Tales from the Folly

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘Antonin Bobet,’ said the man. ‘Who trained you?’

  ‘Nightingale,’ I said.

  ‘Thomas Nightingale?’ said Antonin. ‘He’s not dead?’

  ‘Not as far as I can tell,’ I said. ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Are you going to make me wait much longer for the coffee?’ asked Antonin.

  I’ve always preferred ye olde greasy spoon to chain coffee shops but my dad, who had largely misspent his youth in the espresso bars of Soho, made sure I knew how to use a moka pot and the principles are the same as on the big commercial coffee machines—sort of.

  Antonin, I noticed, shuffled sideways to stay out of convenient lunging range and was careful to keep an eye on me as I made two espressos.

  ‘Both of them without milk,’ said Antonin, as I reached for steam nozzle.

  I asked if he wanted sugar, but he declined and instructed me to sit on the floor with my back to the counter and place his coffee on the floor between us.

  ‘Using only your left hand,’ he said.

  More than a metre separated us and I had to stretch awkwardly to place the cup within his reach. I also managed to spill half my own coffee and spent an entertaining minute or so wiping it off my Metvest and duty belt.

  Antonin waited politely for me to finish rearranging myself before sipping his coffee.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said.

  I sipped mine. The longer people sit around being calm and civilised, the harder it is for them to become uncivilised later—it’s just too much effort. The rule of thumb is that if you keep them talking for over twenty minutes you can usually walk away without the use of force. Usually.

  ‘Who trained you?’ I asked.

  ‘Maurice Guillaume,’ he said. ‘Not that you know him of course.’

  ‘He was your master?’

  This amused Antonin.

  ‘How archaic,’ he said. ‘Maurice was my professeur at the Academy. Do you call Nightingale “master”?’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Too much history,’ I said.

  Antonin nodded.

  ‘That I can understand,’ he said, but I doubted it.

  ‘Well Monsieur Bobet,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk about how we get out of this situation.’

  ‘Do you think Nightingale will be here soon?’

  ‘He’s out of the city,’ I said. ‘Is it important?’

  ‘I killed a man,’ said Antonin. ‘On this very spot, I think, or at least quite close to here. I did it in 1948 so I think Nightingale may be a little more interested in the case than you. History, you understand.’

  ‘I’m interested in history,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened.’

  ‘Why would a young man like you be interested in history?’

  ‘So I can avoid repeating it.’

  ‘Then stay away from men who talk about the Fatherland,’ he said. ‘That’s my advice.’

  ‘Good advice.’

  ‘How far out of the city is Nightingale?’ he asked.

  I shrugged and offered to make another coffee.

  ‘You can stay where you are,’ he said. ‘And I’ll tell you a story.’

  They do things differently in France, apparently, even in the wacky way-back days of the Third Republic. Antonin Bobet was from an old family in Lyon and had been selected, aged fourteen, to attend the Academy in Paris where he learnt the forms and wisdoms.

  ‘In Latin?’ I had to ask.

  ‘The forms, yes,’ said Antonin. ‘The wisdoms were all in French.’

  And it was all properly exam based and meritocratic and if certain old family names, like Bobet for example, turned up with unusual frequency in the rolls, then that was merely an assurance that quality and tradition were being maintained.

  ‘Some of us valued our traditions,’ said Antonin. ‘Others wanted to be modern.’

  ‘What about your Professor?’ I asked.

  ‘He was a Parisian,’ he said. ‘You can never be sure what Parisians believe in—beyond Paris of course.’

  It was all a lot like the Folly as far as I could tell, including the point where it all came crashing down in 1940. Not that everyone thought the fall of the Third Republic was a bad thing—even if it had taken a German invasion to do it.

  ‘After the Armistice we all made our choices,’ said Antonin. ‘I chose Petain and Professeur Guillaume chose De Gaulle.’

