Ben Aaronovitch

Foxholes might breed belief, but trench systems are full of fatalistic cynics.

Few buildings evoke the sinister horror of 1950s municipal architecture more strikingly than the flat roofed pub. Thrown up in their thousands wherever the working class were being rehoused, it’s hard to imagine that the architects were not secret teetotallers looking to make the whole pub experience as grim as possible.

None of this was real.

But I’ve learned that just because something isn’t real doesn’t mean it’s not important.

The bell sang with the first hammer and screamed with the second. And within the scream I heard a familiar laugh and the jingle of merry bells.

Nothing attracts the powerful quite like more power.

Lots of angled struts, planes of glass and random spikes. It was, as architectural theorists like to say, a bold statement and the statement was: “Fuck truth and beauty. We’ve got money and loads of it.”

Common sense said I should scarper. But is anyone will tell you, me and common sense have always had an open relationship.

This guy [Security Guard] was in a navy suit with an unfortunate orange tie, and was nearing us with the caution of a man on a minimum wage zero hours contract who planned to give his employers exactly what they paid for.

Anyone who’s taken statements from multiple witnesses to the same event will know how malleable memory is.

"That at least we can leave to Abdul and the irrepressible Dr Vaughan," said Nightingale. "Who no doubt will be delighted to extend the boundaries of their empire of information."

"Their knowledge base," I said.

"I believe that's what I said."

I found that if you voluntarily take on a chore somebody else doesn’t want to do, they don’t check the results too closely—in case they have to do it again themselves.

I’m all for courageous action, in moderation, Peter. But you have an alarming tendency toward heroics.