Broken Homes

Broken Homes

Author	Ben Aaronovitch
Language	English
Genre	Urban Fantasy
Publisher	Gollancz
Publication date	25 July 2013 (2013-07-25)
Pages	368 pp
ISBN	978-0575132467
Preceded by	Whispers Under Ground (2011)
Followed by	Foxglove Summer (2014)

Broken Homes is the fourth novel in the Rivers of London series by English author Ben Aaronovitch, published 2013 by Gollancz.^[1]

Plot

Constable Peter Grant and Detective Chief Inspector Nightingale are called to investigate road traffic accident involving Robert Weil. The investigating officers found human blood from a body in the early state of rigor mortis in his car. Subsequent enquiries lead to a shallow grave containing the body of a young woman killed with and disfigured by a shotgun whose fingers have been removed. In the absence of vestigia, the lingering after-effects of magic, Peter initially assumes Weil is a serial killer, but he and Nightingale learn that Weil is on their list of Little Crocodiles, members of an Oxford University dining club established by Geoffret Wheatcroft, who against custom and practice had been teaching magic without appropriate oversight to others. One of Wheatcroft's students was Albert Woodville-Gentle, now known as the Faceless Man.

Meanwhile, PC Lesley May, who is still on indefinite sick leave after suffering a magical attack that resulted in catastrophic facial injuries in Rivers of London, returns to The Folly after her latest round of reconstructive surgery. Lesley still wears a therapeutic mask but is now able to speak without using a speech synthesiser. Peter and Lesley receive instruction from Nightingale in the art of magical staff-making. If correctly forged using magic, the staff as a magical reservoir that enables a practitioner to wield magical power at otherwise dangerous levels while avoiding severe and irreversible brain damage resulting from over-use of magic. Nightingale surmises if Wheatcroft hadn't learned the art of magical blacksmithing, therefore the Faceless Man must have not either. The three hope that by creating staffs, they will draw the Faceless Man out of hiding and be able to defend themselves from him.

Sergeant Jaget Kumar, from the Urban Explorer and British Transport Police, calls in Peter to help with a case. Richard Lewis, an employee of Southwark Council and on the Little Crocodile watch list, was captured on CCTV committing suicide by throwing himself under a train. However, Jaget notes to Peter that Lewis' behavior is inconsistent with other public transit suicides and Peter agrees that Lewis exhibits signs of operating under magical influence. He interviews Lewis' civil partner, who tells Peter that Lewis hated working in London, but refused to quit. However, right before his death, Lewis said he was finally going to leave his job.

A routine trawl through the Met's Arts and Antiques unit database of found items leads Peter to a rare German Grimoire handed in by a book dealer, who suspected it was stolen when the man who asked what it was worth clearly had no idea of its value in magical terms, or merely as a fabulously rare book. While the shop surveillance system yields no clues, CCTV coverage of the surrounding area leads Peter to the suspected thief, one Patrick Mulhern.

Mulhern, career criminal and consulting safe-breaker, maintains a legitimate front as a locksmith, working from his home. Peter pays him a call but finds the house silent and an unpleasant vestigia at the door. Peter magically blasts the lock open and discovers Mulhern dead, appearing to have been roasted despite no sign of combustion. Peter believes this death was the work of the Faceless Man and calls in Nightingale and Dr Walid.

While the house yields no clues, Mulhern's theft of one of Erik Stomberg's books takes Peter to the architect's home, West Hill House. Stromberg, expatriate German and designer of one of (fictional) London's most iconic eyesores, which Peter variously describes as a 'concrete spike which dominated the area' and 'inexplicably listed', a decision Southwark council had been trying to reverse 'so they could 'blow the f****r up', chose to live not in his greatest creation, but a Corbusier-influenced white stucco affair (now less than immaculate) in the International Style, that sits uncomfortably overlooking the otherwise Georgian townscape. Peter, who remains interested in architecture despite having failed to gain the necessary scholastic achievements to become an architect (but he retains enough interest in the built environment), can correctly identify and name twenty-five brick bonds (bemusing Nightingale, who is astonished Peter can hardly tell one species of plant from another), instantly recognising a framed original architectural sketch by Bruno Taut.

