The Hanging Tree (PC Peter Grant Book 6)

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘You do understand what happens when you overuse magic?’ she asked.

  ‘We call it hyperthaumaturgical degradation,’ said Nightingale.

  Lady Helena nodded.

  ‘Useful term,’ she said. ‘That’s what happened to dear Albert. Which I thought a fitting punishment. I didn’t have time for a coup de grace – the police were practically knocking on what was left of the front door when I made myself scarce.’

  Nightingale nodded thoughtfully in a way that made me think that somebody was going to be digging out incident reports from 1979, and just for a change it wasn’t going to be me. There was a good chance it would be a big box full of papers – which would suit Nightingale much better anyway.

  Without Albert, the charity funding evaporated and, in any case, she’d begun to have doubts about the ethics of her work.

  ‘But you must have saved lives,’ I said.

  ‘World ill-health is like world hunger,’ said Lady Helena. ‘We could end both tomorrow if we wanted to.’ And she’d become terrified of the potential abuse. ‘Imagine what the military industrial complex would do with animal hybrids,’ she said. ‘Better that the knowledge dies with me.’

  Nightingale glanced my way and gave his head the almost imperceptible tilt that meant it was time for the children to wander off and entertain themselves. I had a number of incentives lined up to coax Caroline away, but in the end I just asked if she wanted a tour and she said yes.

  We were followed by Toby, who’d shaken off his sugar induced lethargy and had obviously decided that he wanted a bit of attention.

  I started with the lecture hall, where generations of practitioners had snoozed their way through demonstrations and lectures, then the smoking room with its art nouveau trimmings and into the mundane library where we could slip up the ladder to the top stacks and step through a concealed doorway onto the landing. Then up another flight of stairs to the main lab.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Caroline.

  I had a pile of modified first generation smartphones at one end of the lab and a noticeably scorched sheet of metal on a bench at the other end. I’d painted distance markers on the metal and on the floor around it. The remains of a couple of cheap pocket calculators were still welded to the innermost markers – I hadn’t had a chance to scrape them off yet.

  ‘Remember when the lights went out at Harrods?’ I asked.

  ‘I remember your master knocking me off my feet,’ she said.

  ‘He’s not my master,’ I said.

  ‘Well he’s not your dad, is he?’ said Caroline and then looked at me sharply. ‘He’s not, is he?’

  ‘He’s my boss,’ I said. ‘My governor.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. She looked at the bench. ‘Magic interferes with technology – do you know why?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘No,’ she looked at the pile of smartphones. ‘But I think you know more than I do.’

  So I explained that, as far as I could tell, magic had a serious degrading effect on microprocessors, and a lesser effect on transistors. ‘But not on thermionic valves,’ I said, ‘or simple circuit boards.’

  ‘I know about that,’ she said and held up her wrist to show off a silver stainless steel Classic Ladies Fireman from Balls – which was at least eight hundred quids’ worth of watch.

  ‘I’ve shown you mine,’ she said, so I held my wrist to show my black and silver Omega.

  ‘Damn,’ she said and grabbed my forearm and pulled it up for a closer look, ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘Christmas present,’ I said.

  ‘What about your boss?’ asked Caroline. ‘Your guvnor? What’s he got?’

  ‘Depends on what he’s wearing,’ I said. ‘I think he’s got a drawer full of them alongside the cufflinks.’

  ‘Sharp dressed man,’ she said. ‘Bit old fashioned for my taste.’

  Oh, you don’t know, I thought, but you suspect. And you can just go on suspecting.

  ‘It’s hard to stay current working in a place like this,’ I said. ‘What’s your mum have on her wrist?’

  ‘Just skin,’ said Caroline. ‘She says “clock time is an imposition of industrial capitalism and should be resisted if not ignored”. Besides, she thinks it interferes with the flow of energy around her chakra points. And you still haven’t said what all the phones are for.’

  ‘Somebody,’ I said, meaning Lesley May, ‘has found a way to tap directly into the energy potential of a smartphone.’

