Lies Sleeping

Here's a comforting thought for you, Peter,' he said. 'However long you may live, the world will never lose its ability to surprise you with its beauty.

The kitchen was the kind of brushed steel monstrosity that looks more like it's designed to weaponise viruses than cook dinner.

The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse [...] stuck in my mind because of the subject's flagrant health and safety violation. As any competent practitioner will tell you, you always complete your protective circle *before* you start your workings.

I’d been warned in advance, so I’d given it some thought. When it was my turn and I stood up and called for life, liberty and peace and managed to sit down before I added a hard-boiled egg to the list.

We seem to be sitting around waiting for the next fucking disaster." he said, which went into the official log as - DCI Seawoll felt that our operational posture was too reactive.

Or as my dad always says: it only becomes a social problem when the working man joins in.

When dealing with the excessively rich and privileged, you’ve got your two basic approaches. One is to go in hard and deliberately working class. A regional accent is always a plus in this. Seawoll has been known to deploy a Mancunian dialect so impenetrable that members of Oasis would have needed subtitles, and graduate entries with double firsts from Oxford practise a credible Estuary in the mirror and drop their glottals with gay abandon when necessary. That approach only works if the subject suffers from residual middle-class guilt – unfortunately the properly posh, the nouveau riche and senior legal professionals are rarely prey to such weaknesses. For them you have to go in obliquely and with maximum Downton Abbey. Fortunately for us we have just the man.

I sighed and went back to my book, in which Morgoth nicked the eponymous jewels and had away with them back to Angbad. Sorry mate, I thought, not my jurisdiction. Did you have them insured? Whereupon Fëanor gets a crime number and a leaflet about being on guard against theft and the wiles of the personification of evil.

Even in the 1980s your average young archaeologist would have had difficulty raising capital for a house. I knew this because it’s one of the things archaeologists will tell you about, at length, at the slightest provocation.

when the government decided that in the light of an increased security threat what London really needed was a smaller police force.

Most archaeology in London these days is rescue archaeology – projects designed to preserve as much as possible from the relentless cash-driven redevelopment. It’s not a new problem. Ask a medievalist about Victorian cellars or an Iron Age specialist about medieval ploughing – but take snacks, because you’re going to be there for a while.

When you arrive unexpectedly at someone’s house you go in through the front door, often after making sure you’ve got a couple of mates waiting round the back. For a business, especially the kind that involves big trucks and heavy metal, it’s always better to go in through the back. The customer-facing part of any modern business is purposely designed to be as politely unhelpful as possible. If you go in from the rear, the customer-facing staff are all facing the wrong way and everybody starts their conversation on the back foot.

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

A negative result is almost as good as a positive one,’ said Seawoll. ‘Isn’t that so, Peter?’ I hate it when people listen to what I say in an inappropriate fashion.

Now, for solid historical reasons, I’m not comfortable with dividing people up into groups.

never run a game of Hide the Lady if you can’t remember where you’ve put the queen, because some people embrace forensic accounting as a blood sport.

I nodded absently as I made a note of the pub. The Rising Sun drinking establishment exists right on the fringes of the demi-monde – not being nearly as antique or mysterious as it pretends to be.

Cicero wouldn’t approve of my writing style, but at least I pronounce his name with a hard C.

I asked whether the High Fae came into the pub. Lulu gave me a crooked smile. “High Fae?” she asked. “You know. The gentry, elves, those posh gits with extradimensional castles, stone spears and unicorns.” “You mean them what step between worlds?” “Could be.” “Who walk on paths unseen and wax and wane with the moon?” “Them sort of people,” I said. “Yeah.” “Not in here, squire,” she said. “I run a respectable pub.

How many thefts have there been?’ I asked. ‘That depends on how you define it,’ said Adrian. Because material went missing off sites all the time, which is why important finds were collated and secured the day they were found. Important in archaeological terms not always being the same as valuable – at least not in the fenceable sense. Archaeology came in all shapes, sizes, and apparent degrees of nickableness. ‘We wouldn’t have even noticed some of the thefts if they hadn’t been important to the context,’ said Adrian. Context being the key concept of modern scientific archaeology, and what separates your modern professional from the fumbling archivists and swivel-eyed tomb raiders of the past. It’s a religion they share with scene of crime technicians and it had been drummed into me from my first day at Hendon. Context – where you find an object – is more important than the actual object. In policing it’s whether the broken glass is on the inside or the outside. In archaeology it’s whether that datable coin is found in the wall foundations or its demolition infill. You can live without the coin, but you need the dating information.

Guleed was in for a treat if Nightingale thought he could do Notting Hill to Baker Street in under fifteen minutes.

it all goes into the great mill that is HOLMES 2, the better to grind the flour of truth and produce the wholesome bread of justice.

the better to grind the flour of truth and produce the wholesome bread of justice.

And if this is coming as a shock you might want to consider doing some background reading before you continue.

Still—policing is a service industry, so no worries there.

The London Mithraeum has been returned to its original location, thanks to Bloomberg, and is now open to the public. I’ve visited and it’s worth a look, although I prefer to think of it as the Temple of Bacchus—a deity who seems much more in keeping with the spirit of London than grumpy old Mithras. Somewhere in the City under all that money and modernist concrete is a Temple of Isis—unless it’s under St. Paul’s, that is. The skulls in the Walbrook are now thought to have been washed there by occasional floods from graveyards outside the Roman city boundaries, rather than being the victims of Boudicca’s sack of Londinium. This probably won’t be the last time Peter jumps to a conclusion based on evidence that is later disproved.

By necessity your education has had to be somewhat martial,” he said. “I found it quite satisfying to teach the beginning formae in a more relaxed fashion. I might even consider teaching full time when I retire.” “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I said. “Quite,” said Nightingale.

Lesley got to her feet and that’s how we found ourselves recreating the stand-off scene from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, only wetter, closer together, and in central London.

Father,” said a woman. Still holding Chorley aloft, Punch turned to look at his daughter as she walked across the bridge toward us. She seemed taller, thinner and darker, and wore a sheath of white linen from armpit to ankle. From her shoulders trailed a shawl of implausibly gauzy material that streamed a couple of meters behind her in a nonexistent wind. Light blazed from the circlet around her head. Isis of the Walbrook, I thought, you kept that quiet, girl, didn’t you?

There was a bestial howl from across the river and something black and doglike bounded down to the bank. Behind it thundered a couple of hundred men on horses, all in variations of the cuirass and long coat worn by my dead friend with the matchlock pistol. That would be the Black Dog of Newgate, I thought, and the cavaliers might be riding the missing horses from Brentford.