The Hanging Tree (PC Peter Grant Book 6)

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Seawoll.

  ‘And he came to see you last night?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

  I read them in on my brief encounter with Reynard at the gig and his message to Nightingale.

  ‘This can’t be a coincidence,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘Him turning up just as he becomes a person of interest.’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Seawoll, allowing a tinge of melancholy to enter his tone. ‘I was hoping to wrap MARIGOLD up – I’ve got a nice stabbing in Fulham which would be much better use of our Miriam’s professional time.’

  ‘Then I suggest that we apprehend him as swiftly as we can,’ said Nightingale. ‘So we can rule him in or out of your inquiry.’

  Stephanopoulos glanced down at her tablet where I knew she had the latest IIP on Reynard Fossman. I also knew there were some things in there she didn’t like, because she’d actioned Guleed to get the information and Guleed had glared at me until I’d handed over the file I’d already compiled on the red-headed little toerag.

  ‘Fossman,’ said Stephanopoulos, ‘from the German fuchs for Fox, so Foxman,’ she caught my eye. ‘Reynard the Fox.’

  ‘Nasty little sociopathic trickster who turns up a lot in fourteenth century French literature, sort of like Brer Rabbit but without the redeeming sense of humility,’ I said.

  Reynard Fossman had a string of convictions, the most serious of which was ABH for biting the ear of a member of the Old Berks Hunt during an anti fox-hunting demonstration, and a couple of assaults against similarly hunting-orientated gentlemen. Beyond that it was all trespass, public order offences – also hunting protest related – and an alleged indecent exposure when he was found running naked across Wimbledon Common which, according to Reynard, was a prank gone wrong. The arrest report was a fun read and the arresting officers had lent him some trousers and dropped him off at his house.

  ‘So he’s a French fairy tale,’ said Seawoll and turned to look, thank god, at Nightingale instead of me. ‘Is he?’

  ‘That’s a difficult question, Alexander,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘I know it’s a difficult question, Thomas,’ said Seawoll slowly. ‘That why I’m fucking asking it.’

  ‘Yes, but do you want to know the actual answer?’ said Nightingale. ‘You’ve always proved reluctant in the past. Am I to understand that you’ve changed your attitude?’

  ‘You can fucking understand what you bloody like,’ said Seawoll. ‘But in this case I do bloody want to know because I don’t want to lose any more officers to things I don’t fucking understand.’ He glanced at me and frowned. ‘Two is too many.’

  ‘Well, he’s definitely associated with the demimonde,’ began Nightingale.

  ‘The demi-monde?’ asked Seawoll, who didn’t appreciate being unhappy and liked to spread it around when he was.

  ‘It’s what we call all the people involved in some way or the other with weird bollocks,’ I said, in an effort to head them both off. ‘Some of them are just people that know things and others are people who are a bit strange in themselves.’ Out loud it sounded even weaker than it had in my head. But Seawoll nodded.

  ‘Individuals like Reynard are not uncommon,’ said Nightingale. ‘And it’s hard to tell whether they have, consciously or unconsciously, sought to mimic a figure from folklore or myth, or whether they are indeed an incarnation of that figure.’

  ‘And the difference being?’ asked Seawoll.

  ‘The first is relatively innocuous,’ said Nightingale. ‘But if Reynard is the story made flesh, then he’s as dangerous an individual as you are likely to meet.’

  ‘More dangerous than you?’ asked Seawoll.

  ‘Perhaps we shall find out,’ said Nightingale.

  Stephanopoulos heaved a sigh that they probably heard upstairs in the Outside Inquiry Office.

  ‘Not that I’m not enjoying the spectacle, lads, but what if we drag this back down to the practicalities,’ she said. ‘Reynard had a message for you – one he was sure you’d be interested in.’

  I checked my notes to make sure I got the phrasing right – ‘He said he could put us in touch “with a certain someone who has an item he might well like to purchase”. I asked him what, and he said Jonathan Wild’s final ledger.’

