Broken Homes (PC Peter Grant) (17 page)

‘The,’ I groped for a word, but I couldn’t find any other term that fit, ‘magical community. We need to open up channels of communication.’ It was your basic
policing by consent
, currently referred to as
stakeholder engagement
, and we’d done at least one lecture on it at Hendon – although judging by Lesley’s amused snort I might have been the only one who stayed awake.

She exchanged looks with Nightingale, who shrugged.

‘Perhaps we could do with a bit of dredging in that direction,’ he said. But before I could ask what
that
meant, he asked Lesley for specifics.

‘We go in as if we’re looking to scoop up any staffs floating around on the open market,’ she said, and explained that having established our interest we’d then imply that we were looking for the materials to construct new ones. ‘We want to make,’ she tilted her head at me, ‘
the community
link our presence with the staffs. That might be enough to draw the Faceless Man out – although I think it might be a bit of a long-term strategy.’

Nightingale sipped his coffee and gave it some thought.

‘It’s worth a try,’ he said. ‘And who knows? We might recover some genuine staffs into the bargain. Do we know when the next fair is?’

‘We know a man who does,’ I said.

‘I presume that would be our Mr Zach Taylor?’ asked Nightingale.

‘Well if you want to know where the goblins are . . .’ said Lesley.

The Goblin Fair was, as far as we could tell, a combination mobile social club, shabeen and car boot sale for London’s supernatural community. I’d actually gone digging in the mundane library and found references to a
Goblin Fayre
and to a hidden market that was
tucked into great St Bartholomew’s feast as a flea hides upon a dog
. The earliest reference was recorded in 1534, which meant that the institution predated Isaac Newton and the establishment of the Folly.

Nightingale had said that there’d always been a supernatural demi-monde at the fringes of the great horse fairs and the traditional markets, but he’d never had anything to do with them.

‘Not my department,’ he’d said.

Not that the Folly had departments, you understand, it being the child of an era when a gentleman might serve his country in any number of ways regardless of previous experience, probity or talent. And if at the same time he might accrue some influence, some status and a huge estate in Warwickshire – then so much the better. Still, Nightingale had worked abroad at the behest of the Foreign and Colonial Offices while others had worked with the Home Office, offering assistance to the police and other civil authorities. Some had done what I considered scientific research, and others still had researched by studying the classics or collecting folklore. Many just used the Folly as their London club while in town from their parsonages, estates or university positions – ‘Hedge Wizards’ Nightingale called them.

At least a couple of those had probably taken an interest in the goblin fairs and had perhaps written a useful tome on the subject. It was just possible that one day I might stumble upon it in the library or an Oxfam in Twickenham – you never know.

Still, as Lesley said, why do it the hard way when we could just call Zach.

According to Zach, the next fair was due the day after and was in north London. Athlone Street, off Grafton Road, Kentish Town – my manor, as it happens. One of my first girlfriends used to live up the other end, so I’d walked down it enough times.

‘Did you get any?’ asked Lesley as we parked the Asbo. We were suffering a standard grey London drizzle, the sort that makes it clear that it can keep it up all day if needs be.

‘I was twelve,’ I said.

‘I bet you were precocious, though,’ said Lesley. ‘She was older, wasn’t she?’

‘Why’d you say that?’ I asked. It was true. Her name had been Catherine and she’d been a year above me in school.

‘It was your big brown eyes wasn’t it?’

I didn’t know what to say. When I was twelve, introspection was not my most prominent characteristic.

‘We were in the swimming club together,’ I said.

The address was a strange Victorian wedge of a building that backed into a railway viaduct. The ground floor was given over to a print shop, and according to Lesley’s intelligence there should be a sign advertising this. This intelligence came from Zach Palmer, who was half human and half – we weren’t really sure what, including the possibility that the other half might be human as well. But anyway he was hooked into what Nightingale insisted on calling the demi-monde.

Speaking of which . . .

‘You know the Fleet runs under here,’ I said.

Lesley groaned. ‘Do you think she’s in there?’

‘Believe it,’ I said.

‘At least it will be out of the rain,’ she said.

There was a sign – a sad bit of damp cardboard cut into the shape of an arrow with the word ‘VENUS’ handwritten and pointing to a side door. Lesley knocked.

