‘Just you wait until the Commissioner sees the bill,’ said Stephanopoulos.
16
Pleased to Meet You
And so it ended like most Police operations do, not with a bang but with us whimpering over the paperwork. Or at least it would have for me and Guleed, if we hadn’t been whisked off to UCH where we snaffled up oxygen and tried not to listen while Dr Walid explained terms like tissue hypoxia to us in more detail than either of us would have liked. Fortunately we responded well to treatment and weren’t kept overnight. Beverley popped over to keep me company and then, typically, spent most of the time in Guleed’s cubicle gossiping – and not even about me. My mum turned up with a care package which I ate one-handed while fending off Bev, Guleed and Nightingale with the other. Once we were out, Beverley drove me back to her house in her sad little Kia and we shared a bath and then bed.
The next morning Nightingale picked me up from Bev’s in the Jag so he could brief me on the way back to Belgravia nick. I was going to take over as Falcon liaison in the hunt for Martin Chorley and Lesley May while he headed back to the Folly to catch up on his sleep.
‘He almost got me, you know,’ said Nightingale. ‘He’d prepared a number of booby traps in the flat upstairs and tried to lure me into the killing zone.’
Fortunately Nightingale still remembered the lessons he’d learnt fighting the Germans.
‘They were expert at combining conventional weapons with magical ones,’ he said. ‘You never knew if you were going to be facing a fireball or a Panzerfaust.’
Martin Chorley was clever and ruthless but his lack of combat experience told against him.
‘Set off his first device a fraction too early,’ said Nightingale. ‘Once I was tipped off it was just a matter of being careful where I stepped.’
Which explained why he’d been slow getting down to the basement. Otherwise both Martin Chorley and Lesley would now be enjoying the simple elegance of our magic-resistant cells.
That they had both managed to get away was the primary failure of the operation, the property damage to One Hyde Park being secondary. Although the fact that we could prove that one of their tenants – Martin Chorley – had instigated the fire was definitely going to help us in the upcoming legal fight.
It would have been even better if we actually had Martin Chorley in custody, or Lesley May for that matter – though we did have Reynard Fossman, who CTC were holding under anti-terrorism legislation at Paddington right across the corridor from Lady Ty’s Americans. I know Seawoll would have liked to arrest Lady Helena and Caroline as well, if only on general principles, but Nightingale argued against it even after we’d discovered that they’d run off with the manuscript of the Magni Operis Principia Chemica, ‘Chymical Principles of the Great Work’.
Nightingale seemed remarkably relaxed about Lady Helena half-inching The Third Principia, given the grief we’d been through to get it in the first place. Postmartin would have cheerfully sentenced them to a life breaking rocks for crimes against scholarship, but Nightingale merely smiled and said that they were probably better suited to the job of interpreting it.
‘I never was one for academic study. And even if you did have time, your Latin isn’t up to the job.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ I said.
‘Speaking as one who was obliged to memorise large sections of The Second Principia, I think I can say with some confidence that you are not losing out. In any case, while Lady Helena will no doubt do a splendid job teasing out its secrets, I believe relying on the wisdom of the ancients, so to speak, is a mistake.’ Nightingale gave a crooked grin I’d never seen before – it made him look all of fourteen. Suddenly I could see him standing on the playing fields of Casterbrook, hands in pockets, school cap pulled down at a rakish angle and looking into a future untroubled by anything more than a couple of world wars, atomic bombs and the loss of everything he held dear.
‘In any event, I rather think that Lady Helena is looking to the past whereas I prefer to look to the future,’ he said. ‘I’m sure if she does discover something worth knowing she’ll be only too happy to share.’
I expressed a certain amount of doubt about that, but Nightingale pointed out that Lady Helena had returned to her place in the Montgomeryshire and should we want it, we could always drive out and ask to borrow the bloody book.
‘And see if her daughter has learned to fly yet,’ said Nightingale.
I asked about Martin Chorley’s Ferrari GTO and Nightingale said it was temporarily impounded.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘I thought they might auction it.’
‘And you were thinking of bidding?’
‘Just a thought,’ I said.
‘Alas,’ said Nightingale. ‘That car will never be sold.’
‘Oh.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I declared it a “magical device” under the terms of the agreement. At least until such time as we can declare it safe for mundane use.’
And he’d stashed it in the coach house where the Orange Asbo used to live.
‘How long do you think that will take?’
‘Well such an evaluation can take a considerable amount of time,’ said Nightingale. ‘Especially given our current work load.’
‘And we wouldn’t want to cut corners, would we?’
‘To do so would be irresponsible,’ he said.
‘Respect,’ I said and raised my fist which Nightingale stared at for a moment before raising his own and bumping mine.
Over the next couple of days it became clear that Martin Chorley and Lesley May had gone to ground. We’ve always supposed he had resources beyond County Gard and its related companies. Seawoll suspects links to organised crime, people smugglers and the like. I assume that he has links to the shadier parts of the demi-monde as well.
Despite Nightingale’s assertion that he’s just an ordinary criminal at heart, I think there’s something more. There was something of the fanatic about him. I’m sure he has a plan . . . I wish I knew what it was.
We did pick up Reynard, though, and charged him with a miscellany of offences ranging from resisting arrest to handling stolen goods. We’re not pushing the Crown Prosecution Service very hard on this case, though. We don’t want our fox in prison. We want him to be out and about like a walking lightning rod.
As I promised Beverley I helped Maksim install some herringbone pattern baffles on a stretch of her river. The idea, Bev said, was to break up the flow and ultimately erode the banks into a more natural shape.
‘I thought you liked a fast flow?’ I asked later that evening.
‘It’s not the volume,’ she said between pants. ‘It’s how it flows.’
Phoebe and Olivia had joined Beverley on the river bank to watch as we worked and afterwards we had a slightly damp picnic under the protection of a weeping willow. Olivia said that she thought her mum might have forgiven me a little, or at least she’d stopped scowling whenever my name came up. When they left I found myself watching them walking away, hand in hand, and wondering what having kids must be like. Once you’re past the nappies and training wheels.
I turned to find Beverley watching me.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said and took me home.
Did I mention the paperwork? It took us a couple of days just to pull all the material together, not helped by having DAC Folsom descend on us for a review with the rest of the Tiger Hunting Committee in tow. So it didn’t really come as much of a surprise when Lady Ty asked if I could pop in to see her.
‘Any time in the next hour would be convenient,’ she said.
We met in the saloon bar at The Chestnut Tree which Lady Ty said she was in the middle of acquiring on behalf of her mother’s property portfolio. Judging by the way the manageress waited on our table, and hovered attentively until dismissed, that acquisition was a done deal in more ways than one.