CHAPTER 8
Southwark
THIS IS police work: you go from point A to point B, where you learn something that forces you to schlep back to point A again to ask questions that you didn’t know to ask the first time. If you’re really unlucky you do both directions in the worst snow since written records began and with Zachary Palmer offering you driving advice while you do it.
Portobello Road was struggling to stay open in the weather. Half the stalls had been dismantled and the remaining stallholders were stamping their feet and gritting their teeth. Fortunately the entrance to the mews on Kensington Park Gardens had been swept clear by a parade of official vehicles.
The statue was on the mantelpiece in the living room, exactly where I remembered it, and had been dusted for prints but not deemed interesting enough to take away. There was even an Italian cleaning lady named Sonya who was busy cleaning up the mess left by the forensic people under the watchful eye of DC Guleed.
“Not that this is supposed to be our job,” she said testily. Even if you’re a family liaison it isn’t really your job to supervise the cleanup before the grieving relatives arrive. I guessed that U.S. senators counted as a special case.
“Has her statement been taken?” I asked.
“No,” said Guleed. “We completely forgot to ask her about the victim’s movements because we’re just that unprofessional.”
I gave her the hard stare and she sighed.
“Sorry,” she said. “The father phoned from the airport—we don’t think he’s taking it well.”
“Trouble?”
Guleed looked over at Zach, who was rooting around in the kitchen for snacks. “I don’t think your friend wants to be here when the senator turns up.”
“Not my problem,” I said.
“Oh, thank you so much for dumping him on me, then,” she said. “I suppose you’re happy now that you’ve got your statue.”
“It’s a very special statue,” I said.
Only it wasn’t really, at least not in and of itself. It depicted the ever popular “Venus-Aphrodite surprised by a sculptor and struggling to cover her tits with one hand and keeping her drape at waist height with the other” so beloved of art connoisseurs in the long weary days before the invention of Internet porn. It was twenty centimeters high, and only when I picked it up did I realize that it was not only made of the same material as the fruit bowl but also slightly magical. Nothing like the fruit bowl, but had we been talking radioactivity, then my Geiger counter would have been ticking away in a sinister fashion.
I wondered if James Gallagher had noticed the same thing. Was it possible that he’d been a practitioner? Nightingale had told me there was a whole American tradition of wizardry, more than just one in fact, but he thought it had gone dormant after World War Two as well. He could have been wrong—it’s not like his track record in that area was particularly impressive.
Sonya, from a small village in Brindisi, said that she remembered the statue well. James had bought it from a man not far from where we were now. I asked if she meant the market but she said no, from a private auction at a house in Powis Square. I asked if she was sure of the address.
“Of course,” she said. “He asked me for directions.”
POWIS SQUARE was a typical late-Victorian garden square with town houses built around a rectangular park that had been rendered as shapeless as a duvet by the snow. Dusk was coming early under slate gray clouds as I parked the car, at an angle to the curb, on the west side and counted numbers until I reached 25.
The facade was covered in scaffolding, the serious kind with tarpaulins stretched between the poles to keep the dust in—a sign that the money was gutting another terraced house. It used to be that you knocked through the ground floor rooms, but now the fashion among the rich was to rip out the whole interior. Surprisingly, given the weather, there were lights on behind the tarpaulins and I could hear people talking in Polish or Romanian or something else Eastern European. Maybe they were used to the snow.
I stepped inside the scaffolding and made my way up the steps to the front door. It was open to show a narrow hallway in the process of being dismantled. A man in a hard hat, a suit, and carrying a clipboard turned to stare at me when I entered. He wore a black turtleneck sweater under his suit jacket and the kind of massive multifunction watch that appeals to people who regularly jump from aircraft into the sea while wearing scuba gear. Or at least really wished they did.
Probably the architect, I thought.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a tone that indicated he thought it was unlikely.
“I’m Peter Grant with the Metropolitan Police,” I said.
“Really?” he said, and I swear his face lit up. “How can I help you?”
I told him I was looking into a report of “disturbances” at the address and asked if he’d noticed anything.
The man, who really was the architect, asked when the “disturbances” occurred, and when I told him the previous week, gave me a relieved smile.
“It wasn’t us, Officer,” he said. “None of us were here last week.”
Given the scaffolding and how much of the interior was missing, they must have been working bloody fast—I said so, which got a laugh.
“If only,” said the man. “We’ve been at this since March. We had to suspend work last week. We were waiting for some marble, white Carrara in fact, and it just completely failed to arrive and until it did arrive, so what was I to do?”
