‘What?’
‘Well, it’s a bit unfeeling to keep referring to these young women as “killer nannies” and the like,’ she said. ‘Whatever they did in life they’re in my care now and I don’t think it’s too much to expect a bit of respect.’
‘Why Green?’
‘Because I didn’t want to use Gamma as a category name,’ she said. ‘And Charlotte because she’s our third Jane Doe.’
The first being the young woman with the unusual teeth who’d died at the Trocadero Centre.
‘Alice Green,’ said Dr Vaughan.
The second being the weird half-man, half-tiger person who’d tried to kill me on a roof in Soho and got himself shot in the head for his trouble.
‘Barry Brown.’
‘You’ve started a new classification system, haven’t you?’ I said.
‘Well, we couldn’t go on with what we had, could we?’ said Dr Vaughan.
Dr Jennifer Vaughan had taken one look at the various cataloguing methodologies for the fae and come to the same conclusions I had – that they were bollocks. She’d been threatening to devise her own system ever since. Now, for solid historical reasons, I’m not comfortable with dividing people up into groups. But the medical profession cannot sleep easy until it has a category for everything.
‘It’s all about instilling confidence,’ Dr Walid had explained once.
Apparently patients much preferred doctors who sounded like they knew what they were talking about – even when they didn’t. Perhaps especially when they didn’t.
‘If it helps, think of it as provisional,’ said Dr Vaughan.
So Brown for the chimera – the cat-girls and tiger-boys, and God knows what else Martin Chorley’s sick little brain might have come up with.
‘Brown for Beta, right?’
‘Just so,’ said Dr Vaughan.
‘And Green for Gamma.’
‘Oh, he is bright, isn’t he?’ said Dr Vaughan to no one in particular. ‘Subjects that are not the product of modification, or at least modification of their phenotype.’
‘So she was born the way she is?’ I said. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Why don’t we have a look?’
She tweaked the sheet back to expose poor Charlotte Green down to her navel. The horribly familiar Y incision had been sewn up, although I noticed the cut had wiggled slightly to avoid bisecting any bullet wounds.
‘We won’t have the genetic results back for a week or so, but I’m willing to bet good money that we won’t find any evidence of chimerism,’ she said.
So no genetic manipulation at the cellular level.
I asked her how she could be so sure, which got me an approving nod from Dr Walid.
‘From this,’ said Dr Vaughan.
I watched, wincing, as she reached into Charlotte’s mouth and pulled her tongue out to its full extent. It was at least twenty centimetres long.
‘Now, as you can imagine,’ said Dr Vaughan. ‘You can’t just a fit a tongue like that into someone’s face – there’s no room for it. If you detach her lower jawbone and have a good look down her throat you’ll see it’s substantially different from the human norm.’
Which didn’t necessarily mean anything, since the human norm was a spectrum that went from smaller than you’d expect to larger than you can imagine.
‘Vastly different,’ said Dr Walid, who’s had this argument with me before. ‘But very similar to Molly’s. As is the dentition.’
‘Molly let you look in her throat?’
‘Not me,’ said Dr Walid, who had never got close to Molly with so much as a tongue depressor.
‘She’s perfectly reasonable if you explain yourself properly,’ said Dr Vaughan. ‘She let me have a quick look with a bronchoscope. Admittedly, it took a little while for her to get used to it, and I did have to get a second bronchoscope after she bit through the first one.’
‘Did you get a tissue sample as well?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ said Dr Walid. ‘That’s what we’ll use as a comparison for genome sequencing. But at an anatomical level, the positioning of the hyoid bone and the larynx are identical between Molly and Charlotte.’
‘Longer tongue, more control, and extra room to keep it in,’ said Dr Vaughan.
And if Charlotte the killer nanny was the same as Molly, then the chances were that she was the same as the so-called High Fae I’d encountered in Herefordshire. We couldn’t call them gammas. It made them sound like bad guys in a cheap first-person shooter – and what if they found out?