Taut, whose Glass Pavilion was erected at the 1914 Cologne Exhibition and is a contemporary of Stromberg's, as a representative of the National Trust, notices Peter's interest in a poster-size 1960s photograph of Skygarden Tower, explains it was contemporaneous but not original to the house, having been added as it was, and that the tower is regarded as Stromberg's most significant work. Taken onto the roof garden, accessed by a door with the key immovably fused into the lock (whether by magic or rust Peter can't tell), he surveys London until a chance remark by the National Trust staff member showing him around alerts him to the fact Stromberg habitually sat drinking coffee beside his brass-bound telescope, now an exhibit at the Science Museum.

Asking for a copy of the list of all Stromberg's books allows Peter the solitude necessary to magically manipulate air so that it functions as a lens (a task so difficult he is unsurprised Isaac Newton, the founder of modern magic, invented the Newtonian telescope as the easier option). The spell allows Peter to see what Stromberg's telescope once revealed: Skygarden Tower in extreme close-up, leading Peter to speculate exactly what Stromberg was waiting to witness.

Taking a break from investigation to provide a visible police presence (or ‘engaging stakeholder interest’ in the language of the course Peter seems to have been alone in not sleeping through), Peter, Lesley, Nightingale and Abigail - as sole member of the Folly's junior wizard outreach programme - attend the Summer Court of the God and Goddess of the River Thames (upper and lower reaches respectively) at Bernie Spain Gardens, doing so in their capacity as keepers of the Queen's peace.

(There are also element of the Territorial Support Group in attendance but parked discretely out of sight, mundane reinforcements just in case 'the wheels come off'.)

Arriving by river cruisers, surrounded by funfair rides and show booths, Father Thames and Momma Thames (who took vacant possession of the lower reaches surrendered after the Great Stink killed off the resident deities, populating the capital's tributaries with her 'daughters') arrive with their respective entourages, principally Ash and Oxley for Father Thames; Lady Ty, sisters Olympia, Chelsea and Beverley Brook (Peter's part-time river-goddess girlfriend) and youngest of Momma Thames' daughters Neckinger (AKA Nicky), and her babysitter-cum-minder Oberon. Also in attendance, seemingly uninvited, in no particular capacity, is Zachery Palmer, one-time murder suspect, gofer, go-between, half-goblin (and since Lesley’s injury, part-time love-interest). While the court is held - the ‘gentry’ graciously accepting the bent-kneed homage of locals and bemused tourists - and when the formalities are done, the team circulates, Abigail speaking to a man who Lesley later describes as ‘the fox’ (leading Peter to ask if he was the talking fox who told Abigail to warn her friends to 'stay on their own side of the river', a notion Abigail dismisses by saying ‘only if he got a lot taller and put on fifty kilos’). At the conclusion, after some quantity of beer is consumed, a genteel pissing contest effectively ends the event.

Returning to the plan to bait a trap for the Faceless Man, Peter and Lesley attend a 'Nazareth', or Goblin Market, a mobile event where the fey and magical practitioners meet to do business and socialise. There they recognise Varenka Debroslova, the late Geofrey Albert Woodville-Gentle's live-in nurse, who attacks them on first sight, savagely and without warning or provocation. A mixed martial/magical arts brawl ensues, Peter knocking down Debroslova with impello, but barely manages to deflect an icy magical blast that wrecks a staircase and tears a hole in a wall: as it is with magic, so it is with conventional combat, with Peter managing to avoid being crippled only by receiving a kick to the thigh that hobbles him.

As he tries to give chase, Peter realises that while he and Lesley are trying to restrain Debroslova, she is trying to disable, maim and very possibly kill them outright. When the fight moves into the street, Debroslova wrecks a car Peter shelters behind, leaving it looking as if it has been rammed by an I-beam and left out in a Siberian winter. Debroslava makes off in a silver Audi, later found dumped in a place providing so many exits that pursuit is impractical, and leaving no clue to her ultimate destination. When Nightingale hears Peter's account and examines the massive property damage she inflicted, he identifies Debroslava as Nochnye Koldunyi or a Night Witch. (^[2] explaining that it isn't so much a magical term as military, meaning a magical practitioner trained exclusively in combat of a kind deemed so dangerous (to the practitioner) even in wartime, it hadn't been countenanced by the British, but, as he later remarks, the Russians were not so much fighting a war for national survival as a war of annihilation).