He’d sent his contingent of Poles, Romanians, and Croats home for the week.
“I still paid them,” he said. “I’m not entirely heartless.”
“Was there any sign of a break-in?” I asked.
Not that he’d noticed, he said, but I was welcome to ask his workers, which I did despite the language barrier. Only one guy reported anything and that was a vague sense that things might have been moved around while they were gone. I asked them if they’d enjoyed their week off, but they all said they’d gone and found casual work.
Before I left I asked if I could have a quick look around, and the architect told me to help myself. The first two stories of the house had been knocked out. I could see the remnants of the plaster molding and a dirty line of exposed brickwork like a high-tide mark. As I stepped into the middle I got a flash of piano music, a bit of jangly pub music, roll out the barrel, knees up Mother Brown, it does you good to get out of an evening. And with the piano, the smell of gunpowder and patchouli oil and the flick flick flick of an old-fashioned film projector.
It was vestigium, almost a lacuna—a pocket of residue magical effect. Or, as Lesley put it, that feeling where someone walks over your grave. Something magical had happened in the house, but unfortunately all I could tell was that it was either recent or very strong and a long time ago.
When I came out I did a quick canvass of the houses on either side. Most of the residents hadn’t noticed anything unusual although one thought that he’d heard piano music a couple of evenings back. I asked what kind of piano music.
“Old-fashioned,” said the neighbor, who was white, thin, and nervous in an expensive kind of way. “Rather like a music hall in fact. Do you know, now that I think about it, I believe there was singing.”
I noted that as some evidence that the premises had been in use the week previously by person or persons unknown, which could go in the report, and heavy magical activity, which would not. I sat in the Asbo with the engine running and wrote out a first draft of my statement. You need to get this stuff down as soon as possible so you can make a clear distinction between what you plan to write down and what really happened.
I was just detailing the statue and trying to remember where I’d written down its evidence reference number when my phone rang.
I checked—the number was being withheld.
“PC Grant?” asked a man.
“Speaking,” I said. “Who’s this?”
“Simon Kittredge, CTC,” he said. “I’m Special Agent Reynolds’s liaison.”
CTC is Counter Terrorism Command, which despite the name does all the spook-related stuff for the Metropolitan Police. Including providing experienced minders for friendly foreign “observers,” to ensure they don’t observe anything that might upset them. I couldn’t think why he was calling me, but I doubted it was good news.
“What can I do you for?” I asked.
“I wondered if Agent Reynolds has made contact with you recently?” he asked.
If he was phoning strangers it could only mean that Reynolds had given him the slip.
“Why would she want to talk to me?” I asked.
A definite pause this time as Kittredge weighed his embarrassment at needing my help against his need to find his wayward American.
“She was asking after you,” he said.
“Really? Did she say why?”
“No,” said Kittredge. “But she’s picked up the fact that you’re not part of the regular team.”
Bloody hell, that was fast—she’d only just got off the plane.
“If she makes contact what do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Call me straightaway.” He gave me his number. “And give her some flannel until I can get there.”
“Yeah, well, I’m good at flannel,” I said.
“So I’ve heard,” said Kittredge, and hung up.
Heard from who? I wondered.
Time for some culture, I thought.
ONWARD TO point C—in this case Southwark, the traditional home of bearbaiting, whorehouses, Elizabethan theatre, and now the Tate Modern. Built as an oil-fired power station by the same geezer who designed the famous red telephone box, it was one of the last monumental redbrick buildings before the modernists switched their worship to the concrete altar of brutalism. The power station closed in the 1980s, and it was left empty in the hope that it would fall down on its own. When it became clear that the bastard thing was built to last, they decided to use it to house the Tate’s modern art collection.
I parked the Asbo as close to the front entrance as I could get and trudged through the ankle-deep snow that covered the forecourt running from the gallery to the Thames. At the other end of the Millennium Bridge a floodlit St. Paul’s rose out of a white and red jumble of refurbished warehouses, the spire brushing the bottom of the clouds. In the distance I saw a couple of hunched figures scuttling across the bridge.
The central chimney of the museum was a blind wall of brick a hundred meters tall, and the main entrances were two horizontal slots on either side of its base. An approach path had been swept clear of snow recently but was already starting to refill, and there were plenty of fresh footprints—obviously James Gallagher hadn’t been the only one with a flyer in his A to Z and a yen for culture.
