Was that what Martin Chorley was about?
I kept my eye on the case and phoned Isis.
‘Peter,’ she said when she picked up. ‘What a lovely surprise. You’re not phoning to cancel tomorrow, are you? Oxley would be devastated – you know how he likes to tell you his stories. Especially now that he’s worn them out up here.’
‘Nah, we’re still on,’ I said. ‘Barring emergencies. I wondered whether you’d had a chance to talk to the Old Man yet?’
‘Oh,’ said Isis, sounding surprised. ‘That. Has that become important?’
I looked over at the empty sword case and the inscription below it and said that I thought it might have done.
‘I’ll pop over and have a chat before we head down to meet you,’ she said.
After the call I opened the shutters on one of the windows. They looked north over a courtyard and beyond that, rearing over the roofs opposite, was the white dome of St Paul’s.
21
A l’ombre des jeunes rivières en crue
The next day Isis and Oxley were coming down to London for an evening performance of La Bohème at the Royal Opera House. We’d decided ages ago that we’d meet up for drinks beforehand and for some reason we ended up in the Punch and Judy Tavern in Covent Garden Market.
‘It’s amazing how little damage the fire did,’ said Oxley.
The balcony ran along the middle of the west end of the market building and faced the east portico of St Paul’s Church where, incidentally, I had met my first ghost. It’s also famously the last resting place of many celebrated luvvies, and is thus known as the Actors’ Church. Which serves to distinguish it from its larger, more famous, namesake.
‘That’s because Beverley here put it out,’ said Isis.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘The water damage was worse than the fire damage.’ Beverley kicked me under the table. ‘Also, this is a solid brick building. So the structure remained intact.’
Half the shops had changed, though.
Apple had taken the opportunity to put in their iBar and the new money had scrubbed away some of the character.
Isis frowned.
‘You don’t mind coming here, do you?’
I assured her I didn’t and explained that this was where I’d done my probation, arrested my first drunk and solved my first investigation. Kissed Beverley for the first time, too – well, that was up the road at Seven Dials, but still.
There were other memories – the ruin of Lesley’s face and the realisation that I was too late. Nearly getting myself hanged on stage and Seawoll clothes-lining me in the Floral Hall Bar. And Beverley floating above me with the firelight refracting through the water before she swept it away with the wave of a hand.
And that was just the first half of the year.
Because I was, amazingly enough, off shift I managed to have my first guilt-free pint for ages. Although my phone was still on and Nightingale had told me to stay upright if at all possible.
‘I don’t like it, Peter,’ he’d said after the morning briefing. ‘It’s all too complicated. Chorley has proved masterful at deceiving us in the past and I fear a great deal of what we’re finding is part of an elaborate ruse. What Varvara would call a maskirovka.’
He wanted us to stay open-minded and alert.
And I really wanted that pint.
‘Fleet was well pissed off,’ said Beverley.
‘As well she might be,’ said Oxley.
There was an East Asian woman doing street magic in front of the portico. From the balcony I could see the way the crowd formed up around her. She was good, catching individuals’ eyes, flirting with the teenagers and getting the younger kids excited by flicking her cards palm to palm like a juggler. When she did something clever you could see the surprise and excitement ripple out through the people around her.
The crowd goes one way and the thief goes the other way. They’re excited, he’s careful. They’re relaxed, he’s tense. And even if I hadn’t known him by name I would have spotted him for the career pickpocket he was.
‘Freddy,’ I shouted down from the balcony.
He looked up. I waved. It took a moment for him to recognise me, then he looked frantically around to see if a couple of response officers were closing in on him. When he didn’t spot any, he gave me a surly look.
I made a throat cutting motion and pointed south towards the Strand.
Freddy hesitated but the implication was clear – if he made me come down there and arrest him it was going to go very hard indeed. Finally he shrugged and slouched off – northwards, I noticed, the opposite of where I’d pointed.
I turned back to find the others staring at me.
‘Pickpocket,’ I said.
Beverley shook her head and Oxley laughed.
‘Well spotted,’ said Isis. ‘You’re not going to leave us and give chase, are you?’
I said that fortunately in these degenerate modern times such things were not necessary. Then I got my phone out and texted Inspector Neblett, my former shift commander, and let him know that our old mate Frederick William Cotton was obviously out of prison again. Probably now planning to work Oxford Street.
I refocused as the waitress brought the second round of drinks. I had another gloriously guilt-free pint. Oxley had something called a Brewdog Vagabond Pale Ale, which came in a bottle and which he claimed never to have tasted before.
‘I’m trying new things,’ he said.
Including a new suit in khaki chambray that had either been tailored deliberately baggy or had once belonged to someone else. Isis was similarly smartly turned out in a burgundy floor-length dress and matching jacket with cream buttons. I did mention that the opera had got a lot more informal since they last attended, which didn’t seem to bother Isis at all.
‘Well, I dress to please myself,’ said Isis, and clinked glasses with Beverley.
‘And I dress to please my love,’ said Oxley.
They all looked at me.
‘I dress to project an aura of confident authority,’ I said.
‘Not to please your goddess?’ said Oxley.
