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you shitting me?’
    We continued to lock stares while he tried to figure out just how big a blunder he’d made.
    â€˜Since when did legal come into it?' he said. ‘All you guys play behind the rule book.’
    â€˜Not Eagle Eye,’ I said.
    Palmer watched me a moment then threw out a laugh like a Volvo backfiring. He pointed a fat finger.
    â€˜So you’re Flynn,’ he said. ‘The ex-filth. I knew it the moment you walked in. Smelled it a mile off.’ He rocked back in his seat and shook his head. ‘Half the private dicks in this city are Met failures,’ he said, ‘but not many of them have the gall to squeal about legalities. Coppers are the most bent people I know.’
    â€˜You don’t know me,’ I pointed out.
    I wasn’t smiling myself. Maybe the sound of the triple-fee bubble popping had spoiled my mood. I’d known the bubble was going to burst but that didn’t make it easier. At least as commissioning interviews went this was short and sweet, because I was through.
    I slid off the swivel chair and wheeled it back to the wall. Palmer waited until I reached the door.
    â€˜Sure I know you,’ he yelled. ‘I did my homework. I made sure I knew what kind of a fuck-up I’d be hiring. And I found it was the worst kind. The high flyer who thinks he’s God right up to the day they cut his strings. How does it feel, Flynn? King of the rubbish dump.’ I heard him getting up from his desk behind me.
    â€˜You’re as bent as any copper I ever met,’ he said. ‘But my information said that your agency was the best. Name your price. I’ll pay it. Only don’t give me pious, Flynn. Pious gives me acid. I never met an ex-filth yet who didn’t have his price!’
    I had the door open. I should have walked out. I shouldn’t have been listening to any of this. Instead I turned back and wheeled the swivel chair out from the wall again.
    Palmer laughed and slapped his desk.
    I picked the swivel up. The thing weighed an absolute ton. You get hernias that way. I saw Palmer’s eyes pop as I heaved my shoulders and launched the chair. It went through the panoramic window as if it was paper, showering glass down onto the bays. Palmer was charging round his desk like a scalded walrus, but his tonnage was against him. By the time he’d got half way across the room I was out of the door and down the stairs.
    It looked like Harold’s acid tablets were going to take a hit today.

CHAPTER six
    My business acumen had shaved forty-five minutes off my schedule, which meant that the North Circular was still moving when I exited the depot. I drove north-east and took the Golders Green turn-off.
    The Slater home was a two-storey Spanish villa facing woods in a cul-de-sac south of the golf course. Ten-foot hedgerows hemmed the roads in like the avenues of a maze, testifying to the area’s premium on privacy. Luckily the Slaters preferred their wealth to be visible. Their house stood open to the road behind a fir-shaded lawn circled by a curving driveway that serviced triple garage doors. There was nothing parked. No sign of life. I spotted an ivy-covered substation set into the trees fifty yards back along the lane. Fibre optics were going down in the area and a ten-foot cable drum on the station parking area gave me cover. I reversed the Frogeye alongside the drum and settled in with a view of the house.
    The lane was quiet. Ditto the Slater house. I tuned in to LBC and listened to two hours of regurgitated headlines and traffic nightmares. Sometimes you learn just by waiting and watching. Sometimes you get nothing. In two hours only three vehicles passed me, heading for properties further in. One was a Porsche with a forty-something woman at the wheel. The two others were high spec Mercs that whispered by as the light faded. I glimpsed shirt-sleeved execs behind tinted windscreens.
    Around seven o’clock thick cloud