Foxglove Summer (2 page)

My satnav led me gently as a lamb through a switchback turn up onto a wooded ridge and then up a steep climb called Kill Horse Lane. At the top of the hill it guided me off the tarmac and onto an unpaved lane that took me further up while taking dainty little bites out of the underside of my car. I turned around a bend to find that the lane ran past a cottage and, beyond that, a round tower – three storeys high with an oval dome roof that gave it a weirdly baroque profile. The satnav informed me that I’d arrived at my destination, so I stopped the car and got out for a look.

The air was warm and still and smelt of chalk. The late morning sun was hot enough to create heat ripples along the dusty white track. I could hear birds squawking away in the nearby trees and a steady, rhythmic thwacking sound from just over the fence. I rolled up my sleeves and went to see what it was.

Beyond the fence the ground sloped away into a hollow where a two-storey brick cottage sat amongst a garden laid out in an untidy patchwork of vegetable plots, miniature polytunnels, and what I took to be chicken coops, roofed over with wire mesh to keep out predators. Despite being quite a recent build there was something wonky about the line of the cottage’s roof and the way the windows were aligned. A side door was open, revealing a hallway cluttered with muddy black Wellington boots, coats and other bits of outdoor stuff. It was messy, but it wasn’t neglected.

In front of the cottage was open space where two white guys were watching a third split logs into firewood. All three were dressed in khaki shorts and naked from the waist up. One of them, an older man than the others and wearing an army green bush hat, spotted me and said something. The others turned to look, shading their eyes. The older one waved and set off up the slope of the garden towards me.

‘Good morning,’ he said. He had an Australian accent and was much older than I’d first thought, in his sixties or possibly even older, with a lean body that appeared to be covered with wrinkled leather. I wondered if this was my guy.

‘I’m looking for Hugh Oswald,’ I said.

‘You’ve got the wrong house,’ said the man and nodded at the strange tower. ‘He lives in that bloody thing.’

One of the younger men strolled up to join us. Tattoos boiled from under his shorts and ran up over his shoulders and down his arms. I’d never seen a design like it before, interlaced vines, plants and flowers but drawn with an absolute precision – like the nineteenth-century botanical texts I’d seen in the Folly’s library. They were recent enough for the red, blues and greens to still be vivid and sharp. He nodded when he reached us.

‘All right?’ he asked – not an Aussie. His accent was English, regional, but not one I recognised.

Down by the cottage the third man hefted his axe and started whacking away again.

‘He’s here to see Oswald,’ said the older man.

‘Oh,’ said the younger. ‘Right.’

They both had the same eyes, a pale washed-out blue like faded denim, and there were similarities in the line of the jaw and the cheekbones. Close relatives for certain – father and son at a guess.

‘You look hot,’ said the older man. ‘Do you want a glass of water or something?’

I thanked them politely but refused.

‘Do you know if he’s in?’ I asked.

The older and younger men exchanged a look. Downslope the third man brought down his axe and – crack – split another log.

‘I expect so,’ said the older man. ‘This time of the year.’

‘I’d better get on then,’ I said.

‘Feel free to pop in on your way back,’ he said. ‘We don’t get that many people up here.’

I smiled and nodded and moved on. There was even a viewing platform enclosed by railings on top of the dome. It was the house of an eccentric professor from an Edwardian children’s book – C.S. Lewis would have loved it.

A copper awning over what I took to be the front door provided a nice bit of shade and I was just about to ring the disappointingly mundane electric doorbell, complete with unfilled-in nametag, when I heard the swarm. I looked back across the track and saw it, a cloud of yellow bees under the branches of one of the trees that lined the track. Their buzzing was insistent, but I noticed that they kept to a very particular volume of space – as if marking it out.

‘Can I help you?’ asked a voice from behind me.

I turned to find that a white woman in her early thirties had opened the door – she must have seen me through the window. She was short, wearing black cycling shorts and a matching yellow and black Lycra tank top. Her hair was a peroxide yellow fuzz, her eyes were dark, almost black, and her mouth extraordinarily small and shaped like a rosebud. She smiled to reveal tiny white teeth.

I identified myself and flashed my warrant card.

‘I’m looking for Hugh Oswald,’ I said.

