Chapter Text
Nightingale doesn't like museums.
I discovered this when the British Museum featured a special exhibit on medieval York that I thought looked interesting, and asked Nightingale if he wanted to come along. I had pegged him as the sort of person who would really enjoy looking at old relics and making intelligent comments about their history, and was therefore a little surprised when he turned me down point-blank.
When I asked why, he told me calmly that the competing vestigia from all of the artefacts gave him a headache.
I pointed out that it could serve as a good learning experience for me, what with having to sort through all that background noise to pick out which vestigium belonged to which artefact, but Nightingale refused to be moved on the subject and eventually I gave up and went by myself. It was quite an interesting exhibit.
I wish I’d remembered that conversation two months later, when Nightingale and I were called in to examine a body at the Imperial War Museum.
Architecturally, the museum looks much as its impressive name would leave you expecting: imposing and orderly with a facade of decaying institutional grandeur. Of course, the presence of two 15-inch BL Mk 1 naval guns jutting out the front lawn like tusks helps to increase the general threatening atmosphere. Walking past them and up to the doors might have been intimidating, had it not been for the fact that I was accompanied by my boss, a man who could pack more of a punch with his mind than the Mk 1 could with 900 kilograms of cold steel.
I’d done my research, thinking—not unreasonably, I’d say—that any sort of malevolent spirit at the Imperial War Museum was likely to be in some way related to, you know, war. As it would turn out, I was barking up completely the wrong tree with that one.
Elephant and Castle is a gloomy place under the best of circumstances, difficult to navigate and sadly lacking in both elephants and castles. Now, at least, it’s a mecca for aficionados of military history, but, as I learned later, its history is much darker than just the war. Up until 1930, the site was home to the Bethlem Royal Infirmary or, as suspense novels and B horror films know it, Bedlam—home to rank and file of the criminally insane and the insanely criminal. It was also the place where some of the psychiatrists who decided that it was actually all right for big boys to cry if they had been shot at and shelled for four years had worked before they went on to coin the term ‘shell shock,’ so I suppose things came full circle when it became a war museum. Or, at least, the link would jump out at me as being particularly prescient in the near future.
Back then, however, my thoughts centred on two things: the ugliness of the brutalist monstrosities flanking the museum, and getting our poor unfortunate corpse investigated in time for lunch, as my stomach was busy protesting against another missed breakfast. In retrospect, I might have noticed that Nightingale was looking particularly pale, but he was still recovering from having taken a bullet through the chest, so that was only to be expected. This was also DCI Seawoll’s first shout since I’d stuck him full of elephant tranquiliser, which couldn’t have helped Nightingale’s colour.
Seawoll had been exceptionally unpleasant when he’d radioed us in, and, if anything, his mood seemed to have worsened by the time we arrived some twenty minutes later in the Jag.
“It’s about fucking time you got here,” Seawoll greeted us at the door to the museum with his usual dulcet tones. He was already wearing a noddy suit, and I tried not to shrink back too visibly when he gave me an extra-long glare, presumably for the tranquiliser incident.
“Well, we’re here now,” Nightingale said in his calm, unruffled voice. “Where is the victim?”
Seawoll scowled again and said something under his breath about this being ‘a fucking great waste of time,’ but turned and led us into the museum all the same. We were only a few paces into the atrium when the vestigia hit me like a wall, and by the way Nightingale’s head snapped up, I could tell he’d sensed it too.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised; between the building’s own history of criminal insanity and all the vestigia still clinging to the hundreds of weapons and killing machines that called the museum home, it was like pouring a dozen household chemicals into a rubbish bin and then drinking the resultant cocktail.
The first and strongest impression I got was fear: clinging, choking fear that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up and my stomach churn. Next was sweat, thick and heavy, and then stale urine and a whiff of something sharp and acrid like gun smoke. There were subtler hints mixed in, and I got a different impression with every passing second: the pang of starvation, mud so thick it clung to the soles of boots, flashes of lightning through heavy rain, the screams of the dying, the stench of spilled blood, and a complete and utter desperation that chilled me to my bones. I wanted very badly to just turn around and walk straight out, but forced myself to hold steady.
I swallowed, blinked, and kept walking, and the vestigia faded slightly as we moved further into the open space of the museum.
“The victim is Andrew Jenkins, intern. The curator found him this morning and called us in,” Seawoll announced without bothering to look at us over his looming shoulder. “Seems to have just dropped dead, though of course the worthless CCTV broke right before it happened, so that's no fucking help. No signs of injury or a struggle.”
“So you’re, er, thinking natural causes?” I asked, a bit timidly, forcing my attention away from the vestigia and to Seawoll.
“I was thinking this was an open and shut case—and not really a case at all, in fact—until your lot barged in.”
I was tempted to point out that Seawoll had called us here, not the other way around, but I did place some value on my life. I glanced at Nightingale, but he was looking the other way, towards a row of display cases lined with artefacts.
“We’re still waiting on your quack,” Seawoll growled as he continued leading us through the atrium, “not that I think his particular services are required here, of course.”
I thought his tone would have been less deriding if Walid’s ‘services’ had involved wholescale debauchery, but given Seawoll’s historically low opinion of the Folly, perhaps he thought that they did.
Seawoll took a turn and led us along the perimeter of an open plan exhibition space. The area was huge, and I tried not to gape too openly at the spitfire hanging overhead or the twisted and unrecognisable shell of a bombed-out car sitting nearby. There was a large WWII-era Russian tank given a place of prominence and, next to me, Nightingale missed a step. We headed to the left, past an exhibition space dedicated to the First World War and a sign that said AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY, and through a builder’s sheet.
