Rivers of London

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘Another triumph for intelligence-led policing,’ I said.

  ‘Quite,’ said Nightingale. ‘It was your friend Constable May who was on the scene first.’

  ‘Lesley? I bet she wasn’t happy about that,’ I said.

  ‘In her words: “Why does this shit always fucking happen to me?”’ said Nightingale.

  ‘So who was our sequestration victim when he was alive?’ I asked.

  ‘Who says he’s dead?’ said Nightingale.

  He led me down the corridor, where they had a room kitted out as a mobile intensive care unit which is, when you think about it, a disturbing thing to find in a mortuary. Lesley was slumped in a chair in the corner of the room. She raised her hand in a hello when we entered. The bed was surrounded on both sides by machines huffing, going beep or just silently blinking. In the bed was Terrence Pottsley, aged twenty-seven, of Sedgefield, County Durham, a stock control manager for Tesco’s, next of kin most definitely not informed as yet. A thicket of stainless steel was growing out of his face – a medical scaffold they call it. Dr Walid hoped that would allow successful reconstructive surgery once the issue of Pottsley’s sequestration was resolved.

  ‘And I complained when I had my braces in,’ said Lesley.

  ‘Is he awake?’ I asked.

  ‘Apparently he’s being kept in what they call a “medical coma”,’ said Nightingale. ‘Did Oxley know who we’re dealing with?’

  ‘Isis did,’ I said. ‘She remembers Henry Pyke as a failed actor who may have been murdered by Charles Macklin – a much more successful actor.’

  ‘That would explain the resentment,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Was he arrested?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘Records are sketchy,’ I said. ‘Pyke might have been arrested …’

  ‘Not Pyke,’ said Lesley. ‘Macklin. To get away with one murder is like an accident, but to get away with two seems a little bit fucking improbable. Not to mention unfair.’

  ‘Macklin lived on to a ripe old age,’ said Nightingale. ‘He was a fixture of Covent Garden life. I knew about the first murder, but I’d never heard of Henry Pyke.’

  ‘Can we have our discussion somewhere else?’ said Lesley. ‘This guy’s making me nervous.’

  Since we were, mostly, coppers, that meant a pub or the canteen – the canteen was closer. I waited for Dr Walid to join us before outlining my strategy.

  ‘I have an idea,’ I said.

  ‘This better not be a cunning plan,’ said Lesley.

  Nightingale looked blank, but at least it got a chuckle from Dr Walid.

  ‘It is, in fact,’ I said, ‘a cunning plan.’

  Nightingale had been carrying around a hard copy of the Piccini script. I laid it out and drew attention to the scene that followed Punch’s disposal of the blind beggar. In it the constable arrives to arrest Punch for murdering his wife and baby.

  ‘I make myself the constable in the next scene.’

  ‘You’re volunteering to have your head beaten in?’ asked Dr Walid.

  ‘If you read the script you’ll see that the constable actually survives the encounter,’ I said. ‘As does the officer who arrives immediately after.’

  ‘I take it that would be me,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘Just so long as it’s not me,’ said Lesley.

  ‘I’m not sure I can see this working,’ said Nightingale. ‘Henry Pyke has no reason to engineer an encounter with us, however well we fit his little play.’

  Dr Walid put his finger on the script and said, ‘Punch asks, “And who sent for you?” to which the constable replies, “I’m sent for you.” Punch doesn’t get a choice; this is his destiny catching up with him. “I don’t want the constable,” he says.’

  ‘I think you’ve got Punch all wrong,’ said Lesley. ‘You’re assuming he’s like a kind of supernatural serial killer who’s locked into acting out a Punch and Judy show. But what if he’s something else?’

  ‘Like what?’ I asked.

  ‘Like the manifestation of a social trend, crime and disorder, a sort of super-chav. The spirit of riot and rebellion in the London mob.’

  We all looked at her in amazement.

  ‘You forget I did A levels too, you know,’ said Lesley.

  ‘Do you have another plan?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Lesley. ‘I just want you to be careful. Just because you think you know what you’re doing doesn’t mean you actually know what you’re doing.’

