‘His name was Derek Shampwell,’ said Dr Walid. ‘Age twenty-three, Australian citizen, had been in London for three years, no criminal record, hair analysis shows intermittent marijuana use over the last two years.’
‘Do we know why he was singled out?’ asked Seawoll.
‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘Although all the cases seem to start with a sense of grievance. Coopertown was bitten by someone’s pet, Shampwell was struck by a motor vehicle while riding.’
Seawoll glanced at Stephanopoulos. ‘Hit and run on the Strand, sir, in a CCTV blind spot.’
‘A blind spot?’ asked Seawoll. ‘On the Strand?’
‘Thousand-to-one chance,’ said Stephanopoulos.
‘May,’ barked Seawoll, without turning round. ‘You think there are related cases?’
‘Including the incident Grant and I witnessed in the cinema, and the one that took place just prior to Shampwell’s death, I’ve identified fifteen cases where the perpetrators have shown uncharacteristic levels of aggression,’ said Lesley. ‘All people with clean records, no psychiatric history and all within half a mile of Cambridge Circus.’
‘How many do we know were actually’ – Seawoll paused – ‘possessed?’
‘Just the ones whose faces fell off,’ said Nightingale.
‘Just so we’re clear,’ said Seawoll. ‘The Commissioner wants this kept quiet, so PC May liaises with PC Grant for the low-level stuff but anything significant, anything at all, you talk to me. Do you have a problem with this, Thomas?’
‘Not at all, Alexander,’ said Nightingale. ‘It all seems eminently sensible.’
‘His parents are flying in tomorrow,’ said Dr Walid. ‘Is it all right if I sew his face back together?’
Seawoll glared at the body. ‘Fuck,’ he said.
Nightingale was silent on the drive back to the Folly, but at the foot of the stairs he turned to me and told me to get a good night’s sleep. I asked him what he was going to do, and he said he’d work on some research in the library – see if he couldn’t narrow down what was doing the killing. I asked if I could help.
‘Train harder,’ he said. ‘Learn faster.’
As I went upstairs, I met Molly gliding down. She paused and gave me an inquiring look.
‘How should I know?’ I said. ‘You know him better than I do.’
You don’t tell your governor that you need a broadband connection, cable for preference, because you want to watch football. You tell him that you need the internet so you can access HOLMES directly instead of having constantly to rely on Lesley May. The football coverage, movies on demand and multiplayer console games are all merely serendipitous extras.
‘Would this involve physically running a cable into the Folly?’ asked Nightingale when I tackled him during practice in the lab.
‘That’s why they call it cable,’ I said.
‘Left hand,’ said Nightingale, and I dutifully produced a werelight with my left hand.
‘Sustain it,’ said Nightingale. ‘We can’t have anything physically entering the building.’
I’d got to the point where I could talk while sustaining a werelight, although it was a strain to make it look as casual as I did. ‘Why not?’
‘There’s a series of protections woven around the building,’ said Nightingale. ‘They were last set up after the new phone lines were put in in 1941. If we introduce a new physical connection with the outside, it would create a weak spot.’
I stopped trying to be casual and concentrated on maintaining the werelight. It was a relief when Nightingale told me to stop.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I think you’re almost ready to move on to the next form.’
I dropped the werelight and caught my breath. Nightingale wandered over to the adjoining bench, where I’d dismantled my old mobile phone and set up the microscope I’d found in a mahogany case in one of the storage cupboards.
He touched the brass and black-lacquer tube. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked.
‘An original Charles Perry number 5 microscope,’ I said. ‘I looked it up on the internet. Made in 1932.’ Nightingale nodded, and bent down to examine the insides of my phone.
‘You think magic did this?’ he asked.
‘I know it was the magic,’ I said. ‘I just don’t know how or why.’
Nightingale shifted uncomfortably. ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘You’re not the first apprentice with an inquiring mind, but I don’t want this getting in the way of your duties.’
‘Yes sir,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep it to my free time.’
