Lies Sleeping

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Which they did, with speed and reproachful looks. And I noticed they knew exactly who we were talking about.

  ‘Does anyone else go in and out of that floor?’ I asked.

  Not that they knew of. And the unfurnished floor was not in common use – bought and paid for, but the client had yet to move in. Zach, who they knew as Mr Henry Hodgekins, made periodic visits and had his own pass. Later they’d furnish us with dates and descriptions and, reluctantly, financial information. But we didn’t have time for that now. We did show them a picture of Lesley and asked if it rang any bells. None, they said. But this was Lesley with her new changeable face – she could go in and out all day and they might never know.

  ‘What do you reckon?’ asked Carey, flushed but pleased with himself.

  ‘We’ve got to go after him,’ I said.

  ‘And if she’s up there? Or something worse?’

  I keyed Nightingale on my Airwave and got Guleed instead.

  ‘We’re ten minutes out,’ she said.

  I looked over at Carey, who shrugged and then nodded.

  ‘We’re going up,’ I told her.

  ‘Be careful,’ she said.

  The security guard, whose name turned out to be Mitchell, came with us to facilitate access through the barriers and guide us around the fish tank, under the escalators and into the correct lift.

  It was a fast lift, but we rode up with the nagging worry that Lesley was already riding down in the adjacent shaft. The walls were glass, so we would have got a good view of her thumbing her nose as she went by. We did get a really good view south over the City proper, framed by the Gherkin and the NatWest tower and cranes rearing like flagpoles over every new development. Through the new construction I caught sight of the river, the fake blades of the Ronson and the gap where Skygarden used to be.

  I couldn’t quite get the angle to see St Paul’s. It was a way to the west, built on the hill on the other side of the Walbrook. I wondered if that was significant.

  ‘We should have waited,’ said Carey. ‘And locked down the place.’

  Which is the age-old dilemma, when chasing a suspect into a big building.

  ‘We just have to hope she doesn’t know we’re coming,’ I said. ‘You ready?’

  Carey pulled his X26 from his shoulder holster and checked the charge. Following the operation in Chiswick, Seawoll had insisted that Carey and Guleed were routinely armed. Carey, who could moan about an overtime bonus, had never complained once about carrying the bulky thing.

  The lift slowed, pinged and opened its doors on to the thirty-fourth floor. The lobby beyond was small, windowless and dimly lit. With its durable peach coloured carpet, neutral coloured walls and sturdy hardwood fire doors it looked temporary – a placeholder.

  Mitchell the guard indicated an electronic touch lock by one of the fire doors and pulled a key card from his pocket.

  ‘This should open it,’ he said.

  Carey took the card from his fingers and shushed him when he tried to protest. I gently pushed him away from the door so he wouldn’t be in the line of fire or in our way, and nodded at Carey.

  Carey pressed the card to the touch lock – and nothing happened.

  He tried a couple more times and we both turned to glare at Mitchell, who cringed.

  ‘It should work,’ he hissed.

  We pointed out, in low whispers, that it obviously didn’t.

  ‘It’s supposed to open everything,’ whispered Mitchell. ‘For safety.’

  ‘Well, obviously it doesn’t,’ said Carey.

  Mitchell said if we would just give him a moment he’d fetch another card, and we let him scuttle back down in the lift.

  Carey gave me an inquiring look, I nodded, and we switched off our Airwaves and our phones.

  Then I blew the electromagnets that were holding the door closed.

  Modern office security and fire doors are designed to fail into an unlocked position so that cubicle monkeys can make a run for it in case of a fire. Disrupt the electrical supply and you can unlock them without breaking a sweat or blowing all the microprocessors in the vicinity and accidentally triggering the sprinkler system.

  But, in my defence, that only happened once and they’re planning to move New Scotland Yard to a new building in any case.

  There was a quiet thud as the magnets let go and I cautiously pushed the door open.

