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5decb76
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We were suffering a standard gray London drizzle, the sort that makes it clear that it can keep it up all day if needs be.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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d782ed1
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Seawoll sat in the executive leather operator's chair behind the desk wearing a dangerously stretched noddy suit that made him look like the Michelin Man's slightly deflated older brother.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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5d59e20
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Zach Palmer, who was half human and half--we weren't really sure what, including the possibility that the other half might be human as well.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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4ef0f10
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I didn't ask why anybody would want to risk the electric two-step on the tracks because, as police, all three of us knew that there wasn't anything so stupid that somebody wouldn't try it sooner or later.
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recklessness
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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2062fdf
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He asked if we were really ghost hunting, and I said we were. "What, like officially?" "Officially secret," I said because discretion is supposed to be, if not our middle name, at least a nickname we occasionally answer to when we remember."
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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d130343
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Even in the 1980s your average young archaeologist would have had difficulty raising capital for a house. I knew this because it's one of the things archaeologists will tell you about, at length, at the slightest provocation.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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0aaf9c6
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I nodded absently as I made a note of the pub. The Rising Sun drinking establishment exists right on the fringes of the demi-monde - not being nearly as antique or mysterious as it pretends to be.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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ddc7a72
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When dealing with the excessively rich and privileged, you've got your two basic approaches. One is to go in hard and deliberately working class. A regional accent is always a plus in this. Seawoll has been known to deploy a Mancunian dialect so impenetrable that members of Oasis would have needed subtitles, and graduate entries with double firsts from Oxford practise a credible Estuary in the mirror and drop their glottals with gay abandon..
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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e5b1726
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The word 'bollocks' is one of the most beautiful and flexible in the English language. It can be used to express emotional states ranging from ecstatic surprise to weary resignation in the face of inevitable disaster.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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c4771b5
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I sighed and went back to my book, in which Morgoth nicked the eponymous jewels and had away with them back to Angbad. Sorry mate, I thought, not my jurisdiction. Did you have them insured? Whereupon Feanor gets a crime number and a leaflet about being on guard against theft and the wiles of the personification of evil.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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697e615
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I had found the upper limit of my courage. Fortunately for me, there is no known lower limit to human stupidity.
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courage
recklessness
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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7adcca7
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There was a list, Kimberley imagined, and in an obscure subsection of that list, a section that had not been properly updated since George Bush was President,
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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af97aa4
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Sited a third of the way up Dartmouth Park Hill, it had obviously been designed by a keen admirer of Albert Speer, particularly his later work on the monumental fortifications of the Atlantic Wall.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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4d3a45e
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Being a seasoned Londoner, Martin gave the body the 'London once-over' - a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress. The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport - like base-jumping or crocodile-wrestling.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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0f049e2
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Even at ten o'clock in the morning it was going to be full of members of the public. Rich, influential members of the public, many of them foreign, a lot of them with some level of diplomatic immunity. 'What I'm saying here,' Seawoll had said, 'is try to limit the amount of damage you do to none fucking whatsoever.' I don't know where I got this reputation for property damage, I really don't
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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1f714e1
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By this point I was eager to emulate Guleed and merge unobtrusively with the imitation French farmhouse fittet cupboard and counter unit behind me.
