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My mum translated this in her head to “witchfinder,” which was good because like most West Africans, she considered witchfinding a more respectable profession than policeman.
“Why are you wearing a mask?” she asked. “Because my face fell off,” said Lesley.
Like young men from the dawn of time, I decided to choose the risk of death over certain humiliation.
It has a Pentecostal congregation and is just the sort of noisy and fervent place my mum favors on those rare occasions when she remembers she’s supposed to be a Christian.
Seawoll dropped the mangled paper clip back into a little Perspex box, where it served, presumably, as an awful warning to the rest of the stationery.
As soon as he recognized me as police he gave a startled jump and literally looked left and then right, as if contemplating a runner. Then he collected himself and opted, boringly, for sulky belligerence.
It wore on its torso what anyone with a passing interest in Chinese history or Dungeons and Dragons would recognize as the scale armor worn by the terra-cotta army—a tunic constructed by fastening together rectangular plates the size of playing cards. Only in this case each plate had a face sculpted onto it. Each of the faces, while simplified to a shape with a mouth, slits or dots for eyes, and the barest hint of a nose, was clearly individual and carved into a distinct expression of sadness and despair.
Every market needs its place and in London such illegal venues have been called nazareths since the eighteenth century.
If you can read these words then you are not only a nerd but probably dead.
Now, there’s a time when an unlocked premises is a positive boon to a police officer, as in, “I was just looking to ascertain the whereabouts of the proprietor when I stumbled across the Class A controlled substances that were in plain sight in the bottom drawer of a locked desk in an upstairs office, m’lord.”
“Speak, friend, and enter,” said Kumar.
“Drums,” I said, and then because I couldn’t resist it, “Drums in the deep.”
Despite that, he asked whether it was element-based—fire, water, air, and earth. I said I didn’t think so. “So no Earthbenders kicking rocks around,” he said. “Nope,” I said. “Or Airbenders, or Waterbenders, or He-Man, or Captain Planet.” Or any other character from a kid’s cartoons.
swear I heard it then, the whisper, behind the clatter of the wheels and the smell of dust and ozone. Not that I recognized it for what it was—not that I’m sure I know what it was even now.
was also informed that the biggest fear an American law enforcement officer lives with is the prospect of dying with their weapon still in its holster.
The cement cracked open and I felt my stomach jump as the ground I was lying on dropped a good meter. And me with it. I saw a dark void under the platform and had just enough time to think—fuck me, he’s an Earthbender—before falling into the black.
A subterranean secret base in the fashion of a James Bond villain. The Faceless Man had the accent for it, true, but did he have a cat? I had a flash of him sitting in a swivel chair with a full-sized cat girl called Sharon perched on his lap while she was talking to her BFF on her mobile.
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 bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.
“Nightingale turned up,” she said. “He was hoping to shout at you a bit to show his affection in a gruff manly and safely nongay way but you were asleep so he just sort of milled around for a while and then off he went.”
It was a good plan, and like all plans since the dawn of time, this would fail to survive contact with real life.
Ten-Tons leaned across the table until we were close enough for me to feel his breath on my cheek. “Would you like some tea?” he asked. “No thanks,” I whispered. “I don’t think we have time.” That wasn’t the real reason, of course, but you don’t insult your host at the first meeting. Captain Picard would have been well pleased with me.
And we sang together, sort of both of us with the clay running between our fingers, and for that moment I was in tune with the fabric of the universe. I was singing along with the actual music of the spheres.”
