Rivers of London rol-1

by Ben Aaronovitch

Yes it was, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t wishing it wasn’t. Typically, a constable only sits in the Commissioner’s anteroom when he’s been very brave or very stupid, and I really couldn’t tell which one applied to me.

  The Commissioner only made us wait ten minutes before his secretary came and fetched us. His office was large and designed with the same lack of style as the rest of Scotland Yard, only with a layer of fake oak panelling on top. There was a portrait of the Queen on one wall and another of the first Commissioner, Sir Charles Rowan, on the other. I stood as close to parade-ground attention as any London copper can get and nearly flinched when the Commissioner offered me his hand to shake.

  ‘Constable Grant,’ he said. ‘Your father is Richard Grant, isn’t he? I have some of his records from when he was playing with Tubby Hayes. On vinyl, of course.’

  He didn’t wait for me to answer but shook Nightingale’s hand and waved us into our seats. He was another Northerner who’d come up the hard way and done that stint in Northern Ireland which appears to be obligatory for would-be Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police, presumably because violent sectarianism is thought to be character-building. He wore the uniform well and was judged by the rank and file as possibly not being a total muppet — which put him well ahead of some his predecessors.

  ‘This is an unexpected development, Inspector,’ said the Commissioner. ‘There are some that would see this as an unnecessary step.’

  ‘Commissioner,’ said Nightingale carefully, ‘I believe circumstances warrant a change in the arrangement.’

  ‘When I was first briefed about the nature of your section I was led to believe that it merely served a vestigial function, and that the—’ The Commissioner had to force the word out. ‘—that “the magic” was in decline and only posed a marginal threat to the Queen’s peace. In fact, I definitely remember the word “dwindle” being bandied about by the Home Office. “Eclipsed by science and technology”, was another phrase I heard a lot.’

  ‘The Home Office has never really understood that science and magic are not mutually exclusive, sir. The founder of my society provided proof enough of that. I believe there has been a slow but steady increase in magical activity.’

  ‘The magic’s coming back?’ asked the Commissioner.

  ‘Since the mid-sixties,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘The sixties,’ said the Commissioner. ‘Why am I not surprised? This is damned inconvenient. Any idea why?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Nightingale. ‘But then there never was any real consensus as to why it faded in the first place.’

  ‘I’ve heard the word Ettersburg used in that context,’ said the Commissioner.

  For a moment there was real pain on Nightingale’s face. ‘Ettersburg was part of it, certainly.’

  The Commissioner blew out his cheeks and sighed. ‘The murders in Covent Garden and Hampstead, these are connected?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘You think the situation will get worse?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Enough to warrant breaking the agreement?’

  ‘It takes ten years to train an apprentice, sir,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s better to have a spare just in case something happens to me.’

  The Commissioner gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘Does he know what he’s getting himself into?’

  ‘Does any copper?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Very well,’said the Commissioner. ‘On your feet, son.’

  We stood. Nightingale told me to raise my hand and read me the oath: ‘Do you, Peter Grant of Kentish Town, swear to be true to our sovereign Queen and her heirs. And well and truly serve your Master for the term of your apprenticeshood. And ye shall be in obedience to all the wardens and clothing of that fellowship. In reverence of the secret of the said fellowship ye shall keep and give no information to any man but of the said fellowship. And in all these things ye shall well and truly behave yourself and secretly keep this oath to your power so help you God, your Sovereign and the power that set the universe in motion.’

  I so swore, although I did almost stumble over the clothing bit.

  ‘So help you God,’ said the Commissioner.

  Nightingale informed me that as his apprentice I was required to lodge at his London residence in Russell Square. He told me the address and dropped me back at the Charing Cross section house.

  Lesley helped me pack.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at Belgravia,’ I asked, ‘doing Murder Team stuff?’

  ‘I’ve been told to take the day off,’ said Lesley. ‘Compassionate — don’t get on media’s radar — leave.’

