Rivers of London

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Which meant that Seawoll had stepped in as Lesley’s patron and made it clear that anyone trying to get to her would have to go through him first. Since my patron was currently lying on a bed at UCH and breathing through a tube, Nightingale was unlikely to do the same for me. I like to think that Seawoll would have extended his protection to me if he could have, but I’ll never know for sure. He didn’t tell me that I should look out for myself – that was a given.

  ‘What the fuck do we do next?’ asked Seawoll.

  ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘No, I’m fucking asking the table,’ said Seawoll.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Sir. There’s loads of stuff I don’t know.’

  ‘Then you’d better start educating yourself, Constable,’ said Seawoll. ‘Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t think Mr Henry Pyke is going to stop now – do you?’

  I shook my head.

  Stephanopoulos grunted and tapped her watch.

  ‘I’m going to spring you,’ he said. ‘Because we need to put an end to this fucking spiritual shit before some ACPO wallah panics and decides to bring in the Archbishop of Canterbury.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ I said.

  Seawoll gave me a look that implied my best had better be fucking good enough. ‘When we start again,’ he said, ‘I need you to make sure your brain is engaged before you put your mouth into gear. Just like after the thing in Hampstead – clear?’

  ‘Crystal,’ I said.

  The door to the interview room slammed open and a man stuck his head inside. He was middle-aged with greying hair, broad-shouldered and with extraordinarily bushy eyebrows. Even if I hadn’t recognised him from his web profile, I would have known Deputy Assistant Commissioner Richard Folsom was one of the big beasts of the jungle. He crooked his finger at Seawoll and said, ‘Alex, a word please.’

  Seawoll looked at the ruined tape machine. ‘Interview suspended,’ he said and gave the time. Then he rose and meekly followed Folsom out of the room. Stephanopoulos gave me a half-hearted attempt at her famous evil glare, but I was wondering whether she still had her My Little Pony collection.

  Seawoll returned and told us that we would be continuing the interview in an adjacent room, one where the monitoring equipment was still working. There, we continued the time-honoured tradition of brazenly lying through our teeth while telling nothing but the truth. I told them that Nightingale and I had reason to believe, through an entirely conventional informer, that the group – because it had to be more than one person – who had perpetrated a series of senseless attacks in and around the West End would be based on Bow Street, and that we had been investigating there when we were ambushed by unknown assailants.

  ‘Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom is particularly worried about any threat to the Royal Opera House,’ said Seawoll. Apparently he was a bit of a connoisseur, having been introduced to Verdi soon after rising to the rank of Commander. A sudden attack of culture snobbery is a common affliction among policemen of a certain rank and age; it’s like a normal midlife crisis only with more chandeliers and foreign languages.

  ‘We think that the focus of activity may be on Bow Street,’ I said. ‘But as yet our investigations have discovered no tangible link to the Royal Opera House.’

  By six o’clock we ended up with a statement of events that Seawoll could sell to Folsom, and I was falling asleep in my chair. I expected to be suspended, or at least warned that I was facing disciplinary action or an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, but it was just coming up to seven when they let me go.

  Seawoll offered me a lift, but I refused. I walked up St Martin’s Lane shaky with tension and lack of sleep. The weather had turned during the night. There was a chill wind under a dirty blue sky. The rush hour starts late on a Saturday, and the streets retained some of their early-morning quiet as I crossed New Oxford Street and headed for the Folly. I was expecting the worst, and I wasn’t disappointed. There was at least one unmarked police car that I could see parked across the street. I couldn’t see anyone inside, but I gave a little wave just in case.

  I went in through the front door because it’s better to face things head on and I was too knackered to walk round to the mews at the back. I was expecting police, but what I got were a pair of soldiers in battledress and carrying service rifles. They wore woodland DP jackets and maroon berets with parachute regiment badges. Two were blocking my way past the cloakroom booths, while two more were tucked away either side of the main doors, ready to catch anyone suicidal enough to attack two fully armed paras in the flank. Somebody was taking the physical security of the Folly very seriously.

