Amongst Our Weapons

20 Reconstruction

Duress is not a defence in murder cases. But balance of the mind is. And with that, and a sympathetic judge, prison could be short and then out on licence. Back to Heather’s narrowboat and the glamour of the open canal.

Which means we’d need to devise a new offender management set-up for Falcon cases.

Which meant I’d made more work for myself, but not that afternoon. Once Francisca had been reunited with Heather and introduced to our custody sergeant, I was sent packing by Nightingale.

Guleed drove me home.

‘Done?’ asked Beverley after I’d kissed her.

‘All bar the paperwork,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said Beverley. ‘Get in the bath and tell me about it.’

So I soaked in our enormous tub while Beverley sat on the stool beside it, listening, eating a plate of rice and soup and occasionally reheating the water. I left out the bit where I deliberately threw myself into a trans-dimensional rift, but even so Bev had that deceptively calm look that told me she was shelving her complaints for a more convenient moment.

After lunch with Mum in the kitchen, I went into the bedroom and lay down for a quick nap.

I awoke to darkness and the sound of women’s voices like the laughter of water tumbling over polished stones. I lay in that halfway state between dreams and reality and listened as they moved around me in whispers of silk and perfume.

‘You want to get up now, babes,’ said my beloved. ‘Or you’re going to miss the main event.’

I rolled out of bed and luckily I was still in my boxers, because I wasn’t dreaming – the room was full of Beverley’s eldest sisters. Lady Ty was there, in a white cotton shift tied at the waist with old rope. There was gold at her throat and wrists and threaded through the braids that were piled up on her head like a crown. She glanced at me and shook her head in resignation.

Effra was there, long and lean in an eye-wateringly psychedelic halter neck dress cinched at the waist with an iridescent scarf of green, gold and black. She’d taken out her normal extensions, and instead her hair was a magnificent puffball Afro with a single Bride of Frankenstein streak of electric blue above each temple. Her nails were long and decorated with flags and shields, lions and leopards, crosses and chevrons. She grinned when she saw me looking and gave me a mocking salute.

Fleet was there, all broad shoulders and narrow waist in blue Lycra gym shorts and matching crop top. Around her neck hung a compact digital stopwatch, and her hair was sensibly hidden beneath a bathing cap. She gave me a curt nod and turned her attention to the stopwatch.

Standing amongst them was Beverley, huge and beautiful, vast and magnificent in a white linen undershirt with her dreads falling free down to her bum. She stood with her hands on the small of her back, spine slightly arched, eyes closed, cheeks puffing in and out.

‘When did it start?’ I asked, while desperately searching for my jeans, my work trousers, tracksuit bottoms – anything.

‘Hours ago,’ said Beverley. ‘But you looked so sweet I didn’t have the heart to wake you until I was ready to go.’

‘Are you ready?’

Beverley grimaced suddenly and then relaxed.

‘Oh, I’m beyond ready,’ she said, and her sisters laughed, even Lady Ty, which was quite unsettling in and of itself.

I found a pair of swimming shorts under one of Beverley’s wetsuits and dragged them on. I spotted a T-shirt under the bed, but when I grabbed it Beverley told me to leave it off.

‘I need you with your shirt off,’ she said, and then she tensed – her face screwing up.

I looked over at Effra, who shrugged and rolled her eyes – she didn’t know why either.

Lady Ty clapped her hands to get our attention.

‘If everybody’s ready,’ she said, ‘then let’s get this show on the road.’

She opened the French windows and, putting her finger to her lips, motioned us outside. Effra led the way and I took Beverley’s arm and followed her out. Beverley was perfectly mobile, except when a contraction hit – at which point she grabbed hold of me and, breathing hard, waited for it to pass. We had to stay quiet because of the row of tents that had been pitched on the patio and the lawn beyond. Tents full of the younger Rivers and hangers-on. Their older sisters and cousins were in the spare bedrooms upstairs.

Counting them, it was obvious that more had arrived while I was asleep.

‘Has everyone in the entire demi-monde decided to turn up?’ I whispered.

‘No,’ Beverley whispered back. ‘Miss Tefeidiad couldn’t make it.’

The night was dark, overcast, and I could smell rain on the air. Not fifteen hundred metres away was a perfectly good birthing pool at Kingston Hospital that had figured prominently in the birth plan not two weeks earlier. A nice, small, uncomplicated birthing pool for a nice low-key birth.

