The Hanging Tree

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Great, I thought, that turned out to be useful in the end, didn’t it?

  ‘Did you find Reynard?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘No,’ said Martin Chorley. ‘He’s a slippery little shit, isn’t he? I’m hoping he’ll run into Nightingale or the plod and get himself shot.’

  I risked turning my head, slowly, to see if I could locate either him or Lesley. He was standing three or four metres away in the centre of the roadway. He was wearing a tailored charcoal pinstripe suit cut in the modern style. He stood, legs slightly apart for balance, arms held loosely by his side – ready for action. I was happy to note that the suit jacket’s sartorial perfection had been marred by scorch mark that ran diagonally from shoulder to waist and his trousers were soaked through from the thighs downwards. Nightingale was obviously handing out lessons in appropriate work attire.

  Lesley was to his right, continuing her search of the parked cars. I couldn’t see the Renault from here but the white Humvee it was hiding behind stuck out half a metre over the line. She continued her search of each vehicle in turn, going round to the back of every car and blowing the lock off the boot, checking inside with a quick scan of the front and rear footwells to ensure nothing was stowed in there. About thirty seconds a car, counting walking time.

  ‘So apart from the face,’ I said, ‘why are you working with this guy?’

  Lesley ignored me, but the question obviously irritated Martin Chorley.

  ‘Because she’s properly English,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m not?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not that I blame you for that, you understand. Your mother was no doubt enticed over to fill some vacancy in the NHS or to drive a bus, or some other job that the working man was too feckless to do himself.’

  Or because she was jazz mad and couldn’t get a ticket to New York, I thought. He must have known a bit of my family history. I know he’d checked up on me, and had to have asked Lesley what she knew. My mum, who’d had a good job at the American library in Freetown, had unfortunately caught jazz off the radio and headed for the bright lights of the city, any city, and had found London and my father.

  Or perhaps he thought being a jazz mad groupie was something only young white women did, or even more likely he just couldn’t be bothered to fit his intelligence together into a proper assessment. Thank god, because if he had he would have known about the Renault that was six cars down the line from where Lesley was currently, and carefully, blowing the bloody doors off a rather tasty silver Porsche.

  ‘But Lesley is a proper Brit,’ said Martin Chorley, who I realised had probably been waiting years for an audience. ‘That wonderful blend of Romano-Celt and Anglo-Saxon with a flavouring of Dane and a pinch of Norman French. That happy breed that conquered the world and could again if all their children were kind and natural.’

  ‘Henry the Fifth,’ I said. ‘You’re doing the bit where Derek Jacobi introduces the traitors.’

  ‘There was a time when the monarchy meant something more than tea parties and sex scandals,’ said Martin Chorley. ‘Before the Saxe-Coburgs or the Tudors or anyone else American TV has done a miniseries about.’

  ‘Alfred the Great?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve always thought you were suspiciously well-educated for a boy from a sink estate,’ he said.

  ‘What can I say – I watched a lot of Time Team growing up.’

  ‘That’s not real archaeology,’ said Martin Chorley. ‘Talk to any proper professional archaeologist and they’ll tell you Time Team was a joke.’

  ‘You know a lot of archaeologists, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I’ve read widely,’ he said – suddenly cagey, which made me immediately curious.

  ‘What’s your favourite period?’ I asked.

  ‘What’s yours?’ he said, dodging the question.

  ‘I like the Romans,’ I said.

  ‘But you’re a policeman,’ said Martin Chorley. ‘Of course you’d like your brutality systemic and carefully licenced.’

  Actually, I thought, it was the underfloor heating and the regular baths.

  ‘I like the Dark Ages,’ said Martin Chorley rolling the syllables around in his mouth. ‘When a man could make himself a myth.’

  I could have talked archaeology and Victorian romanticism all day, but alas work had to take precedence. So while I let Martin Chorley monologue away, I laid my plans against him.

  Anyone can sense another person doing magic, if they’re close enough and they know what to look out for. In fact you can’t learn magic without someone to demonstrate the formae first. Right from the start I’d wondered whether some forms were ‘louder’ than others and it’s not a hard experiment to set up. For once Nightingale didn’t object, partly because sensing formae is the key to winning a magical duel. But mostly, I think, because it forced me to practise producing a consistent effect, which he is very big on.