  You can’t be a London copper and have any interest in history and not know the story of Jonathan Wild – neither Stephanopoulos or Seawoll had to ask who Wild was. But, being police, they did want to know exactly why it would be of interest to the Folly.

  ‘Aside from its obvious historical value, the ledger is thought to reveal the whereabouts of some of Sir Isaac Newton’s lost papers,’ said Nightingale. ‘The ones that Keynes couldn’t get hold of.’

  ‘Are you telling me that Sir John Fucking Maynard Keynes was one of your lot?’ said Seawoll.

  ‘An associate,’ said Nightingale. ‘Not a practitioner.’

  ‘And Isaac Newton is significant to the Folly why?’ asked Stephanopoulos.

  ‘Because he founded it,’ said Nightingale.

  Because, back in the go-ahead post-Renaissance pre-Enlightenment days of the seventeenth century there was no science or magic as such – it was all Natural Philosophy and people hadn’t quite got round to deciding which was which. Back then chemists hadn’t had that dangerously foreign ‘al’ removed and Sir Isaac Newton wanted all the answers to everything – how long the universe was going to last, the exact date of god’s creation, how to make the Philosopher’s Stone, and why do things that go up have to come back down again.

  In those days the idea that large celestial bodies might influence the trajectory of other bodies without an actual material connection of some kind was the stuff of magic, not rationalist thought. Vast, invisible spheres of crystal – it was the only rational explanation. Next you’ll be claiming diseases aren’t caused by bad smells – a lavender nosegay, that’s your friend.

  Sir Isaac Newton legendarily wrote the famous Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which gave us principles that a couple of hundred years later were good enough to land a man on the moon. Then he wrote the slightly less well known Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis, which codified the magical techniques that allow me to inconvenience paper targets and Nightingale to demolish small agricultural buildings.

  ‘There are suggestions that there might have been a Third Principia,’ said Nightingale. ‘This one dealing with alchemy.’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Seawoll. ‘Lead into fucking gold?’

  ‘He was Master of the Royal Mint when he wrote it,’ said Nightingale. ‘He might have considered that a viable way of revaluing the currency.’

  ‘No wonder Keynes was a fan,’ said Stephanopoulos.

  ‘Quite,’ said Nightingale. ‘However, if Wild’s ledger does exist, and if it does contain details of Newton’s lost papers, then we have to acquire it.’

  Seawoll narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Why’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Because we are the rightful owners,’ said Nightingale. ‘And if it really does contain the secret of transmutation or, god forbid, of the philosopher’s stone – then it has to be kept out of the wrong hands.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said Seawoll. ‘You want Wild’s ledger. We need Reynard because he’s a material witness. What you do with him afterwards is your business. Can we agree to that?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘I don’t suppose we have a current address for Mr Fossman?’ said Seawoll.

  I told him nothing more recent than five years old, and he nodded absently.

  ‘In that case I suggest we set up a meet as soon as poss, and arrest the little fucker before this case gets any more fucking complicated,’ he said.

  The rule of thumb in this kind of negotiation is that the negotiator stays as junior as you can get – that way you have somewhere to escalate for extra leverage – so I made the call.

  ‘Are you ready to do a deal?’ asked Reynard.

  ‘I’m ready to ta
lk,’ I said.

  ‘Do you know the Montreux Jazz Café in Harrods?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s a café in Harrods,’ said Reynard. ‘Meet me there at ten tomorrow morning. Just you, nobody else.’

  I agreed and he hung up before I could wangle anything else out of him.

  We spent a happy couple of hours that afternoon working through the logistics of the meet, after which I might have managed to slope off to see Bev that evening if Nightingale hadn’t reminded me that I owed him some practise and a translation of Pliny the Younger.

  ‘I don’t trust this situation,’ said Nightingale. ‘I want you to be sharp.’

  Bollocks, I thought, or testiculi or possibly testiculōs if we were using the accusative.

