After less than a hundred metres Foxglove was showing signs of serious distress and I felt her stumble a couple of times, but we’d reached the shopping parade by then and fortunately the Nisa Local was still open. A nervous black girl of about fifteen who was manning the tills gave us a weary look of disgust as we rushed in. Then got all confused when I told her I was a police officer and that I needed to use a phone.
‘You have to ask the manager,’ she said.
‘I know you’re carrying one,’ I said. ‘Hand it over.’
She mumbled something about not being supposed to carry them on the shop floor but handed over her HTC OnePlus 2. I retreated with Foxglove into the corner where we’d be hidden by the shelves and called Guleed. I probably should have called CCC first, but I didn’t want to take the chance that Chorley still had access to a leak.
Foxglove, who seemed much less panicky now she had a roof over her head, was staring with fascination at the dental health section we were hiding behind. She took down a packet of mint floss and sniffed it.
‘Behave,’ I said.
Guleed picked up and I told her where I was, and where Chorley’s lair was, and let her get on with it. She said she’d pick me up personally. Which I took to mean she was worried about leaks, too.
A thin, overworked, middle-aged white woman appeared at the end of the aisle and nervously asked if we were really police. I said that I was, in my brightest reassuring-the-public voice and handed back the phone.
‘This is a witness. I’m afraid there’s been a serious incident, but there’s no need to worry. My colleagues will be here soon.’
‘Can I help?’ she asked
I told her we were fine – only to discover that Foxglove had been squirting hand sanitiser on the floor behind me. The woman smiled madly and backed off – no doubt to dial 999 as soon as she thought we couldn’t hear her.
Foxglove showed me an air freshener and gave me a quizzical look.
‘Later,’ I said, and made her put it back.
Guleed arrived three minutes later, coming through the front door with her extendable baton in her hand – at which point the manager ran off and locked herself in the staff loos.
Guleed put it away when she saw us, and looked me up and down, then peered around me to smile at Foxglove, who was using me as a shield.
‘Nightingale’s setting up a perimeter,’ she said. ‘And who’s this?’
‘This is Foxglove,’ I said. ‘Foxglove, this is Sahra – a friend of mine.’
Foxglove reached around me to shake Guleed’s hand.
‘Nightingale wants to know if it’s safe to breach,’ said Guleed.
I said I didn’t know, but anyway we had to put Foxglove somewhere before we could raid my former prison. Since the only safe place I could think of was the Folly, that meant Nightingale had to tool over to the Nisa Local to inspect her first. He arrived just before the area manager did and Sahra had to escort him to see the manager.
When the cop cars come screaming to a halt outside a bank robbery, the bit the films don’t show is the two hours of us milling about as we all sort out who’s going to do what to who and under what legislation.
And that’s not counting the risk assessment.
I felt Foxglove tremble at Nightingale’s approach, but he was careful and patient and we all got through the introductions without anyone biting anyone. I briefed him on what I knew about the layout of what had indeed turned out to be a former factory and on my best guess of the likelihood of booby traps (high) or minions (low). We had two options – raid the premises immediately or wait to see if Chorley and Lesley returned.
‘I definitely heard them moving a second bell,’ I said.
‘The longer we wait, the greater the risk of squandering this advantage you’ve bought us,’ said Nightingale immediately. ‘I’ll lead the raid in now to deal with any booby traps. Sahra will come in behind me with her team to make any necessary arrests and secure for a search.’ He looked at me and then at Foxglove – tilting his head slightly to the side. ‘You can accompany Foxglove back to the Folly and stay with her.’
We couldn’t risk leaving a former associate of Chorley unsupervised – not least because we didn’t know how Molly would react.
‘Dr Walid will meet you there,’ said Nightingale. ‘Any questions?’
‘Sahra has a team now?’ I asked, and glared at Guleed, who gave me a smug smile.
Nightingale shook his head. ‘Off you go, Peter. I’ll let you know as soon as the area’s secure.’
Me and Foxglove rode home to the Folly in the back of a pool car. Foxglove spent the journey staring excitedly out the window although she flat out refused to put on her seatbelt.
For obvious reasons, I didn’t want Foxglove’s arrival at the Folly to be through the tradesman’s entrance. So I had the pool car drop us off at the Russell Square entrance. Then I took her hand and led her inside. I hesitated in the lobby to see whether the famous ‘defences’ had any objection to Foxglove, who had immediately been drawn to the statue of Isaac Newton.
Nothing zapped anybody, so obviously the ‘defences’ weren’t against the likes of Foxglove. What had those, justifiably paranoid, wartime wizards been worried about?
There was nobody in the visitors’ lounge or even the atrium. The police staff would have headed home so I supposed everyone one else was out raiding chez captivity.
I called out for Molly.
‘I’ve brought someone to see you,’ I said.
There was a terrible crash and I turned to see Molly sweeping towards us, having dropped her tray on the tiles behind her – a milk jug on its second bounce and leaving a spray of white behind it.
