Whispers Under Ground

  Portobello Court was a case in point, guarding the crossroads with Elgin Crescent and the transition between antique market and the fruit and veg. Holding the line so that a man could still find double sausage, eggs, beans, toast and chips for a fiver and at the same time keep an eye on the patch allocated to the market stall where, Zach swore, James Gallagher had bought his fruit bowl. He had the fry-up. I had a rather nice mushroom omelette and a cup of tea. Zach picked up a discarded copy of the Sun, glanced at the headline – London E. Coli Outbreak Confirmed – and turned to the back pages. I kept my eyes focused out the window where the space the patch occupied was vanishing under the fresh snow.

  I phoned Lesley. ‘How do I check on the owners of a market stall in Portobello?’ I asked.

  Zach paused mid-chew to look at me.

  ‘You call the Inside Inquiry Team,’ she said. ‘Who are actually paid to answer your stupid questions.’ I could hear street sounds behind her.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Gower Street,’ she said. ‘I’ve got another consult.’

  I said goodbye and fished about in my address book for the Inside Inquiry Team’s number. Zach gave me an urgent little wave.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got a little confession to make,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t entirely honest.’

  ‘I’m shocked,’ I said.

  ‘The actual stall,’ he said. ‘The one you want is that one.’ He pointed to a stall further down the street. It was selling pots, pans and assorted dodgy kitchenware and had been when we’d stepped into the café half an hour earlier.

  ‘I’ve got a philosophical question,’ I said. ‘Do you realise that your continually lying to me is an erosion of trust that could have adverse consequences at a later date – for instance in about five minutes?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Zach around a mouthful of chips. ‘I’ve always been a live-in-the-moment kind of guy. A grasshopper not an ant. What happens in five minutes?’

  ‘I finish my tea,’ I said.

  If you live in London just about the last thing you expect is a white Christmas. The stallholder had been ready for the festive season. There was tinsel draped around the struts of his stall and a small plastic Christmas tree with a ‘Last Minute Xmas Bargains!’ sign attached where the fairy should go. But he had to keep knocking the accumulated snow off his awning or risk it collapsing. It also meant he was much more pleased to see me than he might have been – even after seeing my warrant card.

  ‘My brother, my brother, my brother,’ he said. ‘I know the law never sleeps, but surely you must be looking for something for someone special.’

  ‘I’m looking for an earthenware fruit bowl,’ I said and showed him a picture on my phone.

  ‘I remember these,’ he said. ‘The man who sold them said they were unbreakable.’

  ‘Were they?’

  ‘Unbreakable? As far as I know.’ The stallholder blew on his hands and then stuffed them into his armpits. ‘He said it was an ancient process whose secrets had been guarded since the dawn of time. But it looked like pottery to me.’

  ‘Who’d you get them from?’

  ‘It was one of the Nolan brothers,’ he said. ‘The youngest – Kevin.’

  ‘Who are the Nolans?’

  The stallholder looked at Zach. ‘You know them, Zachy boy, don’t you?’ he said.

  Zach bobbed his head noncommittally.

  ‘Nolan and Sons wholesalers,’ said the stallholders. ‘Only strictly speaking they’re the Nolan Bros. now since the dad died.’

  ‘Local boys?’

  ‘Not for ages,’ he said gesturing vaguely south. ‘Covent Garden now.’

  I thanked him and gave him a tenner for his trouble. It never hurts to cultivate, and I was thinking that wherever the case went, Portobello needed to be on my radar. I wondered when was the last time Nightingale had been up here – probably not since the 1940s.

  ‘If you don’t need me anymore,’ said Zach. ‘I’ll be off.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ I said. ‘You can come with me down to Covent Garden.’

  Zach twisted up his shoulders. ‘What do you need me for?’

  Because you don’t want to go, I thought, and because you’ve marked enough squares on the suspicious behaviour board for me to call bingo.

  ‘You can be my local guide,’ I said.

  New Covent Garden is where old Covent Garden went when it switched from being London’s major fruit, vegetable and flower market to being a refurbished tourist trap with a rather good opera house attached. It’s across the river at Nine Elms so I took the Chelsea Bridge as the lesser of two evils – nobody goes across Vauxhall Bridge in the morning unless they’re new in town or working for MI6.

  The river was grey under the snow clouds and as we crossed I could see where the portacabins were beginning to accrete around the solid brick mass of Battersea Power Station. The whole area, including the market, was due to suffer obliteration by urban regeneration in the coming years. I suspected the stacked-Tupperware school of architecture, whose work already lined much of the Thames, would predominate.