‘You’re about to suggest the coach house,’ said Nightingale.
‘Sir?’
‘For this cable connection,’ said Nightingale. ‘The heavy defences tended to disturb the horses, so they skirt the coach house. I’m sure this cable connection of yours will be very useful.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘For all manner of entertainments,’ continued Nightingale.
‘Sir.’
‘Now,’ said Nightingale. ‘The next form – Impello.’
I couldn’t tell whether the coach house had originally been built with a first floor, to house footmen or whatever, which had then been knocked through in the 1920s, or whether the floor had been added by sticking a new ceiling on the garage when they bricked up the main gate. At some point someone had bolted a rather beautiful wrought-iron spiral staircase to the courtyard wall. When I’d first ventured up, I was surprised to find that a good third of the sloping roof on the south-facing side had been glazed. The glass was dirty on the outside and some of the panes were cracked, but it let in enough daylight to reveal a jumble of shapes shrouded by dust sheets. Unlike those in the rest of the Folly, these sheets were furry with dust – I didn’t think Molly had ever cleaned in there.
If the chaise longue, Chinese screen, mismatched side tables and collection of ceramic fruit bowls that I found under the sheets weren’t enough of a clue, I also found an easel and a box full of squirrel-hair paint brushes gone rigid with disuse. Somebody had used the rooms as a studio, judging from the empty beer bottles neatly lined up against the south wall. Probably apprentices like me – that, or a wizard with a serious alcohol problem.
Stacked in the corner and carefully wrapped in brown paper and string were a series of canvases, painted in oils. These included a number of still lives, a rather amateurish portrait of a young woman whose discomfort was palpable, despite the sloppy execution. The next was much more professional – an Edwardian gentleman reclining in the same wickerwork chair I’d found under a dust sheet earlier. The man was holding a silver-topped cane and for a moment I thought he might be Nightingale, but the man was older and his eyes were an intense blue. Nightingale senior, perhaps? The next, probably by the same painter, was a nude with a subject that so shocked me I took it to the skylight to get a better look. I hadn’t made a mistake. There was Molly, reclining pale and naked on the chaise longue, staring out of the canvas with heavy-lidded eyes, one hand dipping into a bowl of cherries placed on a table by her side. At least, I hope they were cherries. The painting was in the impressionist style so the brush strokes were bold, making it hard to tell: they were definitely small and red, the same colour as Molly’s lips.
I carefully rewrapped the paintings and put them back where I’d found them. I did a cursory check of the room for damp, dry rot and whatever it is that makes wooden beams crumbly and dangerous. I found that there was still a shuttered loading door at the courtyard end of the room and mounted above it, a hoisting beam. Presumably to serve a hayloft for the coach horses.
As I leaned out to check it was still solid, I saw Molly’s pale face in one of the upper windows. I didn’t know what I found stranger, that somebody had persuaded her to get her kit off, or that she hadn’t changed in appearance in the last seventy years. She withdrew without apparently seeing me. I turned and looked around the room.
This, I thought, will do nicely.
At one time or other most of my mum?
??s relatives had cleaned offices for a living. For a certain generation of African immigrants cleaning offices became part of the culture like male circumcision and supporting Arsenal. My mum had done a stint herself and had often taken me with her to save on babysitting. When an African mum takes her son to work she expects her son to work so I quickly learnt how to handle a broom and a window cloth. So the next day after practice, I returned to the coach house with a packet of Marigold gloves and my Uncle Tito’s Numatic vacuum cleaner. Let me tell you, 1,000 watts of suckage makes a big difference when cleaning a room. The only thing I had to worry about was causing a rift in the space-time fabric of the universe. I found the window cleaners online, and a pair of bickering Romanians scrubbed up the skylight while I rigged up a pulley to the hoisting beam, just in time for the TV to be delivered along with the fridge.
