Like sleeping with Elaine Sketchley, definitely. Humiliating moments, well, he’d had a few. Where was this meandering thought going?

Bus. The bloke had nailed it with the bus. Upstairs and the very front if possible. It was hard not to slip into some kind of trance. It was hard not to be fascinated by what you could suddenly see over people’s fences that you couldn’t see at street level.

Bath? Maybe. Things had to be going really badly for Klee to run a bath. Klee was more of a shower man. But he’d had good ideas in the shower, certainly. Something about that moment when the water hit his feet. He always went into a shower feet first. That was another quirk maybe about Klee. Maybe it was a good question to ask someone if you were getting to know them – when you get into the shower? Which bit of you do you get wet first? Klee hated showers with fixed heads, you sometimes got them in cheap hotels. Because he wanted to get his feet wet first. Always.

He was disappointed when the famous Nobel prize-winning guy didn’t say burger. He’d seen some documentary about how the whole experience of walking into a burger restaurant – and it had been his favourite, Billy’s Burgers – was engineered to be easy, smooth and reassuring. The lighting. The music. And maybe that was it. Maybe it was that the food was the same every time. Klee never went for the new, tantalizing option.

He ordered the same thing every time. They’d changed the cheese in ‘93 and it had taken him a few years to get over that.

He needed to think. So, he looked up which bus would take him into the centre of town and he got on the bus and went in search of a burger.

He climbed the stairs and settled himself in the front seat.

He’d slipped into a reverie. He’d found himself in the centre of Birmingham. A shopping centre on top of a railway station connected to another shopping centre. Another maze. And he’d banged around it until he’d found Luke and Fletcher’s. He didn’t need to try them on. He knew their trousers fitted.

And so, he could reward himself with a burger in Billy’s Burgers. The whole morning he’d been in a bit of a turn yourself around, sort yourself out kind of haze. Occasionally he’d check his phone. Check the app that showed him the cameras. But then he’d sink down into, what he suspected might be a new routine.

Get the bus into town, do your bits and then order a Billy’s double bubble burger. But as Ernesto Klee took that first bite. He came out of his trance, as if he’d bitten into the burger and broken a tooth.

This single thought brought him to his senses, and made him finish his burger, that he normally liked to savour and eat slowly. This single thought made him pick up his bags with his new clothing, jump into a cab at the rank and shout out the address of the chapel that had been his home for the last 48 hours.

He thought he knew why the garage was empty.

Chapter 13 — Pasties

“Boht is, was, Darren Oliver Brand.”

He was the mastermind behind a gold bullion job in the mid nineteen nineties. Mid-nineties? October 14th 1994 to be exact.

The gold was divided up in a lock up in Essex and his half was never seen again, nor was he.

The received wisdom is that the tricky bit with gold is smelting it down and then fencing it.

And that’s how the others got caught.

But Darren Oliver “Dobby” Brand was known as the “general.” Because all of his jobs were planned with military precision. Or at least that’s what they said. Remember, we’re dealing with villains. And the kind of villains who were doing jobs in 1994 – they weren’t like previous generations that had done national service. I think they might have been anybody who could get beyond planning what they had for breakfast. But it is true that Brand was a planner.

The first job that he’d been involved in was the Cadfield Farm heist. An unusual payroll that was all in cash, in the early nineties. They got away with all the money, but there was a problem. Brand had put enormous amounts of effort into planning the robbery. And the gang stopped the transport that had all the money in a culvert. They used some kind of jammers to stop the radio signals from the security vans. And they didn’t use violence. Well, nobody got hurt anyway. That was another Dobby signature. They used some kind of anaesthetic they’d nicked from the hospital. And masks.

The anaesthetic had the added benefit of wiping the memories of the guards in the van – none of them could remember a thing. Not even the one who later, it turned out had been an accomplice.

This was Dobby’s first known real job. Before that, he literally had been nicking stuff off the back of lorries. And it had all kinds of inspired touches.

There was just one problem. Actually, there were two problems. The first problem – and this might not sound like one - was that they got away with a lot of money. It was more than in a normal week because they were going to lay off about half of the workers. The project was winding down, so there was holiday, bonuses.

Why was it a problem that they’d nicked so much?