Inside it was merely chilly rather than freezing and the floor was wet with snowmelt. There was a temporary rope barrier and a very genteel-looking bouncer who waved me through without asking for an invitation—I suspect they were glad of all the bodies they could get.
A painfully thin white girl in a pink wool minidress and a matching furry hat offered me a glass of wine and a welcoming smile. I took the wine but avoided the smile, what with me being on duty and everything. Among the crowd, most of the women were dressed better than the men except for the ones who were gay or dressed by their partners. My dad always says that only working-class boys like him appreciate proper style, which is funny since my mum buys all his clothes. It was a Guardian and Independent sort of crowd, high culture, high rent, talk the talk, walk the walk, and send your kids to private school.
I did a quick scan just in case Lady Ty was lurking in a corner somewhere.
The Tate Modern is dominated by the turbine hall, a vast cathedral-like space high and wide enough for even the largest artistic ego. I’d come with the school once to see Anish Kapoor’s dirigible-sized pitcher plant thing that had filled the hall from one end to the other. Ryan Carroll didn’t rate this hall, but he did have the elevated floor that projected across the middle.
Because of the crowd, I had to get quite close to the sculptures before I could see them properly. They were made out of shop manikins with what looked like bits of steam-powered technology riveted into their bodies. They’d been posed as if twisting in agony and their facial features ground down until they presented smooth faces to the world. It reminded me uncomfortably of Lesley’s mask or the head of the Faceless Man. Brass plaques were attached to the manikins’ chests, each etched with a single word: INDUSTRY on one, PROGRESS on another.
Steam punk for posh people, I thought. Although the posh people didn’t seem particularly interested. I looked around for another glass of fizzy wine and realized someone was watching me. He was a young Chinese guy with mop of unruly black hair, a beard looking like a goatee that had got seriously out of hand, black square-framed glasses, and a good quality cream-colored suit cut baggy and deliberately rumpled. Once he saw he had my attention he slouched over and introduced himself.
“My name is Robert Su,” he said, speaking English with a Canadian accent. “I’d like, if I may, to introduce you to my employer.” He gestured to an elderly Chinese woman in what was either a very expensive dove gray Alex and Grace suit or the kind of counterfeit that is so well done that the difference becomes entirely metaphysical.
“Peter Grant,” I said and shook his hand.
He led me over to the woman, who despite her white hair and a stooped posture had a smooth unwrinkled face and startlingly green eyes.
“May I introduce my employer, Madame Teng,” said Robert.
I gave a clumsy half bow, and because that didn’t make me look stupid enough, clicked my heels for good measure. “Pleased to meet you,” I said.
She nodded, gave me an amused smile, and said something in Chinese to Robert, who looked taken aback but translated anyway.
“My employer asks what your profession might be,” he said.
“I’m a police officer,” I said, and Robert translated.
Madame Teng gave me a skeptical look and spoke again.
“My employer is curious to know who your master is,” said Robert. “Your true master.”
With the emphasis he put on the word master, I was certain he was talking about magical rather than administrative authority.
“I have many masters,” I said, which when it was translated caused Madame Teng to snort with annoyance. I felt it then, that catching on the edge of my perception, as when Nightingale demonstrates an exemplar forma to me, but different. And there was a brief smell of burning paper. I took an instinctive step backward, and Madame Teng smiled with satisfaction.
Lovely, I thought, just what I needed at the end of a long day. Still, Nightingale would want to know who these people were, and as police you always want to come out of any conversation knowing more about them than they do about you.
And, being police, you’re totally used to being considered rude and impolite.
“So are you two from China?” I asked.
Madame Teng stiffened at the word China and launched into half a minute of rapid Chinese that Robert listened to with an expression of amused martyrdom.
“We’re from Taiwan,” he said when his employer had finished. She gave him a sharp look and he sighed. “My employer,” he said, “has a great deal to say about the subject. Most of it esoteric and none of it relevant to you or I. If you’d be pleased to just nod occasionally as if I’m recounting the whole tedious argument about sovereignty to you, I’d be most grateful.”
I did as he asked, although I had to restrain myself from stroking my chin and saying “I see.”
“What brings you to London?” I asked then.
“We go all over the place,” said Robert Su. “New York, Paris, Amsterdam. My employer likes to see what’s going on in the world—you could say that is her raison d’être.”
“Which makes you what? Journalists? Spies?” I asked.
Madame Teng recognized at least one of those professions and snapped something at Robert, who gave me an apologetic shrug.
