Whispers Under Ground

evidence bag with a laminated card in it. At the top was NEW YORK STATE, below that DRIVER LICENSE, then a name, address and date of birth. His name was James Gallagher, from some town called Albany, NY, and he was twenty-three years old.
    We had a quick argument about what time exactly it was in New York before Seawoll dispatched one of the family liaison officers to contact the Albany Police Department. Albany being the capital of New York State, which I didn’t know until Stephanopoulos told me.
    ‘The scope of your ignorance, Peter,’ said Seawoll, ‘is truly frightening.’
    ‘Well our victim had a thirst for knowledge,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘He was a student at St Martin’s College.’
    There’d been an NUS card in the wallet and a couple of business cards with James Gallagher’s name on them and what we hoped was his London address – a mews just off the Portobello Road.
    ‘I do like it when they make it easy for us,’ said Seawoll.
    ‘What do you reckon,’ said Stephanopoulos. ‘Home, family, friends – first?’
    I’d mostly kept my mouth shut until then and I’d have, frankly, preferred to have sloped off and gone home but I couldn’t ignore the fact that James Gallagher had been done in with a magical weapon. Well, magical pot shard anyway.
    ‘I’d like to have a look round his gaff,’ I said. ‘Just in case he was a practitioner.’
    ‘Practitioner eh?’ asked Seawoll. ‘Is that what you call them?’
    I went back to keeping my mouth shut and Seawoll gave me an approving look.
    ‘All right,’ said Seawoll. ‘Home first, round up any friends and family, get him time-lined. BTP are going get some bodies down here to sweep the tunnels.’
    ‘Transport for London aren’t going to like that,’ said Stephanopoulos.
    ‘That’s unfortunate for them, isn’t it?’
    ‘We should tell forensics that the murder weapon may be archaeological,’ I said.
    ‘Archaeological?’ asked Seawoll.
    ‘Could be,’ I said.
    ‘Is that you’re professional opinion?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Which as usual,’ said Seawoll, ‘is as about as useful as a chocolate teapot.’
    ‘Would you like me to call my boss in?’ I asked.
    Seawoll pursed his lips and I realised with a shock that he was really considering whether to bring Nightingale in. Which annoyed me because it meant he didn’t trust me to do the job and unsettled me because there’d been something comforting about Seawoll’s resistance to any kind of ‘magic wank’ impinging upon his investigations. If he started to take me seriously then the pressure was going to be on me to deliver.
    ‘I heard Lesley’s joined your mob,’ he said.
    Ninety-degree change in direction of the conversation – classic police trick. Didn’t work because I’d been rehearsing the answer to that question ever since Nightingale and the Commissioner came to yet another ‘agreement’.
    ‘Not officially,’ I said. ‘She’s on indefinite medical leave.’
    ‘What a waste,’ said Seawoll shaking his head. ‘It’s enough to make you weep.’
    ‘How do you want to do this, sir?’ I asked. ‘AB do the murder and I do … the other … stuff?’ AB being the radio abbreviation for Belgravia Police station where Seawoll’s Murder Team was located – we police never like to use real words when we can use an incomprehensible bit of jargon instead.
    ‘After how that worked out last time?’ asked Seawoll. ‘Fuck no. You’re going to be operating out of our incident room as a member of the inquiry team. That way I can keep my fucking eye on you.’
    I looked at Stephanopoulos.
    ‘Welcome to the murder squad,’ she said.

3
    Ladbroke Grove
    T he Metropolitan Police has a very straightforward approach to murder investigations, not for them the detective’s gut instinct or the intricate logical deductions of the sleuth savant. No, what the Met likes to do is throw a shitload of manpower at the problem and run down every single possible lead until it is exhausted, the murderer is caught or the senior investigating officer dies of old age. As a result, murder investigations are conducted not by quirky Detective Inspectors with drink/relationship/mental problems but a bunch of frighteningly ambitious Detective Constables in the first mad flush of their careers. So you can see I fit in very well.
    By five twenty that morning at least thirty of us had converged on Baker Street, so we started out for Ladbroke Grove en masse. A couple of DCs hitched a lift