  Antonin didn’t elaborate as to his days working for the collaborationist Vichy Government except to claim, unprompted, that somebody had to ensure some continuity to ensure that the French state survived the war. Which it did in no small part, according to Antonin, thanks to the efforts of someone called Jean Bichelonne and people like Antonin.

  ‘Not that any of this mattered to the Gaullists and Communists,’ said Antonin. The resistance took a perversely dim view of collaborators and things might have gone very badly for him after the war if not for the timely intervention of his old professor. ‘He said that purging me would be a waste of material.’

  Which was why, in the summer of 1948, when Professor Guillaume told him they were travelling to London in ‘support’ of the French Olympic team, Antonin didn’t ask what on earth kind of ‘support’ they were supposed to provide.

  ‘You know what the terrible thing about the English is?’ asked Antonin. ‘You never do what is expected of you. Your city was in ruins, your people barely had enough to eat, your government was bankrupt and you think it’s a good idea to hold the Olympics—unbelievable.’ So Antonin had not been expecting much in the way of hospitality and he wasn’t disappointed.

  ‘And I’m not even going to talk about the food,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you for not bringing that up,’ I said and he gave me a sharp look.

  Professor Guillaume’s plan was to ‘help’ the French basketball team to victory.

  ‘How was he going to do that?’ I asked.

  ‘He was going to make their opponent’s feet heavy,’ said Antonin. He didn’t know the details of the spell because he had strictly been the lookout man and, if necessary, the getaway driver. They had made their preparations and were about to leave for the first game—France versus Iran—when they received a visitor at their hotel.

  ‘It was your ‘master’,’ said Antonin. ‘Nightingale.’

  ‘And he warned you off?’

  Antonin made a puffing nose. ‘Nothing so obvious or indiscreet. He merely welcomed us to London and hoped that we would enjoy the games in the spirit of fraternal brotherhood and fair play that were the true Olympic ideals.’

  ‘So he warned you off?’

  ‘He warned us off.’ And they stayed warned off because Nightingale was famous by that point as the most dangerous wizard in Europe. This did not sit well with Professor Guillaume, but what could they do? Things probably would have been left that way had not the French basketball team, buoyed up by emergency meat supplies from the Fatherland, managed to fight their way to the semi-finals where they beat Brazil 45 to 33 to face the Americans in the final.

  This was too much for Professor Guillaume who resented the Americans almost as much as he resented the English. They knew that the Folly had been decimated at Ettersberg, so they decided to take a chance that Nightingale would be otherwise engaged and sneak into the Haringey Arena to carry out their original plan.

  The arena had originally been built as an ice hockey rink and so they set up in the machine room. It was there, amongst the pipes and compressors, that Antonin had his change of heart.

  ‘I said that I didn’t think what we were doing was right. The Americans had been our allies and this was a violation of the Olympic spirit,’ said Antonin. Professor Guillaume didn’t take this well.

  ‘He said he should have expected as much from a collaborationist like me and that I should have had my head shaved like the German-loving whore I was,’ said Antonin. ‘I told him that I didn’t think it was right to be so petty to our allies a
nd that it was unsportsmanlike. This he found very funny. “Unsportsmanlike,” he shouted. “This is for France, what does France care for sportsmanlike?” He raised his hand to me.’ Antonin shook his head. ‘So I struck him with the pushing spell—I don’t know what you call it in English—and down he went.’

  And never got up again, on account of having smacked his head against a pipe on the way down. Antonin quickly determined that his Professor was permanently dead and then considered his next move.

  ‘Letting France lose at basketball was one thing,’ he said. ‘Having her and the Academy disgraced by a murder investigation and trial was something else entirely.’

  Antonin used a spell, ironically taught to him by Professor Guillaume, to bury the poor man around the back of arena and then caught the first boat-train back to Paris. When he reported in, he was told that the mission had been unauthorised and that he had saved the French state an inquiry.

  ‘Just like that?’ I asked.

  ‘Just like that,’ said Antonin. Although it was made clear that it might be wise for him to take up a quiet life in the provinces somewhere. ‘I went back to my family in Lyon,’ he said.

