Annotation 7 страница. You don’t tell your governor that you need a broadband connection, cable for preference, because you want to watch football

You don’t tell your governor that you need a broadband connection, cable for preference, because you want to watch football. You tell him that you need the internet so you can access HOLMES directly instead of having constantly to rely on Lesley May. The football coverage, movies on demand and multiplayer console games are all merely serendipitous extras. ‘Would this involve physically running a cable into the Folly?’ asked Nightingale when I tackled him during practice in the lab. ‘That’s why they call it cable,’ I said. ‘Left hand,’ said Nightingale, and I dutifully produced a werelight with my left hand. ‘Sustain it,’ said Nightingale. ‘We can’t have anything physically entering the building.’ I’d got to the point where I could talk while sustaining a werelight, although it was a strain to make it look as casual as I did. ‘Why not?’ ‘There’s a series of protections woven around the building,’ said Nightingale. ‘They were last set up after the new phone lines were put in in 1941. If we introduce a new physical connection with the outside, it would create a weak spot.’ I stopped trying to be casual and concentrated on maintaining the werelight. It was a relief when Nightingale told me to stop. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I think you’re almost ready to move on to the next form.’ I dropped the werelight and caught my breath. Nightingale wandered over to the adjoining bench, where I’d dismantled my old mobile phone and set up the microscope I’d found in a mahogany case in one of the storage cupboards. He touched the brass and black-lacquer tube. ‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked. ‘An original Charles Perry number 5 microscope,’ I said. ‘I looked it up on the internet. Made in 1932.’ Nightingale nodded, and bent down to examine the insides of my phone. ‘You think magic did this?’ he asked. ‘I know it was the magic,’ I said. ‘I just don’t know how or why.’ Nightingale shifted uncomfortably. ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘You’re not the first apprentice with an inquiring mind, but I don’t want this getting in the way of your duties.’ ‘Yes sir,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep it to my free time.’ ‘You’re about to suggest the coach house,’ said Nightingale. ‘Sir?’ ‘For this cable connection,’ said Nightingale. ‘The heavy defences tended to disturb the horses, so they skirt the coach house. I’m sure this cable connection of yours will be very useful.’ ‘Yes sir.’ ‘For all manner of entertainments,’ continued Nightingale. ‘Sir.’ ‘Now,’ said Nightingale. ‘The next form — Impello. ’

I couldn’t tell whether the coach house had originally been built with a first floor, to house footmen or whatever, which had then been knocked through in the 1920s, or whether the floor had been added by sticking a new ceiling on the garage when they bricked up the main gate. At some point someone had bolted a rather beautiful wrought-iron spiral staircase to the courtyard wall. When I’d first ventured up, I was surprised to find that a good third of the sloping roof on the south-facing side had been glazed. The glass was dirty on the outside and some of the panes were cracked, but it let in enough daylight to reveal a jumble of shapes shrouded by dust sheets. Unlike those in the rest of the Folly, these sheets were furry with dust — I didn’t think Molly had ever cleaned in there. If the chaise longue, Chinese screen, mismatched side tables and collection of ceramic fruit bowls that I found under the sheets weren’t enough of a clue, I also found an easel and a box full of squirrel-hair paint brushes gone rigid with disuse. Somebody had used the rooms as a studio, judging from the empty beer bottles neatly lined up against the south wall. Probably apprentices like me — that, or a wizard with a serious alcohol problem. Stacked in the corner and carefully wrapped in brown paper and string were a series of canvases, painted in oils. These included a number of still lives, a rather amateurish portrait of a young woman whose discomfort was palpable, despite the sloppy execution. The next was much more professional — an Edwardian gentleman reclining