Follow-up of leads at Southwark Council convinces the team that there is a connection to Skygarden Tower, so Nightingale informally authorises Peter and Lesley to infiltrate the tower (because official police undercover operations are so circumscribed with rules and safeguards in the context of a supposedly secret magical branch that going through the formal process would be impractical). The result of an off-the-books conversation with the local offer is Peter, Lesley and Toby moving into a flat the council allowed the local force to use as an observation post during a previous investigation. Inevitably before Peter and Lesley can investigate the locals, they are pre-emptively investigated by one particularly nosy neighbour, who speculates it might be the result of ‘honour-related’ acid attack, with the strong implication Peter is in for a very hard time until Lesley assures her it was an accident at work involving a chip pan.

Noting in passing the large numbers of empty and security sealed flats bearing County Gard notices, Peter takes Toby for a walk. Peter discovers the eponymous garden is nearly inaccessible, seemingly by design (of a piece with the entire building where everything, including the lifts, conspires to be fractionally too small to contain anything the least bit aspirational, except the massive tray-like balconies intended as 'sky gardens' which in part gave the tower block its name. But not for long because the local council quickly found a reason to in-fill these balcony allotments with poured cement).

As Peter earlier observes, the architect managed to ‘combine some of the disadvantages of living in a terraced street with all of the disadvantages of living in a tower block’, notably by having lift access only to alternate floors and no level street access, thus guaranteeing 'your gran gets lots of healthy exercise'.

When Peter finally manages to get into the garden, he discovers river spirit Nicky gamboling with an impish girl wearing a Mary Quant dress and a battered straw hat who plays hide and seek, generally acting more like a child than a woman, who the bemused Peter is convinced is some kind of fey but exactly what kind he can't work out.

Having walked with Toby, Peter is approached by the resident activist, who tells him he's discovered the real reason Skygarden hasn't been demolished: not a magical resident but those which are 'some of the finest examples of their kind' and thus subject to multiple tree preservation orders.

Returning to the garden Peter mets Nicky, Beverly, Oberon and Effra (another of Momma Thames’ many daughters) feeding Toby Marks and Spencer party-size sausage rolls.

Effra explains the impish girl, named Sky, is a tree nymph subject to the seasons, and thus in spring is in a childlike state and not available for interrogation. Peter bridles at this but still manages to establish the tower (which she says makes 'happy music') is being visited by 'lots of lorries'. Arriving back at their flat after investigating the basement, Peter and Lesley find Zach Palmer in residence, busily eating them out of house and home. He invites Lesley to a 'wizard's pub' to pick up the trail of the Faceless man, leaving Peter to pursue enquiries among the residents (and buy more groceries).

Picking up his messages, Peter discovers a book Folly archivist Professor Postmartin thinks significant showed up in connection to Stromberg’s library. The title Wege der industriellen Nutzung von Magié (Towards the Industrial Use of Magic) convinces Peter that Stromberg built Skygarden as a magical experiment, but the details remain hazy. Returning to the tower's central core, Peter puzzles over the incongruous elements that have no architectural explanation, but in doing so he recognises a similarity between Taut's glass pavilion and guesses he is looking at the magical equivalent of a drilling rig, or refinery, explaining the Faceless Man's interest in unlovable bombastic 1960's architectural overstatement.

This he attempts to explain to Nightingale at a Columbian café after Nightingale reveals Dr Walid has found chimeric cells on the body of the young woman buried near Robert Weil's 'accident'. While Peter’s theory fails to convince Nightingale and Lesley (possibly because he uses the simile of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange), Peter remains convinced the Stadkrone or 'city crown' is intended to act as a magical relief valve, to achieve a controlled overpressure event, an assertion neither Nightingale or Lesley find the least bit compelling.

Recruiting Zach Palmer because he is 'good with locks', Peter and Lesley gain access to a sealed garage maintained by County Gard, a private security company, without resorting to magically blasting anything, and when they do so, they find it stacked high with devices that look a lot like demon traps. Swiftly retreating, they consult Nightingale, who confirms they are related magical devices minus the malicious charge typical of the sort of 'magical land mine' he is more familiar with.

Determining County Gard (the company that seems to have a virtual monopoly on Skygarden’s services) bears investigation, Lesley (and Zach) retire for the night while Peter watches TV (with the sound up) until they are all roused by a piercing scream. Donning their Metvests and grabbing collapsible batons, Peter and Lesely rush down to the garden and discover a biker trying to restart a chainsaw to finish ring-barking an ornamental cherry. Throwing the saw at Peter he misses but manages to escape, while Lesley examines Sky, confirming she has died, apparently of natural causes.