‘What’s the password?’ shouted someone from inside.

‘It’s a slippery slope,’ I shouted back.

‘What?’ shouted the voice.

‘It’s a slippery slope,’ I shouted louder.

‘What kind of slope?’ shouted the voice.

‘A fucking slippery one,’ yelled Lesley. ‘Now open the bloody door before we kick it down.’

The door opened to reveal a tiny hallway and a flight of stairs leading upwards. Peering cautiously around the door was a small white boy of about ten, wearing a black and white bobble hat, fingerless gloves and an adult-sized lime coloured lambswool cardigan that was draped over him like a rain cape.

‘You’re the Isaacs,’ he said. ‘What you doing here?’

‘Why aren’t you in school?’ asked Lesley.

‘I’m home tutored,’ he said.

‘Really,’ said Lesley. ‘What are you learning at the moment?’

‘Never talk to the filth,’ he said.

I told him that we didn’t want him to talk to us.

‘On the contrary,’ said Lesley. ‘We just want to get out of the rain.’

‘Nothing’s stopping you,’ said the boy.

We stepped inside, but before we could troop up the stairs the boy tapped Lesley on the arm.

‘Miss,’ he said. ‘You can’t—’

‘I know,’ she said and took off her mask.

‘Oh,’ said the boy staring up at her. ‘You’re that one.’

‘Yes I am,’ she said and then waited until we were safely up the stairs to whisper, ‘That one what?’

I said that I hadn’t got the faintest idea.

At the top of the drab staircase was a windowless hallway lit by a forty watt bulb in a red Chinese paper lamp shade that managed to make it seem even darker. We had a choice of going up another flight of stairs or out through a door, but before we could even express our indecision the door slammed open and we were confronted by a young white woman in a pink tracksuit with an Adidas logo on it. I recognised her as one of the waitresses from the Goblin Fair we’d visited back in December.

‘What can I do you for?’ she asked.

‘We’re here to buy some stuff,’ said Lesley.

‘Yeah? What kind of stuff?’

‘Stuff from the far off land of mind-your-own-business,’ said Lesley.

‘Scrap metal,’ I said. ‘Stuff that’s a little bit – you know.’ I wiggled my fingers.

Lesley gave me a theatrical glare. ‘Have you quite finished broadcasting our business to all and sundry?’ she asked.

The girl gave me a sympathetic look. ‘Upstairs,’ she said. ‘You want to talk to the gentry.’

‘Thanks,’ I said and wondered who the hell the gentry were, and if they were like the Quiet People or the Pale Lady. What was it with this general lack of personal pronouns? I remembered that I’d heard Nightingale referred to as ‘The Nightingale’ and realised that I’d only assumed that was his actual name.

I followed Lesley, who was having trouble stopping herself from laughing, up the narrow staircase.

‘The far off land of mind-your-own-business?’ I whispered.

‘I didn’t want to seem too obvious,’ she whispered back.

‘No, that wasn’t obvious at all,’ I said.

We were two thirds of the way up the stairs when the door at the top opened and a woman stepped out onto the landing. She was white, middle aged, with dirty blonde hair cut into a neat business-like bob. She wore an expensive charcoal grey skirt suit of conservative cut and carried a slim burgundy attaché case. Her eyes were a faded blue.

Recognising faces is a key cop skill, and although she was looking younger and happier than we’d last seen her I remembered her immediately – Varenka Debroslova, probably an alias – former live-in nurse to one Geoffrey Wheatcroft a.k.a. the Faceless Man version one.

She recognised us at the same time – well, Lesley’s very distinctive – and took an automatic step back. Lesley didn’t hesitate. She lunged up the last couple of steps and I followed her.

The normal thing to do in Varenka’s situation would be to bolt back up and out the door. But instead she lifted her attaché case in both hands and shoved it into Lesley’s face. As Lesley recoiled backwards into me, Varenka practically launched herself headfirst down the stairs towards us. Lesley was knocked back towards me and I had no choice but to catch her and try and twist us both out of the way as Varenka landed on us. She’d obviously planned to surf down the stairs on top of us, but I wasn’t playing that game. I ducked down over Lesley and let the other woman roll across my back towards a hard landing.

