The Hanging Tree

by Ben Aaronovitch

  I hesitated before I added this to HOLMES – I didn’t want to firm up the case against Lady Ty’s wayward daughter, but the whole point of a collation system is that you feed in information to collate. Still, with her mother’s influence putting the brakes on the investigation I figured that Olivia was safe for the moment. With a bit of luck that would give me time to sort things out using the time-honoured tradition of exploiting family connections.

  In days of old, a stout yeoman would set out from Aldgate along the road to Colchester in the full knowledge that just a mile up the road was a small hamlet where he could stop for a pint and a cheeky pie. This rest stop was called Mile End from Le Mille End which is your Norman French for a hamlet a mile up the road. The road from Aldersgate was called Aldgatestrete and then, because that was considered too on the nose, the Mile End Road. It’s where young Richard II signed the peasants’ charter with his fingers crossed behind his back and the first ever V1 cruise missile to land in London hit. It’s also where Queen Mary University teaches Environmental Science, so it was there that I had lunch with Beverley Brook.

  Now, just up the road are some of the best curry houses in London. But no. Bev, who’s gone all outdoorsy since Herefordshire, wanted to go picnic up on the Green Bridge. This is a foot and cycle bridge that crosses the Mile End Road linking the two halves of Mile End Park. Since the bridge was constructed this side of the year 2000 it has a ton of retail space built into its base and one of these places was called Rooster Piri Piri, where you can get a reasonably priced double chicken burger and chips. Even if me and Beverley both agreed that their extra hot Piri Piri sauce was a bit mild by our standards.

  We found ourselves queuing behind a bunch of young men with matching beards and black framed Malcolm X glasses who were making a complicated bulk order. Their fathers might have been from Bangladesh or Pakistan, but their accents ranged from local London to Glasgow with, I noticed, a side trip to France on the way.

  ‘Engineering students,’ said Beverley as they argued about how to divide up the bill.

  Once they’d finished constructing their order we got ours and took it up the steps to the bridge and then across to where there was a decent bench and, importantly, we couldn’t see the Grand Union Canal.

  ‘It’s bad manners for me to sit too close to the canal,’ said Beverley, ‘without asking Mrs Canal’s permission.’ Which Beverley reckoned was more trouble than it was worth, given that she didn’t think it was that scenic a canal.

  ‘There are swamps with a better flow rate than hers,’ said Beverley.

  Now, I’ve met the Goddess of the Grand Union Canal. And she’s perfectly nice, you know, providing you bring her a banana – preferably free trade.

  So once we’d stopped fighting over the remaining chips I asked Bev whether she could maybe see her way to facilitate an off the record meeting with her sister.

  ‘Can’t you just go around and talk to her?’ asked Beverley.

  ‘Even if I make an unofficial visit,’ I said, ‘she won’t talk to me without her brief present.’

  If she’s sensible, I thought, which she is.

  ‘I am not getting involved in this,’ said Beverley.

  ‘I’m not asking you to get involved,’ I said.

  ‘Yes you are.’

  ‘Okay, yes I am.’

  ‘And I’m not going to get involved.’

  ‘Olivia’s your niece,’ I said. ‘And she’s sleepwalking her way into a serious drugs charge.’

  ‘And Tyburn is my sister,’ said Beverley. ‘My older sister, and she holds grudges forever. And I mean forever. Besides, it’ll never get to that – Tyburn will fix it.’

  ‘And how will she do that?’

  ‘If it comes to it you know she’s going to march to Fed HQ and tell your boss to lay off – who’s going to stop her?’

  ‘I’m going to stop her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it’s my job – that’s what the Folly is about.’

  ‘No,’ said Beverley. ‘That’s what you’ve decided the Folly is about. I wonder if the Nightingale thinks the same as you do.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But that’s not the point.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Beverley. ‘You can’t let this case go – not even for a quiet life?’

  There was a long pause while Beverley looked me right in the eye and I was suddenly worried that she was going to ask me to cease and desist as a personal favour to her. And if she did, I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. But then she shook her head and waved her burger at me.

