Ben Aaronovitch - Rivers of London

She raised her hand to her face, but I took it and gently guided it back down.

‘Everything’s going to be OK,’ I said.

‘You’re such a bad liar,’ she said. ‘No wonder I had to do all the talking.’

‘You had such a natural talent for it,’ I said.

‘It wasn’t talent,’ said Lesley. ‘It was hard work.’

‘You always had such a natural talent for hard work,’ I said.

‘Bastard,’ she said. ‘I don’t remember them telling me when I joined that there was a risk my face might fall off.’

‘Don’t you?’ I asked. ‘Remember Inspector Neblett, old shovel-face himself? Maybe that’s what happened to him.’

‘Tell me I’m going to be okay again.’

‘You’re going to be okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to hold your face on with this.’ I showed her the strips of sheet.

‘Oh well, that fills me with confidence,’ she said. ‘Promise you’ll be there whatever happens?’

‘I promise,’ I said and, following Walid’s instructions, started winding a strip of the sheet tightly around her head. She mumbled something, and I assured her that I’d cut a hole for her mouth when I’d finished. I secured the sheet the way one of my mum’s sisters had taught me to secure a headscarf.

‘Oh good,’ said Lesley once I’d cut the promised hole. ‘Now I’m the invisible woman.’ Just to be on the safe side, I knotted the material at the back of her neck to maintain the tension. I found a bottle of Evian by the chaise longue and used it to soak the makeshift bandage.

‘You’re trying to drown me now?’ asked Lesley.

‘Dr Walid told me to do this,’ I said. I didn’t tell her that it was to stop the bandage sticking to the wounds.

‘It’s cold,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m going to need Henry back.’

Henry Pyke returned with transparent eagerness. ‘What must I do now?’

I cleared my mind and opened my hand and spoke the word — ‘ Lux! ’ A werelight flowered above my hand. ‘This is the light that will take you to your place in history,’ I said. ‘Take my hand.’ He was reluctant. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t burn you.’

Lesley’s hand closed around mine, light leaking out between her fingers. I didn’t know how long my magic would last, or even if the whole blood-sucking business with Molly had left me much magic in the first place. Sometimes you just have to hope for the best.

‘Listen, Henry,’ I said. ‘This is your moment, your big exit. The lights will dim, your voice will fade, but the last thing the audience will see is Lesley’s face. Hold on to the image of her face.’

‘I don’t want to go,’ said Henry Pyke.

‘You must,’ I said. ‘That’s the mark of true greatness in an actor — knowing, down to the precise moment, when to make his exit.’

‘How wise of you, Peter,’ said Henry Pyke. ‘That is the true mark of genius, to give oneself to one’s public but to retain that private side, that secret space, that unknowable …’

‘To leave them wanting more,’ I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.

‘Yes,’ said Henry Pyke, ‘to leave them wanting more.’

And then the mouthy git was gone, right on cue.

I heard heavy footsteps on the iron staircase. Dr Walid and the cavalry had arrived. Red stains immediately bloomed on the white sheets covering Lesley face. I heard her gurgling and choking as she tried to breathe. A big hand landed on my shoulder and unceremoniously pushed me out of the way.

I let myself fall to the floor — I figured I could catch up on some sleep now.

The young man in the hospital bed was named St John Giles, and he was a rugby eight, or rowing six or whatever at Oxford University who’d come into London for a night out. He had floppy blond hair that was stuck to his forehead with sweat.

‘I’ve already told the police what happened, but they didn’t believe me. Why should you?’ he said.

‘Because we’re the people that believe people that other people don’t believe,’ I said.

‘How can I know that?’ he asked.

‘You’re just going to have to believe me,’ I said.

Because the bed sheets covered him up to his chest there was nothing to see of his injuries, but I found my eyes drifting down towards his groin — it was like a road accident or horrific facial wart. He saw me trying not to look.

‘Believe me,’ he said. ‘You don’t want to see.’

I helped myself to one of his grapes. ‘Why don’t you tell me what happened,’ I said.

He’d been having a night out with some mates, and had gone to a nightclub round the back of Leicester Square. There he’d met a nice young woman who he’d plied with alcohol before persuading her into a dark corner for a snog. Looking back, St John was willing to admit that perhaps he might have pressed his case a little too fervently, but he could have sworn she was a willing partner, or at least not objecting too strenuously. It was a depressingly familiar story that the officers on Operation Sapphire, the Met’s Rape Investigation Unit, must get to hear all the time. At least, right up to the point where she bit his dick off.

‘With her vagina?’ I asked, just to be clear.

‘Yep,’ said St John.

‘You’re sure?’

‘It’s not the sort of thing you make a mistake about,’ he said. ‘And you’re sure it was teeth?’

‘It felt like teeth,’ he said. ‘But to be honest, after it happened I really stopped paying attention.’

‘She didn’t cut you with something, a knife or a broken bottle, perhaps?’

‘I was holding both her hands,’ he said and made a grasping gesture with his hand. It was vague but I got the gist — he’d pinned her wrists to the wall.

What a prince among men, I thought, and checked the description he’d given at an earlier interview. ‘You say she had long black hair, black eyes, pale skin and very red lips?’

St John nodded enthusiastically. ‘Sort of Japanese-looking without being Japanese,’ he said. ‘Beautiful, but she didn’t have slanty eyes.’

‘Did you see her teeth?’

‘No, I already told you …’

‘Not those teeth,’ I said. ‘The ones in her mouth.’

‘I don’t remember,’ he said. ‘Is it important?’

‘It might be,’ I said. ‘Did she say anything?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like, anything at all.’

He looked nonplussed, thought about it and admitted that he didn’t think she’d spoken the whole time he’d been with her. After that I asked a few closing questions, but St John had been too busy bleeding to notice where his assailant had gone and he never got her name, let alone her phone number.

I told him I thought he was bearing up well, considering.

‘Right now,’ he said, ‘I’m on some really serious medication. I don’t like to think about what’s going to happen when I come off it.’

I checked with the doctors on my way out — the missing penis had never been found. Once I’d finished up my notes — this was still an official Metropolitan Police investigation — I checked in on Lesley, who was one floor up. She was still asleep, her face hidden by a swathe of bandages. I stood by her bed for a while. Dr Walid had said that I’d definitely saved her life, and possibly increased the chances of successful reconstructive surgery. I couldn’t help thinking that hanging out with me had almost killed her. It had been less than six months since she’d gone for those coffees and I’d met a ghost, and it was terrifying that that might have been all the difference there was between me being the one wearing the bandages.

Less terrifying, but much more depressing, was figuring out why it had all kicked off back on that cold January night or, more precisely, that sunny winter’s day on Hampstead Heath when Toby the dog bit Brandon Coopertown on the nose. That was the same week the Linbury Studio, the Royal Opera House’s second, smaller auditorium had staged a revival of a little-known play entitled The Married Libertine , first shown in the main theatre in 1761 and never shown again, as far as I could tell, anywhere else in the world, its author — Charles Macklin. The Royal Opera House fell over themselves to give me access to their booking records, presumably in the hope I’d then go away for ever, and I found William Skirmish and Brendan Coopertown had attended a performance on the same night. A random set of circumstances are what did for William Skirmish, and all those who were maimed or died after him — like I said — depressing.