Descriptions

A painfully thin white girl in a pink wool minidress and a matching furry hat offered me a glass of wine and a welcoming smile. I took the wine but I avoided the smile (…)

I looked around for another glass of fizzy wine and realised someone was watching me. He was a young Chinese guy with a mop of unruly black hair, a beard that looked like a goatee that had got seriously out of hand, black square-framed glasses and a good-quality cream-coloured suit cut baggy and deliberately rumpled. Once he saw he had my attention he slouched over and introduced himself.

            ‘My name is Robert Su.’ He spoke English with a Canadian accent. ‘I’d like, if I may, to introduce you to my employer.’ He gestured to an elderly Chinese woman in what was either a very expensive dove-grey Alex and Grace suit or the kind of counterfeit that is so well done that the difference becomes entirely metaphysical.

            ‘Peter Grant,’ I said and shook his hand.

            He led me over to the woman who despite her white hair and a stooped posture had a smooth unwrinkled face and startlingly green eyes.

            ‘May I introduce my employer Madame Teng,’ said Robert. (...)

‘The Nightingale is his master,’ said a voice behind me.

            I turned to find a stocky black woman in a strapless red dress cut low enough to show off broad muscled shoulders and cut high enough to reveal legs that could do an Olympic-time hundred metres without taking off the high heels. Her hair was shaved down to a fuzz and she had a wide mouth, flat nose and her mother’s eyes.

From WhispersUnderground, by Ben Aaronovitch