“Madame Teng asks you once again—who is your master?”
“The Nightingale is his master,” said a voice behind me.
I turned to find a stocky black woman in a strapless red dress cut low enough to show off broad muscled shoulders and cut high enough to reveal legs that could do an Olympic time hundred meters without taking off the high heels. Her hair was shaved down to a fuzz and she had a wide mouth, flat nose, and her mother’s eyes. I was caught in a wash of clattering machines, hot oil, and wet dog. The cold didn’t seem to be bothering her at all.
Madame Teng bowed, properly, as well she might given that she was in the presence of a goddess—that of the River Fleet no less. Robert Su bowed lower than his employer because he had to, but I could see that he didn’t understand why.
“Hello, Fleet,” I said. “How’s tricks?”
Fleet ignored me and gave Madame Teng a polite nod.
“Madame Teng,” she said. “How nice to see you in London again. Will you be staying long?”
“Madame Teng says thank you,” translated Robert. “And that while, of course, London in December is a true delight, she will be leaving in the morning for New York. If Heathrow is open of course.”
“I’m sure if you encounter any difficulties while leaving, my sisters and I stand ready to render you every assistance,” said Fleet.
Madame Teng said something sharp to Robert Su, who offered me his business card. I gave him one of mine in return. He looked at the Metropolitan Police crest in amazement.
“The police,” he said. “Really?”
“Really,” I said.
There was another round of carefully calculated nods and bows and the two withdrew. I looked at the business card. It had Robert Su’s name, mobile, email, and fax on it—his job description was ASSISTANT TO MADAME TENG. The reverse showed a simplified silhouette of a Chinese dragon, black against the white card.
“Who were they?” I asked.
“Who do you think?” asked Fleet.
She held out her hand and snapped her fingers and I swear a complete stranger broke off his conservation, pushed through the crowd until he found a waitress, and then pushed back to place a glass of white wine in Fleet’s outstretched fingers. Then he returned to his companions, and despite their quizzical looks, took up his conversation where he’d left off.
Fleet sipped her wine and gave me a pained smile.
“Don’t tell Mum I did that,” she said. “We’re supposed to be blending in.”
I realized suddenly the wet dog smell wasn’t coming from Fleet. I looked down and saw that a dog had crept up unnoticed to sit at her heel. It was a patchy border collie that stared up at me with bright eyes, one amber and one blue. That would have explained the wet dog smell if only the dog hadn’t been perfectly dry.
It gave me “the eye”—the fearsome gaze that sheepdogs use to keep their charges in line. But I gave it “the look”—the stare that policemen use to keep members of the public in a state of randomized guilt. The dog showed me its incisors, and I might have escalated as far as me kissing my teeth had Fleet not told it to lie down—which it did.
Only then did it occur to me that, technically, dogs weren’t allowed in the gallery.
“He’s a working dog,” said Fleet before I could ask.
“Really? What’s his job?”
“He’s captain of my dogs,” said Fleet.
“How many dogs have you got?”
“More than I can handle on my own.” She sipped her white wine. “That’s why I need a captain to keep them in order.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
Fleet smiled. “Ziggy,” she said.
Of course it is, I thought.
“Are you going to call Madame Teng?” she asked.
Not without checking with Nightingale first, I thought.
“Don’t know,” I said. “I’ll see how I feel.”
“What are you doing here?” asked Fleet.
“I’ve developed a sudden keen interest in contemporary art,” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m supposed to be reviewing the show tomorrow night on Radio Four,” she said. “If you miss it live you can always catch it on the website. And you haven’t answered my question.”
“I thought I had,” I said.
“Are you on a job?”
“I couldn’t possibly say,” I said. “I’m just here to expand my horizons.”
“Well,” said Fleet, “check out the pieces at the far end—that should keep you suitably expanded.”
THERE WERE only two pieces at the far end of the space, hard up against the bare brick of the exterior wall, and the crowd was noticeably thinner. They struck me as soon as I approached, struck me the way the sight of a beautiful woman does, or Lesley’s ruined face, or a sunset, or a nasty traffic accident. I could see it was having the same effect on the others that came to view it—none of us got closer than a meter and most retreated slowly away from piece.
I got a sudden rushing, screaming sensation of terror as if I’d been tied onto the front of a tube train and sent hurtling down the Northern Line. No wonder people were stepping back. It was about as powerful a vestigium as I’d ever encountered. Something seriously magical had gone into the making of the piece.
