False Value (Rivers of London #8)

by Ben Aaronovitch

I swear I felt a tingle of vestigium. Nothing professionally worrying, just a whiff of glitter and stardust.

nobody was singing but I’d picked up enough of a nearby conversation to learn that David Bowie was dead.

DON’T PANIC

Then she handed me a towel. It was a fluffy orange bathroom towel. “What’s this?” I asked. “It’s your first day towel,” said the receptionist. “You wrap it around your head.”

It’s one of those weird truths you learn early on as police that quite a high percentage of the public have all the survival instinct of a moth in a candle factory. They run the wrong way, they refuse to move, some will run toward the danger, and others will instantly whip out their phones and take footage.

Libertarians and criminals complain about the surveillance state when they see a camera. Police officers complain about it when they don’t.

As my old governor used to say, a copper’s one true comfort in life is that criminals are mostly thicker than pig shit.

“No,” she said. “I don’t want a personal friend in Jesus.” I showed her my warrant card. “But have you let the Metropolitan Police into your heart?” I asked.

I believe in coincidence, coincidences happen all the time, but I don’t trust coincidences.

Oh yeah, I thought. I can has magic spelz too.

“Stop, police!” I shouted, on the basis that one of these days it was going to have the right effect.

I’ve gone toe to toe with some seriously dangerous magical fuckers, and if I have not necessarily emerged victorious then at least I emerged alive.

You can say what you like about late-sixties architecture, but when they baked in the ugly they baked it in good.

found myself pursuing an alternative career path to the one I expected.” “Which was what?” “Sex worker, drug runner and unmourned casualty of the street

“I uphold the Queen’s peace,” I said. “Really?” said Stephen. “The Queen’s peace?” “To the best of my power.” “And when your power isn’t enough?” “I call in backup,”

if you’re not dead in the first instance, then your chances of survival are much improved.

This reminds me of Max from Chronicles of St. Mary's - if you are alive, then anything is possible. It is being dead that seriously limits your options.

“It would save ever so much time,” Reynolds had said when we set it up, “if we just added the population of Florida right at the start.”

You’re all on your lonesome.” “Oh yeah?” I said. “Yeah,” said Stephen, looking pleased with himself. “Because I’ve being reading a LiveJournal by F*ckTheresaMay678. Interesting stuff.” My God, I thought, Silver was right—Nigerian princes and all.

“They’re pretty specific about not talking about the secret project in Bambleweeny,” he said. “Or Deep Thought.” Which was yet another reference from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

But the knife is what will kill you, so that’s your focus. Thus it’s always handy when they brandish it in the air, away from anyone’s soft dangly parts.

We gave her the bland reassuring expression that police have been using on the obviously upset since Daniel had that tricky moment with the lion.

Abigail being my cousin and Nightingale’s other younger, smarter apprentice.

I started making up a blog under the tag of F*ckTheresaMay678, composed of the sort of material it was unwise to commit to the record, however electronically ephemeral.

“In three months,” I said. “I’m going on parental leave come hell or high water. And I literally mean high water.”

Never mind moral and legal ambiguity, I thought, it’s this game of bloody who-knows-what that makes undercover work such a trauma for an honest copper.

Americans, who intellectually knew the rest of the world existed but didn’t really believe it.

We do tend to have some tunnel vision

ASSUME NOTHING, believe nothing, check everything—the ABC of policing.

But everyone assumes causation when they should be thinking coincidence, and correlation when they should be asking whether Twitter is really a reliable source of information.

The problem with troubleshooting is that trouble shoots back. —Anonymous

possible. I think they’re hoping that if they don’t talk about Falcon, then Falcon will hardly ever happen. Ironically, this is known as magic thinking.

“You want to be done with that shit just as quick as you can,” said Seawoll. “You’re one of life’s honest coppers, Peter, and this kind of fucking fakery is not good for you.”

“Well, that went tits up remarkably fast, didn’t it?”

Still magic, like policing, has always been much more about the practice than the theory.

“It’s never wise, Peter, to assume that events revolve around oneself.

“You came to my city uninvited and put members of the public at risk. You tell all your friends and allies and whatever else that they don’t come to my city without asking permission first.”