I sighed, and Beverley laughed and intertwined her fingers with mine.

‘I remember seeing you on the riverbank at Richmond,’ she said. ‘Staring out over the water with that same boggled expression on your face. And I thought, even then, there’s a boy who will be easy to surprise.’

‘That makes no sense,’ I said.

‘It does to me,’ she said.

Given the size of the pool at Kingston, the original plan was that I would be kneeling outside the pool behind Beverley, offering support both moral and physical. But now I was wading into – surprisingly clean – river water. Beverley led me by the hand until the water reached my hips and then stopped. She started tugging at her shift, which was already sodden and heavy.

‘Help me off with this,’ she said, and we peeled it off together.

I wadded it up and threw onto the pool side, where one of Abigail’s fox friends grabbed it and dragged it away. I turned to look and saw that Nicky, Brent and a couple of other junior river goddesses were piling out their tents and jumping up and down in excitement. Maksim shushed them before they could start making a noise and then opened a box full of sweets to bribe them to keep quiet. Standing on the patio, Abigail was chatting to Chelsea and Olympia.

Beverley had another contraction, and I slipped my arms under hers to support her. She blew out her cheeks and made a very strange whining sound which devolved rapidly into the much more familiar ‘Fuckfuckfuckfuck.’

Fleet, Effra and Tyburn waded into the pool to join us. Tyburn passed me a net on a stick, the sort Beverley used to scoop up fishes and insects. Because my hands were full, Tyburn had to delicately trap it under my armpit.

‘What’s this for?’ I asked.

‘Floaters,’ said Tyburn, and giggled.

Tyburn, as far as I knew, was the only one of Mama Thames’s daughters to have actually given birth, so I assumed she knew what she was doing. We’d asked her advice a couple of months previously.

‘Go to St Mary’s,’ she’d said. ‘And make sure you ask for an epidural.’

The Lindo Wing of the private St Mary’s Hospital was where the royals went to drop their sprogs, so I wasn’t surprised. And Beverley wasn’t keen. Besides, it didn’t have anything that Kingston didn’t have.

Listening to Beverley alternately puffing and swearing, I wondered if maybe she wasn’t regretting our al fresco birthing pool. Even if the water was unnaturally warm.

‘This is so undignified,’ said Beverley as she gripped my arm.

‘Anything worth doing usually ends up undignified,’ I said, and Beverley gave me a harsh look.

‘Peter, just so we’re clear,’ she said. ‘Your role in this is strictly supportive.’

‘Yes, my love.’

‘Shut up,’ she said, and turned her head to kiss me.

Fleet laughed and I heard Tyburn making gagging noises like a teenager.

‘Heads up,’ said Effra. ‘Here comes Mama Grant.’

I looked back again to see my mum approaching from the house. Her hair was covered in a white wrap, and she, too, wore a white linen shift like a baptismal dress. Or maybe not linen, because as she stepped into the pool lights the material shimmered with glints of colour. She was looking down at us with a beatific smile that I’d only ever seen on her face when Dad was soloing, and I was even more shocked to see the tracks of tears down her cheeks.

God, African mothers … If you can’t be a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer, knock out some sprogs and they will forgive you all your failures.

She hesitated short of the water and I was wondering why, when I heard the sharp cry of a seagull and suddenly the air smelt of the sea.

With just a hint of diesel and coal smoke.

The whispers and murmured conversations in the garden ceased; even the constant rumble of traffic on the Kingston Bypass faded into nothing. Fleet, Tyburn and Effra separated to leave a path.

Mama Thames rose from the river at the end of the pool and came gliding towards us as if she was carried along by an invisible current. She had black eyes set in a smooth round face, pinked at the corners like her daughters’, broad shoulders, strong arms and wide hips. Her skin was as dark and as smooth as a young child’s. She was dressed identically to my mum – the same iridescent headdress and shift with the colours rippling like wavelets across the fabric. The only difference was an old-fashioned nurse’s watch pinned upside down to her breast.

‘About fucking time,’ said Beverley.

My mum waded past me and joined Mama Thames in front of Beverley, the senior sisters stepping in to form a half-circle.

Mama Thames took her daughter’s hand.

