Broken Homes (PC Peter Grant)

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘What’s she so afraid of?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘I wish I knew,’ said Nightingale.

  In 1666, following an unfortunate workplace accident, the city of London burnt down. In the immediate aftermath John Evelyn, Christopher Wren and all the rest of the King’s Men descended with cries of glee upon the ruined city. They had such high hopes, such plans to sweep away the twisted donkey tracks that constituted London’s streets and replace them with boulevards and road grids as formal and as controlled as the garden of a country estate. The city would be made a fit place for the gentlemen of the enlightenment, those tradesmen they required to sustain them, and the servants needed to minister to them. Everybody else was expected to wander off and do whatever it is unwanted poor people were expected to do in the seventeenth century – die presumably.

  But, alas, it was not to be. Because, before the ashes were cool, the inhabitants of the city moved back in and staked out the outlines of their old properties. London became a shadow city marked out in string, shanties and improvised fences. The buildings may have burnt down, but the people had survived and they weren’t going to give up their rights without a fight. Or at the very least a hefty wodge of cash. Since Charles II, despite being the king of bling, was famously short of readies and already had a war going with the Dutch, London got rebuilt with its donkey tracks intact. And Wren had to be content with the odd church dotted around the place.

  In the 1970s a group of developers had similar grandiose plans for the strip of the South Bank between the London Studios and the Oxo Tower. Although, unlike Wren and his merry band of wig-wearing social improvers, their plans were ambitious only in monetary terms. Architecturally, the best they could come up with was a couple of glass boxes plonked down amongst windy concrete squares. It was indistinguishable from hundreds of similar schemes that had been inflicted on the inhabitants of London since the end of the war. But this time the locals weren’t having it, and you really haven’t seen aggro until you piss off a working-class community in south London. They fought the plans for years until finally they wore down the developers through a combination of organised protest, savvy media skills and cockney rhyming slang. Thus was born the Coin Street Community Builders whose unofficial motto was Building houses that people might actually want to live in. It was revolutionary stuff.

  Another radical notion was the idea that people who lived near the river might actually want to walk along the riverbank. So they threw in a rectangular park that ran from Stanford Street down to the Thames Path. It was in this park, named after local activist Bernie Spain, that the God and Goddess of the River Thames planned to hold their Spring Court.

  ‘But why there?’ asked Lesley.

  Nightingale, even after an afternoon in the library, couldn’t answer that.

  We’d recruited some PCSOs from the local Safer Neighbourhood Team and they were already closing off Upper Ground Street when we arrived late in the morning. It had been bucketing down the day before. But that had let up overnight, to give way to one of the luminous pearl-coloured days which would be almost pretty, if the persistent drizzle wasn’t leaking down the back of your collar. We’d considered wearing uniform but Lesley said, what with her mask and everything, she’d look like a plastic cop monster from Doctor Who. I managed to restrain myself from telling her their real name.

  As the highest ranking non-plastic policeman, Nightingale went off to marshal the PSCOs and their handlers while me and Lesley dealt with the stallholders who were beginning to arrive along Upper Ground. Next to the park was Gabriel’s Wharf, a sort of permanent retail fair with cafés, pizzerias and a couple of upmarket restaurants. Lesley handled that side while I made sure that the booths were being set up in the correctly allocated spaces – ticking them off on my slightly damp clipboard as I went.

  I’d just worked my way down to the Thames Path when I spotted a white skinhead approaching with a heavy duty power tool slung over his shoulder. I walked briskly to intercept him but found, as I got closer, that it was only Uncle Bailiff – Mama Thames’s odd job man, carrying an angle grinder.

  ‘Wotcha,’ he said. He was stocky, middle aged, but as a solid as a block of stone. He wore a spider web tattoo on his neck and had, according to rumour, arrived at Mama Thames’s house to collect an outstanding bank debt and never left. Lesley had gone so far as to run a missing persons check. But whoever he was before he was Mama Thames’s, she could never discover.

  ‘All right,’ I said and nodded at the angle grinder. ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Access, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘For the grand debarkation.’

