‘We sent Ken to see Sabrina and Avon,’ said Oxley. ‘Cher is in Herefordshire seeing the three sisters, and Wey’s all the way up in Scotland making merry with the Tay.’ His grin was full of mischief. ‘We thought it was time to renew old friendships.’
‘What brought all this on?’ I asked.
‘Oh, that would have been you and your good example,’ said Oxley.
‘Cross-community partnerships,’ said Isis.
I resolved to keep my mouth shut for the rest of my life, or at the very least around Oxley and Isis.
At some point close to midnight, when we’d all drunk way too much, the Old Man of the River stood and silence rolled out across the company, so that even the children fell quiet.
He held up a straight half pint glass filled with something amber that was definitely not beer. We all climbed to our feet and raised our own glasses. He said something in a language that I suspect hadn’t been spoken widely since the Romans left Britain, and we all cheered and drained our glasses.
Once we’d sat down Oxley translated.
‘Roughly,’ he said, ‘eat loads, drink to excess, screw your partner’s brains out and be thankful the bard isn’t singing.’
‘You’re lying about the last bit,’ I said.
‘How dare you,’ said Oxley, and grinned.
After that, the toasts started in earnest and I couldn’t leave until I’d delivered mine. I’d been warned in advance, so I’d given it some thought. When it was my turn and I stood up and called for life, liberty and peace and managed to sit down before I added a hard-boiled egg to the list.
Shortly afterwards Beverley came and rescued me by dragging me off to her boat.
‘Before you’re too pissed to be useful,’ she said.
I was in the early stages of proving my worth when the first of the youths thundered past on the pontoon bridge. Five minutes later the next group sneaked past with exaggerated care and the giggling and clink of what sounded to me like underage drinking.
‘You think it’s an accident they’ve got their one fed moored alongside the kids’ field?’ said Beverley. ‘They’ll be sneaking and giggling past us all night.’
Later, at a fairly crucial moment, Beverley stopped moving and shushed me. I stifled a frustrated yelp with great willpower and lay perfectly still and listened.
It was more giggling and furtive movement, only this time one of the voices was far too low to be one of the teens. I was trying to work out who it might be when a woman laughed nearby – low, throaty, distinctively dirty.
‘Isis?’ I whispered.
I felt Beverley’s suppressed laughter as a ripple along her stomach and thighs.
‘Quiet,’ said the man, who I was reasonably sure was Oxley. ‘Or the Isaacs will get thee.’
This from a man who’d been around at the coronation of Æthelred the Unready, for all that he claimed he couldn’t remember the details.
Isis said something that was probably rude and there was a slow splash, which I recognised as a water deity falling into the river. I’ve watched Beverley do that, the water sort of rises up to cushion the blow and she goes in with just a ripple.
‘Bumptious fool,’ said Isis.
I was about to shout out something, just to startle them, when Beverley kissed me and I decided that I had better things to do.
Later, as we lay there with the cabin door open to catch the breeze, we heard Abigail talking to someone, although whoever it was pitched their voice too low for us to identify. I reckoned they were outside her tent. Occasionally there was a laugh and, horrifically, the ting sound of beer cans.
After a while the conversation died down and we heard the distinctive sound of a tent door being zipped closed. What we didn’t hear were any footsteps moving away.
I went to get up and check but Bev put her arm across my chest to stop me.
‘Don’t you dare,’ she said quietly.
‘Just a quick look,’ I said.
‘No.’
‘But—’
‘What do you think the Summer Court is for?’
‘But I’m responsible,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Beverley. ‘And so is she.’
‘People say that, you know,’ I said. ‘But if something goes tits up suddenly everybody wants to know why the police weren’t intervening at an earlier stage.’
‘Relax,’ said Beverley, ‘She’s Nightingale’s apprentice and my friend. People round here would gnaw their own foot off before doing anything with Abigail that Abigail didn’t want them to.’
It still took me a while to drift off.
One other thing the Summer Court was definitely for was creating a tremendous mess. But fortunately Father Thames, or more precisely Oxley, had organised a clean-up crew almost entirely composed of pale young men with hangovers. Soon the drifts of bottles, pink and blue plastic wrappers, and happily unidentifiable organic leftovers were scooped up into bin bags and dumped in an open-topped river barge that had arrived first thing that morning.
‘The Old Man took the Keep Britain Tidy campaign very seriously,’ said Oxley, as we supervised the hard work from deckchairs and drank coffee.
‘Where’s Isis?’
‘Upstream with the rest of the women,’ he said. ‘It’s customary.’
The women and girls got the morning off during the clean-up and traditionally bathed in the symbolically clean waters upstream.
‘And have a picnic and gossip and all the other important mysteries of the better half. It’s all to do with the female principle and that style of thing.’ He caught my expression. ‘This is what Isis tells me. I just keep my eye on the boys and mind my own business.’
Which was obviously the theme for the weekend.
Oxley’s current mental state, caught in that transition between alcohol and caffeine, would have made it a good time to get some social history questions answered – including what the hell they did before coffee was invented – but my phone started ringing. It was Stephanopoulos.
‘City of London need you to do a Falcon Assessment at a crime scene,’ she said.
I asked whether it was urgent.
‘As soon as pos,’ said Stephanopoulos.
Nightingale was obviously busy and neither Guleed or Carey were qualified.
‘I’m on my way,’ I said.
I called both Bev and Abigail, but their phones went straight to voicemail
I asked Oxley to ask Beverley to bring Abigail home. Then I showered, changed and drove back to London.
And if you’re the woman who, driving along the A4155 that afternoon, found herself inexplicably picking up a pair of hitchhikers and driving them all the way into London, I’m really, really sorry – I assumed Beverley would organise a lift from one of her relatives.
13
Probably Goat
Despite being the oldest part of London, the Square Mile has a faster architectural churn than anywhere else in the city. Occasionally it throws up something exciting, innovative and modern . . . but mostly it doesn’t. Architects like a bit of volume, and financiers like floor space. The easiest way to maximise both is to build a cube – which is why ninety-nine per cent of all office buildings are boxes with lobbies.
The New Bloomberg building on Queen Victoria Street was going to be yet another steel-framed Metsec affair but was still half built, with plastic sheeting protecting the gaping open sides. Once the cladding and windows were in, I suspected it wasn’t going to be much of an aesthetic improvement on the 1950s modernist boxes it was replacing. The site hoarding had ‘Improving the Image of Construction’ signs at regular intervals along its length.