Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London 3) (11 page)

‘Yeah,’ he said.

‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I’m not here about the parking fines.’

He grunted and put the crate he was carrying into the back of the van.

‘What are you here about?’ he asked.

I asked him about the pottery fruit bowl he’d allegedly sold to the stallholder in Portobello Road.

‘Earthenware,’ he said. ‘Is that the stuff that looks like it’s not painted?’

I said it was.

‘What about it?’ he asked and stuck his finger in his ear and twisted it a few times. I wondered if his head was going to hinge open.

‘Where did you get it?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘Don’t look at me like that, honestly I don’t remember. Some geezer traded it to me in a pub – I must have been half cut anyway because it was a fucker to shift.’

‘Look, I’m not interested in its provenance or anything,’ I said.

‘Its what?’

‘Its provenance,’ I said slowly. ‘Whether it was stolen or not.’

‘It was tat,’ said Kevin. ‘Why would anyone want to steal it – you couldn’t give it away.’

I gave him my card and told him to phone me if anything similar turned up. I took some encouragement in the fact that he didn’t just ostentatiously throw it away in front of me. I went back to the Asbo where Zach asked me if I’d got what I wanted.

I expressed my displeasure at the current state of my investigation as I started the car up and tried to figure out where the exit was.

‘I don’t know why you’re so interested in this bowl,’ said Zach. ‘It’s not exactly your objet d’art is it? It’s not even a very pretty colour.’

Which was when I remembered the statuette on the mantelpiece back at the James Gallagher’s house. That had been the same dull earthenware as the fruit bowl. I’m not an expert on Victorian knick-knacks but I didn’t think that was a common colour for a figurine.

‘Did James buy a statue as well?’ I asked.

Zach paused too long before saying. ‘Don’t know.’

Meaning yes but you don’t want me to know. Which meant one of two things: either Zach knew the bowl and the statue were connected or he just couldn’t not lie when asked a straight question. Either seemed equally likely.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’m going to drop you off back at the house.’

‘Why?’ asked Zach suspiciously.

‘It’s all part of the service, sir,’ I said.

8

Southwark

T
his is police work: you go from point A to point B where you learn something which 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 a cleaning lady called Sonya who was Italian and busy cleaning up the mess left by the forensics people under the watchful eye of DC Guleed.

‘Not that this is supposed to be our job,’ she said testily. Even if you’re family liaison it isn’t really your job to supervise the clean-up before the grieving relatives arrive. I guessed that US senators counted as a special case.

‘Has she been statemented?’ 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 – I 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 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 keep 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 centimetres high and only when I picked it up did I realise 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 they’d 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 townhouses built around a rectangular park that had been rendered as shapeless as a duvet by the snow. Dusk was coming early under slate grey clouds as I parked the car, at an angle to the kerb, 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 amongst 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 that was in the process of being dismantled. A man in a hardhat, a suit and carrying a clipboard turned to stare at me when I entered. He wore a black turtleneck jumper 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 tones that indicated that 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 that I was looking into report of ‘disturbances’ at the address and had he 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,’ said the man. ‘None of us were here last week.’

Given the scaffolding and how much of the interior was missing they must be 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, 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, 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 round and the architect told me to help myself. The first two storeys of the house had been knocked out. I could see the remnants of the plaster moulding 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 tortured pub upright, 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 residual 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 either it was recent or very strong and a long time ago.

When I came out I did a quick canvass of the houses either side. Most of the residents hadn’t noticed anything unusual although one had thought that he’d heard piano music a couple of evenings back. I asked what kind of piano music.

‘Old-fashioned,’ said the neighbour, who was white, thin and nervous in an expensive kind of way. ‘Rather like a music hall in fact. Do you know, now I think of 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’ liaison.’

CTC is SO15, 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 said.

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 up 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 straight away.’ 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.

I checked my watch.

Time for some culture, I thought.

Onward to point C – in this case Southwark, the traditional home of bear baiting, 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 Lowry figures scuttling across the bridge.

The central chimney of the museum was a blind wall of brick a hundred metres tall and the main entrances were two horizontal slots 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 AtoZ 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 I avoided the smile, what with me being on duty and everything. Amongst the crowd most of the women were dressed better than the men except for the ones that 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 that is 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 the whole hall, but he did have the elevated floor that projected across the middle.