  ‘Alright, I’ll do it. But it’s going to cost you,’ she said.

  ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘Maksim’s putting in some baffles where I run across the common,’ she said. Maksim was the administrator and sole employee of the Beverley Brook Conservation Improvement Trust. He was also a terrifying former Russian mobster who’d come into Beverley’s ‘service’ via a complicated and morally ambiguous route. ‘He needs a hand.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘As long as you come and watch.’

  Beverley grinned. ‘You know I like it when you do improvements,’ she said.

  I know she liked to get me in the water with my clothes on – I blame Colin Firth for that.

  I had a sudden brainwave while driving back west, so when I got to Belgravia I hunted down Guleed, who was typing up that morning’s statements from St Paul’s school for girls with rich parents. I showed her the picture I’d taken of the collage on Olivia’s wall, with the young curly haired woman who had cropped up so frequently.

  ‘Spot this one?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Guleed and checked her notebook. ‘Phoebe Beaumont-Jones – shared a couple of classes with your Olivia.’

  I thought of the picture of them standing together in France, arms comfortably around each other’s waists.

  ‘Not best friends?’ I asked.

  ‘Nobody said anything,’ said Guleed. ‘Least of all Phoebe herself.’

  ‘They definitely look like friends in the picture,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think she was at the party?’ asked Guleed.

  None of the witnesses had identified her, but if she was Olivia’s friend rather than theirs they might have overlooked her. Or were they scared of Olivia, or of Phoebe Beaumont-Jones?

  You can’t go by appearances – I once helped put away a gang of steamers who’d been working Oxford Street at the behest of an OAP with a dodgy hip and pipe cleaner arms. They were so terrified of him that not one of the gang would grass him up. I asked one of them why – off the record – and he told me that the geezer had no off switch, and once he started in that was it. You were dead meat.

  It was just possible that her fellow Paulinas feared to mention Phoebe. Was she the one who supplied the drugs?

  I looked at Guleed, who was obviously thinking the same thing.

  So we called up Bromley and sent them Phoebe’s picture to show to Aiden Burghley.

  Less than an hour of paperwork later, Bromley called back and said that it was just possible that Phoebe might be the young woman he’d sold the drugs to – maybe. We passed Phoebe’s details on, but asked Bromley to let us know before they took any action.

  ‘Follow-up?’ asked Guleed, meaning let’s go find Phoebe and put the frighteners on her, on the off-chance she might cough right there and then. It’s always a good tactic – turn up like a horrible surprise. But since she was seventeen we’d have to faff about getting her a responsible adult and everything, and that would take the edge off.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked.

  Guleed bit her lip.

  ‘Let’s see if we can’t lean on Olivia a bit more first,’ she said. ‘If Phoebe was supplying the drugs, I wish we knew why Olivia is covering for her.’

  ‘Perhaps she doesn’t think there will be consequences,’ I said. ‘Maybe she thinks her mum’s going to get it sorted.’

  Guleed sighed.

  ‘She’s a f
ool if she relies on that,’ she said.

  ‘Her mum seems to be doing quite a good job at the moment,’ I said.

  ‘When I was a little girl,’ said Guleed, ‘I lived in a great big house with marble floors and servants to clean them. I remember the marble floors because you could get a rug, do a run up and slide all the way down the hall and into the dining room. There was a garage with five cars including a beautiful bright green Mercedes and every morning my father would climb into the back of that Mercedes and be driven to work.’

  Guleed tugged at her hijab, adjusting the fit slightly.

  ‘Then one morning my mother woke all us children up and bundled us into the back of that green Mercedes and my father drove us to the airport. The next day I woke up in a B&B off the Euston Road. There were seven of us in two rooms and the toilets smelled.’ She made a note in her daybook. ‘My father was somebody important right up to the day he was nobody at all,’ she said. ‘Power in the material world is fleeting.’

  ‘And yet you became a police officer,’ I said.

