Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

‘We’ve got plans,’ I said. ‘And brand new holding cells.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Lesley.

‘And thanks to you I may even have a—’

Lesley pulled out her pistol and shot Martin Chorley in the head.

I flinched as something that was not rain splashed my face and as, with no more than a rustle of his clothing, Chorley flopped bonelessly to the ground. I looked back at Lesley, who had taken a step backwards so she could point the gun at my face without it being within arm’s reach.

‘Check his pulse,’ she said.

Slowly I squatted down and fumbled in the wet collar of Martin Chorley’s coat. I felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. Not really surprising, given there was an entry wound where his right eye should have been.

‘Is he dead?’ asked Lesley. The rain was running down her face, but her aim was steady.

I stood and the barrel of the gun followed me up.

‘What now?’ I asked. ‘Am I next?’

Lesley laughed. It surprised me – I think it surprised her too.

‘You pillock,’ she said. ‘I did this for you. If you’d helped we could have done it nice and clean and nobody would have been the wiser. Do you think anyone wanted a trial? Do you really think you could have kept him banged up in Belmarsh without him escaping?’

‘That’s not the point—’

‘That is the point,’ she said firmly, and because she still had a gun on me I didn’t push the matter. ‘And now an avalanche of shit is going to land on your head. If you’re still in the job in a year I will be totally gobsmacked.’ She paused and shrugged. ‘Although if you want I could shoot you in your leg – make your statement look a bit better.’

‘I think I’ll forgo the maiming,’ I said. ‘If it’s all the same to you.’

‘Yeah, OK,’ said Lesley. ‘Besides, Bev would be well vexed if I sent you back with a hole.’

Instead, she made me unlock the cuffs on Martin Chorley and cuff myself to him – using my right wrist. Then she took the key.

‘So what about you?’ I asked, because every minute talking to me raised the likelihood Nightingale would catch up with us.

‘Oh, I’m getting the fuck out of here,’ she said. ‘And you really don’t want to come after me.’

She made me lie down next to the corpse with my hands clasped behind my head. Because of the cuffs Martin Chorley’s cold hand kept on brushing up against my wrist.

The rain fell heavily enough on the cobbles to mask Lesley’s footsteps, but I’m pretty certain she was gone thirty seconds later.

I probably could have sprung up, snapped the speedcuffs and given chase, but I had nothing left. So I lay on the cobbles and waited for someone else to clean up the mess.

They suspended me. They had to. Martin Chorley had died in my custody, wearing my cuffs and shot by a former colleague of mine. And this time I was plucked from the warm familiar surroundings of the Department of Professional Standards and into the cold embrace of the IPCC. I went to interviews with my Federation rep by my side and gave minimalist answers to their questions with an air of helpful bafflement. I didn’t think they’d charge me especially since, apart from anything else, I got the impression they had more corrupt fish than me to fry.

Still, these internal investigations take months and I was advised to start thinking of it as a long paid sabbatical.

Because the Folly was officially a police station, I had to move out and move in with Beverley full time. Which at least, I thought, would be a respite from Latin, Greek and practical thaumaturgy. Alas, Nightingale proved perfectly capable of driving across the river and worse, had mastered the dark art of skyping. I blamed Abigail for the latter, although she denied everything.

I also had to get myself my own car, although I did suggest that I might borrow the Ferrari – which caused Nightingale to spontaneously burst out laughing. I eyed up some second-hand BMWs and a Mercedes, but I didn’t have the cash. In the end Beverley bought me a bright orange Ford Focus as an early birthday present.

‘And you have to keep this one intact,’ she said. ‘Because it’s a present.’

It could have been worse. It could have been a Kia.

Abigail went back to school, but alternated on the weekend between taking classes with Nightingale at the Folly and with me at Beverley’s. She also passed on the gossip in exchange for some of my illicit magical research.

I was, finally, invited up to have dinner up chez Stephanopoulos to meet ‘her indoors’, who turned out to be a round-faced white woman called Pam who taught Strategic Management at the University of Middlesex. There was indeed a chicken coop in the back garden and a newly furnished nursery about which they asked me for no advice whatsoever.

Stephanopoulos was walking with a stick and expected to be back at work before I was.

Strangely, despite my conspicuous absence from operational policing, London was spared a plague of headless horsemen or psychotic gnomes. Although Nightingale and Frank Caffrey dealt with a vampire nest in Neasden. Curiously, these vampires turned out to be infected rats. Which meant not only was I spared any ethical qualms, but also Dr Vaughan got some tissue samples.

‘I hope you’re taking precautions,’ I said, while undergoing my monthly physical.

‘Do you think that’s really necessary?’ asked Dr Vaughan.

‘Yes, absolutely,’ I said.

‘And there was I about to set them up as a conversation piece on my coffee table,’ she said. ‘But at least I’ll get to use some of that biohazard training that I took especially.’

‘You’re losing weight,’ said Dr Walid.

‘And missing Molly,’ I said.

Although, according to Abigail, she wasn’t missing me.

‘I think she smiled the other day,’ she said. ‘And Foxglove is painting the kitchen.’

‘What colour?’

‘Henri Rousseau,’ said Abigail. ‘And what are you planning to do about Foxglove?’

There are legal provisions that allow victims of trafficking to claim discretionary leave to remain or asylum status, but they’re bureaucratic and stressful and frankly designed to deter people from trying. Worse still, the screening centre in Croydon would be bound to ask difficult questions, like – Where exactly are you from originally? So I called in a favour from Lady Ty, who was always having her wicked way with the Home Office.

‘What favour exactly,’ said Lady Ty, ‘do you think you’re calling in?’

‘I’m not calling it in,’ I said. ‘I’m giving you a chance to pay it forward.’

‘And I’m going to do this thing . . . because?’

‘Because then I’ll owe you a favour.’

‘Because that worked out so well last time,’ she said.

‘Like it or not, Ty, you’re going to be working with me in the future,’ I said.

‘I thought you were suspended?’

‘Me or someone like me.’

‘Peter,’ said Lady Ty, ‘every morning I wake up and give thanks that there’s nobody else like you.’

‘So you’ll put the fix in, right?’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘Whatever.’

There was no way that we were allowing Patrick Gale and his fellow practitioners the run of the Folly, so we agreed that their training would take place in a neutral location. I’d wanted to stick them in the community rooms at my parents’ flats but Nightingale vetoed that on security grounds.

‘There’s no point keeping them at arm’s length,’ he said, ‘if we give them your parents’ address.’

So we ended up renting space from the Talacre Community Sports Centre down the road. But before they got a sniff of training we made them swear an oath and, more importantly, sign a non-disclosure agreement three centimetres thick. This gave Patrick Gale pause, but when we made it clear that the agreement wasn’t up for negotiation he and his friends signed.