‘This is Keira,’ said Stacy.
Keira acknowledged us with a grudging tilt of the head and then went back to laying the knives and forks.
Stacy looked over to where a skinny young black man was standing hesitantly in front of a glass-fronted mahogany bookshelf. He had the top of his hair in dreads with a fade on the sides. It made him look like he was auditioning for an American cable show as the quirky but tragically expendable best friend.
‘Oliver,’ said Stacy, ‘be a love and fetch a couple of cushions for the recliner.’
Oliver Partridge, aged seventeen, had been given up for care by his mother when he was twelve, after he’d knifed the neighbour’s dog and tried to strangle the family cat. He’d spent a couple of years in a secure psychiatric unit. The NCA couldn’t access his confidential records but, judging by his track record since he was discharged, he was fine providing he stayed on the meds.
Oliver gave Beverley a shy smile and slipped out of the living room.
Stacy asked Beverley if she’d like a drink.
‘We’ve got lemonade, Coke, ginger beer,’ she said, and turned to me. ‘Would you like a beer?’
I said I’d have a ginger beer because I was driving, although of course as a rule of thumb you should never drink while undercover, anyway. How to unobtrusively dump your drink was one of the few bits of tradecraft Silver thought it was worth spending time teaching me.
Oliver returned with a pair of linen-covered foam pillows, which he arranged on the recliner so that Beverley could sit down with suitably grateful cries of comfort, and once enthroned accept a glass of lemonade.
Beverley’s personality and Bulge dragged the centre of the room over to her and soon Stacy and Keira were copping a feel and exchanging bladder anecdotes. I found myself having a non-conversation with Oliver who, despite answering in an astonishing range of monosyllables, told me nothing at all. I did ask him what he wanted to do when he left school, and was relieved when he said he wanted to start a YouTube channel rather than something like, say, taxidermy.
I was saved from conversational death by the arrival of Chef Johnson, who barged into the dining room brandishing a soup tureen.
‘Places everyone,’ he said. ‘Dinner c’est arrive.’
Oliver and Keira jumped to it while Stacy helped Beverley out of her seat and hovered while she got her legs under the table. A rich smell was wafting from the tureen, bypassing my brain and causing my stomach to growl.
‘Cow heel soup,’ Johnson said with glee as he served it up.
But if he was thinking either me or Beverley were going to be appalled by eating the wrong bit of the cow, he was going to be disappointed. I’ve eaten sweetmeats and brawn, and if you don’t know what they are you’re better off not knowing. Trust me on this.
It’s easy enough to make tasty soup; you just follow the instructions. But making delicious soup takes skill. And, judging by the delicate taste of the dumplings, that is what Johnson had. It isn’t easy making delicate dumplings. Mine tend to be a bit on the loft insulation side, so I know what I’m talking about.
Conversation proceeded about where I’d expected it to – some baby chat, some ‘how are you finding it at work?’ chat. Keira would interrupt every so often to say sarky and irrelevant things. Oliver said nothing, but I did catch him smiling at a joke once. It was a surprisingly shy smile for a young man teetering on the verge of violent psychopathy.
The report had been very clear, Stacy and Tyrel were his last chance. One more violent incident and it was goodbye Roehampton and hello Broadmoor.
The main course, again presented with some ceremony by Johnson, was curried prawns, with beef pelau for Keira, who didn’t like seafood, cassava, sweet potato, glazed carrots and steamed peas.
‘Can you write this down?’ I asked. ‘I want to give this to my mum.’
Johnson looked pleased, but Stacy gave me a calculating look thinking, I guessed, that I was sucking up to the boss. Which was true, sort of, but I still wanted that recipe.
‘You’ll notice he’s made enough for eight people,’ said Stacy. ‘He always makes twice as much as we need.’
‘I’ll have seconds, then,’ said Beverley, and so did everyone else except for Keira who said she was watching her weight.
