What Abigail Did Tha Summer

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Foxes don’t care about scheduling and neither, apparently, did wandering teenagers. Indigo leads me around to where there is a gap in the fence.

  ‘That’s where Zebra reported they go in and come out,’ she says.

  ‘Is someone tailing the last one out?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course,’ says Indigo.

  I follow Indigo through the gap, but Simon uses one of the benches that back onto the fence to jump over. I hear him crash through some bushes and start laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask.

  ‘Cut myself,’ he says and, emerging from the bush, shows me the scratch on the palm of his hand. I give him some clean tissues to ball his fist around and stop the bleeding and we follow Indigo further into the bushes. I’m half expecting to run across the Cat Lady again, but instead we push out into a clearing right at the top of the mound. It’s hushed and quiet and you could be in a forest for all that you can hear the outside world.

  In the centre of the clearing is a silver and black microwave. A big one, the sort they use in cafés and canteens. The plug and electric cable are neatly coiled on a side bracket. The door is closed.

  Simon goes to open it but I tell him no.

  ‘Fingerprints,’ I say.

  Sitting in a box under my bed are the nitrile gloves that I bought to practise with my forensic kit. Peter says that the Feds always walk around with a couple of pairs in their pockets just in case. I put that on the list of things that I will start doing as soon as I get home.

  I tell Simon to take off his T-shirt.

  ‘Why?’ he asks.

  ‘I need something to cover my hands,’ I say, and he gives me one of his slow looks. ‘I can’t take mine off, can I?’ I say after a while.

  For a moment I think he’s going to ask me why not, but then he nods and pulls his T-shirt over his head. It’s red with a white stripe across the chest and when he hands it to me, it feels expensive.

  We crouch down by the microwave and I slip my hand into the T-shirt and reach out for the door.

  ‘What do you expect to find?’ Simon asks.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe it’s hands.’

  ‘What?’ I freeze before I touch the handle.

  ‘Maybe it’s full of hands,’ he says. ‘That he’s cut off as trophies.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ says Indigo. ‘The suspense is killing me.’

  I snatch the door open – before I chicken out.

  ‘Oh,’ says Simon, and sounds bare disappointed.

  The microwave is full of phones, neatly stacked to make maximum use of the space inside. Most of them are smartphones, screens dark, turned off or out of battery. A couple have LCD half-screens, also blank. I don’t touch anything but it looks like the inside of the microwave is dry and the phones aren’t damaged – one has a cracked screen, but that could just be wear and tear.

  A scenario is forming in my mind. The kids come here, drop off their phones, go wherever they’re going, then come back, pick up their phones and go home. The Feds will have been trying to track the kids’ phones, but getting stuck in the big open cell area that is Hampstead Heath.

  And maybe a microwave would shield them from triangulation.

  I bet Simon’s mum would know.

  ‘Everybody stand up, but don’t move,’ I say, which predictably causes Simon and Sugar Niner to make the same joke at the same time.

  ‘How can we stand up if we can’t move?’ they both say, but I ignore them.

  I tell them to stay where they are and look around to see if they can spot anything.

  ‘Anything what?’ asks Sugar Niner.

  ‘Anything left behind,’ I say.

  I’ve been in clearings like this before, down by railway lines, behind bushes in parks, in those ignored spaces between the blocks of an estate. Normally, once the locals have found them, they get filled up with rubbish, crisp packets, used condoms, whippets, fag ends, old syringes . . . all that kind of shit. I once found a hardened steel combat knife with a twelve-centimetre blade that I passed on to Peter in case someone had got themselves jooksed by it and it was needed in evidence.

  There was none of that in this clearing, which made me think that nobody was coming here to shag, do nitrous oxide or eat crisps. Just to stash their phones before they went wherever it was they were going.

  Which was definitely not normal behaviour.

