Broken Homes pg-4

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘And in the winter?’

  ‘In the winter she curls up around a good book and dreams away the cold.’

  ‘Where does she do that, then?’

  ‘There are some questions it’s not polite to ask,’ she said. ‘And some questions you shouldn’t ask unless you’re sure you want the answer.’

  We reached her car, which turned out to be another two-seater Mini Roadster a bit like the one that got torched at Covent Garden, only with a honking 2-litre diesel engine and painted fire-engine red.

  ‘What’s with you and the Minis?’ I asked.

  ‘The Thames Valley,’ she said as she climbed in. ‘It’s not just cottages and universities you know. There’s still a bit of industry left.’ Then she flicked her dreads over her shoulder and drove away.

  When she was safely out of sight I called Lesley.

  ‘I think it’s time we checked the basement,’ I said. ‘Bring the bag with you.’

  Lesley met me and Toby in the lift foyer of the lower ground floor. I took a moment to tell her about Sky the wood nymph. She seemed to find Beverley’s appearance amusing.

  ‘And she just happened to be there, didn’t she?’ she said. ‘Total coincidence.’

  We had two grey metal doors to choose from, one on either side of the entrance.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Lesley and she dumped the black nylon carry bag at my feet.

  ‘Either,’ I said. ‘It’s a circular plan — we should be able to work our way round.’

  Lesley chose a door at random and used the skeleton key that Sergeant Daverc had provided to open it up. She quickly found the light switch and stepped inside, so I grabbed the bag and followed. After a moment’s hesitation, Toby followed me.

  Inside, the room smelt of breezeblocks and moist cement. A row of metal lockers lined the exterior and interior walls. A door at the far end was marked with a yellow ‘Danger Electricity’ triangle. I figured the wet cement smell came from what looked like recent work on the floor, visible as a darker-coloured strip running across the room. I opened the bag and me and Lesley took a couple of minutes to tool up.

  ‘Feel anything?’ asked Lesley as I slipped on my Metvest, the undercover beige version without pockets that theoretically fits under your jacket.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Me neither,’ she said. ‘Do you think that’s normal?’

  ‘Too early to tell,’ I said.

  Once we had our Metvests on under our jackets we turned off our main phones and fired up a pair of airwave handsets that, while actually more expensive than our phones, were provided out of the police budget and thus expendable. These went on our tactical belts on which we also hung extendable batons, cuffs and pepper spray — but alas no taser yet.

  ‘They’re probably waiting for one of us to get freeze dried,’ said Lesley, whose attitude towards taser deployment was that people with heart conditions, epilepsy and an aversion to electrocution should not embark upon breaches of the peace in the first place.

  Once we were kitted up, all we were missing was a motion tracker — the kind that makes sinister pinging noises. Instead we had to make do with Toby. Given the electrocution warnings, I picked him up as Lesley used the skeleton key on the next door.

  ‘I want a nice clean dispersal this time,’ I said, and in we went.

  The trick to spotting vestigia, or any of the other weird sensory impressions you get hanging around magic or magical folks, is separating them from all the memories, daydreams and randomly misfiring neurones that is the background noise of your brain. You start by spotting things that couldn’t possibly be related to your current situation — as when you think of a barking dog while examining a man with his head knocked off. Your teacher reinforces your perception by confirming when you’re right. The more you practise, the better you get. And it’s not long before you ask the question — is this what causes schizophrenia?

  Well, if you’re me you ask that question. It never seemed to have occurred to Nightingale at all.

  When I raised it with Dr Walid he said one test would be for me to take anti-psychotic drugs and see if the vestigia went away. I declined, but I’m not sure whether I was more worried that it might work than that it might not.

  There’s a sort of background level of vestigia which I’ve come to expect pretty much everywhere in London. It falls away noticeably in the countryside, but you can get some very strong hot spots and what Nightingale calls lacunae — the remnants of recent magic. Because where you find high levels of vestigia, you generally also find the weird shit that the Folly is supposed to deal with. So me and Lesley have got into the habit of checking any new scene before we do anything else. This procedure, were we more integrated into the Met proper, would be called an Initial Vestigia Assessment or IVA pronounced i-VAH as in — I knew that Gandalf was a villain as soon I’d finished my IVA.

