"Apparently he was a bit of a connoisseur, having been introduced to Verdi soon after having risen to the rank of commander. A sudden attack of culture snobbery is a common affliction among policemen of a certain rank and age; it’s like a normal midlife crisis, only with more chandeliers and foreign languages."

"I rang her and left a message identifying myself and giving an impression of urgency without actually saying anything concrete. Never record anything you wouldn’t want turning up on YouTube is my motto."

"“This is a terrible work,” I said. “Why did you do it?” “The usual reasons,” said the Magister. “I told myself it was piety and duty to the Church, but a thousand years of contemplation will batter down the doors of one’s own delusions.”"

"I’m not a peacock, but on occasion I like to dress to impress, although like most coppers I don’t wear much in the way of bling. The rule being never wear something around your neck that you don’t want to be strangled with."

"“Desperate people do desperate things,” said Spencer-Talbot. “Perhaps if we all did more to make things less desperate, then perhaps there would be less violence.”"

"“Your father,” I said. “What does he really want?” “What any father wants,” said Oxley. “The respect of his children.” I nearly said that not all fathers were worthy of respect, but I managed to keep my gob shut and anyway not everyone had a dad like mine."

"Now I was used to it, the bell-like silence was louder than ever, and I was starting to get undertones of orange blossom and incense. You have to be careful with this stuff or you begin to sound like a wine taster—with about the same amount of meaningless bollocks."

"My hand was shaking a little and the pin proved harder to pull than I expected—I guess that’s a safety feature on a grenade."

"As a typical Londoner, Gurcan had a high tolerance threshold for random thoughtlessness; after all, if you live in the big city there’s no point complaining that it’s a big city, but even that tolerance has its limit."

"Dr. Walid’s theory was that the news media and their consumers unconsciously shied away from events that didn’t fall within the narrow band of their expectations. Shot by a jealous lover or stabbed by a body were narratives they could run with. Killed in an unspecified manner with no witnesses, no CCTV, and no obvious motive probably piqued their curiosity, but would it get clicks or sell papers? More importantly, would it fit the news agenda their organization worked to?"

"I don’t like the fact that all we have so far is that somebody did something to somebody at some time which may or may not have some fucking connection so some other people who we’re not sure still exist."

"“Isn’t the internet wonderful?” she said. “Better than dragons any day.”"

"According to my therapist, attaching conditionals to your past is a classic distancing technique indicating an unwillingness to face your memories directly. Or, I pointed out, it could be a rhetorical device designed to add a humorous note to enliven a story. To which she said, “Or both.” You can’t win with therapists, you know. And even if you do, they just tell you it’s part of the process."

"Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored."

"The trouble with turning a blind eye is that people often take the opportunity to punch you in the face."

"But this was the eighteenth century, when life was cheap and ambition unlimited."

"This is what’s known as operational flexibility, and definitely not making it up as you go along."

"It’s a bland box of a building built in the 1970s; it was considered to be so lacking in architectural merit that there was talk of listing it so that it could be preserved for posterity as an awful warning."

"Sometimes when someone tells you not to go somewhere, it’s better not to go there."

"“Do you have another plan?” I asked. “No,” said Leslie. “I just want you to be careful. Just because you think you know what you’re doing doesn’t mean you actually know what you’re doing.” “I’m glad we clarified that,” I said."

"I wasn’t ready to believe in ghosts, but that’s the thing about empirical experience: it’s the real thing."

"Five hundred years ago the notoriously savvy Henry VIII discovered an elegant way to solve both his theological problems and his personal liquidity crisis—he dissolved the monasteries and nicked all their land. Since the principle of any rich person who wants to stay rich is, never give anything away unless you absolutely have to, the land has stayed with Crown ever since."

"“I’ve been told to take the day off,” said Leslie. “Compassionate—don’t get on media’s radar—leave.” That I could understand. A family annihilation involving charismatic rich people was going to be a news editor’s dream story. Once they’d picked over the gruesome details, they could extend the mileage by asking what the tragic death of the Coopertown family told us about our society and how this tragedy was an indictment of modern culture/secular humanism/political correctness/the situation in Palestine—delete where applicable. About the only thing that could improve the story would be the involvement of a good-looking blonde WPC out, I might add, unsupervised on a dangerous assignment."

