Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(42)

‘Is that him?’ asked Beverley.

We peered out into the rain and saw a couple approaching from the Covent Garden end of Neal Street. The man’s face matched the photograph apart from the bruising around his left eye and the railway track of adhesive strips holding the cut on his cheek together. He held an umbrella over himself and his companion, a stocky woman in a lurid orange waterproof. They were both smiling and seemed happy.

We watched in silence as they reached the gastropub and, with a pause to shake out his umbrella, went inside.

‘Remind me why we’re here again?’ asked Lesley.

‘Have you found the cycle courier yet?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Lesley. ‘And I don’t think my governor likes your governor treating him as his errand boy.’

‘Tell him, welcome to the club,’ I said.

‘You tell him,’ said Lesley.

‘So what’s in the sandwiches?’ asked Beverley.

I opened the Tesco’s bag and unwrapped the packets to find crusty white bread filled with roast beef and mustard pickle garnished with horseradish – very nice, but once my packed lunch had been fried calves’ brain, so I tended to approach Molly’s sandwiches with caution. Lesley, who eats without fear and thinks eels in jelly are a delicacy, dived in but Beverley hesitated.

‘If I eat these, you’re not going to expect an obligation, are you?’ asked Beverley.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. ‘I have an air freshener in the bag.’

‘I’m serious,’ said Beverley. ‘There’s a geezer at my mum’s flats who turned up to repossess some furniture in 1997. One cup of tea and a biscuit later, and he’s never left. I used to call him Uncle Bailiff. He does odd jobs around the place, fixes stuff and keeps the place clean and my mother will never let him go.’ Beverley jabbed me in the chest with her finger. ‘So I want to know what your intentions are with this sandwich.’

‘I assure you, my intentions are honourable,’ I said, but part of me was thinking about how close I came to eating that custard cream back at Mama Thames’s flat.

‘Swear it on your power,’ said Beverley.

‘I don’t have any power,’ I said.

‘Good point,’ said Beverley. ‘Swear it on your mum’s life.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘This is childish.’

‘Fine,’ said Beverley. ‘I’ll get my own food.’ She got out of the car and stomped away, leaving the door open. I noticed that she’d waited for the rain to ease up before throwing a fit.

‘Is that true?’ asked Lesley.

‘Which bit?’ I asked.

‘Spells, food, obligations, wizards – the bailiff,’ said Lesley. ‘For God’s sake, Peter, that’s false imprisonment at the very least.’

‘Some of it’s true,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how much. I think becoming a wizard is about discovering what’s real and what isn’t.’

‘Is her mum really the goddess of the Thames?’

‘She thinks she is, and I’ve met her and I’m beginning to think she might be,’ I said. ‘She’s got real power, so I’m going to treat her daughter as the real thing until I find out different.’

Lesley leaned over the seat back and looked me in the eyes.

‘Can you do magic?’ she asked softly.

‘I can do one spell,’ I said.

‘Show me.’

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘If I do it now I’ll blow the Airwave sets, the stereo and possibly the ignition system. That’s how I busted my phone – I had it in my pocket when I was doing my practice.’

Lesley tilted her head to the side and gave me a cool look.

I was about to protest when Beverley banged on my window – I rolled it down.

‘I just thought you ought to know that it’s stopped raining,’ she said. ‘And there’s a cycle courier walking down the street.’

Me and Lesley piled out of the car, which shows how inexperienced we really were at basic surveillance, remembered that we were trying to be unobtrusive and pretended to be having a casual chat with each other. In our defence we’d just spent two years in uniform, and being obtrusive is what a uniformed constable is all about.

Beverley must have had good eyes because the courier was at the Shaftesbury Avenue end of Neal Street and was approaching at a slow, deliberate pace. He was pushing his bike, which was suspicious, and I saw that the back wheel was bent out of shape. I felt a deep sense of unease, but I couldn’t tell if that was me or something external.

In the near distance a dog started barking. Behind us, a mother told off a child who wanted to be carried. I could hear rain draining into a gutter somewhere and I found myself straining to hear – I’m not sure what. Then I heard it: a thin, strangled, high-pitched giggle that seemed to float in from far away.

The cycle courier looked normal enough, dressed in painfully tight yellow and black Lycra, a messenger bag with a radio attached to its shoulder strap and a street helmet in blue and white. He had a narrow face and a mouth that was a thin line under a sharp nose, but his eyes were worryingly blank. I didn’t like the way he was walking. The twisted back wheel was scraping the forks and the man’s head seemed to bob unnaturally on his neck in time with every revolution. I decided it would be a bad idea to let him get any closer.