Rivers of London

Chapter 8 The Jackanory Version

Toby the dog bites Punch, who beats Mr Scaramouch, Toby’s owner, to death. He then goes home and throws his baby out of the window and beats his wife Judy to death. He falls off his horse and kicks the doctor in the eye. The doctor attacks him with a stick, but he grabs that and beats the doctor to death. He rings a sheep bell outside a rich man’s house, and when the rich man’s servant remonstrates with him Punch beats him to death. At that point, my ice cream melted and slopped all over my shoes.

The Tragical Comedy, or Comical Tragedy, of Punch and Judy as told to John Payne Collier by Giovanni Piccini in 1827. Not very hard to get hold of, once you know what you’re looking for. After the show, Lesley and I showed the Professor our warrant cards and he was happy to hand over the hard copy of the script. We took it over to the Roundhouse on the corner of New Row and Garrick Street, and settled in to read it with two double vodkas..

‘It can’t be a coincidence,’ I said.

‘You think?’ asked Lesley. ‘Something is using real people to act out this stupid puppet show.’

‘Your governor’s not going to like this,’ I said.

‘Well I’m not going to tell him,’ said Lesley. ‘Let your governor tell my governor that the fucking ghost of Mr Punch is knocking people off on his patch.’

‘You think it’s a ghost?’ I asked.

‘How should I know?’ she said. ‘That’s what you magic cops are for.’

The Folly has three libraries: one, I didn’t know about back then, number two was a magical library where the direct treatise on spells, forma and alchemy were kept, all of them written in Latin and so all Greek to me, and number three was the general library on the first floor next to the reading room. The division of labour was clear from the start: Nightingale checked the magic library, and I hit the books in the Queen’s English.

The general library was lined with enough mahogany to reforest the Amazon basin. On one wall the stacks went all the way to the ceiling, and you reached the top shelves by using a ladder that slid along on shining brass rails. A row of beautiful walnut cabinets held the index cards, which were the closest thing the library had to a search engine. I caught a whiff of old cardboard and mildew when I opened the drawers, and it comforted me to think that Molly didn’t go so far as to open them up regularly and clean inside. The cards were arranged by subject, with a master index arranged by title. I started by looking for references to Punch and Judy, but found none. Nightingale had given me another term to search for: revenant. A couple of false passes with the index cards led me to Dr John Polidari’s Meditations on the Matter of Life and Death which, according to the frontispiece, had been published in 1819. The same page had a notation in Latin written in an elegant looping hand: Vincit qui se vincit, August 1821. I wondered what it meant.

According to Polidari, a revenant is an unquiet spirit who returns from the dead to wreak havoc on the living, usually in reprisal for some slight or injustice, real or perceived, that the person suffered during their life.

‘It certainly fits our profile,’ I told Nightingale over lunch — Beef Wellington, boiled potatoes and sautéed parsnips. ‘These little grievances going all postal — it fits Lesley’s idea that the big events have little echoes. ’

‘You think it’s infecting them?’

‘I think it’s a field effect, like radiation or light from a bulb,’ I said. ‘I think the echoes are inside the field, their brains get charged up with negative emotions and off they go.’

‘Wouldn’t more people be affected, in that case?’ asked Nightingale. ‘There were at least ten other people in the cinema foyer, including you and Constable May, and yet only the mother was affected.’

‘Could be that it reinforces anger that’s already there?’ I asked. ‘Or acts as a catalyst? It wouldn’t be an easy thing to prove scientifically.’

Nightingale smiled.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘You remind me of a wizard I used to know called David Mellenby,’ said Nightingale. ‘He had the same obsession.’

‘What happened to him?’ I asked. ‘And did he leave any notes?’

‘I’m afraid he died in the war,’ said Nightingale. ‘He never did get a chance to do half the experiments he wanted to. He had this theory about how the genii locorum works that would have appealed to you.’

‘What was his theory?’ I asked.

‘I believe I will make telling you that contingent on you mastering your next forma,’ he said. ‘I did notice that there were discrepancies between the script and Mr Punch’s actions. I’m thinking of Pretty Polly.’

As laid down in the Tragical Comedy, after killing his wife and kid Mr Punch sings a happy little song about the benefits of wife-murdering and, that done, he presses his suit with Pretty Polly. She’s a character who says nothing but ‘seems nothing loath’ when our cheerful little serial killer starts kissing her.

‘We don’t know he’s following that particular script,’ I said.

‘True,’ said Nightingale. ‘Piccini was relating an oral tradition, and those are almost never reliable.’

According to the possibly unreliable Piccini, the next victim was due to be a blind beggar who coughs in Mr Punch’s face and is thrown off the stage for his presumption. The script didn’t specify if he survived the experience or not. ‘If our revenant Pulcinella is following form,’ I said, ‘then the most likely target is going to be a tinny for the RNIB.’

‘What’s a tinny?’

‘A person with a collecting tin,’ I said, miming a shake. ‘People put their spare change in it.’

