Rivers of London

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘What did you sense in there?’ asked Nightingale as we walked back to the Jag.

  ‘As in vestigium?’

  ‘Vestigium is the singular, vestigia is the plural,’ said Nightingale. ‘Did you sense vestigia?’

  ‘To be honest,’ I said, ‘nothing. Not even a vestige.’

  ‘A wailing child, a desperate mother and an absent father. Not to mention a house of that antiquity,’ said Nightingale. ‘There should have been something.’

  ‘She seemed a bit of a neat freak to me,’ I said. ‘Perhaps she hoovered up all the magic?’

  ‘Something certainly did,’ said Nightingale. ‘We’ll talk to the husband tomorrow. Let’s get back to Covent Garden and see if we can’t pick up the trail there.’

  ‘It’s been three days,’ I said. ‘Won’t the vestigia have worn off?’

  ‘Stone retains vestigia very well. That’s why old buildings have such character,’ said Nightingale. ‘That said, what with the foot traffic and the area’s supernatural components, they certainly won’t be easy to trace.’

  We reached the Jag. ‘Can animals sense vestigia?’

  ‘It depends on the animal,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘What if it was one that we think might already be connected to the case?’ I asked.

  ‘Why are we drinking in your room?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘Because they won’t let me take the dog into the pub,’ I said.

  Lesley, who was perched on my bed, reached down and scratched Toby behind the ears. The dog whimpered with pleasure and tried to bury its head in Lesley’s knee. ‘You should have told them it was a ghost-hunting dog,’ she said.

  ‘We’re not hunting for ghosts,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for traces of supernatural energy.’

  ‘Did he really say he was a wizard?’

  I was really beginning to regret telling Lesley everything. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I saw him do a spell and everything.’

  We were drinking bottles of Grolsch from a crate that Lesley had liberated from the station’s Christmas party and stashed behind a loose section of plasterboard in the kitchenette.

  ‘You remember that guy we arrested for assault last week?’

  ‘How could I forget.’ I’d been shoved into a wall during the struggle.

  ‘I think you hit your head much harder then you thought,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all real,’ I said. ‘Ghosts, magic, everything.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t everything seem different?’ she asked.

  ‘Because it was there in front of you all the time,’ I said. ‘Nothing’s changed, so why should you notice anything?’ I finished my bottle. ‘Duh!’

  ‘I thought you were a sceptic,’ said Lesley. ‘I thought you were scientific.’

  She handed me a fresh bottle and I waved it at her.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You know my dad used to play jazz?’

  ‘’Course,’ said Lesley. ‘You introduced me once – remember? I thought he was nice.’

  I tried not to wince at that and continued, ‘And you know jazz is about improvising on a melody?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I thought it was when you sang about cheese and tying up people’s gaiters.’

  ‘Funny,’ I said. ‘I once asked my dad’ – when he was sober – ‘how he knew what to play. And he said that when you get the right line, you just know because it’s perfect. You’ve found the line, and you just follow it.’

  ‘And that’s got the fuck to do with what?’

  ‘What Nightingale can do fits with the way I see the world. It’s the line, the right melody.’

  Lesley laughed. ‘You want to be a wizard,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Liar,’ she said, ‘you want to be his apprentice and learn magic and ride a broomstick.’

  ‘I don’t think real wizards ride broomsticks,’ I said.

  ‘Would you like to think about what you just said?’ asked Lesley. ‘Anyway, how would you know? He could be whooshing around even as we’re speaking.’

  ‘Because if you had a car like that Jag you wouldn’t spend any time mucking about on a broomstick.’

  ‘Fair point,’ said Lesley, and we clinked bottles.

  *

  Covent Garden, night time again. This time with a dog.

  Also a Friday night, which meant crowds of young people being horribly drunk and loud in two dozen languages. I had to carry Toby in my arms or I’d have lost him in the crowd – lead and all. He enjoyed the ride, alternating between snarling at tourists, licking my face and trying to drive his nose into passing armpits.