Before I could move, Foxglove ducked around me and rushed to meet Molly. They both stopped suddenly, facing each other, centimetres apart. Molly’s hand rose as if to touch Foxglove’s face and hesitated. But Foxglove seized it with her own and pressed it to her cheek. Molly’s face crumpled into an agonised shape and I thought I saw tears before she buried it in Foxglove’s shoulder.
Then, with astonishing speed, they swept away out through the servants’ door by the east staircase.
That’s one problem down, I thought. Time to call Bev.
Only then Dr Walid arrived and did, fairly unobtrusively, medical things to me right there in the atrium before declaring that I seemed fine. But if I felt dizzy, fatigued or nauseous I was to let him know immediately. I said, while guiding him firmly towards the front door, that of course I would. But what I was really looking forward to was my bed. Thank you for your concern.
‘And likewise if you have any psychological symptoms,’ he said, which made me pause.
‘What kind of symptoms?’ I asked.
‘Recurrent memories, flashbacks, upsetting dreams, avoidance, negative feelings, emotional numbness and memory problems,’ he said.
I informed him that if any of that happened he’d be the first person I’d call, which mollified him enough to get him out the door.
‘Don’t forget to call your parents,’ he said, as I practically closed the door in his face.
So I called my parents on the Folly landline and got my mum’s voicemail, thank God. I left a brief reassuring message and was about to finally call Beverley when I heard Toby bark and found him sitting beside me with his lead in his mouth.
‘Five minutes tops,’ I said, but in the end the walk was more like fifteen.
Then I phoned Beverley.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
I told her and asked where she was.
‘Outside the back door,’ she said.
‘Why didn’t you come in?’
‘You know why,’ she said.
So I ran to the back and found her waiting for me in her emergency work jeans and the purple sweatshirt she wears when everything else is in the wash. She
grabbed me and kissed me and we snogged on the doorstop like we were both fifteen and had disapproving parents. She tasted of liquorice and seawater and that first ever rum and Coke I’d sneaked, courtesy of an older cousin, at a christening.
‘Are you sure you can’t come in?’ I asked during a break.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’ve been camping in your Tech Cave since you went missing.’
So I followed her up the spiral staircase to find that she hadn’t been so distressed that she hadn’t brought in an inflatable mattress and nicked bedding from Molly to cover it. Any of my stuff that had got in the way had been pushed to the sides and then covered with a layer of discarded underwear.
I didn’t care. I was so pleased to see her I didn’t even think of tidying up until the next morning.
30
Skulking for Cheese Puffs
There was no sign of Molly, or breakfast, the next morning. So me and Guleed picked up something on the drive down to Coldharbour Lane. Nightingale had stayed overnight to supervise the POLSA team and to step in, in the event of demon traps or vengeful spirits – and to deal with the curious foxes.
‘Abigail’s big talking ones,’ said Guleed.
The ‘factory’ as we were now calling it was, like most of London’s vestigial industrial capacity, built beside railway tracks. It had been put up in the 1930s complete with its own goods sidings to supply raw materials. Once freight had shifted firmly to motor vehicles in the 1950s the sidings went derelict before being redeveloped as an industrial park in the 1980s.
Since London’s railway tracks have long served as conduits for its urban wildlife, it didn’t surprise me the foxes were taking an interest. I asked if Nightingale had taken a statement.
‘They might have spotted something,’ I said.
‘Abigail’s doing that this afternoon,’ said Guleed. ‘I think you’ll find it’s on your action list.’
The place was smaller than I remembered it, consisting of two workshops, a loading bay, a row of rooms that included the one I’d been in when they de-hooded me, two obvious storerooms, one with the sort of sad kitchen seen in every small office, shop and workshop in the country. Once I’d had a look in the fridge I was glad they’d been feeding me takeaway.
‘Yeah,’ said Guleed when I slammed the fridge door shut. ‘Nightingale thought there might be something alive in there.’
I thought of the Quality Street tin of vampire and really hoped their biocontainment had been somewhere else.
Someone had put a ladder down into the oubliette so that forensics could have a good rummage. I didn’t go down, but the mildew and damp smell was strong – had Foxglove’s bubble of faerie somehow inhibited decay? Or had it just masked it, like perfume over sweat?
One of the forensic techs asked if I wanted anything brought up.
‘Just any clothes and art you find down there,’ I said.
Foxglove would get her drawings back, although I did hear a rumour that a particularly fine but unfinished sketch of me imitating the centrepiece statue of Piccadilly Circus found its way into the Charing Cross canteen.
I made a point of bagging any art materials I found and labelling them as evidence to be shipped to the Folly.
What we didn’t find was a bell or any vehicles in the loading bay.
All the businesses in the industrial estate had CCTV, but by an amazing coincidence none of them covered the access road. The camera positioned at the street entrance to the estate had perfect coverage of both the access road and Coldharbour Lane. It had already been digitally copied and farmed out to teams at Charing Cross and the Folly. Meanwhile house-to-house teams were confirming what traffic movements belonged to the other businesses on the estate, even as our forensic accountants investigated to see if they were connected to Martin Chorley in some way. Guleed estimated that at least eighty people were now working directly off this one scene.
‘I can’t help worrying that this might be the entire purpose,’ said Nightingale.