‘A blind man begging for money,’ he said. ‘It would be more useful to know who the revenant was and where he’s buried.’

‘Presumably if we know who he is then we can deal with his issues and lay him to rest peacefully,’ I said.

‘Or,’ said Nightingale, ‘we dig up his bones and grind them into dust, mix them with rock salt and then scatter them out at sea.’

‘Would that work?’

‘Victor Bartholomew says that’s the way to do it,’ Nightingale shrugged. ‘He wrote the book on dealing with ghosts and revenants — literally.’

‘I think we may be overlooking a blindingly obvious source of information,’ I said.

‘Really?’

‘Nicholas Wallpenny,’ I said. ‘All the attacks have originated near the Actors’ Church, which I’m guessing means that our revenant is located nearby. Nicholas might know him — for all we know, they hang out.’

‘I’m not sure ghosts “hang” quite the way you imagine,’ said Nightingale, and with a quick glance to be sure that Molly wasn’t watching, he slipped his half-full plate under the table. Toby’s tail banged against my legs as he snaffled it down.

‘We need a bigger dog,’ I said. ‘Or smaller portions.’

‘See if he won’t talk to you tonight,’ said Nightingale. ‘But remember that our Nicholas wasn’t a reliable witness when he was alive — I doubt his veracity has improved since his demise.’

‘How did he die?’ I asked. ‘Do you know?’

‘Died of drink,’ Nightingale said. ‘Very enjoyable.’

Since Toby was our official ghost-hunting dog, and because he had begun to waddle alarmingly when he walked, I took him with me. It’s a half-hour stroll from Russell Square and the Folly to Covent Garden. Once you’re past Forbidden Planet and across Shaftesbury Avenue, the direct route takes you down Neal Street, where the cycle courier had died. But I figured if I started avoiding certain streets just because somebody’d died on them, I’d have to move to Aberystwyth.

It was late evening and not all that warm, but there was still a crowd of drinkers outside the gastropub. London had come late to the idea of outdoor café society, and it wasn’t going to allow a bit of a chill to get in the way now — especially since it had become illegal to smoke indoors.

Toby did pause close to the point where Dr Framline had attacked the courier, but only long enough to pee on a bollard.

Even at closing time Covent Garden was packed. The post-performance crowd were emerging from the Royal Opera House and looking for somewhere to have a bite to eat and a pose, while clusters of young people on school-sponsored holidays from all over Europe exercised their time-honoured right to block the pavement from one side to the other.

Once the cafés, restaurants and pubs in the covered market shut down, the piazza emptied quickly and soon there were few enough people about for me to risk a bit of ghost-chasing.

There was disagreement among the authorities as to what the true nature of a ghost was. Polidori insisted that ghosts were the detached souls of the deceased who clung to a locality. He theorised that they fed off their own spirit and would, unless this spirit was replenished through magic, eventually fade away to nothing. Richard Spruce’s The Persistence of Phantasmagoria in Yorkshire, published in 1860, broadly agreed with Polidori but added that ghosts might draw on the magic in their environment in a similar manner to a moss leaching sustenance from its rocky home. Peter Brock, writing in the 1930s, theorised that ghosts were nothing more than recordings etched into the magical fabric of their surroundings in much the same way music is recorded on a vinyl disk. Personally I figured that they were like crude copies of the dead person’s personality that were running in a degraded fashion in a kind of magical matrix where packets of ‘information’ were passed from one magic node to the next.

Since both my encounters with Nicholas had started in the portico of the Actors’ Church, that was where I began. Coppers don’t look at the world the same way other people do. You can tell a policeman by the way he looks around a room. It’s a chilly, suspicious gaze that makes him immediately recognisable to others who know what to look for. The strange thing is how fast you pick it up. I was a still a Police Community Support Officer, had only been doing it a month, when I visited my parents’ flat and realised that even if I didn’t know already that my father was an addict, I would have spotted the fact the moment I was in the door. You have to understand that my mum is a cleaning fanatic — you could eat dinner off her living-room carpet — but still all the signs were there if you knew what to look for.

It had become the same with vestigia. When I put my hand on the limestone blocks that made up the portico, the sensations, the cold, vague sense of presence, an odour in the nostrils that might be sandalwood, were the same — only now, like a copper reading a street, I had some inkling of what they meant. I also expected them to be much stronger. I tried to think back to the last time I’d touched the stones. Had the impressions been the same?

I checked to make sure nobody was watching. ‘Nicholas,’ I said to the wall. ‘Are you in there?’

I felt something through my palm, a vibration, I thought, like a distant tube train. Toby whined and scrambled backwards, claws skittering on the cobbles. Before I could take my own step backwards Nicholas’s face, white and transparent, appeared in front of me.

‘Help me,’ he said.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘He’s eating me,’ said Nicholas, and then his face was sucked backwards into the wall. For a moment I felt a strange tugging sensation on the back of my head and threw myself backwards. Toby barked once, and then turned and shot off in the direction of Russell Square. I landed heavily on my back, which hurt, so I lay there feeling stupid for a moment and then got back on my feet. Cautiously, I approached the church and gingerly laid my palm on the stone again.

