Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [2]
There was a badge pinned to his lapel: a pewter skeleton caught mid-caper. It seemed a bit goth for a short cockney geezer, but then London is the pick ’n’ mix cultural capital of the world. I wrote down Street performer.
‘Now sir,’ I said, ‘if you could just tell me what it was you saw.’
‘I saw plenty, squire.’
‘But you were here earlier this morning?’ My instructors were also clear about not cueing your witnesses. Information is only supposed to flow in one direction.
‘I’m here morning, noon and night,’ said Nicholas, who obviously hadn’t gone to the same lectures I had.
‘If you’ve witnessed something,’ I said, ‘perhaps you’d better come and give a statement.’
‘That would be a bit of problem,’ said Nicholas, ‘seeing as I’m dead.’
I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly. ‘If you’re worried about your safety …’
‘I ain’t worried about anything any more, squire,’ said Nicholas. ‘On account of having been dead these last hundred and twenty years.’
‘If you’re dead,’ I said before I could stop myself, ‘how come we’re talking?’
‘You must have a touch of the sight,’ said Nicholas. ‘Some of the old Palladino.’ He looked at me closely. ‘Touch of that from your father, maybe? Dockman, was he, sailor, some such thing, he gave you that good curly hair and them lips?’
‘Can you prove you’re dead?’ I asked.
‘Whatever you say, squire,’ said Nicholas, and stepped forward into the light.
He was transparent, the way holograms in films are transparent. Three-dimensional, definitely really there and fucking transparent. I could see right through him to the white tent the forensic team had set up to protect the area around the body.
Right, I thought, just because you’ve gone mad doesn’t mean you should stop acting like a policeman.
‘Can you tell me what you saw?’ I asked.
‘I saw the first gent, him that was murdered, walking down from James Street. Fine, high-stepping man with a military bearing, very gaily dressed in the modern fashion. What I would have considered a prime plant in my corporeal days.’ Nicholas paused to spit. Nothing reached the ground. ‘Then the second gent, him what did the murdering, he comes strolling the other way up from Henrietta Street. Not so nicely turned out, wearing them blue workman’s trousers and an oilskin like a fisherman. They passed each other just there.’ Nicholas pointed to a spot ten metres short of the church portico. ‘I reckon they know each other, ’cause they both nod but they don’t stop for a chat or nothing, which is understandable, it not being a night for loitering.’
‘So they passed each other?’ I asked, as much for the chance to catch up with my note-taking as to clarify the point. ‘And you thought they knew each other?’
‘As acquaintances,’ said Nicholas. ‘I wouldn’t say they were bosom friends, especially with what transpired next.’
I asked him what transpired next.
‘Well the second, murdering gent, he puts on a cap and a red jacket and he brings out his stick and as quietly and swiftly as a snoozer in a lodging house he comes up behind the first gent and knocks his head clean off.’
‘You’re having me on,’ I said.
‘No I’m never,’ said Nicholas, and crossed himself. ‘I swear on my own death, and that’s as solemn a swear as a poor shade can give. It was a terrible sight. Off came his head and up went the blood.’
‘What did the killer do?’
‘Well, having done his business he was off, went down New Row like a lurcher on the commons,’ said Nicholas.
I was thinking that New Row took you down to Charing Cross Road, an ideal place to catch a taxi or a minicab or even a night bus if the timing was right. The killer could have cleared central London in less than fifteen minutes.
‘That wasn’t the worst of it,’ said Nicholas, obviously unwilling to let his audience get distracted. ‘There was something uncanny about the killing gent.’
‘Uncanny?’ I asked. ‘You’re a ghost.’
‘Spirit I may be,’ said Nicholas. ‘But that just means