Moon Over Soho rol-2

by Ben Aaronovitch

  I got both hands on the railing. It was slippery with blood. Ash saw what I was doing and held himself rigid. It wasn’t the ripping sound it made when it came out that bothered me; that was masked by Ash’s screaming. It was feeling the vibrations as the bone scraped along the rough edge of the iron that I won’t forget.

  A jet of blood smacked me in the face. I smelled copper and, weirdly, a mixture of greasepaint and ozone. The paramedic shoved me out of the way and I fell backward as the ambulance took a corner. She started slapping dressings on entry and exit wounds and taping them in place. The dressings were soaked red before she’d even finished. As she worked she swore under her breath.

  Ash had stopped thrashing and gone silent. His face was pale and slack. I stumbled forward in the ambulance until I could stick my head into the driver’s cab. We were heading up Tottenham Court Road — less than five minutes from the hospital.

  The driver was my age, white, skinny, and wore a skull-and-crossbones stud in his ear.

  I told him to turn around and he told me to fuck off.

  “We can’t take him to the hospital,” I said. “He’s booby-trapped.”

  “What?” yelled the driver.

  “He may be attached to a bomb,” I said.

  He hit the brakes and I was thrown headfirst into the cab. I heard the paramedic in the back scream with frustration and I looked up to find the driver’s-side door open and the driver legging it down the road.

  It was a really good illustration of why you shouldn’t use the first lie that pops into your head. I climbed into his seat, closed the door, put the ambulance into gear, and off we went.

  The London Ambulance Service uses a fleet of Mercedes Sprinter vans, which are just like your standard Sprinter but with about two tons of stuff in the back and the kind of soft suspension designed to avoid killing a patient every time you go over a speed bump.

  It’s also got a pile of extra LCD screens, buttons, and switches that I, in the interest of simplicity, just ignored. Which was why we were still doing blues and twos as we sailed past the entrance to the UCH ambulance bay and headed down Gower Street toward the river.

  It was about this time, according to the EOC call log, that the paramedic used her airwave to report that her ambulance had been hijacked by an escaped mental patient masquerading as a police officer.

  There’s nothing quite like driving an emergency vehicle with a strip of spinners on its roof and a full-sized siren designed to cut through the iPod, car stereo cocoon that most drivers live in and scare random pedestrians back onto the pavements. Moses parting the Red Sea would have felt like I did as I plowed across the junction with High Holborn into Endell Street with a brief moment of déjà vu as I shot down Bow Street and past the scaffolding that marked where they were still repairing the damage done to the Royal Opera House.

  It’s easy to get messed up trying to go south from Covent Garden. The roads have all been bollarded and blocked to stop them from becoming traffic rat runs, but I’d spent two years patrolling out of Charing Cross nick so I knew where they were. I did a sharp right into Exeter Street and a sharp left down Burleigh Street, which caused the paramedic in the back to start screaming at me again. Which was uncalled for, since I felt I was finally getting on top of the ambulance’s tricky handling.

  “How’s he doing?” I yelled over my shoulder.

  “He’s bleeding to death,” she yelled back.

  I merged briefly with the cars on the Strand before cutting across the oncoming traffic and into Savoy Street, a narrow lane that runs straight down to the river just west of Waterloo Bridge. Parking spaces are hard to find in Central London and people tend to pack their cars onto streets with no thought that a vehicle of some width and heft might be driven past by someone with less-than-full confidence in his control. All told, the actual total damages came in a tad less than twenty thousand pounds, mostly scraped paint, wing mirrors, side panels, and a pair of racing bikes that should never have been left secured to a roof rack in the first place. That’s not counting the damage to the ambulance, which I’m sure was entirely superficial.

  I bounced off the bottom of the street and out into the Embankment, swerved right, and ran the ambulance up onto the pavement in front of the Savoy Pier. I scrambled out of the driver’s seat and into the back of the ambulance, where the paramedic stared at me with stunned hatred.

