Whispers Under Ground

a famous RAF base, it’s now the favoured landing spot for the private jets of the kind of people that Ryan Carroll believed drove the art market. A close friend of the senator had lent him his private jet so he could fly his son home on the day after Boxing Day. Agent Reynolds was hitching a lift with the senator and I drove down that morning to see her off. I found her in the severely monochrome departure lounge, all white furniture, grey carpet and frosted- glass tabletops. Her suit was neatly pressed and she looked rested and alert. She offered to buy me a drink with the last of her sterling so I had a lager.

‘Where’s the senator?’ I asked as I sat down.

‘He’s in the RAF Chapel,’ she said.

‘His son’s not—?’

‘No,’ said Reynolds and sipped her drink. ‘He’s already safely on board the jet.’

‘How is the senator?’ I asked.

‘Better for having his son’s murderer caught,’ said Reynolds.

‘I won’t use the word closure if you don’t,’ I said.

‘Do you think he was mentally unstable?’ asked Reynolds.

‘James?’ I asked. ‘No—’

‘Ryan Carroll,’ she said. ‘James had that book, perhaps he was worried about Ryan, not about himself.’

‘It’s plausible,’ I said. ‘But I wouldn’t tell his father. I doubt he wants to think his son’s death was avoidable.’

Reynolds sighed. Outside, a jet shot down the runway and climbed steeply into the sky.

‘How much will you tell him?’ I asked.

‘You mean,’ said Reynolds, ‘will I tell him about the … what do you call it?’

‘Magic,’ I said.

‘You just come right out and say “magic”?’ she asked. ‘Like’s it’s no big deal.’

‘Would you prefer a euphemism?’ I asked.

‘When did you discover magic was real?’ asked Reynolds.

‘Last January,’ I said.

‘January?’ she squeaked and then, in a more normal tone, ‘As in twelve months ago?’

‘Pretty much,’ I said.

‘You find out that magic and spirits and ghosts are all real,’ she said. ‘And you’re just fine with that? You just accept it?’

‘It helps that I’ve got a scientific brain,’ I said.

‘How can that possibly help?’

‘I met a ghost face to face,’ I said, with more calmness than I’d felt at the time. ‘It would have been stupid to pretend it didn’t exist.’

Reynolds waved her scotch at me. ‘As easy as that?’ she asked.

‘Maybe not,’ I said. ‘But most people believe in the supernatural, ghosts, evil spirits, an afterlife, a supreme being, stuff like that. Magic is less of a conceptual leap than you might imagine.’

‘Conceptual leap?’ said Reynolds. ‘Your FBI file underestimated your education.’

‘I have an FBI file?’ Nightingale wasn’t going to like that.

‘You do now,’ said Reynolds and laughed. ‘Relax, it’s in the friendly pile and it’s going to be a very slim file given that I’m going to leave out the most interesting thing about you.’

‘My preternatural good looks,’ I said.

‘No the other stuff,’ she said. ‘You’re not drinking your beer.’

‘What about your report?’ I asked, and took a swallow of beer to mask my anxiety.

She gave me a cool look. ‘You know perfectly well that I’m going to have to leave out the Quiet People, the Rivers and the rest of the Harry Potter stuff,’ she said.

‘You don’t think your governors will believe you?’ I asked.

‘That’s why you took me with you, isn’t it? Because you knew the more outlandish it was, the less likely I was to put it in my report.’ Reynolds shook her head. ‘I don’t know whether they believe in magic, but I know for a fact they believe in psychological evaluations. I like my job and I have no intention of giving them an excuse to sidetrack me.’

‘Which reminds me,’ I said, and fished the two trackers I’d retrieved from beneath the Asbo and Kevin Nolan’s van. ‘These are yours I believe.’

‘Nothing to do with me,’ said Agent Reynolds. ‘Unauthorised electronic surveillance of a foreign national in a friendly country. That would be a violation of Bureau policy.’ She grinned. ‘Can you reuse them yourself?’

‘No problem,’ I said, putting them away.

‘Think of them as a Christmas present,’ she said.

A woman in a pilot’s uniform approached Reynolds and informed her that it was time to board. We finished our drinks and I walked her down to the departure gate. I’ve always travelled from big airports so this was my first chance to wave someone off from the tarmac.

The waiting jet was long and slim, painted white and silver, and seemed much larger close up than I’d expected.

‘Good luck,’ I said.

‘Thank you,’ she said and kissed me on the cheek.

I watched to make sure the jet was on its way before heading for the car park.

One less thing to worry about, I thought. Perhaps I was going to get to see the match that afternoon after all.

I don’t know why I bother, I really don’t, because at that exact instant my phone rang and a voice identified herself as a British Transport Police inspector and asked did I know a certain Abigail Kumara and could I be a dear and come down to the BTP Headquarters in Camden and please take her away.

As it happened, I’d already been planning for just this sort of eventuality. But I’d counted on having more time to butter up Nightingale first.

I said I would certainly be round to get her just as soon as I cleared some things with my boss. The Inspector thanked me and wished me a Happy New Year.

29 Mornington Crescent

I found Abigail in an interview room eating Burger King and reading a month-old copy of Jackie. The BTP had discovered her in the tunnel under my old school committing an act of vandalism. By rights she should have been returned home in disgrace with possible charges pending, but she’d dropped my name and the BTP had been seized by the spirit of goodwill or, more likely, a desire to avoid the paperwork involved.

I sat down opposite her and we stared at each other – she broke first.

‘I was finishing off the graffiti,’ she said. ‘You know the one the ghost was writing. In the tunnel where the Hogwarts Express goes. Before he’s, you know, squished—’

‘Why?’

‘I reckoned that if he got his message out he might get closure and move on,’ she said.

I didn’t ask where she thought the ghost would move on to.

‘I thought it would be a nice Christmassy thing to do,’ she said.

‘It’s the day after Boxing Day,’ I said.

‘We had to spend Christmas with Uncle Bob in Waltham Forest,’ she said. ‘I got a new coat – like it?’

It was blue, quilted and several sizes too big.

‘I’ve got you a Christmas present, too,’ I said.

‘Really?’ she said, and then gave me a suspicious look. ‘What kind of present?’

I handed it over and watched while she meticulously unpeeled the Sellotape before removing and neatly folding the paper. I’d given her a Moleskine reporter-style notebook that looks almost exactly the kind of black