Moon Over Soho rol-2 Page 9

  Why not, I thought. I’ve been getting them in all week, why stop now?

  Ms. Ghosh was a slender light-skinned woman with a sharp nose who favored long dangly earrings and kept her long black hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore white slacks and a purple blouse and over that a gentrified biker’s leather jacket that was at least five sizes too big for her. Perhaps she’d borrowed it against the chill.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “What’s a nice desi girl like me doing in the jazz scene?” Actually I was thinking where the hell she’d got that leather jacket and should she, for religious reasons, be wearing a leather jacket in the first place.

  “My parents were deeply into jazz,” she said. “They were from Calcutta and there was this famous club called Trinca’s on Park Street. You know I visited there last September — there was a wedding. It’s all changed now but there used to be this great jazz scene, that’s where they met. My parents, not the relatives who were getting married.”

  The jacket had a line of crudely made badges down the left-hand lapel, the type you could stamp out with a hand press. I surreptitiously read them while Ms. Ghosh expounded upon the innovative jazz scene that flourished in India after the war. ROCK AGAINST RACISM, ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE, DON’T BLAME ME I DIDN’T VOTE TORY — slogans from the 1980s, most from before I was born.

  Ms. Ghosh was just telling me about the time Duke Ellington played at the Winter Palace — the hotel in Calcutta, not the birthplace of the Russian revolution — when I decided that it was time to put the conversation back on track. I asked whether she was aware of any sudden deaths among her members, particularly during or just after a gig.

  Ms. Ghosh gave me a long skeptical look.

  “Are you having me on?” she asked.

  “We’re looking into suspicious deaths among musicians,” I said. “This is just a preliminary inquiry. The deaths might have looked like the result of exhaustion or drug or alcohol abuse. Have you seen anything like that?”

  “In jazz musicians,” she said. “Are you kidding? If they haven’t got at least one bad habit we don’t let them in the union.” She laughed, I didn’t, she noticed and stopped. “Are we talking murders here?”

  “We don’t know at this stage,” I said. “We’re just acting on information received.”

  “I can’t think of anyone off the top of my head,” she said. “I can look up my records tomorrow if you like.”

  “That would be really helpful.” I gave her my card. “Could you do it first thing?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Do you know those guys are staring at you?”

  I turned to find the irregulars watching me from the eaves of the beer tent. Max gave me a wave.

  “You don’t want to be talking to him, miss,” called James. “He’s the jazz police.”

  I said good-bye to Ms. Ghosh and hoped that she still took me seriously enough to look up the information I wanted. To make it up to me the irregulars agreed to buy me a drink.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Where the jazzman sups there sup I,” said James.

  “We were supposed to be playing the festival,” said Daniel. “But without Cyrus …” He shrugged.

  “You couldn’t get anyone else?” I asked.

  “Not without lowering our standards,” said James.

  “Which admittedly were already pretty low,” said Max. “I don’t suppose you play.”

  I shook my head.

  “Pity,” he said. “We were going to play the Arches next week.”

  “We were actually second from the bottom of the bill,” said Daniel.

  I asked Daniel whether he played anything other than the piano.

  “I do a mean Gibson electric,” he said.

  “How would you like to play with a man who is almost a jazz legend?” I asked.

  “How can you ‘almost’ be a jazz legend?” asked Max.

  “Shut up, Max,” said James. “The man’s talking about his father. You are talking about your father?”

  There was a pause — it was common knowledge that my dad had lost his lip. It was Daniel who put it together. “He’s switched instruments, hasn’t he?” he asked.

  “Fender Rhodes,” I said.

  “Is he any good?” asked Max.

  “He’s going to be better than me,” said Daniel.

  “Lord Grant,” said James. “How cool is that?”

  “That’s pretty cool,” said Max. “Do you think he’ll agree?”

  “I’ll find out,” I said. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Thank you,” said Daniel.

