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material.It’s too plastic for mercury, too metallic for some sort of oil by-product, and it’s keeping itself and the things around it cold, like a fridge, but without being plugged into a socket.If it’s an element, it’s one we’ve discovered.’
    ‘Seftonium,’ said Costain.
    Sefton used a teaspoon to put the goo back in the phial.‘So-called spirit mediums used to pretend to be able to project something they called ectoplasm, which usually turned out to be glue and other gunk.Maybe the original idea for that came from this.’
    ‘Like in Ghostbusters, ’ said Costain.
    ‘It reminds me of what I saw inside those “ghost ships” on the Thames,’ said Ross.‘They had a sort of silver skeleton inside.’
    Quill went to the corkboard which served this team as an Ops Board.‘All right,’ he said, ‘we’ve got enough to start building the board, to list the objectives and to name this mother.’All the board still had on it – the artefacts of the other half-arsed would-be operations they’d considered lately having already been consigned carefully to drawers – was the PRO-FIT facial description picture of the Smiling Man and the concepts list, which now was just a series of headings referring to files on their ancient computer (and the phone number of the Smiling Man, which Quill had labelled ‘the number of the Beast’).At the very top of the board was a card with a question mark on it, over which Quill now pinned a new blank card because the name of the operation was about to be decided.Beneath all that Quill added a picture cut from a newspaper.‘The victim: Michael Anthony Spatley, Liberal Democrat MP for the constituency of Cheadle.Chief secretary to the Treasury, which is a cabinet position.Jewish by birth, atheist by inclination.Forty-six years old.Wife: Ann.Daughter: Jocelyn.Son: Arthur.I’ve put in a request for us to search his home and offices too, which, judging by the tone of voice of the PA I spoke to, will be regarded with incredulity by those who’ve already had the main op through.But we shall persist.’He attached a red victim thread upwards from the picture and pinned a sheet of white paper above it, on which he drew a very rough cartoon of the Toff figure.
    Ross took a new square of paper and added ‘Brian Tunstall’ to the suspect area, also attaching a victim thread between him and Spatley.She drew a dotted line beside both threads, indicating uncertainty.‘Two suspects,’ she said.
    ‘Despite the fact that only one of these “suspects” was observed fleeing the scene,’ noted Costain.
    ‘Yeah, because we make assumptions only when the specialized nature of our work forces us to.And then we take care to note them.’
    Sefton looked between the two of them.Costain had always been the sort of officer who’d insisted on the importance of first-hand street experience, and Ross’ intelligence-based approach always felt that that procedure was missing the wood for the trees, but now … He knew that Costain, when Ross had been unconscious in hospital after the Losley case, had stayed by her bed, had slept in a chair.Sefton had wondered, during those few weeks when Ross had been full of the joys of spring, if they were going to get together.That looked impossible now, which was tough on these two, because he and Quill had someone to talk to about the impossible stresses this team were under, and they didn’t.
    Costain picked up a card of his own and drew a squiggly mass of people on it, then he attached it to Spatley with a dotted thread too.‘Maybe it’s the “spirit” of the riots?Losley said there were two ways to power in London: to “make sacrifice” or “be remembered”, and it’s not like it’s only the old or famous stuff that gets remembered.We hadn’t heard of that green monster thing Kev met.Maybe this is the sort of collective will of those protestors made solid, or something.’
    Quill nodded.‘Good.But I hope that doesn’t bloody turn out to be