  That I could understand. A family annihilation involving charismatic rich people was going to be a news editor’s dream story. Once they’d picked over the gruesome details, they could extend the mileage by asking what the tragic death of the Coopertown family told us about our society, and how this tragedy was an indictment of modern culture/secular humanism/ political correctness/the situation in Palestine — delete where applicable. About the only thing that could improve the story would be the involvement of a good-looking blonde WPC out, I might add, unsupervised on a dangerous assignment. Questions would be asked. Answers would be ignored.

  ‘Who’s going to Los Angeles?’ I asked. Somebody would have to trace Brandon’s movements in the States.

  ‘A couple of sergeants I never got a chance to meet,’ she said. ‘I only worked there a couple of days before you got me into trouble.’

  ‘You’re his blue-eyed girl,’ I said. ‘Seawoll’s not going to hold it against you.’

  ‘I still reckon you owe me,’ she said as she picked up my bath towel and briskly folded it into a tightly packed cube.

  ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

  Lesley asked if I was likely to get the evening off and I said I could try.

  ‘I don’t want to be stuck here,’ she said. ‘I want to go out.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked, and watched as she unfolded the towel and refolded it into a triangle shape.

  ‘Anywhere but the pub,’ she said and handed the towel to me. I managed to stuff it into my rucksack, but I had to unfold it first.

  ‘What about a film?’ I asked.

  ‘Sounds good,’ she said, ‘but it’s got to be funny.’

  Russell Square lies a kilometre north of Covent Garden on the other side of the British Museum. According to Nightingale, it was at the heart of a literary and philosophical movement in the early years of the last century, but I remember it because of an old horror movie about cannibals living in the Underground system.

  The address was on the south side of the square where a row of Georgian terraces had survived. They were five storeys high, counting the dormer conversions, with wrought-iron railings defending steep drops into basement flats. The address I wanted had a noticeably grander flight of stairs than its neighbours, leading to double mahogany doors with brass fittings. Carved above the lintel were the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST.

  Science points east, I wondered? Science is portentous, yes? Science protests too much. Scientific potatoes rule. Had I stumbled on the lair of dangerous plant geneticists?

  I hauled my rucksack and two suitcases up to the landing. I pressed the brass doorbell but I couldn’t hear it ring through the thick doors. After a moment, they opened on their own. It might have been the traffic noise, but I swear I didn’t hear a motor or any kind of mechanism at all. Toby whined and hid behind my legs.

  ‘That’s not creepy,’ I said. ‘Not even in the slightest.’

  I pulled my suitcase through the doors.

  The entrance lobby had a mosaic floor in the Roman manner and a wooden and glass booth that, while in no way resembling a ticket booth, indicated that there was an inside and an outside to the building, and that one had better have permission if one wanted to proceed inside. Whatever this place was, it certainly wasn’t Nightingale’s private residence.

  Beyond the booth, flanked by two neoclassical pillar
s, was a marble statue of a man dressed in an academic gown and breeches. He cradled a mighty tome in one arm and a sextant in the other. His square face held an expression of implacable curiosity, and I knew his name even before I saw the plinth, which read:

  Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;

  God said ‘Let Newton be’ and all was light.

  Nightingale was waiting for me by the statue. ‘Welcome to the Folly,’ he said, ‘the official home of English magic since 1775.’

  ‘And your patron saint is Sir Isaac Newton?’ I asked.

  Nightingale grinned. ‘He was our founder, and the first man to systemise the practice of magic.’

  ‘I was taught that he invented modern science,’ I said.

  ‘He did both,’ said Nightingale. ‘That’s the nature of genius.’

  Nightingale took me through a door into a rectangular atrium that dominated the centre of the building. Above me there were two rows of balconies, and an iron and glass Victorian dome formed the roof. Toby’s claws clicked on a floor of polished cream-coloured marble. It was very quiet, and for all that the place was spotless I got a strong sense of abandonment.

  ‘Through there is the big dining room which we don’t use any more, the lounge and smoking room, which we also don’t use.’ Nightingale pointed to doors on the other side of the atrium. ‘General library, lecture hall. Downstairs are the kitchens, sculleries and wine cellar. The back stairs, which are actually at the front, are over there. Coach house and mews are through the rear doors.’

