The October Man

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Vanessa called in to ask whether I was finished and I said I was. I was about to say that we needed to find Koch’s friends when my phone rang. I looked and saw it was showing a blocked number.

  I answered. A woman’s voice said, “Kriminalkommissar Winter?”

  “Speaking—who is this?”

  “I’m the one who drank your wine,” said the voice. “I’ll be by St Peter’s Fountain for the next fifteen minutes.” Then she hung up.

  I ran out and grabbed Vanessa, who was well trained enough to know when to follow a colleague’s lead and ask questions after. We ran down the stairs and out to where the VW was parked. Without breaking stride I shouted to the waiting officers that the flat was all theirs and was reversing out of the car park before Vanessa had finished buckling up her seatbelt.

  “Where’s St Peter’s Fountain?” I asked.

  “In the main market,” said Vanessa, and gave me directions. Sensibly she waited until she was sure I was going in the right direction before asking why we were tearing across the Roman Bridge with our light strips flashing.

  I told her that somebody had found the wine sacrifice.

  “A location spirit?” she asked. “A river goddess?”

  “Let’s hope so. Or that will be a waste of twenty-six euros.”

  Trier’s main market square is an irregular “A” shape in the centre of the old city. It and the surrounding streets are all pedestrianised, so we had to walk the last hundred metres. Since it was Saturday morning the square was crowded with shoppers and tourists. At the northern end was the market cross, in the centre a circular booth that promoted local wines, a cluster of market stalls and a miniature roller coaster for tiny tots.

  St Peter’s Fountain sat at the southern end. The saint himself is perched on top of a slender gilt-and-white column around which were arranged, Vanessa explained later, the four civil virtues: Justice, Strength, Temperance, and Wisdom. Along with diverse beasts to represent their corresponding vices. The whole thing was mounted on a high plinth so that bored provincial teenagers had something to lean against. At some point in the recent past a spiky wrought-iron fence had been built along the top of the plinth, either to keep the teenagers out or the virtues in.

  Standing by the fountain was a small busty woman in a see-through vinyl mac over an oyster-coloured jumper and skinny black jeans. Her dark blond hair was cut into a short bob that framed a plump oval face, wide-set brown eyes and a small mouth fixed in a disapproving line.

  I haven’t met that many location spirits, but I knew her immediately by the impossibly smooth skin and the naked dislike with which she regarded me. They all start off like that for historical reasons and the Director expects me to placate them, or at the very least not be killed. She says she chose me for my charm, but I’m pretty certain she was being sarcastic.

  Or rather—as Carmela the pathologist once pointed out about the Director—if she’s talking she’s probably being sarcastic.

  By the waiting woman’s side was a small annoyed child of four or five, dressed in a shiny red PVC raincoat with matching court shoes. Her hood was down to show black ringlets that fell to her shoulders. She had hazel eyes and an expression that managed to be even angrier than her companion’s.

  At the KDA the protocol for dealing with local gods is formal politeness.

  “Good day,” I said. “My name is Tobias Winter.”

  Before the older woman could speak the child ran forward, swore at me in French and kicked me hard in the shins. It was as painful as it was unexpected, and it was only because I managed to grab on to Vanessa’s arm that I didn’t fall over.

  By the time I’d recovered my wits the child had retreated to hide behind the older woman’s legs. From that safe vantage she peered out to scowl at me.

  “You can call me Kelly,” said the older woman, as if nothing had happened.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “Of course you are,” said Kelly, while the child spat something in French that made Vanessa gasp—she obviously understood what it meant. Kelly asked me who she was.

  “This is my colleague Vanessa Sommer,” I said.

  Kelly’s face broke into a sudden smile.

  “Sommer and Winter,” she said. “You’re not serious?”

  “A total coincidence,” I said, which only made Kelly’s smile wider.

  The child made a move to run forward again—no doubt to kick me in the other shin—but Kelly prevented her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “Behave,” she said. “Or I won’t bring you out again.”

  “Is your child OK?” asked Vanessa.

  “Stay out of this,” said Kelly, and waved her hand. Vanessa’s mouth shut with an audible click.

  I turned to Vanessa, who was looking puzzled at her sudden inability to open her mouth. She gazed at me with growing panic—I knew the feeling.

  “Stay calm,” I said. “It’s only temporary.” Which got me a glare from Vanessa.

  I turned back to Kelly.

  “Let her go,” I said.

  “Or what, my dear Obersturmbannführer?” asked Kelly. “Will it be the Abteilung Geheimwissenschaften at dawn? Mercury in my headwaters? Vampires?”

  “That was eighty years ago,” I said.

  “That means nothing to me,” spat Kelly. “It means nothing to me…”

  She trailed off suddenly and I realised her attention was focused on Vanessa, who had her hand raised like an obedient kindergartenkind.

  “Yes?” asked Kelly. “What is it?”

  Released to speak, Vanessa immediately turned her full attention on the child.

  “Would you like a pastry?” she asked.

  The child gave Vanessa a long, calculating look.

  “Can I pick the one I like?” she asked in German.

  “Of course.”