  Because I knew Nightingale would want to know, I made sure I asked what had happened to the Academy.

  ‘They made the wrong choice after the Algerian Referendum,’ he said. And consequently they were re-organised out of existence in 1965.

  ‘So why are you here?’ I asked.

  ‘Apart from the coffee?’ asked Antonin. ‘I did a wrong thing sixty years ago and I thought it would be right to give Nightingale the chance to arrest me.’

  That explained his overt use of magic in the coffee shop—he was looking to attract Nightingale’s attention.

  ‘You could have phoned ahead,’ I said. ‘We would have met you at the station.’

  ‘I felt it was fitting that we met here at the scene of the crime,’ said Antonin. ‘Man against man, magic against magic—the way they used to settle things in the old days.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Are we talking about a duel—a magic duel?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Antonin. ‘Better than dying in hospital—no?’

  Oh great, I thought, suicide by cop.

  ‘I don’t see why you have to wait for Nightingale,’ I said. ‘I’m perfectly capable of upholding the honour of my country.’

  ‘Please,’ said Antonin. ‘You’re still a boy.’

  ‘I think that was an insult,’ I said. ‘At the very least I think I’m going to have to make you prove that you’re worth Nightingale’s time.’

  ‘If you insist,’ said Antonin.

  ‘Are there rules?’

  ‘No gods, no staffs, first man to stay down for the count loses and we suspend the contest if the building collapses.’

  I took a deep breath and prepared myself.

  ‘Very well,’ I said. ‘On the count of three?’

  ‘That seems reasonable,’ said Antonin. ‘Although we could still wait for Nightingale.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to miss the opening ceremony on TV,’ I said. ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘One,’ I said and shot him with the taser.

  Like I said, people don’t notice half the kit hanging off your Metvest and I’d placed it out of sight by my leg when I’d spilt my coffee. I had him cuffed before he stopped twitching, but in deference to his age I did it with his hands in front.

  * * *

  We ambulanced him back to UCH where Dr Walid stuck Antonin’s head in the MRI and kept him lightly sedated while we waited for Nightingale to arrive. I’m getting quite good at interpreting the grey smudges as they appear on the screen, and I’ve got to say it didn’t look good for Antonin Bobet.

  ‘Hyperthaumaturgical Necrosis,’ said Dr Walid. ‘He wouldn’t have lasted long—you definitely saved his life.’

  ‘Fair play,’ he spat at me when I brought him lunch. ‘You call electrocuting me fair play?’

  I didn’t bother to answer that, but I did apologise for the quality of the food.

  Nightingale returned and spent a morning chatting while I caught up with the paperwork and squared the incident with Haringey Borough Command. I made a point of calling Sergeant Warwick personally to thank her for her help—always useful to build contacts.

  A very polite man from the French Embassy turned up that afternoon, shook our hands and assured us that if we could see our way to allowing the French Government to repatriate their wayward son, they would consider it a great favour.

  ‘We only have his word for it that he killed Professor Guillaume and I’m not sure what purpose would be served by excavating Green Park Shopping Centre,’ said Nightingale. ‘And it’s not as if he has much time left.’

  So we put the question to Antonin, who chose repatriation.

  ‘At least the food will be better,’ he said and I couldn’t argue with that.

  Introduction: The Domestic

  (Set between Moon Over Soho and Whispers Under Ground)

  Waterstones liked the idea of having a special edition with a short story so much they asked for one to include in an exclusive edition of Whispers Under Ground. I’d always avoided short stories before, they’re a lot of work for a minimum word count and hard to sell. But writing ‘The Home Crowd Advantage’ had whet my appetite, so I agreed. I wanted something anchored in the humdrum, the everyday and in a situation that confronts police on a daily basis.