  As far as I can tell, vestigia build up over time. So modern buildings like Skygarden tend to exhibit low background levels.

  The next room was the building’s power incomer, its electrical substation, recently modernised judging by the clean and compact grey boxes that lined one wall. The lighting was good, all the better to see the many warning symbols — particularly the one which showed a body lying on the ground with a stylised lightning bolt in its chest.

  ‘Danger of death,’ read Lesley.

  ‘Moving on,’ I said.

  The next door put us in what I recognised as the base of the northern fire exit, and unlike everything else in the estate it was well designed. Fleeing residents were neatly channelled off the bottom flight of stairs and out through a pair of double fire doors.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘Old urine,’ I said. ‘And bleach.’ Almost from day one people would have used the stairwell as a convenient spot for a crafty slash and every two to three years the council would have brought in high pressure hoses and scrubbed it down.

  ‘Animals,’ said Lesley.

  ‘I think the dogs did it outside,’ I said. ‘It’s odd that the doors are securely closed.’

  ‘They’re alarmed,’ said Lesley pointing to a set of sensors at the top of the doors.

  ‘This block is on the council shit list,’ I said. ‘The response to repeated abuse would be to shut the alarms off permanently. The doors should be propped open with bricks and there should be needles and condoms all over the floor.’

  ‘Mysterious, yes,’ said Lesley and then nodded at Toby who was yawning. ‘Magical, no. Next door.’

  We found the stairs down in the next room. As far as I could tell, we’d been working our way around the circumference on the lower ground floor and were now opposite the main entrance foyer. The breezeblock walls were bare but there had been work done on the floor here too — a strip of freshly laid cement running from the interior wall to the outer. A new damp course? I wondered.

  A wide staircase descended to a familiarly shiny door with a County Gard logo and not one but two serious-looking padlocks in addition to the door’s own lock. All three were resistant to the skeleton key.

  ‘That’s a health and safety violation,’ I said. ‘We’ve got the same key as the Fire Brigade.’

  ‘What’s behind the door, do you think?’ asked Lesley.

  ‘The base of the central shaft for one thing,’ I said. ‘I’d like to find out what the fuck Stromberg was thinking of when he built it.’

  ‘We could burn the locks off,’ said Lesley.

  ‘Subtle. I like it.’

  ‘Nah, you’re right,’ said Lesley. ‘We can get Frank to ask County Gard to provide keys.’

  Frank Caffrey, as an official fire investigator, could just demand access. After Southwark got pasted for the six fire deaths at Lakanal House neither they nor their contractors were going to mess with the Fire Brigade. I wished I’d thought of that.

  ‘Let’s finish the rest of this floor,’ said Lesley, and that’s what we did. We worked our way through the southern
emergency exit, as suspiciously unsoiled as the northern one, the water incomer and another room with lockers. Apart from the now familiar fresh cement on the floor they were resolutely uninteresting. Toby didn’t so much as growl which was, if anything, said Lesley, a sign of even less than background magic.

  Our IVA completed, we put our kit back in the bag and let ourselves out into the foyer.

  ‘Well, that was rewarding,’ said Lesley as we rode up in the lift.

  ‘I don’t think this place was built for people,’ I said.

  ‘You say that about all modern architecture,’ said Lesley. ‘You want us all to live in pyramids.’

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘did you know the Egyptians invented the terrace?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘They did sleep on the roof in the summer though.’

  ‘That must have been nice,’ said Lesley.

  ‘I think Stromberg built this place as a magical experiment,’ I said.

  The lift door opened and we stepped out.