‘He’s tricky, isn’t he?’ I said.
‘Worse,’ said Nightingale. ‘He builds his plans with multiple redundancy. Had you not escaped then we would be deprived of a major asset. But since you did, we’re forced to expend matériel chasing leads.’
‘That’s to our advantage though, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘We have personnel and an overtime budget.’
‘Not an unlimited budget. Not for this level of operational tempo.’
I pointed out that Chorley must have a deadline too.
‘Why else grab me?’ I said. ‘And Lesley practically said as much.’
‘Yes,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m not sure that’s much comfort.’
What was comforting was that one of the CCTV teams had managed to identify the Sprinter van that been used to deliver me to the factory. It was clearly visible turning off the lane at one in the morning and then departing two hours later, sporting different plates. Between then and my escape a total of twenty-eight separate vehicles had come and gone the same way. All but a couple had been traced, their owners interviewed and their current whereabouts ascertained.
The lack of bell disturbed me.
‘The bell was in there,’ I said.
‘Well, it didn’t go out the front,’ said Guleed. ‘And we haven’t found a back door yet.’
‘Let’s see what the Fox Whisperer finds out,’ I said.
One of the police staff dropped off Abigail before lunch and we pushed our way through some scrub down to where a fence marked the border of the railway tracks. We stopped there and Abigail extracted a Tupperware box from her shoulder bag and opened it. Inside were genuine Molly-baked cheese puffs.
I asked whether Molly was cooking again, but Abigail said no.
‘I keep a stash of these in the fridge just in case,’ she said.
‘So what now?’ I asked, making a sly grab which got my hand slapped.
‘On past form, anything from thirty seconds to five minutes,’ she said, ‘With an average arrival time of around two minutes.’
It was less than sixty seconds later that a large dog fox strolled up with the ‘Yeah, what?’ of a creature who’s figured out that they don’t allow hunting dog packs in built-up areas.
‘Wotcha, Abi.’ Its voice was breathy but surprisingly deep and cockney.
‘All right,’ said Abigail.
‘Is that a cheese puff?’ said the fox, sidling closer.
‘What do you think?’ asked Abigail.
‘Is there any chance of that becoming my cheese puff?’ he said.
‘Don’t know,’ said Abigail. ‘It depends on whether you’re going to be helpful or not, don’t it?’
The fox bobbed his head.
‘How can I be of service?’ he said.
‘Who’s been watching this place?’ she asked, and I thought – what the fuck?
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said the fox. ‘Honest.’
Abigail folded her arms and tapped her feet.
‘All right,’ said the fox. ‘Here’s my problem, right. If I bring you the one who might have been keeping an eye on this place, then they’re going to be rewarded with a cheese puff – yes?’
‘Possibly,’ said Abigail.
‘But what of I, the one which facilitated this engagement without whom no information would be exchanged,’ said the fox. ‘What reward for myself?’
‘I might give you a cheese puff,’ said Abigail.
Reaching into the box, she produced a cheese puff and handed it to me. The fox watched me intently as I took a bite – it was delicious.
‘Cheddar with a hint of thyme,’ I said. ‘Also, crumbled bacon.’
The fox gave a low whine.
‘Might give me one?’ he said. ‘How might “might” become “will”?’
Abigail took out anothe
r cheese puff, took a bite and waved the remainder around for emphasis.
‘That depends upon how long me and this one have to spend waiting for you,’ she said.
‘I see,’ said the fox, turning and vanishing back into the undergrowth.
I eyed up the remaining cheese puffs.
‘Do you think he’s going to be long?’ I asked.
‘Nah,’ said Abigail. ‘The watcher will be his mate – he knew what we were after, but by talking to us first they get two bites of the cherry, don’t they?’
‘That’s sly,’ I said.
‘That’s foxes, isn’t it?’
The fox came back with his mate, a vixen with a particularly long face. They sat on their haunches side by side.
‘Hello,’ said the vixen. ‘Let’s have it then.’ Her voice had a higher register but seemed just as cockney.
‘Have what?’ asked Abigail.
‘The cheese puff,’ said the vixen.
‘Let’s get your report first,’ said Abigail. ‘Then we’ll talk baked goods.’
‘This is a bit of an impasse, isn’t it? Because I’m not about to cough up what I’ve got without something upfront,’ said the vixen.
Abigail removed another cheese puff, broke it in half and threw one bit to each fox. They caught them neatly out of the air and ate them in a single bite. Long tongues emerged to lick the crumbs off their muzzles.
‘Now,’ said Abigail. ‘Your report.’
The report was oddly full of jargon. The foxes spoke of being covert and not wanting to risk being blown by being too obvious while they maintained eyes on the opposition assets. Some of it was incomprehensible: mouse-time, first and second dark all related to times of day, and Abigail had to translate. Still, since the vixen had watched with great interest as me and Foxglove had run down the access road in our rush for freedom and a local convenience, we had a fixed point to work our timings around.
Two big smelly metal boxes had left the factory the previous mouse-time, which Abigail translated as early evening. Two vans which had not registered on the CCTV camera that covered the entrance from Coldharbour Lane.
Lies Sleeping Page 27