Rivers of London

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Like a man emerging from a daydream, the priest turned his eyes to me. When he saw me he broke into a delighted grin. ‘You must be my gift from the gods,’ he said.

  ‘Help me, Father Thames,’ I said.

  Verica plucked a pilum from the hands of the nearest legionary – the soldier didn’t react – and handed it to me. I smelled freshly cut beech wood and wet iron. I knew what to do. I upended the heavy spear and hesitated. Mr Punch shrieked and bellowed in his strange, reedy high-pitched voice. ‘Isn’t it a pity about pretty pretty Lesley,’ he squealed. ‘Will you still love your pretty little Lesley when her face has fallen off?’

  This is not a person, I told myself, and drove the pilum into Mr Punch’s chest. There was no blood, but I felt the shock as it pierced skin, muscle and finally the wooden planking of the bridge itself. The revenant spirit of riot and rebellion was pinned like a butterfly in its display case.

  And people say modern education is a waste of time.

  ‘I asked the river to give us a sacrifice,’ said Tiberius Claudius Verica, ‘and a sacrifice was provided.’

  ‘I thought the Romans frowned on human sacrifice,’ I said.

  Verica laughed. ‘The Romans haven’t arrived yet,’ he said.

  I looked around. He was right, there was no trace of London – or the bridge. For a moment I hung suspended like a cartoon character, and then I fell into the river. The Thames was cold and as fresh as any mountain stream.

  I came up feeling horribly wet and sticky. There was blood smeared over my chest and I’d wet myself at some point, probably when she’d bitten me. I felt drained and voided and numb. I wanted to curl up and pretend that nothing was real.

  ‘That,’ I said, ‘is never going to catch on as a tool for historical research.’

  Somebody was retching but amazingly it wasn’t me. Molly was hunched over, her face turned away and hidden by her hair, vomiting blood onto her nice clean tiles. My blood, I thought, and climbed to my feet. I was light-headed but I wasn’t falling over – that had to be a good sign. I took a step towards Molly to see if she was okay, but she flung her arm in my direction, palm out, and made violent pushing gestures, so I backed off.

  I found myself sitting down again without any memory of wanting to. I was short of breath and I could feel my pulse racing in my throat – all symptoms of blood loss. I decided that it would be a good idea to have a little rest, and I lay back down on the cool tiles, all the better to maintain the blood flow to my brain. It’s surprising how comfortable a hard surface can be when you’re tired enough.

  The rustle of silk made me turn my head. Molly, still crouching, had turned away from the slick pool of red vomit and inched towards me. Her head was tilted to one side and her lips were drawn back to reveal her teeth. I was just about to tell her that I was all right really, and didn’t need any help, when I realised that was probably not what she had in mind.

  With a disturbingly spider-like motion Molly swung one arm over her head and down until her hand slapped on the tiles in front of her face. The arm tensed and dragged Molly another few centimetres towards me. I looked into her eyes and saw that they were all black, with no trace of white at all, and filled with hunger and despair.

  ‘Molly,’ I said, ‘I really don’t think this is a good idea.’

  Her head tilted the other way and she made a gurgling, hissing sound, halfway between laughter and a sob. Sitting up gave me tunnel vision and dizziness, and I fought the urge to lie back down again.

  ‘You think you’re conflicted now,’ I said. ‘Just think how you’ll feel when Nightingale finds out you had me for dinner.’

  Nightingale’s name made her pause, but only for a moment. Then her other hand swept over her head and slapped down right next to my leg. I snatched it away as best as I could and managed to gain a metre in separation.

  This only seemed to aggravate her, and I watched as she drew her legs up under her torso. I remembered how fast she’d moved when she first bit me, and wondered if I’d even seen her coming. Still, I wasn’t about to sit still and let her take me without a fight. I started putting a fireball together, but the forma was suddenly slippery and impossible to imagine.

  Molly snorted and her head twisted on its side as if her neck had become as flexible as a snake. I could see the tension building in the curve of her back and the hunch of her shoulders. I think she could sense me trying to do magic, and didn’t think she was going to give me a chance to succeed. Her mouth opened too wide and displayed too many pointed teeth, and the squeaky little mammal in my ancestry started my legs scrambling in a mad attempt to propel myself backwards.

