Broken Homes (PC Peter Grant) (13 page)

She was a skinny mixed-race kid who had a fine range of suspicious looks, one of which she was happy to turn on Nightingale.

‘Are you going to do some magic?’ she asked.

‘That, young lady,’ he said, ‘depends entirely on how you deport yourself in the coming hours.’

Abigail gave him the look, but only for a moment – just enough to make sure he knew that she wasn’t intimidated.

‘Fair enough,’ she said.

Through the mist the sun was a wavering disc kissing the shadowy arches of Waterloo Bridge. I noticed that a fair number of civilians, mostly tourists and workers from the nearby offices, were wandering amongst the darkened stalls. All part of our contingency planning, and not yet arriving in the quantities I was expecting. Lesley noted that many of them were staying in the area of Gabriel’s Wharf where the cafés and shops were still open.

As the sun vanished, the mist grew thicker and I started to wonder when the showmen were going to turn on their lights.

‘Do you think this is natural?’ Lesley asked Nightingale.

‘I doubt that.’ Nightingale checked his watch. ‘Both sunset and high tide are due at around six thirty – I expect our principals to arrive then.’

So we sent Abigail off to get coffee and settled in to wait.

We heard them before we saw them. And we felt them before we heard them – as an anticipation, like waking up on your birthday, the smell of bacon sandwiches, breakfast coffee and that initial glorious deep-lunged drag on the first cigarette of the day – the last of these being how I knew this wasn’t truly my feelings, but something external.

And then a real sound floated out of the dark. Big heavy marine diesels throttled up suddenly as the blunt prows of two large river cruisers emerged from the mist, one on either side of the pier. They touched the embankment simultaneously and stopped. Behind them the superstructures were darker shadows in the murk.

Then the God and Goddess of the River Thames made their presence known.

The force of them rolled in like a wave and a confusion of images and smells. Coal smoke and brick dust, cardamom and ginger, damp straw and warm hops, pub piano, wet cotton and sloe gin, tonic water and rose petals, sweat and blood. The waiting onlookers went down on their knees around us, the showmen slowly with respect, the tourists with looks of utter surprise. Even Abigail went down until she realised that Nightingale, Lesley and me were still standing. I watched her face set into an expression that is discussed in hushed tones wherever teachers and social workers gather together, and she struggled back to her feet. She glared at me as if it was my fault.

The diesel engines stopped and there was silence – not even Abigail spoke. No wonder the showmen were kneeling in respect. PT Barnum would have banged his head twice on the ground in admiration.

Lady Ty emerged from the mist first. By her side was a wiry man with a thin face and a shock of brown hair – Oxley, the Old Man of the River’s cunning right hand.

They stopped at the point where the pier met the embankment and Oxley threw back his head and shouted something that sounded like Welsh but was probably much, much older.

‘The Queen and King of the River stand at your gates,’ bellowed Lady Ty in her best
Dragon’s Den
minion-cowing voice.

Oxley shouted, or chanted, it’s hard to tell with these Celtic languages, another phrase and again Lady Ty translated.

‘The Queen and King of the River stand at your gates – come forward to receive them.’

I felt a warmth on the back of my neck like an unexpected sunbeam and turned to see a young girl of no more than nine, in an antique silk jacket of brilliant yellow – Imperial Yellow she proudly told me later, and genuine Chinese silk – hair twisted up into a fountain of silver and gold thread over a round brown face with a big mouth set in a Cheshire Cat grin.

She came skipping down the central path, bringing with her the warmth of the sun. The yellow silk glowed, driving back the mist and with her came the smell of salt and the crash of gunpowder and the crack of canvas under strain.

‘Who’s that?’ whispered Lesley.

‘Neckinger,’ said Nightingale.

And I thought of myself studying my
formae
and my Latin and Blackstone’s guide to procedure . . . and all the time there were powers like this young girl among us who could bring spring into the world just by her presence.

On the other hand, the effect was diluted a little bit by the fact that I noticed she was wearing black cotton leggings and a pair of Kicker boots.

She danced up to Oxley and Lady Ty, spread her arms, and bowed deeply from the waist. Then she bobbed back up and fidgeted impatiently from foot to foot just like a normal child starring in her first nativity play.