  Established in 1851, Harrods is the world’s largest family owned corner shop. Although I suspect it’s pretty unlikely that any of the Qatari Royal Family are doing a stint behind the counters. It covers twenty thousand square metres of some of the most expensive real estate in the world and, I couldn’t help but notice, was less than three hundred meters down the Brompton Road from our crime scene at One Hyde Park. Even at ten o’clock in the morning it was going to be full of members of the public. Rich, influential members of the public, many of them foreign, a lot of them with some level of diplomatic immunity.

  ‘What I’m saying here,’ Seawoll had said, ‘is try to limit the amount of damage you do to none fucking whatsoever.’

  I don’t know where I got this reputation for property damage, I really don’t – it’s totally unfair.

  Harrods has ten public ways in and out, not counting staff and goods entrances – providing a potential fugitive with a wide selection of rapid getaways at an affordable price. Inside, it was a warren of showrooms, staircases and escalators, making it a good place to meet if you’re up to no good, and in our estimation the only question was what kind of no good Reynard Fossman was up to.

  I went in, as we had agreed in the planning, through the main entrance on Hans Crescent. The morning clientele was mostly well dressed white women with the occasional upmarket burka thrown in for variety.

  Following the route we’d thrashed out the night before, I went straight up two sets of escalators – past zig-zag mirrors and wall-sized adverts for Dolce & Gabbana and Jimmy Choo’s Eau de Parfum – and a couple of big rooms full of expensive furniture. Most of which was cheaper and nicer than the stuff in One Hyde Park, but still a bit out of my price range. I’ve worked in retail, and I’ve got to say that the Harrod’s staff were all ridiculously attractive, well dressed and happy. Either the management were paying them way over the odds, or their HR department had been outsourced to Stepford, Connecticut.

  A scary white waitress was waiting by the ‘Please Wait Here To Be Seated’ sign. Behind her was a blasphemously bad sculpture of Aretha Franklin that would have caused my father to have a word with the management.

  I told her that I was meeting that guy over there and she waved me cheerfully past.

  Inside were rough grey walls, interspersed with black and white tiles, stainless steel shelves and counters, with round PVC chairs at the tables. There were antique Revox reel-to-reel tape machines randomly placed on shelves. It really wasn’t authentic enough to be a Disney theme park version of a jazz café.

  A pair of wide screen TVs mounted on the walls were showing clips from the Montreux Jazz Festival. They were playing Mélissa Laveaux doing a live set, so they couldn’t be all bad.

  Reynard was the only customer, sitting at a six person table that gave him a view through the café to the corridor and gift wrap department opposite. He was wearing the same tweed jacket, only this time over a black T-shirt with MY SPIRIT ANIMAL IS A GOTH TEENAGER printed in white on the front. I couldn’t see a bag on the table or by his chair, but then we’d all thought it unlikely he’d bring the ledger with him.

  He stood when he saw me and waved at a seat opposite. This left me, I noticed as I sat down, with my back to the entrance.

  ‘Where’s the Nightingale?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s working,’ I said. ‘Have you got the ledger with you?’

  ‘Now, that would be foolish of me, wouldn’t it?’

  The waitress asked if I wanted to order anything.

  ‘Black Americano,’ I said and looked at Reynard. ‘You?’

  ‘I’m good,’ he said and watched the waitress’ bum all the way back to the counter. ‘A bit mature for my taste,’ he said.

  ‘We get it,’ I said. ‘You’re a class act.’

  ‘I am what I am,’ he said.

  ‘How much do you want?’

  Reynard raised an eyebrow.

  ‘That’s your opening position?’ he asked. ‘Hardly a sound negotiating tactic.’

  ‘This isn’t a negotiation,’ I said. ‘I’m not a private individual or some covert spy or something. I’m police and you’re in possession of stolen material of considerable value which we want to return to its rightful owners – that being us.’

  ‘You have no evidence that it’s stolen,’ said Reynard.

  ‘No. But then you are what you are,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you? At the moment, you see, it would be more effort to arrest you, statement the information out of you, seize the ledger and then throw you in prison.’

  ‘Arrest me for what?’

  ‘There’s bound to be something,’ I said. ‘You and Christina were not being particularly law abiding, that’s for certain.’

  But Reynard had started at Christina’s name and I really don’t think he heard the rest of the sentence at all.