  Poking out into the river at that point was a wooden pier, a remnant of the time when this part of the South Bank still boasted warehouses and industry. It was solidly built so that even my size elevens didn’t rattle the boards as I followed Uncle Bailiff along it towards the end. The tide was out and I glanced over the railing at the glistening mud. The year before I’d pulled myself ashore not fifty metres downstream. I noticed that a metal railing had been retrofitted onto the pier, presumably to stop tourists and small children from taking a dive. I also noticed that there were no gaps to allow passengers to board, or climb off, a boat.

  ‘Hey,’ I said to Uncle Bailiff. ‘What do you mean “access”?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, stooping to pull the start cord – the angle grinder growled into life. ‘It’s only a little adjustment.’

  By late afternoon the tide turned. And with it came a river mist that rolled in from the east. The stalls were all in place, but still had their tarpaulins down while their owners stood around chatting and sharing rollups, or at least things I decided to classify as roll-ups for the duration. That’s your famous ‘operational discretion’ at work. The Showmen had arrived while Uncle Bailiff was adjusting the pier. The park wasn’t suitable for a full funfair, so this was a just token presence – a single antique steam-powered carousel and the kind of booth that invites you to lose money three hoops at a time. These too were quiet and shuttered, their owners drinking coffee from cardboard cups, chatting and texting.

  Lesley and me met with Nightingale by the stall we’d set up at the point where Upper Ground Street bisected the park, to serve as a command post and lost children collection spot. We even had a blue and white placard with the Metropolitan Police crest and Working Together for a Safer London printed underneath. Nearby I spotted some familiar faces setting up their instruments in the jazz tent. It was going to be a popular venue, I thought, if the weather didn’t let us down. The drummer looked up and waved me over, he was a short Scottish stereotype called James Lochrane.

  ‘Peter,’ he said and gripped my hand. ‘Your dad’s waiting in the BFI café with your mum.’

  I shook hands with Max Harwood, the bassist, and Daniel Hossack who played guitar, the three of them plus my dad constituting the Lord Grant’s Irregulars. My dad was making his glorious third, or was it fourth, attempt at a career as a jazzman. Daniel introduced me to a thin jittery young white guy in an expensive coat – Jon something I missed – whose day job was in publicity. I wondered if he was the band’s latest attempt to recruit a brass section until James mouthed the word ‘boyfriend’ behind Daniel’s back and all was clear.

  ‘Where’s Abigail?’ I asked.

  ‘Behind you,’ said Abigail.

  Through a series of irritating mistakes, mostly mine, I’d been forced to invent a junior cadet branch of the Folly, consisting only of one Abigail Kamara, in an effort to keep her out of trouble. Nightingale had been way more sanguine about the whole thing than I was expecting, which only served to make me suspicious. Given his attitude, I led Abigail over to our little police stall and made her his problem.

  She was a skinny mixed-race kid who had a fine range of suspicious looks, one of which she was happy to turn on Nightingale.

  ‘Are you going to do some magic?’ she asked.

  ‘That, young lady,’ he said, ‘depends entirely on how you deport yourself i
n the coming hours.’

  Abigail gave him the look, but only for a moment – just enough to make sure he knew that she wasn’t intimidated.

  ‘Fair enough,’ she said.

  Through the mist the sun was a wavering disc kissing the shadowy arches of Waterloo Bridge. I noticed that a fair number of civilians, mostly tourists and workers from the nearby offices, were wandering amongst the darkened stalls. All part of our contingency planning, and not yet arriving in the quantities I was expecting. Lesley noted that many of them were staying in the area of Gabriel’s Wharf where the cafés and shops were still open.

  As the sun vanished, the mist grew thicker and I started to wonder when the showmen were going to turn on their lights.

  ‘Do you think this is natural?’ Lesley asked Nightingale.

  ‘I doubt that.’ Nightingale checked his watch. ‘Both sunset and high tide are due at around six thirty – I expect our principals to arrive then.’

  So we sent Abigail off to get coffee and settled in to wait.