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘How many estates do you know that have wood nymphs living in the middle?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Peter,’ said Lesley with a sigh. ‘Maybe all of them do. Certainly everywhere we go we seem to be tripping over these supernatural buggers.’ She stopped suddenly outside our door and pointed at the door jamb — the slip of paper we’d agreed to leave wedged into it was missing. I unzipped the bag and extracted our batons and passed Lesley hers. They made comforting little shink sounds as we flicked them open.

  Lesley turned the key in the lock as quietly as she could, and nodded down from three. On zero she flung the door open and charged in, I went in a metre behind to avoid the embarrassing police dog-pile effect you get if the officer in front trips over something — say a skateboard. It’s hard to project the full majesty and authority of the law when Lesley is sitting on your back and calling you a muppet.

  Lesley went into the kitchen and yelled, ‘In here!’ And I piled in behind her.

  ‘I surrender,’ said Zach around a mouthful of cereal. He was sitting at our tiny kitchen table with a packet of Weetabix, an open loaf of bread, a now almost empty litre bottle of milk and open jars of raspberry jam and honey in front of him — both with knives stuck in them.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘I’ve got a way with locks,’ he said. ‘It’s a family thing.’

  ‘This would be the thieving side of the family,’ said Lesley.

  ‘There’s another side to his family?’ I asked.

  ‘Hey, leave my family out of this,’ said Zach, fishing the last two Weetabix out of the packet and then reaching for the milk.

  ‘Is there a reason you came round, or did you just run out of food?’ I asked.

  Lesley put the kettle on and snatched the milk from Zach before he could finish it.

  ‘There’s this pub up west that Lesley wanted to know about,’ said Zach. ‘I can get me and her in this afternoon.’

  I looked at Lesley, who shrugged.

  ‘We never did get to lay out our bait for the Faceless Man,’ she said.

  ‘What’s so special about this pub?’ I asked.

  ‘Full of fairies,’ said Zach.

  ‘I’ve got to come with you,’ I said.

  ‘Better if you don’t,’ said Zach as he spread honey on his cereal. ‘You’re a little bit too closely associated with the Thames girls, if you know what I mean. Makes the gentry a tad nervous.’

  ‘Besides, if we go in as a pair we will look like Old Bill. If I go in with Zach it will look more natural,’ said Lesley.

  ‘Just another victim of my legendary charm,’ said Zach.

  ‘And if our Night Witch is in there getting a rum and black?’ I asked. ‘What’re you going to do then?’

  ‘Trust me, bro, it’s not that kind of place, is it?

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘They wouldn’t let your boss through the door, and he’s respected,’ said Zach. ‘It’s all strictly fae plus one and no wizards.’

  ‘Except Lesley?’

  ‘Lesley’s the exception that proves the rule, ain’t she?’ said Zach and I couldn’t argue with that.

  ‘Are you going to clear it with Nightingale?’ I asked her.

  ‘Duh!’ said Lesley and handed me a cup of instant.

  ‘In that case, I’m going to take Mr Phillips up on his invitation. I bet he keeps an eye on who comes and goes,’ I said. ‘And while you’re out you can pick up some more Weetabix.’ I checked the kitchen. ‘And bread and the cheese and — did you eat the dog food?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Zach. ‘I fed the dog.’

  I checked Toby’s bowl and saw he was already working his way through a suitable pile.

  ‘Although I’ll put my hand up to having some of his biscuits,’ said Zach.

  13

  The Back of the Lorry

  In Berlin, the Weimar Republic a massive workers’ estate did decree. And they handed out the job to, amongst others, Bruno Taut who built his estate in the shape of an enormous horseshoe. Once Lesley and Zach had gone, I used our fluctuating WiFi to look it up on Google Earth. As I’d remembered it, Taut’s Hufeisensiedlung enclosed a park with a central pond. Stromberg had admired Taut enough to have his prints on the wall of his study and I knew enough about architects’ egos to know that they don’t stick potential rivals on their walls unless they really like them. Or perhaps there’d been a professional connection that went beyond architecture — could they have been colleagues? Members of the Weimarer Akademie der Hoheren Einsichten, the German equivalent of the Folly? Could he have been Taut’s protege? When the Nazis had taken power, Taut had fled to Istanbul and Stromberg to London. Nightingale had told me that the German expat wizards had either enthusiastically joined the fight or had been shipped to Canada. Had Stromberg kept his skills secret to avoid the fight? Given the subsequent casualty rate, I can’t say I blamed him.