  A brown shape smelling of damp carpet streaked past me and came to a halt, claws skidding on the tiles, between Molly and me. It was Toby in full primeval circle-of-the-campfire, man’s-best-friend, oh-that’s-why-we-domesticated-the-sodding-things mode, barking at Molly so hard his front paws were bouncing off the floor.

  To be honest, Molly probably could have leaned forward and bitten Toby’s snout off, but instead she flinched backwards. Then she leaned forward again and hissed. This time Toby flinched, but he kept his ground in the long tradition of small scrappy dogs that are too stupid to know when to back down. Molly reared back on her haunches, her face a mask of anger and then, as if a switch had been pulled, she slumped down on her knees. Her hair fell back down to cover her face and her shoulders shook – I think she might have been sobbing.

  I dragged myself to my feet and staggered towards the back door. I was thinking that it was probably best to put temptation out of harm’s way. Toby came trotting after me with his tail wagging. I bounced off the doorjamb and found myself outside in the sunlight facing the wrought-iron staircase that led up to the coach house. I contemplated the stairs and thought that I should have fitted a lift, or at least got a bigger dog.

  I knew something else was wrong when Toby wouldn’t come all the way up the stairs. ‘Stay, boy,’ I said, and he dutifully sat on the landing and let me do the heroics. I considered walking away, but I was just too knackered to care and besides, this was my space with my flat-screen TV and I wanted it back.

  I stood to one side of the door and pushed it open with my foot before gingerly peering around the jamb to see who was there. It was Lesley, waiting for me on the chaise longue holding Nightingale’s cane across her knees and staring into space. She glanced over as I slipped in.

  ‘You killed me,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t you just go back to wherever it was you came from?’

  ‘Not without my friend,’ she said. ‘Not without Mr Punch. You’ve murdered me.’

  I slumped down in the easy chair. ‘You’ve been dead for two hundred years, Henry,’ I said. ‘I’m fairly certain you can’t murder someone who’s already dead.’ If you could, I thought, the Met would have a form for it.

  ‘I beg to differ,’ said Lesley. ‘Though it must be said that I have proved a failure on both sides of the veil.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘You had me fooled.’

  Lesley turned and looked at me. ‘I did, didn’t I,’ she said.

  I could see the thin pale lines of stretch marks around the bridge of Lesley’s nose, the fine tracery of broken blood vessels that started around her mouth and climbed like a winter vine to her cheeks. Even the way she spoke was different, the words slurred by broken teeth and Henry Pyke’s need to keep the mouth closed to hide the damage. I had to suppress the anger that seemed to boil up through my chest because this was a hostage situation, and the first rule of the hostage negotiator is never get emotionally involved. Or perhaps it was ‘don’t kill the kidnapper until the hostages are released’ – it was bound to be one or the other.

  ‘Looking back,’ I said, ‘it seems the more remarkable to me that you never slipped up once.’

  ‘You never suspected?’ asked Lesley, happily.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You were utterly convincing.’

  ‘A female role is always a challenge,’ said
Lesley. ‘And a modern woman doubly so.’

  ‘It’s too bad she has to die,’ I said.

  ‘I want you to know that nobody was more surprised than I to find myself occupying this vessel,’ said Lesley. ‘I blame it on the Italian, Piccini, a passionate race. They have to incorporate lust into all their endeavours – even their religious works.’

  I nodded and looked interested. Despite being plugged in, the TV and DVD standby lights were dark. Lesley had been sitting there long enough to drain all my electronics, and if they were gone then surely Lesley’s brain was going to be next. I had to get the last remains of Henry Pyke out of her head.

  ‘That’s how it is with a play,’ said Lesley. ‘The scenes and acts being so much more ordered than in the humdrum world. Unless one takes care, one can be swept away by the genius of the character. Thus Pulcinella made fools of us both.’

  ‘But you’d rather Lesley lived?’ I asked.