‘We welcome the King and Queen of the River,’ she declaimed, stepped between the two adults and, seizing their hands, pulled them onto the embankment. Even Lady Ty, who’d been going for po-faced dignity, had to smile.

‘Peter, Lesley,’ whispered Nightingale urgently. ‘Check the perimeter. And take Abigail with you.’

Nightingale had insisted on this perimeter sweep at the planning stage, but I found I was reluctant to miss the actual debarkation. Given that your actual gods were going to walk amongst us, it seemed disrespectful not to stay and pay our respects. And maybe do a bit of cheering and, you know, possibly a little bit of a genuflect, just to show willing . . .

‘Perimeter sweep,’ said Nightingale in his best command voice. ‘All three of you, now!’

‘I wanted to watch the show,’ hissed Abigail as we dragged her away, but there was a hint of fear behind her usual belligerence. I set a brisk pace towards the Oxo Tower on the basis that Nightingale was obviously worried, and anything that worried Nightingale wasn’t something you wanted worrying you.

We’d gone about ten metres when there was a great roar behind us, like what you get when the home side scores in injury time and the fans all know that it’s all over now. Light exploded through the mist at our backs and, although we probably shouldn’t have, we all turned round to watch.

It looked like a late rock show or early Spielberg – fingers of golden light spilling through the trees and the gaps between the stalls. A wash of exultation, another roar from the crowd and a crashing disappointment that we hadn’t been there to see it. It was impossible to separate what was real from what was glamour. I heard a trumpet fanfare that would have reduced my dad to tears, and then saw white flashes and heard the whoosh-crack of antique flashbulbs. The crowd roared one last time and I could see from the shifting position of the lights that the procession had left the embankment and was heading into the park.

The gold gradually seeped out of the lights over the stalls until they were bog standard tungsten area lamps. Out to our left a diesel coughed into life, a woman laughed and a propane stove ignited. If I listened carefully I could once again hear the comforting thrum of traffic on the Blackfriars Road.

Lesley gave a little bark of a laugh.

‘I’ll never call anyone else emotionally manipulative again,’ she said. ‘That was world class.’

‘Ha,’ said Abigail. ‘That was nothing. You should meet my brother.’

‘Every time I think I know what I’m dealing with . . .’ I said.

‘More fool you,’ said Lesley. ‘Come on, this perimeter’s not going to check itself.’

Since we were out there anyway, we took a couple of minutes to check that our three Sprinter vans’ worth of up-for-anything riot gear and tasers on standby TSG officers were fed and watered. Because the only thing worse than putting up with a bored and testy bunch of TSG is finding they’re all out looking for food when the wheels come off.

Stamford Street, which marked the southern end of our area of operations, was strangely hushed with the traffic closed down. The trucks of the stallholders and showmen were washed-out shapes in the mist. We checked that the PSCOs on road detail had had a smooth shift change and that the skipper in charge was happy.

‘Easiest overtime I’ve ever had,’ said one of the PCSOs. He seemed strangely serene, in a way that I found vaguely disturbing.

The mist was noticeably thicker on the other side of the red brick wall that marked the end of the park. Looking through the entrance I could just make out a swirl of colour that might have been the merry-go-round, and hear the muffled mechanical cheer of its organ.

I was just about to ask Lesley whether she thought we should go back in, when a white European family, obvious tourists by their matching blue Swiss Air backpacks, strolled past us and, before we could stop them, vanished inside the park.

‘Shit,’ said Lesley in surprise. ‘We’d better get back in there before something weird happens to them.’

‘Might be a little bit too late for that,’ I said, but we followed them in all the same.

B
ernie Spain Park was neatly bisected by Upper Ground Road. South of this line the showmen had placed their carousel. The mist was thick enough that you practically had to be riding on the thing to make out the expressions on the faces of the horses. But the coloured lights pulsed and illuminated the faces of the kids who waited their turn. I made a point of watching the ride for at least ten minutes, just to make sure nobody was aging backwards.