‘You’re not the local police,’ she said. ‘You’re up from London.’

I was impressed. Most people don’t even register whether the photo on your warrant card matches your face – let alone notice the difference in the crest.

‘And who are you?’ I asked.

‘I’m his granddaughter,’ she said, and squared her stance in the doorway.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

If you’re a professional criminal this is where you lie smoothly and give a false name. If you’re just an amateur then you either hesitate before lying or tell me that I have no right to ask. If you’re just a bog-standard member of the public then you’ll probably tell me your name unless you’re feeling guilty, stroppy or terminally posh. I saw her thinking seriously about telling me to piss off, but in the end common sense prevailed.

‘Mellissa,’ she said. ‘Mellissa Oswald.’

‘Is Mr Oswald here?’ I asked

‘He’s resting,’ she said, and made no move to let me in.

‘I’d still better come in and see him,’ I said.

‘Have you got a warrant?’ she asked.

‘I don’t need one,’ I said. ‘Your granddad swore an oath.’

She stared at me in amazement and then her tiny mouth spread into a wide smile.

‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘You’re one of them – aren’t you?’

‘May I come in?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘Fuck me – the Folly.’

She was still shaking her head as she ushered me into a stone-paved entrance hall – dim and cool after the summer sun – then into a half-oval sitting room smelling of potpourri and warm dust and back out via the middle of three French windows.

The window opened onto a series of landscaped terraces that descended down towards more woods. The garden was informal to the point of being chaotic, with no organised beds. Instead, clumps of flowers and flowering bushes were scattered in random patches of purple and yellow across the terraces.

Mellissa led me down a flight of steps to a lower terrace where a white enamelled wrought-iron garden table supported a bedraggled mint-green parasol shading matching white chairs, one of which was occupied by a thin grey-haired man. He sat with his hands folded in his lap, staring out over the garden.

Anyone can do magic, just like anyone can play the violin. All it takes is patience, hard graft and somebody to teach you. The reason more people don’t practise the forms and wisdoms, as Nightingale calls them, these days is because there are damn few teachers left in the country. The reason you need a teacher, beyond helping you identify
vestigium
– which is a whole different thing – is because if you’re not taught well you can easily give yourself a stroke or a fatal aneurism. Dr Walid, our crypto-pathologist and unofficial chief medical officer has a couple of brains in a jar he can whip out and show you if you’re sceptical.

So, like the violin, it is possible to learn magic by trial and error. Only unlike potential fiddlers, who merely risk alienating their neighbours, potential wizards tend to drop dead before they get very far. Knowing your limits is not an aspiration in magic – it’s a survival strategy.

As Mellissa called her granddad’s name I realised that this was the first officially sanctioned wizard, apart from Nightingale, I’d ever met.

‘The police are here to see you,’ Mellissa told him.

‘The police?’ asked Hugh Oswald without taking his eyes off the view. ‘Whatever for?’

‘He’s up from London,’ she said. ‘Especially to see you.’ Stressing the
especially
.

‘London?’ said Hugh, twisting in his chair to look at us. ‘From the Folly?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

He climbed to his feet. He’d never been a big man, I guessed, but age had pared him down so that even his modern check shirt and slacks couldn’t disguise how thin his arms and legs were. His face was narrow, pinched around the mouth, and his eyes were sunken and a dark blue.

‘Hugh Oswald,’ he said holding out his hand.

‘PC Peter Grant.’ I shook his hand but although his grip was firm, his hand trembled. When I sat down he sank gratefully into his own chair, his breathing short. Mellissa hovered nearby, obviously concerned.

‘Nightingale’s starling,’ he said. ‘Flown all the way up from London.’

‘Starling?’ I asked.

‘You are his new apprentice?’ he asked. ‘The first in . . .’ He glanced around the garden as if looking for clues. ‘Forty, fifty years.’

‘Over seventy years,’ I said, and I was the first
official
apprentice since World War Two. There had been other unofficial apprentices since then – one of whom had tried to kill me quite recently.

‘Well, god help you then,’ he said and turned to his granddaughter. ‘Let’s have tea and some of those . . .’ he paused, frowning, ‘bread things with the spongy tops, you know what I mean.’ He waved her off.