  The paras didn’t raise their rifles to block me, but they did take on that air of menacing nonchalance that must have enlivened the streets of Belfast no end in the years before the peace agreement. One of them nodded his head towards the alcove where, in the Folly’s more elegant days, the doorman would wait until needed. Another para with sergeant’s stripes resided there with a mug of tea in one hand and a copy of the Daily Mail in the other. I recognised him. It was Frank Caffrey, Nightingale’s Fire Brigade liaison, and he gave me a friendly nod and beckoned me over. I checked the flashes on Frank’s shoulders. This was the 4th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment which I knew was part of the TA. Frank must have been a reservist, which certainly explained where he’d got the phosphorus grenades from. I suspected this was another part of the old boy network, but in this instance I was pretty sure that Frank was Nightingale’s boy. I didn’t see any officers around. I guessed they were back at the barracks turning a blind eye, while the NCOs sorted things out.

  ‘I can’t let you in,’ Frank said. ‘Not until your governor gets better, or they name an official replacement.’

  ‘On whose authority?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, this is all part of the agreement,’ said Frank. ‘Nightingale and the regiment go back a way; you might say there were some debts.’

  ‘Ettersburg?’ I asked, guessing.

  ‘Some debts can never be repaid,’ said Frank. ‘And there are some jobs that have to be done.’

  ‘I have to get in,’ I said. ‘I need to use the library.’

  ‘Sorry son,’ he said. ‘The agreement is clear – no unauthorised access beyond the main perimeter.’

  ‘The main perimeter,’ I said. Frank was trying to tell me something, but sleep deprivation was making me stupid. He had to repeat himself before I realised that he was hinting that the garage was outside of the perimeter.

  I stepped back out into the pale sunlight and made my way round to the garage and let myself in. There was a battered Renault Espace outside with such patently fraudulent plates that I knew it could only belong to the paratroopers. I took a moment to check that the Jag was locked before pulling a dust cover from under a workbench and throwing it over the vintage car. I tramped wearily up the stairs to the coach house, only to find that Tyburn had beaten me to it.

  She was rummaging through the trunks and other old stuff that I’d piled at the far end. The picture of Molly and the portrait of the man I’d assumed was Nightingale’s dad were propped up against the wall. I watched as she knelt down and reached under the divan to pull out another trunk.

  ‘They used to call this a cabin trunk,’ she said, without turning round. ‘It’s made low enough to slide under your bed. That way you could pack the things you needed for your voyage separately.’

  ‘Or more likely your valet would,’ I said. ‘Or your maid.’

  Tyburn lifted a carefully folded linen jacket from the cabin trunk and laid it on the divan. ‘Most people didn’t have servants,’ she said. ‘Most people made do.’ She found what she was looking for and stood up. She was wearing an elegant Italian black satin trouser suit and sensible black shoes. There was still a mark on her forehead where a marble fragment had cut her. She showed me her prize, a drab brown cardboard sleeve containing what I recognised as a 78rpm record. ‘Duke Ellington and Adelaide Hall,
“Creole Love Call” on the original Black and Gold Victor label,’ she said. ‘And he has it stuffed in a trunk in the spare room.’

  ‘Are you going to sell it on eBay?’ I asked.

  She gave me a cold look. ‘Are you here to pick up your things?’

  ‘If that’s all right with you?’

  She hesitated. ‘Help yourself,’ she said.

  ‘You’re too kind,’ I said.

  Most of my clothes were stuck in the Folly, but because Molly never cleaned the coach house I managed to scrounge a sweatshirt and a pair of jeans that had fallen behind the sofa. My laptop was where I’d left it, perched on a pile of magazines. I had to hunt around for the case. Tyburn kept her cool gaze on me the whole time. It was like being watched in the bath by your mother.

  Sometimes, as Frank had pointed out, there are things you have to do no matter what the cost. I straightened and faced Tyburn. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about the fountain.’

  For a moment I thought it might work. I swear I saw something in her eyes, a softening, a recognition – something – but then it was gone, replaced by the same flat anger as before.

  ‘I’ve been investigating you,’ she said. ‘Your father’s a junkie, has been for thirty years.’