‘We much prefer the pair of you as nature intended,’ said Isis.
‘In which case,’ said Oxley, putting down his drink, ‘your wish is my command.’
He started stripping off his jacket and was only stopped when Isis grabbed his hand.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she said.
‘Are they not as fickle as the wind?’ said Oxley. ‘And as changeable as the sea.’
‘I’m not going anywhere near that, mate,’ I said, and Isis asked Beverley what she planned to do with her degree.
‘I’ve still got another year,’ said Beverley.
Down in the Piazza the street magician had given way to a small white man in a shabby suit and a top hat. I felt a moment of unease until he pulled out a yellow balloon and started comically failing to make an animal out of it. He did his patter in a broad West Country accent that had nothing to do with the skeleton army or the cruel streets of nineteenth-century London.
‘I was thinking of going into flood management,’ said Beverley.
‘Isn’t that cheating?’ asked Isis.
‘I like to think of it more as offering a unique insight.’
‘The insight being that they pay you money and you don’t flood their back gardens?’ said Isis.
Beverley denied the extortion aspect, although she admitted that she might end up having to extract some promises from her sisters if she did work in the lower Thames.
‘Which reminds me,’ said Isis. ‘When are Nicky and Brent coming up to visit?’
‘Are you sure you want them back?’ I asked. ‘After what happened last time?’
Oxley waved away any problems.
‘After all,’ he said. ‘Who hasn’t capsized a boat
when they were young?’
‘And I was asked to ask if Abigail might come up before school starts again,’ said Isis. ‘We’d love to have her for a week or two.’
I thought of all that chatting late at night and the sound of the tent zipping up.
‘Asked by who?’ I asked.
‘See how he bristles?’ said Oxley. ‘Ever vigilant of his sister’s honour.’
‘Not my sister,’ I said, which the others seemed to find hilarious.
I said I’d check with her parents, but I already knew they’d say yes. They were horribly trusting, and worse, held me responsible. My dad said that this would be a good preview of life with my own children, but what he thought he might know about it I don’t know.
Oxley asked if we were eating and Beverley did the honours – summoning up a startled looking white guy in a blue pinstripe shirt, who I sincerely hoped was bar staff and not some random member of the public. We’ve talked about the ethics of this, but she does like to show off in front of her country cousins.
Anyway, whoever the guy was, fish and chips and steak and ale pie arrived pretty damn quick. Oxley turned out to be a surprisingly dainty eater and at one point Beverley nudged me and told me to stop embarrassing her in public. But, I mean, if you can’t eat battered cod with your fingers, how should you eat it?
‘Patience,’ said Isis. ‘It only took me a couple of hundred years to stop my darling from farting at the table.’
I pointed out that Beverley had her own bad habits, such as leaving her wetsuits lying around the living room.
‘While still wet,’ I said. ‘Not to mention that time you climbed into bed in the middle of the night still wearing it.’
‘I was going out again in a minute,’ said Beverley. ‘I didn’t want all the hassle of putting it back on.’ Not even after she’d kissed me awake.
Isis and Oxley, who both made a point of swimming unabashedly naked, gave me an interested look, which I ignored. My dad says that a gentleman never tells and my mum says nor tel me business to other person despite being quite happy to tell my business to a non-trivial proportion of London’s Sierra Leonean population. I decided it was time to change the subject, so I asked Isis if she’d had a chance to ask Father Thames about King Arthur.
‘Ha,’ said Isis. ‘Yes, I did. Although I think I should have listened to my husband.’
‘I warned you it would be a pretty riddle,’ said Oxley.
‘I couldn’t speak to its beauty, but it was in Latin.’ Isis asked me if I was sure I wanted to hear it. ‘Often times the answer is not worth the question.’
‘Nice,’ said Beverley. ‘I’ll remember that one.’
‘I’ll take the risk,’ I said.
‘Dicito praeconi lucis,’ said Isis.
‘lucis’ I recognised but ‘praeconi’ I didn’t know.
‘Something of the morning?’ I asked.
‘Herald,’ said Oxley. ‘Herald of the morning – that’s you, by the way.’
‘I thought I was a starling,’ I said.
‘And the herald of the morning,’ said Isis.
‘I thought the herald of the dawn was the rooster.’
‘Do you want to hear the rest or not?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Dicito praeconi lucis,’ she said. ‘Si pontem ad urbem servandam dissolvet, praemium suum exilium erit.’
‘Should I dissolvo the bridge?’
Even as I said it, I remembered the feel of the ghost spear in my hand, the feel of the impact as I drove it through the chest of Punch and pinned him to the decking of the first London Bridge.
A ghost spear, a dream Punch, a memory of London’s past.
Praemium suum exilium erit.
His reward will be exile.
‘Peter?’ said Beverley – they were all staring at me.
‘I don’t fancy exile,’ I said.
‘That’s your actual prophecy, that is,’ said Oxley. ‘You’d better watch out.’
Because when you find the hand of destiny on your shoulder, the proper London response is to deny you’re the one she’s looking for.
‘What, me, guv?’ I said.