‘Whenever you feel ready,’ she said.

‘Actually,’ said Bev, ‘I think I could go for some breakfast – fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!’

There was a lot of panting and shouting and swearing, and I like to think I carried off my very minor role in a properly supportive manner. Literally supportive when the first twin crowned and Beverley flung herself back against me, her feet leaving the bottom of the pool. It felt good to be doing something useful that didn’t involve fishing out floaters.

Then Beverley gave a shudder that seemed to run down her body from head to hips. Mama Thames stooped to lift the first twin clear of the water. Then the baby cried and my mind went completely blank with the enormity of it all.

‘Peter,’ hissed Beverley, ‘we’re not finished yet.

Mama Thames held up the first twin and spoke in a voice loud enough to cause noise complaints across the neighbourhood.

‘Taiwo,’ she called. ‘Mamasu Rose.’ The last being my mum’s two first names.

She passed the baby – umbilical still attached – to Tyburn, who looked down at her, then blew a raspberry and stuck out her tongue.

‘Fuck!’ shouted Beverley.

She tensed again, made a terrible face and then relaxed and slumped back against me. I heard another baby cry and Mama Thames held up another glistening, squirming infant.

‘Kehinde,’ she said, and then looked at me, the power of her regard fixing me in place. She raised an eyebrow.

‘Beatrice,’ I said.

‘Beatrice?’ asked Beverley.

‘After Betty Carter.’

‘Yes,’ said Fleet. ‘The one and only.’

‘Yes,’ said Mum.

‘Yes,’ breathed Mama Thames, and her affirmation was like the wind bellying out the sails of a clipper turning for home.

In films and television they always gloss over the messy bits that come next, the umbilical cord cutting and afterbirth disposal – the alarming pink cloud that briefly suffused our end of the pool.

And so will I.

All through the later stages of the pregnancy I’d imagined the twins as already sly and mischievous, but instead I was entrusted with a pair of wrinkly faced gnomes – albeit with curly mops of black hair and black eyes that pinked to the sides like a cat’s.

‘Yes,’ I said, as I waded out of the pool with the twins in my arms. ‘You are mine.’

‘You’ve got that the wrong way round,’ said Lady Ty behind me.

I woke the next morning to the sound of the foxes begging my mum for snacks and then running around yelping because they were too spicy. Beside me, Beverley stifled a laugh, but when we heard Abigail chasing after the foxes and trying to get them to eat white bread, she couldn’t keep it in any more. The laugh woke the twins, who immediately wanted feeding.

I helped Beverley get into position for tandem feeding and watched as her face took on an expression of pained surprise as the twins clamped on.

‘OK, girls,’ she said, ‘there’s enough for everyone.’

About a minute after feeding, I got my first taste of nappy changing. I don’t know what people complain about. I’ve cleaned up much worse than that. It didn’t even smell that bad.

‘That’s because they’re yours,’ said Auntie Ty when she visited that afternoon. ‘For everyone else, the shit stinks just the same.’

Obviously, the world does not stop just because you’re on paternity leave. Fortunately, between Bev, my mum, Maksim and, disconcertingly, Lady Ty, I managed to carve out enough time to finish up the paperwork. Nightingale, Guleed and Danni handled the inquests and the legal aftermath without me, although the DPS called me in for an interview. I took the twins with me, so it turned out to be quite short.

One thing I did early on was prepare an official briefing document for Special Agent Reynolds, and a definitely unofficial document for the secret branch of the New York Libraries that deals with dangerous magical artefacts. My hope was that they would send someone after Brian Packard and Lesley May to try and secure the lamp. To ginger them up, I may have exaggerated its significance as a magical artefact – just a tad.

‘Is that wise?’ asked Nightingale at the next weekly conference call. ‘We hardly parted on good terms.’

‘We’re all too separated,’ I said. ‘And these informal links are OK, but what if something happens to me and you?’

‘You think we should formalise our association with the FBI?’ he asked.

‘And with the Dutch,’ I said, ‘and the French, and anyone else who wants to talk. Magic has never been purely local, has it? We’ve just done a case from the Middle Ages which extended from Seville to Manchester.’

Nightingale agreed that greater formal co-operation was desirable, but added that the Home Office was still opposed to any such links, and we hadn’t even broached the idea with the Foreign Office.