  Vanessa held out her hand and, after a long enough pause to establish that her acceptance was entirely conditional, the girl skipped forward and took it. Kelly and I watched them walk off in amazed silence.

  “Who’s that?” asked Kelly.

  “Local police,” I said. “Nobody special.”

  “Yes,” said Kelly. “But there’s special and there’s special, isn’t there?”

  “Never mind her. Who’s the child?”

  “She arrived about four and a half years ago,” she said.

  We looked over to where she and Vanessa had disappeared into the bakery.

  “Arrived how?” I asked.

  “I don’t think we know each other well enough to be talking about these things yet,” she said.

  “But she’s the Mosel?”

  “You’ll have to ask her about that.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to talk to me.”

  “What a shame.”

  “I was going to ask you whether you’d noticed any changes recently,” I said. “But obviously things have changed.”

  Kelly shrugged.

  “Things are always changing,” she said. “From my point of view. It was only last millennium that the Vikings burnt down the old market and the archbishop moved it here.” She pointed at a large Celtic cross that stood at the other end of the square.

  “Marked it with a cross and later this fountain. Both of them fakes, by the way—the originals are in the museum,” she said. “I’ve always been very relaxed about the flow of events right up to the moment when you lot killed my mother.” She gave me a tight smile. “That sort of thing causes resentment.”

  “And recently?”

  “Is it true that the Nightingale has taken an apprentice?”

  “His name is Peter Grant,” I said. “And he might not be the only one.”

  “And the Ice Queen chose you as her response?”

  That was a new nickname for the Director. Usually the supernatural types call her die Hexe aus dem Osten—the Witch from the East.

  I said that I was that apprentice, hoping to inject the right degree of humility i
nto the statement.

  Kelly snorted and shook her head.

  “I met him during the war, you know,” she said, growing serious. “The Nightingale. He lay in my arms for three days under the Roman bridge while the werewolves snuffled up and down the banks. He nearly died of a fever.”

  The Research Department were going to love that titbit.

  “There’s change coming from London—” Kelly stopped suddenly and looked over my shoulder. “Where are they going now?”

  I turned and saw that the child in the red raincoat, with a Rosinenschnecke in one hand, was pulling Vanessa over towards the miniature roller coaster.

  “Change coming from London?” I asked.

  “Nothing specific to here,” said Kelly, clearly distracted. “But there’s more…” She hesitated for a moment. “More of what you people call ‘magic’ about. When there’s more of that—things happen.”

  This I had been taught, as a theory at least. Magic is generated from various sources, and if not consumed by natural processes—such as location spirits and ghosts—it can behave like a supersaturated solution and new structures can suddenly crystallise out of apparent nothingness.

  Or suddenly become combustible, like vaporised petrol.

  I asked what kind of things might happen. But Kelly’s attention was on the little girl now riding the roller coaster, supervised by Vanessa.

  “How long do you think they’re going to be?” she asked.

  “My guess is until she gets bored,” I said.

  “That could be a while,” said Kelly.

  I indicated the wine stall.

  “Do you want a glass of wine?” I asked.

  “You think I should have a drink with you?” she said. “Despite what happened to my mother and my sisters and all that death and destruction?”

  I shrugged and said nothing. When you’re police, people are angry at you all the time—you learn to cope.

  “Fine,” said Kelly. “I wonder if they have a decent red.”

  Chapter 5:

  Art

  Appreciation

  The wine booth was run by the Trier Tourism and Marketing GmbH and featured the product of a different winery every few days in rotation. Today it was a nice Riesling from a winery to the east of Trier.

  “One of the Ruwer’s,” said Kelly.

  “And how are they?”

  “We haven’t talked for a while,” said Kelly. “Not since the Diet of Worms in fact.”

  Because I knew the Director would want to know, I tried to press Kelly about changes in the region. And also the nature of the small child who was currently yelling her head off behind the wheel of a red miniature fire engine as it rolled up and down the smooth steel hills of the roller coaster.

  “I can’t explain what I don’t understand myself,” said Kelly. “There’s more than one of these children, though, and the rumour is that they’re popping up all over England as well.”

  “Baby goddesses?”

  “If you like.”

  “And why are you stuck looking after her?”

  “Who else is there?” said Kelly.

  I switched back to asking about the Stracker winery, noble rot and Kelly’s relationship with both. I asked whether she really blessed their vines and made them fruitful.

  “Fruitful?” said Kelly, and giggled. “Things don’t work the way you people think they do. We’re just like everybody else.” She gestured at the crowds of shoppers around us. “If we like people, then we want them to do well. Sometimes good things happen. Crops ripen. Babies are born healthy. Careers prosper. And perhaps that’s down to us.”

  “And the noble rot?” I asked. “Is that part of it?”

  “Not intentionally,” she said, but she was holding back.

  I might have got more, but just then Vanessa brought the child over to the booth. The child tugged Kelly’s arm until she bent down low enough that the girl could whisper in her ear.

  Kelly glanced up at Vanessa before telling the girl, “That’s not allowed. You know the rules.”

  The child pouted and I realised it was time to make our escape.

