Whispers Under Ground

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘I know you know what’s coming next, because I saw the way you reacted to the work at my show.’ He folded his arms. ‘Oh, the herd felt something. But you, you recognised it.’

  ‘Magic,’ I said.

  ‘The real thing,’ said Ryan. And like me, once he’d seen it in action there was no way he wasn’t going to try to learn it. So Stephen set out to teach Ryan how to make an unbreakable pot, and incidentally imbue it with enough vestigia to give any interested art lovers what Ryan called a ‘Glimpse into the numinous’. What he hadn’t counted on was that learning how to do it would take months.

  ‘But I’ll bet money you know that already, don’t you?’ said Ryan.

  Stephen described the process to Ryan as singing a song in your head while you worked. You worked the clay, sang the song in your head and somehow that made it magical.

  ‘Month after month I was down there, drinking tea, fondling the clay and singing in my head,’ said Ryan. ‘But being an artist is like being a shark – you’ve got to keep moving or you drown. So I asked Stephen to make the faces, the ones you saw at the Tate, to my specification, and that’s what he did.’

  ‘How did you get the emotional content?’ I asked. ‘And what did Stephen get in return?’

  ‘I just told him to think about how each face made him feel. Imagine my surprise when they popped out of the kiln emoting like actors.’ Ryan shook his head. ‘Stephen got paid.’

  I asked him whether that wasn’t cheating, but he just sighed in an exaggerated way and told me not to be so bourgeois. ‘I didn’t make the mannequins either, or any of the other found objects I used. Art’s about producing something more than the sum of the parts.’ He waved his hand dismissively and I thought, You’re not fooling anyone but yourself.

  ‘And James Gallagher arrived around this time?’ I asked.

  ‘Like a bad smell,’ said Ryan. ‘Don’t you hate Americans? Not that James was a bad guy. I never thought he was a bad guy. But he arrives with his money and his family and I’ll be honest – he was a fair painter if your tastes run to the old-fashioned. Send him back to la belle époque and he’d have been knee-deep in Parisian pussy within a week.’

  And he had to be branching out into ceramics, he had to be strolling into Ryan’s own hitherto secret world. But Ryan could have lived with all of that if James bloody Gallagher hadn’t been better at singing in his head as well.

  ‘Not that he just sat down and did it first time, you understand,’ said Ryan. ‘It was me that got him settled, showed him the ropes, pointed out where the loo was.’

  ‘How long it did it take him to learn?’

  ‘About three weeks,’ said Ryan. ‘I felt him do it, but you know what? As he sang the song, I did too. In my head. Suddenly it was so simple. And we sang together, sort of both of us with the clay running between our fingers, and for that moment I was in tune with the fabric of the universe. I was singing along with the actual music of the spheres.’

  But the proof of the pudding is in the baking. So the next day both of them had rushed back down the sewers for the grand ceremonial opening of the kiln.

  ‘For Stephen it’s an industrial process,’ said Ryan. ‘Just another day at the office, so we had to wait while he cleared out all the make-work until finally he gets to the layer where our plates are.’ He smiled at the memory. ‘And there they are – beautifully fired both of them. When Stephen put it in my hand, still warm, I knew it was mine. I could feel it through my skin. James and I look at each other and we just start laughing like little kids.’

  Ryan trailed off and stared down at his hands. He turned his right hand over and rubbed absently at the bandage for a moment.

  ‘They test their work by banging it against the side of the kiln,’ said Ryan without looking up. ‘So we did the whole you-first-no-you-first routine and Jimmy boy gets fed up and cracks his plate against the edge of the kiln – the edge mind you – and it rings as sweet as a bell.’ Ryan looked up. ‘You can guess what happened next?’

  I suddenly realised I’d talked myself into a trap – if the plate had broken in his hands then it could explain the cuts on his palm and possibly, if his brief was clever, the DNA evidence as well.

  ‘Yours smashed to pieces?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Ryan. ‘It cracked.’

  And I swear I could hear all of them breathing out suddenly, all the way from the monitoring room next door.

