False Value (Rivers of London 8)

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘Show off,’ said Mrs Chin as I positioned the stepladder under the hole.

  I paused to pull on a pair of workman’s gloves, with reinforced panels on the fingers and palms, over the latex pair I was already wearing. Then I climbed up the stepladder, reached up and pulled myself into the darkness.

  I flicked on my penlight and flashed it around the lift shaft. This was where things could have taken on the definite contours of a popular edible fruit but luckily, built into a shallow recess, was an emergency ladder vanishing up into darkness. I hadn’t been certain it was going to be there.

  ‘It’s a good thing I’m wearing my sensible shoes,’ said Mrs Chin as she poked her head up through the hatch. She reached out with her arms and snapped her fingers.

  ‘Get a move on,’ she said, and I grabbed her arms and pulled her up and then stooped to help Stephen in turn. I pointed out the ladder.

  ‘You go first,’ I said. ‘Mrs Chin goes next and I replace the hatch and follow after.’

  Stephen started uncoiling the nylon rope he had wound around his waist.

  ‘What happens at the top?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a standard lift door,’ I said. ‘Can you handle that?’

  Stephen said he could, and stopped to help Mrs Chin secure the rope around her waist.

  ‘If you get tired,’ he said, ‘hold the rope and I’ll pull you up.’

  ‘Stop fussing,’ she hissed. ‘I was doing this before your mother was born.’

  Stephen swarmed up the ladder and by the time I’d replaced the hatch – so that from inside the lift, at first glance, it would look intact – the pair of them were vanishing into the gloom four metres above.

  I followed and only caught up when Stephen reached the top set of doors. I felt that little tingle, like pins and needles, that I recognised as part of Stephen’s signare. There was a very mechanical clonk sound and light flooded in as the doors opened.

  Getting out was easier than I expected since, strangely, the designers had put in a shelf and handgrips to assist transfer from the ladder. Just another example of lunatic health and safety, I thought as I stepped onto the top floor of Bambleweeny.

  It was brightly lit and mostly empty but for a cylindrical cage three metres across that rose from floor to ceiling. The uprights were made of blue steel with two distinct and separated layers of fine copper mesh. Extending from the base for two metres all around was a thick rubber flooring.

  Mr Faraday, I presume, I thought.

  ‘Don’t touch the cage,’ I said. ‘It might be electrified.’

  The floor was clear for another couple of metres around the insulation mat and then there was a double row, each side, of the same boring beige cubicles as on the floor below.

  ‘Is it in there?’ asked Mrs Chin.

  Me and Stephen crept forward – craning our heads to check the cubicles – until we were close enough to peer through the fine mesh. The Mary Engine looked as it had in the eBay pictures I’d first seen of it, a steampunk Borg cube of steel and brass gears and ratchets. It stood on a thick plastic table and there was a white box attached to one side – an electric engine to turn the crank, I assumed. Next to it were two large jars filled with cloudy amber liquid connected to the Mary Engine by curly red insulated wires with bulldog clips at either end. As I moved around the cage I saw that there was a desk supporting a bog-standard tower PC with a flat screen, mouse and keyboard. An Ethernet cable snaked out the back and up to what I assumed was an adaptor fixed to the side of the Mary Engine.

  Having confirmed the presence of the Mary Engine and the Rose Jars, it was time for my sudden but inevitable betrayal. Me, Nightingale and Silver had worked out several contingencies, of which the simplest would be to flash my torch out of a west-facing window.

  ‘Right,’ I said, ‘we check the rest of the cubicles, dismantle the cage, grab the goods and out.’

  Mrs Chin came to stand beside me.

  ‘What about your algorithm, Peter?’ she said, and I could feel her shifting her weight – balancing on the balls of her feet. ‘The one that was supposed to make this all worthwhile?’

  I clocked Stephen casually moving around the curve of the cage – splitting my focus.

  I crouched slightly as if drawing attention to the PC next to the Mary Engine.