22
What You Were Supposed to Do
You don’t have to tell a police officer that life can go sideways with no warning. But knowing this is one thing, and getting a phone call from Lesley while I was halfway through a smoked kipper is another.
‘Shut up, Peter, and listen,’ she said – which was harsh, given I hadn’t said anything yet.
‘Go,’ I said.
‘Martin’s going to do something stupid. He’s going to run an experimental sacrifice.’
‘Jesus Christ, Lesley, you’ve—’ I began, but Lesley talked right over me.
‘I don’t know who the subject’s going to be,’ she said. ‘But he said that the city had enough rivers already and nobody was going to miss one.’
I went cold at that.
‘Anything else?’ I asked.
‘Just that,’ said Lesley.
‘Was he playing you?’
‘Do me a favour,’ she said, and cut the call.
It’s just as well that Nightingale insists that we all dress for breakfast, because we were down the stairs and out the back into the Portakabin in under sixty seconds.
Nightingale called Oxley and I called Beverley first and Lady Ty second.
‘How credible is this?’ she asked.
‘Credible,’ I said. ‘Can you alert everyone else?’
She said she would, and then get back to me with the dispositions.
After I put the phone down I called Stephanopoulos and alerted her, then Jaget Kumar at BTP and finally, because it had been a contact with Lesley, DI William Pollock at the DPS.
Once we were sure everyone had been warned, we went back upstairs to finish our breakfast.
‘There’s no point rushing around on an empty stomach,’ said Nightingale.
Well, he finished his breakfast . . . I wasn’t hungry any more.
‘This could be another trap,’ he said, tucking his napkin back into his collar.
I said I didn’t think so – if only because the clues to a trap would have to be clearer.
‘Another distraction, then?’
‘Maybe,’ I said, and sat down.
There was still some toast so I buttered a bit and had that, because it was either toast or my fingernails.
The last time Martin Chorley had gone after one of the Rivers, his assassin had got a metre of metaphysical steel through his chest and Chorley himself had been swept away by a bijou urban tsunami.
And that was when Lady Ty hadn’t known he was coming.
I almost wanted him to have another go, because it would save us a lot of time and effort if someone – say, Fleet – were to vigorously defend herself to the point of saving the criminal justice system a ton of paperwork.
But then I remembered the Yellowstone and the weaponised vampirism and the dead John Chapman’s sudden interest in the Walbrook. I called Beverley on my mobile.
‘Hi, babes,’ she said. ‘Suddenly we’re all at Mum’s.’
‘Is anybody covering Walbrook?’ I asked.
I heard her asking about – in the background the football, ‘Prisoner’ by the Weeknd, and an all-comers junior Rivers shouting contest were attempting to drown each other out. While she was doing that I walked back up to my room and dug out my undercover Metvest. This is just an ordinary Metvest, only with a beige pocketless nylon cover instead of the blue one that goes with the uniform. Wearing it makes you about as inconspicuous as a silver Astra parked outside a youth centre, but I’ve come to find the sensation of wearing a rigid plastic tank top strangely comforting.
Down the phone I could hear Brent threatening to flood the living room unless she
got the next go on the games console, and I was quite curious to see if she’d follow through, but Beverley came back on line to tell me that no one had thought to check on Walbrook.
‘She never has anything to do with us,’ she said.
It was Guleed’s day off so I scooped up Carey from the breakfast room, and while he was digging up his Metvest I went to confer with Nightingale in the incident room.
‘At the very least you can warn her,’ said Nightingale. ‘Sahra’s on her way in. Once she’s here we’ll head over to St Paul’s and use that as a staging post.’
‘You think the cathedral is important?’ I asked.
Nightingale tapped the point on the whiteboard where arrows from John Chapman and the Paternoster Society converged on a crude picture of the dome of St Paul’s.
‘It keeps coming up in the investigation,’ he said. ‘However, more germane to today’s operation is that it’s a good central location. From there I’ll be in a position to support you and David or deploy somewhere else should the need arise.’
‘What’s to stop him going up the river, or somewhere else entirely?’ I asked.
‘Word, as they say, is out,’ said Nightingale. ‘Lady Ty and Oxley have been using their national contacts and even small fry like your friend Chester are now covered. And all his behaviour in the last year has centred around the City in one way or another.’ He tapped the whiteboard again and frowned.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Walbrook – I’ll feel better when you’re there.’
I made sure we had a couple of screamers in the nondescript Rover before we pulled out. Then I interpreted Nightingale’s impatience as assigning an A Grade to the shout, stuck on the blues and twos as we cleared the gates and were doing a brisk, but totally within guidelines, forty mph before I hit Theobalds Road.
‘Is there something I should know?’ asked Carey, as he braced himself against the dash.
I explained as best as I could while swerving around deaf commuters and suicidal white van drivers, although I left out the metaphysics and concentrated on the policing.
‘We think Chorley might try and off one of Lady Ty’s sisters,’ I said.
‘Is that the one with the pub in Shoreditch?’ asked Carey, showing that he did actually stay awake in the briefings – he must have been the only one below the rank of inspector who did.
Lies Sleeping Page 19