  I’d offered Lesley a chance to put in some unpaid overtime, but strangely she’d declined. I did zap her Brandon Coopertown’s picture and she’d promised to put his details on HOLMES for me. It was just turning eleven when Toby and I reached the Piazza and found Nightingale’s Jag parked as close to the Actors’ Church as you could get without being towed away.

  Nightingale climbed out as I walked over. He was carrying the same silver-topped cane as he had when I’d first met him. I wondered if it had any special significance beyond being a handy blunt instrument in times of trouble.

  ‘How do you want to do this?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘You’re the expert, sir,’ I said.

  ‘I looked into the literature on this,’ said Nightingale, ‘and it wasn’t very helpful.’

  ‘There’s a literature about this?’

  ‘You’d be amazed, Constable, about what there’s a literature on.’

  ‘We have two options,’ I said. ‘One of us leads him around the crime scene, or we let him go and see where he goes.’

  ‘I believe we should do it in that order,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘You think a directed first pass will make a better control?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Nightingale, ‘but if we let him off the lead and he runs away, that’s the end of it. I’ll take him for his walk. You stay by the church and keep an eye out.’

  He didn’t say what I should keep an eye out for, but I had a shrewd idea that I knew already. Just as I’d suspected as soon as Nightingale and Toby vanished around the side of the covered market. I heard someone pssting me. I turned around and found Nicholas Wall-penny beckoning me from behind one of the pillars.

  ‘Over here, squire,’ hissed Nicholas. ‘Before he comes back.’ He drew me behind the pillar where, among the shadows, Nicholas seemed more solid and less worrying. ‘Do you know what manner of man you’re keeping company with?’

  ‘You’re a ghost,’ I said.

  ‘Not myself,’ said Nicholas. ‘Him with the nice suit and the silver cad-walloper.’

  ‘Inspector Nightingale?’ I asked. ‘He’s my governor.’

  ‘Well, I don’t want to tell you your business,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I’d find myself another governor if I was you. Someone less touched.’

  ‘Touched by what?’ I asked.

  ‘Just you ask him about the year of his birth,’ said Nicholas.

  I heard Toby bark, and suddenly Nicholas wasn’t there any more.

  ‘You’re not making any friends here, Nicholas,’ I said.

  Nightingale returned with Toby, and with nothing to report. I didn’t tell him about the ghost or what the ghost had said about him. I feel it’s important not to burden your senior officers with more information than they need.

  I picked up Toby and held him so that his absurd doggy face was level with mine – I tried to ignore the smell of PAL Meaty Chunks in gravy.

  ‘Listen Toby,’ I said, ‘your master is dead, I’m not a dog person and my governor would turn you into a pair of mittens as soon as look at you. You’re looking at a one-way ticket to Battersea Dog’s Home and the big sleep. Your one chance to avoid the big kennel in the sky is to use whatever doggy supernatural senses you have to track … whatever it was murdered your owner. Do you understand?’

  Toby panted and then barked once.

  ‘Close enough,’ I said, and
put him down. He immediately trotted over to the pillar and lifted his leg.

  ‘I wouldn’t turn him into a pair of mittens,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘No?’

  ‘He’s a short-haired breed – they’d look terrible,’ said Nightingale. ‘Might make a good hat.’

  Toby snuffled around a spot close to where his master’s body had lain. He looked up, barked once and shot off towards King Street.

  ‘Damn,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

  ‘Get after him,’ said Nightingale.

  I was already on my way. Detective Chief Inspectors don’t run – that’s what they have constables for. I sprinted after Toby who, like all rat-like dogs, could really shift when he wanted to. Past the Tesco’s he went, and down New Row with his little legs whirring like a low-budget cartoon. Two years running down drunks in Leicester Square had given me some speed and stamina, and I was gaining when he crossed St Martin’s Lane and into St Martin’s Court on the other side. I lost ground when I had to dodge around a crocodile of Dutch tourists leaving the Noël Coward Theatre.

  ‘Police,’ I yelled, ‘get out of the way!’ I didn’t yell ‘stop that dog’ – I do have some standards.

