Lies Sleeping Page 33

  ‘So will mine.’

  ‘Tyburn’s going to be well pissed off, though.’

  ‘Bonus,’ said Beverley, and wriggled round to kiss me.

  HISTORICAL AND TECHNICAL NOTES

  The Whitechapel Bell Foundry was a real place up until April 2017, when it left London to be replaced, no doubt, by a boutique hotel, some luxury flats and a coffee shop. All the workers described in this book are 100% made up and any resemblance to any real person living or dead is completely coincidental.

  The London Mithraeum has been returned to its original location, thanks to Bloomberg, and is now open to the public. I’ve visited and it’s worth a look, although I prefer to think of it as the Temple of Bacchus – a deity who seems much more in keeping with the spirit of London than grumpy old Mithras. I also find it a comforting to think that somewhere in the City under all that money and modernist concrete is a Temple of Isis – unless it’s under St Paul’s, that is.

  The skulls in the Walbrook are now thought to have been washed there by occasional floods from graveyards outside the Roman city boundaries, rather than being the victims of Boudicca’s sack of Londinium. This probably won’t be the last time Peter jumps to a conclusion based on evidence that is later disproved.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’d like to thank my colleagues Andrew and James who have to listen to the plots of these books long before they make any kind of coherent sense. Also a thanks to John my agent and Jon, Gillian, Stevie, Jen, Paul S, Paul H and the rest of the gang at Orion. Steve for the meticulous copyedit. Anne and Liz who run my life and Joel who keeps the books. Last but not least all those professionals who patiently answered really obvious questions about policing – Bob Hunter; biology – Lucy Stewart; sewer maintenance – Vincent Minney; archaeology – Amy Reid and everyone else at MOLA: and not least lots of extra Latin from Penelope and Paul of the Classics Department of Leeds University.

  Also by Ben Aaronovitch from Gollancz:

  Rivers of London

  Moon Over Soho

  Whispers Under Ground

  Broken Homes

  Foxglove Summer

  The Hanging Tree

  Lies Sleeping

  The Furthest Station (novella)

  COPYRIGHT

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Gollancz

  an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment

  London ec4y 0dz

  An Hachette UK Company

  Copyright © Ben Aaronovitch 2018

  The moral right of Ben Aaronovitch to be identified as

  the author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

  reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

  in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,

  photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the

  prior permission of both the copyright owner and the

  above publisher of this book.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library.

  isbn 978 1 473 20784 4

  Typeset by Input Data Services Ltd, Somerset

  www.gollancz.co.uk