in the same wickerwork chair I’d found under a dust sheet earlier. The man was holding a silver-topped cane and for a moment I thought he might be Nightingale, but the man was older and his eyes were an intense blue. Nightingale senior, perhaps? The next, probably by the same painter, was a nude with a subject that so shocked me I took it to the skylight to get a better look. I hadn’t made a mistake. There was Molly, reclining pale and naked on the chaise longue, staring out of the canvas with heavy-lidded eyes, one hand dipping into a bowl of cherries placed on a table by her side. At least, I hope they were cherries. The painting was in the impressionist style so the brush strokes were bold, making it hard to tell: they were definitely small and red, the same colour as Molly’s lips. I carefully rewrapped the paintings and put them back where I’d found them. I did a cursory check of the room for damp, dry rot and whatever it is that makes wooden beams crumbly and dangerous. I found that there was still a shuttered loading door at the courtyard end of the room and mounted above it, a hoisting beam. Presumably to serve a hayloft for the coach horses. As I leaned out to check it was still solid, I saw Molly’s pale face in one of the upper windows. I didn’t know what I found stranger, that somebody had persuaded her to get her kit off, or that she hadn’t changed in appearance in the last seventy years. She withdrew without apparently seeing me. I turned and looked around the room. This, I thought, will do nicely. At one time or other most of my mum’s relatives had cleaned offices for a living. For a certain generation of African immigrants cleaning offices became part of the culture like male circumcision and supporting Arsenal. My mum had done a stint herself and had often taken me with her to save on babysitting. When an African mum takes her son to work she expects her son to work so I quickly learnt how to handle a broom and a window cloth. So the next day after practice, I returned to the coach house with a packet of Marigold gloves and my Uncle Tito’s Numatic vacuum cleaner. Let me tell you, 1,000 watts of suckage makes a big difference when cleaning a room. The only thing I had to worry about was causing a rift in the space-time fabric of the universe. I found the window cleaners online, and a pair of bickering Romanians scrubbed up the skylight while I rigged up a pulley to the hoisting beam, just in time for the TV to be delivered along with the fridge. I had to wait a week for the cable to be hooked up, so I caught up on my practice and started narrowing down the location of Father Thames. ‘Finding him will be a good exercise for you,’ Nightingale had said. ‘Give you a good grounding in the folklore of the Thames Valley.’ I asked for a clue, and he told me to remember that Father Thames had traditionally been a peripatetic spirit which, according to Google, meant walking or travelling about, itinerant, so not really a lot of help. I had to admit that it was expanding my knowledge of the folklore of the Thames Valley, most of which was contradictory but would no doubt be helpful at the next pub quiz I took part in. To inaugurate my re-entry into the twenty-first century I ordered some pizza and invited Lesley round to see my etchings. I had a long soak in the claw-footed porcelain tub that dominated the communal bathroom on my floor and swore, not for the first time, that I was definitely going to install a shower. I’m not a peacock but on occasion I like to dress to impress, although like most coppers I don’t wear much in the way of bling, the rule being never wear something round your neck that you don’t want to be strangled with. I laid in some Becks because I knew Lesley preferred bottled beer, and settled in to watch sports TV while I waited for her to turn up. Among the many other modern innovations that I’d introduced to the coach house was an entryphone installed on the garage’s side door, so that when Lesley arrived all I had to do was buzz her in. I opened the door and met her at the top of the spiral staircase — she’d brought company. ‘I brought Beverley,’ said Lesley. ‘Of course you did,’ I said. I offered them beer. ‘I want you to make it clear that nothing I eat or drink here puts me under obligation,’ said Beverley. ‘And no mucking me about this time.’ ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Eat, drink, no obligations, Scout’s honour.’ ‘On your power,’ said Beverley. ‘I swear on my power,’ I said. Beverley grabbed a beer, hopped onto the sofa, found the remote and started channel-surfing. ‘Can I on-demand a movie?’ she asked. There followed a three-way argument over what we were going to watch, which I lost at the start and Lesley won in the end by the simple expedient of grabbing the remote and switching to one of the free movie channels. Beverley was just complaining that none of the pizzas had pepperoni when the door opened a fraction and a pale face peered in. It was Molly. She stared at us, and we stared back. ‘Would you like to come in?’ I asked. Molly slipped silently inside and drifted over to the sofa, where she sat next to Beverley. I realised that I’d never been this close to her before; her skin was very pale and perfect in the same way that Beverley’s was. She refused a beer but tentatively accepted a piece of pizza. When she ate she turned her face away and held her hand so that it obscured her mouth. ‘When are you going to sort out Father Thames?’ asked Beverley. ‘Mum’s getting impatient and the Richmond posse is getting restless.’ ‘Richmond posse,’ said Lesley, and snorted. ‘We’ve got to find him first,’ I said. ‘How hard can it be?’ said Beverley. ‘He’s got to be close to the river. Hire a boat, go upstream and stop when you get there.’ ‘How would we know when we got there?’ ‘I’d know.’ ‘Then why don’t you come with us, then?’ ‘No way,’ said Beverley. ‘You’re not getting me up past Teddington Lock. I’m strictly tidal, I am.’ Suddenly Molly’s head whipped round to face the door, and a moment later somebody knocked. Beverley looked at me but I shrugged — I wasn’t expecting anyone. I hit mute on the remote and got up to answer. It was Inspector Nightingale dressed in the blue polo shirt and blazer which I recognised as being the closest thing he ever got to casual dress. I stared at him stupidly for a moment, and then invited him in. ‘I just wanted to see what you’d done with the place,’ he said. Molly shot to her feet as soon as Nightingale came into the room, Lesley got up because he was a senior officer and Beverley stood either from some vestigial politeness or in anticipation of a quick getaway. I introduced Beverley, who he’d met only briefly when she was ten. ‘Would you like a beer, sir?’ I asked. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Call me Thomas, please.’ Which was just not going to happen. I handed him a bottle and indicated the chaise longue. He sat carefully and upright at one end. I sat at the other end while Beverley flopped into the middle of the sofa, Lesley sat slightly to attention and poor Molly bobbed a couple of times before perching right on the edge. She kept her eyes resolutely downcast. ‘That’s a very large television,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s a plasma TV,’ I said. Nightingale nodded sagely while out of his sight Beverley rolled her eyes. ‘Is there something wrong with the sound?’ he asked. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I have it on mute.’ I found the remote and we got ten seconds of Beat the Rest before I got the volume under control. ‘That’s very clear,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s like having your own cinema.’ We sat in silence for a moment, everyone, no doubt, appreciating the theatre-quality surround sound. I offered Nightingale a slice of pizza, but he explained that he’d already eaten. He asked after Beverley’s mother, and was told she was fine. He finished his beer and stood up. ‘I really must be on my way,’ he said. ‘Thank you for the beer.’ We all stood up and I walked him to the door. When he left I heard Lesley sigh and flop back on the sofa. I almost shouted when Molly suddenly slid past me in a rustle of fabric and slipped out the door. ‘Awkward,’ said Beverley. ‘You don’t think she and Nightingale …?’ asked Lesley. ‘Ew,’ said Beverley. ‘That’s just wrong.’ ‘I thought you and her were friends?’ I asked. ‘Yeah, but she’s like a creature of the night,’ said Beverley. ‘And he’s old.’ ‘He’s not that old,’ said Lesley. ‘Yes he is,’ said Beverley, but however many hints I dropped that evening, she wouldn’t say any more.