Well, the payroll was insured. And the insurance company and the police force – that time it was West Yorkshire. It was a combination of commercial necessity and professional pride. The police had to catch the robbers.

So, even though it looked like good luck at the beginning, it was actually bad luck.

The other thing was that this supposed strategic genius had done absolutely no planning about what to do with the money. None. Gang members walked away with suitcases full of cash and did exactly what you’d expect gang members to do who had never had money before in their lives and suddenly had a suitcase full of cash.

They spent it?

Exactly.

All plod, had to do was ask around. Who was looking flush? Have you heard of the “stripper theory?”

I’m taking it, this hasn’t got anything to do with painting and decorating.

“There was this guy who was really good at predicting when the market would collapse. Very good. In the last crash, he’d made enough money – some people can decide they’ve made enough money. And so, he wrote a book letting on how he did it – or letting on some of it anyway - ‘Stripper theory.’”

Basically, as a young, horny, nerdy man, he’d spend a lot of time in strip clubs. And because he was essentially harmless, he’d ended up talking to a lot of the strippers.

One night he’d had a conversation with one of the strippers, Vanessa – she was that most unusual of strippers – a veteran. But she was saying it was time to hang up her pasties.

What are pasties?

“They’re the things that you stick on the end of your nipples.” “Not with super glue, I’m guessing, how do you know this?” “My wife left me, remember? Didn’t yours leave you?”

Sometimes, they have tassels on. Vanessa’s had tassels on. Her speciality was getting one set of tassels to rotate one way and the other set to rotate the other way.

There were two reasons Vanessa was giving up. Firstly, gravity was making the job of getting the tassels to rotate, just a little bit trickier every day. Secondly, a recession, maybe even a depression was coming.

At this, our boy Bernard’s ears pricked up. How did she know a recession was coming?

Vanessa shrugged – “tips are dropping off.”

Not enough glue on the pasties.

Bernard didn’t want to suggest that maybe it was that Vanessa’s charms were, perhaps fading. But Vanessa made her money and had managed to keep herself safe (mostly) by knowing what men were thinking. It wasn’t that, she said. She had a regular clientele. If they were just going to someone younger, she’d know. They were visiting less, and they were paying less because they were broke. And that’s what it had been like last time.

Last time?

Last time there was a recession.

This is all very educational, but why are you telling me this Dr?

What did young men who’d never had money before and suddenly had suitcases full of cash spend their money on?

“Strippers! Hookers!”

“Exactly. That’s how they found most of the gang.”

“Honour among thieves? Bollocks. They all gave up Dobby in the hope of lighter sentences. Also, the coppers picked up the idea that the other members of the gang didn’t like him that much. He was the one who’d insisted on wearing gloves all the time. He was the one who’d been lecturing them about not spending their money all at once. He was the one who’d been right. And we all know.” Pausing looked at Klee, very pointedly, we all know how annoying that can be. They told themselves that somehow it was his fault that they’d got caught. They were more than keen to grass him up.

But there was a problem. There was no sign that he’d spent any of the money, and that was mainly because he was nowhere to be found.

Dobby Brand learned a lot from that job. Firstly, you needed to do as much planning about what to do with the money as you do about how to take it.

Secondly, stay away from villains.

Three years later. The Collaigne-Schotts bullion robbery showed that he’d been learning and he’d been thinking big.

None of the gang had records. Well, they had military records. Again. No actual violence on the job. Again, hospital anaesthetics and guards who genuinely couldn’t remember.

And as much attention was paid to getting rid of the gold and turning it into money as was paid in the planning of the job. They had a smelter. They had a moody gold dealer. They had someone to launder the money into houses and businesses. Well, that’s what they had in the side that got caught. Because Dobby Brand, after a brief discussion in a Nissen hut in Essex with the other members of the gang – was never seen again.

The job relied on the fact that Stansted Airport has a huge runway. The main security strategy for this gold, was to load it onto the plane in a far corner, where, well, I’m guessing, prying eyes wouldn’t see. It was tempting to think that it was safe to load an enormous amount of gold onto the back of a specially adapted 747 in one far corner of the runway, that nobody would be watching. Bit of a flaw in this security strategy.

Somebody was watching. Again – it was suspected that there was someone on the inside, but this time, they never figured out who.