"We were pretty certain we knew roughly where he’d been, but members of the public have an unnerving tendency to switch straight from lying to your face to telling you what they think you want to hear—with no intervening period of veracity at all."

"You don’t get to be a senior investigating officer unless you have a degree in skepticism, an MA in distrust and your CV lists suspicious bastard under your hobbies."

"“Of course now I realize it was a telepathic compulsion.” I was afraid to ask from who—but I had to know. “From aliens,” she told me. “Aliens?” “I’m not mad, you know,” she said. “I’ve been sectioned. They put me in for four weeks’ ‘evaluation’ and at the end the top shrink calls me into her office and looks me in the eye and says, ‘you’re saner than I am—go away.’” “Did you tell them about the aliens?” I asked. “I may have glossed over some of the details,” she said."

"“You know how some people work at being stupid?” she asked. “If you give them a clear, common sense choice they give it a lot of thought and then choose stupid.”"

"She had the startled rabbit look that civilians get after five minutes of helping the police with their inquiries. If they stay calm for too long it’s a sign that they’re professional villains or foreign or just plain stupid. All of which can get you locked up if you’re not careful. If you find yourself talking to the police, my advice is to stay calm but look guilty; it’s your safest bet."

"“Are there aliens?” Simon asks Indigo. “Not that I know of,” she says. “Unless you count cats.”"

"“Have fun,” she says and releases me. “Make trouble.”"

"The perennial problem for retailers the world over are the customers. Not only do they clutter up the shop, but they also demand to be reminded of the title of a book they read a review about in the Telegraph, given directions to The Lion King, helped to find a book their mum will like and, occasionally, purchase some actual merchandise. All of this customer-facing activity gets in the way of the shelving, merchandising, sticking, destickering, table pyramiding and stock returning that is necessary for the smooth operation of a modern bookshop."

"You make a plan without intelligence—you might as well not have a plan at all."

"“He was a Parisian,” he said. “You can never be sure what Parisians believe in—beyond Paris of course.”"

"“Are you a practitioner?” I ask. “A wizard?” “Sorceress, my dear,” she says. “Practitioner is how the gentlemen have styled themselves, as quacks now style themselves as physicians.”"

"He didn’t have “instincts”, he had thirty years of experience—which was much more reliable."

"It’s a police rule of thumb that anything involving members of the public takes twice as long as you think it will."

"Policing is about moving from the unknown to the known and then further—to the provable."

"“But I want you to be cautious.” “Hey,” I said. “Cautious is my middle name.” “But your first name is Never Knowingly,” said Stephanopoulos. Which got all the laughs it deserved."

"With a rich history like that there was nothing to be done except flatten it and replace it with a shopping arcade designed in the who-the-fuck-cares school of retail architecture. The result was a two-story warehouse with a flat roof designed to maximise floor space and nothing else."

"After that I was up and ready for action. It might have been a Saturday, but below the rank of chief inspector weekends are an entirely notional concept."

"“I’m interested in history,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.” “Why would a young man like you be interested in history?” “So I can avoid repeating it.”"

"“Unless you believe it was a coincidence that Melvin the Rat turned up at a party we were hosting.” Actually I thought it probably was, but I found that when people are nursing a grievance it’s a waste of time trying to explain the ubiquitous nature of coincidence in the universe. People always want things to happen for a reason."

"None of those choices seemed likely, but if I’ve learned one thing on the job, it is that a coincidence can kill someone just as easily as malice."

"Been there, I thought, done that, read The Silmarillion."

"Miss Karmargi who’d been my Religious Education teacher at school. An avowed atheist who’d once said that she respected all religions equally—“which is more than can be said for most religions,” she’d added."

"Foxholes might breed belief, but trench systems are full of fatalistic cynics."

"This guy [Security Guard] was in a navy suit with an unfortunate orange tie, and was nearing us with the caution of a man on a minimum wage zero hours contract who planned to give his employers exactly what they paid for."

"The prisons are full of people with poor impulse control and a lack of foresight."

"That at least we can leave to Abdul and the irrepressible Dr Vaughan," said Nightingale. "Who no doubt will be delighted to extend the boundaries of their empire of information." "Their knowledge base," I said. "I believe that's what I said."