It felt cold and rough, and there was nothing else. It was if the vestigia had been sucked out of the stones the same way it had been back at the vampire house. I snatched my hand away and backed off. The Piazza was dark and quiet. I turned and strode into the night, looking out for Toby as I went.

He’d run all the way back to the Folly. I found him in the kitchen curled up in Molly’s lap. She comforted the dog and gave me a stern look.

‘He’s supposed to face danger,’ I said. ‘If he stays, he works.’

Just because I had an active case didn’t mean I was excused practice. I’d persuaded Nightingale to show me the fireball spell, which was, not surprisingly, a variation on Lux, with Iactus to move it about. Once Nightingale was convinced I could do the first part without burning my hand off, we went down to the firing range in the basement to practise. Not that I had known we had a firing range until then. At the bottom of the back stairs you turned left instead of right, through a set of reinforced doors that I’d always assumed was a coal store, and into a room fifty metres long with a wall of sandbags at one end and a line of metal lockers at the other. A row of vintage Brodie helmets hung from pegs above a line of khaki gasmask cases. There was a poster, white lettering on a blood-red background, that said: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’, which I thought was good advice. There was a stack of cardboard silhouettes at the target end, brittle with age but still discernible as German soldiers with coal-scuttle helmets and fixed bayonets. Under Nightingale’s direction I set up a row of them against the sandbags and trotted back to the firing line. Before we started, I checked to make sure I wasn’t carrying my brand new mobile phone.

‘Watch carefully,’ said Nightingale. Then he flung out his hand, there was a flash, a sound like a sheet being ripped in half, and the target on the extreme left-hand side was blown into flaming fragments.

I turned at the sound of excited clapping, and found Molly hissing with delight and standing on tiptoe like a small child at the circus.

‘You didn’t say the Latin,’ I pointed out.

‘You practise this in silence,’ he said, ‘from the outset. This spell is a weapon. It has a single purpose and that is to kill. Once you’ve mastered it you are under the same obligations as any other armed constable, so I suggest you familiarise yourself with the current guidelines on firearms use.’

Molly yawned, covering her mouth to hide how wide it opened. Nightingale gave her a bland look. ‘He has to live in the world of men,’ he said.

Molly shrugged as if to say, Whatever.

Nightingale demonstrated again at a quarter of the speed, and I attempted to follow suit. The fireball I had already practised, but when it came to apply Iactus it felt slippery as if, unlike the apples, there was nothing to get a purchase on. When I flung out my arm in the approved dramatic fashion my fireball drifted gently down the length of the firing range, burned a small hole in the target and embedded itself in the sandbags behind.

‘You have to release it, Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘or it won’t go off.’

I released the fireball and there was a muffled thump from behind the target. A wisp of smoke curled up towards the ceiling. Behind me Molly sniggered.

We did an hour of practice, at the end of which I was capable of flinging a fireball down the range at the dizzying speed of a bumblebee who’d met his pollen quota and was taking a moment to enjoy the view.

We broke for morning tea, and I broached my idea for recovering Nicholas — assuming that enough of the ghost remained, after ‘something’ had ‘eaten’ him, to be recovered.

‘Polidori refers to a spell that can summon ghosts,’ I said. ‘Does it work?’

‘It’s more of a ritual than a spell,’ said Nightingale. In an attempt to stop Molly from overwhelming us with food we’d taken to having tea in the kitchen, the thinking being that if she didn’t have to lay six tables in the breakfast room we might only get two portions. It worked, but they were big portions.

‘What’s the difference?’

‘You keep asking the kind of questions,’ said Nightingale, ‘that really shouldn’t be coming up for another year or so.’

‘Just the basics — the Jackanory version.’

‘A spell is a series of forma strung together to achieve an effect, while a ritual is what it sounds like: a sequence of forma arranged as a ritual with certain paraphernalia to help move the process along,’ said Nightingale. ‘They tend to be older spells from the early part of the eighteenth century.’

‘Are the ritual bits important?’ I asked.

‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Nightingale. ‘These spells don’t get used very often, otherwise they’d have been updated in the 1900s.’

‘Can you show me how to do it?’ I asked. Toby spotted me buttering a teacake and sat up attentively. I broke off a bit and fed it to him.

‘There’s another problem,’ said Nightingale. ‘The ritual as it stands requires an animal sacrifice.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Toby’s looking good and fat.’

‘Modern society tends to frown on that sort of behaviour, especially the modern church on whose grounds, incidentally, we’d have to carry it out.’

‘What’s the sacrifice for?’

‘According to Bartholomew, at the point of death the animal’s intrinsic magic becomes available to “feed” the ghost and help bring it into the material plane,’ said Nightingale.

‘So it uses the animal’s life essence as magic fuel?’ I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you sacrifice people?’ I asked. ‘Take their magic that way?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But there’s a catch.’