  We heard them before we saw them. And we felt them before we heard them – as an anticipation, like waking up on your birthday, the smell of bacon sandwiches, breakfast coffee and that initial glorious deep-lunged drag on the first cigarette of the day – the last of these being how I knew this wasn’t truly my feelings, but something external.

  And then a real sound floated out of the dark. Big heavy marine diesels throttled up suddenly as the blunt prows of two large river cruisers emerged from the mist, one on either side of the pier. They touched the embankment simultaneously and stopped. Behind them the superstructures were darker shadows in the murk.

  Then the God and Goddess of the River Thames made their presence known.

  The force of them rolled in like a wave and a confusion of images and smells. Coal smoke and brick dust, cardamom and ginger, damp straw and warm hops, pub piano, wet cotton and sloe gin, tonic water and rose petals, sweat and blood. The waiting onlookers went down on their knees around us, the showmen slowly with respect, the tourists with looks of utter surprise. Even Abigail went down until she realised that Nightingale, Lesley and me were still standing. I watched her face set into an expression that is discussed in hushed tones wherever teachers and social workers gather together, and she struggled back to her feet. She glared at me as if it was my fault.

  The diesel engines stopped and there was silence – not even Abigail spoke. No wonder the showmen were kneeling in respect. PT Barnum would have banged his head twice on the ground in admiration.

  Lady Ty emerged from the mist first. By her side was a wiry man with a thin face and a shock of brown hair – Oxley, the Old Man of the River’s cunning right hand.

  They stopped at the point where the pier met the embankment and Oxley threw back his head and shouted something that sounded like Welsh but was probably much, much older.

  ‘The Queen and King of the River stand at your gates,’ bellowed Lady Ty in her best Dragon’s Den minion-cowing voice.

  Oxley shouted, or chanted, it’s hard to tell with these Celtic languages, another phrase and again Lady Ty translated.

  ‘The Queen and King of the River stand at your gates – come forward to receive them.’

  I felt a warmth on the back of my neck like an unexpected sunbeam and turned to see a young girl of no more than nine, in an antique silk jacket of brilliant yellow – Imperial Yellow she proudly told me later, and genuine Chinese silk – hair twisted up into a fountain of silver and gold thread over a round brown face with a big mouth set in a Cheshire Cat grin.

  She came skipping down the central path, bringing with her the warmth of the sun. The yellow silk glowed, driving back the mist and with her came the smell of salt and the crash of gunpowder and the crack of canvas under strain.

  ‘Who’s that?’ whispered Lesley.

  ‘Neckinger,’ said Nightingale.

  And I thought of myself studying my formae and my Latin and Blackstone’s guide to procedure . . . and all the time there were powers like this young girl among us who could bring spring into the world just by her presence.

  On the other hand, the effect was diluted a little bit by the fact that I noticed she was wearing black cotton leggings and a pair of Kicker boots.

  She danced up to Oxley and Lady Ty, spread her arms, and bowed deeply from the waist. Then she bobbed back up and fidgeted impatiently from foot to foot just like a normal child starring in her first nativity play.

  ‘We welcome the King and Queen of the River,’ she declaimed, stepped between the two adults and, seizing their hands, pulled them onto the embankment. Even Lady Ty, who’d been going for po-faced dignity, had to smile.

  ‘Peter, Lesley,’ whispered Nightingale urgently. ‘Check the perimeter. And take Abigail with you.’

  Nightingale had insisted on this perimeter sweep at the planning stage, but I found I was reluctant to miss the actual debarkation. Given that your actual gods were going to walk amongst us, it seemed disrespectful not to stay and pay our respects. And maybe do a bit of cheering and, you know, possibly a little bit of a genuflect, just to show willing . . .

  ‘Perimeter sweep,’ said Nightingale in his best command voice. ‘All three of you, now!’

  ‘I wanted to watch the show,’ hissed Abigail as we dragged her away, but there was a hint of fear behind her usual belligerence. I set a brisk pace towards the Oxo Tower on the basis that Nightingale was obviously worried, and anything that worried Nightingale wasn’t something you wanted worrying you.