  So we discovered that you can sense loud splashy spells such as impello or a fireball from as much as ten metres away. It’s down to two to three for normal were-lights and things like raising a shield, but less than a metre for certain variations on lux – particularly those that pushed the wavelength into the infrared. So while Martin Chorley indulged his strange need to confide in me, I slowly and carefully created a little invisible heat sphere, which I’m really going to have to come up with a name for, and nudged it in the direction of the nearest sprinkler head.

  It was a top-of-the-line system and the reaction was almost instantaneous.

  A good sprinkler system is gravity fed. The water comes from a big tank mounted as high as is practical and when the valves on the sprinkler heads activate, down that water comes. It’s a robust system with a minimum of moving parts and no pumps to malfunction at the wrong moment. The water keeps coming until the reservoir is exhausted.

  I knew that and, judging by the peeved expression on Martin Chorley’s face, so did he.

  I’d love to say I had a plan for what followed, but I’d be lying.

  I used the distraction to ease myself into a slightly better position, palms down on the decking ready to lever myself over and up, but Martin Chorley wasn’t that distracted.

  ‘Oh no you don’t,’ he said. ‘Face down, hands on your head.’

  I complied, linking my fingers in the wet hair at back of my head. When someone’s threatening you, you tend to pay attention. Which is why I was looking in the right direction when the Tesla S came drifting around the far corner of the garage and raced towards us.

  At first it just appeared, as if a silver shape was silently growing amongst the artificial rain, and I assumed it was someone else doing a spell. But then I registered the distinctive frowny face emoticon grille and realised what it was coming our way.

  You’d be amazed how fast you can get to your feet when you have to, and I didn’t even bother to go fully upright. I scrambled hand-and-foot to the side like a chimp. I like to think that any remote human ancestors watching from that big savannah in the sky would have given me full points for speed and agility, if not for style.

  ‘Not so fast,’ said Martin Chorley before he realised that something was behind him. He spun round to look and that was almost the last thing he ever did. I think he got some kind of barrier up before the Tesla hit him – and I’m certain that the driver corrected their course to make sure they hit him full on. I saw a flash of red hair in the driver’s seat – left hand, I noticed, so it was an import – and guessed that Reynard Fossman had wisely decided to get his retaliation in early.

  I completely understood his logic – if you go after the Faceless Man you want to make sure he goes down with the first strike. Not that that would stop us from charging Reynard with attempted murder if we thought we could make it stick.

  Lesley emerged from the line of cars – she was only one short of the white Humvee – and glanced down the length of the garage just in time to see the Tesla plough into the far wall, the crash strangely muted by the falling water.

  Lesl
ey turned to frown at me.

  ‘What have you done this time?’ she asked.

  I saved my breath for diving sideways, aiming for the gap between a red Mercedes and a forest green Range Rover, where I could just see my staff poking out behind a rear wheel.

  I felt Lesley start a spell, but before she could release it Reynard came running out of the falling water and jumped on her back. I tried to change direction but lost my footing on the wet tarmac and bounced face first off the Range Rover. I managed to slide down the side as if that was what I’d planned from the start and scooped up my staff.

  Reynard had gone feral, his burgundy button down shirt in strips and rags to reveal the thick russet hair covering his back and shoulders. His legs were wrapped around Lesley’s waist and he had his left arm around her neck while he pounded her head with his other hand. He was snarling, his lips pulled back to reveal his teeth, so that for a moment I thought he might actually be growing a muzzle and I was going to get my first look at a shape shifter.

  Still, science had to wait, and I levelled my staff and the wood hummed under my palm as I flattened the pair of them. Lesley twisted going down, throwing Reynard off onto his back. Neither was going to stay down for long, so I had my follow-up ready. But before I could release it, Reynard rolled back on his shoulders and then kicked himself up onto his feet. Lesley was slower and she was still my primary target, so I knocked her down again.

  She swore, rolled and I lost track of Reynard as I tried to close my distance with her.

  Then I heard Nightingale shout – ‘Down!’ and threw myself flat on my face.