  ‘But from an art point of view it would have been better if it had smashed,’ said Ryan. ‘James looked at me then and it was in his eyes that “Oh well, bad luck you,” look. My failure made his success taste all the sweeter – it’s an American thing. I looked back at him and I think he must have seen it in my eyes, what was coming next, because he made his excuses and left.’ Ryan looked back down at his hands. ‘He ran, I chased, we got lost, I hit him with the plate, it broke, he tried to walk away – I stabbed him in the back. Is that what you wanted to hear?’

  It was more than I wanted to hear, but police work is all about the details so I stayed another half an hour going over what he could remember of the chase and the exact sequence of events around the stabbing. None of it was admissible, but it could be used by the Murder Team to double-check the official statements.

  After that, Nightingale sent me and Lesley back to the Folly for a sleep. By that time in the morning the slush-covered streets were empty and cold. As we turned into Charing Cross Road Lesley put her hand on my shoulder and said; ‘You did some proper policing there – Merry Christmas.’

  Late Christmas morning one of Lesley’s sisters turned up to drive her out to Brightlingsea, where I was informed there would be the traditional turkey, crackers and family squabbles. Nightingale reported that Agent Reynolds had been invited home by an evangelical family at the embassy for much the same experience, only with more cranberries and hopefully fewer arguments. Kumar and Zach spent Christmas delivering Christmas presents to, and taking medical samples from, the Quiet People, and voilà another unwritten ad hoc arrangement was added to the metaphorical book in which we presumably keep them.

  Nightingale presented me with a small package neatly wrapped in silver paper. He stood waiting with suspicious casualness but I wasn’t fooled. I was tempted to pretend I was going to open it later but you shouldn’t be that cruel on Christmas. Unwrapped, it turned out to be an original stainless steel Omega, antique, black and silver, automatic winding and therefore magic-proof and worth about seventy to eighty times what I’d bought him. Which was a slim-line Nokia, modified to have a battery interrupt and preprogramed with every relevant number I could think of including the Commissioner, the Mayor and his tailor, Dege & Skinner of Savile Row.

  I caught up with my parents at Aunty Jo’s. She’s not really my aunty but my mum and her go back all the way to when they were at school in Kambia together. She has a big house off Holloway Road and a large number of kids, all of whom went to university, that she likes to show off every Christmas. Notice the ‘whom’ there – who says I don’t know my grammar? Anyway, me and my parents go there every year and essentially eat and drink until we explode. I invited Nightingale but he said he said he couldn’t leave Molly alone on Christmas day and it wasn’t until I was squashed onto the sofa and watching the Christmas episode of Doctor Who that I realised he hadn’t said precisely why.

  Boxing Day and Beyond

  27

  Tottenham Court Road

  We went in mob-handed, Nightingale in front, backed by me and Lesley in our riot gear. Behind us was a stream of backup including some reliable TSG guys, Guleed, Kumar and right at the back Stephanopoulos – so that if something went wrong, we’d have someone responsible to clear up any mess. Nightingale didn’t say, but I suspected that even further back was a nondescript Transit van filled with former members of the Parachute Regiment. I didn’t worry about them, though, because in the event that they had to be involved I was likely to be past caring.

  I’d been right about the Faceless Ma
n relocating his base under cover of the Crossrail works. It’s amazing what you can come up with when you’re buried under a ton of concrete, although I don’t recommend it as an aid to memory. Kumar and Nightingale cruelly interrupted Christmas dinner for Graham Beale and several other engineering contractors and compared their plans until they found an anomaly. An excavation at the end of Dean Street that only appeared on one set of plans.

  Kumar and Nightingale made that discovery at about just the same time my mum squared off for the traditional Christmas row with her sister. My dad’s usually nodded off by this point and me and all the other nieces, nephews and cousins pile into the kitchen to eat the leftovers and pretend to do the washing up. One thing you never get with my relatives is leftover turkey, but that year there was some serious smoked ham which I had with French mustard. I was thankful that they held off for twelve hours before organising the raid, because I doubt after that much Christmas dinner I would have moved too fast.

