‘I assure you, my intentions are honourable,’ I said, but part of me was thinking about how close I came to eating that custard cream back at Mama Thames’s flat.
‘Swear it on your power,’ said Beverley.
‘I don’t have any power,’ I said.
‘Good point,’ said Beverley. ‘Swear it on your mum’s life.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘This is childish.’
‘Fine,’ said Beverley. ‘I’ll get my own food.’ She got out of the car and stomped away, leaving the door open. I noticed that she’d waited for the rain to ease up before throwing a fit.
‘Is that true?’ asked Lesley.
‘Which bit?’ I asked.
‘Spells, food, obligations, wizards – the bailiff,’ said Lesley. ‘For God’s sake, Peter, that’s false imprisonment at the very least.’
‘Some of it’s true,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how much. I think becoming a wizard is about discovering what’s real and what isn’t.’
‘Is her mum really the goddess of the Thames?’
‘She thinks she is, and I’ve met her and I’m beginning to think she might be,’ I said. ‘She’s got real power, so I’m going to treat her daughter as the real thing until I find out different.’
Lesley leaned over the seat back and looked me in the eyes.
‘Can you do magic?’ she asked softly.
‘I can do one spell,’ I said.
‘Show me.’
‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘If I do it now I’ll blow the Airwave sets, the stereo and possibly the ignition system. That’s how I busted my phone – I had it in my pocket when I was doing my practice.’
Lesley tilted her head to the side and gave me a cool look.
I was about to protest when Beverley banged on my window – I rolled it down.
‘I just thought you ought to know that it’s stopped raining,’ she said. ‘And there’s a cycle courier walking down the street.’
Me and Lesley piled out of the car, which shows how inexperienced we really were at basic surveillance, remembered that we were trying to be unobtrusive and pretended to be having a casual chat with each other. In our defence we’d just spent two years in uniform, and being obtrusive is what a uniformed constable is all about.
Beverley must have had good eyes because the courier was at the Shaftesbury Avenue end of Neal Street and was approaching at a slow, deliberate pace. He was pushing his bike, which was suspicious, and I saw that the back wheel was bent out of shape. I felt a deep sense of unease, but I couldn’t tell if that was me or something external.
In the near distance a dog started barking. Behind us, a mother told off a child who wanted to be carried. I could hear rain draining into a gutter somewhere and I found myself straining to hear – I’m not sure what. Then I heard it: a thin, strangled, high-pitched giggle that seemed to float in from far away.
The cycle courier looked normal enough, dressed in painfully tight yellow and black Lycra, a messenger bag with a radio attached to its shoulder strap and a street helmet in blue and white. He had a narrow face and a mouth that was a thin line under a sharp nose, but his eyes were worryingly blank. I didn’t like the way he was walking. The twisted back wheel was scraping the forks and the man’s head seemed to bob unnaturally on his neck in time with every revolution. I decided it would be a bad idea to let him get any closer.
‘Bastard!’ There was a shout behind me and a rattling crash.
I turned and saw nothing until Lesley pointed to the glass double doors of Urban Outfitters. A man was being slammed violently against the inside of the doors. He was jerked out of sight and then smashed against the doors again – hard enough to pop one of the hinges and make a gap large enough for the man to escape. He looked like a tourist or foreign student, well dressed in the European style – dirty blond hair cut the respectable side of too long, a blue Swissair complimentary knapsack still hooked over one shoulder. He shook his head as if bewildered, and flinched back as his attacker smacked open the doors and strode towards him.
This was a short, plump man with thinning brown hair and round, wire-framed glasses. He was wearing a white shirt with a manager’s tag clipped to the pocket. He was sweating and his shining face was red with rage.
‘I’ve fucking had it,’ he screamed. ‘I try to be polite, but no, you’ve got to fucking treat me like I’m some fucking slave.’
‘Oi,’ shouted Lesley, ‘police.’ She advanced on them, warrant card in her left hand, her right hand resting on the handle of her extendable baton. ‘What seems to be the problem?’