Tales from the Folly

by Ben Aaronovitch

  Once the ice was sufficiently broken so that everyone below the rank of Chief Superintendent felt free to dance, I grabbed the closest non-alcoholic drink and staggered over to a chair next to Peter.

  ‘That’s not a bad sound,’ he said.

  We sat watching Victor and Beverley groove for a bit and then Peter asked me if I’d noticed anything unusual about the River Lugg recently. Victor’s farm is bounded by the Lugg on its west side and Peter, inexplicably, always asks about it when we chat.

  ‘Why are you so interested in the Lugg?’ I asked.

  Miss Tefeidiad, who was sitting at the same table, took notice and leaned in.

  ‘Yes, Peter love,’ she said. ‘Why are you so interested?’

  Peter gave her a dark look and sighed.

  ‘There was…’ he hesitated, ‘an event.’

  ‘Is that what we’re calling it now?’ said Corve, returning with a third slice of cake. ‘I bet that’s not what Bev calls it.’

  I never did find out what Peter’s interest in the Lugg was—although now that when it’s too late, I have my theories—because Victor dragged me out to dance and after that we go so drunk that we didn’t have sex until late the next morning.

  * * *

  A year later Victor and I were walking, somewhat unsteadily, home from the Mortimer Cross Arms when we ran into the foxes.

  Not normal foxes, mind you, but the big talking buggers that introduced themselves to me the month after Peter, Beverley and I rescued the missing Rushpool kids. Since then they’ve been tipping me off about everything from tractor thefts to county line drug deals. And in return I scrupulously enforce the Hunting Act (2004) which outlaws hunting with hounds. And feed them custard doughnuts from Morrisons.

  We were crossing the bridge by the mill when one of them jumped up on the parapet and cried—‘All hail Dominic Croft, hail to thee Constable of the West Mercia Police.’

  It was lucky I was too sloshed to whack it with my baton. I was about to tell it to piss off when a second jumped onto the parapet next to it.

  ‘All hail Dominic,’ it cried. ‘Hail to thee Detective Sergeant.’

  By that time Victor and I had sussed what was going on, so we waited, swaying slightly, for the third fox. Who arrived late—scampering along the parapet to join its mates. Who tutted loudly.

  ‘Sorry,’ it said and then, louder, ‘All hail Inspector Croft—Geographic Commander Northern Herefordshire hereafter.’

  ‘You let them watch the Fassbender again,’ I said to Victor ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘You were on lates,’ he said. ‘And they promised to be good.’

  ‘Hail Dominic and Victor,’ the foxes chorused, ‘soon to be blessed above all other minor landowners in Herefordshire and the wider border regions.’

  ‘What?’ said Victor.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said the first fox.

  I asked for what, which seemed to confuse the foxes.

  ‘Nothing special happened this evening?’ asked the second fox.

  Victor gave this some thought.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the mushroom wellington was particularly fine.’

  The foxes exchanged looks and the first one coughed.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ it said. ‘Nothing to worry about, see you around.’

  Then they scarpered.

  ‘You said it was tonight,’ we heard one fox say as they vanished into the darkness.

  ‘I thought it was tonight,’ said a voice in the distance.

  ‘Obviously it isn’t,’ said the fox now much further away. ‘Is it?’

  We waited in a silence for a couple of minutes.

  ‘How drunk are we?’ asked Victor.

  ‘Not that drunk,’ I said, and with that we went home.

  Nothing else happened after that, and since I was off shift the next day I lay in our big ‘genuine farmhouse style’ brass bed until the late hour of eight AM when Victor, who’d got up at five, called me on my mobile.

  ‘Can you come down to the set aside field? ’ he said. ‘The one by the river.’

  * * *

  Victor has a set aside area which he has kept, despite the fact that the EU policy that set it up has been defunct for over a decade. The boundaries of several fields have been set back from the path of the River Lugg, creating a strip of uncultivated land varying between three to five metres wide. There insects buzz, amphibians croak and flowers, or possibly weeds, bloom. To give the rest of the fauna a look in, the talking foxes have agreed not to hunt there—the custard doughnuts are the price for that.