Chapter 7
The Puppet Fayre

It began when I started a practice session without taking my phone out of my jacket pocket. I even noticed a little flare in intensity when I formed the werelight, but I’d only been reliably casting for two days so it didn’t register as significant. It was only later, when I tried to call Lesley and found my phone was busted that I opened up the case and saw the same trickle of sand I’d noticed at the vampire house. I took it down to the lab and prised out the microprocessor. As it came loose, the same fine sand streamed out of its plastic casing. The gold pins were intact, as were the contacts, but the silicon bit of the chip had disintegrated. The cupboards in the lab were full of the scent of sandalwood and the most amazing range of antique equipment, including the Charles Perry microscope, all put away with such precision and tidiness that I knew no student had been involved. Under the microscope I found the powder to be mostly silicon with a few impurities which I suspected was germanium or gallium arsenide. The chip that handled RF conversion was superficially intact but had suffered microscopic pitting across its entire surface. The patterns reminded me of Mr Coopertown’s brain. This was my phone on magic, I thought. Obviously I couldn’t do magic and carry a mobile phone, or stand near a computer or an iPod or most of the useful technology invented since I was born. No wonder Nightingale drove a 1967 Jag. The question was how close did the magic have to be? I was formulating some experiments to find out, when Nightingale distracted me with my next form. We sat down on opposite sides of the lab bench and Nightingale placed an object between us. It was a small apple. ‘ Impello,’ he said, and the apple rose into the air. It hung there, rotating slowly, while I checked for wires, rods and anything else I could think of. I poked it with my finger, but it felt like it was embedded in something solid. ‘Seen enough?’ I nodded, and Nightingale brought out a basket of apples — a wicker basket with a handle and a check napkin, no less. He placed a second apple in front of me, and I didn’t need him to explain the next step. He levitated the apple, I listened for the forma, concentrated on my own apple and said, ‘ Impello. ’ I wasn’t really that surprised when nothing happened. ‘It does get easier,’ said Nightingale. ‘It’s just that it gets easier slowly.’ I looked at the basket. ‘Why do we have so many apples?’ ‘They have a tendency to explode,’ said Nightingale.

The next morning I went out and bought three sets of eye protectors and a heavy-duty lab apron. Nightingale hadn’t been kidding about the exploding fruit, and I’d spent the afternoon smelling of apple juice and the evening picking pips out of my clothing. I asked Nightingale why we didn’t train with something more durable like ball bearings, but he said that magic required the mastery of fine control right from the start. ‘Young men are always tempted to use brute force,’ Nightingale had said. ‘It’s like learning to shoot a rifle: because it’s inherently dangerous you teach safety, accuracy and speed — in that order.’ We went through a lot of apples in that first session. I was getting them in the air but sooner or later — splat! There was a brief phase when it was fun and then it got boring. After a week of practice, I could levitate an apple without it exploding nine times out of ten. I wasn’t a happy little wizard, though. What worried me was where the power was coming from. I never was very good at electricity, so I didn’t know how much power it took to make a werelight. But levitating one small apple against the earth’s gravity — that was essentially the standard definition of one newton of force, and it should be using one theoretical joule of energy every second. The laws of thermodynamics are pretty strict about this sort of thing, and they say that you never get something for nothing. Which meant that that joule was coming from somewhere — but from where? From my brain? ‘So it’s like ESP,’ said Lesley during one of herperiodic visits to the coach house. Officially she was there to liaise with me on the case, but really she was there for the wide-screen TV, takeaways and the unresolved sexual tension. Besides, apart from a couple of unconfirmed cases around the same time as the Neal Street attack, nothing had come to our attention. ‘Like that guy on that show who could move things around,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t feel like I’m moving things around with my mind,’ I said. ‘It’s like I’m making shapes with my mind, which affects something else, which makes stuff happen at the other end. Do you know what a theremin is?’ ‘It’s that weirdo sci-fi musical instrument with the loops,’ she said. ‘Right?’ ‘Pretty much,’ I said. ‘The point is, it’s the only musical instrument you don’t physically touch. You make shapes with your hands and you get a sound. The shapes are completely abstract, so you have to learn to associate a particular shape with a note and tone before you can get the thing to make a tune.’ ‘What does Nightingale say?’ ‘He says that if I stopped letting myself get distracted I might spend less time covered in bits of apple.’