I had to wait a week for the cable to be hooked up, so I caught up on my practice and started narrowing down the location of Father Thames. ‘Finding him will be a good exercise for you,’ Nightingale had said. ‘Give you a good grounding in the folklore of the Thames Valley.’ I asked for a clue, and he told me to remember that Father Thames had traditionally been a peripatetic spirit which, according to Google, meant walking or travelling about, itinerant, so not really a lot of help. I had to admit that it was expanding my knowledge of the folklore of the Thames Valley, most of which was contradictory but would no doubt be helpful at the next pub quiz I took part in.
To inaugurate my re-entry into the twenty-first century I ordered some pizza and invited Lesley round to see my etchings. I had a long soak in the claw-footed porcelain tub that dominated the communal bathroom on my floor and swore, not for the first time, that I was definitely going to install a shower. I’m not a peacock but on occasion I like to dress to impress, although like most coppers I don’t wear much in the way of bling, the rule being never wear something round your neck that you don’t want to be strangled with. I laid in some Becks because I knew Lesley preferred bottled beer, and settled in to watch sports TV while I waited for her to turn up.
Among the many other modern innovations that I’d introduced to the coach house was an entryphone installed on the garage’s side door, so that when Lesley arrived all I had to do was buzz her in.
I opened the door and met her at the top of the spiral staircase – she’d brought company.
‘I brought Beverley,’ said Lesley.
‘Of course you did,’ I said.
I offered them beer. ‘I want you to make it clear that nothing I eat or drink here puts me under obligation,’ said Beverley. ‘And no mucking me about this time.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Eat, drink, no obligations, Scout’s honour.’
‘On your power,’ said Beverley.
‘I swear on my power,’ I said.
Beverley grabbed a beer, hopped onto the sofa, found the remote and started channel-surfing. ‘Can I on-demand a movie?’ she asked. There followed a three-way argument over what we were going to watch, which I lost at the start and Lesley won in the end by the simple expedient of grabbing the remote and switching to one of the free movie channels.
Beverley was just complaining that none of the pizzas had pepperoni when the door opened a fraction and a pale face peered in. It was Molly. She stared at us, and we stared back.
‘Would you like to come in?’ I asked.
Molly slipped silently inside and drifted over to the sofa, where she sat next to Beverley. I realised that I’d never been this close to her before; her skin was very pale and perfect in the same way that Beverley’s was. She refused a beer but tentatively accepted a piece of pizza. When she ate she turned her face away and held her hand so that it obscured her mouth.
‘When are you going to sort out Father Thames?’ asked Beverley. ‘Mum’s getting impatient and the Richmond posse is getting restless.’
‘Richmond posse,’ said Lesley, and snorted.
‘We’ve got to find him first,’ I said.
‘How hard can it be?’ said Beverley. ‘He’s got to be close to the river. Hire a boat, go upstream and stop when you get there.’
‘How would we know when we got there?’
‘I’d know.’
‘Then why don’t you come with us, then?’
‘No way,’ said Beverley. ‘You’re not getting me up past Teddington Lock. I’m strictly tidal, I am.’
Suddenly Molly’s head whipped round to face the door, and a moment later somebody knocked. Beverley looked at me but I shrugged – I wasn’t expecting anyone. I hit mute on the remote and got up to answer. It was Inspector Nightingale dressed in the blue polo shirt and blazer which I recognised as being the closest thing he ever got to casual dress. I stared at him stupidly for a moment, and then invited him in.
‘I just wanted to see what you’d done with the place,’ he said.
Molly shot to her feet as soon as Nightingale came into the room, Lesley got up because he was a senior officer and Beverley stood either from some vestigial politeness or in anticipation of a quick getaway. I introduced Beverley, who he’d met only briefly when she was ten.
‘Would you like a beer, sir?’ I asked.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Call me Thomas, please.’
Which was just not going to happen. I handed him a bottle and indicated the chaise longue. He sat carefully and upright at one end. I sat at the other end while Beverley flopped into the middle of the sofa, Lesley sat slightly to attention and poor Molly bobbed a couple of times before perching right on the edge. She kept her eyes resolutely downcast.
