Lies Sleeping

by Ben Aaronovitch

‘Because it’s twisty and clever. I’m vexed with you for hiding that side from me. You see, I know you can do the job now, Peter.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so,’ I said. ‘You didn’t used to.’

  Lesley smiled.

  ‘I was willing to be convinced,’ she said. ‘And you are full of surprises.’

  ‘So you reckon I can do the job now?’

  ‘That’s what I said, didn’t I?’

  But, I thought, I no longer trust the things you say – do I?

  ‘But that’s not your problem is it?’ she said, and sipped her beer.

  ‘So now I’ve got a new problem?’

  ‘When we first met you always wanted to go clubbing,’ she said. ‘You were the one that wanted to catch a film, watch TV, go out for a curry.’

  ‘Not just me,’ I said. ‘Especially the curry thing.’

  ‘Yeah, maybe not the curry thing,’ she said. ‘But that’s not my point.’

  ‘You have a point? I thought we were just chatting – now you’ve got a point?’

  ‘When was the last time you took leave?’ she said. ‘See? You’ve got to think about it – it’s that rare a thing. You must have accumulated a shitload of holiday time.’

  ‘Not as much as you’d think,’ I said.

  ‘I want you to take some time off.’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lesley. ‘This is that chance.’

  ‘For how long?’ I asked, but Lesley wasn’t going to fall for that.

  ‘Until things have settled down,’ she said. ‘You’ll know when that happens.’

  ‘You think killing Punch is going to settle things down?’ I said, and shouldn’t have.

  Because now Lesley knew that I knew. But sometimes you’ve got to push to win.

  ‘You always were good at working stuff out,’ she said. ‘Not always exactly quick, but you get there in the end, don’t you?’

  ‘So what’s it all in aid of?’ I asked. ‘What does Marty want?’

  ‘He wants to make the world a better place.’

  ‘How?’

  Lesley’s eyes were suddenly cold.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘killing Punch would be a good start.’

  ‘What if getting rid of Punch fucks everything up?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like the city. Maybe he’s part of the ecosystem – maybe he’s necessary.’

  Lesley pinched her own cheek and pulled – it stretched a little bit further than was normal.

  ‘Talk to me about fucking Punch,’ she said. ‘I dare you. The cunt was in my head for months, Peter, fucking with my mind. I don’t care if the whole fucking city falls into a hole. Nobody does. Not really. At least nobody outside the M25.’

  ‘That’s a bit harsh,’ I said. ‘What’s the city ever done to you?’

  ‘You don’t get it, Peter,’ she said. ‘London sucks.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Fucking does – London sucks. Sucks the rest of the country dry. You want to get ahead, you have to go to London. You want to get away – go to fucking London. All the jobs, all the money goes to London. The rest of the country gets the leftovers, the bits that London doesn’t want.’

  ‘Like the DVLA,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And the BBC, of course.’

  ‘Not the important bit,’ she said, and checked her watch. ‘Out of time.’ She got up and started pulling on her coat. ‘Any longer and people are going to start looking for you.’

  ‘I didn’t call anyone,’ I said.

  ‘More fool you, then.’ She turned to go. ‘Take the holiday, Peter,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘And don’t follow me out.’

  I waited until I was sure she couldn’t see me and then scrambled after her – keeping low so the crowd would shield me if she looked back. Dusk had fallen while we talked and I burst out the front door into the warm half-light of Holborn. I looked left and right, but no sign of Lesley or even a stranger with Lesley’s walk.

  To the left was Holborn Station, but I didn’t think she’d risk the CCTV coverage on the Underground. Where would she go? Down the back streets and into Lincoln’s Inn, maybe? I was pulling my phone out when an IRV, a silver Astra with Battenberg squares, pulled up with no lights and no siren. The uniform inside leant over and called my name.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘They’re setting up a perimeter.’