This area, Seawoll explained in words of as few syllables as possible, was on the tail end of a renovation. Our unfortunate intern, whose body was currently obscured from view by a knot of forensics experts in noddy suits, had arrived at work early to prepare the display space for the arrival of some new artefacts later this week. Now it was our forensic experts examining the carefully arranged plaques, stands, and temperature- and humidity-controlled cases.
The three of us stopped at the white forensics tent just outside the square of yellow police tape surrounding the body, and Seawoll waited impatiently while we pulled on our ever-fashionable noddy suits. I noticed Nightingale wince as he bent to step into his, and he had to put a hand on one of the collapsible tables for support.
Once we had donned plastic gloves and shoe coverings, we strode across the crime scene and towards where the unfortunate Andrew Jenkins lay sprawled on the hard concrete floor directly underneath a bright yellow RAF AS.10 Oxford. The room was largely empty apart from a cluster of half-installed cabinets and display cases, the plane, and an imposing-looking WWII-era camouflage tank sitting near the opposite wall. Those last two, it seemed, had been too large to be moved into place after the remodelling was complete, and I guessed the construction had gone on around them. Judging from the small mountain of polypropylene sheeting sprawled across the floor by the tank, they must have only recently been uncovered.
Next to me, I felt more than saw Nightingale stiffen suddenly. I glanced towards him, but before I could ask him what the matter was, my attention was arrested by a gaggle of forensics techs. Well, more specifically, it was arrested by the man standing next to them who, by all rights, ought not to have been there at all.
Most conspicuously, he wasn’t wearing a noddy suit, instead favouring a tweed jacket that appeared to be even more old-fashioned than most of Nightingale’s wardrobe. He looked slightly uneasy but not out of place, and I quickly identified him as the curator who had called Seawoll in.
He was standing to what I could only describe as attention, posture ramrod straight despite his advancing years. Judging by his grey hair, sunspots, and general air of having seen a lot of shit, he was pushing retirement, if not delaying it. Ex-military was my first thought, which, I supposed, explained his attachment to this place. I’d read up about him on the drive over, and the museum website had proudly boasted that he’d been the head curator for years. It didn’t specify how many, exactly, but the implication was that the period was numbered in decades.
I thought again that, as a civilian, he ought not be here at all, but I found my thoughts slipping away as quickly as I could form them.
Seawoll was ignoring the man completely, and my interest in him was waning as well, so when Nightingale fixated on him, I almost kept walking and left him behind. Nightingale frowned and seemed just on the verge of stepping over and confronting the man when a probationary constable, smothered into homogeneity by the white forensic suit, approached and informed the three of us that Mr Jenkins was ready for our tender ministrations. Nightingale blinked, shook his head, and said that we’d be right over, but his tone was unusually distracted. We started towards the body, and when I glanced over again to find that the curator had turned away, I was perfectly content not to give him another thought.
Andrew Jenkins’s eyes were open and glassy, lips slightly parted. I supposed he might have been called attractive if you happened to be into the slightly foppish, floppy haired ‘Hugh Grant, circa 1994 look.’ And corpses, of course.
Though still more graceful than most men I knew, when Nightingale lowered himself towards the floor, I could see that the movement was stiff. I guessed that his chest was bothering him, and from the sheen on his forehead he was probably running a slight fever, but I knew better than to express any concern, particularly in front of Seawoll.
I decided that Nightingale didn’t need my assistance in checking a body for vestigia and, having been up close and personal with far too many corpses since becoming Britain’s only (officially sanctioned) apprentice wizard, I was in no rush to volunteer my services unnecessarily. Instead, I found myself looking over at the group of forensics techs again. The tweed-jacketed curator was still standing near them, and when he caught my eye, he waved a little and motioned me to come over. I left Nightingale crouched in a position that Walid would certainly not have approved of, but I reassured myself with the thought that Nightingale was a big boy who presumably knew his limits, and what the good doctor didn’t know couldn’t raise his blood pressure.
As I neared the curator, he greeted me with the kind of nod that might have once been a bow. “Constable.”
He gave me an apologetic smile, and I found I liked him immediately. He introduced himself as William Briggs and confirmed his position at the museum. “Sorry for calling you out on a Saturday. It’s a horrible business, and for someone so young...”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I understand Mr Jenkins was an intern here?” I removed my notepad from my pocket, because I’d long since learned that pen and paper sometimes work the best, particularly when your jurisdiction is magic, the enemy of microprocessors everywhere. That, and the fact that it creates a certain image of old-school proficiency which members of the general public seem to find reassuring. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm him?”
The curator—Mr Briggs, I should say, him being a bloke doing a job and not a character in Doctor Who—blinked at me. “No, sir, not that I know of.”
“But you don’t think he died of natural causes?”
Briggs huffed a mildly incredulous laugh. “That wouldn’t account for the magic, now would it, dear boy?”
It was my turn to blink at him, and not just because he’d actually called me ‘dear boy.’ I opened my mouth to ask him about eight questions at once, but before I could get a word out, I heard Seawoll saying something loudly that I knew from many presentations at Hendon that police officers are absolutely not supposed to say in front of members of the general public.
I turned slowly to see that Seawoll had squared up to my boss, and looked like he meant business. Nightingale was standing now as well, but still at a height disadvantage despite being a very respectable six feet tall. What Nightingale had done to earn Seawoll’s giant-sized dose of vitriol, I had no idea, but it didn’t necessarily take much with him. For my governor, being present in the same room as him usually did it.
Whatever they’d been arguing about, Nightingale was looking genuinely frustrated, and it wasn’t an expression I could recall seeing on his face before—generally, he preferred maddeningly calm. He must have seen a number of the police, Briggs, and myself staring at them, though, because his face quickly went blank.