  “Don’t thank me, man,” I said. “Just doing my job.”

  So, the jazz police to the rescue. If my dad said yes — which I thought he probably would. The Arches Club was in Camden Lock, just down the road from my flat, so logistics would be easy. I decided to let Mum organize the rehearsals — she might enjoy that.

  It was only after I’d agreed to see what I could sort out that I realized I’d never heard my father play before an audience. The irregulars were so pleased that James was moved to offer to buy me a pint, several pints in fact, but I was driving so I stuck to just the one. It was just as well because ten minutes later Stephanopoulis called me.

  “We’re turning over Jason Dunlop’s flat,” she said. “We’ve found some things I’d like you to take a look at.” She gave me an address in Islington.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” I said.

  JASON DUNLOP lived in the half-basement flat of a converted early-Victorian terrace on Barnsbury Road. In previous eras the servants’ quarters would be fully underground, but the Victorians, being the great social improvers they were, had decided that even the lowly should be able to see the feet of the people walking past the grand houses of their masters — hence the half basement. That and the increased daylight saved on candles, a penny saved is a penny earned and all that. The interior walls had been painted estate-agent white and were devoid of decoration, no framed photographs, no reproduction Manets, Klimts, or poker-playing dogs. The kitchen units were low-end and brand-new. I smelled buy-for-lease and recently too. Judging by the half-emptied packing cases in the living room, I didn’t think Jason had lived there long.

  “A messy divorce,” said Stephanopoulis as she showed me around.

  “Has she got an alibi?”

  “So far,” said Stephanopoulis. The joys of dealing with the bereaved when they’re both victim and suspect — I was glad I wasn’t doing that bit of the investigation. The flat had only one bedroom, a pair of masculine suitcases pushed into the corner, a line of packing cases with fingerprint dust smeared on the lids. Stephanopoulis showed me where a pile of books had been carefully arranged on a plastic sheet by the bed.

  “Have they been processed?” I asked.

  Stephanopoulis said yes, but I put on gloves anyway. It’s good practice when handling evidence and I got a grunt of approval from the sergeant. I picked up the first book; it was old, a prewar hardback that had been carefully wrapped in white tissue paper. I opened it and read the title: Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis by Isaac Newton. I had a copy of the same edition on my desk, with a much bigger Latin dictionary sitting next to it.

  “We saw this,” said Stephanopoulis. “And we thought of you.”

  “Are there any more?” I asked.

  “We left the box for you,” she said. “Just in case it was cursed or something.”

  I hoped she was being sarcastic.

  I inspected the book. Its cover was worn at the edges and warped with age. The edges of the pages had dents and smears from being handled. Whoever had owned this book hadn’t left it on a shelf; this had been used. On a hunch I turned to page 27 and saw, just where I’d stuck in a Post-it note with a question mark on it, was the word, written in faded pencil, quis? Somebody else couldn’t work out what the hell Isaac was going on about in the middle part of the introduction.

  If someone was really
studying the craft then they’d need Cuthbertson’s A Modern Commentary on the Great Work. Written in 1897 in English, thank God, and no doubt welcomed with open arms by every frustrated student who’d ever tried to light his room with a werelight. I looked in the box and found a copy of Cuthbertson right under a huge modern desktop Latin dictionary and grammar — it was nice to know I wasn’t the only one who needed help. The Modern Commentary was, like the Principia, old and well used. I flicked through its pages and came across a faded stamp thirty pages in — an open book surrounded by three crowns and encircled by the words BIBLIOTHECA BODLEIANA. I checked the Principia and found a different stamp, an old-fashioned drawing compass surrounded by the words SCIENTIA POTESTAS EST QMS. I turned to the frontispiece and found a faint rectangular discoloration. My dad had books with that same pattern, ones that he’d jacked from his school library when he was young. The mark was from the glue that once held a folder into which a library card would have fit back in the day when dinosaurs roamed the earth and computers were the size of washing machines.