  Simon spots it first – a splash of yellow half hidden in a bush by the desire path in and out of the clearing. I hand him back his shirt and go to have a closer look. It’s a yellow cotton shirt with white polka dots, sized for a small girl. I lift it up carefully by the collar and see that the trailing edges at the front are wrinkled and twisted. Somebody had been wearing this tied up, poor white trash style. I wonder why they abandoned it. I gingerly sniff it, and smell floral body spray and a hint of sweat. Otherwise it’s clean – I don’t think it’s been here long.

  ‘Can one of you track this by smell?’ I ask the foxes.

  There is an embarrassed silence.

  ‘The thing is,’ says Indigo, ‘we’re not very good on smell – good at hearing . . .’

  ‘We can orientate ourselves in relation to the Earth’s magnetic field,’ says Sugar Niner.

  ‘But not really with smell,’ says Indigo.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Sugar Niner.

  ‘We need a hound dog,’ says Simon, and Indigo huffs.

  Holding the shirt at arm’s length to minimise contamination, I pull out my phone and flip through until I find the most recently added number.

  Thistle picks up on the second ring.

  ‘Hello, Abi,’ she says. ‘You must want something.’

  I explain what I need and she tells me no problem.

  ‘I’ll send Ziggy,’ she says.

  Ziggy turns out to be the collie with the mismatched eyes that the foxes all call Alpha Dog. As he trots into the small clearing I can hear the foxes scrambling to clear the area. Only Indigo is staying, and she is cowering behind my legs and making occasional squeaking noises.

  Ziggy is in front of me and gives me the hard stare, so I crouch down so he can get a good look at how unimpressed I am.

  ‘This is important,’ I say. ‘I need to see where this came from. Can you do that?’

  According to this thing I saw on the internet, cats and dogs use expressions on us that they don’t use on each other. This being on account of the fact that we effectively co-evolved together. So unless sheep are susceptible to a look of long-suffering patience, I’m going to say that the one Ziggy gave me was reserved for humans.

  I hold out the yellow shirt for him, and Ziggy sniffs it a couple of times and then saunters off towards the gap in the fence. Indigo runs up my back and tries to perch on my shoulders again.

  ‘The game’s afoot!’ she cries. ‘Follow that dog.’

  21

  The House

  I’m standing outside a house on a lane off East Heath Road, a four-storey semi-detached place a bit like Simon’s house, only older. The house next door has a shallow roof and a half basement but this one, the house Ziggy has brought us to, is surrounded by a two-metre green wooden site hoarding and shrouded in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. There’s a builder’s placard halfway up, next to a blue and white sign with a drawing of a bodybuilder and WARNING ALARMED in red letters. There is an ordinary-sized door with a Yale lock and a double-sized gate with two heavy-duty padlocks next to that.

  Ziggy pads over to the hoarding, puts his paw on the door and turns his head to give me a look.

  ‘Yes, I’m impressed,’ I say. ‘That’s some proper tracking there.’

  The look turns long-suffering, like my history teacher when he thinks I’m going to ask him a question.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Give mad love to Thistle
for me.’

  Ziggy nods, turns and walks away.

  Once the collie is out of sight, Indigo pops out of a hedge like a ninja and I spot Sugar Niner, Zebra and a couple of foxes I don’t recognise skulking in the gardens on either side of the house. Indigo jumps from a wall onto Simon’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem to notice, let alone mind, the weight.

  ‘Sugar,’ says Indigo, ‘take a team and check the back for access, put surveillance in place and report back.’

  ‘Roger,’ says Sugar Niner, and vanishes into the next-door garden followed by a couple of foxes.

  ‘Zebra,’ says Indigo. ‘Head back to Lucifer and report.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I say.

  ‘Wait one,’ Indigo tells Zebra, and then asks if I’ve got any instructions.

  ‘Ask Lucifer to take the teams off the perimeter and put them around the Tumulus,’ I say in my best Nightingale voice. ‘Track any Sugars coming out, but intercept any trying to get in.’

  ‘Intercept?’ says Zebra in shock.