  Access was via the basement of an International Money Transfer shop on Dean Street. We didn’t wait and use a ram. Instead, Nightingale employed a nifty spell that caused all the hinges and attachment points on a reinforced fire door to simultaneous pop out of the frame so that the door itself toppled slowly backward into the corridor. He signalled me to wait before darting through – there was a long moment and then he told us to follow on.

  It was a cylindrical shaft six metres across and twenty metres deep. The door gave in at the top, from where a modern metal staircase with sensible handrails spiralled around the circumference down to the base. It had been hiding in plain sight, marked on the construction blueprints as an emergency access shaft for the far end of the Crossrail passenger platforms. What it looked like to me was an inverted wizard’s tower, but I kept that to myself. There was an open-frame lift, like the ones used on building sites, that nobody wanted to be the first to use – just in case of booby traps.

  The shaft was adjacent to the smaller shaft located at the end of Dean Street that Graham Beale’s brother had been found at the bottom of.

  ‘No floors,’ said Lesley.

  ‘They haven’t been installed yet,’ I said. ‘You can see the points where the load-bearing beams were going to slot in.’

  ‘What’s with him?’ asked Guleed.

  ‘He once arrested an architect,’ said Kumar.

  At the bottom, placed in the exact centre of the bare cement floor. was a double-sized inflatable mattress of the type people take camping. It had been neatly made up with blue and white striped sheets and pillow cases, a duvet in a matching cover, clean, crisp – meticulously turned over. Next to it was parked an empty wheelchair and under the covers was Albert Woodville-Gentle, my personal number one suspect for the first Ethically Challenged Magician – the Faceless Man’s mentor. He was lying on his back, eyes closed, hands folded across his chest. Dead for about three days, Stephanopoulos reckoned – a timeline confirmed by Dr Walid, who rushed down from Oban the next day.

  ‘Natural causes,’ he reported after the tests came in. ‘Exacerbated by severe hyperthaumaturgical necrosis.’ Which was the next step up from hyperthaumaturgical degradation. So magic had put him in that wheelchair. He made a point of having Nightingale, Lesley and me in the lab when he did his brain transects – presumably as an awful warning. Nightingale said that Dr Walid always got excited when he had a new brain to play with.

  But all that came days later. While we were still waiting for the forensics people Lesley asked the question that had been bugging me. ‘Why no demon traps? If it had been me, I’d have left a nasty surprise in hope of taking us all out.’

  Nightingale looked around. ‘Our ethically challenged magician is far too careful to return here,’ he said. ‘Whatever plans he may have had regarding this place I suspect he changed them shortly after your derring-do on the roof top in Soho.’

  ‘He didn’t seem that worried,’ I said. Contemptuous, yes. Worried, no.

  ‘As I said,’ said Nightingale. ‘Careful. I suspect he instructed the nurse to bring Old Albert here and then abandon him – a message to us I suppose.’

  ‘Do you think we can find the nurse?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Lesley. ‘Or worse. He’s not going to leave any loose ends.’

  That wasn’t going to stop us looking.

  28

  Biggin Hill

  Biggin Hill Airport is far enough out of London for there to be fields and woods and snow on the ground. Once a famous RAF base, it’s now the favoured landing spot for the private jets of the kind of people that Ryan Carroll believed drove the art market. A close friend of the senator had lent him his private jet so he could fly his son home on the day after Boxing Day. Agent Reynolds was hitching a lift with the senator and I drove down that morning to see her off. I found her in the severely monochrome departure lounge, all white furniture, grey carpet and frosted-glass tabletops. Her suit was neatly pressed and she looked rested and alert. She offered to buy me a drink with the last of her sterling so I had a lager.

  ‘Where’s the senator?’ I asked as I sat down.

  ‘He’s in the RAF Chapel,’ she said.

  ‘His son’s not—?’

  ‘No,’ said Reynolds and sipped her drink. ‘He’s already safely on board the jet.’

  ‘How is the senator?’ I asked.

