By the time we reach the door, Rory is helping his poor hapless victim up from the floor. "Oh my God. Oh my God, I punched you. Why did I do that?"

"Listen, mate," the man says, after he's cracked his jaw back into place, "don't ask and don't worry about it."

But Rory's not listening to him. Rory turns to me, wide-eyed, looking at this hands like a murderer and says, "Doctor, I punched him and I don't know why I did it except I had to and it felt really right."

The man dusts himself off behind him. Looks at me, shaking his head, 'Please don't start this.'

"Of course you punched him, Detective. He kissed Amy that time, remember?"

That, apparently, is how River intends for this heist to work. The man who just arrived and got punched is that plumber from before. You know, with all the tattoos and the metal in his face and the black hair like porcupine spines. We met inside Rory's head that time? When everything else was 1940s? And Bogart gave me a black eye? Remember? Of course you remember.

Liam Reilly, the mind thief from Leeds.

Amy and Rory are shrugging at each other. The former knows who Reilly is, but not what I'm talking about. It was, after all, a sort of computerize dream of Amy that got kissed, not the real thing. That would be even more awkward. Rory, on the other hand, knows all of this, in the same way your computer still knows your old password even after you've changed it. He couldn't say it out loud, but he knows it used to be there.

Reilly finally shakes off the impact. While the Ponds continue their wordless discussion of what the hell could be going on, he steps up to me and extends a hand. "General. Your wife sent me."

Silence falls. The Ponds look round.

Carefully, I ask him, "When are you coming from?"

"With all due respect, sir, I'm not allowed to tell you that."

"On whose authority? River's? Just tell me, I'll deal with it."

"No, sir, yours."

"In which case you definitely have to tell me."

"You said you'd say that."

Amy and Rory both have uncapped marker pens in their hands, forearms bared and ready. Every time somebody calls me 'General' the Silence show up. Except for Reilly here, as I recall. Nothing happened last time he used it, except that somebody outside reached into the program and extracted him before I could make him explain.

New Theory: Two kinds of people call me 'General' – nice people and not-nice people.

Before I can quite see what he's looking at, Reilly leans around me. Looks up to the gallery and waves. "Hello, you."

Jessica. Holding the corner of the wall just enough to peer around it.

"You can come down," I tell her, "He's alright. I think…"

"You'll like this, love," Reilly shouts to her. She's coming quietly, carefully, down the stairs and his voice jolts her. Not afraid, just wary. Reilly swings a black backpack down from his shoulder and starts to unpack the contents across the console. Missing all the important bits, not knocking against anything that could kill us, which is a difficult thing to do and something I myself have frequent trouble with. As he does so, speaks past me again, which is really rather rude of him, and still at Jessica, "Need you to nip back to the White Place, clunk old Short-Arse round the head for us."

"Am knowing that. Doctor told it."

Yes, how dare he steal my promise. I always meant for Jessica to get that particular hit in, whether it meant anything or not. Now he's reducing it to a mere part of the task. It's not even a treat anymore.

Before I can question him, though, "Everything's all ready to go, sir. You and the missus have it all planned out. The program is already installed and just needs to be activated."

"Installed where?" I ask, "In who?"

"In Kovarian, sir. Who else?"

There is a lingering quiet then, the hum of growing smiles. Pond, who had previously been preoccupied with denying the whole kiss debacle, suddenly skips up, leaning over the new equipment on the console as if it were a display of jewels in a museum.

"You mean to tell me that somebody gets to go in and run around inside that twisted, vicious mind, taking anything that's not nailed down and privy to all the thoughts and secrets."

"Mrs Williams," Reilly says, "That is pretty much spot on."

Voice terse, barely restrained, "Doctor, I would like to volunteer for that part of the mission. I am willing to take on that particular burden and I'd like to point out that I'm the first one to call it, so it's obviously mine."

While I explain to her that she's untrained, that there's a reason Reilly's here and it's because he has experience in these things, that I'll try and have him bring back something embarrassing for us all to enjoy, while I'm letting Amy down gently, I watch Reilly. He pretends not to notice, still poking and arranging the wires and anodes, but he knows I'm watching.

