Whispers Under Ground

than something you’ve made up, it remains consistent where the lies do not. All you have to do is keep asking variations on the same questions, until you can sort one from the other. That’s why helping the police with their inquiries can take you all day – if you’re lucky.

‘Are they fae?’ asked Lesley.

Zach gave a startled glance at the tape recorder and then at the CCTV camera.

‘Are you sure you’re allowed to talk about that stuff?’ he asked.

‘Are they?’ I asked.

‘You know you guys are the only people that say “fae”,’ said Zach. ‘Out there we don’t call people fae. Not if you want to keep your teeth.’

‘You said your dad was a fairy,’ I said.

‘Well he was,’ said Zach.

‘The Rivers said you were half goblin.’

‘Yeah I ain’t going to say nothing against the Rivers, but they aren’t half a bunch of stuck-up cunts,’ said Zach getting loud at the end.

At last, I thought, a point of entry.

‘Is your friend Stephen a goblin, then?’ asked Lesley.

‘You shouldn’t go around calling people a goblin unless you know what the word means,’ said Zach. his voice back to its cheery cockney geezer normal. But I could hear the agitation underneath. Plus he’d started drumming his fingers on the tabletop.

‘What should we call them, then?’ asked Lesley.

‘You,’ said Zach pointing at me and then Lesley. ‘Shouldn’t be calling them anything at all – you should be leaving them alone.’

‘One of them shot at me,’ I said. ‘With a Sten gun. And another one buried me under the ground, under the fucking ground, Zach, and left me for dead. So I don’t think leaving them alone is going to be a bleeding option.’

‘They were just defending …’ started Zach and then caught himself.

‘Defending what?’ I asked.

‘Themselves,’ said Zach. ‘You’re the Isaacs man – we know all about you from back through the annals of history. We all know what happens if you’re a square peg in a round hole.’

So definitely fae, I thought.

‘So who were they defending?’ I asked.

‘Self-defence,’ said Zach.

Outright lie.

‘What’s his brother’s name?’ I asked.

Hesitation. ‘Marcus,’ said Zach – another lie.

‘Does he eat a lot of greens?’ asked Lesley. ‘Because the Nolan brothers were delivering a ton of vegetables for just two people.’

‘They live an active, healthy life,’ said Zach.

‘Zach,’ I said. ‘How stupid do you think we are?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Zach. ‘Do you want it on a scale of one to ten?’

‘Who are they?’ asked Lesley.

We saw him open his mouth to say – who’s they? But Lesley slapped her palm on the table. ‘My face itches, Zach,’ she hissed. ‘The sooner you tell us the truth the sooner I can go home and get out of this mask.’

‘Who are they?’ I said.

‘They’re just people,’ said Zach. ‘You need to leave them alone.’

‘It’s too late for that,’ I said. ‘Has been since your friend shut down the Central Line during the Christmas rush. They’re talking a closed platform for up to six months, they’re talking millions of pounds. Do you really think they’re going to be satisfied if I just stroll up and say “we know who did it but we’ve decided to leave them alone”?’

Zach slumped forward and pressed his head against the tabletop and groaned – theatrically.

‘Give us something we can take upstairs,’ said Lesley. ‘Then we can do a deal.’

‘I want assurances,’ said Zach.

‘You can have my word,’ I said.

‘No disrespect, Peter,’ said Zach. ‘But I don’t want a promise from the monkey. I want it from the organ grinder – I want it from the Nightingale.’

‘If they’re special,’ I said, ‘then there’s a chance we can keep it low-key. But if you want me to bring in my governor, then you’re going to have to talk to me first.’

‘Who are they?’ asked Lesley.

They were, as far as Zach understood it, people that had met up with Eugene Beale and Patrick Gallagher when they were working on the railways south of the river.

‘Not when they were digging the sewers?’ I asked.

‘From before that,’ said Zach. ‘They helped dig the tunnel at Wapping.’

Which explained why Beale’s butty gang had such a reputation as excavators.

‘You say they’re not fae,’ I said. ‘But they are different?’

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Different how?’ asked Lesley.

‘Look,’ said Zach. ‘There’s basically two types of different, right? There’s born different. Which is like me and the Thames girls and what you call fae but only because you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. And there’s choosing to be different, which is like you and the Nightingale.’ He pointed at me and then frowned. ‘Sorry, there’s three basic types, okay? There’s born, those that choose and those that are made different.’ He pointed at Lesley. ‘Like through an accident or something.’

Lesley stared at his finger and he dropped it.

I was just about to ask what he meant by that, when Lesley told Zach to stop getting off the subject.

‘Never mind about me,’ she said. ‘Are these people born different? Is that what you’re saying?’

Zach nodded and I would have written subspecies in my notes if Dr Walid hadn’t once sat me down and given me a stern lecture about using biological classifications when I didn’t know what the terms actually meant. I wrote mutants instead, and then scribbled it out. Dr Walid would just have to be content with born different.

Lesley asked him to speak out loud for the benefit of the tape.

‘Born different,’ said Zach. ‘I don’t know where they came from originally. The Gallagher’s and the Beales hooked up with them back in their excavating days. I don’t know how – maybe they dug them up.’

‘But they’re the people that make the pottery, right?’ I asked.

Zach nodded again and then, after Lesley gave him a look, said, ‘Yes it was them that made the pottery.’

‘Do they have a name?’ asked Lesley.

‘Who?’ asked Zach.

‘These people,’ she said. ‘Are they dwarves, elves, gnomes what?’

‘We call them the Quiet People,’ said Zach.

‘And you took James Gallagher down to meet them?’ I asked, before Lesley had a chance to ask whether they were quiet or not.

‘I heard through the grapevine that he was asking after Empire Pottery and I thought I saw a business opportunity,’ said Zach. ‘So I introduced myself. I told you I was his guide, remember – when you first asked me.’

‘Was it you that bought the fruit bowl?’ I asked.

‘Actually it was that statue,’ said Zach. ‘Or rather I took him down the goblin market and he bought it there.’

Lesley gave me the evil eye as I established that the ‘goblin market’ was the moving nazareth but I thought Nightingale would want to know.

‘You took him to Powis Square?’ I asked.