Seawoll also seemed to notice that he’d drawn unwanted attention, though he looked considerably less repentant about it, probably because he outranked everyone except Nightingale and thus had no one to please but himself. I took a moment to wonder how a man like Seawoll had ever managed to climb so far up the Met’s chain of command, and came up empty.
My attention was brought back to Briggs when he said, “You are with the Folly, yes?”
Startled once again—this was becoming a nasty habit—I pushed Nightingale and his apparent, and no doubt justified, irritation with Seawoll to the back of my mind, and concentrated fully on the curator. On my checklist of suspicious things, knowledge of what sort of crimes the Folly actually investigates ranks very highly, and knowing the Folly’s proper name—and not just the unplaceable, changeable acronym given to us by the Met—sent up a whole host of red flags. I gripped my notepad more tightly and carefully kept my voice level and not over-curious. “The Folly, you say? How did you come to hear that name?”
Briggs chuckled, but I kept my expression neutral in a way that I thought would have made Nightingale proud. “I’m older than I look, dear boy. And you could say I’ve had a rather... personal relationship with the uncanny.”
He didn’t elaborate, and despite my natural tendency towards intellectual curiosity—not, as Lesley puts it, because I’m nosy and have the attention span of a goldfish (though it’s actually been proven now that we’ve been giving goldfish bad press all along)—I managed to restrain myself and ask a question more pertinent to the case in hand.
I nodded towards where the hapless Mr Jenkins was still lying motionless on the museum floor. “You think magic was involved in this?” I asked, pen poised. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t interviewing him—Seawoll would want that honour all to himself, surely—but if Briggs was going to talk, then I might as well take notes.
“I don’t know how it couldn’t have been. The vestigia was...” Briggs stared into the middle distance, his expression creased by some remembered trauma. “It wasn’t pleasant, I can tell you.” Perhaps he had been too distracted by his memory to remember that vestigia was not a term bandied about often—not in circles that most people in the Met would refer to as ‘polite,’ in any case—or perhaps it was just so ingrained that he didn’t think twice.
“And the camera footage was no help at all,” Briggs continued, sounding a little worried. “Our security system is state-of-the-art, though only one camera was in operation this morning since, as you can see, we haven’t moved any artefacts in yet, aside from the AS.10 and our new tank, of course. In any case, it was working fine right up until Andrew entered the room, and then...nothing.” He swallowed, clearly knowing at least some of the implications of this, but his bearing remained military. I suddenly found myself wondering if he’d seen combat.
“What was it, precisely, that you felt?” That was Nightingale, having arrived at my elbow while I took notes. I glanced at him, and did a double-take when I saw how pale he was. It might have been the exertion, or the early-morning start, or the argument with Seawoll, but he looked considerably worse than he had the previous evening. If he was surprised by what he’d apparently read over my shoulder, he gave no sign of it.
“I didn’t touch him for long, you understand,” Briggs said in a hesitant voice. “I was just checking for a pulse, but the vestigia was strong...very strong. There was this great sense of fear. It was...suffocating. And there was something else, like leather rubbing together, and the smell of fresh mortar and brick dust.”
I glanced at Nightingale again, and, by his nod, I assumed he’d picked up the same traces from his own inspection of the body. Over his shoulder, I saw Seawoll speaking loudly to a member of the forensics team and jabbing his finger in a way that clearly indicated that the unfortunate man was getting a dressing down he wouldn’t soon forget.
“You say the CCTV footage cut out after Mr Jenkins entered the room?” Nightingale questioned. Briggs nodded and, by the way Nightingale turned his gaze on me, I knew what my next task would be. “Might we trouble you for a look?”
“Of course—I’ll show you myself,” Briggs offered, appearing happy to help.
Contrary to what logic might dictate, keenness to oblige the police often results in another tick in the suspicious behaviour checklist—playing a part in the investigation gives wannabe criminal masterminds a sense of control in the proceedings and the impression that they will be able to misdirect the enquiry.
Of course, contrary to the Daily Mail’s perception that degenerates lie in wait on every street corner, sometimes people are, you know, just decent human beings. Briggs did seem like one of those, but still there was a niggle, and I could interpret the implications of Nightingale’s slight frown well enough by now to know that he felt it, too.
All the same, there seemed no reason to refuse the curator’s offer of help, so I thanked Briggs and he began to turn away. I took a moment to speak to Nightingale.
“Is there anything else you want me to do, sir?” I spoke as quietly as I could, it not being the done thing for a policeman, and a chief inspector at that, to appear to need assistance from a lowly constable, particularly when members of the general public might be watching. As far as they’re concerned, Hendon hatches baby policemen and women out of little departmental eggs and constables are programmed from birth to know what to do when some poor sod’s had his skull caved in. Inspectors, by this logic, ought to be practically omnipotent.
Nightingale hesitated for a fraction of a second and then shook his head. “As you were, Constable.”
That was weirdly formal, even for him, and abnormally militaristic. I didn’t think I’d imagined his pause before replying, either—there was something he wanted me to do. I made no move to follow Briggs; not yet, at least.
“The surrounding vestigia should be charted,” Nightingale announced at last. My grasp of English grammar—or Latin grammar, come to that—is, as my governor keeps reminding me, not especially firm. That being said, there is one thing that stuck with me from GCSE: the use of the passive voice. My instructor Mr Parry had been Welsh and otherwise indistinct, but he’d given us a very memorable formula—if a sentence could be completed with ‘by zombies,’ it’s passive. And so it seemed Nightingale was banking on the armies of the undead arriving and doing his note-taking for him, or, more likely, me. But he hadn’t asked me directly, and that was odd.