Nearby was a stall where I bought a toffee apple for Abigail in the hope it might glue her teeth together for a while, and worked our way through the narrow shadowy gaps between the stalls until we’d reached the jazz tent and the Metropolitan Police stall where Nightingale was waiting.

‘So, what was all that?’ asked Lesley.

‘That was the joint Court of the Thames in session for the first time since 1857,’ said Nightingale. ‘I fear they may have got a touch carried away in their enthusiasm.’

I looked over at the northern half of the park where the court was arrayed. In the mist it was just shadows and lights and looked exactly the same as the southern end. But I could feel it calling to me. A nagging little temptation, like a bad habit on a long dull day. I looked back at Lesley, who winked when she saw me looking.

‘We could rope ourselves together like mountaineers,’ she said.

The operational plan was that one of us would remain with Abigail at the police stall while the other two proceeded about the fair and, by dint of being clothed in the awesome majesty of the law, head off any high spirits before they got out of hand.

Me and Lesley decided to start with the jazz tent on the basis that, being jazzmen, the Irregulars might have some beer. And I had this theory that alcohol, being a depressant, might counteract all the glamour that was washing around us. And even if it didn’t, it could still get you drunk. Lesley was sceptical, but seemed open to some practical experimentation in that area. When we ducked into the tent we found that it was already half full of punters and totally full of my mother.

In honour of the fact that my dad was playing she was wearing her upmarket beatnik outfit, all skinny jeans, black roll-neck jumper and silver bling – all now back in fashion amongst the cognoscenti, much like my dear old dad. No beret, I noticed. Some things that happened in the sixties stay in the sixties – even if in my mum’s case most of them happened in the late seventies. When she saw me she bustled over and, after hugging me, greeted Lesley and asked how she was.

‘Much better,’ said Lesley.

Mum gave a dubious look and turned to me for confirmation.

‘
How e day do
?’ she asked in Krio.

‘
E betta small small
,’ I told her.

Mum nodded and looked around. ‘
You girlfriend day cam
?’ she asked.

It took me a moment to realise who she was talking about. Girlfriend? I’d never actually got that far with Beverley Brook before she’d moved upstream as part of a hostage swap. That had been my idea as part of, if I say so myself, a very clever way to stop the two halves of the River Thames going to war with each other. Beverley, for a lot of good reasons, had been an obvious choice for the swap although Lesley said it was down to my unconscious desire to head off a meaningful relationship before it could get started. Lesley says she could write a book about my relationship issues, only it would be long, dull and pretty similar to all the other books on the market.

‘She’s not my girlfriend,’ I said, but my mum ignored me.

‘
Dis nah fambul business
?’ she asked.

‘Sort of the family business,’ I said.

‘
Dem people den very strange and differend
,’ she said. Lesley snorted.

‘I’ve noticed that,’ I said.

‘
But this one notto witch
?’ asked my mum, who incidentally had attacked my last girlfriend for being same. ‘E
get fine training
.’

‘How’s Dad?’ I asked. Always a reliable way to sidetrack my mum.

‘
He day do fine. Den day ya he do a lot of wok
.’

So the Irregulars had told me, lots of gigs and rumours of an exclusive vinyl-only release carefully designed to appeal to fans of ‘proper’ jazz – whatever that was these days.

She glanced back at where my dad, properly turned out in pressed chinos and a green v-neck cashmere jumper over a white cotton shirt with button-down collar, was having a technical discussion with the rest of the band. Lots of hand gestures as he indicated where he wanted the solos to come in during the set because, as my dad always says, while improvisation and spontaneity may be the hallmarks of great jazz, the hallmark of being a great player is ensuring the rest of the band is spontaneously improvising the way you want them to.

‘
Are wan talk to you in private
,’ said my mum.

‘Now?’

‘Now now.’

I waved off Lesley and followed Mum out into the mist.

Are know you papa sabie play the piano
,’ she said. ‘
But e good more with dee trumpet. En dee trumpet nah e make am famous
.’

Despite Mum’s best efforts, heroin had done for my dad’s teeth and so he ‘lost his lip’, his embouchure if you’re going to be posh about it, and unless you’re Chet Baker that’s pretty much all she wrote for a man with a horn.