  Ash was barely breathing and the dressing on his chest was completely soaked through with blood. When I asked the paramedic to open the door I thought for a moment she was going to hit me, but she released the latches and threw them open. She wouldn’t help me take Ash out and I didn’t have time to figure out how to work the lift at the back, so I pulled him over my shoulder and staggered out into the drizzle.

  I’d actually chosen the Savoy Pier for two reasons. It wasn’t in use, so I wouldn’t have to clamber over a boat to get to the river, and it had a nice gentle access ramp that would have been perfect to roll the gurney down had I managed to get the damn thing out of the ambulance. Instead I had to first lumber up the ramp to the gate with Ash in a fireman’s lift. He was a big healthy guy and I suspected I was going to be an inch shorter by the time I reached the Thames. There’s a thing like an open telephone booth at the top end of the ramp, designed to stop tourists, drunks, and the merely criminal from running out onto the pier.

  I paused for breath and realized that over the yodel of the ambulance’s own siren I could hear other sirens approaching. I looked up and down the Embankment and saw flashing blue lights coming from both directions. A glance over the parapet revealed that the tide was out and jumping down there would be a ten-foot drop onto stones and mud. I looked at the booth. It had the metal lock I remembered. I had been planning something subtle, but since I didn’t have time I blew the whole thing off its hinges.

  As I ran down the ramp, I heard the Incident Response Vehicles skidding to a halt behind me and the medley of grunts, shouts, and radio chatter that announces that the Old Bill is here to sort you out. As I ran across the width of the pier something whacked me hard across the thighs. The safety railing I realized too late, and I went headfirst into the Thames.

  The Goddess of the River will proudly tell you that the Thames is officially the cleanest industrial river in Europe, but it is not so clean that you want to drink it. I came up spitting with a metallic taste in my mouth.

  A dark shape bobbed in the water a yard from me — Ash floating on his back.

  I wear a pair of Dr. Martens shoes for general detective work. They’re smart, hard-wearing, and, crucially, retain some of that horrorshow goodness for kicking that still makes DMs the footwear of choice for all right-thinking skinheads and soccer hooligans. On the other hand, they’re heavy and you do not want to be wearing them while treading water. Once I had them off, I splashed forward to check on Ash — he appeared to be a lot more buoyant than I was. I could hear him breathing and it sounded stronger than before.

  “Ash,” I said. “You feeling better?”

  “Much better,” he said languidly. “The water’s a bit salty but nice and warm.”

  It was bloody freezing for me. I looked back at the pier to see my fellow policemen shining their torches across the water but it was okay, because the tide was still going out and Ash and I were already a couple of hundred yards downstream. Well, okay until we were both swept out into the North Sea or I died of hypothermia or drowned — or most likely an exciting combination of all three.

  The current took us under the arches of Waterloo Bridge.

  “You never told me she was a pale lady,” said Ash.

  “Who’s the pale lady?” I asked.

  “Lady of death,” he said, and then added something in a language that sounded a bit like Welsh but probably wasn’t.

  “Hey,” said a nearby voice. “What are you doing in the river?” Young, female, middle-class but with the clipped vowel sounds that comes from having parents who believe in education or else. This would be one of M
ama Thames’s girls.

  “That’s a difficult question,” I sputtered. “I was driving home from Oxford, Ash called me, and it all went pear-shaped from there. What are you doing in the river?”

  “It’s our turn on the rota,” said a second voice as we emerged on the other side of the bridge.

  Ash was happily floating and I wondered if I was the only one finding it hard to maintain a conversation while treading water. Something warm brushed against my leg and I twisted in time to see a girl pop her head out of the water. With just the lights from the bank she was hard to see clearly, but I recognized the cat’s curve to the corner of her eyes and her mother’s strong chin.

  “What are you? Lifeguards?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” she said. “If you make it out of the river under your own steam, fair enough. If you don’t then you belong to Mama.”