  ‘That had nothing to do with me,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, and I was just about to say something clever when a white woman sat down next to Reynard. She was dressed in a pastel yellow blazer over a white blouse and black leggings. Her face was very familiar.

  ‘Hey Peter,’ said Lesley May. ‘What’s up?’

  Reynard had gone as pale as semi-skimmed milk – I swear his hands started shaking.

  It was her old face, from before the Royal Opera House and Mr Punch.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘You wearing a wire or not?

  ‘Hello, Lesley,’ I said – slightly louder than I meant to.

  ‘Well, that answers that question,’ she said. ‘I’ll bet you’re surprised to see me.’

  Twenty seconds, I reckoned, that’s all I needed.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked.

  Lesley smiled and I saw the skin of her face was smooth and clear, like that of a child.

  ‘Got my face fixed,’ she said.

  ‘So I see.’

  Ten seconds.

  ‘You didn’t think it was possible,’ she said.

  ‘Obviously I was wrong,’ I said.

  ‘So the question is,’ said Lesley, ‘did Nightingale lie to you, or is he just ignorant?’

  ‘This is nothing to do with me,’ said Reynard and started to stand.

  Lesley balled her fist and I felt the little flicker that warns you that a practitioner is summoning up a forma. If you want to do the counter spell, then you have to guess the forma and then cast faster. This is what Nightingale calls the lutte sans merci and surviving one requires sensitivity, foresight and lightning fast reflexes.

  Or you can lean back in your chair, brace yourself against the wall, get both feet up against the table and shove with all your strength. The edge caught Lesley in the stomach and Reynard across the thighs. Lesley went with the blow – I saw her allow herself to be pushed backwards, finishing her spell as she tipped over. Not an easy thing to do, I can tell you. Reynard screamed with pain and then did a neat little standing jump that left him crouched on the table.

  On the sound principle that whatever Lesley had cast I didn’t want to be in front of it, I threw myself diagonally across the table top and while I slid down it I conjured a couple of delayed action fireballs that I call, much to Nightingale’s annoyance, skinny grenades and lobbed them in the Les
ley’s general direction. John Woo would have been proud.

  I made a half-hearted grab for Reynard but he sort of bounded off the table, through the slot in the wall, and out into the corridor. I let him go – Lesley was my priority now. But before I could roll off the other side, the bloody table lurched and shot straight upwards. I flattened myself as the ceiling came rushing towards me, but there was a bright flash, like a professional standard flash gun, and the table lurched to the left and tipped me off.

  I hit something with my shoulder – I think it was Aretha – and smacked face first onto the floor tiles. What with one thing and another, I didn’t think having a rest was a good idea, so I rolled in a random direction and scrambled to my feet. Just in time to see Lesley vault through the slot in the wall and tear after Reynard who was vanishing up a cross corridor marked HARRODS’ TECHNOLOGY. I went after them, but I had my shield up because I really didn’t think this was going to have a happy ending.

  It might have been a Wednesday morning, but there were enough punters around to give a working copper conniptions. There are rules about putting the public in danger during a chase – the principle one of which is don’t put members of the public at risk.

  ‘Police,’ I shouted as a member of the public bounced off my shield. ‘Everybody out.’

  Which had the effect of making some people stop, some people reach for their phones, and the rest to carry on shopping regardless.

  I shouted again – which at least cleared enough of a hole for me to spot Lesley turning left into the next room. I followed and felt my shield ripple as I veered past a triple-screened games console with built-in racing car controls. There was a smell of burning plastic and I hoped it hadn’t been me.

  Just ahead Lesley and Reynard were in a three-way struggle with a solidly built white man in a beige raincoat. He had an army surplus crew cut and narrow little eyes. He didn’t look like store security and I felt a flash of irritation because have-a-go heroes are all very well until they get themselves killed, and then guess who’s left explaining themselves to the subsequent inquiry.

  At least this room was narrow, with Spyware counters on the right and Vodafone on the left – small enough that all the potential collateral had had the good sense to clear out.