  ‘I said it was fleeting,’ said Guleed. ‘Not that it wasn’t important.’

  ‘So what did your dad do that was so important?’ I asked.

  Guleed snapped her daybook shut. ‘Are we going to lean on Olivia or not?’

  ‘Just waiting on a location,’ I said, which was sort of true. ‘Where’s David?’

  ‘He’s out doing a recce on his target,’ said Guleed. ‘He managed to dig out floorplans on Zoopla, of all places, and now is checking to make sure he’ll have all the exits covered.’

  ‘Pays to be thorough,’ I said.

  Guleed shrugged and I could see that she was going to push the Olivia issue again when I was saved by my phone ringing – it was Beverley.

  ‘You so owe me for this, babes,’ she said and gave me the details.

  When she was finished I hung up and told Guleed. Who was not happy.

  ‘Just you?’ she said.

  ‘If you’re there, then it becomes sort of officially official,’ I said. ‘This might be our best chance to find out who supplied the drugs.’

  ‘And if it turns out to be Olivia Thames-MacAllister?’

  ‘Then at least we won’t be wasting our time looking for someone else.’

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I’m sitting outside while you’re in there.’

  So, back to Mayfair where the constant flow of money keeps the streets clean and free of unsightly poor people. It was just as well one of us was staying in the car, because we couldn’t find a legal parking space.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Guleed as I got out.

  ‘Hey, if I’m not back in an hour,’ I said, ‘call the President.’

  Lady Ty met me at her front door and for once she wasn’t wearing a suit. Instead she wore a pair of jeans and a loose green Arran jumper. Her hair was wrapped in a faded green and gold African print scarf which meant that either she was between hair conditionings or she was reverting under stress – neither was a good omen.

  Her gaze flicked over to Guleed and then back to me.

  ‘I see you’ve left the secret policeman’s daughter in the car,’ she said.

  ‘Ty,’ I said, ‘you’re better at sarcasm than I am – I concede. Whatever. Can we just get this done?’

  The idea that I was more reluctant to meet up than she was threw her off long enough for me to get inside the house, and we were back in the kitchen where the wheels had come off the first time. Olivia was waiting for us in the same seat as before, but there was no caution this time, plus two or otherwise. This was off the books – I was not here, this never happened – the spice must flow.

  Since she was sitting, I stayed standing – so did her mum.

  ‘We know about Phoebe,’ I said.

  A little jerk of the head as Olivia tried to hide her reaction, not helped by having her mum ask, ‘What about Phoebe?’

  I looked at Lady Ty, but made sure I could still see Olivia’s reaction.

  ‘Your husband George drives a blue BMW?’ I said and quoted the licence number.

  ‘What about it?’ asked Lady Ty who had probably been planning to hold my feet to the fire but now had something else to worry about – thank god.

  ‘Do you know its current whereabouts?’

  ‘George has a space at the car park at Marble Arch,’ she said. ‘He always leaves it there when he’s away working.’

  ‘A car matching its description was used to buy the drugs that killed Christina Chorley,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ said Lady Ty and strode across the kitchen to where a surprisingly unbranded clutch bag was sitting on the counter beside the microwave. From it she pulled a set of keys and dangled them at me. ‘There are only two sets of keys,’ she said. ‘George has the others.’

  ‘Then it must have been you who drove down south to buy drugs,’ I said.

  ‘That’s absurd,’ she said. ‘You know that’s absurd.’

  ‘I have a dealer who can identify your car and I can prove that it was in the right place at the right time – I’ve got the CCTV,’ I said. Which was a total lie. At best there was a fifty-fifty chance that should I spend five days tracking down cameras I might find one that had recorded the event. ‘If it wasn’t you, who was it?’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ said Olivia from behind me. ‘It was me.’

  ‘Olivia can’t drive,’ said Lady Ty. ‘I offered to pay for lessons, but she can’t even be bothered to apply for a provisional licence.’

  This I knew – just as I knew that Phoebe Beaumont-Jones had a brand spanking new driver’s licence, issued just a month previously. Obviously she was better motivated than our Olivia.

