Amongst Our Weapons

15 Earthworks

They were wrapping up at the Kensal Green moorings, so I popped in to look at a hole in the ground. I parked up in the Sainsbury’s car park and showed my warrant card to the PCSO guarding the gate out onto the towpath. To keep our secure area manageable, we’d moved Heather’s narrowboat along the canal to the Sainsbury’s stop-and-shop mooring. Guleed was sitting on the roof with Danni and an armed response officer called Cecil.

A Crime Scene Examiner in a noddy suit was waiting by a small tent erected on the towpath.

‘Are you the one doing the Falcon Assessment?’ he asked.

I said I was and apologised for keeping them waiting.

The Crime Scene Examiner shrugged and said he was on overtime.

Usually these white and blue crime scene tents are a horror, because they use them to protect bodies and bits of bodies from the elements and the prying eyes of the media. But this time it was just the point on the towpath that Francisca had struck with her spear.

It was a big hole. I’d seen the geyser of earth and concrete when it hit but I was still surprised by its size. It also had a very clearly defined shape, as if it had been gouged out by an enormous ice cream scoop – the same as the wounds on Preston Carmichael and David Moore.

No wonder they’d found a film of vaporised blood and skin all over the Silver Vaults – I really hoped they’d invested in some deep cleaning afterwards.

And, like with the terrible wounds in Preston’s and David’s chests, there was a short tube of lightning glass left at the bottom. I reached out with a gloved hand and brushed it with my fingertips.

Now I was used to it, the bell-like silence was louder than ever, and I was starting to get undertones of orange blossom and incense. You have to be careful with this stuff or you begin to sound like a wine taster – with about the same amount of meaningless bollocks.

Definitely the same vestigium as on the lightning glass and in Preston Carmichael’s flat.

I sat on my heels and thought it through.

I’d got good and close to the spear at our last encounter, close enough to see that the tip was made of a blunt tube of lightning glass. I would check later, but it looked to me that the section of glass in the crater before me was the same length as the sections left inside the previous victims’ chest cavities.

If a section broke off from the spear each time she used it – would she eventually run out of spear? Using the broken section as a guide, I tried to estimate how much ‘ammunition’ she had left. Four or five more strikes, I thought – four, plus three confirmed strikes, would make seven. The number of people with rings – could that be a coincidence?

Assuming that the spear didn’t merely regenerate itself every time it vanished into hyperspace.

We needed to break that spear.

Guleed was sceptical.

‘And what if it does regenerate?’ she asked.

‘Then we’ll learn something new,’ I said.

Since I was Falcon Two and thus, technically, more dangerous than he was, Cecil had wandered off for refs and I took the opportunity to have a rummage around the narrowboat. A POLSA search team had given it a thorough once-over and, while they’re trained to not be too disruptive, what had probably been a properly shipshape interior looked a bit dishevelled. Especially since the POLSA team had had the decking up to check the bilges.

‘You’d be amazed what people try to hide down there,’ said Danni, and she reached down to chivvy a section of decking back into its proper place.

Canal boats sit low in the water, so once down the narrow stairs in the stern you’re half under the surface level. The stern cabin seemed to be general storage, with waterproofs and coats hanging on hooks, cupboards and a fold-down table. Next was the shower and toilet – a composting toilet, the latest in eco-friendly loo design.

‘Because we’re half under water,’ said Danni, ‘the shower has to have a separate pump for drainage.’

I asked Danni why she knew so much about canal boats, and she admitted that a lot of her friends lived on the canals.

‘The non-police ones, anyway,’ she said.

The double bed was next, raised a metre off the deck in an alcove with storage underneath. The pale pink sheets and green duvet were rumpled and a 12 volt adaptor trailed a cable on the pillow.

‘Laptop,’ said Danni – now with the Digital Forensics techs.

There was a chunky crucifix mounted between the two square windows, both hung with yellow and blue flowery curtains.

