Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [124]
I love my dad. He’s a walking caution.
My mum has three landlines. I picked one up and called my voice-mail service. The first message was from Dr Walid.
‘Peter,’ he said. ‘Just to let you know that Thomas is conscious and asking for you.’
The broadsheets called it May Madness, which made it sound like a tea dance. The tabloids called it May Rage, presumably because it had one less syllable to fit across the front page. The TV had some good footage of middle-aged women in long dresses tossing bricks at the police. Nobody had a clue what had happened, so the pundits were out in force explaining how the riot was caused by whatever socio-political factor their latest book was pushing. It was certainly a searing indictment of some aspect of modern society – if only we knew what.
There was a big police presence in UCH’s A&E department, most of them loitering in search of overtime or trying to get statements from victims of the riot. I didn’t want to give a statement, so I slipped in the back way by grabbing a mop bucket and passing myself off as a cleaner. I got lost in the upper levels looking for Dr Walid before stumbling onto a corridor that looked vaguely familiar. I opened doors at random until I found Nightingale’s. He didn’t really look any better than last time.
‘Inspector,’ I said. ‘You wanted to see me.’
His eyes opened and flicked towards me. I sat on the edge of the bed so he could see me without moving his head.
‘Got shot,’ he whispered.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I was there.’
‘Shot before,’ he said.
‘Really, when?
‘War.’
‘Which war was that?’ I asked.
Nightingale grimaced and shifted in his bed. ‘Second,’ he said.
‘The Second World War,’ I said. ‘What were you in – the baby brigade?’ To have enlisted even in 1945 Nightingale would have had to have been born in 1929, and that’s if he’d lied about his age. ‘How old are you?’
‘Old,’ he whispered. ‘Turn century.’
‘Turn of the century?’ I asked, and he nodded. ‘You were born at the turn of the century – the twentieth century?’ He looked as if he was in his bluff mid-forties, which is a neat trick when you’re lying half-dead in a hospital bed with a machine that goes ‘ping’ at regular intervals. ‘You’re over a hundred years old?’
Nightingale made a wheezing sound that alarmed me for a moment, until I realised that it was laughter.
‘Is this natural?’
He shook his head.
‘Do you know why it’s happening?’
‘Gift horse,’ he whispered. ‘Mouth.’
I couldn’t argue with that. I didn’t want to tire him too much, so I told him about Lesley, the riot and being locked out of the Folly. When I asked him whether Molly could help me track Henry Pyke, he shook his head.
‘Dangerous,’ he said.
‘Has to be done,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he’s going to stop until he’s stopped.’
Slowly, one word at a time, Nightingale told me exactly how it would work – I didn’t like the sound of it one bit. It was a terrible plan, and it still left the question of how to get back into the Folly.
‘Tyburn’s mother,’ said Nightingale.
‘You want her to overrule her daughter?’ I asked. ‘What makes you think she’ll do that?’
‘Pride,’ said Nightingale.
‘You want me to beg?’
‘Not her pride,’ said Nightingale. ‘Yours.’
London Bridge
It’s not easy manoeuvring an articulated lorry up the Wapping Wall, so I hired a middle-aged man called Brian to do it. Brian was balding, pot-bellied and foulmouthed. The only thing missing from the stereotype