Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [33]
‘Tango Whiskey Three from Tango Whiskey one: say again?’
TW-1 would be the Richmond Duty Inspector in the local control room, TW-3 would be one of the Borough’s Incident Response Vehicles.
‘Tango Whiskey One from Tango Whiskey Three, we’re down by the White Swan being attacked by the bloody geese.’
‘White Swan?’ I asked.
‘It’s a pub in Twickenham,’ said Nightingale. ‘By the bridge to Eel Pie Island.’
Eel Pie Island I knew to be a collection of boatyards and houses on a river islet barely 500 metres long. The Rolling Stones had once played a gig there, and so had my father – that’s where I knew it from.
‘And the geese?’ I asked.
‘Better than watchdogs,’ said Nightingale. ‘Ask the Romans.’
TW-1 wasn’t interested in the geese; she wanted to know about the crime. There’d been multiple 999 calls twenty minutes earlier, reporting a breach of the peace and possible fighting between groups of youths, which in my experience could turn out to be anything from a hen night gone wrong to foxes turning over rubbish bins.
TW-3 reported seeing a group of IC1 males dressed in jeans and donkey jackets fighting with an unknown number of IC3 females on Riverside Road. IC1 is the identification code for white people, IC3 is black people and if you’re wondering, I tend to jump between IC3 and IC6 – Arabic or North African. It depends on how much sun I’ve caught recently. Black versus white was unusual but not impossible, but I’d never heard of boys versus girls before, and neither had TW-1, who wanted clarification.
‘Female,’ reported TW-3. ‘Definitely female, and one of them is stark naked.’
‘I was afraid of that,’ said Nightingale.
‘Afraid of what?’ I asked.
There was a rush of emptiness outside the Jag as we shot across the Chiswick Bridge. Upstream of Chiswick, the Thames throws a loop northwards around Kew Gardens and we were cutting across the base and aiming for Richmond Bridge.
‘There’s an important shrine nearby,’ said Nightingale. ‘I think the boys might have been after that.’
When he said shrine, I guessed he wasn’t talking about the rugby stadium.
‘And the girls are defending the shrine?’
‘Something like that,’ said Nightingale. He was a superb driver, with a level of concentration that I always find a comfort at high speed but even Nightingale had to slow down when the streets narrowed. Like a lot of London, Richmond town centre had been laid out back when town planning was something that happened to other people.
‘Tango Whiskey one from Tango Whiskey four; I’m on Church Lane by the river and I’ve got five or six IC1 males climbing into a boat – in pursuit.’
TW-4 would be Richmond’s second Incident Response Vehicle, meaning that just about every available body was now dealing.
TW-3 reported that there was no sign of the IC3 females, naked or otherwise, but that they could see the boat and it was heading for the opposite bank.
‘Call them and tell them we’re on our way,’ said Nightingale.
‘What’s our call sign? I asked.
‘Zulu One,’ he said.
I keyed the microphone. ‘Tango Whiskey One from Zulu One; show us dealing.’
There was a bit of a pause while TW-1 digested this. I wondered if the duty inspector knew who we were.
‘Zulu One from Tango Whiskey One; copy that.’ The Inspector had sounded flat, neutral. She knew who we were, all right. ‘Be advised that the suspects seem to have crossed the river and may now be on the south bank.’
I tried to acknowledge but it came out strangulated when Nightingale put us the wrong way down the one-way system on George Street, which you’re not supposed to do even with your lights and siren on. Not least because of the risk of coming face to face with something heavy and designed to clean