  I only saw it coming because of the rain from the sprinklers. It was a like a lens, an optical distortion whirling through the air – a circular saw three metres across, droplets spraying off the top. Even as I was dropping I saw it slice horizontally through the front of the Humvee. And it was fast. I barely got my face to the concrete before it passed over me with a sound like tearing cloth. I looked up and saw Lesley had dropped as well.

  ‘Stay down!’ shouted Nightingale as something zigzagged over my head from behind me, with a noise like a hummingbird . . . if hummingbirds weighed twenty kilos and ate rats for dinner.

  A second and third super-hummingbird passed me to the left and right. I managed to catch a glimpse of one – it looked like a drill head made of silver snowflakes. Whatever they did when they hit a target, it wasn’t going to be a joy forever. I decided to stay down and started wriggling towards Lesley, who was making a spirited crawl for the shelter of the Humvee.

  ‘Get to cover,’ yelled Nightingale, which just goes to show that great minds think alike. This obviously applied to Lesley as well, because she scrambled to her feet even as I did. But not to Guleed, who came barrelling out of the rain and smacked Lesley down into the gap between the cars.

  I made it into my own gap between a BMW 5 series and a Jaguar XJ, whose resale value Lesley had recently lowered by ripping open the doors, just before a chunk of the ceiling collapsed onto the spot where I’d been lying.

  I peered through the windows of the BMW and saw Guleed grappling with Lesley on the other side. I couldn’t risk the crossfire on the roadway, so I clambered awkwardly around the back and arrived just in time to see Guleed snap her head forward and land as sweet a Glaswegian kiss as was ever administered outside the National Club in Kilburn. Lesley staggered back, clutching her nose, and before she could recover Guleed had her spun around with her right arm in an elbow lock and I, upholding the fine tradition of the Metropolitan Police Service, piled in behind. I’m sure, had she thought about it, Lesley would have approved.

  I hooked her feet out from under her, she went face down and I pulled the speedcuffs off my belt. It wasn’t that easy while trying to hang on to my staff, and I only had one of her wrists snapped when the white Humvee lurched half a metre over and squashed us up against the side of the BMW.

  ‘God, Peter,’ said Lesley. ‘Why are you so clumsy with the cuffs?’ And she elbowed me in the nuts. It hurt, but it would have hurt a lot more if I hadn’t been wearing the box that’s part of my PSU kit. I’ve been smacked in the bollocks before, and try to learn from my mistakes.

  The Humvee lurched again, and we would have been crushed if it hadn’t been for its high clearance, which allowed all three of us to slide underneath it.

  ‘Shit,’ said Lesley, ‘he’s getting away!’

  I followed her gaze and saw a pair of legs climbing into Reynard’s Renault. It was Reynard himself – I recognised the skinny hipster jeans as they climbed through the passenger door. The engine started, no microprocessors to fry on that car, and it started to pull out of the parking spot.

  ‘Where does he think he’s going?’ asked Guleed, which was a good question because there was no ramp up to the surface. Only the two vehicle lifts, and they were in lock-down.

  Lesley wriggled and I was trying to get a grip on her other wrist when she was dragged out from under the Humvee and into the roadway. Since me and Guleed were hanging onto to her, we went too.

  The sprinklers had finally stopped, leaving the decking a wet cold slick and the air full of the smell of stale water. I noticed that some serious puddles had accumulated in some of the parking bays and around the entrance to the lifts. Whoever had put the nice resin coating down had skimped on the drainage system.

  We had a good view of the Renault as it accelerated past us towards the far side of the garage. And an equally good look at the bonnet when it exploded in a ball of fire. Exactly the way cars in films do, and cars in real life don’t. It scraped forward for a couple of metres before grinding to a stop. Oily smoke poured from the ruined front of the car and, had there been any water left, that would have been a good time for the sprinklers to activate.

  Lesley kicked and twisted, but I think me and Guleed had both decided that our operational priority was arresting her which, unlike everything else going on around us, seemed within our performance envelope.

  The back of the Renault blew open of its own accord and a couple of storage crates, the same make as the ones back at The Chestnut Tree, bounced out onto the wet tarmac. Lesley made a lunge forward and then recoiled as Guleed sprayed her in the face with her CS aerosol.