  ‘Does it have to be an Apple or will an Android do?’

  ‘Anything with a chip-set,’ I said.

  ‘Wait,’ said Caroline. ‘Are you saying magic doesn’t just destroy the chips – you can actually get power out of it as well? How do you know that?’

  Because I’d trained myself to do a very consistent were-light for testing purposes and then measured the output while feeding calculators, phones and, once, an obsolete laptop into the spell. Then I measured it with an antique optical spectrometer that I’d found in a storeroom. It was a beautiful brass and enamel thing that looked like someone had bolted two telescopes to an early turntable. It had taken me another two weeks to find the prism which was in a different box with some notes handwritten in Latin which I hadn’t dared show Nightingale in case he confiscated them. I hadn’t translated them yet, but from the diagrams I was pretty sure the author had been conducting experiments similar to mine.

  ‘How do you feed a calculator to a spell?’ asked Caroline.

  ‘Same way you’d do a ritual animal sacrifice, except without the animal,’ I said.

  This amazed Caroline, not least because she hadn’t known you could do ritual animal sacrifice – which really shouldn’t have surprised me, what with her mum being her mum.

  ‘Ten points to Ravenclaw,’ she said.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘I always fancied Gryffindor.’

  ‘Dream on,’ she said. ‘Definitely Ravenclaw.’

  ‘I think,’ I said, ‘that it might be possible to trigger a sort of magic chain reaction that feeds off the chipset without the practitioner having to do anything else.’ I nearly said it was like setting a phaser to overload, but I’ve learnt to keep that kind of joke to myself, even with people who make Harry Potter references – especially with people who make Harry Potter references.

  ‘To do what exactly?’ asked Caroline.

  ‘Magically it just makes a lot of “noise”, but the side effect is to dust every microprocessor in about twenty metres.’ I’d gone over the Harrods crime scene that morning with a laser rangefinder and a pocket microscope and found that every chip within ten metres was toast, damaged beyond repair out to twenty, and showing signs of damage out to thirty. I was hoping that further research would reveal it was following the inverse square law, because otherwise I was going to have to call CERN and tell them to take a tea break.

  ‘I’ve got a similar spell I use to knock out electronic ignitions,’ I said. ‘I call it the car killer.’

  ‘Oh, that’s a great name,’ said Caroline.

  ‘Alright,’ I said. ‘What do you call the smoke rope thing that you do?’

  She said it had a name in Sanskrit or Bengali or one of those but she just called it the smoke trick.

  ‘We’ve got a firing range downstairs,’ I said. ‘Want to show me how it’s done?’

  *

  And it wasn’t as easy as she made it look. I showed her the car killer and the skinny grenade but I kept the water balloons to myself, because a man’s got to have a few secrets. We both managed to do some serious damage to the NATO standard cardboard cutouts and we might have moved on to the paintball gun but the grownups came looking for us and said it was time for Caroline to go home.

  I walked them round the corner to where their car was parked. It was an honest to god early model MG MGB, a 1968 judging from the dashboard instruments, although at some point it had been re-sprayed a hideous lime-flower green, once again proving that nine
out of ten classic motors are wasted on their owners. As I waved them off I made a note of the car’s index to add to their nominal file.

  Nightingale said he’d come to an arrangement with Lady Helena. They would track down Fossman while I worked Operation Marigold to see if I could firm up his involvement from that direction. And, if I could discover who’d supplied the fatal drugs to Christina Chorley and get Tyburn’s daughter off the hook at the same time, so much the better.

  ‘Just to clarify one thing,’ I said. ‘When you find Fossman, he’s going to be cautioned and interviewed on the record – right?’

  ‘Do you think that’s wise?’ asked Nightingale. ‘Considering?’

  ‘Either we’re the law or we’re not,’ I said.

  Nightingale nodded gravely and then he looked away and smiled.

  ‘Agreed,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ I said, but the smile worried me.