‘We have potential allies with influence,’ I said.

‘You’re thinking of Lady Ty,’ he said. ‘Not someone who has shown us much goodwill in the past.’

‘Ah, but we’ve got family connections now,’ I said. ‘And baby diplomacy.’

Nightingale remained sceptical, but less than a week later Grace and Caroline came down from Glossop to visit.

I offered them a twin each to hold, but strangely they said no.

‘Not everybody wants children, you know, Peter,’ said Caroline.

‘And it’s hard to talk with your hands full,’ signed Grace.

Since the twins were doing their rare impression of sleeping angels, I made coffee and put some biscuits out. Grace had taken the opportunity to nose around the living room, and when I got back she was having what looked like a heated discussion with Caroline. I was definitely going to have to pick up some British Sign Language soon – if only so I could eavesdrop on those two.

The discussion wound down and the two accepted coffee. Unfortunately, Beverley and Abigail had eaten all the Molly-supplied biscuits and we had to make do with the ones donated by the local Waitrose.

Grace and Caroline had brought a hanging mobile for the twins – carved wooden figures interspersed with moons and stars and capering kitchenware. The figures were traditional fairytale witches wearing pointy hats and riding brooms, although at least one of them was brandishing a hammer, and they had foxes as familiars, not cats.

The foxes puzzled me a bit, but before I could ask about them Grace presented me with another gift. This was a tooled leather smartphone case – the type with a flap that protected the screen.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

When I took it, it seemed to be much heavier than it needed to be. When I opened it I saw that gold threads had been inlaid into the leather in looping knots and curls. When I looked back at Grace and Caroline they wore identical grins.

‘Magic-resistant,’ signed Grace.

‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Stay here a moment.’

I went and fetched an Airwave handset from my office and showed it to Grace.

‘Could you make one for this?’ I asked.

Grace’s grin grew wider and slightly feral.

‘What’s it worth?’ she signed.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

Less work-related, ironically, was a visit from Stephanopoulos and her wife Pam. They’d come for what Stephanopoulos jokingly called an ‘infant assessment session’. They’d been thinking of either having their own kids or adopting, and the twins did their best to persuade them that they might prefer to adopt older children.

‘Once they’re past the screaming and pooing stage,’ said Pam.

I did put them in touch with Stacy Carter and Tyrel Johnson, who fostered older ‘difficult’ kids and might be able to advise.

‘You’re a compulsive networker,’ said Beverley when I told her.

‘It seems to work,’ I said, although my therapist constantly tried to convince me that the networking was a displacement activity to help me avoid dealing with my own emotional issues. She was having to work quite hard at the moment, because I’ve found I can happily talk about how much I love the twins for a whole hour, no problem. And unlike my other acquaintances, my therapist can’t make excuses and run away.

Spring arrived, and by May, Maksim had remodelled the water feature into something a bit less like a slipway and a bit more like a swimming pool. To celebrate that, and some surprisingly good weather, we held Beverley’s birthday party outside in the garden. Just to be on the safe side, we rigged an awning that extended over the patio in case it rained. Which, of course, it did. Fortunately, Fleet and Effra took it in turns to sit in the water and keep it warm enough for all the kids – river goddesses or not – to splash about in without contracting hypothermia. Since we weren’t having a christening, the party also served to introduce the twins to a wider circle of friends and family. And Seawoll demanded that he be made a godparent.

‘I’ve always wanted to be a disreputable uncle,’ he said.

He’d brought presents, just in case – two pairs of onesies with a picture of the Tardis on the front with SO MUCH BIGGER ON THE INSIDE printed beside it.

Because new parents crave sleep above all things, we wrapped up the party by the early evening, but Nightingale lingered. While Mum and Beverley settled the twins, Nightingale beckoned me out onto the patio and, sensing a lecture coming, I reluctantly joined him sitting at the white enamel garden table. Judging by the bottle of Kloud beer in front of him, this wasn’t going to be an official lecture. I suspected something much worse. Friendly advice.

Before we got down to it, though, Nightingale turned and addressed the shadowed length of the garden.

‘This is a top secret confidential discussion,’ he said loudly. ‘So you lot can all pop off back to your duty stations.’

