Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7)(34)

‘This ritual does seem reminiscent of the bacchanalia described in Livy or perhaps, given the sacrifice of the goat, classical Greek worship,’ said Postmartin.

Sex, booze and animal sacrifice – I suppose after a hard week flogging your slaves and inventing comic theatre you needed something to do on the weekends. I asked whether Postmartin thought this was significant.

‘The London Mithraeum is thought to have been converted to the worship of Bacchus in the fourth century ad,’ he said. ‘Could be a coincidence.’

Only in a rational world, I thought.

‘Mithras lost his lustre, did he?’ I asked.

‘Mithras could have been a contender,’ said Postmartin. ‘He was one of the big three mystery cults, along with Jesus Christ and Isis.’ Then, as Postmartin had it, the Christians got the nod from Emperor Constantine and that was all she wrote for the other two gods. ‘Which was a pity, because imagine world history if Europe had turned to Isis instead,’ he said. ‘A female priesthood would have been just the start.’

Postmartin said that there was solid evidence that there had been a Temple of Isis in London but nobody knew where it was. Not like they did with Bacchus and the Mithraeum.

‘But if you do run into a candidate for it,’ he said, ‘you will let me know?’



So, to sum up – persons unknown had, probably, conducted a bacchanal on the exact site of what was probably London’s last major temple to Bacchus, and that ceremony had produced a real magical effect – possibly intentionally.

I wasn’t putting this on the whiteboard until I had some idea who the persons unknown were.

And that information was gleefully supplied the following day by Special Constable Nguy?n.

‘They were all sensible enough to leave their cars at home,’ she said. ‘We think most walked out of the area and then got night buses. A smaller number felt relaxed enough to summon an Uber to pick them outside the building, and one was picked up his wife in the family SUV.’

‘Her name was Monika Gale. Wife of Patrick Gale.

‘Boch, Loupe and Stag,’ said Nguy?n. ‘You guys really know how to pick your suspects. I’ve been asked, in my role as Folly liaison, to indicate that as far as City of London Police are concerned this is one hundred and ten per cent a Falcon case. Good luck.’

And that was that.



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.

So it was Nightingale who went striding into Patrick Gale’s workplace with his best black Dege & Skinner two piece suit, with me following behind in my serviceable tailored M&S looking like the loyal flunky I was.

Bock, Loupe and Stag occupy a large chunk of the building across from Broadgate Tower. Like that, this one was designed – as far as I could tell – by the same people who did the interior layout for Cybertron. Lots of angled struts, planes of glass and random spikes. It was, as architectural theorists like to say, a bold statement and the statement was: ‘Fuck truth and beauty. We’ve got money and loads of it’.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale to see Patrick Gale,’ Nightingale said, and flashed his warrant card at the receptionist without breaking step.

Ahead was a set of security gates, like posh minimalist versions of the ticket barriers at Tube stations. I was probably the only one who noticed the tiny gesture Nightingale made with his right hand. I recognised the tight little surge which followed as a complex fifth order spell that caused the gates to lock in the open position so we could walk through.

A tall, thin Sierra Leonean man in a security guard uniform stepped up to block us.

‘Step back, sir,’ I said firmly.

Which he did smartly – possibly because of my impressive command voice, but more likely because his name was Obe and he was my cousin – second or third, I forget which – on my mum’s side. I’d nudged him into his current job shortly after Patrick Gale came to my attention. It was down to Obe that we knew the make and model of the security barriers, how many guards would be on duty, and that Gale was currently up in his office.

Because we’d planned this as carefully as any raid on a crack house, with maps and timetables and Guleed and Carey out front and back with an arrest team just in case anybody tried to scarper. After all, you don’t want to be striding resolutely into someone’s office only to find they’re spending a dirty weekend in Honolulu with their son’s macramé tutor – do you?

Gale had an office on the sixth floor, so we risked the lift.

We emerged into an open-plan office crowded with the upmarket walnut veneer versions of drone cubicles, took a sharp left and headed down the clearway towards the big airy offices of the senior partners.