  ‘How many people live here?’ I asked.

  ‘Just the two of us. And Molly,’ said Nightingale.

  Toby suddenly crouched down at my feet and growled, a proper rat-in-the-kitchen growl that was all business. I looked over and saw a woman gliding towards us across the polished marble. She was slender and dressed like an Edwardian maid, complete with a starched white bib apron over a full black skirt and white cotton blouse. Her face didn’t fit her outfit, being too long and sharp-boned with black, almond-shaped eyes. Despite her mob cap she wore her hair loose, a black curtain that fell to her waist. She instantly gave me the creeps, and not just because I’ve seen too many Japanese horror films.

  ‘This is Molly,’ said Nightingale. ‘She does for us.’

  ‘Does what?’

  ‘Whatever needs doing,’ said Nightingale.

  Molly lowered her eyes and did an awkward little dip that might have been a curtsey or a bow. When Toby growled again Molly snarled back, showing disturbingly sharp teeth.

  ‘Molly,’ said Nightingale sharply.

  Molly demurely covered her mouth with her hand, turned and went gliding back the way she came. Toby gave a little self-satisfied snort that didn’t fool anyone but himself.

  ‘And she is … ?’ I asked.

  ‘Indispensable,’ said Nightingale.

  Before we went up, Nightingale led me over to an alcove set into the north wall. There, resting on a pedestal like a household god, was a sealed museum case containing a copy of a leather-bound book. It was open to the title page. I leaned over and read: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis, Autore: I. S. Newton.

  ‘So not content with kicking off the scientific revolution, our boy Isaac invented magic?’ I asked.

  ‘Not invented,’ said Nightingale. ‘But he did codify its basic principles, made it somewhat less hit and miss.’

  ‘Magic and science,’ I said. ‘What did he do for an encore?’

  ‘Reformed the Royal Mint and saved the country from bankruptcy,’ said Nightingale.

  Apparently there were two main staircases; we took the eastern one up to the first of the colonnaded balconies and a confusion of wood panelling and white dust sheets. Two more flights of stairs led us to a second-storey hallway lined with heavy wooden doors. He opened one, seemingly at random, and ushered me in.

  ‘This is yours,’ he said.

  It was twice the size of my room at the section house, with good proportions and a high ceiling. A brass double bed was shoved into one corner, a Narnia wardrobe in the other and a writing desk was between them, where it could catch the light from one of the two sash windows. Bookshelves covered two entire walls, empty except for what turned out on later inspection to be a complete set of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1913, a battered first edition of Brave New World and a Bible. What had obviously once been an open fireplace had been replaced with a gas fire surrounded by green ceramic tiles. The reading lamp on the desk had a faux-Japanese print shade and beside it was a Bakelite phone that had to be older than my father. There was a smell of dust and freshly applied furniture polish, and I guessed that this room had dreamed the last fifty years away under the white dust sheets.

  ‘When you’re ready, meet me downstairs,’ said Nightingale. ‘And make sure you’re presentable.’

  I knew what that was about so I tried to stretch it, but it didn’t take me long to unpack.

  Strictly speaking, it wasn’t our job to pick up grieving parents from the airport. Leaving aside the fact that officially this was Westminster Murder Team’s case, it was extremely unlikely that August Coopertown’s parents had any information pertinent to the murder. It sounds callous, but detectives have better things to do than impromptu counselling for bereaved relatives; that’s what Family Liaison Officers are for. Nightingale didn’t see it that way, which was why he and I were standing at the arrivals barrier at Heathrow when Mr and Mrs Fischer cleared customs. I was the one holding the cardboard sign.

  They weren’t what I expected. The dad was short and balding and the mum was mousy-haired and tubby. Nightingale introduced himself in what I assumed was Danish and told me to carry the bags back to the Jag, which I was glad to do.

  Ask any police officer what the worst part of the job is and they will always say breaking bad news to relatives, but this is not the truth. The worst part is staying in the room after you’ve broken the news so that you’re forced to be there when someone’s life disintegrates around them. Some people say it doesn’t bother them — such people are not to be trusted.