  The first girl surfaced again and rose out of the water until she was waist-deep and as steady as if she were standing on a box. I noticed she was wearing a black wet suit with ORCA written across her chest. Enough light caught her face for me to recognize her as Olympia, aka Counter’s Creek, one of the younger daughters of Mama Thames, which meant that the other was no doubt her twin sister, Chelsea.

  “Do you like the suit?” Olympia asked. “Neoprene. It’s the best you can buy.”

  “I thought you guys liked to skinny-dip?” I said. Their older sister Beverley had swum naked the last time I’d seen her in the water.

  “In your dreams,” said Olympia.

  Chelsea surfaced on the far side of Ash. “I thought I smelled blood,” she said. “How you doing, Ash?”

  “Much better now,” he said drowsily.

  “I think we need to get him back to Mama,” she said.

  “He told me to get him in the river,” I said. My legs were getting really tired and I looked around to find the shore a lot farther away — I was being dragged out into the central channel.

  “What do you want — a medal?” asked Chelsea.

  “How about a tow back to shore,” I said.

  “Doesn’t work like that,” said Olympia.

  “But don’t worry,” said Chelsea. “If you go under for the third time — we’ll be waiting for you.”

  And then, with an unremarkable plopping sound, they vanished under the water.

  I swore at some length at that point and would have sworn for longer except I was freezing to death. I tried to gauge which bank was closer. It was tricky because the combination of the tide and current was sweeping me toward Black-friars Bridge. The same bridge under which Roberto Calvi, God’s own banker, got his neck stretched — not really a promising omen for me. I was freezing and trying to remember the water survival training I did when I got my swimming certificate in primary school. My legs felt heavy and my arms ached and, as far as I could see, neither bank was closer.

  It’s remarkably easy to die in the Thames; lots of people manage it every year. I was beginning to worry I was going to be one.

  I struck out for the south bank on the basis that the Thames path ran on that side so there were more likely to be members of the public able to render assistance. Plus the OxoTower made a convenient landmark. I didn’t try to fight the current and concentrated the last of my strength on getting closer to the bank.

  I’ve never been what you’d call a strong swimmer but if the alternative is being a statistic it’s amazing what you can pull out of the reserves. The world contracted around me until there was nothing but the cold weight of my wet clothes, the pain in my arms, and the occasional malicious slap in the face by a wave that would leave me gasping and spitting.

  Mama Thames, I prayed. You owe me, get me to shore.

  I realized suddenly that my arms weren’t really working properly and that it was getting harder just to keep my face above the water.

  Mama Thames, I prayed again. Please.

  At some point the tide turned and I found myself being washed back upstream until a random eddy caught me and gently shoved me onto the dirty mud of the Thames bank. I pulled myself slithering as far up the foreshore as I could manage before rolling onto my back. I stared up at the rain clouds above, lit a dull sodium red by the lights of the city, and thought that of the many things I never wanted to do again this was near the top. I was so cold that my fingers and toes had gone numb, but I was shivering, which I took to be a good sign because I had this vague notion that it’s when you stop shivering that you should be really worried. I decided that I could afford to stay where I was and catch my breath or maybe some sleep — it had been a long day.

  Contrary to what you might have been told, it is almost impossible to lie prostrate and groaning in a public place in London without attracting a crowd of putative good Samaritans — even when it’s raining.

  “Are you all right, mate?”

  There were people on the parapet above me. I looked at their quizzical upside-down faces from where I lay. Helpful people with mobile phones who would helpfully phone the police who in turn would probably ask me to help them with their inquiries about a certain hijacked ambulance.

  Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, I thought. For they are soggy and hard to light.

  I considered making a run for it but the paramedic and the ambulance driver could both identify me and in any case I was just too knackered to move.

  “You just hold on, mate,” said the voice from above. “The police are on their way.”

  It took the police at least five minutes to get there, which wasn’t bad as response times go. I was duly wrapped in a blanket and put in the back of the IRV, where I told them I’d fallen in while pursuing a suspect and had ended up on the wrong side of the river. They didn’t ask me any of the usual questions about my imaginary suspect, which I thought was odd until the Jag pulled alongside the IRV and I realized that Nightingale had already put the fix in.