  Beyond was it was wide open – at least half the thirty-fourth floor’s available space, lit by the grey daylight slanting in through the glass cladding.

  Zach was reclining on the red leather sofa that faced the door, a can of Red Stripe in one hand and what would turn out to be, after later examination, an enormous spliff in the other.

  ‘You took your time,’ he said before turning his head. ‘I was going to spark up without you.’

  Despite this, me and Carey made a cautious advance – just in case it was a trap.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Zach, when he realised it was us. ‘And it was going to be sushi night too.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘What are you guys doing here?’

  Carey strode forward and, before I could stop him, punched Zach in the face – hard enough to stagger him backwards.

  ‘Where the fuck is she?’ he shouted.

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’ said Zach, clutching his face and backing away towards the wide windows and their expensive view of north London.

  I grabbed Carey’s arm before he could hit Zach again. He shrugged off my hand but stepped back, his hands raised, palms up to show that he was finished. I was gobsmacked. You have to be a bit aggressive to be a police officer, it’s the nature of the job. But I’d never seen David Carey so much as shout at a suspect before. He always said he was too lazy to hit someone.

  I pointed at the brass bed that sat incongruously in an open space and told Zach to sit on it. I looked at Carey to see if he was going to be trouble, but he just shook his head.

  ‘You watch him,’ I said. ‘I’ll do a quick search.’

  And it was a quick search, since it was standard open-plan office floor into which what looked like a pied-â-terre’s worth of furniture had been deposited. Then arranged into a wall-less imitation of a flat, with separate spaces for kitchen, bathroom, lounge and bedroom. It was creepily like a stage set or something out of a surreal episode of the original Star Trek.

  The furniture was all high end and I suspected that if I called up the John Lewis catalogue on my phone I’d find every single item. Except maybe the trio of creepy white busts with half-formed faces that lined the top of a dresser. Wig holders, I realised.

  ‘She used to put her masks on them,’ Zach explained later.

  Somebody was going to have to track the furniture in case Martin Chorley had been sloppy enough to use his own bank account to buy it. Likewise one of our forensic accountants would trace the ownership of the office space back to whatever shell company Martin Chorley had bought it with. How many of these front organisations could he have? And how many could he lose before his operation ground to a halt?

  As many as he needs, I thought. Not to mention other underhand details that we haven’t even thought of yet.

  ‘Can I least finish the spliff before the handcuffs go on?’ said Zach.

  ‘Only if you give me some,’ said Carey.

  16

  Stupidity Led

  We arrested Zach for obstruction of justice but not for possession – mainly because most of the evidence was missing and Carey had become worryingly cheerful. There was definitely something up with David Carey, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it – you can’t talk to a senior officer without dropping your mate in the shit. And your average police, especially your average male police, don’t like you insinuating that the job’s getting a bit much for them.

  There were probably some guidelines somewhere, but
I expect they were above my pay grade.

  I stayed at the open-plan flat overnight just in case Lesley was stupid enough to come back, while a couple of specialist DCs interviewed Zach for eight hours straight before coming back the next morning and doing it again for at least another six hours. If Zach told the truth at any point in the fourteen hours total, then nobody was able to prove it. The National College of Policing now use excerpts of the tapes for their advanced interview training course.

  We gave up on any notion that Lesley was going to appear that morning and, around ten o’clock I went back to the Folly for a wash. As I came in the back Toby ran up, barking in what would have gone into a police notebook as ‘an agitated fashion’.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ I said. ‘I don’t care.’

  But Toby kept up sharp little yaps in the manner of a dog who had been putting in some practice recently, and could probably keep the noise up indefinitely.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Go on, then.’

  Toby danced back a couple of lengths and then turned and ran up the east stairs and up another flight until we were outside one of the teaching labs on the first floor. Toby scratched on the door and I heard the unmistakably Welsh Dr Jennifer Vaughan say, ‘For God’s sake don’t let him back in.’