  ‘We’re Charlie Fox,’ says Indigo. ‘Covert only. Dogs, cats, yes. But we don’t do human sanctions.’

  ‘Ow,’ says Simon as Indigo inadvertently digs her claws in, and I remember what ‘sanction’ means in spy talk.

  ‘Don’t be tapped,’ I say. ‘Warn them off. We just need to keep it clear until the Feds arrive.’

  ‘What makes you think they’re going to find it?’ asks Lucifer.

  ‘Because I’m going to call them and tell them where it is,’ I say.

  Now, I should have called Nightingale. But, you know what? It never even occurred to me. Instead I pulled my precious emergency burner phone out of my backpack, because the Feds can track your SIM card and the IMEI number that identifies your phone. That’s why swapping out your SIM when you want to stay anonymous is a waste of time. The Feds can also identify your voiceprint if you’re stupid enough to leave a message, which was why I coached Indigo in what I wanted her to say. She memorised it first time – they’re good at remembering stuff, these foxes are. On account of them not being able to write shit down.

  I hold the phone up so Indigo, still perched on Simon’s shoulder, can leave a message at Holmes Road station, for whom it may concern, as to what they can find at the Tumulus. Then I take the battery from the phone, just to be on the safe side, and tell Indigo to climb down off Simon.

  ‘Do we go in?’ asks Simon.

  ‘We should have a look,’ I say. ‘Make sure it’s the right house.’

  I push at the small door, because you never know until you try, but it’s firmly shut.

  ‘Give us a boost,’ I say, and Simon puts his hands around my waist and lifts me until I’m sitting on his shoulder. Like we’re acrobats or something. On the other side of the hoarding is the remains of a front garden, flower beds crushed under a muddy yellow skip, and two pallets piled high with concrete blocks and stuff and covered in blue tarpaulin.

  Unless you’re yearning for another long talk with the Feds, it’s not a good idea to be caught being black, young and leering over someone’s fence. So I make Simon move to the right so I can hop over and use the skip to climb down.

  It’s quiet inside and feels abandoned. The skip is empty and there is grass growing up between the gaps in the pallets – it’s like nobody has worked here for weeks, maybe months. A steep flight of steps leads up to the front door, but the rest of the house is hidden behind scaffolding and plastic sheeting that covers it all the way down into the basement area.

  There’s steps down, but if there’s a door into a separate basement flat it’s been sealed up behind the scaffolding too.

  Peter and Nightingale have been teaching me how to sense vestigia – the traces that magic and stuff leaves behind it. Not just magic, though. It’s like people leave behind traces too – very faint but it builds up. Trouble is, you’ve got to learn the difference between your certified vestigia and the random shit that goes on in your head.

  Very random in your case, says Peter. But he can talk.

  I’m being quiet and blank like they taught me. But all I’m getting is a whispering sigh, like the wind through trees in winter, like someone being sad on the other side of the library shelves at school.

  Indigo jumps over the fence and joins me.

  Then Simon opens the small door, the one I thought was locked, and comes into the front garden.

  ‘Are we going inside?’ he asks.

  ‘Maybe,’ I say, and check the Chubb lock on the back of the small door. The latch bolt is still extended and the strike plate is undamaged, so no way Simon should have been able to push it open.

  I know all the names of the parts, because I’ve been helping Peter learn how to finesse locks with magic. It’s still easier to blow the whole lock out. But if you’re going to do that, Peter says, why not just use a battering ram like normal police?

  I turn the lock so that the latch bolt is fully retracted and click the safety into position so it stays open. Then I close the door and wedge a brick against the bottom so it won’t blow open.

  I turn and find Indigo and Simon looking at me with the same expression on their faces – which is a neat trick when you think about it.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing,’ they both say at the same time.

  ‘Are we going inside?’ asks Simon.

  I say that we should have a look first, but that’s easier said than done since the front windows are covered and the passageway on the right side is blocked by building materials. The front door is the original, I think, made of dark wood with panels, a brass letterbox and knocker. Above is a stained-glass window in the shape of a peacock’s tail.

