Blackstone’s Police Operational Handbook recommends the ABC of serious investigation: Assume nothing, Believe nothing, and Check everything. - Ben Aaronovitch

It was already one of the hazards of being police that you became suspicious of the everyday. You didn’t have to spend much time on the job before realising that professional criminals are comparatively rare and that crime is something committed by ordinary people.

Why would someone use magic to kill a jazz musician in the middle of his set? I mean, I have my problems with the New Thing and the rest of the atonal modernists but I wouldn’t kill someone for playing it–at least not if I wasn’t trapped in the same room.

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.