Ben Aaronovitch - Moon Over Soho

I bounced off the bottom of the street and out into the Embankment, swerved right, and ran the ambulance up onto the pavement in front of the Savoy Pier. I scrambled out of the driver’s seat and into the back of the ambulance, where the paramedic stared at me with stunned hatred.

Ash was barely breathing and the dressing on his chest was completely soaked through with blood. When I asked the paramedic to open the door I thought for a moment she was going to hit me, but she released the latches and threw them open. She wouldn’t help me take Ash out and I didn’t have time to figure out how to work the lift at the back, so I pulled him over my shoulder and staggered out into the drizzle.

I’d actually chosen the Savoy Pier for two reasons. It wasn’t in use, so I wouldn’t have to clamber over a boat to get to the river, and it had a nice gentle access ramp that would have been perfect to roll the gurney down had I managed to get the damn thing out of the ambulance. Instead I had to first lumber up the ramp to the gate with Ash in a fireman’s lift. He was a big healthy guy and I suspected I was going to be an inch shorter by the time I reached the Thames. There’s a thing like an open telephone booth at the top end of the ramp, designed to stop tourists, drunks, and the merely criminal from running out onto the pier.

I paused for breath and realized that over the yodel of the ambulance’s own siren I could hear other sirens approaching. I looked up and down the Embankment and saw flashing blue lights coming from both directions. A glance over the parapet revealed that the tide was out and jumping down there would be a ten-foot drop onto stones and mud. I looked at the booth. It had the metal lock I remembered. I had been planning something subtle, but since I didn’t have time I blew the whole thing off its hinges.

As I ran down the ramp, I heard the Incident Response Vehicles skidding to a halt behind me and the medley of grunts, shouts, and radio chatter that announces that the Old Bill is here to sort you out. As I ran across the width of the pier something whacked me hard across the thighs. The safety railing I realized too late, and I went headfirst into the Thames.

The Goddess of the River will proudly tell you that the Thames is officially the cleanest industrial river in Europe, but it is not so clean that you want to drink it. I came up spitting with a metallic taste in my mouth.

A dark shape bobbed in the water a yard from me — Ash floating on his back.

I wear a pair of Dr. Martens shoes for general detective work. They’re smart, hard-wearing, and, crucially, retain some of that horrorshow goodness for kicking that still makes DMs the footwear of choice for all right-thinking skinheads and soccer hooligans. On the other hand, they’re heavy and you do not want to be wearing them while treading water. Once I had them off, I splashed forward to check on Ash — he appeared to be a lot more buoyant than I was. I could hear him breathing and it sounded stronger than before.

“Ash,” I said. “You feeling better?”

“Much better,” he said languidly. “The water’s a bit salty but nice and warm.”

It was bloody freezing for me. I looked back at the pier to see my fellow policemen shining their torches across the water but it was okay, because the tide was still going out and Ash and I were already a couple of hundred yards downstream. Well, okay until we were both swept out into the North Sea or I died of hypothermia or drowned — or most likely an exciting combination of all three.

The current took us under the arches of Waterloo Bridge.

“You never told me she was a pale lady,” said Ash.

“Who’s the pale lady?” I asked.

“Lady of death,” he said, and then added something in a language that sounded a bit like Welsh but probably wasn’t.

“Hey,” said a nearby voice. “What are you doing in the river?” Young, female, middle-class but with the clipped vowel sounds that comes from having parents who believe in education or else. This would be one of Mama Thames’s girls.

“That’s a difficult question,” I sputtered. “I was driving home from Oxford, Ash called me, and it all went pear-shaped from there. What are you doing in the river?”

“It’s our turn on the rota,” said a second voice as we emerged on the other side of the bridge.

Ash was happily floating and I wondered if I was the only one finding it hard to maintain a conversation while treading water. Something warm brushed against my leg and I twisted in time to see a girl pop her head out of the water. With just the lights from the bank she was hard to see clearly, but I recognized the cat’s curve to the corner of her eyes and her mother’s strong chin.

“What are you? Lifeguards?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” she said. “If you make it out of the river under your own steam, fair enough. If you don’t then you belong to Mama.”

The first girl surfaced again and rose out of the water until she was waist-deep and as steady as if she were standing on a box. I noticed she was wearing a black wet suit with ORCA written across her chest. Enough light caught her face for me to recognize her as Olympia, aka Counter’s Creek, one of the younger daughters of Mama Thames, which meant that the other was no doubt her twin sister, Chelsea.

“Do you like the suit?” Olympia asked. “Neoprene. It’s the best you can buy.”

“I thought you guys liked to skinny-dip?” I said. Their older sister Beverley had swum naked the last time I’d seen her in the water.

“In your dreams,” said Olympia.

Chelsea surfaced on the far side of Ash. “I thought I smelled blood,” she said. “How you doing, Ash?”

“Much better now,” he said drowsily.

“I think we need to get him back to Mama,” she said.

“He told me to get him in the river,” I said. My legs were getting really tired and I looked around to find the shore a lot farther away — I was being dragged out into the central channel.

“What do you want — a medal?” asked Chelsea.

“How about a tow back to shore,” I said.

“Doesn’t work like that,” said Olympia.

“But don’t worry,” said Chelsea. “If you go under for the third time — we’ll be waiting for you.”

And then, with an unremarkable plopping sound, they vanished under the water.

I swore at some length at that point and would have sworn for longer except I was freezing to death. I tried to gauge which bank was closer. It was tricky because the combination of the tide and current was sweeping me toward Black-friars Bridge. The same bridge under which Roberto Calvi, God’s own banker, got his neck stretched — not really a promising omen for me. I was freezing and trying to remember the water survival training I did when I got my swimming certificate in primary school. My legs felt heavy and my arms ached and, as far as I could see, neither bank was closer.

It’s remarkably easy to die in the Thames; lots of people manage it every year. I was beginning to worry I was going to be one.

I struck out for the south bank on the basis that the Thames path ran on that side so there were more likely to be members of the public able to render assistance. Plus the OxoTower made a convenient landmark. I didn’t try to fight the current and concentrated the last of my strength on getting closer to the bank.

I’ve never been what you’d call a strong swimmer but if the alternative is being a statistic it’s amazing what you can pull out of the reserves. The world contracted around me until there was nothing but the cold weight of my wet clothes, the pain in my arms, and the occasional malicious slap in the face by a wave that would leave me gasping and spitting.

Mama Thames, I prayed. You owe me, get me to shore.