  Toby whirred past the J. Sheekey Oyster Bar and the salt-beef and falafel place on the corner, and shot across the Charing Cross Road, which is one of the busiest roads in central London. I had to look both ways before crossing, but luckily Toby had stopped at a bus stop and was relieving himself against the ticket machine.

  Toby gave me the smug, self-satisfied look employed by small dogs everywhere when they’ve confounded your expectations or messed on your front garden. I checked which buses used the stop – one of them was the 24: Camden Town, Chalk Farm and Hampstead.

  Nightingale arrived, and together we counted cameras. There were at least five that had a good view of the bus stop, not to mention the cameras that Transport for London routinely mounts in its buses. I left a message on Lesley’s phone suggesting she check the camera footage from the 24 bus first. I’m sure she was thrilled when she got it.

  She got her revenge by calling me at eight o’clock the next morning.

  I hate the winter; I hate waking up in the dark.

  ‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ I asked.

  ‘Early bird gets the worm,’ said Lesley. ‘You know that picture you sent me, the one of Brandon Coopertown? I think he boarded a number 24 at Leicester Square less than ten minutes after the murder.’

  ‘Have you told Seawoll?’

  ‘’Course I have,’ said Lesley. ‘I love you dearly, but I ain’t going to fuck up my career for you.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That I had a lead on WITNESS A, one of several hundred generated in the last two days, I might add.’

  ‘What did he say?

  ‘He told me to check it out,’ said Lesley.

  ‘According to Mrs Coopertown he should be back today.’

  ‘Even better.’

  ‘Can you pick me up?’ I asked.

  ‘’Course,’ said Lesley. ‘What about Voldemort?’

  ‘He’s got my number,’ I said.

  I had time for a shower and a coffee before meeting Lesley outside. She arrived in a ten-year-old Honda Accord that looked like it had been used in one too many drug raids. She gave me a sour look as Toby scrambled onto the back seat.

  ‘This is just a borrow, you know,’ she said.

  ‘I wasn’t about to leave him in my room,’ I said as Toby snuffled God knows what from the gaps between the seats. ‘Are you sure it was Coopertown?’

  Lesley showed me a couple of hard copies. The bus security camera was angled to get a good shot of anyone coming up the stairs and there was no mistaking the face – it was him.

  ‘Is that bruising?’ I asked. There appeared to be blotches on Coopertown’s cheeks and neck. Lesley said she didn’t know but it had been a cold night, so it could have been from drink.

  Because it was Saturday the traffic was merely horrendous, and we made Hampstead in just under half an hour. Unfortunately as we pulled into Downshire Hill I spotted the familiar silver shape of the Jaguar nestled among the Range Rovers and BMWs. Toby started yapping.

  ‘Doesn’t he ever sleep?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘I reckon he was on obbo all night,’ I said.

  ‘He ain’t my governor,’ said Lesley, ‘so I’m going to go do the job. Coming?’

  We left Toby in the car and headed for the house. Inspector Nightingale got out of his Jag and intercepted us just short of the front gate. I noticed he was wearing the same suit he had been in the night before.

  ‘Peter,’ he said, and inclined his head to Lesley. ‘Constable May. I take it this means your search was successful?’

  Even the Queen of Perky wasn’t going to defy a senior officer to his face, so she told him about the CCTV footage from the bus and how we were ninety per cent certain, what with the evidence from our ghost-hunting dog, that Brandon Coopertown, at the very least, was WITNESS A if not actually the killer.

  ‘Have you checked his flight details with Immigration yet?’ asked Nightingale.

  I looked at Lesley, who shrugged. ‘No sir,’ I said.

  ‘So he could have been in Los Angeles when the murder was committed.’

  ‘We thought we’d ask him, sir,’ I said.

  Toby started barking, not his usual annoying yap but proper furious barks. For a moment I thought I felt something, a wave of emotion like the excitement of being in a crowd at a football match when a goal is scored.