  Victor says the new straight boundaries make the fields easier to work and he thinks there are voles living in the riverbank, although currently we haven’t spotted one yet.

  What we could spot was the naked child poking around the muddy bank with a stick. He was a boy, aged about two, pale skinned with a shaggy mop of black hair and, when he looked our way, blue eyes. He looked well fed and, apart from the mud, well cared for. He gave us both a little wave before turning away to squat down and dig the soft earth around a tree root.

  I had a bad feeling about this—particularly when I remembered the foxes being accidentally prophetic the evening before.

  ‘What should we do?’ asked Victor.

  ‘Let’s keep an eye on him while I make a few phone calls,’ I said.

  The boy seemed perfectly content to poke around where he was while I called up control to see if there were any missing children reported and asked to be informed if any were in the next few hours.

  I looked up to find that the boy had dug a worm out of the soil and was holding it up to show us. Once he was sure he had our attention he dangled the worm over his open mouth and made as if to eat it.

  I’m from a big country family with uncounted nieces and nephews who I’ve been ‘volunteered’ to babysit over the years so I know a teasing bluff when I see it, but Victor was an only child.

  ‘Don’t eat that,’ he said and scrambled down the bank and plucked the worm out of the boy’s hands. ‘We need those to maintain the soil matrix.’

  The boy immediately threw his arms around Victor’s neck, forcing him to pick him up.

  ‘So where did you come from then?’ asked Victor.

  The boy solemnly stretched out an arm and pointed towards the middle of the river.

  I sighed and made the phone call I’d been putting off.

  * * *

  We got back to the farmhouse and found an ancient blue Land Rover parked in the yard. Inside, sitting round our kitchen table, were Miss Tefeidiad and her daughters, Corve and Lilly. They’d helped themselves to my Hobnobs I noticed but had made a big enough pot of tea for everyone.

  ‘Let’s be having you then,’ said Miss Tefeidiad and reached out to pluck the child from Victor’s arms. She handled him with brusque competence, checking fingers, toes, limbs and teeth in much the same way I’ve seen Victor check a lamb.

  ‘Seems to be all there,’ she said, and dumped him on a startled Corve.

  ‘Whatever should we do with him?’ said Corve.

  ‘Isn’t he your responsibility?’ I asked.

  ‘Well technically, maybe,’ said Corve gingerly passing the boy to Lilly. ‘This is a bit of a turn-up for us. In the old days we’d just let him get on with it.’

  ‘Get on with what?’ asked Victor.

  ‘Being alive,’ said Corve. ‘It’s not as if he’s in any danger from animals and the like, and back then the people would know well enough to leave him be.’

  ‘Not like now,’ said Miss Tefeidiad. ‘These days he could be hit by a car or run over by a combine harvester.’

  ‘And I’m not sure I even remember how to be a parent,’ said Corve. ‘We’re far too ancient and set in our ways. Aren’t we Lilly?’

  ‘Hmnnn,’ said Lilly and passed the baby to Victor.

  ‘Perhaps we should call Peter,’ I said. ‘This sounds like something the Folly would handle.’

  ‘I don’t see why we should be running t
o London every time we have a little problem up here,’ said Miss Tefeidiad with a sniff. ‘We’ve been solving our own problems for thousands of years—even if things have become complicated of late.’

  ‘Social services, then,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ said Miss Tefeidiad.

  ‘But he needs to be adopted,’ said Lilly. ‘That’s the modern way.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said her mother.

  I looked over to where Victor had plonked the boy down on the table and was making farting noises to keep him amused.

  ‘He’ll have to go to school,’ said Corve.

  ‘I don’t see why,’ said Miss Tefeidiad, ‘I can’t be doing with all this education.’

  ‘He’ll be able to make friends,’ said Lilly. ‘And blend in and move in a mysterious way.’

  ‘You don’t need an education to move in a mysterious way,’ muttered Miss Tefeidiad.