  ‘I’m glad we’ve clarified that,’ I said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Even if you catch up with Henry, what then?’

  It was a good question – I looked at Nightingale.

  ‘I can track his spirit,’ said Nightingale. ‘If I get close enough I can track him all the way back to his old bones.’

  ‘And then what?’ asked Lesley.

  I looked at Nightingale. ‘We dig them up and grind them into dust, mix them with rock salt and then scatter them out at sea,’ I said.

  ‘And that’ll work?’ she asked.

  ‘Has before,’ said Dr Walid.

  ‘You’ll need a warrant,’ said Lesley.

  ‘We don’t need a warrant for a ghost,’ I said.

  Lesley grinned and pushed the script over to my side of the table. She tapped the page with her spoon and I read the line: Constable: Don’t tell me. You have committed murder, and I have a warrant for you. ‘If you want to play the part, you’re going to need all the props.’

  ‘A warrant for a ghost,’ I said.

  ‘That at least will not pose a difficulty,’ said Nightingale. ‘Although it does mean we’ll have to postpone the capture operation until late tonight.’

  ‘You’re going ahead with this?’ asked Lesley. She looked at me with concern. I gave my best shot at insouciance, but I suspect it came out looking more like unfounded optimism.

  ‘I believe, Constable, that this is our only option,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’d be most grateful if you could brief Inspector Seawoll and ask him to stand ready in Covent Garden at eleven.’

  ‘As late as that?’ I asked. ‘Henry Pyke might not wait that long.’

  ‘We won’t get our warrant until eleven at the earliest,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘And if this doesn’t work?’

  ‘Then it’ll be Lesley’s turn to come up with a plan,’ said Nightingale.

  We drove back to the Folly, where Nightingale vanished into the magic library, presumably to bone up on his revenant-tracking spells, while I went upstairs to my room and took my uniform out of the cupboard. I had to hunt around for my helmet, and eventually found it under the bed with my silver whistle, absurdly still part of the modern uniform, inside. Since my latest phone hadn’t survived Tyburn’s fountain I retrieved the police-issue Airwave from my desk and slotted in its batteries. As I packed it in my carryall with my uniform jacket I realised that the room still looked like somebody’s spare bedroom, somewhere I was just staying in until something better came along.

  I slung the carryall over my shoulder and turned to find Molly watching me from the doorway. She cocked her head to one side.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But we’ll be eating out.’

  She frowned.

  ‘I’m the one who’s going to be out front,’ I said, but it didn’t seem to impress her. ‘He’ll be fine.’

  She gave me a last sceptical look before gliding away. By the time I was out of my room she was nowhere to be seen. I went downstairs and waited for Nightingale in the reading room. He emerged half an hour later dressed in his ‘working’ suit and carrying his cane. He asked me whether I was ready, and I said that I was.

  It was a beautiful warm spring evening, so rather than take the Jag we strolled down past the British Museum before cutting through Museum Street and into Drury Lane. Even though we’d taken our time we still had hours to spare, so we popped into a curry house near the Theatre Royal, with the promising name of the House of Bengal, for dinner.

  As I
checked a menu mercifully free of potatoes, thick crust pastry, suet and gravy, I realised why Nightingale liked to eat out so much.

  Nightingale had the lamb in wild lemon and I made do with a chicken Madras hot enough to make Nightingale’s eyes water. It was a little on the mild side for me. Indian cooking has no terrors for a boy raised on groundnut chicken and jelof rice. The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn’t set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper. Actually there’s no such motto – from my mum’s point of view it was simply inconceivable that anybody would want to eat anything that didn’t burn the inside of your mouth out.

  We ordered a beer while we waited, and Nightingale asked me how my diplomatic efforts were progressing. ‘Leaving aside your little contretemps with Tyburn.’

  I told him about the visit to Oxley’s river and Beverley’s response. I left out the whole wanting-to-jump-in-myself aspect of the visit. I said that I’d thought it had gone well, and had established that there was a mutual connection between the two sides. ‘It’s something we can build on,’ I said.

