I had been demoted from Detective Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police fraud squad to Desk Sergeant at Gypsy Hill police station, a harsh blow.

I really had believed that the Duchess had stolen her own jewels in order to get publicity for her upcoming autobiography, it had seemed convincing at the time.

But the theory that her secret lover the Prince of Wales had been blackmailing the editor of the Times to obtain better reviews was perhaps an over-enthusiastic interpretation of the scant evidence.

The subsequent debacle after the failed attempt to infiltrate the Buckingham Palace garden party had left my superiors with reason to complain – however a reprimand and a few months suspended on full pay would surely have been sufficient.

But here was my chance to redeem my reputation, a dead body had been discovered on the steps of the Crystal Palace Public Library. As the 471 bus trundled towards the morgue at St. George’s hospital I read over my notes from the crime-scene.

“A look of horror transfigured the face to a terrifying grimace, it was no human expression, more like some wild animal, the crazed death-throes of a wild cat.”

The description was not forensic, I left that to those trained in such skills, my interest was with the psychology of the individual.

I was not officially allowed into the morgue, since I was not the investigating officer on the case, I had gone rogue on this one in order to prove my skills to the bureaucracy who had demoted me so hastily.  I was helped out by Klaus Fleischer, assistant at the morgue, an old friend, who left a pass for me at reception. Klaus had been barred from practice as a medical doctor in his native Germany after an unfortunate incident with an attractive Fraulein and a misplaced spatula. He had been accepted in his current situation due to the extreme staff shortages and on condition that he was forbidden access to living patients. He had now found his true metier in the detailed examination of corpses and we had co-operated on many a fascinating dissection.

The corpse was now laid out on the table and Klaus was bent over it, apparently sewing back on an arm which he had removed during the examination. He looked up as I entered, Klaus was getting on for sixty now, he had wild grey hair sticking out in all directions, a lined gaunt face and wire spectacles with round lenses, bearing in fact a striking resemblance to the ageing Albert Einstein, in all but mind.

“What have you got for me Klaus” I asked.

He spoke very slowly in a heavily accented Germanic singsong “Vell, ze body vas in reasonable health, running a little to fat, muscular legs, slight abrasions on the inner thighs.”

“I see.” I paced the length of the small rectangular room, there wasn’t much space in there with Klaus on one side of the examination table and me on the other, I fixed him with my unwavering gaze to gain his full attention, at the same time pocketing the evidence bag with the man’s personal effects.

“Cause of Death? Klaus!”

“Vell, zat has some elements of interest, strangulation is the immediate cause, wiz a narrow wire or string, ze veapon itself is not present, but analysis of fibres reveals an organic compound and the presence of the DNA of a goat – possibly it’s intestines.”

Goats. I had come across devil-worship and its attendant rites before, ritual slaughter, the worship of the horned skull.

“Klaus, this could be a repeat of the case of the Southend Suffocation, remember the sheep’s blood we found under the victim’s fingernails.”

“E’es a most interesting case, severe contusions of the cranium, but all of the classic symptoms of suffocation”

“I deduced the involvement of the Walthamstow Society of Necromancers”

“Yes, but it turned out, if you recall, zat he had fallen off ze pier while chasing a seagull that stole his hamburger, fell headfirst into ze mud.”

“Klaus, you are a scientist, I am a detective, I must look beyond the obvious. The presence of the sheep’s-blood was indicative, my researches revealed connections Klaus, arcane perhaps, but connections, the possibility of trained sea-gulls could not be excluded.”

Klaus gave me a sidelong glance and mumbled something about the dead man being an assistant in the butchery department at Tesco’s.