  The Fischers had obviously googled for the closest hotel to their daughter’s house, and had thus booked themselves into a brick-built combination prison block/ petrol station on Haverstock Hill whose lobby was shopworn, fussy and as welcoming as a job centre. I doubt the Fischers noticed, but I could see that Nightingale didn’t think it was good enough, and for a moment I thought he was going to offer to put them up at the Folly.

  Then he sighed and told me to put the luggage down by the reception desk. ‘I’ll deal with things from here,’ he said and sent me home. I said goodbye to the Fischers and walked out of their lives as fast as I could go.

  *

  After that I really didn’t want to go out but Lesley persuaded me. ‘You can’t just come to a stop ’cause bad things happen,’ she said. ‘Besides, you owe me a night out.’

  I didn’t argue, and after all, the good thing about the West End is that there’s always somewhere to see a film. We started at the Prince Charles but they were showing Twelve Monkeys downstairs and a Kurosawa double bill upstairs, so we went round the corner to the Leicester Square Voyage. The Voyage is a miniature village version of a multiplex with eight screens, of which at least two are larger than your average plasma-screen television. Normally I like a certain amount of gratuitous violence in my cinema, but I let Lesley persuade me that Sherbet Lemons, this month’s feel-good romcom with Allison Tyke and Dennis Carter was just the film to cheer us up. For all I know it might even have worked, had we had a chance to see it.

  The foyer was dominated by the concessions counter which stretched across its breadth. There were eight transaction points, each with its own till nestled amid a confusion of popcorn dispensers, hotdog grills and cardboard display signs offering kids’ boxes tied to the latest blockbuster. Above each transaction point was a widescreen LCD which displayed the films on offer, their age classification, when they were
on, how long we had until they started and how many seats were left in each auditorium. At regular intervals the screen would switch to display a trailer, an advert for mechanically recovered meat or just to tell you what a good time you were having at the Voyage chain of cinemas. That evening there was only one transaction point open, and a queue of approximately fifteen stood waiting to be served. We joined the queue behind a well-dressed middle-aged woman out with four girls aged between nine and eleven. It didn’t bother Lesley and me — if you learn one thing as a copper, it’s how to wait.

  The follow-up investigation revealed that the single member of staff manning the transaction point that shift was a twenty-three-year-old Sri Lankan refugee named Sadun Ranatunga, one of four people staffing the Leicester Square Voyage that evening. At the time of the incident, two were cleaning out screens one and three in preparation for the next showing, one was on duty to take tickets and the last was dealing with a particularly unpleasant spillage in the gents.

  Because Mr Ranatunga was selling both tickets and popcorn, it took him at least fifteen minutes to wear down the queue to the point where the woman in front of us began to get her hopes up. Her accompanying children, who up till then had been amusing themselves elsewhere, flocked back to the queue so they could get their bid for sweets in early. She was impressively firm, making it clear that the ration was to be one drink and one serving of popcorn or a packet of sweets — no exception, and I don’t care what Priscilla’s mother let you have when she took you out. No you can’t have nachos, what are nachos, anyway? Behave, or you won’t get anything.

  The tipping point came, according to Charing Cross CID, when the couple next in line asked for a concessionary price. The couple, who were identified as Nicola Fabroni and Eugenio Turco, a pair of heroin addicts from Naples who had come to London to dry out, had leaflets from the Piccadilly English Language School which they claimed made them bona fide students. As recently as the week before Mr Ranatunga would have just let it slide, but that afternoon his manager had informed him that Head Office had decreed that Leicester Square Voyage had been selling far too many concessionary tickets, and that in future staff should decline any request that seemed suspect. In compliance with this directive, Mr Ranatunga regretfully informed Turco and Fabroni that they would have to pay full price. This did not go down well with the couple, who had budgeted their evening on the basis that they could lig into the cinema. They remonstrated with Mr Ranatunga who was adamant in his refusal, but since both parties were doing this in their second language, it used up valuable time. Finally, and with ill grace, Turco and Fabroni paid the full price with a pair of grubby five-pound notes and a handful of ten-pence pieces.