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Sefton. ‘We need to at least start working out what we want to ask Ballard.’
    There was silence again. Nobody knew where to start. Nobody wanted to be here.
    Sefton walked with Lofthouse down the corridor that led to her office in Gipsy Hill police station. He was grateful as always that the four of them tended to get immediate
access to their boss.
    ‘It’s not like Quill’s not talking,’ she said. ‘He told me about what he saw in Hell. Dear God.’ She led him in and closed the door behind them. ‘I
debriefed Quill about Operation Dante – and now it occurs to me that he named the bank job that and I never even called him on it.’ She put her hand on her desk as if to steady herself.
Was Sefton wrong, or was there a burden on her shoulders too? Of all of them, their boss should be the one with the least tension, not having the Sight herself, but benefiting from their success,
getting good word of mouth across the Met, but . . . no, this was also someone who wasn’t sleeping too well.
    He waited for her to sit before doing so himself. ‘I wanted to, ma’am.’ He had something big to ask of her, and he felt the need for formality. ‘Thing is, in the old days
he kept up such a brave face I thought maybe it was a good thing he’d made a joke out of it.’
    ‘Such jokes do not ease his pain now, though, do they?’
    ‘That’s what I wanted to meet with you about, ma’am. This unit might have just had a major success as far as the mainstream Met is concerned, making it, I’m sure, a lot
easier for you to defend our funding, but I can’t see how we can go forward. I can’t see how we’re going to work together again. Dante basically fell into our laps. We separated
into our specialities, and we didn’t have to interact much beyond stuff we’d done a hundred times before. The next time something from
our
world comes along, something that
pushes us, that demands we rely on each other . . . excuse my French, ma’am, but’ – and there went the formality – ‘we’ll be fucked.’
    ‘I had rather begun to realize all the above myself. Do you have some new options for me?’
    Sefton took a deep breath. ‘You’ve been helping us all this time without sharing the experiences that got us here. You believe us when we tell you about impossible things.
You’ve asked us not to question you about it. Clearly you know something about hidden London. Clearly you knew the Continuing Projects Team, the guys who, we presume, used to be our sort of
law in this town.’ He remembered the personnel file with her name on it they’d found in the ruins of the CPT’s headquarters in Docklands. Since then, Lofthouse had refused,
incredibly, to discuss the matter with them. Quill had said she’d intimated that was the price of her continuing to let them operate. ‘We’re at the end of our tether, ma’am.
Anything you can add to our knowledge would help.’
    Lofthouse closed her eyes.
    ‘It’s time for you to come clean with us, ma’am.’
    He thought for a moment that she was going to yell at him, but no. She was fighting some internal battle. Finally, she managed to look at him again. ‘Do you know,’ she asked,
‘when the temple building you found in Docklands was destroyed?’
    Sefton felt bemused at this sudden turn. She sounded like she didn’t know. Which was contrary to what he’d assumed about her involvement with the CPT. ‘We can only say it was
after a certain date, five years ago, when the records cease. Everyone who talks about the old law says the CPT seem to have stopped presiding over London around then.’
    ‘I gather, from what you’ve all told me about previous operations,’ said Lofthouse, ‘that it must take a great deal of energy and concentration on someone’s part to
make everybody forget the Continuing Projects Team?’
    ‘That’s correct. We haven’t been able to discover anything else about them. It’s like they’ve been erased from history, except for