There was some technical skill in the gang though. They figured out how to cut a Land Rover sized hole in the fence that didn’t get detected by the security systems. And they turned up at just the right minute. Hence the suspicion that it was an inside job. And there was some explosive knowledge. They did the Michael Caine thing – they blew the doors off!

Masks on. Filled the van with sleepy, sleepy, goodnight fumes. Charges on the doors, They knew exactly where to blow the doors to get the hinges and 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and boom! “Robert est son oncle.”

“What?”

“Bob’s your mother’s weird older brother who passes out at Christmas while the kids are opening their presents and the cartoons are still on. He doesn’t even make it to lunch.”

“Actually, he was called Eric.”

“This is a brilliant theory. There’s just one problem with it.”

“Oh you’re gonna nit pick now are you? Pick holes in it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I’m not gonna pick holes. I’m just going to blow one giant hole. Michael Caine blowing the doors off hole. Boht can’t be Brand.”

“Why not?”

“Because Brand has been in the freezer in the crypt. For the last thirty years.”

“It’s not a crypt. Unitarian chapels didn’t have…”

“The cellar. It’s downstairs. It’s dark. It’s a bit damp. I’m not going to argue. The freezer in the cellar. The body in the freezer in the cellar? It’s Brand. From the sell-by dates on the peas – it’s tricky of course, because it’s frozen food. I don’t think he made it to that Christmas 1994.”

Klee held up a printout of a black and white photograph of Brand.

And next to it, he held up his phone. Even with the Jack Frost impression, it was definitely the same face.

Chapter 14 — Sheep

“Wha’? Argh!”

4.44am

Congratulations.

They don’t have official most wanted lists in the UK, but Interpol do. Of course he’s not at the top of it now. It’s all terrorists now.

But he was on top of it for a while.

You’ve found the villain who got away with 247 kilos of gold. Current value? About 25 million quid.

But you found him in a freezer.

And you didn’t find the gold.

5:03am

Jewellery quarter. Birmingham has a jewellery quarter! He didn’t know precisely what went on there. But he could guess. Jewellery! Somebody could sell the gold bit by bit. Somebody could sell gold to businesses in the jewellery quarter. Hell, someone could set up businesses in the jewellery quarter, maybe Boht had done all of this.

Who the hell was Boht?

Why did he have a chapel?

That was the thing to do tomorrow – find out more about the chapel.

It had been a chapel until the late 80’s. He knew that. He’d seen leaflets and posters for the fundraising.

Minutes!

He’d seen minutes of the fundraising meetings. There were names in there! That was a place to start.

“Boht doesn’t exist.”

“Colour me unsurprised.”

“You know what that means?” “If I’m being perfectly honest, no I don’t.”

“It means my client – his nephew - doesn’t exist. Oh actually there is someone with that name. But I’ve looked at pictures – he’s not my client.” “The way you talk about clients, I’d have thought that was their ideal state.”

“What?” “Non-existence.”

“Well I suppose this one is approaching the ideal state. Because not only does this client not exist, but he’s paying his bills.”

“What’s he want me to do? Why am I here?”

“And what should we do? Should I pull you out? Find you something else? There’s a sheep farm in Norfolk. You wouldn’t have to farm the sheep…”

“No way we’re walking away from this now.” “But you might be in danger.”

“Of what? Half-finishing my curry, waltzing out into the night in a negligee, shooting myself in the face and then tidying up? Haven’t you figured out what this could mean?”

“What do you mean what this could mean?” “What do you think you might be able to buy with 25 million quid’s worth of gold?”

“We can’t keep it, Ernie.” “I wasn’t thinking about having Rolexes up my arms, and I already have a sports car.”

“What then?”

“I dunno, maybe we could spend it on burning off the cover for the top plod at the Met.”

“What? You want to kill us? Please don’t kill us, we’ll pay you 25 million quid?”

“The negotiation course at Hendon really paid off.”

“I can see just a few problems with that.”

“We don’t know exactly who killed Jackie. Unless you think the entire Met is corrupt, it must just be a small group who did.” “Do we have our suspicions?”

“We have our suspicions.”

“What else?”

“How is 25 million quid going to help? We can’t just walk up to the people who are trying to kill us.” “It’s mainly you.”

“Right.”

“Actually, it’s all you.”