  ‘Is this possible?’ she asked.

  ‘Only if you agree,’ I said.

  Lesley leaned forward and took my hand. ‘Oh, but I do, my boy,’ she said. ‘We can’t have it be said that Henry Pyke was so ungracious as to inflict his own sad fate upon an innocent.’

  I really did wonder when he said that if he had any inkling of the trail of death and misery he’d left behind. Perhaps that was a function of being a ghost; perhaps to the dead the world of the living was a dream, and not to be taken too seriously.

  ‘Then let me call my doctor,’ I said.

  ‘This would be the Scottish Mohamedan?’

  ‘Dr Walid,’ I said.

  ‘You believe he can save her?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘I believe he can,’ I said.

  ‘Then by all means summon him,’ said Lesley.

  I went outside onto the staircase, replaced the battery in my spare mobile and called Dr Walid, who said he would arrive within ten minutes. He gave me some instructions to follow in the meantime. Lesley looked expectant when I returned.

  ‘Can I have Nightingale’s staff?’ I asked.

  Lesley nodded and handed over the silver-topped cane. I placed my hand on the handle as Dr Walid had suggested but there was nothing, just the chill of metal – the staff had been completely drained of magic.

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ I said. There was a relatively clean dust sheet over the back of the chaise longue – I grabbed it.

  ‘Truly?’ asked Lesley. ‘Alas, for as the hour grows closer I feel myself reluctant to depart.’

  I started ripping the sheet into broad strips. ‘Can I speak to Lesley directly?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course, dear boy,’ said Lesley.

  ‘Are you okay?’ There was no outward change that I could see.

  ‘Ha,’ she said, and I was sure from the tone that this was the real Lesley. ‘That’s a stupid question. It’s happened, hasn’t it, I can feel it …’

  She raised her hand to her face, but I took it and gently guided it back down.

  ‘Everything’s going to be OK,’ I said.

  ‘You’re such a bad liar,’ she said. ‘No wonder I had to do all the talking.’

  ‘You had such a natural talent for it,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t talent,’ said Lesley. ‘It was hard work.’

  ‘You always had such a natural talent for hard work,’ I said.

  ‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember them telling me when I joined that there was a risk my face might fall off.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ I asked. ‘Remember Inspector Neblett, old shovel-face himself? Maybe that’s what happened to him.’

  ‘Tell me I’m going to be okay again.’

  ‘You’re going to be okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to hold your face on with this.’ I showed her the strips of sheet.

  ‘Oh well, that fills me with confidence,’ she said. ‘Promise you’ll be there whatever happens?’

  ‘I promise,’ I said and, following Walid’s instructions, started winding a strip of the sheet tightly around her head. She mumbled something, and I assured her that I’d cut a hole for her mouth when I’d finished. I secured the sheet the way one of my mum’s sisters had taught me to secure a headscarf.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Lesley once I’d cut the promised hole. ‘Now I’m the invisible woman.’ Just to be on the safe side, I knotted the material at the back of her neck to maintain the tension. I found a bottle of Evian by the chaise longue and used it to soak the makeshift bandage.

  ‘You’re trying to drown me now?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘Dr Walid told me to do this,’ I said. I didn’t tell her that it was to stop the bandage sticking to the wounds.

  ‘It’s cold,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m going to need Henry back.’

  Henry Pyke returned with transparent eagerness. ‘What must I do now?’

  I cleared my mind and opened my hand and spoke the word – ‘Lux!’ A werelight flowered above my hand. ‘This is the light that will take you to your place in history,’ I said. ‘Take my hand.’ He was reluctant. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t burn you.’

  Lesley’s hand closed around mine, light leaking out between her fingers. I didn’t know how long my magic would last, or even if the whole blood-sucking business with Molly had left me much magic in the first place. Sometimes you just have to hope for the best.

  ‘Listen, Henry,’ I said. ‘This is your moment, your big exit. The lights will dim, your voice will fade, but the last thing the audience will see is Lesley’s face. Hold on to the image of her face.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ said Henry Pyke.

