Ben Aaronovitch - Rivers of London

‘How did you know this was our shout?’ I asked.

‘I have my own sources,’ said Nightingale.

One of the Richmond IRVs arrived with the Duty Inspector onboard and we all indulged in a bit of bureaucratic strutting to establish our respective bona fides. Richmond won on points, but only because one of them had a flask full of coffee. Nightingale briefed the locals — it was a gang thing, he said. Some IC1 youths, no doubt drunk, had stolen a boat, sailed down from beyond Teddington Lock and picked a fight with a local group of IC3 youths — some of whom were female. When they tried to escape, the Teddington gang had managed, accidentally , to set their boat on fire, had abandoned ship and escaped on foot down the Thames pathway. Everybody nodded their heads — it sounded like a typical Friday night in the big city. Nightingale said he was sure nobody had drowned, but the Richmond Duty Inspector decided to call in a search-and-rescue team just in case.

Then, our two inspectors having marked their respective trees, we went our separate ways.

We drove back up to Richmond but stopped well short of the bridge. Dawn was at least an hour away, but as I followed Nightingale through an iron gate I could see that the road we were on cut through a municipal gardens that sloped down to the river. There was an orange glow ahead of us, a hurricane lantern hung on the lower branches of a plane tree, and it illuminated a row of red-brick arches built into the revetment that supported the roadway. Inside these artificial caves I glimpsed sleeping bags, cardboard boxes and old newspaper.

‘I’m just going to have a chat with this troll,’ said Nightingale.

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I think we’re supposed to call them rough sleepers.’

‘Not this one we don’t,’ said Nightingale. ‘He’s a troll.’

I saw movement in the shadow of one of the arches, a pale face, ragged hair, layers of old clothes against the winter cold. It looked like a rough sleeper to me.

‘A troll, really?’ I asked.

‘His name is Nathaniel,’ said Nightingale. ‘He used to sleep under Hungerford Bridge.’

‘Why did he move?’ I asked.

‘Apparently he wanted to live in the suburbs.’

Suburban troll, I thought, why not?

‘This is your snout, isn’t it,’ I said. ‘He tipped you off.’

‘A policeman is only as good as his informants,’ said Nightingale. I didn’t tell him that these days they were supposed to be referred to as Covert Human Intelligence Sources. ‘Stay back a bit,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know you yet.’

Nathaniel ducked back into his lair as Nightingale approached and crouched politely at the threshold of the troll’s cave. I stamped my feet and blew on my fingers. I’d been sensible enough to grab my uniform jumper, but even with that on under my jacket three hours by the river in February was edging me into brass monkey territory. If I hadn’t been so busy jamming my hands into my armpits I might have noticed much sooner that I was being watched. Actually, if I hadn’t spent the last couple of weeks trying to separate vestigium from ordinary random paranoia I wouldn’t have noticed at all.

It started as a flush, like embarrassment, like the time at the Year Eight disco when Rona Tang marched across the no man’s land of the dance floor and informed me, in no uncertain terms, that Funme Ajayi wanted me to dance with her, but there was no way I was going to dance with a conspiracy of teenage girls watching me while I did it. It was the same scrutiny — defiant, mocking, curious. I checked behind myself first, as you do, but I could see nothing but sodium streetlights up the road. I thought I felt a puff of warm breath against my cheek, a sensation like sunlight, mown grass and singed hair. I turned and stared out over the river and for a moment I thought I saw movement, a face, something …

‘Seen something?’ asked Nightingale, making me jump.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said.

‘Not on this river,’ said Nightingale. ‘Not even Blake thought that was possible.’

We returned to the Jag and the fickle embrace of its 1960s heating system. As we returned through Richmond town centre, the right way round the one-way system this time, I asked Nightingale whether Nathaniel the troll had been helpful.

‘He confirmed what we suspected,’ he said. That the boys in the boat had been followers of Father Thames, had come downstream to raid the shrine at Eel Pie Island and been caught by followers of Mother Thames. They were doubtless well tanked up, and probably did set their own fire while trying to make their escape. Downstream, the Thames was the sovereign domain of Mother Thames, upstream, it belonged to Father Thames. The dividing line was at Teddington Lock, two kilometres downstream from Eel Pie Island.

‘So you think Father Thames is making a grab for turf?’ I asked. It made these ‘gods’ sound like drug dealers. Traffic was noticeably heavier heading back — London was waking up.

‘It’s hardly surprising that the spirits of a locality would exhibit territoriality,’ said Nightingale. ‘In any case, I think you might have a unique insight into this problem. I want you to go and have a word with Mother Thames.’

‘And what do me and my unique insight say to Mrs Thames?’

‘Find out what the problem is and see if you can find an amicable solution,’ said Nightingale.

‘And if I can’t?’

‘Then I want you to remind her that, whatever some people may think, the Queen’s peace extends to the whole Kingdom.’

Nobody got to drive the Jag except Nightingale, which was understandable. If I had a car like that I wouldn’t let anyone else drive it either. However I did have access to a ten-year-old Ford Escort in electric blue which had ex-Panda car written all over it. Nightingale shopped at the same used-car showroom as Lesley. You can always tell an old cop car because however hard you scrub, it always smells of old cop.

Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Wapping — the old and the new East End were mashed up together by money and intransigence. Mother Thames lived East of the White Tower in a converted warehouse just short of the Shadwell Basin. It was just the other side of the slipway from the Prospect of Whitby, an ancient pub that was a legendary jazz venue back in the day. My dad had sat in there with Johnny Keating but had managed, with his finely tuned ability to sabotage his own career, missed performing with Lita Roza — I think they got Ronnie Hughes to replace him.

To the main road the warehouse showed a blind face of London brick pierced by modern windows, but on the Thames side the old loading wharves had been converted into a car park. I parked up between an orange Citroën Picasso and a fire-brick red Jaguar XF with an Urban Dance FM sticker in the windscreen.

As I stepped out, I had the clearest sense of vestigia so far. A sudden smell of pepper and seawater as quick and shocking as the scream of a gull. Hardly surprising, since the warehouse had once been part of the Port of London, the busiest port in the world.

A bitterly cold wind was sweeping up the Thames so I hurried for the entrance lobby. Someone somewhere was playing music with the bass turned up to Health and Safety-violating levels. The melody, assuming there was one, wasn’t audible but I could hear the bass line in my chest. Suddenly, above it there was a trill of feminine laughter, wicked and gossipy. The neo-Victorian lobby was guarded by a top-of-the-line entryphone. I pressed the number Nightingale had given me and waited. I was about to try the number again when I heard the slap of flip-flops on tile approaching the door from the other side. Then it opened to reveal a young black woman with cat-shaped eyes, wearing a black t-shirt that was many sizes too big for her with the words WE RUN TINGZ printed on the front.