‘You’ll notice the pot is empty,’ said Johnson when we’d finished.
Stacy clapped her hands and Oliver and Keira sprang up and started clearing away.
‘So what’s for pudding?’ asked Beverley.
‘Ice cream,’ said Stacy. ‘Or there’s some banana cake.’ She jerked her thumb at Johnson. ‘He doesn’t do pudding.’
‘I had nine brothers and sisters,’ he said. ‘We weren’t dirt poor, but I didn’t know what pudding was until I came over here to live with my aunt.’
We all had ice cream and banana cake, which Stacy admitted came from Marks & Spencer. Stacy’s body language had subtly shifted. She had been tentative, almost formal, with Beverley. But now she’d lost her caution. She was leaning over the table towards her, and I saw her briefly put her hand on Beverley’s arm.
I’d been asking Johnson what it was like running security for Terrence Skinner when into a pause dropped Stacy’s next question.
‘I’ve got to ask,’ said Stacy. ‘Peter’s a nice enough lad. But, be honest, what is it in him that attracts you?’
Beverley gave me a sly smile.
‘He’s a world-class shagger,’ she said.
Stacy grinned and Oliver looked at me wide-eyed.
‘No, I mean it,’ said Beverley. ‘Olympic standard shagging. Morning, noon and night. I knew it as soon as I saw him the first time. That man, I thought, will go like a dredger at high tide.’
‘Is he hung?’ asked Keira.
‘Like a—’
‘Hey,’ I said quickly.
‘You notice he doesn’t deny the shagging,’ said Beverley, and I realised that she now had Keira in the palm of her hand. ‘Even if he doesn’t think it’s true.’
Maddeningly, I was actually blushing, and in winter that shows. Certainly I think Johnson noticed, because he made a credible stab at being an old-fashioned West Indian patriarch by frowning at his wife and foster children.
‘Now then,’ he said. ‘We shall have none of that at the table.’
Beverley and Stacy exchanged looks and then burst out laughing.
‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ said Stacy.
After pudding we manhandled Beverley back into her chair and had coffee in the sitting room. Oliver and Keira vanished upstairs to their rooms to – hopefully, given the alternatives – log on to unsuitable websites. I wondered if Stacy and Johnson monitored their web activity.
Of course they would, I thought. And Johnson will have access to state-of-the-art monitoring software, as well.
I asked Stacy how she got into fostering.
‘We can’t have kids of our own,’ she said breezily. ‘We were looking to adopt and one of my mates, who’s a social worker, suggested we foster a couple of kids. She said it was for practice, but looking back she needed carers that could deal with the older kids she had on her books.’
‘You obviously took to it,’ said Beverley.
‘It’s like having a tattoo,’ she said. ‘It’s painful, but when you see the result you start thinking about having another one.’
Like a lot of ex-coppers, Stacy and Johnson had gone into business as private detectives and had made a decent enough living at it. But Stacy found fostering satisfying in a way that being a private detective never was, and gradually it became a full-time job.
‘Wandsworth started sending us their problem cases. And, to be honest, everything I learnt in the Job was more useful for dealing with the kids than it was digging into people’s marriages and dodgy employees.’
‘It can’t pay, though,’ said B
everley.
‘You get an allowance from the council but that doesn’t really cover expenses.’ Stacy pointed at Beverley’s Bulge. ‘As you are about to find out.’
Things had got a bit parlous, but then Johnson got his job at the Serious Cybernetics Corporation and solved all their financial problems. Especially since, as part of the senior management team, Johnson was getting stock options. Something to keep them solvent in the future.
‘Thank God for Skinner,’ she said.
Beverley turned and gave me a strange look I couldn’t interpret, before turning back and asking about the photos of the young people hanging in the hallway. Since obviously Beverley couldn’t be dragged out to examine them. Stacy produced a tablet on which the pictures were all conveniently stashed. Only her obvious pride in their achievements, however minor, stopped the experience from being the single most boring thing that has ever happened to me.