  ‘You must,’ I said. ‘That’s the mark of true greatness in an actor – knowing, down to the precise moment, when to make his exit.’

  ‘How wise of you, Peter,’ said Henry Pyke. ‘That is the true mark of genius, to give oneself to one’s public but to retain that private side, that secret space, that unknowable …’

  ‘To leave them wanting more,’ I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Henry Pyke, ‘to leave them wanting more.’

  And then the mouthy git was gone, right on cue.

  I heard heavy footsteps on the iron staircase. Dr Walid and the cavalry had arrived. Red stains immediately bloomed on the white sheets covering Lesley face. I heard her gurgling and choking as she tried to breathe. A big hand landed on my shoulder and unceremoniously pushed me out of the way.

  I let myself fall to the floor – I figured I could catch up on some sleep now.

  The Job

  The young man in the hospital bed was named St John Giles, and he was a rugby eight, or rowing six or whatever at Oxford University who’d come into London for a night out. He had floppy blond hair that was stuck to his forehead with sweat.

  ‘I’ve already told the police what happened, but they didn’t believe me. Why should you?’ he said.

  ‘Because we’re the people that believe people that other people don’t believe,’ I said.

  ‘How can I know that?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re just going to have to believe me,’ I said.

  Because the bed sheets covered him up to his chest there was nothing to see of his injuries, but I found my eyes drifting down towards his groin – it was like a road accident or horrific facial wart. He saw me trying not to look.

  ‘Believe me,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to see.’

  I helped myself to one of his grapes. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened,’ I said.

  He’d been having a night out with some mates, and had gone to a nightclub round the back of Leicester Square. There he’d met a nice young woman who he’d plied with alcohol before persuading her into a dark corner for a snog. Looking back, St John was willing to admit that perhaps he might have pressed his case a little too fervently, but he could have sworn she was a willing partner, or at least not objecting too strenuously. It was a depressingly familiar story that the officers on Operation Sapphire, the Met�
��s Rape Investigation Unit, must get to hear all the time. At least, right up to the point where she bit his dick off.

  ‘With her vagina?’ I asked, just to be clear.

  ‘Yep,’ said St John.

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing you make a mistake about,’ he said. ‘And you’re sure it was teeth?’

  ‘It felt like teeth,’ he said. ‘But to be honest, after it happened I really stopped paying attention.’

  ‘She didn’t cut you with something, a knife or a broken bottle, perhaps?’

  ‘I was holding both her hands,’ he said and made a grasping gesture with his hand. It was vague but I got the gist – he’d pinned her wrists to the wall.

  What a prince among men, I thought, and checked the description he’d given at an earlier interview. ‘You say she had long black hair, black eyes, pale skin and very red lips?’

  St John nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sort of Japanese-looking without being Japanese,’ he said. ‘Beautiful, but she didn’t have slanty eyes.’

  ‘Did you see her teeth?’

  ‘No, I already told you …’

  ‘Not those teeth,’ I said. ‘The ones in her mouth.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘It might be,’ I said. ‘Did she say anything?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like, anything at all.’

  He looked nonplussed, thought about it and admitted that he didn’t think she’d spoken the whole time he’d been with her. After that I asked a few closing questions, but St John had been too busy bleeding to notice where his assailant had gone and he never got her name, let alone her phone number.

  I told him I thought he was bearing up well, considering.

  ‘Right now,’ he said, ‘I’m on some really serious medication. I don’t like to think about what’s going to happen when I come off it.’

  I checked with the doctors on my way out – the missing penis had never been found. Once I’d finished up my notes – this was still an official Metropolitan Police investigation – I checked in on Lesley, who was one floor up. She was still asleep, her face hidden by a swathe of bandages. I stood by her bed for a while. Dr Walid had said that I’d definitely saved her life, and possibly increased the chances of successful reconstructive surgery. I couldn’t help thinking that hanging out with me had almost killed her. It had been less than six months since she’d gone for those coffees and I’d met a ghost, and it was terrifying that that might have been all the difference there was between me being the one wearing the bandages.