Ben Aaronovitch - Rivers of London

‘Call an ambulance,’ said Nightingale and ran up the steps. I grabbed my phone as Lesley stumbled over to the baby and fell to her knees. I saw her turn the little body over and feel for a pulse. I gave the emergency code and the address on automatic. Lesley bent over and started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, her mouth covering the baby’s mouth and nose in the prescribed manner.

‘Grant, get in here,’ called Nightingale. His voice was steady, businesslike. It got me moving up the steps and onto the porch. Nightingale must have kicked the front door right off its hinges because I had to run right over it to get into the hall. We had to stop to work out where the fuck the noise was coming from.

The woman screamed again — upstairs. There was a thumping sound like somebody beating a carpet. A voice, I thought it might be a man’s but very high-pitched, was screaming: ‘Have you got a headache now?’

I don’t even remember the stairs. Suddenly I was on the landing with Nightingale in front of me. I saw August Coopertown lying face down at the far end of the landing, one arm thrust through a gap in the banisters. Her hair was wet with blood and a pool was growing under her cheek. A man stood over her holding a wooden baton at least a metre and a half in length. He was panting hard.

Nightingale didn’t hesitate. He bulled forward, shoulder down, obviously planning to take the man down in a rugby tackle. I charged, too, thinking I’d go high to pin the man’s arms after he’d gone down. But the man whirled around and casually backhanded Nightingale with enough force to slam him into the banisters.

I was staring right at his face. I assumed it must be Brandon Coopertown, but it was impossible to tell. I could see one of his eyes but a great flap of skin had been peeled back from around his nose and was covering the other eye. Instead of a mouth he had a bloody maw full of white flecks of broken teeth and bone. I was so shocked that I stumbled and fell, which was what saved my life when Coopertown swung that baton at me and it passed right over my head.

I hit the ground and the bastard ran right over me, one foot slamming down on my back and blowing the air out of my lungs. I rolled over as I heard his feet on the stairs and managed to get onto my hands and knees. There was something wet and sticky under my fingers, and I realised that there was a thick trail of blood leading across the landing and down the stairs.

There was a crash and a series of thumps from the hallway below.

‘You need to get up, Constable,’ said Nightingale.

‘What the fuck was that?’ I asked as he helped me up. I looked down into the hallway where Coopertown, or whoever the hell it was, had fallen — mercifully face down.

‘I really have no idea,’ said Nightingale. ‘Try to stay out of the blood trail.’

I went down the stairs as fast as I could. The fresh blood was bright red, arterial. I guessed it must have fountained out of the hole in his face. I bent down and gingerly touched his neck, looking for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘Peter,’ said Inspector Nightingale. ‘I need you to step away from the body and walk carefully outside. We mustn’t contaminate the scene any more than we have already.’

This is why you have procedure, training and drill, so that you do things when your brain is too shocked to think for itself — ask any soldier.

I stepped outside into the daylight.

In the distance I could hear sirens.

Inspector Nightingale told Lesley and me to wait in the garden, and faded back into the house to check there was nobody else inside. Lesley had used her coat to cover the baby and was shivering in the cold. I tried to struggle out of my jacket so I could offer it to her, but she stopped me.

‘It’s covered in blood,’ she said.

She was right: there were smears of blood up the sleeves and trailing the edge of the hem. There was more blood on the knees of my trousers. I could feel the stickiness where it had soaked through the material. There was blood on Lesley’s face, around her lips, from when she’d tried to resuscitate the baby. She noticed me staring.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve still got the taste in my mouth.’

We were both trembling and I wanted to scream but I knew I had to be strong for Lesley’s sake. I was trying not to think about it, but the red ruin of Brandon Coopertown’s face kept sneaking up on me.

‘Hey,’ said Lesley. ‘Keep it together.’

She was looking concerned, and she looked even more concerned when I started to giggle — I couldn’t help myself.

‘Peter?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But you’re being strong for me and I’m being strong for you and— Don’t you get it? This is how you get through the job.’ I got my giggles under control and Lesley half-smiled.

‘All right,’ said Lesley, ‘I won’t freak out if you don’t.’ She took my hand, squeezed it and let go.

‘Do you think our back-up is walking from Hampstead nick?’ I asked.

The ambulance arrived first, the paramedics rushing into the garden and spending twenty minutes trying futilely to resuscitate the child. Paramedics always do this with children, regardless of how much it damages the crime scene. You can’t stop them, so you might as well let them get on with it.

The paramedics had just got started when a transit van’s worth of uniforms arrived and started milling around in confusion. The sergeant approached us cautiously — mistaking us for civilians covered in blood and therefore potential suspects.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

I couldn’t speak — it seemed like such a stupid question.

The sergeant looked over at the paramedics, who were still working on the baby. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’ he asked.

‘There’s been a serious incident,’ said Nightingale as he emerged from the house. ‘You,’ he said, pointing at a luckless constable, ‘get another body, go round the back and make sure nobody gets in or out that way.’

The constable grabbed a mate and legged it. The sergeant looked like he wanted to ask for a warrant card but Nightingale didn’t give him a chance.

‘I want the street closed and tapped off ten yards in both directions,’ he said. ‘The press are going to be all over this any minute, so make sure you’ve got enough bodies to keep them back.’

The sergeant didn’t salute because we’re the Met and we don’t salute, but there was a touch of the parade ground in the way he swivelled round and marched off. Nightingale looked over to where Lesley and I stood shivering. He gave us a reassuring nod, turned on one of the remaining constables and started barking orders.

Soon after that, blankets appeared, a place was found in the transit van and cups of hot tea with three sugars thrust into our hands. We drank the tea and waited in silence for the other shoe to drop.

It took less than forty minutes for DCI Seawoll to reach Downshire Hill. Even with the Saturday traffic it meant he must have been doing blues and twos all the way from Belgravia. He appeared in the side doorway of the van and frowned at Lesley and me.

‘You two all right?’ he asked.

We both nodded.

‘Well, don’t fucking go anywhere,’ he said.

Fat chance of that. A major investigation, once it gets under way, is as exciting as watching reruns of Big Brother , although possibly involving less sex and violence. Criminals are not caught by brilliant deductive reasoning but by the fact that some poor slob has spent a week tracking down every shop in Hackney that sells a particular brand of trainer, and then checking the security-camera footage on every single one. A good Senior Investigating Officer is one who makes sure their team has dotted every I and crossed every T, not least so that some Rupert in a wig can’t drive a defendant’s credit card into a crack in the case and wedge it wide open.