‘In that case,’ I said, ‘can we change the surname to Greenwood?’
‘Whatever for?’ asked Dr Vaughan.
‘Because one day we might want to share this data with them,’ I said. ‘And it will be slightly less embarrassing.’
8
Flat Roof Pub
So I spent the next couple of days seeing if I couldn’t find where Charlotte Greenwood had come from.
Some say there is an invisible line in the world that separates the demi-monde, the world of magic, from the mundane world of everyday existence. They say that if you step over that line, however unknowingly, your world will be changed for ever. They say that once you have taken that fateful step you can never go back, never unsee what you have seen, never unknow what you have discovered.
This is of course total bollocks.
Of course you can cross back; you can move to Burnley and become a hairdresser, or to Sutton and work in IT. You can go caravanning in Wales and never see a single dragon, and go swimming in the Severn and never meet the goddess Sabrina.
Even the very strange can leave the demi-monde if they put their mind to it. There’s definitely at least one bridge troll that I know of teaching PE at a comprehensive in Reading.
Those that don’t choose a quiet life teaching basketball to twelve-year-olds form what we call the demi-monde, because calling it the half-world in English would lead to too many questions. It’s made up of fae of all kinds, and also people who want to be fae or have been touched by the supernatural in some way, or just found this great pub with this really spooky atmosphere.
So pub crawling I went – from the Chestnut Tree at Hyde Park Corner to the Spaniards Inn in Highgate, to the shebeen that’s run off the roof of a tower block in Hillingdon. Everywhere I went I was greeted with the glad cries and open-hearted welcome that a police officer comes to expect when trawling his suspect pool.
I did get some co-operation if only, as it was made clear, to speed me on my way.
While I was out fruitlessly outreaching the community, the Queensland Police emailed back to say that Gabriel Tate had died the previous November after being bitten by an eastern brown snake at his home in Middle Park, Brisbane. That he didn’t recognise the bite for what it was, until he was too far gone, was attributed to his inexperience with Australian wildlife and it was considered an accidental death. Just to be on the safe side I requested the full file.
An email from the US regarding John Chapman just said Call me.
By the time I got back from Hillingdon it was past 8 p.m. in Washington DC, and so late enough to catch my US contact at home.
Leaving aside dumb luck, criminals are mainly caught by systems, not individuals. Most of these systems are officially sanctioned and come with virtual folders full of regulations and best practice, but some are complex webs of interpersonal relationships and traded favours. Where everyday policing butts up against boundaries – jurisdictional, national, ideological – the official linkages can clog up or break down or just plain fail to exist at all. Here the informal networks take over at every level, from ordinary hard-working but newly qualified DCs to the chief constables of major forces – they are tolerated as the quickest way to get the job done.
Foreign is always tricky even when you share a common language, and so a
sensible young copper looks to maintain whatever contacts might fall into his lap.
Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds was my contact at the FBI and ostensibly worked for the Office of Partner Engagement in Washington DC. She was also, as far as we both knew, the Bureau’s only Special Agent currently tasked with investigating weird bollocks. She suspected there might be more, but the top brass at the Puzzle Palace had made a point of discouraging her curiosity.
We’d been very cautious about our contacts until the previous winter, when Kimberley had been forced to break agency protocol and get my help, or at least my advice, long distance. And, in the aftermath, nothing happened. Which is impressive considering the centre of a small town was effectively levelled as a consequence.
Since that contact we’d regularly exchanged information, gossip and advice on the basis that if the powers-that-be didn’t want us to –and we had no doubt that we were being monitored – they’d bloody well say so.
‘I think we can safely assume,’ Kimberley had said during one conversation, ‘that the FBI now considers you a partner it’s engaging with.’
Still we didn’t say anything out loud that we didn’t want the NSA overhearing.
‘John Chapman taught Latin at John Carroll University in Cleveland,’ said Kimberley. ‘That’s the one that’s in Ohio.’