The pool lights were still on, illuminating the water and the drizzle falling on it. Traffic rumbled on the main road and Mum was singing ‘Stormy Weather’ in the kitchen.

Nightingale lifted his hand in a vaguely threatening gesture and there was a sudden rustling amongst the bushes, as if half a dozen medium-sized quadrupeds were departing at some speed.

‘Alone at last,’ I said.

‘I doubt it,’ said Nightingale. ‘Those were decoys. They’ll have left at least one fox on station. Their hearing is really quite magnificent, as is their sense of smell, although Abigail thinks they may have traded some of that for greater intelligence.’

Nightingale seemed about as eager to give the friendly advice as I was to receive it, and I didn’t see any reason to spur him on.

‘What do you know about them that you haven’t told me?’ I asked.

‘It’s what Abigail knows that she hasn’t told either of us that interests me,’ he said. ‘But we can deal with that issue at a more appropriate time.’

Oh well, I thought. It was worth a try.

‘Had you died, Peter,’ said Nightingale without preamble, ‘or vanished into some ghastly allokosmos, it would have been my duty to come here to notify Beverley of your death.’ He tilted his head towards the house. ‘I was spared that, thankfully. Not least because the consequences in terms of flood damage to south-west London could have been dire.’

We both managed weak smiles at the joke.

‘I had hoped that incipient fatherhood would temper your recklessness,’ he said. ‘But we are what we are, aren’t we? But being the people we are, we take our responsibilities very seriously. So, in an effort to curb your enthusiasm somewhat, I plan to retire.’

I nearly dropped my beer, and six metres down the garden a squeaky fox voice went ‘What?’

‘But—’ I said.

Nightingale smiled and raised his hand to stop me.

‘Not just now, of course,’ he said. ‘But certainly within the next five years. You, in turn, will be required to take a more managerial role in the Folly. This way, you will be forced to put a higher value on your own life.’

Because, of course, I thought, administrative duties have been such a feature of your tenure.

I opened my mouth to … what? Object? Plead? Scream?

‘When I first contemplated recruiting you,’ said Nightingale, ‘I spoke to your Team Inspector Francis Neblett.’

‘He must have loved you,’ I said.

Neblett had been so old-school uniform that I’d had to fight the urge to salute every time he walked past.

‘I believe he would have preferred not to have recommended you,’ said Nightingale. ‘But he was far too upright a man to dissemble. He said you were prone to “overthinking” things and that you were easily distracted. But if I could engage your attention, you were capable of anything.’

‘That is not the impression he gave me,’ I said.

‘Indeed,’ said Nightingale, with a disturbing grin, ‘he also warned me about you.’

‘Warned you about what?’

‘He said that you were surprisingly reckless and that I would age significantly with you under my command,’ he said.

‘And have you?’ I asked.

‘I’ve had moments of worry,’ he said. ‘And this is my solution.’

‘But what are you going to do with yourself,’ I said, ‘if you retire?’

‘Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘there are so many things I would like to do. For one thing, I would like to see the mountains of Kashmir again.’

Oh, good, I thought, a war zone. Now who’s going to get white hair?

‘It would be nice to visit Germany and not be shot at,’ he said. ‘Or China, or Sierra Leone – places I’ve never been.’

The panic I was feeling must have shown on my face.

‘Not all in a rush,’ he said. ‘Obviously. When I was younger even than you, the headmaster of Casterbrook suggested that I consider becoming a teacher. I was horrified at the time, of course, but now I think we should consider reopening the old place.’

‘As a school?’

‘More as a college and a training centre,’ said Nightingale. ‘After all, there’s no point in my leaving you in charge if you have no underlings to order about.’

‘A police training college?’ I asked – the College of Policing would probably love that.

‘We can start modestly right away,’ said Nightingale. ‘That much is in your operational plan already.’

‘PIP level 1 Crime Scene Vestigia Awareness,’ I said.

‘Quite,’ said Nightingale. ‘Although I think in the long term we should pursue a wider curriculum.’

‘Is that wise?’ I asked.

‘The wider the base, the greater the stability of the building,’ said Nightingale. ‘You taught me that.’

I thought of the future – which now had my daughters in it, and foxes, and mad Northern smiths, and whatever mischief Abigail was going to get herself into.

I raised my bottle.

‘To the future,’ I said. ‘Whatever that is.’

THE END