  Had the Skygarden Estate been built in emulation of the Hufeisensiedlung only with a tower at its centre instead of a pond? And did it have some purpose beyond inefficiently housing large numbers of Londoners?

  I really didn’t think the Faceless Man would be taking this much interest unless it had.

  The WiFi connection dropped off and, search as I might, nobody else was offering free connections to the good people of Elephant and Castle. There were plenty of internet cafes in the immediate area, but I wasn’t that keen on doing without my TV that evening. Or at least that was the story I was planning to stick to.

  Betsy Tankridge lived four floors up from us in one of the four-bedroom flats. When I rang the doorbell it was opened by Sasha, who stared at me for a good fifteen seconds before asking what I wanted.

  ‘Is your mum in?’ I asked.

  It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for him to parse a simple question before he turned his back on me.

  ‘Mum,’ he yelled as he walked away. ‘Someone at the door.’

  As he stomped up the internal stairs his mum peered around the kitchen door and gave me a big smile.

  ‘Peter, come in,’ she said and bustled me into the living room before retreating back into the kitchen to rustle up tea and biscuits. I sat down in the sort of large leather sofa that my mum would have approved of, and checked the room. The sideboards I reckoned were genuine antique oak but the cupboards, complete with decorative plates, were the new Polish furniture — although the high-end stuff made from real wood cut from an identifiable tree. The top row of plates were from Royal Weddings starting with Princess Anne and ending with Will and Kate. The shelf below was all Royal Jubilees starting with the Silver Jubilee in 1977. Old Liz II looking increasingly dyspeptic with every plate.

  Mounted on the wall opposite the sofa was a 75 inch Samsung LED which neatly confirmed that I’d come to the right place.

  There were at least half a dozen pictures of Kevin, twice as many of Sasha — although mostly from when he was younger
and less sullen. There were older pictures of a pleasant looking white man with a square face and lank brown hair — including a couple of him in a wide-lapelled penguin suit and top hat getting married to a stunningly attractive Betsy. Mr Tankridge I presumed.

  Betsy came back and caught me looking, but instead of telling me about her husband she put her tea tray down on the coffee table and asked if I took sugar. She poured from a pot-bellied teapot hidden under an obviously hand-knitted tea cosy into two mismatched but clean mugs. She dropped in two sugar lumps from a red bowl with a green Easter egg frieze around its lip and handed me the mug.

  ‘I’ve only just moved down here and-’ I started.

  ‘Oh, where were you from before?’

  ‘Kentish Town.’

  ‘That’s in Camden isn’t it?’ asked Betsy.

  I said it was and this seemed to satisfy Betsy, who lifted her mug to her lips, took a big slurp and gave me a calculating look.

  ‘So what can we do you for?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know the area and I was just wondering if you could point me in the direction of a reliable secondhand shop,’ I said.

  ‘What you looking for?’ asked Betsy.

  ‘Just a TV for now.’

  Betsy gave me a happy smile.

  ‘Well, it just so happens that you’ve come to the right place.’

  ‘You’re mad to be moving in now,’ said Kevin in the lift going down.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. Because what with the council wanting everyone out it was only a matter of time before they started cutting off the electricity, or the water, or ‘forgetting’ to send the dustbin men around. I asked him why he was still there.

  ‘Can’t leave Sasha and Mum on their own, can I?’ he said. ‘Christ knows what would happen to them.’

  I thought it more likely that his dear old mum would happen to somebody else rather than the other way round. But I kept my mouth shut.

  ‘What about your brother, is he keen to move out?’

  ‘He lives in his own little world in his room, don’t he? Hardly ever comes out of that room,’ said Kevin. ‘And he won’t be here for much longer.’