“Right”

“I’m sitting here in plain sight. Nobody’s trying to kill me. Actually, I think the Corgi hates me, and would kill me if she were certain of an alternative source of kibble:”

“But if we give them the money, all that happens is they say, thank you very much and carry on trying to kill me.”

“So, what do we do?”

“Well, this is the Met right?” “Yes, that’s right, someone, or several someones in the largest police force in Europe are trying to kill you.”

“The exploding car suggests that’s the case.”

“But what else do we know about the Met?”

“Canteen prices now are so how, you might as well just eat out?”

“There’s always another faction. Whoever is doing this, there will be other people in the met that are happy to catch them, trip them up and take their place on the greasy pole.”

“I think I’m with you.” “So this is what we have to do.”

“When you say ‘we,’ why do I have the feeling that you actually mean ‘me.’”

“We need to find out who killed Jackie, and who tried to kill you.” From his tone of voice, he could tell that Pausing was working this out in head as he said it. Pausing kept going.

“And then we need to figure out who’s eager to take them down. And give them the gold and the collar of the century on condition that the Jackie Spanner Killers go down.”

“Brilliant, sergeant Pausing.” “Actually I was promoted to inspector, just as I resigned.”

“Only two problems with this.”

“I’m certain there a lot more than that but go on.”

“First – we don’t know who it is who’s trying to kill us.” “You, it’s you they’re trying to kill.”

“You’re, the exploding car suggests it’s personal.”

“What was your other problem?”

“Well, even if we did know who was trying to kill me? How do we know that there’s anybody powerful enough to pull them out of the Met?”

“This is also a problem.”

“And then there’s the final one. And might I suggest, this is the really big one?” “Go on.”

“We don’t have the gold! We don’t know if there even still is any gold!

Boht might have spent, Boht might have hidden it where we can’t find it.”

“I agree Ernie, this is also a problem.”

“OK, so let me run through this, just so I’ve got it right.”

“Might be an idea.”

“First we find out who’s going to kill me.”

“Yes.”

“Second, we find out who might have enough clout in the Met to stop them.” “Yes.” “Third we offer them the gold.”

“Yes.”

“And while we’re doing all these, high level negotiations, we need to find the gold.”

“I knew there was a reason why you hired me.”

“I thought it was that whole ‘saving your life, I’m in eternal debt thing.’”

“Well, there is that, but also, as employees, go, certainly employees of a security firm, you’re pretty smart.”

“Well, thank you… Hang on a minute.” “What?”

“Why are you complimenting me?”

“I just said you were smarter than the average security guard, that’s not much of a compliment.” “Yes, but even that, you don’t that. What’s going on. What is it? What is it you want me to do?” “Well…”

“Well what?”

“Well, I was thinking the way that we find out who’s trying to kill you is…”: “Yes?”

“We set a trap. And.” “And I’m the bait aren’t I? I’m the big, fat wiggly worm.”

“Well, I’d hesitate to say it, but…”

“OK, what do I do?”

“Oh, that bit’s simple?”

“It is?”

“Call Preston, and then take the car out of the garage.”

Chapter 15 — Listing Badly

It was a habit he’d picked up when he was a new recruit. He’d got in trouble for it.

“You’re not supposed to write everything down, Klee. Just the pertinent points.” And you weren’t supposed to keep notebooks that weren’t the official notebooks. Not while you were on duty anyway.

So, he would turn it into a kind of song, in his head. Worst rap ever! He’d make a list.

Like now, sitting in the café, he’d known the minute he walked in it would be his local.

Man and woman in hi-vis. Orange hi-vis? Who works in orange hi-vis?

The woman offering the man hay fever tablets.

And then showing him two packs of air freshener! Klee tried to stop his mind from boggling. If your nose was blocked from hay fever, why did you need the air freshener? Or was the story that you needed the hay fever tablets because otherwise you couldn’t breathe, but when you could breathe – whatever environment you were in, you were going to need air freshener.

A woman, thirties, short hair, no wedding ring. Two dogs. A poodle, or something like that, one of these adorable crosses. And a dog, the shape of a corgi, but with grey-blue spots on a white background. And pale, grey-blue eyes.