  Just to be safe, I knocked on the door. In the Folly you never knew what you might be walking in on.

  Dr Vaughan asked who it was. I assured her it was me, and the door opened enough to reveal her face – albeit half covered by eye protectors and a filter mask. She looked down at Toby.

  ‘Get back, fiend from hell,’ she said. And then, to me, ‘You can come in as long as you keep him out.’

  It took a bit of effort to arrange, but once I’d got myself in I got a whiff of something that made me wish I’d stayed outside with Toby. Dr Walid and Abigail were dressed in the same style paper smocks, eye protectors and filter masks as Dr Vaughan and they were all clustered around a bench. On the bench was what I recognised as a stainless steel dissection tray.

  In the tray I caught a glimpse of pink and red viscera surrounded by russet red fur, before deliberately moving away so I couldn’t see any more. It had been large – dog- rather than cat-sized.

  I heard Toby scrabble on the other side of the door.

  ‘We can’t tell,’ said Dr Walid, ‘whether he’s upset over what we’re doing, or thinks we’ve started lunch without him.’

  Dr Vaughan picked up a scalpel and moved in to make another incision – Abigail leant forward to look over her shoulder.

  ‘What is it? I asked.

  ‘It was brought into the animal hospital in Islington,’ said Dr Walid. ‘But it died before it could be treated. We think it may be one of Abigail’s friends.’

  He looked at Abigail, who shrugged.

  ‘What make you think that?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, he’s much bigger than we would expect from an urban fox,’ said Dr Vaughan as she worried something with the tip of her scalpel, ‘and its brain is noticeably larger both in gross size and ratio to body mass. And, while I’ll admit that I am not a veterinarian, the fact that the arrangement of the larynx resembles that of a human is a bit of a giveaway.’

  ‘Are you sure we should be cutting it up quite so casually,’ I said, ‘if it’s one of the talking ones?’

  ‘We are not being casual,’ said Dr Vaughan. ‘This is a post mortem, not a dissection.’

  ‘That’s why Jen’s doing the cutting,’ said Abigail.

  ‘Do you have a cause of death?’ I asked.

  ‘Multiple injuries caused by massive blunt force trauma,’ said Dr Vaughan.

  ‘Hit by a car,’ said Abigail.

  ‘Most likely,’ said Dr Vaughan.

  ‘Notification is going to be a bit tricky,’ I said.

  Not that I wanted the job of telling this fox’s nearest and dearest.

  ‘Abigail’s thought of that,’ said Dr Walid proudly.

  Abigail held up a large brown paper forensic envelope and opened it so I could see the white towelling face cloth inside.

  ‘I rubbed it over his fur,’ she said. ‘Other foxes should be able to identify him by his smell.’

  ‘They’ll probably know he’s dead by the smell, too,’ said Dr Walid.

  ‘Handy. That’ll save you doing that part of the notification at least,’ I said, which got me stony looks from all three.

  ‘Don’t go anywhere without telling me first,’ I told Abigail, and then deliberately let Toby in on my way out. I admit that was a bit petty, but in my defence I hadn’t had much sleep and I was worried about Carey.

  I went to my room, set my phone alarm for later that afternoon and climbed into bed.

  I didn’t really feel like I’d slept much when the alarm woke me, but I had my part to play in the continuing interrogation of Zachary Palmer. We’d done good cop, bad cop, patiently-trying-to-understand cop, and now we were going to try ‘I’m on your side really’ cop. By rights the last one should never work in a million years, but you’d be surprised. Certainly some people currently doing time have been.

  I selected my wardrobe with care – jeans, trainers and my Adidas hoody of urban invisibility. Then I picked up a basket of surplus cakes from Molly, climbed into the Hyundai and headed off to Belgravia to liberate Zach the goblin boy.

  ‘I bought you a present,’ I said once he was out and we were safely in the Hyundai, and I passed over the basket.

