Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(79)

It made sense. She’d been present when Coopertown killed his wife and child, during the incident in the cinema and the attack on Dr Framline. She’d been there when we planned the operation outside the Opera House, and she’d arrived with the back-up in time to pick up the missing pistol.

Lesley May was my suspect. She was part of it, sequestrated by Henry Pyke as part of his mad play of riot and revenge. I wondered if she’d been part of it from the beginning, from the first night when William Skirmish had his head knocked off and I’d met Nicholas Wall-penny. Then I remembered Pretty Polly from the Piccini script – the silent girl romanced by Punch after he’d killed his wife and child. He kisses her most audibly while she appears ‘nothing loath’. Then he sings, If I had all the wives of old King Sol, I would kill them all for my Pretty Poll.


There was a mother who lost her son in Covent Garden once. She was very English in an old-fashioned way, good-quality print dress, nice bag, down for a shopping trip to the West End and a visit to the London Transport Museum. Got distracted by a window display for a moment and turned back to find her six-year-old boy had gone.

I remember very clearly how she looked by the time she found us. A surface veneer of calm, a traditional British stiff upper lip but her eyes gave her away – darting left and right, she was fighting the impulse to run in all directions at once. I tried to keep her calm while Lesley called it in and started organising a search. I don’t know what I was saying, just calming words, but even while I was speaking I saw that she was shaking almost imperceptibly, and I realised that I was watching a human being come apart in front of my eyes. The six-year-old turned up less than a minute later, led up from one of the Piazza’s sunken courtyards by a kindly mime. I was looking right at the mother when the son reappeared, saw the relief laid bare on her face and the way the fear was sucked backwards into her until only the brisk and practical woman in the sundress and the sensible sandals remained.

Now I understood that fear, not for yourself but for somebody else. Lesley had been sequestrated – Henry Pyke was sitting in her head and had been there for at least three months. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen her. Had her face looked different? And then I remembered her smile, the big grin showing lots of teeth. Had she smiled at me recently? I thought she might have. If Henry Pyke had activated the dissimulo on her, made her over into Pulcinella’s form, there’s no way she could have disguised the ruin of her teeth. I didn’t know how to get Henry Pyke out of her head, but if I could get to her before the revenant made her face fall off then I thought I might know how to stop that, at least.

By the time Dr Walid returned to his office, I had a plan.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

I told him, and he thought it was a terrible plan as well.





A Better Class of Riot


The first task was to find Lesley. This I did by the simple expedient of calling her mobile and asking her where she was. ‘We’re in Covent Garden,’ she said. We being her and Seawoll and about half the rest of the Murder Team, the Chief Inspector having gone for the time-honoured police tradition of ‘when in doubt throw manpower at it’ approach. They were going to sweep the Piazza and then do a swift check of the Opera House.

‘What does he hope to do?’ I asked.

‘In the first instance, contain any problems,’ said Lesley. ‘Beyond that we’re waiting on you, remember?’

‘I may have sorted something out,’ I said. ‘But it’s important that you don’t do anything stupid.’

‘Hey,’ she said. ‘This is me.’

If only that were true.

The next thing I needed was wheels, so I called up Beverley on her waterproof mobile and hoped she wasn’t swimming lengths under Tower Bridge, or whatever it was river nymphs do on their day off. She picked up on the second ring and demanded to know what I’d done to her sister. ‘She’s not happy,’ she said.

‘Never mind your sister,’ I said. ‘I need to borrow a motor.’

‘Only if I get to come along,’ she said. I’d expected that; in fact, I was counting on it. ‘Or you can walk.’

‘Fine,’ I said, feigning reluctance.

She said she’d be over in half an hour.

Third on the list was getting hold of some hard drugs, which proved surprisingly difficult given that I was in a major hospital. The problem was, my tame doctor was having ethical qualms.

‘You’ve been watching too much TV,’ said Dr Walid. ‘There’s no such thing as a tranquilliser dart.’

‘Yes there is,’ I said. ‘They use them in Africa all the time.’

‘Let me rephrase that and talk slowly,’ said Dr Walid. ‘There’s no such thing as a safe tranquilliser dart.’

‘It doesn’t have to be a dart,’ I said. ‘Every minute we leave Lesley sequestrated there’s a chance that Henry Pyke’s going to make her face fall off. To do magic your mind has to be working. Shut down the conscious bit of the brain, and I’m willing to bet Henry can’t do his spell and Lesley’s face stays the way God intended.’

I could see from Dr Walid’s expression that he thought I was right. ‘But what then?’ he asked. ‘We can’t keep her in a medical coma indefinitely.’