  I carefully emptied the packing case. There were six more books that I recognized as being authentically related to magic, all of them with the BIBLIOTHECA BODLEIANA library stamp.

  I assumed that stamp referred to the Bodleian Library, which I vaguely remembered was in Oxford, but while I didn’t recognize the second stamp I did recognize the motto. I dialed the Folly. The phone rang several times before being picked up. “It’s Peter,” I said. There was silence at the other end. “I need to speak to him right away.” I heard a clunk as the receiver was put down by the phone. As I waited I thought it was about time that I bought Nightingale a proper phone.

  When Nightingale picked up I explained about the books. He made me list the titles and describe the stamps. Then he asked if Stephanopoulis was available.

  I called her and offered her the phone. “My governor wants a word,” I said.

  While they talked I started bagging the books and filling out the evidence tags.

  “And you think this makes it more likely?” she asked. “Fair enough. I’ll send the boy over with the books. I expect you to maintain chain of custody.” Nightingale must have assured her that we would be as scrupulous as any Home Office lab because she nodded and handed the phone back to me.

  “I think,” said Nightingale, “that we may be dealing with a black magician here.”

  Chapter 5

  The Night Gate

  BLACK MAGIC, as defined by Nightingale, was the use of magic in such a way as to cause breach of the peace. I pointed out that a definition like that was so broad as to essentially include any use of magic outside of that authorized by the Folly. Nightingale indicated that he regarded that as a feature, not a bug.

  “Black magic is the use of the art to cause injury to another person,” he’d then said. “Do you like that definition better?”

  “We don’t have any evidence that Jason Dunlop ever did any injury to anyone through the use of black magic,” I said. We’d laid out the case files on a table in the breakfast room along with the books I’d brought back from Dunlop’s flat and the remains of Molly’s eccentric stab in the direction of eggs Benedict.

  “I’d say we have a fairly clear indication that somebody did him injury,” said Nightingale. “And strong evidence that he was a practitioner. Given the unusual nature of his assailant I think it’s a safe bet that magic was involved — don’t you?”

  “In that case isn’t it possible that the Jason Dunlop murder is related to my dead jazz musicians?”

  “It’s possible,” said Nightingale. “But the MOs are very different. I think it’s better to keep the two investigations distinct for the moment.” He reached out to where one of the Folly’s monogrammed Sheffield steel forks was jammed upright into a poached egg and flicked it with his finger — it barely moved. “Are you sure it’s not stuck in the muffin?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s being held in place by the egg alone.”

  “Is that even possible?” asked Nightingale.

  “With Molly’s cooking,” I said, “who knows.”

  We both looked around to make sure Molly wasn’t listening. Up until that morning Molly’s repertoire had been strictly British public school: lots of beef, potatoes, treacle, and industrial quantities of suet. Nightingale had explained once, when we were out having Chinese, that he thought Molly was drawing her inspiration from the Folly itself. “A sort of institutional memory,” he’d said. Either my arrival was beginning to change the “institutional memory” or more likely she’d noticed me and Nightingale sloping off for illicit meals with other restaurants.

  The eggs Benedict was her attempt to diversify the menu.

  I picked up the fork, and the egg, the muffin, and what I assumed was the hollandaise sauce lifted off the plate in one rubbery mass. I offered it to Toby who sniffed it once, whined, and then hid under the table.

  There was no kedgeree that morning, or sausages, or any poached eggs not smothered in vulcanized hollandaise sauce, not even toast and marmalade. Obviously the culinary experimentation had so exhausted Molly that the rest of breakfast was off the menu. The coffee was still good, though, and when you’re going over your case files that’s the important thing.