  ‘What we need is a nice local couple,’ said Corve.

  Ah, I thought, here it comes.

  ‘I taught myself how to move in a mysterious way,’ Miss Tefeidiad continued muttering.

  ‘Childless for preference,’ said Lilly.

  ‘I don’t see why we have to be mysterious in any case.’

  ‘Good, solid respectable people,’ said Corve.

  ‘We never had to be respectable in the old days.’

  ‘Pillars of the community,’ said Lilly and winked at me.

  ‘People had to be respectable to us.’

  ‘With the appropriate level of resources,’ said Corve.

  ‘Newly married perhaps,’ said Lilly, and all three mothers and daughters turned as one to smile at us.

  ‘No,’ I said, but I knew it was probably too late.

  ‘How much influence will he have?’ asked Victor.

  ‘Influence on what?’ asked Lilly.

  ‘The weather, soil structure, lamb survival rates,’ said Victor and I wondered, not for the first time, whether all farmers become obsessed or if only obsessive people become farmers.

  Corve hesitated.

  ‘Oh, tons of influence,’ said Lilly quickly. ‘Where his feet pass crops will grow, et cetera, et cetera.’

  ‘And we’re not without influence ourselves,’ said Miss Tefeidiad.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Corve, ‘We’d help out.’

  ‘We’d be like his fairy godmothers,’ said Lilly.

  Victor caught my eye and raised an eyebrow.

  Hail Dominic and Victor, the foxes had hailed us, soon to be blessed above all other minor landowners in Herefordshire and the wider border regions. The little bastards could have given us more of a warning.

  ‘He seems like a good little chap,’ said Victor.

  ‘Victor,’ I said slowly. ‘He’s the god of the River Lugg.’

  ‘Good. He can help with the drainage then,’ said Victor.

  ‘And with a pair of fine upstanding men like you for parents,’ said Miss Tefeidiad, ‘what could possibly go wrong?’

  At which point the baby Lugg peed on the table.

  Introduction: The Moments

  Sometimes you have an idea for something that is more of a mood than a story, something that will last a page or two and conjure an atmosphere. I decided to call these ‘moments’ and I include them in this volume for completeness.

  Moment One

  Nightingale—London September 1966

  Since the war it had become impossible, during his infrequent visits to London, to persuade Hugh to visit the Folly, so we naturally gravitated to the Navy and Military. The food was not a patch on Molly’s but like most of the survivors Hugh complained that there were too many ghosts at Russell Square for him to be truly comfortable.

  ‘I’m surprised that you stay there yourself,’ he’d said on an earlier trip. ‘But then you were always made of sterner stuff than us mere mortals.’

  The chaps have always needed to set me on a plinth this way. I can see it in their eyes. If the Nightingale can take it so can I, they say and who am I to disabuse them or tell them of the nights I have spent pleading with the spirits for some peace. If only there were ghosts in truth, after all I had been educated in a dozen different ways to rid myself of those.

  I, of course, could not abandon the Folly without first abandoning Molly and that was not something I was prepared to do. This duty had proved a strong enough thread upon which to hang my sanity, that and the stubborn streak I had no doubt inherited from my mother.

  Hugh was in fine fettle, that afternoon his son had recently taken a position with an old established firm in Hereford.

  ‘One had feared that he would be drawn to the bright lights of the Metropolis,’ said Hugh. ‘Instead I am graced by his presence most weekends. He’s taken a great interest in the bees of late.’

  ‘And how are the hives,’ I asked.

  ‘Thriving naturally,’ said Hugh. ‘I have a talent if I do say so myself.’

  I’ve always thought Hugh’s desperate striving for normalcy was undermined by that strange quixotic urge of his. I’ve seen photographs of his ‘tower’ in Herefordshire and his interest in insects predated the war. David used to rag him mercilessly about his frequent field trips abroad.

  ‘Hugh is our modern Darwin,’ he once said. ‘Only he takes his inspiration from beetles not snails.’