A large man, who somehow managed to look clumsy, even when all he was doing was walking in the shop. He paid with a card which he got out of his wallet, several other cards dropped to the floor, he bent to pick them up. As he bent down, he caught a basket of crisps that was in front of the checkout with the top of his head. The small Indian woman behind the counter – whose name was Anunciata – came out from behind the counter to help him pick up the crisps. The small Indian man fixed him with a glance. Making sure that he paid. This guy’s name was Donny. It had crossed both Donny, and Klee’s mind that this clumsiness was just an act to create a distraction so that the clumsy man could steal chocolate, or crisps. A lot of effort for a packet of crisps.

But now, watching the clumsy man try to put sugar in his coffee, he changed his mind. No, this was real clumsiness. Maybe some neurological condition. The man – a big man, with woolly dark hair, and enormous shoes – he thought of Jackie for a moment, walked back towards the door with his coffee. Somehow, he had put the plastic lid on it incorrectly and it was spilling and dripping down his hand.

Listing what he could see. And then, remembering what he could see.

He’d seen a book in a house. Someone had been burgled. Their shelves had rivalled Mr Boht’s. The victim of the burglary was a magician. And one entire bookshelf was books on memory.

When they’d asked the man – a young man. Looking at the bookshelves and the carpets, and the curios. Yes, that’s what they were, curios. Blonde hair, twentysomething. Already going bald.

When, off the top of his head (so to speak) he listed exactly the things that had been stolen, the other policemen were immediately suspicious. Was this an insurance job? No, it wasn’t, no insurance.

But what he did have was a good memory. A Chinese puzzle box, a set of steel rings, a book of 1,000 card tricks that can be done without preparation. A guillotine (1:24 scale).

Klee had started with one book, “Remember Everything!” But before long, he had his own bookshelf full of books on memory tricks.

Every now and again through his career in the Met, someone would exclaim that he had a photographic memory. He didn’t. He had a terrible memory. He especially didn’t think visually at all. A lot of the memory books suggested that you create an image to remember someone’s name, for example. He would struggle to do that. He could make it work. He thought in words. The sound of the words, talking to himself. Fortunately only in his head. Not out loud.

What he would find himself doing especially in crime scenes, is doing that, talking to himself, telling himself what he could see, and then going over and over this list of things that he could see in his head.

Was it poetry? No.

Was it like a rap or hip-hop word spitting?

Jesus no.

What was it?

Do you know what it was most like?

Well, Then You Have a Go!

What?

“Well, Then You Have a Go!”

What the hell was that?

WTYHAG – as it was never known – was a Saturday night prime time TV show. The premise was that there would be a demonstration from an expert. A chef would demonstrate how to bone a chicken. Someone would do something with origami.

A serial killer would expertly dismember a body.

OK that never happened.

So, the gag of the show was that the contestants would be terrible at the cake decorating or hair cutting or beef jointing – come to think of it, there was actually quite a lot of dismemberment. But whoever was best at it, at the end of the show, they would get the chance – just the chance – to win a prize – actually prizes.

And the way the prizes worked was that the person who’d been really good at origami and Airfix kit assembly would watch a series of aspirational prizes go past on a conveyor belt.

A Teasmade! A cuddly toy! A fondue set. What the holy living fuck was a fondue set? This was the seventies. A machine that woke you up to the blurpy blurpy sound of a tiny amount of tea being made with explosive inefficiency right next to your ear – that was the height of sophistication. Actually, the fondue set went beyond the height of sophistication. Nobody really knew what it was for. A mysterious black cauldron. Some kind of lamp that needed to be lit. A peculiar set of sharp implements.

Klee was probably actually finished at Hendon before he realized that there was a difference between fondue and Voodoo.

Are we anywhere near the point?

We are not. We are quite a long way from it.

The point was this. Klee taught himself to remember every item on the conveyor belt. So when it came to making lists of the things he saw when he was on a crime scene, or on a bus, he did it. Almost without thinking.

Chapter 16 — Henry

“Henry” “Ernest” “Where are you? It sounds noisy.” “I’m at a boot sale in the middle of an air field.” “Anything interesting?” “Mostly it’s stolen power tools getting shifted before the rozzers get here.”

“Do the rozzers bother with things as trivial as stolen power tools?”

“Well, the things I took hardly cost more than a van full of power tools and they made sure they sent me down.”