'Mrs Williams', he called her. And never made eye-contact. Answered her normally, respectfully, but with no warmth, no friendliness.

And that's the thing about Pond, she makes you feel all warm and fluffy. You don't get a say in it. Especially the first time you meet her. That's why she's such a good companion, you see, they notice her and not me.

Which means that Reilly and Pond have met before, and she's done something he doesn't like.

But I can't think of anything that's happened up until now.

Which probably means she hasn't done it yet.

Things to Keep An Eye On – 1) People calling me General and 2) Any unpleasantness with Pond.

So there's that to deal with. Also the fact that she's doing an awful lot of pouting and moaning about the two 'outsiders' (which I can only take to mean Reilly and Jessica) getting to have all the fun.

But oh, what a perfect idea now descends. Keep everybody happy, keep Pond and Reilly at opposite ends of the job, keep everything professional.

"Right!" I announce, "Gather round. It's time for that great scene where I lay out what's supposed to happen and then we go to work, and the job is not without a bump or two, but we all come out unscathed."

"Rory, I thought I told you to throw that Leverage boxset into a star?"

"I forgot, Amy, sorry."

They'd better not even think of such a thing; I'm not halfway through it. And I'm reaching for the record player, for my background heist music, and it is Pond's hand that reaches back and stops it. Just because she's not getting what she wants.

Anyway, I get everyone on one side of the console so I can talk to them all at once.

"I think I've got this figured out. I'm going to go through and Mr Reilly is going to correct me should I get anything wrong. I'd like to point out that I won't actually be wrong, I just won't be right yet, seeing as it's me who puts all this together somewhere in the future."

Vicious under the weight of all her crushing disappointments, "Get on with it…"

I explain:

There is currently a dormant computer program within Kovarian's brain. We send Jessica in, via manipulator, to activate it. She returns to us for her own safety.

Then, as guided and controlled by Yours Truly, Reilly enters the program. He gathers all sorts of information, including the location of the Keeper's infokey.

Rory interrupts. I'm actually surprised I got this far before it happened. "No, wait. I thought we were going in here to get River?"

"And she will be where the infokey is. Which we also need to recover. Two birds, one stone and are we sure there isn't another phrase for that? I just don't like killing all these birds all the time and-"

Biting off every word like a bullet, this from Pond; "Get. On. With. It."

Reilly will also be able to extract plans, routes, security codes, as and when they are required. These will be passed from the program to a separate terminal from which the physical half of the heist can be controlled.

"And that's where we come in, isn't it, Doctor?"

No, Pond, we're sending Jessica. She knows her way around the place, she can defend herself, and the Silence won't risk killing her.

All being well, that should be it. Our dual thieves are extracted safely and with everything they went in for, and all is once again well in the Tardis. All caught up, an end to day after day lurching from one crisis to the next, back to adventures and pointless fun and Jammie Dodgers and occasionally getting a night off from saving ourselves to occasionally save the world.

Life used to be like that, didn't it? I'm not making that up?

I must admit, I get lost somewhat in the daydream of how things used to be. Pond has a question. She has to ask me twice, and she is not in the mood to do so. Charges right up and shoves me at the shoulder for the second try, "So where does that leave us, then?"

"Safe, Pond. Here. Chez Tardis."

"No. No way. This is about River, Doctor, your wife, my daughter, there's no way I'm just going to sit here and-"
"Pond, somebody needs to control the transfer between the two separate terminals. I will be hair-close to unconscious and basically useless. I need you to feed information from Kovarian's mind to Jessica's ear. Without a wire in between, they're just two empty, useless tin cans."

"Oh," she says. Mildly, starting to smile again. Appeased. "I'd sort of be, like, the hub of it all."

"Amelia, without you, we're all worthless."

"Oh." And she wanders back off to Rory, done with me. While her back is turned I mouth at her husband, 'Watch her'.

It's personal, you see. Hard to blame her when it's personal. She's only human, after all.