  I said a polite goodbye, explained that we had urgent business elsewhere, grabbed Vanessa’s elbow and guided her away from the booth.

  “What’s the hurry?” she said. “Where are we going?”

  “Away,” I said. “Unless you want to be a high priestess of a very select religion.”

  Vanessa gave me a startled look as what I said meshed with her recent experiences.

  “She couldn’t?” she hissed.

  “She could,” I said. “Although to be fair it usually wears off over time.”

  “Usually?”

  We ducked into a smaller cobbled square surrounded by cafés, bars and hotels.

  “Some people make a career of it,” I said, and pulled Vanessa into a hotel bar where I ordered a double vodka for each of us.

  “I don’t like vodka,” said Vanessa, but I told her it was medicinal.

  “That was the Bezauberung, the glamour,” I said, while Vanessa dutifully drained her shot and made a face. “If a location spirit exerts itself, then it can influence your actions.”

  “And you didn’t think to warn me before the meeting?”

  “I didn’t think she’d try something in the middle of the main square,” I said. “But it’s difficult to judge how a location spirit is going to react. Mainly because I don’t meet directly with them very often. Apart from anything else, they don’t like us very much.”

  “I noticed that,” she said. “Did you get anything useful?”

  “She said it wasn’t her.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  I told Vanessa about Kelly’s report that the overall level of magic was rising and how when that happened you get an increase in what we at the KDA call supernatural infractions. Vanessa listened without comment and then ordered two double espressos.

  “To counteract those vodkas,” she said. “And does this mean that, in the past, levels of magic were higher?”

  “There was more activity,” I said. “That much is certain. Why do you ask?”

  “I think it’s time we went to the museum.”

  I looked at my watch—it was past twelve.

  “Let’s eat first,” I said. “And give the goddesses a chance to clear the area.”

  North of the main market runs the Simeonstraße and rising at the far end of the street like a dirty brown and black lump of weathered stone was the Porta Nigra—the Black Gate. It had marked, Vanessa said, the northern boundary of the Roman city. In the tenth century a mad monk from Syracuse named Simeon had himself walled up inside. His aim apparently was to sanctify this pagan monument. Shortly after he started work, the river flooded—devastating the city. The townsfolk blamed Simeon. So did my dossier when I had a look. Still, the flood receded and Simeon kept on praying until he dropped dead and was buried in his sleeping cell. This got him canonised by both the Eastern and the Western Churches, which was probably what he was aiming for.

  Armed with this new saint, the clergy then moved in and turned the pile into a church and built a monastery in Simeon’s name next door. A thousand years later the Porta Nigra is a major tourist attraction and the monastery buildings serve as the City Museum.

  Vanessa identified herself to the museum staff in the crisp white minimalist entrance, led me past a room of statues and paintings, a mini cinema full of fractious kids and, ignoring the lift, up three flights of stairs. The original monastery had been built around a central courtyard with an elevated cloister along which the museum curators had arranged lines of statues.

  Vanessa stopped in front of one statue, checked it, muttered something and moved on to find what she was looking for on the western side. She turned to me and gave a triumphant wave.

  “Look familiar?” she asked.

  The curves were even more exaggerated, but there was no mistaking the face—although the expression of joyful humour was difficult to asso
ciate with the real Kelly, also known as the goddess of the River Kyll. The statue was white alabaster and depicted, according to the writing on the plinth, Methe the goddess of drunkenness. She was holding aloft a drinking bowl in one hand and was dressed in about a half a metre of gauzy fabric and wearing, at a jaunty angle, a centurion’s plumed helmet.

  Wine, religion and Romans—I was beginning to get the hang of Trier.

  “So who’s Methe?” I asked. “Besides being the goddess of drunkenness.”

  “No idea,” said Vanessa. “But somebody here is bound to know.”

  The somebody we located was a middle-aged woman called Petra with big hair, a starched white blouse and a smart skirt suit—one of the museum curators. She explained that the sculpture had been by Ferdinand Tietz, who’d spent the middle of the eighteenth century knocking out a ton of statues for various princes and archbishops, including that of Trier.

  “As to Methe,” said Petra, “she was the daughter of Dionysus and wife of Staphylos and mother of Botrys.”

  “Dionysus is the god of wine, yes?” I asked.

  “Strictly speaking, the god of the grape harvest, winemaking, theatre and fertility,” said Petra with a certain relish.

  His son-in-law, Methe’s husband Staphylos, was supposed to have died suddenly after a heavy drinking bout and his name became the Greek word for a bunch of grapes, while the grape itself was named after her son Botrys.

  “We have a statue of Staphylos as well.” Petra took us around the cloister and stopped in front of a second statue. “Also by Tietz,” she said. Despite being less well preserved there was no mistaking the plump lasciviousness that was the sculpture’s hallmark.

  “Unfortunately, this one was severely damaged in the nineties,” said Petra. “We believe it was a deliberate act of vandalism by French officers.”

  I could see the reasoning, because the damage was confined entirely to the statue’s face, leaving the body in as good a condition as the statue of his wife Methe. I asked what evidence they had that the damage had been done by French officers.