It would have been cosy, I thought, lying here in the warm, with rain pounding on the roof and wind in the trees. Far away from car traffic or sirens or the sounds of the city. Your lover in your arms. For Heather it must have been heaven … Had Francisca felt the same way? Could she be persuaded that no mission or vengeance was worth abandoning this warm bolthole?

I touched the crucifix, not expecting anything, but the burst of vestigium was intense – the same soundless tone as in the spear tip. I took the crucifix down and found that while the Christ figure was silver-plated, the cross was plastic. It said Made in China on the back, so I doubted that this was another antique. And so it must have acquired its vestigium from Francisca. It was far too large for her to have been wearing it during our encounter in Middlesex Street, so it must have soaked up magic where it hung on the bulkhead.

Did Francisca leak magic when she was asleep?

Had that affected Heather? So far she hadn’t shown any changes in gross physical form or displayed any strange powers. People and children who’d been exposed to faerie had occasionally picked up some weird talents – we’d have to check for that in the medium term.

Faerie, I thought, allokosmoi, spare dimensions, boundary effects.

Francisca must be getting power from somewhere – the flaming wings, halo and spear had to be sucking up megawatts at the very least. Not to mention the teleporting and the walking on water.

Danni called my name and I went to check the rest of the boat.

Just for a change, I got back home before dark and, to avoid being waylaid by foxes, cousins and other distractions, I went in through the side gate so I could get a good look at whatever Maksim was doing with a JCB in the back garden.

Which turned out to be digging a big rectangular-shaped hole in the lower garden – although it looked like he’d finished for the night. The hole was covered with Monarflex, yellow and black hazard tape had been strung across the width of the garden, and a tarpaulin had been thrown over the JCB.

‘Can I go in now?’ said a small voice.

Lifting the tarpaulin, I found a miserable-looking fox sitting in the cab of the JCB. It seemed smaller than the others and had dark grey fur shading to black on its throat and belly. It brightened up considerably when it saw me.

I asked it what it was doing.

‘Guarding important diggy thing,’ it said. And, then, after some thought, ‘Getting damp. Can I go in? I haven’t seen any cats at all.’

‘Off you go then,’ I said and it shot off, not towards the house, as I’d expected, but over the fence into the recreation ground.

I looked back at the house and saw Beverley waiting for me in the covered section of the patio. She had a mug of something in her hand.

‘I’ve decreed an upper limit on the number of foxes allowed in the house,’ she said as I walked up and kissed her. She tasted of hot chocolate.

‘Where do the surplus stay?’ I asked.

Beverley passed the hot chocolate to me.

‘They have a provisional field operations centre down by the river,’ she said.

‘Which is what in reality?’

‘A big den lined with the lino offcuts Maksim had in his shed and equipped with Abigail’s old sleeping bag,’ she said.

I took a sip and handed the hot chocolate back. I saw Abigail through the kitchen window, unpacking Tupperware containers – she waved when saw me.

‘Why is Maksim digging a hole in the back garden?’ I asked. I thought I knew the answer, but it’s dangerous to make assumptions.

‘It’s for the birthing pool,’ said Beverley. ‘It was in the birthing plan.’

‘I thought we were going to Kingston,’ I said. ‘I distinctly remember that.’

‘That pool isn’t big enough,’ said Beverley.

We’d been shown round the birthing pool at Kingston Hospital the last time we’d gone in for a check. There were calming blue walls with a mural of a flower with sparkles rising out of it. Lots of nice clean medical bits and pieces within easy reach. The pool itself was the size of a hot tub, white and lit from below. There was room for Bev and a midwife, with me offering physical and moral support from the sides and other trained medical personnel on hand for complications.

The midwife had had reservations about birthing twins in a pool because twins can be tricky, but Beverley had reassured her that all would be well. So that had been the agreed birthing plan, as far as I knew, until the last couple of days.

‘Big enough for who?’ I asked.

