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"Some of them tried to talk to me, their voices thin and high and warped by a distance that wasn’t purely physical. I ignored them and kept on walking. There was nothing I could do for them, apart from playing them the short, sharp tune that would push them off the rim of oblivion - and I don’t do that kind of thing any mo Kf t plre unless my back is really to the wall, for the simple reason that I don’t know where I’m sending them. I’m a Pied Piper who learned somewhere down the line to see the rats’ point of view.

Following the signs I climbed a stone staircase enclosing the wrought-iron gridwork of a Victorian elevator, coming out onto a wide landing whose quarry-stone tiles were ancient enough to be dished in the middle.

Unfortunately there were two intensive-care wards, one to each side at the head of the stairs - and each of them was behind a set of double doors that bore a chrome lozenge at chest height on the left-hand side: a digital combination lock, known among professional thieves as a yes-or-no.

The riddle of which ward Kenny had been admitted to was solved immediately by the uniformed constable standing guard on the door to my right. That just left the two obstacles - the lock and the copper. Maybe I could use the one to fend off the other, but only if I got the timing right.

I headed right on over to the door, trying to keep the air of brisk certainty up and running and facing down Mister Plod with a stare of cold superiority.

‘Evening,’ I said.

‘Evening, sir,’ he answered.

His gravelly voice matched his shoe-leather skin and brick-shithouse build. He looked like someone who’d jumped a plane out of Zimbabwe just ahead of a bunch of pitchfork-wielding farm workers. He also looked as though he didn’t like me very much, based on first appearances, and was prepared to hate me on further acquaintance. If Basquiat had stationed him here, maybe he was one of her two ‘questionable use of force’ gents. I looked forward cordially to never finding out.

I only locked stares with him for a moment: then I turned my attention to the lock.

It was a Baring Streamline-D, which meant it had a four-digit key and three factory defaults. And I used to know what they were, right off the top of my head, but that was back in my student days when stage magic and escapology were the only things I could get serious about. These days I have to rely on the mnemonic, invented by my sensei Tom Wilke, the Banbury Bandit:

Old fox speaks true.