‘What’s the catch?’

‘You get hunted down even unto the ends of the earth and summarily executed,’ said Nightingale.

I didn’t ask who would be called upon to do the hunting and the executing.

Toby barked, demanding sausages.

‘If all we need is a source of magic,’ I said, ‘I think I’ve got an acceptable substitute.

According to Bartholomew, the closer to the ghost’s grave site you were the better, so I spent a couple of hours going through the parish records while Nightingale persuaded the Rector that we were interested in catching some church vandals. It’s a very strange church, a great big rectangular stone barn designed by Inigo Jones. The east portico, where I’d first met Nicholas Wallpenny, was fake — the actual entrance being at the western end of the church and giving out onto the churchyard, which had been made over into gardens. Access was via a pair of high wrought-iron gates on Bedford Street. Nightingale managed to talk the rector into lending him the keys.

‘If you’re planning a stake-out,’ said the Rector. ‘Shouldn’t I stay behind, just in case?’

‘We’re worried that they might be following you,’ said Nightingale. ‘We want them to think the coast is clear so we can catch them in the act.’

‘Am I in danger?’ asked the Rector.

Nightingale looked him in the eye. ‘Only if you stay in the church tonight,’ he said.

The gardens were enclosed on three sides by the brick backs and shuttered windows of the terraced houses built at the same time as the rest of the Piazza. Cut off from the traffic noise, they formed a calm green space watched over by the true portico of the church. Cherry trees, pink with flowers in the May sunlight, were planted along the path. It was, as Nightingale said, quite the loveliest spot in London. It was just too bad that I was going to be coming back at midnight to perform a necromantic ritual.

The Parish burial records were sketchy, and the best approximate position I could get for Wallpenny’s grave was over on the north side of the gardens, somewhere near the middle. Since Nicholas had been loath to show himself with Nightingale around, he was going to be stationed by the gate on Bedford Street, safely within screaming-for-help range. There was still the occasional trill of birdsong as I entered just after midnight. The night was clear, but you couldn’t see any stars through the haze. The iron of the gate was cold under my hand as I swung it closed and headed for the grave. I had a Canadian survival torch which came with a headband; I used it to read the crib notes in my standard-issue police notebook.

You cannot scratch a pentagram into soft, springy turf with anything less than a back hoe, and in any case I wasn’t about to vandalise such a lovely lawn. Instead I drew the star and circle with charcoal dust using a burlap sack with a hole cut in one corner like an icing bag. I laid it on nice and thick. Polidori had quite a lot to say about the dangers of breaking the pentagram when summoning a spirit. Having your soul dragged out and sent screaming down to hell was only the start of it.

At each cardinal point of the pentagram I put one of my calculators. I’d suggested that I bring Toby along just in case the substitution didn’t work, but when it was time to leave the Folly the dog was nowhere to be found. I’d picked up a packet of chemical glow sticks from a local camping shop, and these I cracked and placed where the crib sheet called for candles. The conjurer — in this case, me — was supposed to impart some of his essence, which was late eighteenth-century magic speak for ‘put some magic into’ the circle around the pentagram. There’s a particular forma created for just that purpose but I hadn’t had time to learn it — instead, Nightingale suggested that I just create a were-light in the centre.

I took a deep breath, created the werelight and floated it into the centre of the pentagram. I adjusted my light and started to read the conjuration from my notebook. The original had gone on for four manuscript pages, but with Nightingale’s help I’d managed to shave it down some.

‘Nicholas Wallpenny,’ I said. ‘Hear my voice, accept my gifts, rise and converse.’

And suddenly he was there, as shifty-looking as ever.

‘I knew you was special as soon as I laid eyes on you,’ he said. ‘Your governor not around, is he?’

‘Over there,’ I said, ‘beyond the gate.’

‘Mind you keep him there,’ said Nicholas. ‘I was right about the murdering gent, weren’t I?’

‘We think it’s the spirit of Pulcinella,’ I said.

‘You what?’ said Nicholas. ‘Mr Punch? I think you must have had one too many. Get thee to a lushery. ’

‘You wanted my help last night,’ I said.

‘Did I?’ asked Nicholas. ‘But that would make me a blower and a slag, and ain’t nobody ever said that Nicholas Wallpenny ever put the jack on a cove, lest he get a visit from the punishers.’ He gave me a significant look. A ‘blower’ was old London slang for an informer, and ‘punishers’ were likewise slang for men hired to beat people up — presumably for ‘blowing’.

‘That’s a relief,’ I said. ‘How’s … death treating you?’

‘Fair enough,’ said Nicholas. ‘Can’t complain. Certainly a lot less crowded than it once was. This being the Actor’s Church and all, we’re never short of an evening’s entertainment. We’ve even had the occasional guest artiste for our further edification. We had that famous Henry Pyke — that’s Pyke with a Y — mind you, he’s very particular. He’s popular with the ladies on account of his long nose.’

