Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(66)
Tyburn’s smile vanished. ‘Why don’t you have a nice drink?’ she asked.
She’d gone too far and she knew it, and she knew I knew she knew it too. Whatever influence she’d put on me must have been too subtle to handle a suggestion that obvious. Plus I’ve always wondered about that fish.
‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘There’s a pub down the road. Let’s go there.’
‘You cunning bastard,’ she said, and I didn’t think she was talking about me. She leaned in closer and stared into my eyes. ‘I know you’re thirsty,’ she said. ‘Drink the water.’
I felt my body lurch forward towards the fountain. It was involuntary, just like when you get a twitch in your leg or the hiccups, but now it was my whole body working to a purpose that wasn’t mine – it was terrifying. I realised then that the Old Man and Mama Thames hadn’t even been trying to control me and, had they wanted to, they could have had me doing cartwheels around the room. There had to be a limit to the power, or else what was to stop Mama Thames or the Old Man walking into Downing Street and dictating terms? I think people would notice if that happened – the Thames would be a lot cleaner, for a start.
It had to be Nightingale, I realised. The counterweight, the human balance to the supernatural, and that meant that they couldn’t control him. The only thing that separated Nightingale from an ordinary guy was his magic, which meant that the magic must supply a defence. It was a stretch, but it isn’t easy thinking things through when the personification of a historic London river is mentally trying to overwhelm you.
To try and buy time I attempted to throw myself backwards. It didn’t work, but it did stop my next lurch towards the fountain. Nightingale hadn’t taught me a block to the magic yet, so I reached for Impello instead. Lining up the forma in my mind was so much easier than I expected – later I speculated that whatever it was Tyburn was doing acted on the instinctive bit of my brain, not the ‘higher’ functions – that I got carried away.
‘Impello,’ I said, and tried to lift the statue off its pedestal.
Tyburn’s eyes widened at the sound of cracking marble. She whirled to look and as her eyes left mine I staggered back, suddenly free. I felt the shape in my mind slip out of control and the statue’s head disintegrated in a spray of marble chips. I felt a blow to my shoulder and a sharp cut on my face and a chunk of marble the size of a small dog slammed into the patio tiles by my feet.
I saw that the birdbath had also cracked, and that water was escaping and spreading across the patio like a bloodstain. Tyburn turned back to look at me. There was a cut on her forehead and her sundress was torn just above her hip.
She’d gone very quiet, and that was not a good sign. I’d seen that quiet before, on my mum and on the face of a woman whose brother had just been knocked down by a drunk driver. People are conditioned by the media to think that black women are all shouting and head-shaking and girlfriending and ‘oh, no you didn’t’, and if they’re not sassy then they’re dignified and downtrodden and soldiering on and ‘I don’t understand why folks just can’t get along’. But if you see a black woman go quiet the way Tyburn did, the eyes bright, the lips straight and the face still as a death mask, you have made an enemy for life: do not pass go, do not collect two hundred quid.
Do not stand around and try and talk about it – trust me, it won’t end well. I took my own advice and backed away. Tyburn’s black eyes watched me go, and as soon as I was safely in the side passage I turned and legged it as fast as I could. I didn’t exactly run down the hill to Swiss Cottage, but I did make it a brisk walk. There was a payphone near the bottom which I needed since the battery had been in my mobile during my statue demolition. I called the operator, gave my identification number and got a call routed to Lesley’s mobile. She wanted to know where I’d been because apparently it had all gone pear-shaped without me.
‘We saved the blind guy,’ she said, ‘no thanks to you.’ She refused to give me any details because ‘your boss wants you down here yesterday.’ I asked her where ‘here’ was and she told me the Westminster Mortuary, which made me cross because we may have saved the blind man but some poor bastard had still lost his face. I told her I’d be there as soon as possible.
I caught a lift in the local area car down to Swiss Cottage tube and hopped a Jubilee Line train into town. I doubted that Lady Ty had the manpower or the inclination to have the stations covered, and one of the few advantages of blowing out my phone was that it couldn’t be jacked, ditto any trackers she might have stashed about my person. I’m not being paranoid, you know. You can buy those things off the internet.
Rush hour was almost in full flood when I got on the train, and the carriage was crowded just short of the transition between the willing suspension of personal space and packed in like sardines. I spotted some of the passengers eyeing me up as I took a position at the end of the carriage with my back to the connecting door. I was sending out mixed signals, the suit and reassuring countenance of my face going one way, the fact that I’d obviously been in a fight recently and was mixed race going the other. It’s a myth that Londoners are oblivious to one another on the tube: we’re hyper-aware of each other and are constantly revising our what-if scenarios and counter strategies. What if that suavely handsome yet ethnic young man asks me for money? Do I give or refuse? If he makes a joke do I respond, and if so will it be a shy smile or a guffaw? If he’s been hurt in a fight does he need help? If I help him will I find myself drawn into a threatening situation, or an adventure, or a wild interracial romance? Will I miss supper? If he opens his jacket and yells ‘God is great’, will I make it down the other end of the carriage in time?