I watched her heading back towards the tower – her waist was disturbingly narrow and the flare of her hips almost cartoonishly erotic.

‘Pikelets,’ said Hugh suddenly. ‘That’s what they’re called. Or are they crumpets? Never mind. I’m sure Mellissa will be able to enlighten us.’

I nodded sagely and waited.

‘How is Thomas?’ asked Hugh. ‘I heard he managed to get himself shot again.’

I wasn’t sure how much Nightingale wanted Hugh to know about what we police call ‘operational matters’, a.k.a. stuff we don’t want people to know, but I was curious about how Hugh had found out. Nothing concerning that particular incident had made it into the media – of that I was certain.

‘How did you hear about that?’ I asked. That’s the beauty of being police – you’re not getting paid for tact. Hugh gave me a thin smile.

‘Oh, there’s enough of us left to still form a workable grapevine,’ he said. ‘Even if the fruit is beginning to wither. And since Thomas is the only one of us who actually does anything of note, he’s become our principal source of gossip.’

I made a mental note to wheedle the list of old codgers out of Nightingale and get it properly sorted into a database. Hugh’s ‘grapevine’ might be a useful source of information. If I’d been about four ranks higher up the hierarchy I’d have regarded it as an opportunity to realise additional intelligence assets through enhanced stakeholder engagement. But I’m just a constable so I didn’t.

Mellissa returned with tea and things that I would certainly call crumpets. She poured from a squat round teapot that was hidden underneath a red and green crocheted tea cosy in the shape of a rooster. Her father and I got the delicate willow pattern china cups while she used an ‘I’m Proud of the BBC’ mug.

‘Help yourself to sugar,’ she said, then perched herself on one of the chairs and started spreading honey on the crumpets. The honey came from a round little pot with ‘Hunny’ written on the side.

‘Do have some,’ she said as she placed a crumpet in front of her granddad. ‘It’s from our own bees.’

I hesitated with my cup of tea halfway to my lips. I lowered the cup back into its saucer and glanced at Hugh, who looked puzzled for a moment and then smiled.

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Where are my manners? Please eat and drink freely with no obligation etcetera etcetera.’

‘Thank you,’ I said and picked up my teacup again.

‘You guys really do that?’ Mellissa asked her granddad. ‘I thought you made all that stuff up.’ She turned to me. ‘What exactly are you worried would happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I’m not in a hurry to find out.’

I sipped the tea. It was proper builder’s tea, thank god. I’m all for delicate flavour, but after a stint on the motorway you want something with a bit more bite then Earl Grey.

‘So, tell me, Peter,’ said Hugh. ‘What brings the starling so far from the Smoke?’

I wondered just when I’d become ‘the starling’ and why everyone who was anyone in the supernatural community had such a problem with proper nouns.

‘Do you listen to the news?’ I asked.

‘Ah,’ said Hugh and nodded. ‘The missing children.’

‘What’s that got to do with us?’ asked Mellissa.

I sighed – policing would be so much easier if people didn’t have concerned relatives. The murder rate would be much lower, for one thing.

‘It’s just a routine check,’ I said.

‘On granddad?’ asked Mellissa. I could see her beginning to get angry. ‘What are you saying?’

Hugh smiled at her. ‘It’s quite flattering really – they obviously regard me as strong enough to be a public menace.’

‘But children?’ said Mellissa, and glared at me.

I shrugged. ‘It really is just routine,’ I said. Just the same way we routinely put a victim’s nearest and dearest on the suspects list or grow suspicious of relatives who get all defensive when we make our legitimate inquiries. Is it fair? No. Is it warranted? Who knows. Is it policing? Ask a stupid question.

Lesley always said that I wasn’t suspicious enough to do the job properly, and tasered me in the back to drive the point home. So, yeah, I stay suspicious these days – even when I’m having tea with likable old buffers.

I did have a crumpet, though, because you can take professional paranoia too far.

‘You didn’t notice anything unusual in the last week or so?’ I asked.

‘I can’t say I have, but I’m not as perceptive as I once was,’ said Hugh. ‘Or rather, I should say, I am not as
reliably
perceptive as I was in my prime.’ He looked at his granddaughter. ‘How about you, my dear?’