  ‘Conflict resolution,’ said Nightingale. ‘Is this what they teach at Hendon these days?’

  ‘Yes sir,’ I said. ‘But don’t worry, they also teach us how to beat people with phone books and the ten best ways to plant evidence.’

  ‘It’s good to see the old craft skills are being kept up,’ said Nightingale.

  I sipped my beer. ‘Tyburn’s not a big fan of the old ways,’ I said.

  ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘Of all of Mother Thames’s children you had to pick a fight with Lady Ty.’ He waved his fork. ‘That is why we do not throw magic around until we are trained.’

  ‘What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘You could have talked your way out of it,’ he said. ‘What do you think Ty is – a gangster? Did you think she was going to “plug a cap” in your head? She pushed you to see where you’d go and you blew up.’

  We ate our curries for a while. He was right – I’d panicked.

  ‘It’s “popped a cap in my ass”,’ I said. ‘Not plugged – popped.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘You don’t seem that worried about it, sir,’ I said. ‘The Lady Ty business.’

  Nightingale finished a mouthful of lamb and said, ‘Peter, we’re about to offer ourselves up as Judas goats to a powerful revenant spirit who’s killed more than ten people that we know of.’ He dug into his rice. ‘I’m not going to worry about Lady Ty until after we’ve lived through that.’

  ‘If I remember rightly,’ I said, ‘I’m the Judas goat, the “constable” in this scenario. And considering that it’s my backside hanging out in the air, sir, are you sure you can track him?’

  ‘Nothing is certain, Peter,’ he said. ‘But I’ll do my best.’

  ‘And if we can’t run him into his grave?’ I asked. ‘Do we have a plan B?’

  ‘Molly can do haemomancy,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s very impressive.’

  I sorted through my slim store of Greek. ‘Divination through the agency of blood?’

  Nightingale chewed thoughtfully and swallowed. ‘Perhaps that’s not the best term for it,’ he said. ‘Molly can help you extend your sense of vestigia out some distance.’

  ‘How far out?’

  ‘Two to three miles,’ said Nightingale. ‘I only did it the once, so it’s hard to tell.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Like stepping into a world of ghosts,’ said Nightingale. ‘It may even be the world of ghosts for all I know. It might be possible to find Henry Pyke that way.’

  ‘Why can’t we do it that way now?’ I asked.

  ‘Because the odds are five to one against you surviving the experience,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘So, yeah,’ I said. ‘Probably best not to do it that way now, then.’

  If my profession – that’s thief catcher, not wizard – could be said to have started anywhere in London, then it started in Bow Street with Henry Fielding, magistrate, satirical author and founder of what came to be known as the Bow Street Runners. His house was right next door to the Royal Opera House, back when it was just the Theatre Royal and Macklin was supplementing his gin-running activities with a bit of acting on the side. I know all this because Channel 4 did a TV drama about it starring the bloke who played the Emperor in the Star Wars films. When Henry Fielding died, his position as magistrate was taken by his blind younger brother John, who strengthened the Bow Street Runners further but evidently not to the point where they could stop Macklin beating Henry Pyke to death practically on their doorstep. No wonder Henry was pissed off. I know I would be.

  It became London’s first true police station, and in the nineteenth century it moved across the road and became the Bow Street Magistrates Court – probably the most famous court in Britain after the Old Bailey. Oscar Wilde was sent down there for being a public nuisance, and William Joyce, Lord Haw Haw himself, started his short walk to the hangman’s noose from Bow Street. The Kray twins were remanded there for the murder of Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie. It was sold in 2006 to a land magnate who turned it into a hotel because while history and tradition have a fine voice in London, money has a sweet siren song all its own.

  The original house had been replaced by an indoor flower market with an arched iron and glass roof. Eliza Doolittle, as played by Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, would have bought her violets there before moving off to display the worst cockney accent this side of Dick Van Dyke. When they rebuilt the Royal Opera House in the 1990s it swallowed up most of the surrounding block, including the flower market. Which was why we found ourselves round the backstage entrance of the Opera House where, apparently, Nightingale knew a guy who could get us in.