I didn’t like the way Nicholas looked; tense, nervous and as if he would be sweating if he could still sweat. I considered backing off, but the cruel fact is that informants, dead or alive, are there to be used if necessary.

‘This … Henry Pyke, is he planning a long run?’ I asked.

‘Best to say that he’s bought the theatre,’ said Nicholas.

‘Sounds good,’ I said. ‘Any chance of me catching a show?’

‘Well, Constable, I wouldn’t be so damned keen to get on the bill if I was you,’ said Nicholas. ‘Mr Pyke can be strangely hard on his co-stars, and I daresay he’s got a role in mind for you.’

‘Still, I wouldn’t mind getting to meet …’ I said, but suddenly Nicholas was gone.

The pentagram was empty, with just my werelight burning at its centre. Before I could snuff it out I felt something grab me by the head and try to drag me bodily into the pentagram. I panicked, pulling and twisting frantically to try and escape. Nightingale had been emphatic about not stepping into the pentagram, and I had no intention of finding out why. I yanked my head back, but I felt my heels scrape in the turf as I was dragged forward — towards the pentagram. Then I saw it. Below my own werelight, in the centre of the pentagram, was a dark shadow like the mouth of a pit dug into the earth. I could see the roots of the grass and the worms frantically trying to burrow back into the sides, the layers of topsoil and London clay fading into the darkness.

I was almost on the brink when I realised that whatever was dragging me was working through my own spell. I tried to shut down the werelight but it stayed lit, glowing now with a sullen yellow colour. I’d pushed my shoulders so far back that I was practically lying vertical, and still my heels ploughed forward.

I heard Nightingale yelling and looked over to see him running flat out towards me. I had a horrible feeling that he wasn’t going to make it in time. In my desperation I had one more thing to try. It’s not easy to concentrate when you’re being dragged into oblivion, but I forced myself to take a deep breath and make the correct forma. Suddenly the werelight burned a fiery red. I made the shape with my mind that I hoped would pour in the magic, but I couldn’t tell whether it was working. My heels ploughed through the edges of the pentagram and I felt a rush of excitement, a hunger for violence and a whole ocean of shame and humiliation and lust for revenge.

I dropped the fireball half a metre and let go.

There was a disappointingly quiet thump, like the sound a heavy dictionary would make if you dropped it. Then the ground lifted up underneath my legs and knocked me tumbling backwards. I hit the branches of the cherry tree behind me and caught a glimpse of a column of earth shooting upwards like a freight train leaving a tunnel, before I fell out of the tree and the ground got its licks in.

Nightingale grabbed my collar and pulled me away as cherry blossom and clods of earth rained down around us. A big chunk landed on my head and shattered, sending dirt trickling down the back of my neck.

Then there was silence; nothing but the sound of distant traffic and a nearby car alarm going off. We waited half a minute to catch our breath, just in case something else was going to happen.

‘Guess what,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a name.’

‘You’re damned lucky still to have a head,’ said Nightingale. ‘What’s the name?’

‘Henry Pyke,’ I said. ‘Never heard of him,’ said Nightingale.

Predictably my headband torch had died, so Nightingale risked a werelight. Where the hole had been was now a shallow dish-shaped depression three metres across. The turf was completely destroyed, ground into a mix of dead grass and pulverised soil. Something round and dirty and white was resting near my foot. It was a skull. I picked it up.

‘Is that you, Nicholas?’ I asked.

‘Put that down, Peter,’ said Nightingale. ‘You don’t know where it’s been.’ He surveyed the mess we’d made of the garden. ‘The rector’s not going to be happy about this,’ he said.

I put the skull down, and as I did, I noticed something else embedded into the ground. It was a pewter badge depicting a dancing skeleton. I recognised it as the one Nicholas Wallpenny had ‘worn’. He must have been buried in it.

‘We did say we were hunting vandals,’ I said.

I picked up the badge and felt just the tiniest flash of tobacco smoke, beer and horses.

‘Perhaps,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I doubt he’s going to accept that as an explanation.’

‘A gas leak, maybe?’ I said.

‘There’s no gas main running under the church,’ said Nightingale. ‘He may become suspicious.’

‘Not if we tell him the gas leak story is a cover for digging up an unexploded bomb,’ I said.

‘A UXB?’ asked Nightingale. ‘Why make it that complicated?’

‘’Cause then we can bring in a digger and have a good rummage around,’ I said. ‘See if we can’t disinter this Henry Pyke and grind him up into grave dust.’

‘You’ve got a devious mind, Peter,’ said Nightingale.

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said. ‘I do my best.’

Besides a devious mind, I also had a bruise the size of a dinner plate on my back and a couple more beauties on my chest and legs. I told the doctor I saw in A&E that I’d had an argument with a tree. He gave me a funny look and refused to prescribe any painkillers stronger than Nurofen.