“Would you like me to…” I began, intending on asking if I should start on charting the vestigia after I’d looked over the CCTV footage, but he cut me off sharply.
“No!” Nightingale took a breath, deep enough to be painful with his still-healing chest wound, and it unsettled me more than I liked to admit that he was having to steady himself. “No, I’ll handle that.”
I’d seen that expression on his face before, when we’d stood in the basement of a Soho nightclub and Nightingale had told me that he didn’t want to see what was lurking in the shadows. I wondered what it was he thought I’d been offering to do, since I doubted charting vestigia was anything I couldn’t handle.
I never got to find out, though, because Nightingale told me to follow Mr Briggs, and there’s only so long a constable can stand around gawking at his superior before someone assumes he’s in need of some traffic to direct.
I gratefully stripped off my noddy suit as I left the crime scene, leaving the outfit piled in the white tent, and followed Briggs through a door marked STAFF ONLY.
The CCTV footage was much as Briggs had described: Andrew Jenkins entered the room, looked around for a few seconds, and then the camera cut out. I slowed down the video and flipped through frame by frame. There wasn’t anything untoward as far as I could see, but sending the images off to be analysed with some fine-toothed magnifying software might uncover something. I copied the file onto a memory stick I’d taken to carrying with me, since it was useful for storing data close at hand that I didn’t want vaporised in the case of someone using magic, and stowed it away in my pocket. Once I got back to the Folly, I’d upload it to HOLMES, and we’d see what the murder team could do.
I asked which camera it was that the video was from, and he told me.
“You should have someone bring it down from the wall,” I suggested. Knowing what I did about magic and electronics, I was willing to bet good money that, once we’d opened it up, we’d find a good deal of sand.
I stood and made to leave with him, but he remained seated. “I should check to make sure that none of the other cameras in the room have been damaged. This one,” he motioned to the destroyed camera, “was the only camera in the new exhibition room that was powered up, so it’s possible the others are still functional. I ought to test them, though, for my own peace of mind and that of the donors who will be delivering their pieces when the museum reopens.”
He sounded so reasonable—and it was his office, after all—that I just left him to it. It wasn’t until I had returned to the floor of the museum that I thought to wonder why I hadn’t questioned him, just as I hadn’t really questioned his presence at the crime scene. He ought to have been escorted off to a cosy little room somewhere with a constable, a statement sheet, and a cup of tea hours ago.
I frowned and cast my eyes around the crime scene. I didn’t see Nightingale anywhere and, oddly enough, Seawoll wasn’t around either. The forensics team were still photographing the body and taking measurements, but there was no one else in sight; Dr Walid apparently hadn’t arrived yet. If I didn’t have to get back in a noddy suit, I wasn’t about to, so I skirted the edge of the yellow police tape, adopting a purposeful walk and trying not to look like I had lost my governor.
I walked around an informational board and was momentarily distracted by the description of the camouflage WWII-era tank printed on it. It turned out it was German, and had been deployed in the latter half of the war. I was halfway through the section about its impressive weapons armaments when my brain suddenly parsed through what I’d just read. My eyes jumped to the top of the informational board and scanned along the technical name of the tank: Panzerbefehlswagen Tiger Ausf. B Sd.Kfz. 268. Then I read the title of the board, which I had somehow missed when my attention had been arrested by a photograph of General Eisenhower walking next to one of the overturned tanks. And then I realised what I ought to have put together the moment Nightingale had stiffened next to me as we’d entered the room: it was a Tiger tank.
It was then that I heard a distinctly muffled thump.
My head snapped up and I went on high alert. The sound had come from around the corner of the tank, out of view of the crime scene, and I was fairly certain that none of the forensics team were supposed to be back there.
I strode forward quickly, and as I did so I heard Seawoll’s voice, harsh and low. “—don’t know what your fucking problem is, but I don’t fucking care.” I could imagine the spittle flying from his mouth.
A wave of vestigia hit me like a wall as I neared the tank, and I stumbled. Before I could remind myself it was just an aftertaste of events long past, I was choking on fear and it felt like a rag was being stuffed down my throat. I forced myself to breathe, but the vestigia was still lying heavy in the air. I felt the sticky texture of dried blood beneath my Doc Martens, heard the crunch of the tank’s treads as it rolled over human bones, and caught a too-familiar scent of wet pine.
I swallowed down a sudden rise of nausea and quickened my stride.
“You don’t—don’t want—Alexander—please stop.” That was Nightingale, still out of my line of sight but sounding considerably out of breath and more than a little distressed.
“Just look at you—you’re even more fucking useless than normal, you sad bastard. And apparently this is your fucking case. Not mine, yours. So pull your finger out.”
Alarmed, I hurried forward and ducked under the barrel of the tank’s gun. My heart was pounding in my chest as I rounded the corner of the tank and finally laid eyes on my governor.
He was pushed against the side of the tank, Seawoll looming over him. One of Seawoll’s hands was planted firmly against the side of the tank next to Nightingale’s head, the other pressing against my governor’s chest very near to where the still-healing gunshot wound was. Nightingale had shrunk back against the cold metal of the tank and was very pale, breaths coming fast and shallow. I could see even from this distance that he was shaking.
Then Seawoll made the grave mistake of pulling his hand back a few inches and hitting the side of the tank again. I felt the vestigia sharpen in intensity as the metal rang with a deep thrumming noise, and Nightingale’s head jerked up. I think he must have registered that it was only Seawoll, but that didn’t seem to make a difference. He looked at him, and then I swear Nightingale just snapped.