I took a deep breath and a slug of wine and stepped up for a closer look. The manikin was the same make as those in the other gallery, but posed in this case with arms outflung and palms turned upward as if in prayer or supplication. It wore on its torso what anyone with a passing interest in Chinese history or Dungeons and Dragons would recognize as the scale armor worn by the terra-cotta army—a tunic constructed by fastening together rectangular plates the size of playing cards. Only in this case each plate had a face sculpted onto it. Each of the faces, while simplified to a shape with a mouth, slits or dots for eyes, and the barest hint of a nose, was clearly individual and carved into a distinct expression of sadness and despair.
I felt that despair, and a strange sense of awe.
A slender man in his early thirties with a long face, short brown hair, and round glasses joined me in front of the sculpture. I recognized him from the flyer in James Gallagher’s locker—it was Ryan Carroll, the artist. He wore a heavy coat and fingerless gloves. Obviously not a man to put style before comfort. I approved.
“Do you like it?” he asked. He had a soft Irish accent that if you’d put a gun to my head I’d have identified as middle-class Dublin but not with any real confidence.
“It’s terrible,” I said.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “And I like to think horrific as well.”
“That too,” I said, which seemed to please him.
I introduced myself and we shook hands. He had stained fingers and a strong grip.
“Police?” he asked. “Are you here on business?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “The murder of a young art student named James Gallagher.” Carroll didn’t react.
“Do I know him?” he asked.
“He was an admirer of yours,” I said. “Was he ever in contact?”
“What was his name again?” asked Ryan.
“James Gallagher,” I said. Again not a flicker. I pulled up a head shot on my phone and showed him that.
This is where, as police, you have to make a decision—do you ask for an alibi or not? Fifty years of detective dramas mean that even the densest member of the public knows what it means when you ask where they were at a certain time or date. Nobody believes “just routine,” even when it’s true. With television broadcast levels of vestigia radiating from his artwork, I figured Ryan Carroll had to be involved in something but I had no evidence that he’d ever come in contact with James Gallagher. I decided I would write him up that night and let Seawoll or Stephanopoulos decide whether they wanted him interviewed. If his statement was taken by someone else from the Murder Team, I could pursue the magic angle while he was distracted.
I love it when a plan comes together, especially when it means someone else will do the heavy lifting. I waved my glass at the manikin in his coat of despair.
“Did you make them yourself?” I asked.
“With my own little hands,” he said.
“You’re going to make a million,” I said.
“That’s the plan,” he said smugly.
A blond woman in a blue dress waved at Ryan to get his attention. When she had it, she pointed at her watch.
“You’ll have to excuse me, Constable,” said Ryan. “Duty calls.” He walked over to the blond woman, who took his arm and pulled him gently back toward the waiting crowd. As they went she fussed at Ryan’s collar and jacket. Manager, I wondered, or better half, or possibly both?
Most of the patrons gathered around them, and I heard the woman launch into what was unmistakably a warm-up speech. I guessed that Ryan Carroll was about to take his bow. I looked at his work again. The question was—did he imbue it with its vestigia or did that come from a found object? And if it did, was Ryan aware of its significance?
My phone rang—it was Zach.
“You’ve got to help me,” he said.
“Really? Why’s that?”
“His old man threw me out of the house,” he said. “I ain’t got nowhere to go.”
“Try Turning Point. They’ve got a big shelter up west,” I said. “You can stay there tonight.”
“You owe me,” said Zach.
“No I don’t,” I said. One of the lessons of policing is that everyone has a sad story, including the guy you’ve just arrested for shoving a chip pan in his wife’s face. Obvious grifters like Zach were often way more convincing than those who had real grievances—comes with practice, I suppose.
“I think they’re after me,” he added.
“Who’s they?” I asked.
There was a round of applause from the crowd.
“If you pick me up I’ll tell you,” he said.
Shit, I thought. If I ignored him and he turned up dead, I’d be facing some questions from Seawoll and a ton of paperwork.
“Where are you?” I asked reluctantly.
“Shepherd’s Bush—near the market.”
“Get on the tube and meet me at Southwark.”
“I can’t do the tube,” he said. “It’s not safe. You’re going to have to meet me here.”
I asked him which end of the market and headed for the exit. As I traversed the empty hallway, I saw Ziggy the dog sitting alertly on his haunches by the door to the gift shop. He looked at me, tilted his head to one side, and then tracked me all the way out.