In no time, Nicky - resident goddess - arrives distraught as a child, but as a deity she is very literally lethally angry, demanding a life for a life, followed by Oberon who appears at the run, sword in hand. Nightingale, also summonsed by Sky's mortal cry, warns him against any interfering with the Queen's peace, since this would breach ‘the agreement’. While he takes some convincing, Nightingale gives Oberon his 'oath as a soldier' justice will be done. Oberon bears the still distraught Nicky away. Later, while a forensic team investigate the death of Sky surrounded by her beloved trees, all of them thoroughly ring-barked and so dying, Peter and Lesley head out of town, following a report of a dead body dumped out of a Ford Transit on the East Ham-Barking border. There Peter identifies the man, who has apparently drowned in situ, as the chainsaw wielding biker. Dr Walid, summoned as the only 'Falcon' competent medical specialist, confirms the man apparently died when his lungs filled with water, but of what kind he can't determine without tests. Since there is no sign of open water and no evidence of the man being ducked, Lesley is prompted to ask Peter 'If [the law] doesn't apply to them, why does it apply to us?'.

Guessing the owners of the Transit van might have reported the vehicle stolen days after the alleged theft, Peter and Lesley head to Essex to interview the Transit van's owner. Finding the farm given as the owner's address seemingly deserted, Lesley and Peter investigate and discover newly constructed sheds of suspiciously green pine planking; windowless, assembled with wooden pegs, the door held shut with a wooden latch. Using a torn-off green bough from a nearby sapling (which as it is still ‘alive’ functions as a magical insulator) Peter uses it to open the shed. Anticipating magical IEDs they instead discover massively constructed shelves made of unseasoned wood identical to those housing the disks found in the Country Gard garage, implying the farm was where what Peter has dubbed 'dog batteries' were prepared. Leaving with all due, haste Peter and Lesley walk out and into the arms of a pair of thugs, one with a shotgun.

Peter manages to deflect the shotgun so it discharges harmlessly, but the Night Witch arrives and, despite Peter raising a magical shield, effortlessly knocks him down and very nearly out. Detained on their knees with hands on their heads in a dog-fighting ring, guarded by the two thugs with shotguns who remain behind them so they can't be magically attacked, Peter and Lesley try to reason with them, pointing out killing police officers means they will never be allowed to get away with it, and that their employer won't leave anyone alive to protect herself from the same fate. When she returns with containers of petrol and orders her men to shoot the pair then douse the arena with petrol, they instantly bridle, hedge, wheedle, argue and generally delay matters until the sound of Nightingale's vintage Jaguar causes her to wave the pair to silence so she can ambush Nightingale as he walks through the door.

In a move that surprises everyone Nightingale doesn’t bother with the door, instead tearing the rear wall to pieces, strolling inside and shooting his cuffs.

In seconds the Night Witch is locked in mortal combat not with a pair of coppers, but the only magical practitioner on record who took a late model Tiger tank in single combat and walked away leaving smoking wreckage.

Very sensibly, as fireballs and normally immovable items start to fly about their ears, Peter, Lesley and the two thugs duck for cover then run for their lives as the magical duel soon reduces the farm, outbuildings and vehicles, including Peter's beloved Ford ASBO (but excluding Nightingale’s Jaguar, which hadn’t come close except as an aural illusion) to debris.

At the conclusion of the battle, after the hostages have been rescued, the Night Witch is in custody, and the local force arrives and decide to arrest everybody on the general principle that it's their manor and no one else's.

After much waving of warrant cards, calls to superiors, veiled threats (and dire warnings) that what just happened to everything in sight unless someone not a million miles from Essex takes a principled decision not to be bone-headed, the Folly team plus prisoners, including one picked up still running some five kilometres from the farm, decamp to Chelmsford's police station, described as being ‘conveniently close’ to Essex Police HQ, thereby facilitating the process of making what just happened someone else’s problem, specifically someone at ACPO level.

Under questioning, the Night Witch, AKA Varvara Sidorovna, explains she was captured during the Great Patriotic War, barely surviving despite giving no hint she was a magical practitioner, instead maintaining she was a nurse. Somehow surviving the routine abuse of prisoners that followed, she became a part of the Organisation Todt slave-labour effort to build Hitler's Atlantic Wall. To her surprise on arrival at her work camp she discovered she was on former British soil, assuming the country must have been defeated until it was explained she wasn't on the mainland but the Channel Island of Alderney. Escaping by being prepared to kill anyone who got in her way, she was surprised to find an old lady not only unwilling to raise an alarm but happy to hide her and guide her into the arms of the resistance who kept her hidden, providing her with false papers and teaching her to speak 'beautiful proper English' until the cessation of hostilities some time after the invasion of Europe.