  I remember Hugh in those dark forests on the Ettersberg. He’d dropped his staff and picked up a rifle. With every action of the bolt he swore at the German infantry as if they were responsible for the things we’d seen.

  We all reached the limitations of our art that night.

  ‘And speaking of our mighty capital,’ said Hugh over our Castle Puddings. ‘I’ve been hearing the most extraordinary things. The gypsies who came for the harvest this year said that there was a woman who has been claiming to be goddess of the River Thames. A coloured lady no less.’ Hugh grinned and waves his fork as if it was my fault. ‘Is this true? Is it even possible?’

  I said that it seemed entirely possible and that I had met the young lady in question and she seemed entirely agreeable, if somewhat forceful. Hugh expressed interest in how the Old Man of the River might be taking this new turn of events and I told him with the same indifference he’d shown to events below Teddington Lock these last hundred years or so.

  ‘I thought the old town felt different,’ said Hugh and I felt a sudden moment unwarranted alarm.

  ‘Different in what way?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Hugh. ‘A certain frisson, a sense of excitement, youth, energy,’ he trailed off and shrugged.

  ‘The miniskirts?’ I said because Hugh had always had an eye for the ladies.

  ‘You don’t feel it then?’

  ‘I can’t say that I do.’

  ‘And yet you seem much more cheerful,’ said Hugh. ‘Has something changed?’

  ‘You remember what David used to say—“everything is change”.’

  ‘I remember that you invariably responded with plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose,’ said Hugh. ‘Perhaps you were both right.’

  After lunch I gave Hugh a lift to Paddington to catch his train. During the drive he suggested that I might trade in my perfectly serviceable Rover P4 for something more modern and went as far as to quote Marcus Aurelius—in the original Greek no less.

  Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars and see yourself running with them.

  I hardly saw what that had to do with my choice of automobile but once he’d the idea in my head I began to see the advantages of perhaps acquiring one of the new model Jaguars. At the very least it would impress my colleagues at Scotland Yard.

  And perhaps a new suit in the modern style to go with it.

  Moment Two

  Reynolds—Florence, Az. 2014

  There’s something about these motels that makes me want to talk to Jesus.

  When I was a girl, I used to talk to him all the time, before races, exams, the occasional date—we used to be much closer.
I had a friend in Jesus indeed. I suppose I stopped being so chatty as I got older. I reckoned Jesus did not need to know about every traffic jam on the way into the office, every burst pipe, lost cat, disappointing boyfriend—every trivial bump in my life. It’s not that I stopped thinking that Jesus loved me, I know that he loves me as he loves all of us, I just felt he might have more important concerns. The world being what it is.

  Still there’s something about these motel rooms that make me want to get down on my knees and pray, head down, eyes closed or as my Mama used to say—adopting the right attitude towards the Lord.

  I’m tempted to call Mama and talk to her instead, but she wouldn’t understand and in any event, I’m not supposed to discuss these cases with civilians. Not even my Mama. She’d probably tell me to stop overthinking things and count my blessings. Which I do on a regular basis.

  The motel room is painted a pale blue, there’s a microwave on top of the minibar and an old-fashioned TV that promises cable at a price. The bedspread has an old-fashioned floral pattern in grey and green. The bed is nice and firm, which I like because when the Bureau send you out they don’t spring for anything but coach. Although you’d be surprised how often the badge gets me an upgrade, especially out west. The air conditioning is good, thank God, and the Wi-Fi is decent.

  Only the bed and the microwave are any temptation.

  Florence has a main street called Main Street, a high school football team called the Gophers, a saloon that dates back to the Old West and seven different prisons. Incarceration is the local industry here and business is booming as criminals keep breaking the law and we keep locking them up. I’ve seen a great number of prisons on this assignment and the towns they sit next to are just ordinary small towns with ordinary folks doing ordinary things.

  According to Google there are some restaurants on Main Street but that would mean eating alone and that usually means having to fend off conversation. I was a much friendlier person at the start of this trip.