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humor
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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f2504a8
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Archway is where the post-war dream of the urban motorway died in the teeth of local opposition and the inability of the designers to answer basic traffic management questions.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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3b9b193
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Boss," I said into my Airwave. "It's getting needlessly metaphysical out here." "Ignore" --
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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1dedabe
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but the first rule about a black woman's hair is you don't talk about a black woman's hair. And the second rule is you don't ever touch a black woman's hair without getting written permission first. And that includes after sex, marriage, or death for that matter. This courtesy is not reciprocated.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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237ccd3
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from uni5
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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a6150d9
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culminating in one of those formless red brick shopping centres which artfully combines a complete lack of aesthetic quality with a total disregard for the utilitarian function for which it is built.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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cca12b1
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Asbo
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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d707636
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I, Anna Maria de Burgh Coppinger Isis solemnly swear on
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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55848cd
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I know it's hard, Peter," she'd said. "But if you could contain your erudition and ready wit for just a little while we'd be most grateful." "Am I allowed to be cheeky?" I'd asked. "No you're fucking not," said Seawoll. "I'm"
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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e25283c
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Apparently after six days baking pigs and herding bricks, the inhabitants would kick back with a spot of cock-fighting, bullbaiting, and ratting. It was the sort of place an adventurous gentleman might venture only if he didn't mind being beaten, rolled, and catching an exciting venereal disease.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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f377eb9
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MUCH AS I love the Jag, it's too conspicuous for everyday police work. So that day I was driving a battered silver ex-Metropolitan Police Ford Asbo that, despite my best efforts, smelled vaguely of old stakeouts and wet dog. I
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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b1d6e11
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We should tell forensics that the murder weapon may be archaeological," I said. "Archaeological?" asked Seawoll. "Could be," I said. "Is that your professional opinion?" "Yes."
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murder-weapon
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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c690c60
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One Hyde Park squatted next to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel like a stack of office furniture, and with all the elegance and charm of the inside of a photocopier. Albeit a brand new photocopier that doubled as a fax and document scanner.
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modern-architecture
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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f096e23
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Richmond won on points, but only because one of them had a flask full of coffee.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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af636ea
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This is a speech we've all heard before. From the con artists who aren't like the burglars, who aren't like the armed robbers, who only ever broke a bone if the victim had it coming and the murderers who made 'one mistake' and are forced to pay for it for the rest of their lives. They want to know what you're doing about the real criminals, the rapists and the paedophiles. Who want to know why you're wasting resources on them when we should..
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moral-relativism
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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2e859a0
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So, actions were still being actioned and me and Guleed were actioning them, and the wheels of justice ground on. Albeit in first gear. So
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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e34093e
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Vikings," said Lesley. "Precisely," said Nightingale. "Bloodthirsty, but surprisingly erudite in a limited fashion." Well"
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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70c09d3
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insouciance. But there's just something uniquely intimidating about
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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3f7c859
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As soon as we stopped sleeping with our cousins and built walls, temples and a few decent nightclubs, society became too complex for any one person to grasp all at once, and thus bureaucracy was born.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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22917f8
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But risking a fair fight - not so easy. That's why you see those pissed young men doing the dance of the 'don't hold me back' while desperately hoping someone likes them enough to hold them back.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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5b25504
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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.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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0615220
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As property prices started rising, developers snatched up bomb sites and derelict buildings and erected the shapeless concrete lumps that have made the '70s the shining beacon of architectural splendor that it is.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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33e5979
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African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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6fff781
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We decided to go back to basics and put the frighteners on some snouts." "Really?" "We adopted a proactive intelligence-gathering policy utilising appropriate stakeholders in the community and pre-established covert human intelligence sources. "And nobody can put a frightener on a covert human quite like Lesley can."
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intelligence
jargon
police-procedure
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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6dc8a42
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A sudden attack of culture snobbery is a common affliction among policemen of a certain rank and age; it's like a normal midlife crisis, only with more chandeliers and foreign languages.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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a6a51e7
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Because who is more oppressed," exclaimed Leslie. "Those that seek nothing but entitlements for themselves or those that claim for everything, social security, housing benefit, disability and pay for nothing." One"
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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6de34f8
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Well, our victim had a thirst for knowledge," said Stephanopoulos. "He was a student at St. Martins College."
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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1fd80b3
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MIU was still stuffed into their overheated office space. Luckily somebody had sprung for an industrial-sized cooling fan with a face the same diameter as a dustbin lid and an unfortunate tendency to blow any unsecured paperwork out the nearest window. If we'd had a green screen we could have shot the live elements to a low budget disaster movie.
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Ben Aaronovitch |
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931034c
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Sir Isaac Newton legendarily wrote the famous Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which gave us principles that a couple of hundred years later were good enough to land a man on the moon. Then he wrote the slightly less well known Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis, which codified the magical techniques that allow me to inconvenience paper targets and Nightingale to demolish small agricultural buildings. "There"
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Ben Aaronovitch |