I didn’t see him make a movement, didn’t see his lips form a word. He didn’t even have his staff. But one moment there was just Seawoll, looming over the pale Nightingale, and then there was an explosion of light like a star going supernova.
The next thing I knew, I was on my side on the hard concrete floor. I only registered this because the smooth, flat surface of the cement was cold beneath my cheek. My head was ringing, and my hair felt like it had had a close shave with a volcano. The air was stifling hot, like I had fallen into an oven, and the air smelled of vaporised circuits.
As any police officer is trained to do in even the direst of circumstances, I picked myself off the ground and turned to face the threat. I was staggering a little—my balance was all off—and it took me a few seconds to find my footing, but I made the Met proud in the end.
The blinding light had faded as quickly as it had come, but swaths of it were still swimming across my vision, and I had to blink to dislodge them. As I did so, my bleary eyes found Seawoll, sprawled on his side five metres away like a discarded child’s toy. I blinked at him dumbly, thinking I should check to see if he was all right.
Then my head swung the other way, and all thoughts of Seawoll fled my mind. Nightingale was standing near the tank, trembling violently and staring at the fallen detective chief inspector.
“Sir,” I said automatically, but my voice came out hoarse and an octave higher than I would have liked.
Nightingale’s gaze shifted from Seawoll to me without blinking, and when I saw the look of utter terror on his face, I felt my blood run cold.
“Just...calm down, sir,” I forced out, taking a couple of steps closer and raising my hands as though to calm a skittish horse. I really didn’t have a huge amount of experience with skittish horses, but I’d dealt with enough drunken brawlers to know there wasn’t much difference.
Nightingale swallowed, the motion getting briefly stuck halfway. He blinked at me, and I saw something shift behind his eyes. “P—Peter?” he whispered. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said, encouraged. I took another step forward. “It’s me. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
“...Fine,” Nightingale echoed, and took a half-step backwards as his legs started to give out from under him. He bumped into the tank for support and stiffened like he’d received an electric shock. The vestigia flared up again, and I knew I had to get him away from the Tiger as soon as possible.
“Inspector,” I said quickly, worried he might do a repeat performance and not wanting to rejoin Seawoll on the floor, “it’s okay. We’re safe. We’re in a museum, that’s all. It’s just the vestigia—it’s not real. Just...come over here.”
The gaze Nightingale turned on me was completely blank and devoid of recognition, and it remains to this day one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever seen. His fingers clenched against the side of the tank, and I knew suddenly that he must be having a flashback.
“The war is over,” I said as reassuringly as I could, forcing myself to inch closer, ignoring the static-y, charged feeling in the air that increased the closer I got to Nightingale. I realised abruptly that he was still drawing on a lethal quantity of magic, holding it in check around him.
“Just...calm down,” I said again, a little hopelessly, getting as close as I dared. Nightingale was as white as a sheet, and he was trembling and trying to stand stock-still all at the same time. “Everything’s fine.”
I was running out of things to say, and Nightingale didn’t seem to be paying me any attention anyway. I wondered distractedly where everyone else was; hadn’t the forensics team noticed the explosion of magic?
“Inspector Nightingale, sir,” I said, a bit desperately, but he didn’t even blink. “Thomas,” I tried, a little louder.
Nightingale’s head turned, and I felt the charged cloud of magic around us falter momentarily.
“It’s me, Peter. Just—everything’s fine. You can let it go.”
Nightingale blinked at me, and I noticed for the first time the tears running down his cheeks. “Th—they—they came out of nowhere,” Nightingale stammered, voice as far from his usual collected tones as it was possible to be. “I—I tried—they were just—everywhere—and we’d lost so many al—already.”
“That’s all in the past,” I told him, trying to keep the tremor out of my own voice. “That—nothing can be done about that now. It’s over.”
Nightingale looked at me, and I saw the pain there, mixed with fear and more guilt than I’d ever seen in any convicted man’s eyes.
“Inspector,” I said, and took another step closer. This time I bumped into something that wasn’t exactly there, and was forced to take half a step back. I moved my hand forward experimentally and it slid inexorably to the side. Nightingale was maintaining a shield spell much like the one Faceless had used on the rooftop, I realised.
I looked at Nightingale again, dumbfounded, and he broke out in a fresh round of shivers as if on cue, sweat beading on his brow. I wondered how he had the energy to maintain the shield spell on top of everything else, but my question was answered when Nightingale started to slump towards the floor.
The shield flickered, but before I could break through, it was back again, and Nightingale had managed to keep his feet, no longer leaning on the tank for support. He had a hand facing me, palm out, and I guessed that was to help direct the shield spell.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, a little desperately. “Inspector, it’s me, Peter. Your apprentice. You don’t need the shield.”
Nightingale wasn’t paying attention again, but he did start swaying alarmingly.
“Inspect—Thomas!” I said quickly. “For God’s sake, stop it and let me help you.”
“Don’t need—help—” Nightingale rasped, breaking out in a fresh round of shivers. “Please—stop. Just—let me—die—” His hand shook and dipped several inches.
I stared at him. “What?” was the only thing I managed to say.
The shield spell flickered again, and then dropped completely as Nightingale collapsed. I crossed the two metres between us and caught him around the middle before he hit the floor. Walid is going to kill me, I thought.
Seawoll came to his senses—in a manner of speaking—just as I was lowering Nightingale carefully to the floor.
“Did you—did you see what that fucking lunatic did?” Seawoll said loudly, in a voice clearly gearing up for a full-blown rant. “He ought to be locked up; I’ve been saying it for years—”
From Seawoll’s tone, I figured he had suffered no lasting damage, and elected to ignore him. Seawoll knew enough about Nightingale—and about magic, as much as he was loathe to admit it—to know that what he had done was stupid at best and sadistic at worst. The way I saw it, he’d had it coming.