‘Your mum, for one,’ said Bev. ‘And my mum, of course.’

That explained it – having the Goddess of the Thames turn up at Kingston Hospital would be massively disruptive. Things happened on account of her being a goddess, wherever she goes – the sort of things that require advanced public order planning.

‘Kingston nick will never know the favour we’re doing them,’ I said.

We had Korean that night, courtesy of the Ree family, who were amongst Beverley’s earliest … let’s say acolytes, because worshippers would probably be overstating things.

‘People believe in me,’ Beverley had said once, ‘because I don’t make promises I can’t deliver.’

‘What do you promise?’ I’d asked.

‘Good irrigation, for one,’ she’d said. ‘You should see Eun-Ju’s allotment.’

Certainly the cabbage in the kimchi was home-grown, although I suspected the grilled pig offal had come from a specialist butcher in New Malden. Even before I encountered Molly’s frugal ways with random animal leftovers I’d been raised eating cow’s foot and pepper soup, so the offal didn’t bother me, but I steered Abigail in the direction of the barbecued beef.

Every so often we could hear a low keening sound from the foxes, who had been banished to the patio and were staring into the house like the poor starving waifs they definitely weren’t.

Sung-Hoon asked me if I was looking forward to being a father and I said I was hoping to make a good job of it, which both the Rees seemed to find hilarious.

Afterwards I was helping Abigail with the washing-up when I got a text from Special Agent Kimberley Reynolds, who is the Folly’s semi-official liaison at the FBI. She handles what she calls the ‘basement files’, which I assume is a reference to The X-Files, and we swap advice and information back and forth using Skype and our official e-mail accounts. Our assumption is that the shadowy forces of the surveillance state were probably monitoring us, but our attitude was that if they wanted us to stop they could bloody well ask us nicely.

‘Good tradecraft,’ Indigo the fox had said. ‘Makes the opposition lazy and allows you to feed them disinformation while you continue through clandestine channels.’

Abigail says that the foxes think they are, or may actually even be in some way, spies. Which is why it didn’t surprise me when one of them, whose name I thought might be Sugar Niner, popped up from under the desk in the side room full of unpacked boxes that Beverley laughingly calls my study.

‘Can I sit on your lap?’ asked Sugar Niner.

‘There’s raw chicken on the patio for you,’ I said. ‘And dumplings.’

‘No thanks,’ said Sugar Niner. ‘I already ate. Had eggs and a mouse.’

‘You can sit on the other chair over there,’ I said. ‘But observation only.’

Sugar Niner reluctantly climbed onto the spare plastic garden chair next to the desk and watched alertly as I set up the call to America.

We’d asked Reynolds to follow up on Andrew Carpenter and Brian Packard, so I’d decided not to wait until the morning. It would be the middle of the afternoon at Quantico, so she’d still be in her office.

‘How’s Beverley?’ asked Reynolds once we were connected.

A thin white woman in her early thirties, with short auburn hair, she was wearing her work suit with her ID badge on a lanyard around her neck. A beige cubicle wall with a wall planner was visible behind her – if it hadn’t been for the letters FBI on her ID she could have been an office drone anywhere in the world.

I gave the latest update on Beverley, the bulge, and the fact that the birth plan appeared to be going out the window.

‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ said Reynolds. ‘You’re strictly kibitzing on this one. Make sure you don’t fall asleep, do what you’re told and you’ll be fine.’

We moved on to Carpenter and Packard.

‘They’re both naturalised US citizens now,’ said Reynolds, ‘Andrew Carpenter originally worked for Ogilvy & Mather, they’re a New York ad agency, but moved on to MullenLowe U.S., another agency, after he became a citizen. He still lives in New York.’

Reynolds had called Carpenter and found him co-operative. He remembered the Bible study group, and was convincingly surprised and shocked at learning of David Moore’s and Preston Carmichael’s deaths.