Rescue arrived when Johnson invited me out to admire the garden and join a conspiracy to, if not exactly pervert the course of justice, certainly help put a thumb on the scales.
‘You know the guys from Belgravia, right?’ he said as we stood on the porch.
With the road blocked out by the house and the garden wall bounded by a golf course, this could have been a country garden.
The ultimate English dream, my dad calls it, to have your own country garden – but in the city.
I said I’d worked with some of them, including DS Guleed.
‘Do you know the SIO?’ he asked.
‘Who, Seawoll?’ I said. ‘He shouted at me once – does that count?’
‘Do you think Guleed would be willing to talk to you?’ asked Johnson. ‘You know – unofficially.’
‘I think she might,’ I said, and wondered if this operation could possibly get more tangled than it already was. ‘But Guleed’s ambitious. She’s going to want something in return.’
Johnson jammed his hands in his pockets – I’ve seen that gesture before. He really wanted a cigarette, or a drink, or something other than the conversation he was having.
‘Anything in particular?’ he asked.
‘Inside information,’ I said. ‘What William Lloyd was really working on in Bambleweeny, maybe. Something we won’t tell them.’
‘I don’t know what they’re doing in Bambleweeny,’ he said. ‘But if I look the other way, you’re welcome to do a bit of careful digging.’
‘Okay.’
‘Careful digging. And anything you find,’ said Johnson, ‘you run past me before you take it anywhere else.’
‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ asked Beverley once I’d cautiously pulled out into the late evening traffic. ‘Lying to people like Stacy and Tyrel?’
‘A bit,’ I said. ‘But it can’t be helped.’
‘Stacy’s really making a difference to some lives,’ she said.
‘More power to her,’ I said.
‘And you heard her – she relies on Tyrel’s job to keep them afloat.’
I paused while I negotiated the Stag Lane roundabout and then asked where she was going with this.
‘What if you bring down this company?’ she asked. ‘What’s going to happen to Tyrel and Stacy and all the future Keiras and Olivers they might have helped?’
Rain started splattering on the windscreen – I turned on the wipers.
I said that she was assuming that the company was dirty.
‘And even if it is,’ I said, ‘corporate cases are a pain and these companies never face any serious consequences.’
Silver had given me that lecture – a long list of corporate malfeasance that went all the way back to the Bow Street Runners. Most of it unpunished.
‘Maybe, babes,’ said Beverley, ‘I’ve got more faith in the forces of law and order than you do. So the company goes down the toilet leaving Stacy and Tyrel . . .?’
‘If the company goes down, Tyrel will get himself another job,’ I said. But I was thinking he was exactly the sort of guy who’d be thrown to the wolves to save the guilty. ‘They’re both grown-ups – they can look after themselves.’
‘Yeah,’ said Beverley, that long drawn-out ‘yeah’ that I had learnt to dread. ‘But I think I’m going to take an interest.’
‘If you’re that interested in the victims of crime, I can introduce you to hundreds. Or, better still, call up Victim Support.’
‘But, love, it’s a matter of prioritisation and resource allocation,’ she said. ‘One, it helps prevent future crime. Two, they live within shouting distance of me.’ She meant Beverley Brook, the medium-sized South London river, rather than the heavily pregnant woman in the seat next to me. ‘And three . . .’ She drew out the three. ‘You and I are together – so what happens because of you happens because of me.’
I had to think about that one.
‘Does that mean that the next time you flood Worcester Park, it’s my fault too?’
‘Of course it is,’ she said. ‘Mind you, it was your fault last time as well – indirectly.’
We probably could have continued the conversation all the way home and into our bed. But just then my phone rang and Beverley answered.
‘It’s Thomas,’ she said, and put it on speaker.
‘Hello, Peter,’ said Nightingale. ‘I apologise for interrupting your evening, but I thought you might want this information as soon as possible.’
‘Nothing good then,’ I said.