  I got in, but even while I was pulling on the seatbelt I was wondering who ‘they’ were since I hadn’t called it in when Lesley arrived. Nightingale wouldn’t have me tracked – right?

  I went to click the seat belt in, but an arm wrapped around my chest from behind and I smelt beer and clean hair – Lesley. Something bit into my neck and I heard her tell the driver to cut the lights. Contrary to the films, no safe sedative will put you out instantly. But whatever Lesley had jabbed me with was filling up the corners of my mind with beer flavoured milkshake. I stopped trying to dislodge Lesley’s arm and flailed at the driver. I had some mad idea that if I could distract him we might crash, or at least draw attention to the car. It might have worked. I don’t know, because the milkshake was foaming over my eyes and my last thought was that Nightingale was going to be disappointed and Beverley was going to be really pissed off.

  25

  An Alarming Lack of Cocktail Parties

  I woke up in darkness and, judging from the smell of my own breath, wearing a cloth hood. I was lying on my side on a metal surface with my legs fastened and my arms tied behind my back. There was something yielding that was supporting my head, carefully placed to avoid positional asphyxiation. Which was just as well, since I was definitely not feeling well. Like I said . . . nothing that sedates you that fast is remotely safe.

  Even with a hood on, I was unmistakably in the back of Sprinter or a Transit van. I was a bit short of clues otherwise. I tried counting turns as I was thrown from side to side, but lost track and all I could smell was the inside of the hood. I doubted I was going to be recreating this journey with the help of a preternaturally perceptive blind person and a deceptively cheerful flock of geese. I suppose it could have been worse – I could have been head down in a barrel.

  I’ve never been that good at judging time without an external reference. Dr Walid thinks it’s because I’m outwardly orientated and always looking to establish my position within the wider environment. He thinks that might be why I’m good at vestigia. But, given that his data pool consists of five people, I’m not giving that theory much weight. Whatever, I think it was about half an hour from when I regained consciousness to the van coming to a halt.

  I heard the back doors creak open and was seriously considering lashing out with my feet when hands grabbed my legs and dragged me out. They were strong, whoever it was, strong enough to effortlessly lift me and sling me over their shoulder. And it wasn’t a wide shoulder either, and bony enough to dig into my stomach. What with the aftermath of the sedative, the hood and the jogging up and down, they were all sodding lucky they didn’t have to wash that hood afterwards.

  Then I was lowered, with surprising care, into a chair with my wrists behind the seat back. The ridiculously strong hands kept me from moving while somebody else fixed what felt suspiciously like alligator clamps to my left index finger and the top of my right sock.

  I heard Chorley ask whether things were ready and Lesley say they were. I felt the tape securing the neck of the hood being ripped off, followed by the hood proper. I squinted in the sudden light.

  I was in a large, high-ceilinged room with a row of tall metal-framed windows with small panes. The walls were whitewashed brick with rounded edges along the windowsills and doorways. Interwar Art Deco industrial, I guessed, a former school or office, not so common a design that I couldn’t trace it
later.

  Chorley was perched on a chair in front of me, elbows on his knees, leaning forward intently but not, unluckily, close enough for me to bite his nose. He was dressed office casual in tan slacks and a light blue pinstripe shirt, top button undone – no tie.

  I knew it was futile but I conjured up a shield to cut the ties on my hands. Before I even had the forma lined up my body gave an involuntary jump – a thudding shock and then pain.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Lesley from behind me.

  I recognised the set-up – it came straight out of Nightingale’s wartime guide to holding practitioner POWs.

  ‘What have you got that plugged into?’ I asked. ‘The mains?’

  ‘As it happens, yes,’ said Lesley. ‘We couldn’t find a car battery.’

  ‘Now we’ve established that we’ve taken adequate precautions,’ said Chorley, ‘perhaps we can get down to business?’

  ‘You’ve kidnapped a police officer,’ I said. ‘The last time that happened Nightingale hunted the perpetrators down like dogs – and I mean literally like dogs – from horseback.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Chorley. ‘I personally wanted you dead. I had some talent lined up to shoot you as you came out of your mother’s flat.’