In the confusion that followed the war she was able to avoid repatriation and obtain genuine identity documents and settled down to live a more or less normal life. When challenged by Lesley that she looks good for a woman of ninety, Vavara explains that one day in 1966 she stopped growing old but that she didn't realise she was getting younger for a while, but claims her recollections of that period were hazy, cautioning Lesley 'never do magic on acid'. Admitting only to doing 'odd jobs' in the magical community, she derides the suggestion that she is in trouble, observing for a woman who survived the attention of the SS and concentration camp conditions, the worst the British prison system has to offer holds no terrors, and that the effort to keep a magical practitioner incarcerated simply isn’t worth the effort, concluding with a gnomic comment 'If you're afraid of wolves, don't go into the woods'.

Returning to London Peter, who now knows the County Gard operation wasn't a real-estate scam as he assumed, but a heist involving stolen magic, he visits the company's offices with Lesley, finding the only person on the premises is an unusually tall cleaner with a regal manner, an expensive purple silk hijab and an accent that sounds like she had an education to match.

Asking Peter 'What's missing?' Lesley points out the only thing not left in situ is every hard drive, strongly indicating that whatever had been going on, the County Gard contribution is already over.

Filled with foreboding they return to Skygarden Tower where Peter uses magic to force an entry to a newly sealed flat belonging to a neighbour who was apparently still a resident only a short time before, and discovers holes have been drilled in supporting pillars, the holes stuffed with plastic explosive, detonating cords neatly gathered and led to a cash box taped to the drilled pillar.

Taking a deep breath Peter opens the box and discovers a mechanism minus a helpful count-down timer but displaying a note saying 'Please do not tamper as being blown up often offends'. Backing out Peter calls 999, explains the tower has been rigged with demolition charges, and that he and Lesley will evacuate the few remaining tenants, with Peter taking the upper floors.

When he is sure the last tenants are clear Peter goes up to the roof and finds the access doors open, the Faceless Man waiting, enjoying a bird's-eye view of a major incident response and - patronising and overconfident as ever - he engages Peter in a little light banter before explaining he can't afford to let Peter live and flourishes his radio detonator.

As he does so Peter realises on this occasion the Faceless Man hasn't done his homework: Peter directs a magical attack at him which the Faceless Man effortlessly deflects, not understanding he wasn’t the intended target, the charges go off and the Stadkrone finally fulfils its intended purpose, Peter crying 'Here's Bruno!' as the accumulated magic discharges, astonishing the Faceless Man.

Since the building is in imminent danger of collapse he flees the scene by jumping off the roof. Knowing he has no other prospect of survival and guessing his arch enemy had some form of escape planned, Peter also dives after, and onto, the Faceless Man. Hanging on for dear life, the Faceless Man unable to do anything much without destroying his concentration and dooming them both, Peter is able to ride him down to a hard landing, followed by a swift kicking before handcuffing him.

Triumphant, Peter is then figuratively and literally shot in the back, twice (but not fatally). Shocked, concussed, hurt, covered with dust, Peter wanders through wreckage-strewn streets until he is intercepted by a uniformed officer who ushers him to a London Ambulance Service triage tent where he breaks protocol by failing to identify himself, and thus opening up the horrible possibility of yet another professional conduct enquiry. Instead he borrows a mobile phone to alert Nightingale then he uses his Doctor Martens, warrant card and a twenty pound note to persuade a very reluctant taxi driver to take him back to the Folly.

There Peter joins Molly and they stand guard until Frank Caffrey and his Parachute Regiment associates arrive, ready for a mundane assault while Peter and Molly continue to stand guard against magical shenanigans.

After a protracted wait all that happens is Toby (who took nine hours to cover four kilometres) arrived home apparently no worse for wear.

At around three the following morning Nightingale arrives with Varvara Sidorovna in tow, informs Molly she would be staying until further notice, handing the former Night Witch over to the silent, gliding, baleful, predatory presence that is the Folly's housekeeper, and very sensibly the former Night Witch decides it wouldn't hurt to be a model house guest.

In the days that follow, Peter catches up with Zach, who reminds Peter of the significance of the chimeric cells Dr Walid found on the dead woman's body, a clue Peter entirely overlooked.

If they didn't explain everything they at least validated Peter's suspicion: if the Faceless Man isn't Professor Moriarty he's doing a really good impression.

Characters

References