  As we crossed back over Waterloo Bridge he asked me whether Ash was all right.

  “I think so,” I said. “Chelsea and Olympia didn’t seem worried.”

  Nightingale nodded. “Good work,” he said.

  “I’m not in trouble?” I asked.

  “You’re in trouble,” he said. “Just not with me.”

  He still made me get up the next morning and do double practice — the bastard.

  AFTER PRACTICE I took the hardcopy from Oxford to the tech-cave where I plonked it on the chaise longue and tried to pretend it didn’t exist. Entering that much data was going to be a pig and really probably not worth the time it would take me to do it. When I found Leslie had left me three emails expressing the unutterable boredom of a small seaside town off season I had one of those really stupid clever ideas. I emailed her back and asked whether she wanted to do some tedious data entry. She said yes and I called IPS and arranged to have them picked up and biked over. Because you can’t ask someone like Leslie, no matter how bored she is, to do something that dull without an explanation, I gave her an outline of who Jason Dunlop was and how we were looking for connections to Geoffrey Wheatcroft.

  Lost books of magic, she wrote. YFKM. Data entry. I’m so sad, me.

  Keep busy, I wrote back. She didn’t reply to that one.

  Dr. Walid had posted me some JPEGs of what looked like thin slices of cauliflower, but the accompanying text assured me that they were thin sections of Michael “the Bone” Adjayi’s brain. When magnified they displayed the telltale neurological damage that was indicative of hyperthaumaturgical degradation — which is what kills if you do too much magic. And also, as we had learned on our last big case, what happens if some total bastard uses you to do magic by proxy. It’s a truism in policing that witnesses and statements are fine but nothing beats empirical physical evidence. Actually it isn’t a truism because most policemen think the word empirical is something to do with Darth Vader, but it damn well should be. To drive the point home, Dr. Walid included slices from Cyrus Wilkinson’s brain for comparison — the damage was identical.

 
This was proof that Mickey the Bone had been done in by the same method as Cyrus Wilkinson — if only I could figure out why.

  I packaged up the lists for Leslie and gave them to Molly with strict instructions not to bite the courier when he came to call for them.

  Back in the garage there was a note folded under the Jag’s windshield wiper. It read, in Nightingale’s surprisingly inelegant handwriting, Unsupervised use of the Jaguar is suspended until such time as the appropriate driving certification is presented. So Nightingale did know about the driving courses after all.

  I took the Asbo — it gets better mileage anyhow.

  CHEAM IS about as far southwest as you can get in London while officially staying in the capital. It’s another typical outer London village that acquired, in short order, a railway station, some posh detached villas in the late-Victorian style, and finally a smothering blanket of mock-Tudor semis built in the 1930s. Cheam is what the green belt was established to prevent happening to the rest of southeast England. Pictures of Cheam adorn the walls of planning offices of every Home County to serve as an awful warning. And that was before any black people moved into the area.

  Chez Adjayi was a big detached Edwardian villa along a road lined with variations on that theme. Apart from a token oval of greenery, the front garden had been paved with concrete, the better to park a couple of big German cars conveniently in front of the house. I could read the family history in that house. Father and Mother had immigrated in the late 1960s, found jobs that they were wildly overqualified for, bought a run-down property in a relatively unfashionable area, and were now living off the fat of the property boom. Father would wear bespoke suits and be the man of the house; Mother would have a bedroom full of shoes and three mobile phones. The kids would be expected to become doctors, lawyers, or engineers in descending order of preference.

  A young woman around my age opened the door and I guessed she was a sister or close cousin. She had the same big forehead, high cheekbones, and flat nose, although her face was plumper and rounder than Michael’s and she wore half-moon reading glasses with black enamel frames. She smiled when she opened the door and saw me, but the smile faded when I told her who I was. She was dressed in a sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms. I smelled perspiration and furniture polish. When she let me in I saw that the Hoover was sitting in the middle of the hallway and that the framed photographs that lined the walls had all been dusted and polished.