Ben Aaronovitch

I asked Oxley to ask Beverley to bring Abigail home. Then I showered, changed and drove back to London.

And if you're the woman who, driving along the A4155 that afternoon, found herself inexplicably picking up a pair of hitchhikers and driving them all the way into London, I'm really, really sorry - I assumed Beverley would organise a lift from one of her relatives.

“A romantic,” said Nightingale. “The most dangerous people on earth.”

Upstairs, MOLA’s offices had the same open-plan cubicle based workspace that has been the delight of code monkeys and low-level paper pushers since one time and motion consultant said to another, “Hey, you know, I don’t think we’ve really dehumanized these white collar drones enough.”

Old Street roundabout is a diamond-shaped circulatory system designed in the late 1960s to thin out the number of cyclists heading in and out of the City. In line with the then-current planning conventions they added a series of mugger-friendly underpasses, an insufficiently wide entrance to Old Street Underground station, and a small shopping arcade lined with urine-attracting beige tile.…

You can say what you like about late-sixties architecture, but when they baked in the ugly they baked it in good.

I pointed out that, according to Bev, half the ecological disasters in the world occurred when people removed “pests” or predators without thinking through the consequences.

My recent experience trying to explain magic to people who really would rather it didn’t exist has given me an arsenal of euphemisms. I’m particularly proud of “initial incident” although “subjective perception threshold” runs a close second.

I could see the cartoon slot machine flicker behind his eyes. Nightingale was offering what the ridiculously rich always crave—a chance to be exclusive.

Despite being the oldest part of London, the Square Mile has a faster architectural churn than anywhere else in the city. Occasionally it throws up something exciting, innovative and modern…but mostly it doesn’t. Architects like a bit of volume, and financiers like floor space. The easiest way to maximize both is to build a cube—which is why ninety-nine per cent of all office buildings are boxes with lobbies.

“There’s paperwork for magic? asked Vanessa.

“Not so glamorous now, eh?” I said.

We headed off to do some community outreach. This involves meeting people, listening to their stories and memorizing their names and faces in case you have to come back and arrest them at a later date.

As police you can live with the violence, the squalor and the stupidity—it’s the waste of people’s futures that really grinds you down.

“He believed in a mystical connection between the farmer and the soil.”

“And you don’t?” I asked.

“I believe there’s a connection,” she said. “I just happen to believe it’s biochemical.”