  ‘So it must be you,’ I said to Lady Ty, who raised an eyebrow in reply. I drew myself up and said in my most serious voice – ‘Cecelia Tyburn McAllister-Thames I—’ It’s a long name and I drew it out as much as I could, but you’ve got to wonder what might have happened had Olivia been made of sterner stuff.

  ‘Fine,’ said Olivia. ‘Fine, okay, I wasn’t alone.’

  Lady Ty met my eyes before I turned to face her daughter, and her gaze was cool and ironic and terrifying.

  ‘Was it Phoebe?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Did she buy the drugs?’ I asked.

  Olivia hesitated.

  ‘Did she?’ said her mother.

  ‘Yes.’

  Lady Ty asked if buying the drugs had been Phoebe’s idea and, when Olivia hesitated again, asked the question again in a tone I recognised from my own mum. The one that says: Yes there’s going to be trouble, but that is as nothing to the trouble you are about to be in if you continue to cross me.

  ‘Yes,’ said Olivia. It had been Phoebe’s idea because Phoebe was fun and exciting and didn’t spend her whole life trying to conform to other people’s expectations. Phoebe was a rebel.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Lady Ty. ‘She’s a rebel, good for her. And you’re planning to go to prison on her behalf why?’

  ‘You forget I’ve seen you at work,’ said Olivia. ‘I knew you’d get me out of it.’

  ‘I understand that,’ said Lady Ty. ‘What I’m asking is why you’re even risking it for this girl. God knows I’ve got close friends, but I wouldn’t go to prison for them – not for a packet of dodgy E’s.’

  I’ve seen enough of these rows to know that we were winding up to DEFCON 1 and that my window for getting any coherent information out of either of them was small.

  ‘Whose idea was it to go to the party at One Hyde Park?’ I asked.

  Mother and daughter turned to look at me.

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ asked Olivia.

  ‘You said you weren’t friends with Christina, so was it Phoebe that suggested you go to the party?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer that,’ she said, but I was pretty certain she already had.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ demanded Lady Ty, turning back to Olivia. ‘What cou
ld you possibly owe this . . . girl.’

  ‘I love her,’ said Olivia quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘She’s my girlfriend,’ she said and then, to clear up any semantic confusion, ‘My lover,’ and then, because her mum was still staring at her with a stunned expression on her face, ‘we have sex, we’re lesbians, queer, dykes, we get out of the left side of the bed, we dance the face fanny fandango—’

  ‘All right,’ said Lady Ty. ‘I get it – you’re a lesbian.’

  By this point I was eager to emulate Guleed and merge unobtrusively with the imitation French farmhouse fitted cupboard and counter unit behind me.

  Lady Ty took a deep breath.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘Since when?’

  ‘Since about I was eleven.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me?’ Lady Ty turned to glare at me. ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Why the fuck would he know?’ asked Olivia.

  ‘Why the fuck don’t I know?’ said Lady Ty.

  ‘Because I thought you might react like this,’ said Olivia and, when her mum continued to just stare at her dazedly, continued, ‘Aunty Fleet said I should tell you.’

  ‘Fleet knows?’ said Lady Ty. ‘Of course Fleet knows! Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘I had to tell someone,’ said Olivia and then stopped mid-sentence to stare at me. Her mum turned to face me as well.

  ‘You’ve got what you wanted,’ she said in a strangely distant tone. ‘Now piss off.’

  And off I pissed.

  I found Guleed still in the car reading something off her phone. She’d taken the opportunity to change her hijab, the new one being electric blue with silver and black details. Hijabs, Guleed once told me, were like T-shirts – you could choose ones that uniquely expressed your personality. But, unlike a T-shirt, you could wear them with the sort of conservative suit that was de rigueur for serving police officers.

  ‘Do you get the impression that this Phoebe is more involved with the dead girl and Reynard than Tyburn’s daughter is?’ asked Guleed, once I’d filled her in.