Lesley looked outraged but kept her mouth shut.
Nightingale pointed at the empty boss. ‘This one was primed to go off at the first use of formal magic inside the flat,’ he said. ‘I think it was deliberately left behind to kill either of you two. Fortunately it was me that triggered it and I had time to contain and dissipate the effect.’
‘Or what would have happened?’ I asked.
‘It would have killed me certainly,’ said Nightingale. ‘And anyone in the flat with me. And probably would have shortened the life of anyone within twenty yards of here.’
I opened my mouth to ask what the deaths would have looked like, but Lesley silenced me with a glare – it’s impressive how much expression she can project out of those eye holes.
‘Luckily this is a nice modern building made of concrete,’ said Nightingale. ‘Not much in the way of
Nightingale took a deep breath and in a weirdly ecclesiastical gesture brought two fingers down towards the second boss – he paused with his fingertips hovering above the metal.
‘This may be somewhat unpleasant,’ he said and pressed his fingers down.
Fucking major fucking understatement.
We didn’t throw up, pass out or burst into tears, but it was a close thing.
‘Well?’ asked Nightingale, who was obviously made of sterner stuff.
‘A dog, sir,’ said Lesley hoarsely. ‘Pitbull, Rottweiler, some ugly bastard thing like that.’
The second boss had crumbled into sand and one part of my brain was wondering whether that was the same phenomena that kept destroying my phones. And the other part of my brain was screaming that I was never going to eat meat again.
There had been blood and pain and mad exultation and concrete walls and rotting straw and then it started to drain away, exactly the way a nightmare does on waking. Leaving the memory of terror unwinding in your stomach.
‘Dog fight,’ I said.
I got to my feet a little unsteadily and helped Lesley to hers. Nightingale sprang up, his face as angry as I’ve ever seen him.
‘He used a dog,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I approve of that at all.’
‘At least it wasn’t a human being this time,’ said Lesley.
‘Is it safe to take samples?’ I asked.
Nightingale said yes, so I borrowed a couple of tamper bags from the forensics techs, who I noticed hadn’t felt a thing, and bagged samples from each of the bosses. Then I switched my phone on and took pictures of the script around the edges.
‘Did the Germans ever use dogs?’ I asked.
‘Not that we know of,’ said Nightingale. ‘But then they had an unlimited supply of people.’
‘Do you think he was connected to the Faceless Man?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I think he may have been the original,’ said Nightingale. ‘He’s certainly the right age to be the man who decapitated Larry the Lark and established the place in Soho.’
‘He looked like he might be a stroke victim to me,’ said Lesley. ‘Maybe he overdid the magic. That would explain why he dropped out of sight.’
The Faceless Man I’d met, the one who had effortlessly kicked me around the rooftops of Soho, had been young, I was sure of it, in his thirties at most. If Wood-ville-Gentle had gone into medical retirement in the 1970s when his successor was still in short trousers then that would explain the gap. Nightingale agreed.
‘But I do wonder what the connection between them is,’ he said.
‘The connection could be anything,’ I said. ‘Family, apprentice, someone he ran into at the bus stop.’
‘I think we can discard that last one,’ said Nightingale.
‘But now we know one end of the connection,’ said Lesley. ‘We can track him through his medical records, through that Russian nurse’s immigration status, the syringes, the money trail from this flat. Now that we have a name to work with – that could take us anywhere.’
It’s going to take us there bloody cautiously,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s obvious to me that the demon trap was left here to kill you and Peter should you have made a return visit. Follow the paper trail by all means but from now on there will be no more direct encounters with potential Little Crocodiles without me present. Is that understood?’
Strangely, neither Lesley or I rejected this change in strategy. There’s nothing like a brush with death to instil caution in a person. Nightingale, no doubt perfectly aware that he had made his point, sent us home. But I wasn’t ready for the quiet of the Folly just yet.
‘Do you want to go to the pub?’ I asked as we were going down in the lift. ‘We haven’t gone out drinking in ages.’
‘There might be a reason for that,’ said Lesley tapping the mouth hole of her mask.
‘So use a straw,’ I said.
How could she say no?
‘Where are we going?’ asked Lesley as we sped down the Embankment.
‘I thought we’d go to the AB local,’ I said.
Lesley jerked. ‘You … bastard,’ she said.
‘They want to know how you are,’ I said. ‘You’ve got to … meet them sooner or later.’
‘You were going to say “face them” weren’t you?’
‘Face them,’ I said. ‘Yes, face them. And more importantly neither of us will have to pay for our drinks all night.’
13
Sloane Square
Quite simply, to be police is to drink. Unless you’re DC Guleed of course, in which case to be police is to learn how to be sociable amongst a bunch of drunk colleagues. It starts when you’re an ordinary PC, because after twelve hours of having the general public wind you up, you need something at the end of the day to wind you down. If marijuana was legal the first thing my generation of coppers would do after knocking off would be to light up a spliff of unusual size but, since it isn’t, we go to the pub instead. It was only after I’d sunk my first pint that I realised I was going to be designated driver that night and thus it was I who was playing the role of virtuous abstainer.
The AB local was your classic Victorian corner pub that was hanging on to its traditional ambience by the skin of its teeth, and the fact that it wasn’t fronting the main road. It wasn’t totally overrun by police but it really wouldn’t have been a good place for a random member of the public to pick a pocket or start a fight. You could tell lower ranks because the suits were from D&C and Burtons while senior officers splashed out on bespoke – it wasn’t just that they could afford it, it was also because they were less likely to get random bodily fluids on it.
Seawoll was holding court at one end of the bar and putting them away in the sure and safe knowledge that his most competent DI, Stephanopoulos, was running the case. When he spotted Lesley he beckoned her over. When I moved to follow he stopped me with a raised finger. Lesley had always been his favourite. Still, he sent that first and only pint down the bar to me, so the evening at least got off to the right start.
A dark-haired DC with pale skin whose name I can’t remember sidled over with DC Carey in tow. She wanted to know whether it was true I worked for the Folly or not and, when I said yes, she wanted to know whether magic was real or not.
I told her that while there was a lot of really strange shit around, magic, doing spells and the like, didn’t really exist. I’d taken to giving this explanation to random inquiries ever since Abigail, junior ghost hunter extraordinaire, had taken my flippant confirmation and run with it.