Or that was the plan, anyway. Unfortunately, the staircase was too narrow and too steep, so we all bumped down it together. Stairs are a killer and we all might have ended up with sundry cracked ribs and broken legs except we were jammed in so tight we went down in slow motion. Even so, my shoulder slammed into a riser hard enough to make my teeth click, somebody’s knee slammed into my back and I definitely smacked my head on the rough plasterboard wall at one point.

Lesley yelled in fury as we tumbled out onto the landing. In a fight, if you want to be the last man standing it’s important to be the first guy back on your feet. So I levered myself off Varenka’s back and tried to grab her arm. But she had other ideas. She sprang to her feet and used my own grip on her arm to pull me off balance and slam me against the wall. It would have gone much harder on me if Lesley hadn’t grabbed a handful of expensive suit jacket and climbed up Varenka’s back.

‘Oi,’ yelled the girl in the pink tracksuit. ‘None of that. It’s Pax bloody Domus here.’ I noticed that she was putting the stress on the wrong syllable. It’s pax-blud-eee DO-mus, I thought, and I might have gone on to mention this except that Varenka put an elbow in my stomach that left me disinclined to discuss the finer points of Latin pronunciation.

I got my leg out of the way of a kick that would have broken my knee, and felt like it broke my thigh bone instead, and realised that Varenka had not said a single word since she’d met us on the stairs. There was something terrifying about the ferocity and silence with which she fought. I understood suddenly that this was a woman who had done real fighting, against people who’d been trying to kill her. We were just trying to restrain her, but she was trying to maim us – if we didn’t shut her down quick she was going to cut us to pieces.

Varenka whipped round and sent Lesley staggering across the hallway and into the girl in the pink tracksuit who went down swearing. Then Varenka spun to face me but with Lesley clear that was my chance to summon up the
impello-palma
combination that I feel is my own personal contribution to specialist law enforcement.

Varenka reacted even before I’d finished the spell, and flung up her arm to protect her face as it slammed into her like a body block from an invisible riot shield. She rocked back on her heels and I realised the implications of her early reaction just in time to feel her building a counter spell. In the confines of the landing there wasn’t anywhere to go but back up the stairs, so I faked towards the landing door and then lunged up the steps.

I felt the bite of cold metal and caught the smell of alcohol and wet dog. Something went past me with the instant violence of an articulated lorry slipstreaming a lay-by, wood splintered, somebody screamed and a billow of choking white plaster dust filled the landing. A metre-wide section of the doorjamb and the wall beside it had smashed open. Through the hole I could see chairs and tables and startled pale faces.

‘That’s it,’ screamed the girl. ‘You three are barred!’

But it was just us up there, Varenka having scarpered.

‘Watch it,’ I yelled as Lesley cautiously peered down the staircase towards the exit. ‘She’s a practitioner.’

‘No shit,’ said Lesley and vanished down the stairs

I followed her down using both hands for balance as I took the stairs three at time. When I reached the bottom there was no sign of the boy who’d let us in and I hoped he’d been smart enough to do a runner.

Lesley was too good a copper just to bang through the door. She paused to check that Varenka wasn’t waiting in ambush before slipping out. She veered left as she went, so I veered right. Varenka was the other side of Grafton Road yanking open the driver’s side door of a silver Audi. When she saw us, she gave an exasperated snarl and flung out her arm in my direction. I did a dive behind the nearest car and slapped the pavement just in time for something to smash into the side of the vehicle with a noise of breaking glass. The car alarm went off, but behind the endless electronic hooting I heard the Audi pulling way. I thumbed the jury-rigged battery switch on my mobile and risked a glance over the bonnet just in time to be able to read the index on the back of the Audi as it accelerated south down Grafton Road.

The other side of the car I’d been sheltering behind, a red VW Golf, had been smashed in and was white with what looked like frost. I resisted the urge to touch it, just in case. I looked over and found that Lesley was unhurt and walking to join me.

My phone jingled to let me know it was finally ready. I rang Metcall, gave my rank and name and asked to speak to the supervisor for EK, meaning Camden. While I waited to be put through I wrote the index number on my arm with the biro Lesley handed me. When the supervisor came on I asked for an urgent circulation on a vehicle and gave them the index.