Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch [85]
Tyburn’s eyes widened at the sound of cracking marble. She whirled to look and as her eyes left mine I staggered back, suddenly free. I felt the shape in my mind slip out of control and the statue’s head disintegrated in a spray of marble chips. I felt a blow to my shoulder and a sharp cut on my face and a chunk of marble the size of a small dog slammed into the patio tiles by my feet.
I saw that the birdbath had also cracked, and that water was escaping and spreading across the patio like a bloodstain. Tyburn turned back to look at me. There was a cut on her forehead and her sundress was torn just above her hip.
She’d gone very quiet, and that was not a good sign. I’d seen that quiet before, on my mum and on the face of a woman whose brother had just been knocked down by a drunk driver. People are conditioned by the media to think that black women are all shouting and head-shaking and girlfriending and ‘oh, no you didn’t’, and if they’re not sassy then they’re dignified and downtrodden and soldiering on and ‘I don’t understand why folks just can’t get along’. But if you see a black woman go quiet the way Tyburn did, the eyes bright, the lips straight and the face still as a death mask, you have made an enemy for life: do not pass go, do not collect two hundred quid.
Do not stand around and try and talk about it – trust me, it won’t end well. I took my own advice and backed away. Tyburn’s black eyes watched me go, and as soon as I was safely in the side passage I turned and legged it as fast as I could. I didn’t exactly run down the hill to Swiss Cottage, but I did make it a brisk walk. There was a payphone near the bottom which I needed since the battery had been in my mobile during my statue demolition. I called the operator, gave my identification number and got a call routed to Lesley’s mobile. She wanted to know where I’d been because apparently it had all gone pear-shaped without me.
‘We saved the blind guy,’ she said, ‘no thanks to you.’ She refused to give me any details because ‘your boss wants you down here yesterday.’ I asked her where ‘here’ was and she told me the Westminster Mortuary, which made me cross because we may have saved the blind man but some poor bastard had still lost his face. I told her I’d be there as soon as possible.
I caught a lift in the local area car down to Swiss Cottage tube and hopped a Jubilee Line train into town. I doubted that Lady Ty had the manpower or the inclination to have the stations covered, and one of the few advantages of blowing out my phone was that it couldn’t be jacked, ditto any trackers she might have stashed about my person. I’m not being paranoid, you know. You can buy those things off the internet.
Rush hour was almost in full flood when I got on the train, and the carriage was crowded just short of the transition between the willing suspension of personal space and packed in like sardines. I spotted some of the passengers eyeing me up as I took a position at the end of the carriage with my back to the connecting door. I was sending out mixed signals, the suit and reassuring countenance of my face going one way, the fact that I’d obviously been in a fight recently and was mixed race going the other. It’s a myth that Londoners are oblivious to one another on the tube: we’re hyper-aware of each other and are constantly revising our what-if scenarios and counter strategies. What if that suavely handsome yet ethnic young man asks me for money? Do I give or refuse? If he makes a joke do I respond, and if so will it be a shy smile or a guffaw? If he’s been hurt in a fight does he need help? If I help him will I find myself drawn into a threatening situation, or an adventure, or a wild interracial romance? Will I miss supper? If he opens his jacket and yells ‘God is great’, will I make it down the other end of the carriage in time?
All the time most of us were devising friction-free strategies to promote peace in our time, our carriage and please God at least until I get home. It’s called, by people over sixty, common courtesy,