  I ask Indigo whether she can hear anything.

  ‘No,’ she says, her ears cocking forward. ‘Nothing’s moving about inside.’

  ‘Try the door,’ I tell Simon, and he grins and trots up the stairs. Me and Indigo follow so he doesn’t get carried away.

  Simon pushes the door and it opens way too easily. Just like the small door in the hoarding.

  I put my hand on his arm to stop him rushing inside.

  ‘We’ve got to have a look,’ he says.

  I’m thinking that the door shouldn’t be open. But if Jessica, Natali and Goth Girl and all have been traipsing in and out, then it would have to be open – right? And I didn’t want to call Nightingale and have him come over and find it’s just an empty house.

  You always watch scary movies and laugh at the white girls that go inside when they should be hopping a bus to the next postcode. But, real talk – most of the time you’re not in a film and the music doesn’t go all minor key to clue you in.

  So in I go – with Simon and Indigo right behind me.

  22

  Doing It Like the White Girls Do

  Inside is dark and sad.

  There’s a hallway with stairs going up, doors to the left and, at the far end, a gloomy rectangle leading to probably the kitchen. Or, going by the state of the hall, what’s left of the kitchen. The builders obviously started stripping the walls and stopped before they’d finished, ’cause there’s layers of wallpaper ripped off to reveal bare brick or older paper.

  They left the green tiling just inside the door though – probably not worth looting.

  ‘Anything?’ I ask Indigo.

  ‘Nothing,’ she says.

  ‘We all stay together,’ I say. ‘No splitting up.’

  ‘Roger,’ says Indigo, and Simon nods.

  Through the door is the front room/back room knock-through that Peter says is a sign that you’re rich enough to have more rooms than kids. It’s bigger and taller even than Simon’s house. The double-height windows at either end allow in enough light, despite the plastic sheeting, to reveal it’s been stripped, too. Not just the wallpaper – there’s a rectangle around a bricked-up firep
lace where a mantelpiece has been ripped out. The skirting boards have gone and the plug sockets are pulled out to expose the wiring behind.

  ‘Don’t touch the wires,’ I say as we walk through the room.

  ‘Why haven’t they finished?’ asks Simon.

  ‘Who?’ asks Indigo.

  ‘The builders,’ he says. ‘Everything is ready but they’ve just left it.’

  ‘They could have run out of money,’ I say, which is unlikely on account of if you’re rich enough to buy a house this far up Hampstead Hill you’re not going to be hurting for paper. Something to check, though – afterwards.

  Simon stops suddenly and points at the second fireplace, the one that once served the back room, and says, ‘Toast – on a fork.’

  This one is missing its mantelpiece, too, but still shows green ceramic tiles and a tangle of gas pipes where a heater had once been installed.

  ‘If there was a fire,’ he says wistfully.

  ‘We’ll see what’s in the kitchen, though, won’t we?’ I say.

  Nothing is in the kitchen, not even the cabinet units, although you can see where they’d once been. Wires dangle from the ceiling and spew out of gaps in the wall. The old lino is still in place, marked with clean rectangles outlined with sharp-edged grease stains.

  There’s a back door and windows, but I can’t see out to the garden because of the plastic sheeting.

  ‘Upstairs?’ I say.

  So up the stairs we are going, but slowly and quietly because something is jarring me. Indigo scampers up to the landing and stops – ears pricking. The treads and risers are bare wood and the white paint of the balusters is chipped and scarred. It’s really quiet, like ‘too quiet’ quiet.

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ says Simon, and laughs for no reason.

  ‘There’s nothing up here,’ says Indigo, but we check anyway and find two more big rooms, stripped and cold in the milky light from the windows. A third room that obviously was a bathroom – no en suite, I notice – has white tiles still clinging to the walls in patches, a pile of rubble under the window, and a pair of copper pipes rising out of the floor.