  It shouldn’t hurt when people say these things to me. I’ve known my dad was an addict since I was twelve. He was quite matter-of-fact about it once I’d found out, and keen to make sure I understood what it meant – he didn’t want me following in his footsteps. He was one of the few people in the UK who still got his heroin on prescription, courtesy of a GP who was a big fan of London’s least successful jazz legend. He’s never been clean but he’s always been under control, and it shouldn’t hurt me when people call him a junkie, but of course it does.

  ‘Damn,’ I said. ‘He’s kept that really quiet. I’m shocked.’

  ‘Disappointment runs in your family, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Your chemistry teacher was so disappointed in you that he wrote a letter to the Guardian about it. You were his blue-eyed boy – figuratively speaking.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘My dad keeps the clipping in his scrapbook.’

  ‘When they sack you for gross misconduct,’ said Tyburn, ‘will he keep that clipping as well?’

  ‘Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom,’ I said. ‘He’s your boy, isn’t he?’

  Tyburn gave me a thin smile. ‘I like to keep track of the rising stars,’ she said.

  ‘Got him twisted around your little finger?’ I asked. ‘It’s amazing what people will do for a bit of slap and tickle.’

  ‘Grow up, Peter,’ said Tyburn. ‘This is about power and mutual self-interest. Just because you still do most of your thinking with your genitalia doesn’t mean everyone else does.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, because somebody has to tell him to trim those eyebrows,’ I said. ‘Did the gun come from you?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd,’ she said.

  ‘It’s your style. Get somebody else to solve your problems for you. Machiavelli would be proud.’

  ‘Have you ever read any Machiavelli?’ she asked. I hesitated and she drew the correct conclusions. ‘I have,’ she said. ‘In the original Italian.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘For my degree,’ she said. ‘At St Hilda’s, Oxford. History and Italian.’

  ‘Double first, of course,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘So you understand why I don’t find Nightingale’s shabby gentility impressive in any way.’

  ‘So did you provide the gun?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I did not,’ she said. ‘I didn’t need to engineer this failure. It was only a matter of time before Nightingale screwed up. Although even I wasn’t expecting him to be stupid enough to get himself shot. Still, it’s an ill wind.’

  ‘Why aren’t you inside right now?’ I asked. ‘Why are you stuck in the coach house? It’s very impressive in there, got a library you wouldn’t believe and you could make a fortune hiring it out to film companies as a period location.’

  ‘All in good time,’ she said.

  I fumbled my keys out of my pocket. ‘Here, I can lend you my keys,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you can talk your way past the paras.’ She turned away from my outstretched hand.

  ‘The one good thing to come out of this,’ she said, ‘is that now we get a chance to make a rational choice about how these matters are handled.’

  ‘You can’t go in,’ I said, ‘can you?’

  I thought of Beverley Brook and her ‘inimical force fields.’

  She gave me the Duchess look, the old money stare that footballers’ wives never get the knack of, and for a moment it rolled off her, the stink of the sewer and money and the deals done over brandy and cigars. Only, Tyburn being modern, there was a whiff of cappuccino and sun-dried tomatoes in there as well. ‘Have you got what you came for?’ she asked.

  ‘The TV’s mine,’ I said.

  She said I could pick it up whenever I liked. ‘What did he see in you?’ she asked, and shook her head. ‘What makes you the keeper of the secret flame?’

  I wondered what the hell the secret flame was. ‘Just lucky, I guess.’

  She didn’t dignify that with a reply. She turned her back on me and returned to rummaging in the trunks. I wondered what she was really looking for.

  On my way out through the coach yard I heard a muffled barking behind me and looked back. A pale, mournful face was watching me from a second-floor window – Molly, holding Toby tightly to her chest. I stood and gave them what I hoped was a reassuring wave, and then headed off to see if Nightingale was still alive.

  There was an armed police officer stationed outside Nightingale’s room. I showed him my warrant card and he made me leave my bags outside. A modern ICU can be surprisingly quiet: the monitoring equipment only makes a noise when something goes wrong, and since Nightingale was breathing on his own there was no Darth Vader wheezing from a respirator.