  I’d expected there to be some cake left over, but I’d arrived back in the Folly to find Molly packing up anything that didn’t have a bite out of it into professional looking cake boxes. She couldn’t possibly be planning to store them – we’d never finish them before they went stale – and Molly never froze anything.

  ‘Homeless shelters,’ said Nightingale when I thought to ask. ‘I found out when a nice young woman turned up at the gate with a van.’

  ‘We should find out who she’s liaising with there,’ I said.

  ‘Whatever for?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Basic security?’

  ‘But Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘if we do that Molly might discover that we know what she’s up to.’ He picked up a forlorn slice of Liverpool Tart. ‘She’s enjoying sneaking around behind our backs far too much for us to spoil it.’

  7

  The Intrepid Fox

  I arrived back at the Belgravia Outside Inquiry Office to find everyone else working the Hammersmith stabbing.

  ‘Poor sod was standing outside a pub having a drink,’ said Carey. ‘And a bunch of guys just stroll up and stab him.’

  There was already a row of white faces pinned to the whiteboard because, while they’d been sensible enough to wear hoodies to mask their identities from the CCTV, somebody in the pub had recognised them.

  ‘Had it away with one of the suspects’ girlfriends,’ said Carey. ‘We’re not sure which of the suspects’ girlfriend she was and, get this, two of the other suspects are her brothers. If they’d been Muslim I’d have said this was an honour killing.’

  The media always calls this sort of thing senseless, but the motive made sense – it was just stupid, is what it was.

  Still, this was the kind of case that Seawoll liked — simple, straightforward and easy on the clear-up rate. They were going to go in and grab all six suspects the next morning in a series of raids. Carey had been given responsibility for one of them, which was pissing Guleed off no end, because she was stuck on my Falcon case. You can always tell when you’ve pissed Guleed off because of the bland look of polite interest on her face whenever you speak to her. This was why when she announced that she was going to head over to St Paul’s School for the effortlessly posh to put the frighteners on the sixth form, I decided to stay where I was and work my way through Operation Marigold’s action list just to see if anything popped out.

  What popped out was a cross-reference from Bromley Crime Squad who had busted someone with a suitcase full of Magic Babar pills. Not just the same brand but, according to the lab report, from the same batch as those found at One Hyde Park.

  So the next morning I actioned myself to take a little trip across the river.

  Bromley nick is, like Belgravia, a redbrick 1990’s build resembling an out-of-town Morrisons that was repurposed at the last moment and fitted with offices and a custody suite. A middle-aged PC from the local Case Progression Unit met me in the reception and walked me into the interview room where Aiden Burghley, wannabe suburban drug dealer, was waiting with his solicitor.

  Aiden was a young white man, about my age, but smaller with a soft bland face, brown hair and watery blue eyes. He looked like he should be selling insurance or houses rather than drugs, but according to his nominal a sad second from Warwick University had landed him back in his parents’ semi in Bromley. No record of a job but he did own an ancient Vauxhall Vectra, so I could see he might be desperate enough to turn to crime.

  You can understand the temptation – you pop over on the ferry to Holland, pick up some pills, drive around, visit a dope café, go clubbing, hop back on the ferry. It’s pills, so the dogs don’t smell them. You’re not buying in huge bulk, so your shipment’s not going to show up on police intelligence. Shit, you’re practically at personal use levels anyway, and the chances of a random search picking on you at customs are thousands to one, really hundreds of thousands to one.

  Had Aiden Burghley been sensible enough to pop the pills himself or just share them with his friends he’d have been alright, but no – he had to try to flog them to a pair of surprised off-duty female police officers at Glitrrz, a club just off Bromley High Street. After weighing up whether an easy collar would be worth the stick they’d get for frequenting a notorious trouble spot, they went for the collar and now Aiden had spent a night in the cells and was looking at a long list of charges with words like ‘intent’ and ‘supply’ in the title.

  He had an equally young and fresh-faced solicitor from the local Legal Aid specialist firm at his side. You always have to be careful around legal aid solicitors because not only do they spend more time in police interview rooms than you do, they’re also usually in a really bad mood because their clients are idiots and because the government is always cutting the legal aid budget. This one was a white woman with slate-grey eyes which she narrowed at me when I introduced myself.