  You want to be calm and in control and insouciant in the face of danger. But I was thinking of the ‘talent’ and my mum and dad and for a moment I was paralysed by the conflicting waves of fear and rage. I could feel my face burning and my hands flex – Lesley gave me a little cautionary shock.

  I didn’t snarl – Stay away from my family – because I felt we could take the horrific and protracted vengeance speech as read. Still, I’d have to take the threat to my parents more seriously in the future.

  If I lived long enough.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about your parents,’ said Chorley. ‘I’m not foolish enough to think that would slow you down for a moment, and it is unnecessary in any case. Short of killing you, this is by far the most elegant solution.’

  ‘Why not kill me?’ I asked, because I’m stupid that way.

  ‘You know why not,’ he snapped. ‘Your friend Lesley has an unwarranted soft spot for you. Although I’m beginning to see that you could well have a place in our new tomorrow. That’s why I let her have one last go at persuading you to stand down – which is why you’re still alive now. Despite our little contretemps the other day.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that,’ said Chorley.

  And because you never know your luck, I asked him where he got the vampire bits from.

  ‘You’d be surprised what you can buy on the dark web these days,’ said Chorley. ‘And what shadows lie behind the shadows you think you know.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘What shadows are those?’

  ‘Lesley is right about you in one way. You are persistent. I’m not about to breach my own operational security. And besides,’ he gave me a bright smile, ‘most of it will be irrelevant soon.’

  ‘What, you mean when the sleeper awakes and leads a jihad to conquer the known universe,’ I said.

  ‘Very funny,’ said Chorley.

  ‘What was that about?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘Sorry, wrong power fantasy,’ I said. ‘I mean when Arthur wakes and rides out with his chosen knights to . . . What, exactly? Storm Buckingham Palace? What are you expecting to happen?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you think you know, Peter,’ said Chorley, frowning.

  ‘I know you’re obsessed with the Dark Ages and with Arthur,’ I said. ‘And I know you think you’ve got hold of Excalibur. And I know you murdered John Chapman and probably Gabriel Tate to keep the details quiet.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Chorley, ‘the first I knew about John and Gabriel’s deaths was when Lesley read your report on it and told me. Sorry – nothing to do with me.’

  His mobile rang then – the jingling factory-set tune – and he pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and grimaced.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, getting up. ‘I’ve got to take this. Back in a mo.’

  I waited until I was certain he was out of the room before asking for a cup of tea.

  ‘Later,’ she said. ‘If you’re good.’

  ‘You know he’s a plastic toy short of a happy meal – right?’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘Because he believes in magic?’

  ‘Because he plans to bring back King Arthur. The Once and Future King. You know, the one that was totally made up by a bunch of Welsh Nationalists and romantic Frenchmen.’

  I heard Lesley laugh behind me.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve done a bit of reading on the subject.’

  ‘I bet that helped you with your PIP2 qualifications.’

  ‘Still passed,’ I said, because Lesley always did know how to sidetrack me.

  ‘Not Arthur,’ she said suddenly. ‘We don’t need a man with a sword, do we?’

  ‘What do we need?’

  ‘We need the power behind the legend. The brains, the magic. You should like this. This is your kind of stuff.’

  Oh shit, I thought. And suddenly I could see it. Chorley was a man who liked to walk in the shadows and stand beside the throne – not Arthur. Never Arthur. Not the king of Camelot.

  But its architect,

  ‘Do me a favour,’ I said wearily.

  ‘That’s exactly what I’ve been trying to do from the start.’

  ‘There never was a Merlin,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah?’ said Lesley. ‘And you know that because?’

  ‘Because people have spent the last hundred years looking for him,’ I said. ‘And he’s nowhere to be found.’