I bent over the new corpse and gave it the once-over. Medical examination is all very well but the experienced eye of the detective can sometimes spot what the professionals, with their tunnel-vision, miss out. Klaus had done a thorough job as usual, apparently dismembering the entire corpse before partly re-assembling it for presentation to the undertaker. Its eyeballs were protruding, unmistakeable dark patches beneath them, this man was insomniac or else a frequenter of disreputable nightspots. I pressed lightly the puffy area beneath his right eye, the eyeball popped-out and rolled onto the floor, surprised I jumped backwards, dislodging the head which bounced on the floor, did a somersault and landed upright, at which the other eyeball popped out and rolled towards the door, which opened. Doctor Edwina Carrington, the chief medical officer, entered, for a few silent, pregnant, moments staring only at the head on the floor which stared back with it’s now eyeless, horrific gaze. She then looked up at me, recognition dawned.

“Hudson, what are you doing here? You are no longer a detective, get out of here”

“Just popped in to say hello, must be going” I headed for the door but slipped on the first eyeball and went over backwards, grabbing the shroud from the examination table and dragging the corpse down on top of me. The horror of being engulfed in a mass of dismembered limbs and dissected organs was akin to drowning, the slithering mass was as a living thing. I fought my way through it and spluttered upright, my clothing stained with half-congealed human gore.

“Lovely to see you Edwina” I said as I passed her at speed and raced towards the exit doors.

The visit had not been without its difficulties, but I had what I wanted. The victim was an insomniac with sore thighs, ritually murdered with the intestine of a goat. My notes from the crime scene were instructive here, I had noted there the expression of a wild cat on the corpse’s face. Metaphorically speaking the goat had murdered the tiger, a classic revenge motive.

Safe back on the 471, in a corner seat at the back, I popped open the evidence bag.

Inside was a single Yale key, a dog-eared black and white photograph and a receipt for the sale of a record player to Cash-converters, high-street Penge. No wallet, no identification. The face on the photo was somehow familiar but I couldn’t place it, it had that soft-focus sheen familiar from publicity photos of film stars in the black and white era, he was smiling suavely into the camera and appeared to be holding a wand of some kind, this confirmed for me the occult connection. On the back was a scribbled platitude, scruffy but legible – “All the best, Yehudi.” It meant nothing to me.

So here it was, the story of a man, the struggles and travails of a life boiled down to this. A man down on his luck and selling his possessions, treasuring a photo of an old friend, the unobtrusive key to his lonely bed-sit hidden deep in his pockets and unfound by his attacker. As the bus strained up the hill towards Crystal Palace I gazed out over the miles of rooftops towards the river, mile after mile of terraced houses, flats, tower-blocks, room after empty room, millions of nameless faces, millions of faceless names. What did it mean, what was it for? I held the key to one man’s story in a polythene bag on the back seat of a double-decker groaning uphill, leading me who-knows-where, a road to nowhere, a long day’s journey into night, a streetcar named desire, my city in all it’s anonymous horror laid out before me.

“Gypsy Hill Police Station” said the bus loudspeaker, an impersonal but not unattractive female voice.

My stop! I jumped up and clattered down the stairs.

Back at the station I tried to gather my thoughts, what did I have so far? I decided to put it all into “Moriarty” the specialised crime-based computer search engine. This was something I had developed with Huan Lee, a Chinese computer hacker who had been caught attempting to subvert the automated ordering system at McDonalds. Goodness knows how many big Macs and Fries he had got away with before I caught him huddled in a corner of the Brixton store tapping frantically on his laptop as he supplied half-price portions to all-comers. The bemused staff had been working non-stop for the past six shifts breaking all records for the number of burgers supplied but unbeknownst to them gaining zero in revenue. The whole thing was hushed-up by McDonalds and they didn’t press charges but paid Huan Lee to fix the gaps in their cyber security.

We had developed a firm friendship and he had helped me on many cases, as well as supplying numerous free take-away meals. He was however now in Pentonville serving the final three months of a one-year stretch after being involved in our unfortunate attempt to infiltrate the fateful palace garden party. He was caught after going in over the wall in the early hours of the morning to plant microphones disguised as dahlias. I had been there too but had managed to escape by marching through a side entrance, flashing my warrant card at the constable on duty and mumbling something about a meeting with the equerry of the bedchamber.

