Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [42]
There were two benches outside the court. We sat on one while the accused, Celia Munroe, her lawyer and a friend she’d brought along for moral support shared the other with Mr Ranatunga and Mr Ranatunga’s brother. None of them wanted to be there, and all of them blamed us.
‘Any word from Los Angeles?’ I asked.
‘Brandon Coopertown was a man on the edge,’ said Lesley. ‘Apparently all of his American deals had fallen through and his production company was about to fold.’
‘And that house?’ I asked.
‘About to go the way of all flesh,’ said Lesley. I looked blank. ‘Mortgage was six months in arrears,’ she said. ‘And his income this year barely scraped thirty-five thousand.’
That was a good ten grand more than I was getting as a full constable – my sympathy was limited.
‘It’s starting to look like a classic family annihilation,’ said Lesley, who’d been reading up on her forensic psychology. ‘Father faces a catastrophic loss of status, he can’t live with the shame and decides that without him his wife’s and kid’s lives are meaningless. He snaps, tops a fellow media professional, tops his family and tops himself.’
‘By making his face fall off?’ I asked.
‘No theory is ever perfect,’ said Lesley. ‘Particularly since we can’t even find a reason for William Skirmish being in the West End that night.’
‘Maybe he was on the pull,’ I said.
‘He wasn’t on the pull,’ said Lesley. ‘And I should know.’
Because William Skirmish’s ‘victim timeline’ had become barely relevant to the case, the job of completing it had been handed to the Murder Team’s most junior member, i.e. Lesley. Since she’d spent such a lot of time and effort reconstructing William Skirmish’s last hours she was perfectly willing, in fact overjoyed, to share it with me in excruciating detail. She’d checked out William Skirmish’s romantic leanings and found no history of trawling the West End for sex – serially monogamous, that was our William – all of them guys he’d met through work or mutual friends. She’d also traced every single CCTV that he’d passed that night, and as far as Lesley could tell he’d walked from his house to Tufnell Park Station and caught the tube to Tottenham Court Road – from there, he’d walked straight to Covent garden, via Mercer Street, and his fatal encounter with Coopertown. No deviation or hesitation – as if he had an appointment.
‘Almost as if something was messing with his head,’ she said. ‘Right?’
So I told her about the dissimulo spell and the theory that something had invaded Coopertown’s mind, forced him to change his face, kill William Skirmish and then his family. This led, naturally, to a description of my visit to Mama Thames, the magic lessons and Molly the ‘God knows what she is’ Maid.
‘Should you be telling me this?’ asked Lesley.
‘I don’t see why not,’ I said. ‘Nightingale’s never told me not to. Your boss believes this stuff is real, too; he just doesn’t like it very much.’
‘So something was messing with Coopertown’s mind – right?’ asked Lesley.
‘Right,’ I said.
‘And whatever that was,’ continued Lesley, ‘could have been interfering with William Skirmish’s mind as well. It could have made him come down West just so he could have his head knocked off. I mean, if it can mess with one person’s mind, why not another, why not yours or mine?’
I remembered the horror of Coopertown’s face as he lurched towards me across the balcony, and the smell of blood. ‘Thank you for that thought, Lesley,’ I said. ‘I shall certainly treasure it for ever – probably late at night when I’m trying to sleep.’
Lesley glanced at where Celia Monroe sat demurely. ‘She had the same kind