Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [35]
‘There are a number of agreements,’ said Nightingale. ‘A great deal of what we do is making sure everyone keeps to them.’
‘There’s a goddess of the river,’ I said.
‘Yes – Mother Thames,’ he said patiently. ‘And there’s a god of the river – Father Thames.’
‘Are they related?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘And that’s part of the problem.’
‘Are they really gods?’
‘I never worry about the theological questions,’ said Nightingale. ‘They exist, they have power and they can breach the Queen’s peace – that makes them a police matter.’
A searchlight stabbed out of the darkness and swept over the river once, twice, before swinging back to fix on the remains of the narrowboat – the London Fire Brigade had arrived. I smelled diesel exhaust as the fire boat gingerly manoeuvred alongside, figures in yellow helmets waiting with hoses and boathooks. The searchlight revealed that the superstructure had been completely gutted by the fire, but I could see that the hull had been painted red with black trim. I could hear the firemen chatting to each other as they boarded and made the narrowboat safe. It was all reassuringly mundane. Which brought me to another thought. Nightingale and I had scrambled out of bed, into the Jag and headed west before there was any indication that this was nothing more than the tail end of an average Friday night.
‘How did you know this was our shout?’ I asked.
‘I have my own sources,’ said Nightingale.
One of the Richmond IRVs arrived with the Duty Inspector onboard and we all indulged in a bit of bureaucratic strutting to establish our respective bona fides. Richmond won on points, but only because one of them had a flask full of coffee. Nightingale briefed the locals – it was a gang thing, he said. Some IC1 youths, no doubt drunk, had stolen a boat, sailed down from beyond Teddington Lock and picked a fight with a local group of IC3 youths – some of whom were female. When they tried to escape, the Teddington gang had managed, accidentally, to set their boat on fire, had abandoned ship and escaped on foot down the Thames pathway. Everybody nodded their heads – it sounded like a typical Friday night in the big city. Nightingale said he was sure nobody had drowned, but the Richmond Duty Inspector decided to call in a search-and-rescue team just in case.
Then, our two inspectors having marked their respective trees, we went our separate ways.
We drove back up to Richmond but stopped well short of the bridge. Dawn was at least an hour away, but as I followed Nightingale through an iron gate I could see that the road we were on cut through a municipal gardens that sloped down to the river. There was an orange glow ahead of us, a hurricane lantern hung on the lower branches of a plane tree, and it illuminated a row of red-brick arches built into the revetment that supported the roadway. Inside these artificial caves I glimpsed sleeping bags, cardboard boxes and old newspaper.
‘I’m just going to have a chat with this troll,’ said Nightingale.
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I think we’re supposed to call them rough sleepers.’
‘Not this one we don’t,’ said Nightingale. ‘He’s a troll.’
I saw movement in the shadow of one of the arches, a pale face, ragged hair, layers of old clothes against the winter cold. It looked like a rough sleeper to me.
‘A troll, really?’ I asked.
‘His name is Nathaniel,’ said Nightingale. ‘He used to sleep under Hungerford Bridge.’
‘Why did he move?’ I asked.
‘Apparently he wanted to live in the suburbs.’
Suburban troll, I thought, why not?
‘This is your snout, isn’t it,’ I said. ‘He tipped you off.’
‘A policeman is only as good as his informants,’ said Nightingale. I didn’t tell him that these days they were supposed to be referred to as Covert Human Intelligence Sources. ‘Stay back a bit,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know