At the end of March, the clocks go forward one hour to mark the start of British Summer Time. I woke up late to find the Folly feeling weirdly empty, the chairs in the breakfast room still tucked beneath the tables and the buffet counter unlaid. I found Nightingale reading the previous day’s Telegraph in one of the overstuffed armchairs that lined the first-floor balcony. ‘It’s the change in the clocks,’ he said. ‘Twice a year she takes the day off.’ ‘Where does she go?’ Nightingale pointed up towards the attic. ‘I believe she stays in her room.’ ‘Are we going on a road trip?’ I asked. Nightingale was wearing his sports jacket over a cream-coloured Arran sweater. His driving gloves and the keys to the Jag were lying on a nearby occasional table. ‘That depends,’ he said. ‘Do you think you know where the Old Man of the Thames is today?’ ‘Trewsbury Mead,’ I said. ‘He’ll have arrived there round about the Spring Equinox, which was last week, and he’ll stay until All Fool’s Day.’ ‘Your reasoning?’ asked Nightingale. ‘It’s the source of his river,’ I said. ‘Where else is he going to go in the spring?’ Nightingale smiled. ‘I know a nice little transport café off the M4 — we can have breakfast there.’

Trewsbury Mead, early afternoon under a powder blue sky. According to the Ordnance Survey, this is where the Thames first rises 130 straight-line kilometres west of London. Just to the north is the site either of an Iron Age hill fort or a Roman encampment, the exact nature of which is awaiting an episode of Time Team. Apparently there is a soggy field, a stone to mark the spot and a chance, after a particularly wet winter, that you might see some water. You approach down a minor road that turns to gravel once you’re past the private houses it was built to serve. The line of the river is marked by a dense stand of trees, and the source of the Thames is beyond that. In the field beyond was the Court of the Old Man of the River. We could hear it before we saw it, the rumble of diesel generators, steelwork clanking, the bass beat of music thumping, tannoys barking, girls screaming, glimpses of neon over the treeline and the whole round-the-corner thrill of a travelling funfair. I had a sudden Bank Holiday memory of holding my father’s hand in one fist and clutching a precious handful of pound coins in the other. Never enough, and quickly gone. We left the Jag by the side of the road and walked the rest of the way. Beyond the line of trees I could see the tops of the big wheel and that ride where they fling you into the air on the end of a rope which I really don’t see the point of. The track crossed a stream bed on a modern concrete culvert which had recently been scored by the passage of heavy trucks, and for a moment we were in the shade of the trees. The first line of parked caravans began as soon as we were back in the sunlight. Most of them were old-fashioned with humpbacked roofs and mean little doors and windows. A few were modern with sloped fronts and go-faster stripes. I even caught sight, through the thickets of Calor gas bottles, deckchairs, guy ropes and sleeping Rottweilers, of the horseshoe roof of a wooden gypsy caravan — something I thought was only for tourists. Although the caravans seemed to be parked randomly I was struck by the notion that there was a pattern, a deep structure that nagged at the edge of perception. There was definitely a perimeter, and nothing illusive about the heavyset man who guarded it from the doorway of his caravan. The man had thick black hair greased into a quiff and a set of long sideburns that had last been fashionable when my dad was doing regular sessions with Ted Heath in the late 1950s. He also had a totally illegal twelve-bore shotgun propped up against the side of his caravan. ‘Afternoon,’ said Nightingale, and kept walking past. The man nodded. ‘Afternoon,’ said the man. ‘Good weather we’re having,’ said Nightingale. ‘Looks to be fair,’ said the man in an accent that was either Irish or Welsh, I couldn’t tell, but definitely Celtic. I felt a prickle on the back of my neck. A London copper doesn’t like to intrude upon a traveller camp with anything less than a van full of bodies in riot gear — it’s considered disrespectful otherwise. The residential caravans formed a semicircle around the fair proper. There, the big beasts of the fairground world roared and clanked and blared out ‘I Feel Good’ by James Brown. Every copper knows that the funfairs of Great Britain are run by the Showmen, a collection of