‘He said he hadn’t had any contact with the other members since he left Manchester,’ said Reynolds.

‘Did you ask him about his ring?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ said Reynolds. ‘He says he lost his this past January.’

‘Did he say lost or stolen?’

‘Definitely lost,’ said Reynolds. ‘He thinks he left it at a Vietnamese restaurant in the East Village. Took it off in the bathroom to wash his hands and forgot to put it back on again.’

‘Sounds unlikely,’ I said.

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Reynolds. ‘So I asked a couple of the oblique questions we discussed.’

We’d recently talked over some of the interview techniques me and Nightingale had developed as part of the Falcon Awareness Course. They seemed to have worked in this case.

‘There was a definite sense of disconnection from events,’ said Reynolds.

‘So probably he came under the influence,’ I said.

‘That’s the way it seems to me,’ said Reynolds.

‘Do you have a precise date?’

‘Fifth of January,’ said Reynolds.

The 46th World Economic Forum had run from the 20th or the 23rd, so plenty of time for Lesley to grab one ring from Andrew Carpenter before jetting over to Switzerland to seducere the other from Alastair McKay.

‘But,’ said Reynolds, when I proposed this, ‘that implies that Lesley knew who at least two of the ringbearers were.’

‘Ringbearers – really?’ I said.

‘Hey,’ said Reynolds. ‘If the name fits …’

‘So did Lesley know about Brian Packard?’ I said.

‘That’s where things get interesting,’ said Reynolds. ‘Brian Packard went to UCSD Health Sciences for both his master’s and his doctorate.’

That made sense – according to Manchester University’s records he’d graduated with a first in biochemistry. Reynolds confirmed that it wasn’t unusual for foreign students to be recruited by the top research schools. Although she said his résumé must have been impressive, since University of California San Diego was in the top five globally of biomedical research centres.

‘They sponsored him for a visa, too,’ said Reynolds. ‘He became an American citizen and joined the Life Sciences faculty at UCLA in 2007, and then in 2014 drops off the grid.’

It’s not as hard to avoid Big Brother as people think it is, although it helps if you have a source of readies and pay in cash. Without a legitimate reason to open an official investigation, Reynolds could only make a casual data sweep – basically social media plus reported crimes and deaths.

‘Could he have just opted for a quiet life?’ I asked.

‘It’s hinky,’ said Reynolds. ‘One minute he’s a happy man around Facebook, with a Twitter and an Instagram account, and the next day he stops posting. The accounts keep running but he’s not posting any more.’

‘Could he be dead?’

‘An identified body would have turned up in my initial sweep,’ said Reynolds.

And she said she’d reached out to the LA Office to do a more thorough search and see if there were any John Does that might match his description.

But what had really caught her attention was that in the six or so months running up to his abandonment of social media, he’d started interacting online with some real nutjobs.

‘Flat-earthers or our kind of nutjobs?’ I asked.

‘Difficult to tell from a distance,’ said Reynolds. ‘But the individuals in question used some of the key words you told me to look out for. I managed to obtain some transcripts of exchanges that happened on one of the 4chan boards and Mr Packard was definitely looking for something.’

Reynolds got the strong impression that Brian Packard wasn’t looking to drink the Kool-Aid, but instead searching for the real thing. And me and Agent Reynolds both knew that there were groups in California who knew where real magic could be found.

‘I’ll send you the transcripts and let you know if anything else turns up,’ said Reynolds, and after pleasantries we shut down the connection.

‘Classic case of recruitment,’ said Sugar Niner.

I looked over to where the young fox was still sitting on the chair and looking pleased with himself, and asked what he meant.

‘What’s it worth?’ asked Sugar Niner.

‘You know the rules,’ I said. ‘Information first, payment second.’

‘What if you don’t like the information?’

‘Then you don’t get paid.’

Sugar Niner gave such a huge and human sigh that I was certain it was put on for effect.

