The Furthest Station (Peter Grant #5.7)
Ben Aaronovitch
To Bob Hunter who still doesn’t understand
his role in making me look good.
Whoever you are,
I have always depended
on the kindness of strangers.
A Streetcar Named Desire,
Tennessee Williams
Chapter 1:
CECI N'EST PAS
UN MéTRO
Jaget said he’d been watching this documentary on TV about the way people learn to track animals.
“Not white people, right?” he said. “Like people that grow up in the bush.”
In this case !Xun people from southern Africa, only Jaget couldn’t do the click sound until I taught him. I can only do it because I once harboured romantic dreams of emigrating to South Africa and had got someone to teach me. Since I hadn’t practised in ten years it probably meant we were both doing it wrong. We got some from funny looks from our fellow passengers—possibly because we were both in full uniform.
Now, Sergeant Jaget Kumar swans around in his uniform all the time, the better to deter terrorism, pickpockets and people playing their music too loud. But I can normally live without my Metvest. Especially on a Tube train during the morning rush hour in late July when Evian sales are at their peak. The S8 rolling stock is supposed to be air conditioned but, seriously, you wouldn’t know it.
Still, it’s amazing how even on the most crowded Tube train a police uniform can clear a good ten centimetres of personal space all around your body. The other commuters will literally climb into each other’s armpits to avoid touching you. Maybe they think it’s bad luck or something.
“Anyway,” said Jaget. “The thing about these people, right, is that they start learning to track about the same age they can walk. Their dads take them out and teach them, so by the time they’re grown up they’re experts. They had this young boy and he looked at this trail and he just reeled off all the animals that had gone past in the last couple of days.”
“How did they know he was telling the truth?”
“What?”
“The documentary makers,” I said. “How do they know he was telling the truth. He could have been making all that shit up.”
“Why would he make it up?”
“Because there’s these rich geezers with money and cameras and he figures that’s what they want to hear.”
“I believed him, okay?”
I said that I would have set up a low-light camera in a hide overnight and then you could check the boy’s account against the video evidence. Jaget said I was missing the point.
“Which was?”
“Maybe the reason Abigail is better at finding ghosts than you,” he said, “is because that’s all you’ve let her do for the last couple of years. Ten thousand hours and all that.”
“She’s been doing more than chasing ghosts,” I said.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That’s what’s worrying me.”
Which was when we heard the commotion further down the carriage. A good solid scream would have been nice, but after two hours of riding the trains at rush hour we’d settle for anything we could get.
“At last,” said Jaget.
Even with our uniforms on, it took us a good five minutes to push our way down the train. And, by the time we reached where it had come from, everyone was busily trying to pretend nothing had happened.
I made a mental note of the faces in case they became relevant later, before zeroing in on a young white woman in a blue off-the-peg skirt suit sitting in a seat by the end door. She caught my eye because, not only was her face flushed, but she kept on sneaking looks at us and then pretending to become madly interested in her Kindle.
Me and Jaget did some professional looming until we’d cleared enough space for me to crouch down and, in my best non-intimidating voice, ask whether she was alright. In case you’re wondering, that blokey sing-song timbre with a reassuring touch of regional—in my case cockney—accent is entirely deliberate. We actually practice it in front of a mirror. It’s designed to convey the message that we’re totally friendly, customer-facing modern police officers who have nothing but your wellbeing at the core of our mission statement…but nonetheless we are not going to go away until you talk to us. Sorry, but that’s just how we roll.
I let Jaget take over, since technically this was his jurisdiction—especially if this turned out to be a common or garden sexual assault. He started by getting her name out of her—Jessica Talacre, aged twenty-four, publicist for a small technical publisher located off Charterhouse Street.
“Was that you yelling?” he asked.
“I was just startled,” she said and crossed her arms. “Someone knocked into me.”
Jaget looked around at the nearby passengers.
“One of these people?”
“It was an accident,” she said. “They didn’t mean to.”
“But it wasn’t one of these guys, was it?” I said.
Jessica Talacre looked at me sharply. “What makes you say that?”
“Was there something a bit weird about this person?” I asked.
“What, apart from being a ghost?” she said, and looked defiant and then a bit fearful that we might have the famous white coats stashed about our person.
“What makes you think it was a ghost?” I asked.
“Because,” she said, “he faded out in front of my eyes.”
I pulled out my notebook and asked if she could give me a description.
“Wait,” she said. “You believe me?”
There had been reports suggesting that there was a ghost on the Metropolitan Line. Which Jaget brought to me, because disruptive phantasmagoria is the responsibility of the Special Assessment Unit, otherwise known as the Folly, otherwise known as “those weird bleeders.” Since, despite being an Operational Command Unit, the SAU consisted of me and Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale, and since Inspectors don’t get out of bed for anything less than a body in the vicarage, most initial case assessments were done by yours truly.
When I’d first met him, Jaget had been working for the London Underground division of the British Transport Police but they’d just now re-organised and reassigned him to his very own office at their swanky HQ in Camden Town. Technically he worked directly for the Chief Constable as a trouble shooter and go-to problem solver, but really he was there to deal with the weird shit on the Underground. For this he blamed me.
“You’re the one that likes exploring places underground,” I said. “You walked right into this of your own accord.”