‘Let’s say interesting,’ said Nightingale.
So, yeah, nothing good.
‘I visited the would-be assassin, Mr Lloyd, this afternoon in the company of Jennifer and Abdul and, after an initial assessment, persuaded his doctors to release him for tests at UCH.’
‘So, what did you find out?’
‘As you know, this kind of assessment is always subjective. But for my own part I’m confident that William Lloyd had been subjected to either the glamour or some form of sequestration,’ said Nightingale. ‘You understand the implications, of course.’
That somebody or something powerful had chosen William Lloyd to carry out its wishes.
‘Yes,’ I said, and then asked if he knew which of those two options it was.
‘I couldn’t make that determination,’ he said. ‘But Abdul says that there are minor but definite signs of hyperthaumaturgical degradation.’
Hyperthaumaturgical degradation was the nice long word Dr Walid had invented to describe the damage magic does to your brain. If it was present, it meant that either William Lloyd was a practitioner or he’d been sequestrated.
But sequestrated by what and where?
Nightingale was well ahead of me.
‘I’ll check his home address,’ he said. ‘But investigating his workplace falls to you, I’m afraid.’
Which meant we really needed to get into Bambleweeny – and soon.
At least that should make Stephen the Librarian happy.
Afterwards, as I was helping Bev out of the car, I told her that she could take an interest in Johnson and Stacy’s foster kids. But only if she was subtle about it.
‘Relax,’ she said as she waddled towards the front door. ‘I shall move in a mysterious way.’
8
All You Lose is the Emotion of Pride
Questions for the morning commute.
Where did the gun that was not really a gun come from? And where did a plastic machete that should have had all the cutting power of a LARPing sword get its razor edge? And why did William Lloyd want to kill his boss? And if he didn’t, and he really was under the influence or sequestrated, who did want to kill Terrence Skinner? And why?
Which led us back to the Mary Engine that Stephen the wannabe cat burglar said Skinner had stashed in Bambleweeny, along with the 137-key music book reader that he may, or may not, have been building.
And who w
as leaving lethal magical traps aimed at killing Stephen? Was it Skinner himself or a third – no, wait – . . . us, Skinner, the Librarians – a fourth faction? And what the fuck did they want?
And finally, why don’t people clear out of the way of opening Tube doors so passengers can get off the train?
The walk from Old Street to the SCC had become routine by now and I fell into step with Dennis Yoon, who asked me to avoid heroics that morning because he had a particularly tricky bit of coding to do.
I said I’d do my best and then we turned into Tabernacle Street.
In the window, replacing the late Ziggy Stardust, was my face in the style of an Obama poster with ‘Yes we can’ written across the top. When I walked into reception, the receptionists stood up and applauded. Some of the mice followed suit but, reassuringly, there were also some jeers and catcalls to prove that we were still in London.
I gave them my most nonchalant wave, tapped myself through the barriers and went to hide in the unisex loos. Unfortunately Leo Hoyt was already in there and for some reason he seemed discontented.
‘I’ve worked here for over a year,’ he said. ‘And do you know what he calls me?’
I presumed ‘he’ was Johnson.
‘Leo,’ I said.
‘Hoyt,’ said Leo. ‘When he remembers. Most of the time I’m “you there”.’
‘Okay, you can tackle the next psychopathic knifeman,’ I said. ‘In fact, be my guest.’
He didn’t laugh.
‘This started before that,’ he said. ‘It’s because you both used to be police, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t what, Leo?’
‘It’s not fair,’ he said, and looked like he was going to say more, but instead walked out of the loo.
He had said police, but I wondered if he was thinking “black” as well. I considered catching him up and explaining that ninety-nine times out of a hundred it works the other way. But, no . . . This wasn’t a conversation on Facebook and I wasn’t here to make friends. In fact, Silver had warned me explicitly not to get emotionally attached.
False Value (Rivers of London 8) Page 12