‘That’s a very large television,’ said Nightingale.
‘It’s a plasma TV,’ I said. Nightingale nodded sagely while out of his sight Beverley rolled her eyes.
‘Is there something wrong with the sound?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I have it on mute.’ I found the remote and we got ten seconds of Beat the Rest before I got the volume under control.
‘That’s very clear,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s like having your own cinema.’
We sat in silence for a moment, everyone, no doubt, appreciating the theatre-quality surround sound.
I offered Nightingale a slice of pizza, but he explained that he’d already eaten. He asked after Beverley’s mother, and was told she was fine. He finished his beer and stood up.
‘I really must be on my way,’ he said. ‘Thank you for the beer.’
We all stood up and I walked him to the door. When he left I heard Lesley sigh and flop back on the sofa. I almost shouted when Molly suddenly slid past me in a rustle of fabric and slipped out the door.
‘Awkward,’ said Beverley.
‘You don’t think she and Nightingale … ?’ asked Lesley.
‘Ew,’ said Beverley. ‘That’s just wrong.’
‘I thought you and her were friends?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, but she’s like a creature of the night,’ said Beverley. ‘And he’s old.’
‘He’s not that old,’ said Lesley.
‘Yes he is,’ said Beverley, but however many hints I dropped that evening, she wouldn’t say any more.
The Puppet Fayre
It began when I started a practice session without taking my phone out of my jacket pocket. I even noticed a little flare in intensity when I formed the werelight, but I’d only been reliably casting for two days so it didn’t register as significant. It was only later, when I tried to call Lesley and found my phone was busted that I opened up the case and saw the same trickle of sand I’d noticed at the vampire house. I took it down to the lab and prised out the microprocessor. As it came loose, the same fine sand streamed out of its plastic casing. The gold pins were intact, as were the contacts, but the silicon bit of the chip had disintegrated. The cupboards in the lab were full of the scent of sandalwood and the most amazing range of antique equipment, including the Charles Perry microscope, all put away with such precision and tidiness that I knew no student had been involved. Under the microscope I found the
powder to be mostly silicon with a few impurities which I suspected was germanium or gallium arsenide. The chip that handled RF conversion was superficially intact but had suffered microscopic pitting across its entire surface. The patterns reminded me of Mr Coopertown’s brain. This was my phone on magic, I thought. Obviously I couldn’t do magic and carry a mobile phone, or stand near a computer or an iPod or most of the useful technology invented since I was born. No wonder Nightingale drove a 1967 Jag. The question was how close did the magic have to be? I was formulating some experiments to find out, when Nightingale distracted me with my next form.
We sat down on opposite sides of the lab bench and Nightingale placed an object between us. It was a small apple. ‘Impello,’ he said, and the apple rose into the air. It hung there, rotating slowly, while I checked for wires, rods and anything else I could think of. I poked it with my finger, but it felt like it was embedded in something solid.
‘Seen enough?’
I nodded, and Nightingale brought out a basket of apples – a wicker basket with a handle and a check napkin, no less. He placed a second apple in front of me, and I didn’t need him to explain the next step. He levitated the apple, I listened for the forma, concentrated on my own apple and said, ‘Impello.’
I wasn’t really that surprised when nothing happened.
‘It does get easier,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s just that it gets easier slowly.’
I looked at the basket. ‘Why do we have so many apples?’
‘They have a tendency to explode,’ said Nightingale.
The next morning I went out and bought three sets of eye protectors and a heavy-duty lab apron. Nightingale hadn’t been kidding about the exploding fruit, and I’d spent the afternoon smelling of apple juice and the evening picking pips out of my clothing. I asked Nightingale why we didn’t train with something more durable like ball bearings, but he said that magic required the mastery of fine control right from the start.
‘Young men are always tempted to use brute force,’ Nightingale had said. ‘It’s like learning to shoot a rifle: because it’s inherently dangerous you teach safety, accuracy and speed – in that order.’