Ben Aaronovitch - Broken Homes

‘No,’ he whispered.

We drank in silence for a bit.

‘Have you talked to Beverley?’ he asked.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because she came here to talk to me about you,’ he whispered.

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Suddenly everyone seems to think I’m the Peter Grant expert.’

‘Really? Who else?’

‘Your boss, for one,’ whispered Zach. ‘Then Lady Ty snuck up on me while I wasn’t looking and nearly scared me to death. And Oberon wanted to know on behalf of Effra who probably was asking on behalf of Beverley.’

‘How’s Nicky?’

‘Not a happy camper, but she’s young and immortal,’ he whispered. ‘She’ll get over it eventually.’

With a worryingly creaky mechanical sound the jukebox flipped records and started playing Sultans of Swing.

‘Why Dire Straits?’

Zach waved his hand at his whispering clientele. ‘They’re working their way through the last hundred years of popular culture. It was the early 70s last month.’

‘But Dire Straits?’

‘They were getting a little bit too fond of Marc Bolan,’ he whispered. ‘I did consider introducing them to the lo-fi percussion and funky R amp;B goodness that was the Washington Go Go sound, but in the end I reckoned that might be just a bit too much for their tiny little minds to cope with.’

‘You could try Public Enemy,’ I whispered.

‘I hear you’re living with the Night Witch,’ whispered Zach. ‘What’s that like?’

‘Creepy in a sort of charming Bond villain way,’ I whispered. ‘We’re all very polite and careful around each other. We’re getting rid of her soon.’ Nightingale was forging a bracelet that he planned to seal around her wrist using his magic metal-fusing powers so she couldn’t get it off without more magic or some serious bolt cutters. To prevent the former it was fitted with the guts of an electronic tag that reported her location every sixty seconds — if Varvara Sidorovna used magic it would blow the chip and sound the alarm.

‘Nightingale’s told her that if he has to track her down again he’ll deport her back to Russia,’ I whispered.

‘Won’t they just give her a medal?’ asked Zach. ‘Heroine of the Great Patriotic War and all that.’ He caught me staring at him. ‘I did a history GCSE you know. I liked the Russians — I could relate.’

‘Shoot her or recruit her,’ I whispered. ‘The point is she becomes their problem not ours.’

The jukebox flipped to Who Wants To Live Forever by Queen.

‘You’re kidding me?’ I said too loudly and got glared at.

‘We have karaoke nights,’ whispered Zach. ‘This is the favourite followed by I Want To Break Free .’

I finished my pint and made to leave.

‘Have you considered the idea,’ asked Zach, ‘that Lesley might be doing this as a way of worming her way into the Faceless Man’s organisation — under cover double agent style of thing?’ He trailed off.

‘He’s promised her her face back,’ I said.

‘You can’t know that,’ hissed Zach.

No, but I knew that Dr Walid had found chimeric cells on a woman who’d had her face erased by a shotgun blast. Covering evidence of experiments by the Faceless Man aimed at restoring Lesley’s face. A bait he must have reckoned she couldn’t resist — how could anyone? He’d probably planned to keep her in the Folly and get her to spy on us. Nightingale had said that the Faceless Man wasn’t Moriarty, but from my perspective he was doing a really good impression of the man.

‘That’s the only motive that makes sense,’ I hissed back.

‘It might be both,’ whispered Zach. ‘You’ve got to at least consider that possibility.’

I shook my head.

‘If she gets in touch with you, will you let me know?’ I asked.

‘What do you think?’

I thought that there was not a chance in hell he would.

‘Fair enough,’ I said and went home.