Ben Aaronovitch

I didn’t dare ask because we have an unspoken agreement—I don’t question what she does on my computer when I’m out and, in return, she doesn’t murder me in my sleep.

From a policing point of view, guns are a pain. Once someone is known to be tooled up, your operational priorities are suddenly fucked up. It all becomes about managing whoever was stupid enough to pull a gun in central London and your number one priority is public safety, followed closely by officer safety and then, not so closely, by the safety of the moron with the gun.

A promise is a promise, or as Nightingale put it, “either your word is good or it’s worthless.”

There’s nothing like having your girlfriend talk in geological time to make you feel insignificant.

Most people don’t see half of what’s in front of them. Your visual cortex does a shit load of imaging processing before the signal even gets to your brain, whose priorities are still checking the ancestral savannah for dangerous predators, edible berries and climbable trees. That’s why a sudden cat in the night can make you jump and some people when distracted, can walk right out in front of a bus. Your brain just isn’t interested in those large moving chunks of metal or the static heaps of brightly colored stuff that piles up in drifts around us. Never mind all that, says your brain, it’s those silent fur-covered merchants of death you’ve got to watch out for.

It’s a police mantra that all members of the public are guilty of something, but some members of the public are more guilty than others.

The Daily Mail had the scoop but the media had caught the smell of blood in the water and twenty-four-hour news outlets were running the bulletin every half an hour, with a teaser on the quarter in case your attention span was that short.

Dedication: This book is dedicated to all the people who get up and do something about it, whatever it is and however small the thing is they do.

Nightingale had taught me to be cautious of the early sources. “A great deal of it is accurate,” he said. “And a great deal is less so. Unfortunately it can be difficult to determine which is which.”

I’ll say this for the Queen. She was brave—or possibly stupid. It’s easy to mistake the two.

I am a goddess, Peter, a creature of temperament and whimsy. I’m supposed to be arbitrary and mercurial—it’s practically my job description.

Keeping a secret always makes the police suspicious. And while we’re willing to believe in the possibility of a totally innocent explanation, we never think that’s the way to bet.