  ‘Sahra!’ she spluttered.

  In the still underground air the smoke was quickly rolling over our heads. According to Frank Caffrey, about a third of fire deaths are down to smoke inhalation and he’s a professional so he should know. I wanted out of that basement. Fortunately, so did Guleed.

  ‘The stairwell,’ she shouted and we each kept one hand on Lesley as we crawled towards the atrium with the lifts and stairs. Also, I was thinking of those nice thick fire doors and the strong possibility that Stephanopoulos would be available nearby for tea, sympathy and first aid.

  Lesley didn’t co-operate.

  She somehow managed to roll herself sideways, right over my back, wrenching the speedcuffs out of my left hand and smashing her elbow into the side of my face so that my skull smacked the ground. I really wasn’t any good to man or police officer for what seemed like half an hour, but was probably more like ten seconds. The smoke had boiled down to ground level by then and I came to with Lesley gone and Guleed trying to drag me towards where she hoped the stairs were.

  I couldn’t see more than half a metre and every breath burnt the back of my throat. I was beginning to get seriously worried when I smelt dust and sandalwood and what might have been the hot wind off the desert, or possibly just the car burning a few metres away. Then the smoke blew away like the parting of the Red Sea and Lady Helena walked calmly past us down a lengthening corridor of clear air towards the Renault. She lifted her right hand and made a clenching gesture and the fire that engulfed the engine block snuffed out.

  Now that was a spell I definitely wanted to learn.

  Me and Guleed took advantage of the fresh air to clamber to our feet and start coughing. I was so busy attempting to expel my lungs that I didn’t follow Lady Helena to the back
of the Renault. One of the storage boxes was open and on its side and she squatted down and starting picking through the spray of manuscripts and plastic folders.

  After a few moments I had enough breath to ask whether she’d seen Nightingale.

  She didn’t look up from her search but she did shrug.

  ‘I think I might have been fighting him at one point,’ she said. ‘It all got rather confused. Ah!’ She stood up brandishing a package the size of a family sized box of Sainsbury’s own cornflakes. ‘Not a total waste of my time after all,’ she said and then strolled past me back towards the stairs. ‘If you’re looking to stop our friend Mr Chorley, my best guess is that he’ll try break out via the vehicle lifts.’

  I briefly considered trying to arrest her. Guleed caught my eye, waiting to follow my lead, but I shook my head. With the fire out the smoke wasn’t getting any thicker, but the dense haze remained pretty toxic and whatever air spell Lady Helena had cast we couldn’t count on it lasting forever. So me and Guleed gathered up the spilled loot, plonked it back in the storage container and carried it, and the one with the lid still on, back to the stairwell.

  There we found Stephanopoulos and a bunch of irate London Fire Brigade in breathing gear. She wanted to know if the garage was clear of Falcon, so she could let the fire officers in. But I couldn’t give her that assurance. It took us half an hour to locate Nightingale, who’d chased Martin Chorley through a brand new hole in the vehicle lifts but hadn’t dared continue the pursuit beyond the secure perimeter.

  ‘Far too high a risk of civilian casualties,’ he said later.

  Stephanopoulos didn’t look happy.

  ‘We have not exactly covered ourselves with glory,’ she said.

  ‘On the other hand,’ said Guleed, ‘none of us are dead.’

  ‘Just you wait until the Commissioner sees the bill,’ said Stephanopoulos.

  16

  Pleased to Meet You

  And so it ended like most Police operations do, not with a bang but with us whimpering over the paperwork. Or at least it would have for me and Guleed, if we hadn’t been whisked off to UCH where we snaffled up oxygen and tried not to listen while Dr Walid explained terms like tissue hypoxia to us in more detail than either of us would have liked. Fortunately we responded well to treatment and weren’t kept overnight. Beverley popped over to keep me company and then, typically, spent most of the time in Guleed’s cubicle gossiping – and not even about me. My mum turned up with a care package which I ate one-handed while fending off Bev, Guleed and Nightingale with the other. Once we were out, Beverley drove me back to her house in her sad little Kia and we shared a bath and then bed.