  One way or another Aiden was going up the steps. But, as a young white middle class first offender, if he pleaded guilty there was a good chance he’d walk away without a prison sentence. My strategy was simple – I threatened to add him to the suspect pool in the death of Christina Chorley.

  ‘The pills that killed her came from the same batch as those you brought back from Holland,’ I said. ‘And that puts you in the frame for manslaughter—’

  And that was as far as I got before the solicitor objected to the evidence that Aiden’s drugs had been the same drugs that allegedly may have caused the death of Christina Chorley. Thank god she didn’t have access to the PM report yet. Had she known about Christina’s pre-existing condition it might have been all over. I waited for her to wind down, suspended the interview and then asked the solicitor if I might have a word in private.

  The solicitor, whose name was Patricia Polly – seriously, Patricia Polly – said she needed a cigarette anyway, so we repaired to the car park.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I don’t want your boy for this, but it’s a high profile case and someone is going to get done for it. Even if I walk away now, any review team that comes in is just going come to the same conclusions I have.’

  Which, while not an out and out lie, was probably at the far end of wishful thinking.

  Ms Polly took a deep drag of her Silk Cut and nodded.

  ‘So what do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘I know he claims that he did the run for his own personal use and that he wouldn’t have sold any except he was unexpectedly skint,’ I said. ‘But I reckon he sold a big bag to somebody else – I just want to know who.’

  ‘I’m not going to have him admit to that,’ she said. ‘Even if it is true.’

  Wait for it.

  ‘Unless there was a bit of mutual consideration.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask him in confidence if he can help,’ I said. ‘Because if there’s somebody else, not only will he be volunteering vital information but he’ll be making sure somebody else steps into the frame for the manslaughter.’

  I could tell she was doubtful, but I reckoned she’d figure it was worth a punt.

  I gave her my card a
nd had time for a full English in the canteen before she called me back.

  Apparently there’d been this posh girl.

  ‘Did she have a name?’ I asked – we were on the record because he was still under caution, and I might need the evidence for court. There’s no point knowing who done it if you can’t prove it.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ said Aiden.

  I asked what she looked like.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Curly hair and . . .’ Aiden made chest expanding gestures with his hands. ‘You know.’

  ‘Black or white?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Maybe tanned?’ said Aiden. ‘I really wasn’t looking at her face.’

  I asked if he’d seen her car.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘BMW X5, the one with the three litre turbo diesel.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘Imperial blue.’

  ‘Imperial blue?’

  ‘That’s what that colour is called – Imperial Blue,’ said Aiden.

  ‘Can you remember what she was wearing?’

  ‘No, mate. Sorry.’

  Which is a good demonstration of why eyewitnesses have all been a caution since Marc Anthony said ‘I dunno mate, they were all wearing togas.’

  ‘Did you notice the year on the plate?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘It was a 63.’ But crucially he didn’t remember the area code or the rest of the index. Some things are more important to some people than they are to others. 63 meant the car was registered between September 2013 and February 2014 – which might narrow it down a bit.

  I terminated the interview and gave him back to Bromley CID and told them what a good boy he’d been – for whatever good that might do him. Then I headed back across the river and settled back at my corner of the desk at Belgravia nick. Carey grumbled and shifted over, but he was too busy doing the metric ton of paperwork involved in organising a raid to chat. Guleed was out – presumably still terrorising the sixth form at St Paul’s.

  As soon as Aiden Burghley had mentioned the blue BMW, there’d been a little tickle in my brain. And when I logged into HOLMES and a did a word search through the Marigold nominals there it was – a blue 63 reg BMW X5 registered to George Thames-McAllister. On the off-chance I ran an ANPR sweep on Bromley and there was the right BMW, tooling down the A21 towards the town centre and then back again. Exactly the right time window for Aiden Burghley to sell its occupant some MDMA.