interwoven families so clannish they officially constitute a separate ethnic group of their own. Their family names were painted on the generator trucks and blazoned across the tops of hoardings. I counted at least six different names on six different rides and half a dozen more as we walked through the fair. It seemed that each family had brought one ride to the spring fair at Trewsbury Mead. Skinny young girls ran past, trailing laughter and streamers of red hair. Their older sisters paraded in white hot pants, bikini tops and high-heeled boots, checking out the older boys through Max Factor lashes and clouds of cigarette smoke. The boys tried to hide their awkwardness by playing butch or walking the moving rides with studied indifference. Their mums worked the booths painted with the rough murals of last decade’s film stars and festooned with banners and health and safety warnings. Nobody seemed to be paying for the rides or the candyfloss, which probably explained why the kids were so happy. The fair proper formed another semicircle, and at its centre was a rough-hewn wooden corral like those you see in Westerns, and in the centre of that was the source of the mighty River Thames. Which looked to me like a small pond with ducks on it. And, standing at the fence rail, was the Old Man of the River himself. There was once a statue of Father Thames at the Mead, now transported to the more reliably wet stretch of the river at Lechlade, which showed a muscular old man with a William Blake beard reclining on his plinth with a shovel over his shoulder, crates and bundles arranged at his feet — the fruits of industry and trade. Even I can spot a bit of Empire spin when I see it, so I didn’t really expect him to look like that but I think I was still hoping for something grander than the man at the fence. He was short, with a pinched face dominated by a beaky nose and a heavy brow. He looked old, in his seventies at least, but there was a sinewy vigour in the way he moved, and his eyes were grey and bright. He wore an old-fashioned, double-breasted suit in dusty black, the jacket unbuttoned to show off a red velvet waistcoat, a brass fob watch and a folded pocket handkerchief the bright yellow of a spring daffodil. A battered homburg was jammed on his head, wisps of white hair escaping from underneath, and a cigarette dangled from his lip. He stood leaning on the fence, one foot on the lowest rail, talking out of the side of his mouth to a crony, one of several frighteningly spry old men who shared the fence with him, gesturing at the pond or taking a long pull on his cigarette. He glanced up as we approached, frowning at the sight of Nightingale before turning his attention to me. I felt the force of his personality drag at me: beer and skittles it promised, the smell of horse manure and walking home from the pub by moonlight, a warm fireside and uncomplicated women. It was a good thing I’d had practice with Mama Thames and had mentally prepared on the walk up because otherwise I would have marched right up and offered him the contents of my wallet. He winked at me and turned his full attention on Nightingale. He called out a greeting in a language which could have been Skelta or Welsh, or even authentic pre-Roman Gaelic for all I knew. Nightingale answered in the same language, and I wondered whether I was going to have to learn that one too. The cronies shuffled along to make a space at the fence — only wide enough for one, I noticed. Nightingale joined Father Thames and they shook hands. With his height and good suit, Nightingale should have looked like the lord of the manor mixing with the commoners but there was no deference in the way Father Thames sized him up. Father Thames was doing most of the talking, emphasising his words with little twirls and flicks of his fingers. Nightingale leaned on the fence deliberately minimising the height difference and nodding and chuckling, I could tell, at all the right moments. I was considering whether to edge forward so that I could understand what they saying more clearly when one of the younger men at the fence caught my eye. He was taller and thicker-set than Father Thames, but had the same long sinewy arms and narrow face. ‘You don’t want to be bothering with that,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a good half-hour before they get past the pleasantries.’ He reached out a large calloused hand to shake mine. ‘Oxley,’ he said. ‘Peter Grant,’ I said. ‘Come and meet the wife,’ he said. The wife was a pretty woman with a rounded face and startling black eyes. She met us on the threshold of a modest 1960s caravan that was parked in its own little space to the left of the funfair. ‘This is my wife Isis,’ said Oxley, and to her, ‘This is Peter, the new apprentice.’ She took my hand. Her skin was warm, and with the same unreal perfection that I’d noticed on Beverley and Molly. ‘Delighted,’ she said. Her accent was pure Jane Austen. We sat on folding chairs around a card table with a cracked linoleum top, decorated with a single daffodil arranged in a slender vase of fluted glass. ‘Would you like some tea?’ Isis asked, and when I hesitated said, ‘I, Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger Isis solemnly swear on the life of my husband,’ which got a chuckle from Oxley, ‘and the future prospects of the Oxford rowing team that nothing you partake of in my house will place you under any obligation.’ She crossed her heart and gave me a little-girl smile. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘Tea would be nice.’ ‘I can see you’re wondering how we met,’ said Oxley. I could see he wanted to tell the story. ‘I presume she fell into the river,’ I said. ‘You would presume wrong, sir,’ said Oxley. ‘Back in the day I had a great fondness for the theatre, and would often smarten myself up and row up to Westminster for an evening’s entertainment. Quite the peacock I was back then, and attracted, I like to think, many an admiring gaze.’ ‘What with him traversing the cattle market at the time,’ said Isis, returning with the tea. The cups and teapot were modern porcelain, a very clean design with a stylish platinum strip around the lip, not chipped at all, I noticed. I suspected I was getting the VIP treatment, and I wondered why. ‘I first set eyes on my Isis at the old Royal on Drury Lane, this being the new one that burned down not long after. I was in the gods, and she was in a box with her dear friend Anne. I was smitten, but alas she already had her fancy man.’ He paused long enough to pour the tea. ‘Although he suffered a terrible disappointment, I can tell you.’ ‘Hush my love,’ said Isis. ‘The young man doesn’t want to hear about that.’ I picked up my teacup. The brew was very pale, and I recognised the aroma of Earl Grey. I hesitated with the cup at my lips but trust has to start somewhere, so I took a resolute sip. It was a very fine cup of tea indeed. ‘But I am like the river,’ said Oxley. ‘I may run but I am always there.’ ‘Except during droughts,’ said Isis, and offered me a slice of Battenberg cake. ‘I’m always lurking under the surface,’ said Oxley. ‘I was, even then. Her friend had a very nice house at Strawberry Hill, beautiful place, and back in those days not surrounded by mock-Tudor semis. If you’ve seen the place then you’ll know that it’s built like a castle, and my Isis was a princess held captive in its tallest tower.’ ‘Having a long weekend at a friend’s house, actually,’ said Isis. ‘My chance came when they held a great masquerade at the castle,’ said Oxley. ‘Dressed in my finest, my features cleverly disguised with a swan mask, I slipped in through the tradesman’s entrance and soon found myself mingling with the fine people inside.’ I figured that I was already in trouble for the tea, so I might as well have the cake. It was shop-bought and very sweet. ‘It was a grand ball,’ said Oxley. ‘Lords and ladies and gentlemen all dressed in Josephine gowns or tight breeches and velvet waistcoats, and every one of them thinking wicked thoughts while safe behind their mask. And most wicked was my Isis, for all that she was wearing the mask of the Queen of Egypt.’ ‘I was Isis,’ said Isis. ‘As you well know.’ ‘So I boldly stepped up and marked her card for every dance,’ said Oxley. ‘Which was a cheek and an effrontery,’ said Isis. ‘I saved you from the left feet of many a swain,’ said Oxley. She put her hand on his cheek. ‘Which I cannot deny.’ ‘The thing you have to remember about a masquerade is that at the end of the night the masks have to come off,’ said Oxley. ‘At least in polite company, but I had been thinking …’ ‘Always a worrying development,’ said Isis. ‘Why did the masquerade have to end?’ said Oxley. ‘And as the son follows the father, I let action follow thought and seized my darling Isis, threw her over my shoulder and was away across the fields towards Chertsey.’ ‘Oxley,’ said Isis. ‘The poor boy is an officer of the law. You can’t be telling him you kidnapped me. He’d be honour bound to arrest you.’ She looked at me. ‘It was entirely voluntary, I can assure you,’ she said. ‘I was twice married and a mother, and I’d always known my own mind.’ ‘It is certain that she proved to be an experienced woman,’ he said and, much to my embarrassment, winked at me. ‘You wouldn’t think he was once a man of the cloth,’ said Isis. ‘I was a terrible monk,’ he said. ‘But that was a different life.’ He rapped the table. ‘Now that we’ve fed, watered and bored you senseless, why don’t we talk some business? What is it that the Big Lady wants?’ ‘You understand that I’m strictly the go-between in this,’ I said. We actually did a course on conflict resolution at Hendon, and the trick is always to stress your neutrality while allowing both parties to think you’re secretly on their side. There were role-playing exercises and everything — it was one of the few things I was better at than Lesley. ‘Mama Thames feels that you may be looking to move downstream of Teddington Lock.’ ‘It’s all one river,’ said Oxley. ‘And he’s the Old Man of the River.’ ‘She claims he abandoned the tideway in 1858,’ I said. More precisely during the Great Stink — note the capitals — when the Thames became so thick with sewage that London was overwhelmed with a stench so terrible that Parliament considered relocating to Oxford. ‘Nobody stayed in London that summer who could move away,’ said Oxley. ‘It wasn’t fit for man or beast.’ ‘She says he never came back,’ I said. ‘Is that true?’ ‘That is true,’ said Oxley. ‘And in truth, the Old Man has never loved the city, not since it killed his sons.’ ‘Which sons were these?’ ‘Oh, you know who they are,’ said Oxley. ‘There was Ty and Fleet and Effra. All drowned in a flood of muck and filth and finally put out of their misery by that clever bastard Bazalgette. Him that made the sewers. I met him, you know, very grand man with the finest set of chops this side of William Gladstone. Knocked him on his arse for the murdering bastard that he was.’ ‘You think he killed the rivers?’ ‘No,’ said Oxley. ‘But he was their undertaker. I’ve got to hand it to the daughters of the Big Lady, for they certainly must be hardier than my brothers.’ ‘If he doesn’t want the city, why is he pushing downstream?’ I asked. ‘Some of us still have a hankering for the bright lights,’ said Oxley, and smiled at his wife. ‘I dare say it would be nice to attend the theatre again,’ she said. Oxley refilled my cup. A crackly voice on a tannoy somewhere behind me yelled, ‘Let’s get this party started.’ James Brown was still feeling nice, sugar and spice now. ‘And you want to fight Mama Thames’s daughters for the privilege?’ ‘You think they’re too fearsome for us?’ asked Oxley. ‘I don’t think you want it badly enough,’ I said. ‘Besides, I’m sure arrangements could be made.’ ‘An excursion by coach, perhaps?’ asked Oxley. ‘Will we need passports?’ Despite what you think you know, most people don’t want to fight, especially when evenly matched. A mob will tear an individual to pieces, and a man with a gun and a noble cause is happy to kill ever so many women and children. But risking a fair fight — not so easy. That’s why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of the ‘don’t hold me back’ while desperately hoping someone likes them enough to hold them back. Everyone is always so pleased to see the police arrive because we have to save them whether we like them or not. Oxley wasn’t a pissed young man, but I could see he was just as keen to find someone to hold him back. Or maybe his father? ‘Your father,’ I said. ‘What does he really want?’ ‘What any father wants,’ said Oxley. ‘The respect of his children.’ I nearly said that not all fathers were worthy of respect, but I managed to keep my gob shut, and anyway, not everyone had a dad a like mine. ‘It would be nice if everyone could chill for a bit,’ I said. ‘Keep everything relaxed while the Inspector and I sorted something out.’ Oxley looked at me over his teacup. ‘It is spring,’ he said. ‘Plenty of distractions upstream of Richmond.’ ‘Lambing season,’ I said. ‘And what not.’ ‘You’re not what I expected,’ said Oxley. ‘What were you expecting?’ ‘I was expecting Nightingale to choose someone more like himself,’ said Oxley. ‘Upper-class?’ ‘Solid,’ said Isis, pre-empting her husband. ‘Workmanlike.’ ‘Whereas you,’ said Oxley, ‘are a cunning man.’ ‘Much more like the wizards we used to know,’ said Isis. ‘Is that a good thing?’ I asked. Oxley and Isis laughed. ‘I don’t know,’ said Oxley. ‘But it will be interesting finding out.’