  ‘Better for having his son’s murderer caught,’ said Reynolds.

  ‘I won’t use the word closure if you don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think he was mentally unstable?’ asked Reynolds.

  ‘James?’ I asked. ‘No—’

  ‘Ryan Carroll,’ she said. ‘James had that book, perhaps he was worried about Ryan, not about himself.’

  ‘It’s plausible,’ I said. ‘But I wouldn’t tell his father. I doubt he wants to think his son’s death was avoidable.’

  Reynolds sighed. Outside, a jet shot down the runway and climbed steeply into the sky.

  ‘How much will you tell him?’ I asked.

  ‘You mean,’ said Reynolds, ‘will I tell him about the … what do you call it?’

  ‘Magic,’ I said.

  ‘You just come right out and say “magic”?’ she asked. ‘Like’s it’s no big deal.’

  ‘Would you prefer a euphemism?’ I asked.

  ‘When did you discover magic was real?’ asked Reynolds.

  ‘Last January,’ I said.

  ‘January?’ she squeaked and then, in a more normal tone, ‘As in twelve months ago?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ I said.

  ‘You find out that magic and spirits and ghosts are all real,’ she said. ‘And you’re just fine with that? You just accept it?’

  ‘It helps that I’ve got a scientific brain,’ I said.

  ‘How can that possibly help?’

  ‘I met a ghost face to face,’ I said, with more calmness than I’d felt at the time. ‘It would have been stupid to pretend it didn’t exist.’

  Reynolds waved her scotch at me. ‘As easy as that?’ she asked.

  ‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘But most people believe in the supernatural, ghosts, evil spirits, an afterlife, a supreme being, stuff like that. Magic is less of a conceptual leap than you might imagine.’

  ‘Conceptual leap?’ said Reynolds. ‘Your FBI file underestimated your education.’

  ‘I have an FBI file?’ Nightingale wasn’t going to like that.

  ‘You do now,’ said Reynolds and laughed. ‘Relax, it’s in the friendly pile and it’s going to be a very slim file given that I’m going to leave out the most interesting thing about you.’

  ‘My preternatural good looks,’ I said.

  ‘No the other stuff,’ she said. ‘You’re not drinking your beer.’

  ‘What about your report?’ I asked, and took a swallow of beer to mask my anxiety.

  She gave me a cool look. ‘You know perfectly well that I’m going to have to leave out the Quiet People, the Rivers and the rest of the Harry Potter stuff,’ she sa
id.

  ‘You don’t think your governors will believe you?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s why you took me with you, isn’t it? Because you knew the more outlandish it was, the less likely I was to put it in my report.’ Reynolds shook her head. ‘I don’t know whether they believe in magic, but I know for a fact they believe in psychological evaluations. I like my job and I have no intention of giving them an excuse to sidetrack me.’

  ‘Which reminds me,’ I said, and fished the two trackers I’d retrieved from beneath the Asbo and Kevin Nolan’s van. ‘These are yours I believe.’

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ said Agent Reynolds. ‘Unauthorised electronic surveillance of a foreign national in a friendly country. That would be a violation of Bureau policy.’ She grinned. ‘Can you reuse them yourself?’

  ‘No problem,’ I said, putting them away.

  ‘Think of them as a Christmas present,’ she said.

  A woman in a pilot’s uniform approached Reynolds and informed her that it was time to board. We finished our drinks and I walked her down to the departure gate. I’ve always travelled from big airports so this was my first chance to wave someone off from the tarmac.

  The waiting jet was long and slim, painted white and silver, and seemed much larger close up than I’d expected.

  ‘Good luck,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said and kissed me on the cheek.

  I watched to make sure the jet was on its way before heading for the car park.

  One less thing to worry about, I thought. Perhaps I was going to get to see the match that afternoon after all.

  I don’t know why I bother, I really don’t, because at that exact instant my phone rang and a voice identified herself as a British Transport Police inspector and asked did I know a certain Abigail Kumara and could I be a dear and come down to the BTP Headquarters in Camden and please take her away.