“Wasn’t the mistake you made stealing from Lord Gatling?” “Possibly.” “And then trying to fence the things you stole in an antique shop in the village.” “Yes, that was part of it.” “A shop owned by Lord Gatling.” “Those were my salad days, when I was green in judgement and had a brain like a mushed avocado.”

Henry Jayne was a celebrity. After a shaky start, in the world of work – getting a prized job as an assistant curator in a local stately home – things had gone almost immediately awry, when, not priceless, but rather, very definitely high-priced antiques started to go missing from Shelaghbrightdown (pronounced Sheldon) Hall.

Part of Henry’s mistake was that he didn’t know Barry Gatling. Yes, Barry Gatling was a Lord. Yes, Barry Gatling had a title and land. No, Barry Gatling was not gentry. Barry Gatling was also a thief. And like many thieves, there was nothing that Barry hated more than being stolen from.

When Henry had become a moderately famous TV star, it had been in all the papers about his “colourful” past.

Henry was a participant in a TV show “X Marks the Spot.”

It was part antique show, part children’s party-style treasure hunt.

Each pair of ordinary members of the public was paired with an “Antiques expert” and given a series of objects as clues. The clues inevitably led to a local tourist attraction that was trying to vary its approach to marketing.

And as Henry said himself, he was “taken from the country jail” and “by a set of curious chances”, had become the nation’s favourite antiques expert.

At that point, there’d been just one snag. Henry hadn’t really known all that much about antiques. But something strange happened.

And it was as the result of a conversation that Henry had had with a serial killer.

“He wasn’t really a serial killer.” “He killed four people.” “Yes, but they weren’t random people. And it wasn’t for sex, or for the thrill. He was quite sane.” “He chopped them up and distributed them across Gloucestershire.” “But that was a sensible thing to do – he was trying to avoid detection. They tricked him out of his business. Anyway. When I knew him, he was the gentlest soul that you could possibly imagine. And I don’t know why he decided to take me under his wing.” “It wasn’t… the obvious?”

“Oh no, he wasn’t gay!”

Henry never said what it was that the Crickley Hill killer said to him. But it had clearly set him on a different path. And since leaving prison, he had used all the money and time that being on a successful TV show gave him to learn as much as he possibly could about antiques. His specialism was porcelain. He had written several books. But he had a good eye for antiques.

And beyond that, he had a villain’s sense of when something was pukka, and when something was moody. Even though he’d been a rubbish thief. And that’s exactly what Klee felt he needed right now.

“I have fallen among antiques.” “Are you sure? The last time you suggested I come and look at what you thought were antiques, it was like we were in a skip.”

Klee said nothing, he just flipped the camera round on his phone and slowly scanned the pews.

“Where the hell are you?” “Birmingham.”

“Wait! Wait!” “What?” “Go back.” Klee had been wondering how long it would take, it had crossed his mind that everything in there might be junk, this stuff looked good to him, but maybe he was in a skip again.

“The lamp.”

“The naked woman?”

“Yes.”

“Can you lift it? And see what’s on the base?”

“I’ll have to put the phone down.” Klee tried to lift it. “I can’t lift it.” “Could you just tilt it on its side?” “I’ll ring you back.”

After ten minutes of clearing space, Klee managed to clear enough space on the pew. He gently lifted the glass shade out of the arms of the naked lady. And then as carefully as possible he tilted it on its side.

“I’ve done it.” “You’re out of breath?” “Yes.” “It sounds like you’ve been jogging.” “This thing is very heavy.” “Show me the base.” Klee moved his phone to show Henry the base.

“Ah, how disappointing.”

“Not good?” “Not really.” “Do you have anything – a key, a coin? That you could use to scratch the base?”

Klee reached in his pocket and pulled out the now useless rusty key that had been the old key for the chapel.

“Gently, gently.”

“Henry? Are you still there?” “I don’t say this lightly, Ernest, that is one of the most peculiar things that I have ever seen.”

“Peculiar? Peculiar good, or peculiar bad?” “Well, put it this way. If the lamp was an original in bronze, it would be worth about five thousand pounds but…”

“But?” “But, it’s most definitely a fake.”

“So, worthless then?” “That’s the strange part.”

“Strange?”

“Because if it’s what I think it is, and I’m looking now to see how long it’s going to take me to drive to – where are you in Birmingham?”