  I turned off Nine Elms into the access road and stopped at the toll gate. I forked over the entry fee rather than show my warrant card in order to forestall any advance word of my coming. That useful bit of advice had come with the ‘pool report’ from the Inside Inquiry Team who’d managed a pretty exhaustive check on Nolan and Sons in the hour it took me to drive there. The access road dipped under the railway tracks and I followed the signs round into the market proper. The market buildings had been built in the 1960s as a scaled-up replica of the arcade in the original Covent Garden, only this time making sure it was dingily utilitarian in concrete and breezeblock. Two rows of arcades with shop-sized units that allowed display at one end and easy lorry access at their backs. When it’s busy I imagine it’s really impressive, but being a fresh fruit and vegetable market the working day was over by seven in the morning. By the time I drove into the complex the shutters were down and the new snow was already thick around the entrances to the loading bay. Fortunately, Nolan and Sons didn’t run to a place in the main market. They operated out of one of a line of railway arches nearby. Their shutters were up and an aging Transit van was parked outside – Nolan and Sons was written upon a sign at the front of the arch and repeated in flaking paint on the van.

  ‘Tight bastards,’ muttered Zach. ‘Their dad’s been dead for twenty years and they can’t be arsed to change the signs.’

  I’d parked the Asbo under the overhang of the elevated railway tracks three arches down from Nolan and Sons so I could observe for a bit without the windscreen getting covered in snow.

  I asked Zach why he hadn’t wanted to come down to the market.

  ‘I got into a bit of trouble last year – my face is banned from the market,’ he said.

  ‘But you’re with me,’ I said. ‘I’m the police – that makes it official.’

  ‘Ha,’ he barked. ‘The police? Please, as if. No offence but you people have no idea what’s really going on.’

  ‘No? What’s really going on then?’

  ‘Things you wouldn’t believe,’ he said.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I asked as a skinny white boy in a blue Adidas hoodie emerged from the arches and half ran, half stumbled, off towards the main market. In this weather wearing just a hoodie was a true example of style over brains. He was that skinny that he must have been freezing.

  ‘That’s our Kevin,’ said Zach. ‘Not too bright.’

  ‘What wouldn’t I believe?’ I asked.

  ‘You still on about that?’ asked Zach.

  ‘You brought it up.’

  ‘Let’s just say that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ said Zach. ‘That’s Shakespeare, that is.’

  ‘Are we talking aliens here?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘But I did see a unicorn in Epping Forest.’

  ‘When was that?’
/>
  ‘Back when I was a kid,’ said Zach – he sounded wistful, like it was a real memory. ‘And there’s a shebeen at the top of a council flat where you can get the best beer and bootleg comedy acts this side of the Hudson River. And there’s a girl that lives on the canal at Little Venice who grows blow under water.’

  ‘You’re sure it’s not seaweed?’ I asked but I was thinking that Zach was a little too well informed to be your average London wide-boy. Not that I was going to let him know that I knew. The golden rule for policing is always try to know more than any suspects, witnesses and officers of superintendent rank and above.

  ‘This is magic weed,’ he said. ‘I had a block to sell once and I ended up smoking it all myself.’ It had obviously temporarily slipped Zach’s mind that I was police – happens quite a lot with white guys, I’ve noticed. Can be very useful at times.

  Kevin Nolan came back dragging a pair of bin bags behind him. He dropped them near the back of the Transit van. We watched as he pulled a stack of plywood crates off a stack and started emptying the contents of the bin bags into them – it looked like greens to me. His movements were exaggeratedly sloppy and sullen, like a child who’d been nagged into tidying his room.

  ‘What do you think he’s doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Late bargains,’ said Zach. ‘You can get a lot of cheap stuff if you wait this late in the day and you’re not picky.’

  Kevin, the bin bags emptied, started loading the crates into the back of the Transit van. I didn’t want to be chasing him around town in this weather, so I got out of the car.

  ‘You be here when I get back,’ I told Zach.

  ‘Trust me,’ he said. ‘I’ve got no intention of leaving this vehicle.’

  There’s a number of different ways to handle the initial approach to a member of the public, ranging from the insinuating yourself into a conversation to warming up with a pre-emptive smack on the head with your baton. I decided to go for bold and authoritative, because that usually has the best effect on long thin nervous streaks of piss like Kevin.

  I squared my shoulders and advanced with my warrant card in full view.

  ‘Kevin Nolan,’ I said. ‘Can I have a word.’

  It was perfect. I caught him just as he was picking up crates. As soon as he recognised me as police he gave a startled jump and literally looked left and then right, as if contemplating a runner. Then he collected himself and opted, boringly, for sulky belligerence.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said.

  ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I’m not here about the parking fines.’

  He grunted and put the crate he was carrying into the back of the van.

  ‘What are you here about?’ he asked.

  I asked him about the pottery fruit bowl he’d allegedly sold to the stallholder in Portobello Road.

  ‘Earthenware,’ he said. ‘Is that the stuff that looks like it’s not painted?’

  I said it was.

  ‘What about it?’ he asked and stuck his finger in his ear and twisted it a few times. I wondered if his head was going to hinge open.

  ‘Where did you get it?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t look at me like that, honestly I don’t remember. Some geezer traded it to me in a pub – I must have been half cut anyway because it was a fucker to shift.’

  ‘Look, I’m not interested in its provenance or anything,’ I said.

