Lies Sleeping

Homes are like witnesses. They pretty much lie all the time.

I was tempted to ask what our strengths actually were, but that probably would have been a cue for more practice and I do, eventually, learn from my mistakes.

... medical profession cannot sleep easy until it has a category for everything.

"It's all about instilling condfidence," Dr. Walid had explained once.

Apparently patients much preferred doctors who sounded like they knew what they were talking about -- even when they didn't. Perhaps especially when they didn't.

The police don't like being policed any more than your average member of the public does. But I've had more experience of being investigated than most officers my age and have learned to sit still, be polite and give short, precise answers to any questions. Do not get clever, do not volunteer information and do not offer a helpful critique of your questioner's interviewing technique -- no matter how justified it might be.

I suggested the British Museum, not least because it’s possible to lose just about anything in their storage area. They’re still looking for a mummy that went missing in 1933 – staff believe it was stolen but Nightingale said he’d always had a sneaking suspicion that it got bored one day and walked away.

Guleed went home because she has, she says, a deep and mystical understanding of the work-life balance. A concept I once tried to explain to Nightingale with the aid of the big whiteboard in the visitors’ lounge. I think he grasped it in the end, and said he was all in favour as long as I understood that this in no way applied to apprentices.

You don’t make your way up the Met’s particularly convoluted greasy pole without knowing when to use a bit of showmanship.

Unfortunately we don’t have a PACE compliant custody suite, otherwise we’d be able to bang suspects up and subject them to Molly’s cooking until they confessed or exploded – whichever came first.

Normally the police like to turn up nice and early, preferably around 6 a.m., because not only are people liable to be actually at home but that early in the morning they’re rarely playing with a full deck. Today we were going in Sunday lunchtime because we weren’t looking for shock and awe but aiming for sinister and creepy instead. Nightingale is remarkably good at that – I think it’s the accent.