‘It’s a pattern of behaviour,’ he said. ‘The best agent you can have is a trusted member of the opposition, and that’s the same for them, too. So you need to be able to spot someone on your own side who’s been recruited.’

‘Do foxes join the opposition?’ I asked, even as I wondered who the opposition was.

‘No, but we learn about it in training so we can keep an eye on our human allies.’

And Sugar Niner had been taught about Henry Busybody, who worked for the Department of Important Business and thus had access to war secrets.

‘Which war are we talking about?’ I asked.

‘Not relevant,’ said Sugar Niner. ‘This is a training hypothetical.’

So the opposition has three main weapons to gain Henry Busybody’s co-operation – money, sex and ideology, or, as Sugar Niner put it, ‘Cheese puffs, mating and cat dependency.’

‘You don’t really mean cat dependency,’ I said.

Sugar Niner admitted he’d gone off track a bit. Money and mating were useful, but ideology was better because your potential agent will be cheaper, self-motivated and more likely to neglect their own safety.

‘But the thing is,’ said Sugar Niner, ‘nobody just wakes up in their den one morning and thinks that a long-haired Persian is the epitome of creation. First they have to engage with other cat lovers, to be exposed to the ideology of cat supremacy, until they are willing to put the interest of felines ahead of their own.’

‘Are we still talking about Henry Busybody and the war?’

‘Or that the National Socialist Party is the last hope for national salvation,’ said Sugar Niner – a bit testily, I thought.

‘Do you even know who the National Socialist Party were?’ I asked.

Sugar Niner hesitated.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But that’s not important. There’s a pattern – Henry Busybody takes an interest, meets a couple of cat fanciers …’ Sugar Niner paused again and recalibrated. ‘A couple of fascist sympathisers, reads some articles in the Daily Mail and thinks they might have some good ideas.’

It was obvious that Sugar Niner had no idea about the Daily Mail, fascism or probably World War Two – it was all Bible stories to him. I had this sudden vision of a classroom full of foxes being taught basic espionage techniques and each of them translating Henry Busybody’s flirtation with fascism into something more culturally appropriate.

‘But the thing is, you can’t have a useful agent if they have cat hairs all over them,’ said Sugar Niner. ‘They’d be spotted immediately.’

‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Are you at war with the cats? Are they the opposition?’

Sugar Niner looked shifty.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We don’t know who or what the opposition is.’

‘So what’s all this business with cats?’

‘Cats are dangerous, cruel and sneaky,’ said Sugar Niner. ‘They make good …’ His brow creased as if he was translating some difficult fox concept in his head.

‘Scapegoats?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Sugar Niner delightedly. ‘Excellent scapegoats.’

‘What has this to do with Brian Packard?’

‘He’s obviously interested in magic in America, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Then he drops out of sight,’ said Sugar Niner. ‘Because he found magic and he doesn’t want anyone to know he has. Or …’

‘Or?’

‘He was eaten by cats,’ said Sugar Niner. ‘That’s why they never found a body.’

‘I think one is more likely than the other.’

‘You’re right,’ said Sugar Niner. ‘Is that worth a reward?’

I started to have a horrible feeling about Brian Packard’s role in the whole case.

‘Let’s go see what’s in the fridge,’ I said.

Sugar Niner plumped for a couple of eggs because we were out of cheese puffs.

‘Can I have an egg box,’ he asked, and I found one at the top of the cardboard recycling box and, after slotting the eggs, put it on the kitchen floor.

Normal foxes crunch their eggs and I supposed Sugar Niner probably did, too, when he didn’t have an egg box, but now he carefully bit the tops off the eggs and licked them out with his tongue.

‘Makes them last longer,’ he said when he caught me watching.

But I wasn’t thinking of foxes. I was thinking of magic and siphons and fiery angel wings.

Later that night, when we were safely in bed and out of the prying eyes of minders, cousins and foxes, I asked Beverley to do something magical.