  Nightingale’s head snapped round to look at the Coopertowns’ house.

  We heard a window break and a woman screaming.

  ‘Constable, wait!’ shouted Nightingale, but Lesley was already through the gate and into the garden. Then she stopped so suddenly that Nightingale and I nearly piled into her back. She was staring at something on the lawn.

  ‘Jesus Christ, no,’ she whispered.

  I looked. My brain kept trying to slide away from the idea that someone had thrown a baby from a first-floor window. Tried to convince me that what I was seeing was a scrap of cloth or a doll. But it wasn’t.

  ‘Call an ambulance,’ said Nightingale and ran up the steps. I grabbed my phone as Lesley stumbled over to the baby and fell to her knees. I saw her turn the little body over and feel for a pulse. I gave the emergency code and the address on automatic. Lesley bent over and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, her mouth covering the baby’s mouth and nose in the prescribed manner.

  ‘Grant, get in here,’ called Nightingale. His voice was steady, businesslike. It got me moving up the steps and onto the porch. Nightingale must have kicked the front door right off its hinges because I had to run right over it to get into the hall. We had to stop to work out where the fuck the noise was coming from.

  The woman screamed again – upstairs. There was a thumping sound like somebody beating a carpet. A voice, I thought it might be a man’s but very high-pitched, was screaming: ‘Have you got a headache now?’

  I don’t even remember the stairs. Suddenly I was on the landing with Nightingale in front of me. I saw August Coopertown lying face down at the far end of the landing, one arm thrust through a gap in the banisters. Her hair was wet with blood and a pool was growing under her cheek. A man stood over her holding a wooden baton at least a metre and a half in length. He was panting hard.

  Nightingale didn’t hesitate. He bulled forward, shoulder down, obviously planning to take the man down in a rugby tackle. I charged, too, thinking I’d go high to pin the man’s arms after he’d gone down. But the man whirled around and casually backhanded Nightingale with enough force to slam him into the banisters.

  I was staring right at his face. I assumed it must be Brandon Coopertown, but it was impossible to tell. I could see one of his eyes but a great flap of skin had been peeled back from around his nose and was covering the other eye. Instead of a mouth he had a bloody maw full of white flecks of broken teeth and bo
ne. I was so shocked that I stumbled and fell, which was what saved my life when Coopertown swung that baton at me and it passed right over my head.

  I hit the ground and the bastard ran right over me, one foot slamming down on my back and blowing the air out of my lungs. I rolled over as I heard his feet on the stairs and managed to get onto my hands and knees. There was something wet and sticky under my fingers, and I realised that there was a thick trail of blood leading across the landing and down the stairs.

  There was a crash and a series of thumps from the hallway below.

  ‘You need to get up, Constable,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ I asked as he helped me up. I looked down into the hallway where Coopertown, or whoever the hell it was, had fallen – mercifully face down.

  ‘I really have no idea,’ said Nightingale. ‘Try to stay out of the blood trail.’

  I went down the stairs as fast as I could. The fresh blood was bright red, arterial. I guessed it must have fountained out of the hole in his face. I bent down and gingerly touched his neck, looking for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Peter,’ said Inspector Nightingale. ‘I need you to step away from the body and walk carefully outside. We mustn’t contaminate the scene any more than we have already.’

  This is why you have procedure, training and drill, so that you do things when your brain is too shocked to think for itself – ask any soldier.

  I stepped outside into the daylight.

  In the distance I could hear sirens.

  The Folly

  Inspector Nightingale told Lesley and me to wait in the garden, and faded back into the house to check there was nobody else inside. Lesley had used her coat to cover the baby and was shivering in the cold. I tried to struggle out of my jacket so I could offer it to her, but she stopped me.

  ‘It’s covered in blood,’ she said.

  She was right: there were smears of blood up the sleeves and trailing the edge of the hem. There was more blood on the knees of my trousers. I could feel the stickiness where it had soaked through the material. There was blood on Lesley’s face, around her lips, from when she’d tried to resuscitate the baby. She noticed me staring.