Huan’s time inside had not been wasted though, he had developed our specialised search engine, soon to become a vital part of the equipment of any crime-fighting professional, we already had plans for a worldwide marketing campaign.

I typed in: Strangulation +Tiger + Goat + Occult + (a wild hunch this) eyeball. It led me to a labyrinth of connected websites of astounding depravity, the dark web section was especially disturbing. Hours later I collapsed over the keyboard exhausted and paranoid, jumping at every stray sound in the deserted police station. But nothing in the 12,000 increasingly sickening results pointed to the victim or his circumstances.

I made a pot of soothing police tea and sent out for a cost-free pizza using Lee’s latest App. Refreshed I tried again, concentrating more precisely on the man himself: Intestine + record Player + Penge + Yehudi.

This time there were only eighteen results. The first three gave various details about the construction of violins and their ilk. Apparently, the intestines of goats and sheep are used for the strings of these instruments. The mind boggles, examination of the intestines of sacrificed goats is a well-known technique of the occult world to make judgements and predict events. The involvement of the entire classical-music industry in such clandestine practices frankly didn’t surprise me. The air of exclusivity and mystery which surrounds the public performances of this type of material has long made me suspicious of its devotees.

Next up on the search engine I hit pay dirt. The Penge amateur operatic society and orchestra was holding a rehearsal this very night between 7 and 10 p.m. at St. John’s church. The troupe apparently had about 30 members, many of whom would have the offending gut-stringed instruments in their possession. I looked up at the clock, it was already a quarter to eight. I didn’t have a second to lose, stopping only to grab my coat and an emergency pack of wine gums I headed at a run for the bus station, the 227 would get me to Penge in about 15 minutes.

You may be wondering about the wine gums; I have found them useful on many a tedious stake-out. The sugar content helps to keep the mind alert, and if you close your eyes while inserting them into your mouth the effort involved in identifying the flavours sharpens both the senses and the mental processes. This didn’t appear to be a stake-out mission – more a blunder-in-and-see-what-happens scenario, but you never can tell.

I jumped from the bus and hit the road running; it was about a 500-yard dash up to the church. The building was like a piece of rural England plonked into the London suburbs, stone walls and spire glowing in the spring twilight, surrounded by an acre or so of neatly mown grass and clipped shrubs. I entered from the side door as quietly as I could trying desperately to suppress my panting breath. The evening light coming through the stained-glass windows cast a spangled crepuscular glow, there was a considerable commotion coming from a large group of people gathered around what I assumed to be the altar.

Most of the group were dressed casually but there was a man at the front in full evening dress with a white bowtie, he wore pince-nez and had a fine head of gently curling grey and blonde hair down to his shoulders.

“Ladies and gentlemen” he was attempting to shout above the din, waving a white stick above his head. “We will have to accept the situation as it is, Mary can take over as first cello for this evenings practice and we’ll see if we can contact George later in the week”

It seemed that they were missing a member, could it be my corpse?

“Let’s take a break now,” said the penguin, “we’ll start again at bar fifteen in ten minutes”

I took this opportunity to approach the over-dressed individual. “Excuse me sir, are you in charge here? I’m from the police.”

“I’m Gerald Markham, chief conductor of the orchestra. Oh goodness” he said, “Is it about George? Has something happened to him?”

I didn’t want to give away too much too early.

“It may be related to an investigation that we are undertaking” I said.

“Do you know this man?” I showed him the photograph. He looked at me in disbelief and annoyance.

“Of course I don’t know him. I know who it is, it’s Yehudi Menuhin.”

“Is he a member of the orchestra?”

“What do you mean, you fool, we don’t have world-leading musicians in the orchestra, more’s the pity. Besides of course, he’s dead”

Dead. Another corpse to add to the tally.

“When did he die?”

“A long time ago, in 1999 I believe.”

The cusp of the millennium, an inauspicious date. So, the plot thickens, this story goes back twenty years at least.