‘Taught Latin?’ I asked, not liking the past tense.
‘Died in an officer involved shooting last January,’ said Reynolds, who’d managed to get a look at the file.
Chapman had been filling up his car at a local gas station when he was attacked by a lone figure dressed in black combats and a black or dark blue winter jacket. Police theorise that the assailant was either planning a straight mugging or a carjacking, but either way he was out of luck because a Cleveland PD cruiser pulled into the gas station forecourt just as the attack went down.
The subsequent events were confused and not helped by the fact that the police cruiser’s camera was facing away from the action and the footage from the gas station’s CCTV was never recovered. According to the officers’ own statements they responded to what they initially perceived as an altercation, but as they were approached they were threatened by the unidentified assailant.
‘This is where you might find it interesting,’ said Reynolds. ‘The officers’ statements in the official investigation both say that the unidentified male threatened them with a long knife, “almost a sword”, and in fear of their lives they opened fire.’
Emptying their Glock 17s – 17 shots each – at their target.
‘I’ve seen panic fire before,’ said Kimberley. ‘And judging from the dispersion pattern those boys were strictly spray and pray.’
John Chapman had been struck three times in thigh, hip and chest and had died on the way to hospital. The unidentified assailant fled the scene and was never apprehended. The Cleveland PD’s follow-up investigation was swift, comprehensive and, to Kimberley’s eye, almost entirely fabricated.
‘It helped that Mr Chapman lived alone with no relatives and didn’t seem particularly loved at his place of work,’ she said.
‘No interest from the British Consulate?’ I asked.
‘Chapman had dual citizenship and Cleveland PD only recovered his American passport,’ said Kimberley. ‘I doubt it occurred to them to check further.’
‘Sloppy,’ I said.
‘Under pressure, in my view,’ said Kimberley. ‘But fortunately for you the DOJ was conducting an investigation of the whole department.’
Which meant that Kimberley had access to confidential documents without all the hassle of getting warrants – or permission.
Both the officers had been long-standing veterans. During their careers neither had faced complaints for excessive force and only one had discharged his firearm at an incident while the other had not – they were both described as reliable, professional and level-headed.
And both had retired from law enforcement within six weeks of the incident.
‘You think they ran into something,’ I said. ‘Something they didn’t understand?’
‘Oh, definitely.’
‘Any chance of you talking to them directly?’
‘Already booked on a flight.’
Kimberley was too experienced to make a move without cover – she had to have sanction from higher up. Strangely, who precisely constituted these higher-ups never arose in conversation. Obviously not worth discussing.
If this was sanctioned, then they must have been as spooked as Kimberley.
‘You’re that certain?’ I asked.
‘Thirty-four rounds, Peter,’ said Kimberley. ‘They hit the car eight times, two gas pumps three times each, they hit the “We’re Open” sign and the support pillars either side. And the only thing they didn’t hit was the mystery assailant? I know you have a low opinion of American law enforcement, but trust me when I say we teach our people to shoot straight.’
‘Then be careful,’ I said.
‘Always am.’
I checked in the next morning to see if we knew the whereabouts of Zachary Palmer, the demi-monde’s very own go-to guy for ducking and diving, bar work, fixing and general dishonesty. Due to a lucrative consultation contract with Crossrail, currently worth three hundred large a year, he didn’t actually have to do any ducking and diving. That he still fiddled his change and sold dodgy goods on the Portobello Road while the money piled up in a low interest building society account seemed to wind up Seawoll no end.
‘He could at least move to a Home Office priority crime,’ he said. ‘Something worth nicking him for. Or maybe he could buy something worth sequestrating.’
I explained that people like Zach were wired differently from most of us. Driven by a different set of priorities – even if they were as blind to their obsessions as we were to ours.
‘Is that what it is?’ Seawoll had said, giving me a long look. ‘Well, that explains a lot.’
