Lies Sleeping (Peter Grant, #7)(10)

‘He is now,’ said Seawoll.

Because Fiona had been in the living room with Nightingale and Carey and hadn’t witnessed the attack, we hadn’t revealed anything to her beyond the fact that it had been a serious assault.

‘She seemed suspiciously uninterested to me in how her husband was injured,’ said Guleed. ‘I mean I’d want to know – wouldn’t you?’

But Fiona Williams had accepted Guleed’s explanation with what psychologists call a ‘flat’ response.

‘She might still be in shock,’ said Seawoll. ‘We’ll give her a day or two to recover and then you can have another pop.’

Fiona Williams had hired the nanny from an agency But when Guleed had followed up they’d denied knowing anything about Alice McGovern, aka the Pale Nanny, but whether the substitution had been made with or without the collusion of Richard Williams we wouldn’t know until he woke up.

‘If he wakes up,’ I said.

‘Abdul seemed confident he would,’ said Nightingale.

So we were going to have to find a way to secure him against future attack. We’d discussed housing high-risk witnesses and/or suspects inside the Folly, but that had its own problems – running from PACE compliance to operational security. Ultimately, safety for the likes of Richard Williams and his family lay in us nailing Martin Chorley’s feet to the floor.

‘We’re stuffed until he does wake up,’ said Seawoll.

Neither Nightingale not Seawoll were looking particularly happy at the lack of results so far, but I kept my mouth shut because I’d noticed that Guleed had skipped over a couple of pages in her notebook and guessed that she’d saved the best for last. You don’t make your way up the Met’s particularly convoluted greasy pole without knowing when to use a bit of showmanship.

‘There was one more thing,’ she said and gave me the barest flicker of a wink. ‘Richard Williams had an unusual interest in bells.’ She paused for applause – not a sausage – and went on. ‘He made several trips to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.’

‘Good lord,’ said Nightingale. ‘I didn’t realise it was still open.’

‘Could it have been for his work?’ asked Seawoll.

‘We’re checking that now, but he went to some lengths to keep it secret from the missus,’ said Guleed.

The missus, perhaps because she was missus number two, had twigged that Richard was keeping secrets. And, having way less faith in his fidelity than his first wife – go figure – followed him down to Whitechapel to see what he was up to. This sort of thing is pretty common – people often draw more attention to themselves trying to hide their activities than whatever it was they were up to would. Plus sometimes the cover-up is more illegal than the thing they were covering up.

Still, if people were brighter routine police work would be much harder.

Guleed had held off contacting the bell foundry directly.

‘I didn’t want to risk tipping anyone off,’ she said, and both Nightingale and Seawoll nodded approvingly.

‘I think you two should go and have a poke around the place,’ said Seawoll. ‘While we finish up with Chiswick.’

He looked over at Nightingale, who gestured at me and Guleed.

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he said.





5

Two Sticks and an Apple

‘I think I preferred it when they didn’t get on,’ said Guleed.

‘They still don’t,’ I said. ‘They’re just being professional about it.’

So professional, in fact, that if you listened closely you could hear both Nightingale and Seawoll creaking under the strain. Fortunately, modern technology allows the modern minion on the go to do his prep work far away from his superiors and, bonus, get some reconnaissance in while he’s at it.

Me and Guleed had ensconced ourselves in the Café Casablanca, whose window seats afforded a nice view of the front and back entrances to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and who served coffee that was strong, hot and properly grande. It also served a selection of Indian sweets made on the premises that were doing their best, through smell alone, to convince me that type 2 diabetes was a small price to pay.

Back in the day, or rather rursus in diebus antiquis, your newly minted Romano-Brit with a decent torc and his eye on the main prize might want to get his bullock cart full of garum from the burgeoning port of Londinium to the brand spanking new capital of Britannia – Camulodunum. To facilitate this vital trade in fermented fish guts the Roman Army thoughtfully laid one of their famously straight roads between the two cities – that this allowed for the rapid redeployment of various legions in their quest to bring the joys of underfloor heating to the benighted tribes further north was mere serendipity.

You could tell Whitechapel Road was Roman by the fact that it was straight and wide enough for bus lanes, a cycle superhighway, and a street market. It carved a line from Aldgate to the Mile End Road and beyond. It’s been the East End’s one-stop shop for life, death and culture since the docks drove the massive expansion of the city eastward. You can shop in the market, worship in a mosque that was once a synagogue, that was once a Huguenot church, educate yourself in the Whitechapel Library, culture yourself in the Whitechapel Gallery, live in the shadow of the sci-fi tower blocks of the City, and then die in the London Hospital.