  He looked old and out of place among the polyester bed covers with their crisp, easy-to-clean pastel colours. One limp arm was exposed and hooked up to half a dozen wires and tubes, his face was drawn and grey and his eyes closed. But his breathing was strong, even and unaided. There was a bowl of grapes on the sideboard, and a bunch of blue wildflowers had been stuffed, a bit randomly I thought, into a vase.

  I stood next to the bed for a while, thinking that I should say something but nothing came to mind. Checking first to make sure that no one was likely to see me I reached out and squeezed his hand – it was surprisingly warm. I thought I felt something, a vague sense of wet pine, wood smoke and canvas, but it was so faint I couldn’t tell whether it was vestigia or not. I caught myself swaying on my feet, I was that tired. There was an institutional armchair in the corner of the room. Made of laminated chipboard and polyester-covered fire-retardant foam, it looked far too uncomfortable to sleep in. I sat down, let my head flop to one side and was gone in less than thirty seconds.

  I woke up briefly to find Dr Walid and a pair of nurses bustling around Nightingale’s bed. I stared at them stupidly until Dr Walid saw me and told me to go back to sleep – at least, I think that’s what he said.

  I woke again to the smell of coffee. Dr Walid had brought me a cardboard jug of latte and enough tubular sachets of sugar to make a significant dent in my grocery budget.

  ‘How is he?’ I asked.

  ‘He was shot in the chest,’ said Dr Walid. ‘That sort of thing’s bound to slow you down.’

  ‘Is he going to be all right?’

  ‘He’s going to live,’ said Dr Walid. ‘But I can’t say whether he’ll make a full recovery or not. It’s a good sign that he’s breathing unaided, though.’

  I sipped the latte; it burned my tongue.

  ‘They locked me out of the Folly,’ I said.

  ‘I know,’ said Dr Walid.

  ‘Can you get me back in?’

  Dr Walid laughed. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I’m just a civilian advis
or with a bit of esoteric expertise. With Nightingale incapacitated, unlocking the Folly is a decision that has to be made by the Commissioner, if not higher up.’

  ‘Home Secretary?’ I asked.

  Dr Walid shrugged. ‘At the very least,’ he said. ‘Do you know what you’re going to do?’

  ‘Do you have access to the internet?’ I asked.

  In a teaching hospital like UCH, if you walk through the right doors it stops being a hospital and becomes a medical research and administrative centre. Dr Walid had an office there and, I was shocked to learn, students. ‘I don’t teach them the esoteric stuff,’ he explained, but was – and not wanting to blow his own trumpet – a world-renowned gastroenterologist. ‘Everyone needs a hobby,’ he said.

  ‘Mine is going to be job-hunting,’ I said.

  ‘I’d have a shower first,’ said Dr Walid, ‘if you’re planning any interviews.’

  Dr Walid’s office was an awkwardly narrow room with a window at the thin end and shelves covering the entire length of both long walls. Every surface was piled with folders, professional journals and reference books. At one end of the narrow shelf that served as a desk, a PC bobbed uncertainly in a sea of hard copy. I dumped my bags and plugged the laptop into the mains to recharge the batteries. The modem was hidden behind a stack of Gut: an International Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology. A jaunty subtitle revealed that Gut had indeed been voted Best Journal of Gastroenterology by gastroenterologists worldwide. I didn’t know whether to be worried or reassured by the implication that there were many more magazines devoted to the smooth functioning of my intestines. The socket for the modem looked suspiciously jury-rigged and definitely not standard NHS issue. When I asked Dr Walid about it, he merely said that he liked to keep certain of his files secure.

  ‘From who?’ I asked.

  ‘Other researchers,’ he said. ‘They’re always looking to pirate my work.’ Apparently the hepatologists were the worst. ‘What do you expect from people who deal with so much bile?’ said Dr Walid, and then looked disappointed that I didn’t get the joke.

  Content that work was possible, I let Dr Walid show me to the staff bathroom down the corridor where I showered in a cubicle big enough, and equipped for, a paraplegic, his wheelchair, a care assistant and her guide dog. There was soap provided, a generic lemon-smelling antibiotic cake that felt ferocious enough to strip off the upper layer of my epidermis.