  We’d gone about ten metres when there was a great roar behind us, like what you get when the home side scores in injury time and the fans all know that it’s all over now. Light exploded through the mist at our backs and, although we probably shouldn’t have, we all turned round to watch.

  It looked like a late rock show or early Spielberg – fingers of golden light spilling through the trees and the gaps between the stalls. A wash of exultation, another roar from the crowd and a crashing disappointment that we hadn’t been there to see it. It was impossible to separate what was real from what was glamour. I heard a trumpet fanfare that would have reduced my dad to tears, and then saw white flashes and heard the whoosh-crack of antique flashbulbs. The crowd roared one last time and I could see from the shifting position of the lights that the procession had left the embankment and was heading into the park.

  The gold gradually seeped out of the lights over the stalls until they were bog standard tungsten area lamps. Out to our left a diesel coughed into life, a woman laughed and a propane stove ignited. If I listened carefully I could once again hear the comforting thrum of traffic on the Blackfriars Road.

  Lesley gave a little bark of a laugh.

  ‘I’ll never call anyone else emotionally manipulative again,’ she said. ‘That was world class.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Abigail. ‘That was nothing. You should meet my brother.’

  ‘Every time I think I know what I’m dealing with . . .’ I said.

  ‘More fool you,’ said Lesley. ‘Come on, this perimeter’s not going to check itself.’

  Since we were out there anyway, we took a couple of minutes to check that our three Sprinter vans’ worth of up-for-anything riot gear and tasers on standby TSG officers were fed and watered. Because the only thing worse than putting up with a bored and testy bunch of TSG is finding they’re all out looking for food when the wheels come off.

  Stamford Street, which marked the southern end of our area of operations, was strangely hushed with the traffic closed down. The trucks of the stallholders and showmen were washed-out shapes in the mist. We checked that the PSCOs on road detail had had a smooth shift change and that the skipper in charge was happy.

  ‘Easiest overtime I’ve ever had,’ said one of the PCSOs. He seemed strangely serene, in a way that I found vaguely disturbing.

  The mist was noticeably thicker on the other side of the red brick wall that marked the end of the park. Looking through the entrance I could just make out a swi
rl of colour that might have been the merry-go-round, and hear the muffled mechanical cheer of its organ.

  I was just about to ask Lesley whether she thought we should go back in, when a white European family, obvious tourists by their matching blue Swiss Air backpacks, strolled past us and, before we could stop them, vanished inside the park.

  ‘Shit,’ said Lesley in surprise. ‘We’d better get back in there before something weird happens to them.’

  ‘Might be a little bit too late for that,’ I said, but we followed them in all the same.

  8

  The Pissing Contest

  Bernie Spain Park was neatly bisected by Upper Ground Road. South of this line the showmen had placed their carousel. The mist was thick enough that you practically had to be riding on the thing to make out the expressions on the faces of the horses. But the coloured lights pulsed and illuminated the faces of the kids who waited their turn. I made a point of watching the ride for at least ten minutes, just to make sure nobody was aging backwards.

  Nearby was a stall where I bought a toffee apple for Abigail in the hope it might glue her teeth together for a while, and worked our way through the narrow shadowy gaps between the stalls until we’d reached the jazz tent and the Metropolitan Police stall where Nightingale was waiting.

  ‘So, what was all that?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘That was the joint Court of the Thames in session for the first time since 1857,’ said Nightingale. ‘I fear they may have got a touch carried away in their enthusiasm.’

  I looked over at the northern half of the park where the court was arrayed. In the mist it was just shadows and lights and looked exactly the same as the southern end. But I could feel it calling to me. A nagging little temptation, like a bad habit on a long dull day. I looked back at Lesley, who winked when she saw me looking.

  ‘We could rope ourselves together like mountaineers,’ she said.

  The operational plan was that one of us would remain with Abigail at the police stall while the other two proceeded about the fair and, by dint of being clothed in the awesome majesty of the law, head off any high spirits before they got out of hand.