Zach was also costing us a fortune, because a full-time surveillance is three shifts of five running 24/7 plus overtime – a cool two and a half grand a day. And every week or so he managed to shake them anyway. As he had that morning.
We still had to pay the bloody team, by the way – police work is by the hour, not by results.
‘Is he using magic to do that?’ asked Guleed.
‘He’s just really sneaky,’ I said. ‘But I reckon he only makes an effort when he wants to slope off and meet Lesley – which is a good thing.’
‘Because?’
‘For one thing, it means if we ever find Martin Chorley we can time his arrest to when she isn’t there,’ I said. ‘One less thing to worry about.’
There was no Goblin Market that week but Marcia, who grows underwater blow on the Regent’s Canal just outside Camden Lock, mentioned that she’d heard of unusual sightings of the High Fae around Southend and Canvey Island.
‘Only on moonless nights,’ said Marcia, a muscular white woman in her seventies who favoured sleeveless tops that showed off her impressive tattoo collection. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Yeah, thanks,’ I said. ‘But can we make sure it’s just tea this time?’
‘I’ve already said that was a mistake,’ said Marcia. ‘I got the labels mixed up.’
She ducked into the cabin to put the kettle on. Marcia’s boat is one of the few remaining narrowboats still rigged for cargo, with a small cabin at the stern and a long tarpaulin-covered A-frame over the holds forward. The tarpaulin was blue, which clashed horribly with the lurid red and orange gingerbread trim of the boat itself. Marcia had bought it in 1974 when she’d mustered out of the Merchant Marine. Previous to that she’d been first mate on a tramp freighter registered out of Panama. At the bow of the boat, just behind the prow, a half metre high carved wooden statue of an orangutan sat cross-legged, palms upwards in the style of the Buddha. Thi
s mark of allegiance being why Marcia didn’t pay tying up fees anywhere along the length of the canal.
That and the blow, of course. Which, while not containing any Falcon-actionable ingredients, and you can be sure we tested extensively, was potent enough for me to be missing one whole weekend. Guleed swears blind I didn’t do anything too embarrassing and so far nothing has surfaced on YouTube. Occasionally she or Bev, or once even Molly, will look at me and laugh . . . but that could just be my paranoia.
I glanced inside Marcia’s cabin long enough to make sure it was Sainsbury’s own label tea bags going into the mugs. Once the tea was done we did the whole ‘no obligation’ exchange – nobody knows whether this is really necessary, and nobody wants to be the first to find out the hard way that it is.
We sat opposite each other on the padded gunwales and chatted shit for a bit. It’s good when you’re running an investigation not to get tunnel vision. Sometimes spending a bit of time with the local faces can often yield better results than charging around yelling ‘Just the facts, ma’am’. So it proved that afternoon, although I didn’t spot the connections until much later.
‘You guys haven’t been stirring up the City, have you?’ she asked.
We were moored off Muriel Street in Islington, just short of the west end of the Islington Tunnel, which gaped like the entrance to a dark dimension, but really just led to more Islington. Marcia had gestured down it when she spoke – so I knew when she said ‘the City’ she meant the City of London proper.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Things have been unsettled recently.’
She refused to provide details – although she did suggest I might want to check out the Goat and Crocodile. Which turned out to be a pub in Shoreditch. When I checked the map I keep on my phone I saw that it lay squarely on the theoretical course of the Walbrook. The river that originally bisected the Roman city from north to south.
Worth a look, I thought.
Few buildings evoke the sinister horror of 1950s municipal architecture more strikingly than the flat roof pub. Thrown up in their thousands wherever the working class were being rehoused, it’s hard to imagine that the architects were not secret teetotallers looking to make the whole pub experience as grim as possible. How else do you explain the cheap portal frame construction, the equally cheap uninsulated concrete slabs, and the flat roof with just enough parapet to ensure that damaging puddles formed with the lightest drizzle.
Lies Sleeping Page 6