So we had a name — Henry Pyke. Nicholas had hinted that Pyke wasn’t buried at the Actors’ Church but we checked the records, just in case. Nightingale called the General Registry Office at Southport while I scoured for Pykes on Genepool, Familytrace and other online genealogy sites. Neither of us got very far except to establish that it was a common name and strangely popular in California, Michigan and New York State. We convened in the coach house so that I could continue to use the internet and Nightingale could watch the rugby.

‘Nicholas said he was an entertainer,’ I said. ‘He might even have been a Punch and Judy man, a “professor”. The Piccini script was published in 1827, but Nicholas said that Pyke was an older spirit so I’d guess late eighteenth, early nineteenth century. But records from that period are useless.’

Nightingale watched the All Blacks roll right over the Lions’ fullback to score, and judging by his long face the margin of victory was suitably dire. ‘If only you could speak to some keen theatregoers from that period,’ he said.

‘You want to summon more ghosts?’ I asked.

‘I was thinking of someone who was still alive,’ he said. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

‘Are you talking about Oxley?’ I asked.

‘And his darling common-law wife, Isis, also known as Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger, Mistress of John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich and live-in lover of the famous Shakespearean scholar Henry Ireland. Departed this veil of tears 1802, presumably for the greener pastures of Chertsey.’

‘Chertsey?’

‘That’s where the Oxley river is,’ he said.

If I was going to see Oxley again then I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone. I called Beverley on her waterproof mobile and asked her if she was up for a field trip. Just in case her mum’s prohibition was still in force, I was going to tell her that it was in aid of ‘dealing’ with Father Thames, but I never got the chance to say it.

‘Are we taking the Jag?’ she asked. ‘No offence, but your other car stinks.’

I told her yes, and she was buzzing on the entryphone fifteen minutes later. Obviously she’d been lurking about the West End already.

‘Mum’s got me sniffing around,’ she said as she climbed into the Jag. ‘Looking for your revenant.’ She was wearing a black embroidered bolero over a red roll-neck jumper and black leggings.

‘Would you know a revenant if you saw one?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘There’s a first time for everything.’

I wanted to watch her tuck her long legs under the dash, but I figured the temperature was high enough already. My dad once told me that the secret to a happy life was never to start something with a girl unless you were willing to follow wherever it led. It’s the best piece of advice he’s ever given me, and probably the reason I was born. I concentrated on getting the Jag out of the garage and setting a course for the South-West and the wrong side of the river again.

In AD 671, an abbey was founded on the high ground south of the River Thames in what is now Chertsey. It was your classic Anglo-Saxon establishment, half centre of learning, half economic power house and a refuge for those sons of the nobility who thought there was more to life than stabbing people with swords. Two hundred years later the Vikings, who never got tired of stabbing people with swords, sacked the abbey and burned it down. It was rebuilt, but the inhabitants must have done something to piss off King Edgar the Peaceable because in AD 964 he kicked them out and replaced them with some Benedictines. This order of monks believed in a life of contemplation, prayer and really big meals, and because they liked to eat this meant they never saw a stretch of arable land they didn’t want to improve. One of their improvements, sometime in the eleventh century, was to dig a separate channel for the Thames from the Penton Hook to the Chertsey Weir to provide water power for their grinding mills. I say the monk’s ‘dug’, but of course they drafted in some peasants for the hard labour. This artificial tributary of the Thames is marked on the maps as the Abbey River, but was once known as the Oxley Mills Stream.

I hadn’t told Beverley where we were going, but she twigged what we were up to as soon as we swung off the Clockhouse Roundabout and headed down the London Road for glorious Staines.

‘I can’t be coming down here,’ she said. ‘This is off my patch.’

‘Relax,’ I said. ‘This is sanctioned.’

It’s a weird thing that, despite being born and raised in London, there are large stretches of the city that I’ve never seen. Staines was one of those, despite technically not being in London, and to me it looked low-rise and countrified. After we crossed Staines Bridge I found myself on an anonymous stretch of road with tall hedges and fences blinding me on both sides. I slowed down as we approached a roundabout and wished that I’d invested in a GPS system.

‘Go left,’ said Beverley.

‘Why?’

‘You’re looking for one of the Sons of the Old Man?’ she asked.

‘Oxley,’ I said.

‘Then go left,’ she said with absolute certainty.

I took the first exit off the roundabout with that weird sense of dislocation you get when driving under someone else’s direction. I saw a marina on my left — bobbing rows of white and blue cruisers with the occasional long boat to break up the monotony.

‘Is that it?’ I asked.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘That’s the Thames. Keep going straight.’ We crossed a short modern bridge over what Beverley assured me was Oxley’s river and reached a strange little roundabout. It was like driving into the land of the munchkins, an estate made of little streets lined with pink stucco bungalows. We turned right, parallel to the river. I drove slowly in case some little bugger jumped out into the middle of the road and started singing.

‘Here,’ said Beverley, and I parked the car. When I got out she stayed in her seat. ‘I think this is a bad idea.’

‘They’re really very nice people,’ I said.