I awkwardly pulled off my jacket, still supporting Nightingale’s limp body with one arm so I didn’t have to rest him against the tank. When I’d freed the garment, I rolled it up, heedless of Molly’s careful ironing, and stuffed it under Nightingale’s head as an impromptu pillow. He was very still now, alarmingly so, though when I put the back of my hand an inch above his mouth, I was relieved to find he was still breathing, though the breaths were short and shallow.
That was how we were when Briggs arrived on the scene, Dr Walid in tow. I found I was incredibly glad to see both of them despite my still-present fear that Walid might harbour murderous feelings towards me for letting Nightingale get into this state while under my (admittedly extremely nominal) supervision.
Walid dropped to his knees beside Nightingale in alarm, pushing me aside roughly and unzipping the top of Nightingale’s noddy suit so he could loosen his collar. Walid felt for a pulse, and from his pinched expression that indicated he was expending a great deal of effort to keep from swearing, I guessed he didn’t like what he found.
“What the hell just happened? Constable?” Briggs’s gaze was more intense than I would have expected from someone who’d spent a fair portion of his life squinting at faded wartime letters and similarly indecipherable members of the public. I didn’t duck my eyes, because I’m a professional, but it was a close call. I also managed to refrain from pointing the finger—possibly literally—at Seawoll.
Seawoll himself, however, was showing no such restraint. He strode over to us with a bullishness that indicated he really hadn’t been hurt by whatever it was Nightingale had done to him. His bloodshot gaze zipped between us, and I sensed he was trying to decide whose head to crack in first.
He rounded on the unfortunate Walid, who had pulled my jacket out from under Nightingale’s head and was checking his breathing. “This is beyond a fucking joke, doctor, I don’t mind telling you. I knew he’d go too far one day—all of that hocus pocus and the other freaky shit—and now he has. He needs to be signed off, for his own good and the protection of the civilian population. That entire sorry excuse for a department can go to hell.” He sent an icy glance in my direction.
Walid, peeling back one of Nightingale’s eyelids to check his pupil dilation, didn’t even bother to look up at Seawoll. “You’re aware of what vestigia is, Inspector?”
From Seawoll’s pursed lips, I could tell he was.
Walid continued before he could be interrupted, fishing a penlight out his pocket, “And you know some of Inspector Nightingale’s history—his…combat experience and recent injury?”
Seawoll, man mountain that he already was, stood up straighter. “That’s not relevant unless you’re saying he ought to have been signed off years ago—that I would agree with.”
I’d seen Walid mildly pissed off before, and certainly frustrated, but I realised then that I’d never seen him properly angry until that moment. He paused in shining the light in one of Nightingale’s eyes just long enough to glare up at Seawoll with the cold fury only truly achieved by the righteously angered. “What’s relevant, Inspector, is that between what I know of your past actions and what happened here today, I won’t hesitate to report you for aggravated assault and swear in a court of law that any action taken against you by Inspector Nightingale was in self-defence.”
I think I might have been gaping; I know Seawoll was, but Briggs cut in before the inspector could work himself up to an aneurysm. “I saw the whole incident on the CCTV, as I told Walid. It’s been recorded, sir. Clear evidence of unprofessional and threatening conduct on your part which I won’t hesitate to hand over to your superiors. The incident unfortunately wasn’t recorded in its entirety—technology being fickle as it is—” I don’t think I imagined the brief sideways glance Briggs gave me (he knew, the sly old man), “but I think this current picture speaks for itself. You seem quite unharmed, which is more than can be said for your colleague.”
Seawoll blinked at him, and I could tell he was looking for some way around the wall of logic that was descending in front of him. “But—the fucker assaulted me! I could have died!”
“Oh, shut up, Inspector.” That was Walid, surprising me yet again as he pulled Nightingale half out of his noddy suit and started unbuttoning his crisp white dress shirt. “You’ve had it in for Inspector Nightingale ever since you joined the Met. If you want to avoid legal action, I suggest you call an ambulance and remove yourself from this area.”
“He tried to kill me,” Seawoll protested, but I could see the gears turning in his head. He scowled fiercely, and I gathered he had decided winning this one would be too costly. “I’ll go,” he ground out after a long moment, “but if a fucking word of this reaches anyone—” He jabbed his finger in Walid’s direction and then shifted it to me and Briggs. “I’ll have your badges.” He scowled at us all again, not seeming to realise that Briggs had no badge to revoke, and neither really did Walid, for that matter, and stomped off in the direction of the crime scene.
I watched him go.
“Peter,” Walid said, and his tone was abruptly ice cold and completely level. “Call an ambulance.”
I looked around and felt something inside of me freeze at Walid’s tone. The doctor had finished unbuttoning Nightingale’s dress shirt, revealing a vast red and purple bruise blossoming across his upper chest, growing with each passing second. Nightingale’s breathing had picked up as well, and with each inhale it sounded like he was rubbing two sheets of sandpaper together.
“Now, Peter,” Walid snapped, and his voice dragged my attention away from Nightingale. I scrambled to my feet as fast as I could and ran flat-out in the direction of the atrium. The mobile in my pocket was almost certainly dead, and after the amount of magic Nightingale had released, I wouldn’t have been surprised if every computer chip in a half mile radius had crumbled to sand.
Luckily, the radios in the cars outside seemed to still be working, and I used the first one I found to call for an ambulance.