  ‘It’s in that, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘We take it with us.’

  Never mind Stephen, I thought, Mrs Chin will be the real threat. I can probably get a strike in if I surprise her, but after that it’s anyone’s guess. Still, one of the alternative plans to alert Nightingale and Silver was to make as loud a noise as possible.

  As an organisation we like to play to our strengths.

  I decided on a big snapdragon for distraction and a shield slam as follow-up. I was clearing my mind when somebody else interrupted.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said a voice, ‘it’s the Pink Panther.’

  And Leo Hoyt, sitting on an operator’s chair, pushed himself backwards out of a cubicle near the back of the room.

  I straightened up, but before I could speak my arm went dead. I turned to look and saw that Mrs Chin had grasped my wrist with the finger and thumb of her left hand. Her right hand was held up beside her face with the little finger extended, as if she were drinking tea with the Queen.

  I felt the numbness rushing down past my elbow – there was no pain but it was terrifying – and I tried to break my own balance so that I’d fall away from Mrs Chin and break her grip.

  ‘Stop that,’ she said. ‘Or I stop your heart.’

  Human beings are really difficult to directly control by magic – Dr Walid has postulated that the human central nervous system generates its own autonomic magical resistance as a function of evolving in a world where potential predators can do magic. In order to partially paralyse me like that, Mrs Chin had to be a very highly trained practitioner. A true master, in Nightingale’s terms. An utter pain in the arse, literally, in mine.

  I wasn’t sure she could stop my heart, but I decided to err on the side of caution and stopped moving.

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Leo, scrambling off his chair.

  ‘Stephen,’ said Mrs Chin. ‘If you don’t mind?’

  I recognised the spell as the same impello-palma combination he’d used on me at the London Library. Leo went over on his back with a shocked grunt.

  ‘Stay down, Leo!’ I shouted. ‘Wait for assistance!’

  ‘Good advice, Leo,’ said Mrs Chin. ‘You listen to your friend.’

  I tried forming a spell – the first long, complicated one I could think of. In this case telescopium, which was Newton’s own creation and had largely gone out of fashion with the invention of the binoculars. Mrs Chin sensed me, of course, and sent a pulse of pain down through my wrist into my left leg. This is the standard technique for subduing an experienced practitioner – you keep disrupting their concentration. You can use cold water, loud noises, electric shocks or, in this case, magically induced pain.

  I groaned theatrically and hunched down with the pain, which allowed me to get my left hand into the top pocket of my trousers.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t,’ said Mrs Chin, and another pulse of pain made me spasm upright. Too late for her – I had my screamer in my hand.

  ‘What is that supposed to be?’ she asked, shifting position so she could see my left hand.

  ‘Thermal detonator,’ I said, and held the screamer up in what I hoped was a threatening gesture.

  ‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ said Stephen.

  ‘No, seriously,’ I said. ‘It’s built around a stripped-down L84 grenade with a clockwork timer to make it magic-proof.’

  ‘Why would you even make such a thing?’ asked Mrs Chin, with a note of horrified curiosity.

  ‘We use them on vampire nests,’ I said.

  Stephen looked interested.
Mrs Chin’s gaze stayed fixed on me. That’s the trouble with direct control spells – you have to maintain them. Postmartin calls it the ‘control fallacy’ and says that it’s a common fault of powerful practitioners.

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Does it?’ asked Mrs Chin.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Stephen. ‘The amount of times I’ve had to lug gas around the Subway to clear nests.’

  ‘Can I point out this is ticking,’ I said. ‘Literally.’

  ‘You’re going to tell me it’s got a dead man’s switch,’ said Mrs Chin.

  ‘It’s essentially a hand grenade and I’ve pulled the pin,’ I said.

  ‘Stephen,’ snapped Mrs Chin. ‘Get rid of it.’

  There was a weird pulse down my arm, not painful but shocking in its intensity, and my left hand popped open against my will. As the screamer began to fall, Stephen snatched it with impello and propelled it straight at the window. It should have bounced – modern office windows are double-glazed, heat treated and shatter resistant. But instead Stephen melted a small hole through both panes and out it flew into the street below.