  It wasn’t so much a stage door as a heavy-goods entrance. I’ve seen warehouses with smaller loading bays, and there was an industrial-sized lift for getting enormous scenery palettes from floor to floor. Terry, a balding little man in a beige cardigan – Nightingale’s guy on the inside – said that they weighed upwards of fifteen tons, and when they weren’t being used were stored in a depot in Wales – he didn’t say why it had to be Wales.

  ‘We’ve come to see the Magistrate,’ said Nightingale.

  Terry nodded gravely and led us through a series of narrow, white-painted corridors and HSE-specified fire doors that reminded me of uncomfortably of West-minster Mortuary. We finished up in a low-ceilinged storeroom that Nightingale assured us was the ground floor of the flower market.

  ‘Directly where the parlour of Number Four once stood,’ he said, and turned to our guide. ‘Don’t worry, Terry, we can see ourselves out.’

  Terry gave us a cheery wave and left. The room was lined with ugly steel and hardboard shelving stuffed with cardboard boxes and delivery wraps full of napkins, cocktail sticks and packs of a dozen serving trays. The centre of the room was empty, with just a few scuff marks to show where a line of shelves had once stood. I tried to feel for vestigia but all I got at first was dust and ripped plastic. Then I sensed it, right on the edge of perception: parchment, old sweat, leather and spilled port.

  ‘A ghost magistrate,’ I said. ‘To provide a ghost warrant?’

  ‘Symbols have power over ghosts,’ said Nightingale. ‘They often have more effect than anything we can bring to bear from the physical world.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘To be honest, Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘I remember the class where we studied it and I know I read the relevant passages in Bartholomew – I may even have written an essay, but I’m damned if I remember any of the why.’

  ‘How are you planning to teach me this stuff if you don’t know it yourself?’

  Nightingale gently tapped his cane against his chest. ‘I was going to refresh my memory before we got to that part of your education,’ he said. ‘I know at least two of my Masters who did the same thing, and back then we had specialist teachers.’

  I realised suddenly that Nightingale
was looking for reassurance, which I found extremely worrying. ‘Just make sure you stay ahead of me,’ I said. ‘How do we find the Magistrate?’

  Nightingale smiled. ‘We just need to get his attention,’ he said. He turned and addressed the empty centre of the room. ‘Captain Nightingale to see the Colonel.’

  The smell of old sweat and spilled drink grew stronger, and a figure appeared in front of us. This ghost seemed more transparent than my old friend Wall-penny, thinner and more ghostly, but his eyes glittered as they turned on us. Sir John Fielding had worn a black bandage to hide his blind eyes, and Nightingale had called on the ‘Colonel’, so my guess that this was Colonel Sir Thomas de Veil – a man so routinely corrupt that he managed to shock eighteenth-century London society, generally considered by historians to be the most corrupt in the history of the British Isles.

  ‘What do you want, Captain?’ asked De Veil. His voice was thin and distant, and around him I could sense rather than see the faint outlines of furniture: a desk, a chair, a bookcase. Legend had it that De Veil had a special private closet where he conducted ‘judicial examinations’ of female witnesses and suspects.

  ‘I’m looking for a warrant,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘On the usual terms?’ asked De Veil.

  ‘Of course,’ said Nightingale. He drew a roll of heavy paper from his jacket pocket and proffered it to De Veil. The ghost reached out a transparent hand and plucked it from Nightingale’s fingers. For all that he did it casually, I was certain that the effort of moving a physical object must be costing De Veil something. The laws of thermodynamics were very clear on the subject – all debts must be paid in full.

  ‘And which miscreant are we looking to apprehend?’ asked De Veil, and placed the paper on the transparent desk.

  ‘Henry Pyke, Your Honour,’ said Nightingale. ‘Who goes by the name of Punch, and also by the name of Pulcinella.’

  De Veil’s eyes glittered and his lips twitched. ‘Are we arresting puppets now, Captain?’

  ‘Let us say that we are arresting the puppet master, Your Worship,’ said Nightingale.