Then I was at a loss. I turned back to the museum and sprinted inside, deciding that Walid might be able to use my help. I passed the square of yellow police tape and cluster of very confused forensics techs without even sparing them a glance and finally skidded to a halt around the front of the Tiger tank.
Briggs was standing near a sizeable dent in the tank’s side I hadn’t noticed before and was, as far as I could tell, paralysed, staring wordlessly at Nightingale.
I followed his gaze, and felt my own blood run cold. Walid was kneeling over Nightingale, and he was doing chest compressions. I knew with a sudden terrifying certainty that the only reason Walid would be doing that was if Nightingale’s heart had stopped.
We’d learned how to administer CPR as part of a first aid unit back at Hendon, though I mercifully hadn’t needed to use the knowledge yet, as someone more qualified had always stepped up. I’d seen it done numerous times, of course, but it had always been administered to total strangers. Seeing the way Nightingale’s chest deflated under Walid’s interlocked hands, and hearing the scraping noise of bone on bone and the wet, sucking sound of his breaths...I turned and retched the remains of last night’s steak and kidney pudding onto the concrete.
“Peter,” Walid said once I was done, voice tight and quick as he spoke between compressions.
As little as I wanted to see Nightingale like that again, I forced myself to turn and edge closer, trying not to look at the huge dark bruise on the inspector’s chest or the mangled way his ribs didn’t quite line up anymore.
“You’ve had training, right?” Walid asked quickly, between compressions. I noticed him counting under his breath.
I swallowed, seeing where this was going and desperate to avoid it any way I could. On the concrete, Nightingale gasped brokenly for breath, the sound impossibly desperate.
One of my first impressions of Nightingale had been how trim he was, but he’d lost a lot of weight after being shot and hadn’t made up much ground in the meantime. Seeing him now, gasping for air, trembling, and so very thin, he looked all of a sudden incredibly fragile, and not at all like the indomitable figure I’d come to think of him as.
“Yes—yes,” I forced out, unable to tear my eyes from Nightingale. “But I’ve never—”
“Take over.” Walid’s tone brooked no argument, and before I could protest, he was breathlessly rattling the procedure off to me. He had me arrange my hands in front of me, did one more compression, and shifted away.
For a breathless moment I couldn’t move, couldn’t bring myself to take Nightingale’s life into my own hands in such a direct and literal way. Then the training kicked in and I took Walid’s place kneeling beside Nightingale’s chest. My hands were trembling, but I locked my fingers together and put the heel of my hand on my governor’s sternum.
We’d practised on dummies in the CPR course, but nothing could quite prepare me for the feeling of Nightingale’s cold, sweat-slicked skin under my hands. The dark bruise I finally recognised as a sign of internal bleeding had spread further, reaching inky tendrils over Nightingale’s dangerously pale skin.
I forced myself to swallow and leaned into the first compression. Nightingale’s chest deflated under my inexpert hands, and I shivered as I felt his ribs protest the movement.
“Harder,” Walid rasped from where he was breathing heavily beside me. “And faster.”
I took a shaky breath and forced myself to speed up, jabbing the heel of my hand into Nightingale’s sternum and putting as much force behind each compression as I could. I knew the speed I should be going at was the same as the lead rhythm in the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive,” and, ironically, Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” and I opted for the former. I played the song in my head, forcing myself to follow along with the lyrics instead of looking at the way Nightingale’s entire body rocked limply back and forth with every compression.
Nightingale wheezed weakly under my hands, and the sound hitched in his throat several times before he lapsed into silence. I tried to feel grateful for the fact that Nightingale was at least still breathing, but I was finding it increasingly difficult to feel grateful for anything.
Instead, I threw my whole back into the compressions until I was shaking from exertion and my hands throbbed.
I was panting by the time Walid raised his hand and motioned for me to stop. I sat back on my heels, gasping for breath. I was more than a little alarmed to see that Nightingale didn’t look any better; if anything, he was paler, and his gasping breaths were shallower and further apart.
Walid tilted Nightingale’s head back and eased his mouth open. I knew paramedics carried masks with inflatable bags and oxygen supplies for just this purpose, but the ambulance must have been minutes away at best, and Nightingale needed air now.
Walid listened for a moment to Nightingale’s weak gasps, and then leaned over, pinched his nose shut, and gave him a rescue breath. Nightingale’s chest rose and fell in a reassuringly normal fashion, but then Walid had to catch his own breath and Nightingale went alarmingly still.
Walid administered a second breath and then motioned at me to resume compressions. “Thirty more,” he directed, sounding winded.
It was easier this time, and I fell into the rhythm right away.
Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I’m a woman’s man—
Halfway through I realised I wasn’t pressing hard enough and forced myself to put more effort into the motion, Nightingale’s body swaying back and forth with every compression.
Music loud and women warm, I’ve been kicked around since I was born—
I had forgotten to count the compressions again, but Walid must have been keeping track, because it wasn’t long before he waved at me to stop and checked Nightingale’s breathing again.
I was shaking, and my shoulders ached like I’d overexerted myself at the gym. I looked blankly down at Nightingale’s chest as Walid encouraged it to rise and fall, and I realised dimly that there was no way Seawoll, even on his worst day, could have done all this to Nightingale.
Seawoll might have roughed him up a little, and I was sure the vestigia had had a profound effect on Nightingale’s mental state, but now he was suffering some sort of massive internal bleeding that we couldn’t even do anything about until the ambulance arrived.
I remembered the explosion of light, and how Nightingale had trembled as he’d held me at bay with a shield spell in addition to keeping a grasp on enough magic to make the air snap with static. A horrifying thought occurred to me, and I reached out blindly for Walid, finding his elbow and tugging on his sleeve weakly.