‘I’m sure they’re very civilised and all that,’ she said. ‘But Ty is not going to like this.’

‘Beverley,’ I said. ‘Your mum told me to sort things out, and this is me sorting things out. This is you facilitating me sorting things out. Only that’s not going to happen unless you get out of the car.’

Beverley sighed, unbuckled and climbed out. She stretched and arched her back, making her breasts strain alarmingly against her jumper. She caught me staring and winked. ‘Just getting the kinks out,’ she said.

Nightingale had said that eating Isis’s Battenberg cake had been a bad idea, so I couldn’t see him approving of me fraternising with the local water nymphs. So I kept my eyes on Beverley’s round bum and tried to think professional thoughts. Besides, there was always Lesley or, more precisely, the remote hope of Lesley at some point in the future.

I rang the doorbell and stepped back politely.

I heard Isis call from inside. ‘Who is it?’

‘Peter Grant,’ I said.

Isis opened the door and beamed at me. ‘Peter,’ she said. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’ She spotted Beverley behind me, and although she didn’t lose her smile a wariness came into her eyes. ‘And who is this?’ she asked.

‘This is Beverley Brook,’ I said. ‘I thought it was about time proper introductions were made. Beverley, this is Isis.’

Beverley extended a cautious hand, which Isis shook. ‘Pleased to meet you, Beverley. We’re out back — you’d better come through.’ Although she didn’t do anything as undignified as break into a run, Isis did walk at the brisk pace of a wife determined to reach her husband with the shocking news ahead of the guests. I got a brief glimpse of tidy little rooms with floral wallpaper and chintz before we emerged through the kitchen door.

The bungalow backed straight onto the river, and Oxley had built himself a wooden wharf that projected over a wide spot in the water. A pair of magnificent weeping willows, one at each end, screened the pool from the outside. It felt as cool and timeless as the inside of a country church. Oxley was standing naked in the pool with the brown water lapping at his thighs. He was grinning up at Isis who was making frantic behave yourself gestures from the edge of the wharf. He looked past at Beverley and me as we walked out.

‘What’s this?’ he asked. I saw his shoulders tense, and I swear the sun went behind a cloud — although that could have been a coincidence.

‘This,’ I said, ‘is Beverley Brook. Say hello, Beverley.’

‘Hello,’ said Beverley.

‘I thought it was about time you met the other half,’ I said.

Oxley shifted his weight, behind me I felt Beverley take a step backwards.

‘Well, isn’t this nice,’ said Isis brightly. ‘Why don’t we all have a nice cup of tea.’

Oxley opened his mouth as if to speak, appeared to think better of it and, turning to his wife, said, ‘Tea would be nice.’

I breathed out, Beverley giggled nervously and the sun came out again. I took Beverley’s hand and led her forward. Oxley had a labourer’s physique, lean and covered in hard, ropy muscle — Isis obviously liked her bit of rough. Beverley, interestingly, seemed more interested in the water.

‘This is a nice place,’ she said.

‘Would you like to come in?’ asked Oxley.

‘Yes please,’ said Beverley, and to my utter amazement she whipped off her jumper and bolero in one sinuous movement, stepped out of her leggings, and with a memorable flash of naked brown limbs, threw herself into the water. Isis and I had to step back smartly to avoid being drenched.

Oxley winked at me and looked at his wife. ‘Are you coming in too, my love?’

‘We have another guest,’ said Isis primly. ‘Some of us still have manners.’

Beverley surfaced and stood in the river up to her waist with a cheeky grin and bare breasts. Her nipples, I couldn’t stop myself noticing, were large and stiff. She turned her gaze on me, heavy-lidded and suggestive. If her mother had been like the undertow of the sea, then Beverley was as irresistible as a swift clear river rushing through a hot summer’s afternoon.

I’d already started unbuttoning my shirt when I felt Isis’s hand on my arm.

‘You really are the most extraordinarily gullible young man,’ she said. ‘What on earth are we going to do with you?’

Oxley ducked under the surface. Beverley looked at me with her head cocked to one side, a sly smile on her lips, and then she slipped down into the water.

Isis offered me a seat at the plastic garden table and then, muttering under a breath, collected up Beverley’s discarded clothes, folded them neatly and draped them over a drying rail by the back door. Oxley and Beverley had been out of sight for more than a minute. I looked at Isis, who seemed unperturbed.

‘They’re going to be at least another half-hour,’ she said, and made us tea. I kept an eye on the water as she bustled but there weren’t even bubbles. I told myself they must have swum out of the pool and surfaced beyond the trees somewhere but I wasn’t very convincing, even to myself. She gave me the now standard assurances as she poured and offered me a slice of Madeira — I said no thank you. I asked her if she remembered a Henry Pyke. She thought the name was familiar.

‘I’m certain there was an actor of that name,’ she said. ‘But there were always so many actors, so many beautiful men. My good friend Anne Seymour had a mulatto footman who could have been your brother. He was a terror for the kitchen maids.’ She leaned forward and looked me in the eyes. ‘Are you a terror for the kitchen maids, Peter?’

