Ben Aaronovitch - Rivers of London

‘This is Molly,’ said Nightingale. ‘She does for us.’

‘Does what?’

‘Whatever needs doing,’ said Nightingale.

Molly lowered her eyes and did an awkward little dip that might have been a curtsey or a bow. When Toby growled again Molly snarled back, showing disturbingly sharp teeth.

‘Molly,’ said Nightingale sharply.

Molly demurely covered her mouth with her hand, turned and went gliding back the way she came. Toby gave a little self-satisfied snort that didn’t fool anyone but himself.

‘And she is … ?’ I asked.

‘Indispensable,’ said Nightingale.

Before we went up, Nightingale led me over to an alcove set into the north wall. There, resting on a pedestal like a household god, was a sealed museum case containing a copy of a leather-bound book. It was open to the title page. I leaned over and read: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis , Autore: I. S. Newton .

‘So not content with kicking off the scientific revolution, our boy Isaac invented magic?’ I asked.

‘Not invented,’ said Nightingale. ‘But he did codify its basic principles, made it somewhat less hit and miss.’

‘Magic and science,’ I said. ‘What did he do for an encore?’

‘Reformed the Royal Mint and saved the country from bankruptcy,’ said Nightingale.

Apparently there were two main staircases; we took the eastern one up to the first of the colonnaded balconies and a confusion of wood panelling and white dust sheets. Two more flights of stairs led us to a second-storey hallway lined with heavy wooden doors. He opened one, seemingly at random, and ushered me in.

‘This is yours,’ he said.

It was twice the size of my room at the section house, with good proportions and a high ceiling. A brass double bed was shoved into one corner, a Narnia wardrobe in the other and a writing desk was between them, where it could catch the light from one of the two sash windows. Bookshelves covered two entire walls, empty except for what turned out on later inspection to be a complete set of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica published in 1913, a battered first edition of Brave New World and a Bible. What had obviously once been an open fireplace had been replaced with a gas fire surrounded by green ceramic tiles. The reading lamp on the desk had a faux-Japanese print shade and beside it was a Bakelite phone that had to be older than my father. There was a smell of dust and freshly applied furniture polish, and I guessed that this room had dreamed the last fifty years away under the white dust sheets.

‘When you’re ready, meet me downstairs,’ said Nightingale. ‘And make sure you’re presentable.’

I knew what that was about so I tried to stretch it, but it didn’t take me long to unpack.

Strictly speaking, it wasn’t our job to pick up grieving parents from the airport. Leaving aside the fact that officially this was Westminster Murder Team’s case, it was extremely unlikely that August Coopertown’s parents had any information pertinent to the murder. It sounds callous, but detectives have better things to do than impromptu counselling for bereaved relatives; that’s what Family Liaison Officers are for. Nightingale didn’t see it that way, which was why he and I were standing at the arrivals barrier at Heathrow when Mr and Mrs Fischer cleared customs. I was the one holding the cardboard sign.

They weren’t what I expected. The dad was short and balding and the mum was mousy-haired and tubby. Nightingale introduced himself in what I assumed was Danish and told me to carry the bags back to the Jag, which I was glad to do.

Ask any police officer what the worst part of the job is and they will always say breaking bad news to relatives, but this is not the truth. The worst part is staying in the room after you’ve broken the news so that you’re forced to be there when someone’s life disintegrates around them. Some people say it doesn’t bother them — such people are not to be trusted.

The Fischers had obviously googled for the closest hotel to their daughter’s house, and had thus booked themselves into a brick-built combination prison block/ petrol station on Haverstock Hill whose lobby was shopworn, fussy and as welcoming as a job centre. I doubt the Fischers noticed, but I could see that Nightingale didn’t think it was good enough, and for a moment I thought he was going to offer to put them up at the Folly.

Then he sighed and told me to put the luggage down by the reception desk. ‘I’ll deal with things from here,’ he said and sent me home. I said goodbye to the Fischers and walked out of their lives as fast as I could go.

*

After that I really didn’t want to go out but Lesley persuaded me. ‘You can’t just come to a stop ’cause bad things happen,’ she said. ‘Besides, you owe me a night out.’

I didn’t argue, and after all, the good thing about the West End is that there’s always somewhere to see a film. We started at the Prince Charles but they were showing Twelve Monkeys downstairs and a Kurosawa double bill upstairs, so we went round the corner to the Leicester Square Voyage. The Voyage is a miniature village version of a multiplex with eight screens, of which at least two are larger than your average plasma-screen television. Normally I like a certain amount of gratuitous violence in my cinema, but I let Lesley persuade me that Sherbet Lemons , this month’s feel-good romcom with Allison Tyke and Dennis Carter was just the film to cheer us up. For all I know it might even have worked, had we had a chance to see it.

The foyer was dominated by the concessions counter which stretched across its breadth. There were eight transaction points, each with its own till nestled amid a confusion of popcorn dispensers, hotdog grills and cardboard display signs offering kids’ boxes tied to the latest blockbuster. Above each transaction point was a widescreen LCD which displayed the films on offer, their age classification, when they were on, how long we had until they started and how many seats were left in each auditorium. At regular intervals the screen would switch to display a trailer, an advert for mechanically recovered meat or just to tell you what a good time you were having at the Voyage chain of cinemas. That evening there was only one transaction point open, and a queue of approximately fifteen stood waiting to be served. We joined the queue behind a well-dressed middle-aged woman out with four girls aged between nine and eleven. It didn’t bother Lesley and me — if you learn one thing as a copper, it’s how to wait.

The follow-up investigation revealed that the single member of staff manning the transaction point that shift was a twenty-three-year-old Sri Lankan refugee named Sadun Ranatunga, one of four people staffing the Leicester Square Voyage that evening. At the time of the incident, two were cleaning out screens one and three in preparation for the next showing, one was on duty to take tickets and the last was dealing with a particularly unpleasant spillage in the gents.

Because Mr Ranatunga was selling both tickets and popcorn, it took him at least fifteen minutes to wear down the queue to the point where the woman in front of us began to get her hopes up. Her accompanying children, who up till then had been amusing themselves elsewhere, flocked back to the queue so they could get their bid for sweets in early. She was impressively firm, making it clear that the ration was to be one drink and one serving of popcorn or a packet of sweets — no exception, and I don’t care what Priscilla’s mother let you have when she took you out. No you can’t have nachos, what are nachos, anyway? Behave, or you won’t get anything.

The tipping point came, according to Charing Cross CID, when the couple next in line asked for a concessionary price. The couple, who were identified as Nicola Fabroni and Eugenio Turco, a pair of heroin addicts from Naples who had come to London to dry out, had leaflets from the Piccadilly English Language School which they claimed made them bona fide students. As recently as the week before Mr Ranatunga would have just let it slide, but that afternoon his manager had informed him that Head Office had decreed that Leicester Square Voyage had been selling far too many concessionary tickets, and that in future staff should decline any request that seemed suspect. In compliance with this directive, Mr Ranatunga regretfully informed Turco and Fabroni that they would have to pay full price. This did not go down well with the couple, who had budgeted their evening on the basis that they could lig into the cinema. They remonstrated with Mr Ranatunga who was adamant in his refusal, but since both parties were doing this in their second language, it used up valuable time. Finally, and with ill grace, Turco and Fabroni paid the full price with a pair of grubby five-pound notes and a handful of ten-pence pieces.