“What if—it’s got to be—he used an awful lot of magic—”
Walid sat back from giving the second rescue breath and waved at me to resume compressions. I did so, and Walid, between breaths, said, “I know. Never seen—this type of injury before—but he didn’t even have—his staff with him, so—can’t know anything for sure.”
That was less than reassuring, but I knew that if Nightingale didn’t maintain proper blood flow to his brain, it wouldn’t matter if he’d overexerted himself magically or not.
My arms were cramping by the end of the third round of compressions, and I was relieved when Walid motioned for me to move aside after the rescue breaths. As he started counting under his breath, I moved around him to take his place at Nightingale’s head.
The inspector was incredibly pale, the roots of his dark hair standing out starkly against his sweat-beaded forehead. The tear tracks from earlier were still gleaming on his cheeks, smeared now. Nightingale’s throat convulsed somewhere around Walid’s twentieth compression, but apart from that, he made no visible effort to breathe.
I felt even less confident about administering rescue breaths than I had about compressions, but my arms had gone all wobbly and failed me, so I didn’t have much choice. When Walid reached thirty and sat back heavily, I tilted Nightingale’s head back like Walid had done, put my turned head above his, and listened for Nightingale making any attempt to breathe, hoping to feel the tickle of breath on my cheek. When there was nothing, I turned my head, took a deep breath, and pressed my mouth to his.
Nightingale’s lips were cold against mine, but it wasn’t quite the icy chill I associated with corpses, which I took as a good sign. I moved my hand to pinch his nose shut and, after making sure I had created as airtight of a seal as I could with my lips, breathed. I thought I caught a hint of wet pine, but I might have imagined it. I kept my eyes open and locked on Nightingale’s chest in the periphery of my vision, and was relieved to see it rise as I emptied my lungs of air.
When I had nothing left to give, I pulled away and gasped in a breath of my own. I allowed myself only a few brief seconds before leaning forward again and giving him another breath. This time, as I felt myself grow a little lightheaded, Nightingale’s lips twitched beneath mine.
Encouraged, I pulled back, sucking in air and watching as Nightingale attempted to draw a breath of his own. It was clearly a struggle, and his Adam’s apple weaved up and down a half dozen times before he managed a wheezing cough.
I felt myself break into a smile of relief, but I’d called it too soon. Nightingale coughed again, the motion convulsing his shoulders, and this time he succeeded in spitting up a mouthful of blood. I automatically turned his head before he could choke on it, but my spirits dropped so fast it felt like whiplash. I’d been at the aftermath of enough car accidents to know that coughing up blood was never a good sign.
Walid, who had been watching, swore under his breath and resumed compressions when Nightingale fell ominously still again, no longer attempting to breathe. I turned his head back to the front and carefully wiped the scarlet line of blood and saliva off his pale cheek with my shirt sleeve.
I was not looking forward to tasting Nightingale’s blood on my lips during my next rescue breath. Beside me, Walid was doing his best to keep up the compressions, but it was exhausting work and I knew he wasn’t as young as he’d used to be. So when I heard the shrill, unmistakable sound of an ambulance siren not far away, I’m not ashamed to say that I had never been more relieved to hear anything in my entire life.
I slumped against the floor, shaking and just drinking in the knowledge that fully trained paramedics would be on the scene within seconds.
Unfortunately, Walid reached his thirtieth compression before they could arrive.
“Peter,” Walid said breathlessly, dragging my attention back to him. The doctor, sweat beading on his brow and looking utterly exhausted, motioned weakly at Nightingale’s head with his hand, and I understood with a sinking feeling what he wanted me to do.
I could distantly hear the sound of the museum doors being thrown open, accompanied by far-away, urgent voices, but Walid, Nightingale, and I were trapped in a bubble in which the only thing that mattered was the rhythm of artificial heartbeats and breaths keeping Nightingale alive.
I forced myself back to my knees and, without even bothering to listen for a breath this time, because Nightingale was so still I doubted I could have missed it if he so much as twitched, pressed our mouths together.
I breathed as much air into his lungs as I dared, and when I pulled away I felt a wetness on my lips. I licked at them automatically, and was rewarded with a sharp, coppery taste flooding my mouth. I tried not to gag, failed, and wiped ineffectually at my mouth with the back of my hand.
Walid must have said something, because I drew another shaky breath and leaned over Nightingale again. I had to put my hand on the concrete on the other side of his head to steady myself this time, and tried to ignore the salty taste of blood as I gave him another breath.
Once I was done, Walid resumed compressions even though his arms were shaking and I was pretty sure it was my turn. Luckily, it was then that the paramedics arrived on the scene.
I gasped at them in relief and exhaustion, and had distracting the fluorescent-vested professionals not interfered with their attempt to save Nightingale’s life, I would have hugged one then and there, Englishness be damned.
Once they’d taken over the compressions from Walid, I expected the doctor to drop to the floor beside me, but instead he rocked to his feet, rattled off something to the paramedics, and started off in the direction of the siren.
Uncertain of what he was doing, I grudgingly forced myself to my feet as well. I was still trying to recover my breath by the time the paramedics were slapping a breathing mask over Nightingale’s face and sliding him onto a stretcher.
The amount of sterile, mass-produced equipment on the scene was incredibly reassuring, and I felt suddenly that everything was going to be all right. I’m not sure why I thought that; I knew that getting to the ambulance wasn’t the problem for most patients—it was the living long enough to be discharged from the hospital that was the hard part. But in that moment, exhausted and spent as I was, after all that Walid and I had done, and with the paramedics moving with the surety of people who had made saving lives their profession...I couldn’t help thinking that the worst was over.
I didn’t know how wrong I was.