  ‘Its what?’

  ‘Its provenance,’ I said slowly. ‘Whether it was stolen or not.’

  ‘It was tat,’ said Kevin. ‘Why would anyone want to steal it – you couldn’t give it away.’

  I gave him my card and told him to phone me if anything similar turned up. I took some encouragement in the fact that he didn’t just ostentatiously throw it away in front of me. I went back to the Asbo where Zach asked me if I’d got what I wanted.

  I expressed my displeasure at the current state of my investigation as I started the car up and tried to figure out where the exit was.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so interested in this bowl,’ said Zach. ‘It’s not exactly your objet d’art is it? It’s not even a very pretty colour.’

  Which was when I remembered the statuette on the mantelpiece back at the James Gallagher’s house. That had been the same dull earthenware as the fruit bowl. I’m not an expert on Victorian knick-knacks but I didn’t think that was a common colour for a figurine.

  ‘Did James buy a statue as well?’ I asked.

  Zach paused too long before saying. ‘Don’t know.’

  Meaning yes but you don’t want me to know. Which meant one of two things: either Zach knew the bowl and the statue were connected or he just couldn’t not lie when asked a straight question. Either seemed equally likely.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to drop you off back at the house.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Zach suspiciously.

  ‘It’s all part of the service, sir,’ I said.

  8

  Southwark

  This is police work: you go from point A to point B where you learn something which forces you to schlep back to point A again to ask questions that you didn’t know to ask the first time. If you’re really unlucky you do both directions in the worst snow since written records began and with Zachary Palmer offering you driving advice while you do it.

  Portobello Road was struggling to stay open in the weather. Half the stalls had been dismantled and the remaining stallholders were stamping their feet and gritting their teeth. Fortunately, the entrance to the mews on Kensington Park Gardens had been swept clear by a parade of official vehicles.

  The statue was on the mantelpiece in the living room, exactly where I remembered it, and had been dusted for prints but not deemed interesting enough to take away. There was even a cleaning lady called Sonya who was Italian and busy cleaning up the mess left by the forensics people under the watchful eye of DC Guleed.

  ‘Not that this is supposed to be our job,’ she said testily. Even if you’re family liaison it isn’t really your job to supervise the clean-up before the grieving relatives arrive. I guessed that US senators counted as a special case.

  ‘Has she been statemented?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Guleed. ‘We completely forgot to ask her about the victim’s movements because we’re just that unprofessional.’

  I gave her the hard stare and she sighed.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘The father phoned from the airport – I don’t think he’s taking it well.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  Guleed looked over at Zach, who was rooting around in the kitchen for snacks. ‘I don’t think your friend wants to be here when the senator turns up.’

  ‘Not my problem,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, thank you so much for dumping him on me, then,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’re happy now you’ve got your statue.’

  ‘It’s a very special statue,’ I said.

  Only it wasn’t really, at least not in and of itself. It depicted the ever-popular ‘Venus-Aphrodite surprised by a sculptor and struggling to cover her tits with one hand and keep her drape at waist height with the other’ so beloved of art connoisseurs in the long weary days before the invention of internet porn. It was twenty centimetres high and only when I picked it up did I realise that it was not only made of the same material as the fruit bowl but also slightly magical. Nothing like the fruit bowl, but had we been talking radioactivity, then my Geiger counter would have been ticking away in a sinister fashion.

  I wondered if James Gallagher had noticed the same thing. Was it possible that he’d been a practitioner? Nightingale had told me there was a whole American tradition of wizardry, more than just one in fact, but he thought they’d gone dormant after World War Two as well. He could have been wrong – it’s not like his track record in that area was particularly impressive.

  Sonya, from a small village in Brindisi, said that she remembered the statue well. James had bought it from a man not far from where we were now. I asked if she
meant the market but she said no, from a private auction at a house in Powis Square. I asked if she was sure of the address.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘He asked me for directions.’

  Powis Square was a typical late Victorian garden square with townhouses built around a rectangular park that had been rendered as shapeless as a duvet by the snow. Dusk was coming early under slate grey clouds as I parked the car, at an angle to the kerb, on the west side and counted numbers until I reached 25.

  The facade was covered in scaffolding, the serious kind with tarpaulins stretched between the poles to keep the dust in – a sign that the money was gutting another terraced house. It used to be that you knocked through the ground-floor rooms but now the fashion amongst the rich was to rip out the whole interior. Surprisingly, given the weather, there were lights on behind the tarpaulins and I could hear people talking in Polish, or Romanian or something else Eastern European. Maybe they were used to the snow.

  I stepped inside the scaffolding and made my way up the steps to the front door. It was open to show a narrow hallway that was in the process of being dismantled. A man in a hardhat, a suit and carrying a clipboard turned to stare at me when I entered. He wore a black turtleneck jumper under his suit jacket and the kind of massive multifunction watch that appeals to people who regularly jump from aircraft into the sea while wearing scuba gear. Or at least really wished they did.