  I glanced at Stephen, who waggled his eyebrows to show that he knew how cool that was.

  We waited for the bang, but of course nothing happened.

  ‘Must have been a dud,’ I said.

  Another pulse down my arm shut me up while Stephen rolled Leo over on his front and secured his wrists behind his back with a cable tie. Mrs Chin continued to control me while Stephen did the same to me. Then I was made to sit on the floor next to Leo, who had struggled into a sitting position.

  ‘I have no doubt you’re capable of breaking those ties,’ said Mrs Chin. ‘But in the time it takes you to do that I will break both your legs – capisce?’

  ‘Si, baroni,’ I said.

  ‘We’re not here to hurt anyone, but this is too important to let you get in the way.’

  ‘What’s so important about it?’ I asked.

  ‘Nice try,’ she said, and walked back to where she could keep a beady eye on me and Leo while still supervising Stephen as he started to methodically cut a hole in the side of the Faraday cage.

  ‘The police are on their way,’ said Leo. ‘I hit the panic button as soon as you came up the lift.’

  I wanted to tell him that they were already here, but I wasn’t ready to surrender what slim advantage I had. I did tell him to keep his head down and to run like fuck if he got the opportunity.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, putting one and one together and making three. ‘That means . . .’ he began, but clamped his mouth shut when he saw my expression.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And the Pink Panther is the diamond, you twat.’

  The Mary Engine was a dense cube sixty centimetres on each side. Given that it was made of brass and steel, we’d assumed it was going to be heavy. To that end Stephen had purchased a reinforced nylon bag with a rigid base and heavy-duty castors. Used by roadies, he explained, for moving amplifiers around. He had to use impello to get the Engine into the bag. Once he had it zipped up and had dragged it clear of the cage he looked over at Mrs Chin, who nodded.

  ‘Do it,’ she said.

  Stephen made a needless theatrical gesture and the two Rose Jars imploded, the murky fluid inside cascading down onto the rubber matting. There were no sparks, so I guessed the Faraday cage had been passive rather than active.

  Mrs Chin gave me a stern look.

  ‘And remember,’ she said, wagging her finger. ‘The shades are never truly your friends – they all want something.’

  In the bag, so to speak, the Mary Engine would have been a bugger to move even with me and Stephen handling it. As it was, Mrs Chin had to divide her attention between keeping an eye on us and giving the occasional push.

  Which was probably why Nightingale chose that moment to make an appearance.

  He walked quietly up from the direction of the lift wearing his sturdiest navy blue worsted Detective Chief Inspector suit and introduced himself. Or at least he tried – he actually only got as far as, ‘Hello, my name is Thomas Nightingale . . .’ when Stephen tried to throw a cubicle at him.

  It was a clever move, because the fabric-covered chipboard, backed up by the weight of a desk, a computer and an in-out tray, came flying in from behind Nightingale. I gave him A for effort, and Nightingale gave him a complicated variant on impello that threw him in my direction.

  For boring historical reasons, I’ve practised quite hard recently learning various techniques for dealing with bound hands. A quick bit of spot heat and a twist and I got to my feet just in time to give Stephen a good kicking when he landed in front of me. Unfortunately, when I went in for a restraint he managed to get his arm around my neck and tried to put my head through a cubicle wall. We were in a sort of weird crouching grapple when two sudden bursts of vestigia startled us. One had the distinctive twist and punch that Nightingale gives his spells, but the other was like a crowd shouting at a football match.

  Me and Stephen were so surprised that we forgot we were supposed to be fighting and stared at where our two teachers were facing off. I’ve seen Nightingale fight masters before, and that had involved a lot of flash and a ton of property damage. This was nothing like that; each faced the other like boxers sparring in a ring, their weight shifting from foot to foot, hands held in loose fists, eyes fixed on their opponents.