‘Is not my mere existence enough any more?’ she asked.

I thought very carefully before giving an answer.

‘Of course it is,’ I said. ‘But I need something that affects the material domain beyond the confines of my heart.’

She put her Kindle on her bulge and gave me a suspicious look.

‘Have you been reading Greek love poetry again?’

‘No, I’m still working my way through Marcus Aurelius,’ I said. ‘I want to try something.’

‘Like what?’

‘There’s a theory that some types of magical phenomena are in fact a type of boundary effect where an allokosmos intersects our reality,’ I said.

‘For example?’ said Beverley.

‘Do you remember the unicorns?’

‘Yes.’

‘We know they’re really creatures of Faerie, which is a type of allokosmos, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Remember how they used to be invisible half the time?’

‘Except when you were stupid enough to feed them magic,’ she said.

‘So which do you think is more plausible?’ I said. ‘That half a tonne of bone, muscle and killer spike could turn naturally transparent, or it was out of phase with our reality and thus invisible.’

‘For one thing,’ said Beverley, ‘I’d say they weighed at least a thousand kilograms, and for another, you got the whole out of phase thing from Star Trek.’

‘Just because it’s in Star Trek doesn’t mean it’s not true,’ I said.

‘And just because I don’t have an alternative working hypothesis doesn’t mean the first bit of technobabble you come up with is true.’

‘That’s why I want to test it,’ I said.

‘I walked into that, didn’t I?’

I wisely said nothing.

‘Fine,’ said Beverley.

She struggled into a more upright sitting position. Fortunately I have developed some skills in strategic pillow placement that have served me well during the later stages of pregnancy.

‘What did you have in mind?’ she asked.

‘Do a water balloon … Not yet!’ I said, as Beverley raised her hand. ‘Let me get into position, count to ten and then do a water balloon.’

I lay down flat on the bed and closed my eyes.

‘I’m not sure you’re supposed to involve expectant mothers in science experiments,’ said Beverley.

But I’ve learnt to reach a state of receptiveness while under combat stress, so Beverley talking wasn’t going to disturb me. Had she kissed me, on the other hand, I would have been fucked.

The house, like most structures over fifty years old, had its own background bits of vestigia and, of course, Beverley had left her mark. Like the little splashing sounds and the smell of car wax and drying laundry. I wasn’t sure where the Russian church music came from unless Maksim had been keeping secrets – that was something I could check later.

I let the background stuff wash away.

At first I thought I might be wrong. I’ve never ‘heard’ Beverley when she’s being professionally goddess-like, but then I’d nearly always been distracted at the time. Then I felt a strange tickle and a flicker at the periphery of my mind. There was the catch at the edge of reality that I’d come to associate with certain kinds of magic.

There’s a spell called sīphōnem that is used to defuse demon traps. Its key components are two formae – flue and conmove – which, along with a bunch of other modifiers and inflectentes, allows you to siphon away the power in the demon trap and disperse it harmlessly. Like letting the air out of a balloon without popping it.

Only considerably more dangerous.

If it worked on a demon trap, I wondered if a modified version might work on the power bleeding through a boundary. Like that which was, hopefully, creating a water balloon.

‘Is it working?’ asked Beverley.

I caught the hazy sense of streams running through fields, through culverts, of cars being washed on summer afternoons, net curtains and Sunday lunch. The sensations coalesced into a round shape above my head – the water balloon.

I tried the first couple of formae that composed the spell and felt them catch the edges of the balloon. But having proved that much of the theory, I wasn’t about to experiment further on Beverley.

‘Yes,’ I said, and I opened my eyes to find a wobbling globe of water hovering a couple of centimetres above my nose. ‘You can stop that if you like.’

‘OK,’ said Beverley.

I watched with relief as the globe floated to the ceiling and, without any fuss or lingering dampness, evaporated.

‘Will it help?’ she asked.

‘Let’s hope so,’ I said.