  He gave me a sour look before opening the basket and extracting a cupcake decorated with a bunny face in blue and white icing. He brandished it at me.

  ‘Do you think this makes everything all right?’ he asked, but took a bite anyway. ‘It’s not going to work,’ he said through a mouth full of crumbs.

  ‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s not going to work.’

  ‘What isn’t going to work?’

  ‘You don’t get all friendly, give me cake and then think I’m going to lead you to my secret hideout.’

  ‘Do you have a secret hideout?’

  ‘See.’ Zach had a rummage in the basket to see what else he could find. ‘Want something?’

  I said I was trying to cut down.

  ‘More for me,’ he said.

  ‘Lesley said that you can’t stay in the same place for long. She said it was a compulsion because you’re part fae.’

  ‘That there is one of them things, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘One of what things?’

  ‘One of them things that is sort of true. But at the same time not really true. I like to move about, but I have stayed put once or twice – like in Notting Hill.’

  Where he’d happily lived in the unfortunate James Gallagher’s flat for at least three months without moving on.

  ‘I get restless sometimes,’ he said. ‘And sometimes I don’t.’

  Then to my surprise he snapped the basket closed, put it on his lap and folded his arms firmly over the lid.

  ‘Maybe you should leave Lesley alone,’ said Zach, after we’d sat in silence for a bit. ‘It’s not like there’s nothing else going on, is it?’

  People are often willing to tell you all sorts of secrets when they’re trying to hide something from you. You should always make a mental note – it may not be your case today but you never know, it might come round later.

  I asked what else was going on.

  ‘For one thing, the Vikings have gone at Holland Park,’ said Zach.

  ‘The Vikings?’

  ‘There used to be loads of ghosts at Holland Park.’

  I said I’d never had any reports of mass ghost sightings at Holland Park and Abigail had done a really serious search the year before.

  ‘Not on the main tube tunnels,’ he said. ‘The other ones. The secret ones.’

  A secret bunker had been a
djacent to the station during World War Two, which was now used as a private nightclub by my least favourite pair of Bev’s sisters and also connected to the Quiet People’s warren under Notting Hill.

  ‘Vikings?’

  ‘Danes maybe, Northmen certainly,’ said Zach. ‘Raiders from across the sea what got themselves done in by Alfred or Æthelred. One of them early kings.’

  ‘You saw them?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah,’ said Zach, ‘but you could hear them, couldn’t you? All screaming and yelling and lamenting.’

  ‘And now they’re gone?’

  ‘Leaving not a single solitary moan behind.’

  ‘You’re taking the piss, aren’t you?’

  ‘On my life,’ he said.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘do you want to go home or not?’

  Zach paused to give it some thought but in the end he relented – as I knew he would.

  ‘Stanmore,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a place in Stanmore.’

  We knew all about it of course – but I didn’t tell him that.

  I drove via Neasden to avoid the traffic and we were just crawling along the semi-detached and taxi gardened wasteland of Dudden Hill when Zach unexpectedly spilled the beans.

  ‘They want to summon Mr Punch,’ he said.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘Whatever for?’

  Lesley had been possessed by Mr Punch, aka the restless London spirit of riot and rebellion – or possibly by the ghost of an eighteenth-century actor who thought he was Mr Punch. It had all got a bit confusing towards the end of that particular case.

  ‘Lesley’s not . . .’ I started, but didn’t know where to go with the question. Not still working with Mr Punch? Under his influence? Possessed?

  ‘What do they want him for?’

  ‘Oh,’ Zach waved his hand airily. ‘They’re going to kill him.’

  I braked sharply to avoid hitting the back of a Volvo.

  ‘Isn’t he already dead?’

  ‘You tell me,’ said Zach. ‘You’re the one who’s met him.’

  ‘Can he be killed?’

  ‘Anything that’s alive can be killed. But I think this is more in the way of a sacrifice. You know, for the power.’