“Kings Norton.” “If it’s what I think it is, it is probably going to be worth, well, let’s just say, considerably more.”

“Tea?”

“Do you have leaves, a pot and china cups?” Henry gestured around at the pews, several of which were filled with china services. “Ah yes, but about the leaves?” “I nipped out and got some specially.”

“In that case yes, palaeolithic cow’s milk if you have it.”

“Not almond?” “As you Ernestos” Klee was never quite sure why he added the extra ‘s.’ “As you know, I endeavour to be vegan, these days. But the problem with almond milk is that it just sits at the bottom of the cup and sulks. And I’ve tried the others.”

For the last hour Henry had been walking around the pews, pulling things out. Every time Klee had tried to ask him for a verdict he had held up a hand and then placed a finger to his lips.

But Klee could tell from the expression on his face, that he’d already seen something quite special.

As always with Henry, he was playing a game. So, for an hour or so, he’d left Henry to it, jokingly mentioning that he’d noticed if Henry nicked anything (he so wouldn’t). And he’d slipped out and bought some leaf tea.

He’d let Henry pick a tea service.

“Why don’t we walk through to the other room?” He said slyly. And then breezily walked through the maze as fast as he could.

“Ernestosia, might I ask, what the holy living fuck is this?”

“Oh this? This is my labyrinth.”

Klee knew that Henry’s love of antiquarian books almost matched his love of porcelain. And so he’d deliberately not mentioned the library maze, to make sure he had a big reveal.

He parked Henry in the middle of the maze while he washed the teapot and cups and made the tea.

When he returned he was sitting bolt upright on the chaise longue holding a book in his hand.

“Did you know about this?”

“Know about what?”

He was holding in his hand a tiny book that was no bigger than his palm. “You didn’t know about it.”

“What?” “You see, whoever put this collection together thought they were being cute. Nearly everything is under the radar, most of the books are worth less than a few thousand pounds. Occasionally, there are yards and yards that are actually worthless.”

“But this? This was quite a serious mistake.” “What is it?”

“This is a privately printed edition of ‘Pissing Blue Steam’.”

“Is it some kind of medical textbook?”

Harrison Corner was a blue-eyed, blue-blooded, so, I supposed it was logical that he’d want to piss it.

Harrison came from a family of steel barons in Pennsylvania. As part of the rounding off of his education, he went on a European tour, at, well, let’s say, quite an interesting point in European history.

He in fact left for Europe on the day that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated.

By the time he got to Paris, the war had already started. And, rather than turn around and go straight back, Mr Corner decided he was going to continue his travels, and the almighty dollar being what it was, that worked out OK, he stayed in luxury hotels on both sides of the front lines. He travelled to Greece, which most people who were averse to dying of water borne diseases didn’t do in those days. And he generally had a ball. It was only the pesky business of the Americans joining the war in 1917 that put a stop to his peregrinations. He ended up in Switzerland for the rest of the war, and there he fell in with a bad lot?

“Protofascists?”

“Not quite.” “Communists?”

“Definitely not. The clue is in the title ‘Pissing Blue Steam.’”

“Over ambitious genito-urinary surgeons?”

“Worse than that – Surrealists!”

“Ah!”

“And this is his book of surrealist poetry.”

“Is it any good?”

“It’s utterly appalling, even by the standards of surrealist poetry, which is pretty bad, this is terrible. I suspect it might even be terrible by the standards of books that express a desire for blue excretions.”

“So, why is it of any interest?” “Because Harrison Corner wasn’t the trustafarian drifter that he appeared to be.”

“He wasn’t?”

“No, he was a spy.”

“And this is important why?” “Because everywhere he went, Paris, Berlin, Constantinople, Vienna, he would leave the manuscript of yet another book of his appalling poems. But hidden in them would be his assessment of the current situation.”

“So what was Boht’s mistake?” “Boht?” “That’s whose collection this is. Ulysses T Boht.” “His mistake was that this book has skyrocketed in value. Last year, Harrison Corner’s great-grand-nephew wrote his biography. And he revealed that his great-great-uncle had been a spy for the Americans. At a time, when the historical view was that the Americans were doing their level best to not get involved. He’s become a kind of American James Bond. But also, an American James Bond who left secret codes in his slim volumes of poetry all over Europe.”