Beverley had a ton of friends at uni, but these were the only two that were interested in jazz. Not enough to know who my father was without looking him up on Wikipedia, but interested all the same.
‘And it’s in a good cause,’ said Melanie, which was news to me so I looked at Beverley.
‘Help for the Ebola crisis,’ she said.
Help for mum’s extended family, I thought. But since this seemed to constitute at least a quarter of the population of Sierra Leone, the effect was going to be much the same. It was odd, that, because for a Fula my mum didn’t half have a lot of Temne and Susu relatives.
Melanie said that she’d always wanted to work somewhere like Sierra Leone once she was qualified – somewhere she could really make a difference – what did I think?
‘The beaches around Freetown are brilliant,’ I said, which got me a blank look.
But you can only tease white people for so long before the universe punishes you for it – in this case when my mum came into the main bar, spotted me and waved me over.
She was dressed like something out of an old photograph – black long-sleeved roll neck jumper and grey slacks. Around her neck hung a couple of thick gold ropes that I was amazed had made it through the family lean patch, and a high quality wig cut in an eighties bob. All she was missing was a beret.
When I joined her she pecked me on either cheek – continental style – which was just disturbing.
‘Peter kam ya, are wan talk to you,’ she said.
I sighed and let myself be drawn to quiet corner. When I was younger she only used to lapse into Krio with me when she was angry or she wanted me to do something like fetch her a cup of tea or go to the shops. Nowadays it’s a sign that she’s about to discuss something I don’t want to talk about.
‘You en Beverley don begin for lay down wit each other en?’
‘Mum,’ I said, with an involuntary whine.
‘Are hope say u dae use protection ooh.’
‘Of course we’re using protection,’ I said. ‘And it’s none of your business.’
‘U get for take tem en be careful.’
‘We’re always careful.’
My mum looked suddenly disappointed.
‘So you want tell me say e go tay before are see me gran pekin dem?’ she said.
‘I’m not sure that we’re quite at that stage yet.’
‘But Aunty Kadie en borbor get two pekin dem already,’ said my mum.
‘I know – you made me go to the christening, remember?’
‘An you big for ram.’
‘He has more time on his hands,’ I said.
‘E bette for born pekin way you young,’ said my mum. ‘It’s scientifically proven.’
‘Yes mum.’
‘I’d look after them,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘If you born now are go mend dem,’ she said. ‘That way you could both be about your business.’
I suddenly wondered if my mum could swim and whether I dared tell Beverley about the offer. Not now, I thought, not a good idea right now.
Luckily it was time to go out through the side door and follow the black arrow painted on the white brick walls marked JAZZ ROOM. According to my dad it had just been refurbished and the acoustics were much better, though he missed the proper sized piano.
‘Joe Harriott would have loved it,’ he’d said.
Despite its role in jazz history it was a small space, with its own bar and triangular stage in the corner opposite the entrance. Bev made sure she was front and centre with her friends tagging nervously behind. She cast a look over her shoulder at me, her eyes dark and sly and her beautiful wide mouth twitching up at the corners, but I wanted to stay by the door – where I could keep an eye on who was coming in.
The wizards of the Folly, or the Society of the Wise, back when there was no chance of taking the piss out of them on Twitter, have never really got the hang of the demi-monde – that strange collection of people and things-that-are-also-people tied into the magical world. Following the predictable mania for classification that gripped them during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they spent a lot of time talking about proportions of human and good- and bad-faerie blood and then assigning names to the result. Most of it was as useful as the theory of luminiferous aether, but it did explain why calling someone a goblin in some London pubs could get you a smacking. Still, after two years and change at the Folly I knew them when I saw them – most of the time.
I knew this one as soon as he entered. A short young white man with a pointy chin and rust coloured hair slicked back with gel. He wore a tweed countryman’s jacket over a black T-shirt, a pair of zombie hunter cargo pants and hiking boots. Not DMs, I noticed, something Swiss and military. I knew instantly that he was at least part fae and a wrong-un. Partly because of my long experience as a copper, partly because of his expression of beatific innocence, but mostly because I’d last met him trying to chat up my thirteen year old cousin and as a result had run a comprehensive record check on him.
His name was Reynard Fossman and he was dismayingly pleased to see me.
He raised his walking stick in salute and I saw that it was made of hickory and its head was a knot of roots smoothed down and polished to bring out the grain. I considered having him for carrying an offensive weapon, because it doesn’t have to be offensive per se – it’s the intention to use it as such that counts in law.
‘Mr Fossman,’ I said.
‘Excellent,’ said Reynard and gave me a vulpine smile, ‘you remember me.’
‘Yes, I do,’ I said.
‘And how is your lovely cousin?’ he asked. ‘Still gorgeous, I hope.’
‘What do you want?’ I asked.
‘Oh, so many things,’ said Reynard. ‘But in this instance I bear a message for your master.’
People don’t like it when you don’t react to this sort of shit. They can get frustrated and escalate out of their own comfort zone. You can end up with some useful information that way, or an excuse to arrest them for assaulting a police officer. I gave Reynard my blandest expression, but he just cocked his head and gave me a calculating look. He had a reputation for being cunning, as well other words starting with C.
‘Tell him,’ said Reynard, ‘that I can put him in touch with a certain someone who has an item he might well like to purchase.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Jonathan Wild’s final ledger,’ he said.
‘So?’ I said.
‘You do know who Jonathan Wild was?’ asked Reynard.
Jonathan Wild – self-styled Thief Taker General who cut out the criminal middle man by arranging to have your property stolen, fenced and sold back to you inhouse. It was a wonderful scam – if you wanted your stuff back, you had to deal with him. And if you were a thief and you didn’t play ball it was a long walk to a short drop at Tyburn. Of course, this was back in the eighteenth century when a gentleman might have a good meal, a little professional company and still have enough left out of a fiver to bribe a high court judge.
‘Is he part of One Direction?’ I asked.
Reynard sighed theatrically and proffered his business card.
‘Just make sure you tell the Nightingale,’ he said and then, pausing only to doff an imaginary top hat at my mum, he slipped back out the way he came.
I looked at his card. White high quality stock, a stylised fox’s head in embossed red-gold and below that a single mobile number – a disposable, I found when I checked it the next morning.
‘Ah,’ said Nightingale when I stepped outside and called him. ‘That is indeed an item we might want to acquire.’ Which was Nightingale speak for: grab it with both hands. ‘We shall have to discuss this tomorrow.’