  The Domestic

  The tricky thing about architectural fashion is that it’s never as demarcated as the textbooks make out. The terrace mid-way up Prince of Wales Road was doing its best to pretend it was Regency, but the sash windows, slapdash stucco and half basement all said mid-Victorian at the earliest. I gave it the once over. The paint was grubby rather than dirty and the iron railings had been maintained free of rust. First wave right-to-buy property owner, I thought, from back in the days when Camden Council still had terrace flat conversions on its books.

  My domestic lived down a flight of external stairs, in the basement flat. The front door was trapped in an alcove under the steps to what would have originally been the main entrance before the house was subdivided—the better for the unspeakably common tradesman to come and go as unobtrusively as possible. The doorbell chimed when I pressed it and habit made me step out of the confined alcove while I waited for it to open. It’s always good to have some space to manoeuvre when the door opens—just in case.

  When it did open, a little old white woman stuck her head round the doorjamb and peered at me suspiciously.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Mrs Eugenia Fellaman?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘My name’s Peter Grant. I’m a police officer and I wondered if I might come in and have a quick word.’ I showed her my warrant card—she wasn’t impressed.

  ‘I’ve already spoke to the other one,’ she said.

  ‘Yes Ma’am I know,’ I said. The ‘other one’ being Sergeant Bill Crosslake who had called me in. ‘He asked me to talk to you. He thought I might be able to help.’

  She stepped out of her front door the better to chase me back up to street level.

  ‘Well he thought wrong,’ she said, and as she came into the daylight I saw the faded purple of a bruise on her left cheek.

  ‘Can I ask how you got that bruise?’

  I watched as she carefully didn’t lift her hand to her face.

  ‘I walked into the door, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘You get like that when you’re a bit older.’

  ‘We both know that’s not true,’ I said.

  She folded her arms. She was wearing a green woollen loose knit jumper, clean but with frayed cuffs. Her hair was grey, thinning and gathered back into a ponytail. There were a pair of red framed reading glasses hung around her neck on black beaded cord. She had grey eyes and a good line in belligerent defiance.

  ‘It was them upstairs that called you in,’ she said. ‘Wasn�
��t it?’

  Actually, it had been the couple upstairs, but also the Romanian students next door and a member of the public who’d happened to be walking his dog outside. All had dialled 999 within five minutes of each other, which prompted an India-Grade response from the area car, who arrived within three minutes. When the responding officers talked their way inside the flat, they found Mrs Fellaman, definite signs of a struggle but no trace of another person or persons on the premises.

  Mrs Fellaman claimed that she was completely alone and that she’d merely fallen against the chair, which had broken, causing her to reach out in an involuntary fashion, and pull down a row of ceramic elephants and an antique ormolu clock.

  Violent crime, like charity, begins at home. Twenty percent of all murders occur in the victim’s residence and forty percent of all female murder victims are killed by their partner. Which is why the responding officers gently, but firmly, insisted on searching the flat. They found nobody and Mrs Fellaman, with a certain amount of satisfaction, sent them on their way.

  ‘We’re concerned about your safety,’ I said.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘But it’s my patience you should be worried about. That other one, the big one, has been round here two times already and he never found nothing either.’

  The Camden response team had passed the details onto the local neighbourhood safety team which was headed by Sergeant Crosslake. He’d talked to the neighbours and confirmed their stories, made a follow up visit to Mrs Fellaman, found nothing and in frustration sat outside, in his own car, on his own time, the next evening until he heard the argument for himself.

  ‘That was proper rowing,’ he’d told me. ‘And there were definitely two voices.’

  But again, when he’d talked himself inside, there was just Mrs Fellaman entirely on her own.

  ‘And there was something else,’ Crosslake had said. ‘There was something off about that flat.’

  ‘Third time lucky,’ I told Mrs Fellaman.

  ‘With all this crime around,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why you bother.’

  Because when we’re not ticking boxes and achieving performance targets going forward, we actually try to prevent the occasional crime. Not to mention that ‘Granny beaten death after police visited three times—shocker!’ is not the sort of headline you want hanging over your conscience, let alone your career.