  I could feel multiple formae piling up around each of them, but there wasn’t even a ripple in the air. This was speed chess with an invisible board. And when both of them released their spells, I swear I felt the building creak under the strain. Neither waited for the other to follow through and the formae flickered past my senses too fast to even separate one from another. Nightingale’s right fist clenched slightly and Mrs Chin opened her palm. I think there were at least two more passes, and both rocked back on their heels before shifting stances again.

  Nightingale was grinning – a wide smile of unselfconscious pleasure – and we heard a wheezing sound that I realised was Mrs Chin laughing.

  ‘Wow,’ said Stephen in wonder, and he punched me in the bollocks.

  I curled up around the pain, but I’ve been in too many fights not to use the motion to get my leg hooked around the back of his knee. He went over backwards and I rolled behind the wall of a cubicle and used a chair to pull myself to my feet.

  Stephen came after me. He knew he had to keep the initiative, but I was swinging the chair the other way so that he ran right into it. As he staggered back, I followed through with a freezing water bomb to the head to disrupt any magic he was planning.

  I caught sight of Leo sensibly stumbling towards the relative safety of the far end of the office and returned my attention to Stephen, just in time to get one of his nicely calculated impello-palma to the stomach.

  As Nightingale always says, never take your eyes off your opponent – and Stephen would probably have put me down with the next spell if there hadn’t been a sinister ‘pop’ from back where the old folks were fighting.

  And a concussion wave blew us and every loose bit of furniture five metres further down the office. I found myself, with no intervening period of consciousness, in the dark and wedged under a sheet of plasterboard. I have, for both personal and operational reasons, a slight phobia about being buried under rubble. So I was probably a bit more forceful than I might have been getting the stuff off me. There’s a spell that dates back to the Victorian era called the coffin bell, designed to allow a skilled practitioner to dig himself out from his own grave. It’s a fourth order spell, so I reckon you’d have to be a pretty good practitioner to be able to cast it after being accidentally buried alive. I also have doubts about whether it could shift four cubic metres of loose earth, but it certainly made short work of the pile of office furniture I was under.

  The lights were out, but there was enough reflected street light for m
e to see the room. Because I’ve learnt to respect Stephen’s ability to sucker-punch me at every opportunity, I immediately shifted position and did a visual sweep.

  Whatever had gone ‘pop’ had cleared a circle in the middle of the room. The Faraday cage had resisted being blown down, but the copper mesh had been stripped off the steel pylons – they would still be digging fragments out of the wall weeks later. Beyond the immediate radius of complete destruction the cubicles had been knocked over, rather than flattened, and they seemed intact at the far ends.

  At the centre of ground zero was the nylon carry case containing the Mary Engine. Amazingly, the bag was intact but judging by its malformed, half-crushed shape its contents were not. Next to it someone had placed a miraculously spared office chair on which Mrs Chin sat with her hands primly clasped in her lap. Behind her, as per regulations when dealing with dangerously Falcon-capable prisoners, stood Nightingale.

  ‘Ah, Peter, excellent,’ he said. ‘Would you be so good as to check for casualties?’

  Part Four

  Cyberdyne

  I’m sorry, I couldn’t find ‘a good song’ in your music.

  Siri

  16

  Nice Job Breaking it, Hero

  I found Leo Hoyt, dazed but unharmed, tucked into the far corner. I cut the ties on his wrists and told him to stay put until someone came and got him. Judging by the state of the room, that somebody would probably be the fire brigade. Then I went looking for Stephen, who had been half buried – but unlike me he was pinned under a heavy wooden desk. Once I established he wasn’t being crushed, I decided to leave him for the fire brigade, too.

  ‘I think the building has been compromised,’ said Nightingale, when I joined him and Mrs Chin.

  He pointed a hand at the ceiling and I saw that the hanging tiles had been blown away, revealing the actual concrete roof which was marked by an alarming starburst of cracks. Positioned, I noticed, right over the squashed remains of the Mary Engine.