I thought of Molly. ‘I’d have to say no,’ I said.

‘No, I can see that,’ she said, and sat back in her chair. ‘He was murdered,’ she said abruptly.

‘The footman?’ I asked.

‘Henry Pyke. Or that was the rumour. Another victim of the notorious Charles Macklin.’

‘Who was he?’

‘A most terrible Irishman,’ said Isis. ‘But a splendid actor. He’d killed a man once already at the Theatre Royal in a dispute about a wig, stabbed him in the eye with his cane.’

‘Lovely,’ I said.

‘Had that Irish temper, you see,’ said Isis. Macklin had been a successful actor in his youth who retired in his prime to run a gin house which promptly went out of business. Forced back on to the boards, he was an ever-popular fixture at the Theatre Royal. ‘They loved him there,’ said Isis. ‘You always saw him in his favourite seat in the pit just behind the orchestra. I remember Anne liked to point him out.’

‘And he killed Henry Pyke?’

‘According to the gossip he did, for all that there were half a dozen witness said he did not,’ she said.

‘Were these witnesses friends of Macklin?’

‘And admirers too,’ said Isis.

‘Do you know where Henry Pyke is buried?’ I asked.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It was just a bit of scandal at the time. Though I would have thought St Paul’s, since that would have been the proper parish.’

She meant St Paul’s Covent Garden, of course — the Actors’ Church. Things kept coming round to that one bloody spot.

There was a splash, and Beverley came running onto the wharf as if there was a set of stairs hidden under the water. She was as dark and sleekly naked as a seal, and you could have fired a shotgun past my ear and I still wouldn’t have looked away. She turned back to the river and jumped up and down like a kid.

‘I beat you,’ she said.

Oxley came out of the river with as much dignity as a naked, middle-aged white man could be expected to have. ‘Beginner’s luck,’ he said.

Beverley threw herself into the chair next to mine. Her eyes were bright and water was pearling on her arms and on the smooth skin of her shoulders and the slopes of her breasts. She smiled at me, and I tried to keep my eyes on her face. Oxley padded over and sat down opposite and, without preamble and ignoring a look from Isis, grabbed himself a piece of Madeira.

‘Did you enjoy your swim?’ I asked.

‘There are things down there you wouldn’t believe, Peter,’ she said.

‘Your hair’s wet,’ I said.

Beverley touched her straightened hair, which was beginning to frizz. I kept watching as she suddenly remembered she was stark naked. ‘Oh shit,’ she said, and gave Isis a panicked look. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘Towels are in the bathroom, dear,’ said Isis.

‘Laters,’ said Beverley, and ran for the back door.

Oxley laughed and reached for another slice of cake. Isis slapped his hand. ‘Go and put some clothes on,’ she said. ‘You appalling old man.’ Oxley sighed and went into the bungalow, Isis watching him fondly as he went.

‘They’re always like that after a swim,’ she said.

‘Do you go swimming too?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Isis, and blushed ever so slightly. ‘But I’m still a creature of the riverbank. There’s a balance in them between the water and the land; the more time they spend with us, the more like us they become.’

‘And the more time you spend with them?’

‘Don’t be in a hurry to go into the water,’ said Isis. ‘It’s not a decision you want to rush into.’

Beverley was quiet all the way back up West. I asked her whether she wanted to be dropped off somewhere.

‘Can you take me home?’ she asked. ‘I think I need to talk to my mum.’

So I had to drive all the way across town to wonderful Wapping with Beverley too subdued to talk, which was unsettling in its own right. When I dropped her off outside the flats she paused before she got all the way out, and told me to be careful. When I asked her what I should be careful of she shrugged, and before I could stop her she kissed me on the cheek. I watched her walk away from the car, the hem of jumper clinging to her backside and thought — what the fuck was that about?

Don’t get me wrong, I fancied Beverley Brook but I was little suspicious, not least because both her and her mother seemed capable of getting an erection out of moss if the mood took them. Isis’s caution about getting into the water with somebody who wasn’t a hundred per cent human was just the icing on the cake.

Rush hour was starting to build as I drove back to the Folly. The day had clouded over and rain began to spatter the windscreen. I was fairly certain that Oxley and Beverley had made a connection. When I’d seen them standing side by side in the river, they’d looked … comfortable was the best word, or maybe familiar in the sense of cousins. Bartholomew, who could bore for England on the subject of genii locorum, was adamant that the ‘nature spirits’, as he called them, would always take some of the characteristics of the locus they represented. Father and Mama Thames were spirits of the same river — if I could edge them closer together, then their true nature should take its course.

And if that meant spending a few days watching Beverley in the river, then that was a price I was willing to pay.

I considered checking in with Lesley, but instead I locked up the garage and walked across the park to Russell Square tube station. I bought some flowers from a stall by the station and, for no apparent reason, headed in to catch a train somewhere else.