Whispers Under Ground

smiled and released Zach’s wrist. ‘I’m not asking you to put yourself at risk, just find us the current location. We’ll do the rest.’
    ‘You only had to ask,’ said Zach.
    ‘Can you find it by this afternoon?’ asked Nightingale.
    ‘Course,’ he said. ‘But I’m going to need some readies – for transport, washing some hands, that sort of thing.’
    ‘How much?’
    ‘Pony,’ said Zach, meaning £500.
    Nightingale pulled a silver money clip from his jacket pocket and peeled off five fifties and handed them to Zach, who disappeared them so fast I didn’t see where they went. He didn’t protest the shortfall, either.
    ‘Let’s take our coffee to the library,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘Will you be all right here?’ I asked.
    ‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Zach who was already eyeing up the salvers for a return visit.
    ‘One does rather wonder if he will stop before he explodes,’ said Nightingale as we walked along the balcony.
    ‘It’s one of those paradox thingies,’ I said. ‘What happens when the unstoppable cook meets the unfillable stomach?’
    The General Library is where me and Lesley do most of our studying. It’s got a couple of ornate reading desks with angular brass reading lamps and an atmosphere of quiet contemplation that is totally spoiled by the fact that we both have our headphones on when we’re studying.
    Nightingale strode over to the shelves that I’d come to know as the eccentric naturalist section. He tapped his finger along a line of books before pulling one out and inspecting it. ‘Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly is probably the authority,’ he said. ‘How’s your French?’
    ‘Do me a favour,’ I said. ‘I’m barely keeping up with my Latin.’
    ‘Pity,’ said Nightingale and replaced the book. ‘We should get that translated one day.’ He pulled out a second, thinner, volume. ‘Charles Kingsley,’ he said and handed the book to me. It was titled On Fairies and Their Abodes .
    ‘Not as comprehensive as Barbey d’Aurevilly,’ said Nightingale. ‘But reasonably sound, or at least so my tutors assured me when I was at school.’ He sighed. ‘I did prefer things when we all knew what we were doing and why.’
    ‘Before I ran into Zach I ran into Fleet,’ I said. ‘And before I ran into Fleet I ran into a Chinese woman who I’m pretty sure was a practitioner.’
    ‘Did she introduce herself?’
    I told him all about the mysterious Madame Teng, although I left out the fact that I’d essentially been rescued by Fleet and her Captain of Dogs.
    ‘Good god, Peter,’ said Nightingale. ‘I can’t leave the city for five minutes.’
    ‘Do you know who she was?’ I asked.
    ‘A Daoist sorceress I would imagine,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘Is that good or bad?’
    ‘The Chinese have their own traditions, including the practice of magic,’ said Nightingale. ‘As I understand it, Daoist magic is based on writing characters on paper much in the same way that we speak formae aloud. Beyond that I don’t think we ever discovered how it works. Contact was limited, we didn’t want to tell them our secrets and unsurprisingly they didn’t want to share theirs with us.’
    He frowned at the bookcase and swapped two volumes around.
    ‘Do they operate out of Chinatown?’ I asked.
    ‘We have an arrangement with Chinatown,’ he said. ‘They don’t scare the horses and we don’t go in asking questions. Mao pretty much killed all the practitioners during the 1950s and any that survived on the mainland were finished off in the Cultural Revolution.’
    ‘She was from Taiwan,’ I said.
    ‘That would make sense,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’ll look into it.’
    Just to make Nightingale’s day I finished off with a description of Ryan Carroll’s – possibly – magical art installation.
    ‘And there I was hoping that we could leave that case to the Murder Squad and concentrate on the Little Crocodiles,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘Anything useful in Henley?’ I asked.
    ‘Apart from the snow?’ said Nightingale. ‘Rather pleasant couple in a converted stable. They were very proud of it and insisted on showing me around the whole thing.’
    ‘A little too helpful?’ I asked.
    ‘I didn’t take their word for it,’ said Nightingale. ‘I donned the old balaclava and had a scout round their grounds after dark.’ He hadn’t found anything, but sneaking stealthily through the snow had reminded him of an operation in Tibet in 1938. ‘Chasing German