Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3)

by Ben Aaronovitch

Like young men from the dawn of time I decided to choose the risk of death over certain humiliation.

These days, provided you have the right access, you log into your AWARE terminal to access CRIS, for crime reports, Crimint+, for criminal intelligence, NCALT, for training programmes, or MERLIN, which deals with crimes against or involving children, and get your information within seconds.

Given that all three of us were Londoners, we paused a moment to carry out the ritual of the ‘valuation of the property’. I guessed that, given the area, it was at least a million and change.

it was another Brutalist tower of jagged concrete that had acquired a Grade II listing because it was that or admit how fucking ugly it was.

it was one of the last monumental redbrick buildings before the modernists switched their worship to the concrete altar of brutalism.

because the victim is an American citizen? Do you find the murder of American citizens funny?’ I was tempted to tell her it was because we were British and actually had a sense of humour, but I try not to be cruel to foreigners, especially when they’re that strung out. I took a

The media response to unusual weather is as ritualised and predictable as the stages of grief. First comes denial: ‘I can’t believe there’s so much snow.’ Then anger: ‘Why can’t I drive my car, why are the trains not running?’ Then blame: Why haven’t the local authorities gritted the roads, where are the snow ploughs, and how come the Canadians can deal with this and we can’t? This last stage goes on the longest and tends to trail off into a mumbled grumbling background moan, enlivened by occasional ‘Asylum Seekers Ate My Snow Plough’ headlines from the Daily Mail, that continues until the weather clears up.

It was late Victorian with a half basement, orthogonal bay windows and a narrow little front door designed to give the illusion of grand urban living to a new generation of aspirational lower middle class.

Every market needs its place and in London such illegal venues have been called nazareths since the eighteenth century.

Thus: ‘We did a joint evaluation of video evidence encompassing all possible access points in conjunction with BTP and CLP and despite widening the parameters of our assessment to include registered and non-registered cameras in the high-probability zones we have as yet to achieve a positive identification of James Gallagher prior to his appearance at Baker Street,’ becomes ‘We’ve checked every CCTV camera in the system and it’s as if the fucker beamed down from the Starship Enterprise.’

You burn down one central London tourist attraction, I thought, and they never let you forget it.

It’s always better if the person you’re interviewing doesn’t know that you know that they know that they have to be more careful.

the rules of English grammar are largely an artificial construct with little or no bearing on the language as it is spoke.

Unfortunately, what is true of hanging is not true of the smell of the London sewers, which are truly indescribable. Let’s just say that it’s the sort of smell that follows you home, hangs around outside your door and tries to hack your voicemail.

Londoners being Londoners, the prohibition on using the Underground lasted right up until the first air-raid warning, at which point the poorly educated, but far from stupid, populace of the capital did a quick back-of-the-envelope comparison between the stopping power of ten metres of earth and concrete and a few centimetres of compost, and moved underground en masse.

‘But there is a certain amount of weird shit that goes on down here and people got into the habit of asking me to keep track of it,’ said Kumar. ‘Why was that?’ ‘Watched too much X-Files growing up,’ he said. ‘Also I’m a bit of an urban explorer.’

I shrugged. ‘What do I know?’ I said. I was thinking of making it my family motto.

‘Lots of ghost reports,’ said Kumar and started digging through the catering boxes. ‘Not as many as we get from overground tracks.’

This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I’ve never yet had a Higgs boson turn up and try to have a conversation with me.

Was it better to die in the illusion of sunshine and warmth or face death in a cold darkness of reality? Was it better to die in happy ignorance or terrified knowledge. The answer, if you’re a Londoner, is that it’s better not to die at all.

He was right, I didn’t know what I was going to do, but then that’s what god created senior officers for.

am well within my rights to express a certain level of dissatisfaction with the way you exercise your responsibilities in this area.’

It was a good plan and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life.

As Conan the Barbarian famously said, That which does not kill us does not kill us.

Safety tip: wading trousers – not built for stealth.

London was the world’s first megalopolis. You can make a case for Beijing, Constantinople or Rome, but for sheer fuck-off insanely rapid expansion, London was to set the pattern, followed by every big city that came after.

‘That’s because we’re in their ends now, said Zach. ‘Ends?’ asked Reynolds. ‘Manor,’ I said. ‘Patch,’ said Lesley. ‘Yard?’ I tried when Reynolds still looked blank. ‘Hood,’ said Zach. ‘Gotcha,’ said Reynolds.

‘Is that what you call them?’ I asked, and thought that what we needed was some bloody agreement about nomenclature.

But the proof of the pudding is in the baking.