  Murder investigations start with the victim because usually in the first instance that’s all you’ve got. The study of the victim is called victimology because everything sounds better with an ology tacked on the end. To make sure that you make a proper fist of this, the police have developed the world’s most useless mnemonic: 5 x WH & H. Otherwise known as Who? What? Where? When? Why? & How? Next time you watch a real murder investigation on the TV and you see a group of serious-looking detectives standing around talking, remember that what they’re actually doing is trying to work out what sodding order the mnemonic is supposed to go in. Once they’ve sorted that out the exhausted officers will retire to the nearest watering hole for a drink and a bit of a breather.

  Fortunately for us on the first question — Who is the victim? — Stephanopoulis and the Murder Team had done most of the heavy lifting. Jason Dunlop had been a successful freelance journalist, hence his membership in the Groucho Club. His late father had been a senior civil servant and had sent the young Jason to a second-tier independent school in Harrogate. He’d read English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was an undistinguished student before graduating with a matching undistinguished second. Despite this poor academic performance he walked straight into a job at the BBC, where he was first a researcher and then a producer on Panorama. After a stint working for, of all things, Westminster Council in the 1980s, he moved back into journalism writing articles for the Times, the Mail, and the Independent. I leafed through some of the clippings; lots of articles of the you-send-me-on-holiday-I’ll-write-you-a-good-review variety. Family holidays with wife Mariana, a PR executive, and their two golden-haired kids. As Stephanopoulis had told me, the marriage had recently collapsed, lawyers had already been engaged, and custody of the children was an issue.

  “It would be nice to talk to the wife,” said Nightingale. “See if she knows anything about his hobbies.”

  I checked the transcripts of the interview with the wife but there was nothing about an unwholesome interest in the occult or supernatural. I made a note to add this to the wife’s nominal file on HOLMES and suggest she be reinterviewed on that subject. I flagged it for Stephanopoulis, but she wasn’t going to let us talk to the wife unless we came up with something serious.

  “Very well,” said Nightingale. “We’ll leave all the mundane connections in the capable hands of the detective sergeant. I think our first move should be to track down the source of the book.”

  “I figured Dunlop stole it from the Bodleian Library,” I said.

  “That’s why you shouldn’t make assumptions,” said Nightingale. “This is an old book. It could have been stolen prior to Dunlop arriving at Oxford and then come into his possession by some other route. Perhaps the person wh
o trained him.”

  “Assuming he was a practitioner,” I said.

  Nightingale tapped his butter knife on the plastic-wrapped copy of the Principia Artes Magicis. “Nobody carries this book by accident,” he said. “Besides, I recognize the other library mark. It’s from my old school.”

  “Hogwarts?” I asked.

  “I really wish you wouldn’t call it that,” he said. “We can drive up to Oxford this morning.”

  “You’re coming with me?” Dr. Walid had been very clear about the whole taking-it-easy thing.

  “You won’t get access to the library without me,” he said. “And it’s time that I started introducing you to people connected to the art.”

  “I thought you were the last?”

  “There’s more to life than just London,” said Nightingale.

  “People keep saying that,” I said. “But I’ve never actually seen any proof.”

  “We can take the dog,” he said. “He’ll enjoy the fresh air.”

  “We won’t,” I said. “Not if we take the dog.”

  FORTUNATELY, DESPITE the overcast, the day was warm, so we could head up the A40 with the windows down to let out the smell. Truth be told the Jag isn’t that comfortable as a motorway car, but there was no way I was heading into a rival jurisdiction in the Ford Asbo — standards have to be maintained, even with Toby in the backseat.

  “If Jason Dunlop was trained,” I said as we climbed on to the Great West Road, “then who was his teacher?”

  We’d discussed this before. Nightingale said it was impossible to pick up organized “Newtonian” magic on your own. Without someone to teach you the difference, vestigia are hard to distinguish from the random background noise of your own brain. The same was true of the forma; Nightingale always had to demonstrate the form to me before I could learn it. To teach them to yourself you’d have to be the kind of insane monomaniac who’d deform his own eyeball to test his theories on optics — in short, someone like Isaac Newton.