  I heard the scrape of chair legs on cement and Lesley walked out in front of me. She was carrying a silver and black metal button box of the kind used to operate heavy industrial equipment, which trailed a braided blue cable behind it. I didn’t need to ask where that went.

  Still, my chair didn’t seem to be fastened down. And with Lesley now in front of me I reckoned that if her attention wavered I could yank myself free of the clips before she could react. That’s why the operator is supposed to stay behind the prisoner.

  Lesley must have caught my attitude, because she frowned and wiggled the button box at me.

  ‘Regarding Merlin,’ she said, ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’

  ‘And children’s books are not evidence of shit,’ I said. ‘Or both of us would have gone to Hogwarts.’

  ‘I don’t get it, Peter. We’ve both met people . . .’ she put a deliberately alien stress on the word people, ‘who are thousands of years old. People hidden beneath the streets. And you’re shagging a river, for Christ’s sake. We do spells. I mean, what do you find intrinsically unlikely about Merlin being a real person?’

  ‘What if he’s Welsh?’

  ‘What if he is?’

  ‘Then he’s hardly likely to give you back the England you want, is he?’

  ‘He’s not going to give us anything,’ she said. ‘He’s going to help us make Britain a better place.’

  ‘Better how?’

  ‘Just better,’ she said, the corners of her mouth drawing downwards. ‘Nicer, cleaner, better!’ She shouted the last word and then paused to get control. ‘Not the shithole it is now.’

  ‘Something we can all be proud of,’ said Chorley, coming back into the room.

  He nodded at Lesley, who retreated back out of my sight – the button box cable swishing behind her like an angry tail.

  Chorley beckoned to someone else behind me.

  ‘Come over here, Foxglove,’ he said. ‘I want to introduce you properly.’

  I twisted my head to track a pale white woman stepping hesitantly into view.

  I’d never met a more obvious fae who wasn’t riding a unicorn. She was impossibly tal
l and slender, with elongated arms that emerged from a loose brown sleeveless smock and ended in long-fingered hands. She had supermodel legs in black leggings that ended at the ankles to expose dainty pink feet. Her face was long and oval, with a small mouth and chin, prominent cheekbones and big hazel eyes. Her hair was a cascade of gleaming black down her back.

  She shyly stopped beside Chorley and did a little nod and dip in my direction.

  ‘Foxglove,’ said Chorley. ‘This is Peter Grant, who will be staying with you for a while.’

  ‘Hi,’ I said, as brightly as a man tied to a chair can.

  I might have gone for a bit of charm, except Foxglove stepped forward and, with no real discernible effort, lifted me up and threw me over her shoulder. This explained the painfully thin shoulder from earlier, I thought – where was this one when I was carrying ten tons of shopping back from Ridley Road market?

  She carried me quickly out of the room and, I think, down a corridor and into another room. I was hoping I’d become detached from the pain-making machine but Lesley was nippily following us and kept giving me low-level shocks every fifteen seconds or so to keep me off balance. Mostly, all I could see was Foxglove’s hair but I caught glimpses of more cream coloured 1930s brick, a corridor, a double door and then we were out into an echoing space full of natural light.

  Finally Foxglove plonked me down, seized my shoulders and turned me to face forward. We were in a large room – a workshop with high walls and a dirty glass skylight roof. The floor was bare cement with no visible furniture and at my feet lay an ominous dark round hole three metres across.

  ‘I made this especially for you, Peter,’ said Martin Chorley. So he’d followed us, too. ‘To keep you safe and sound until the work is finished.’

  I looked down the hole – all I could see was a circular stretch of vinyl matting at least five metres down. It didn’t look very safe to me.

  ‘And afterwards, when we’re all eating dung for dinner,’ I said, ‘you don’t think I’m going to come looking for payback?’

  I felt strong fingers break the ties on my feet and then my wrists.

  ‘Not particularly,’ he said. ‘I know your type, Peter. You believe in law and order, and soon there will be a new order.’