Broken Homes

20

Sometimes, when you turn up on their doorstep, people are already expecting bad news. Parents of missing kids, partners that have heard about the air crash on the news — you can see it in their faces — they’ve braced themselves. And there’s a strange kind of relief, too. The waiting is over, the worst has happened and they know that they will ride it out. Some don’t, of course. Some go mad or fall into depression or just fall apart. But most soldier through.

But sometimes they haven’t got a clue and you arrive on their doorstep like god’s own sledgehammer and smash their life to pieces. You try not to think about it, but you can’t help wondering what it must be like.

Now I knew.

I got up off the ground and went after them. Because otherwise what good am I?

I was covered in dust and I must have looked pissed off, because random strangers would rush forward with offers of help only to back off quickly when they got close enough to see my face. I grabbed one that had foolishly got within arm’s reach.

‘Did you see a woman in a mask,’ I shouted. ‘She had a man with her — did you see where they went?’

‘I haven’t seen anyone, mate,’ he said and broke away to leg it.

I reached the outer cordon where a uniformed skipper took one look at me and ordered me to the ambulance assembly point. He sent a probationary constable to guide me and, although she looked about twelve years old, she already had the command voice down pat.

I should have told them who I was, not least because all the gold, silver and bronze commanders thought I’d been on the roof when it came down. But certain things have to be kept in the family.

There were at least a dozen ambulances in the casualty marshalling area on Elephant Road, but even as I was being bundled into the back of one I saw a couple peel off and head back into general circulation. The London Ambulance Service is one of the largest and busiest in the world, and can’t afford to hang about waiting for people to get injured. Not even at a major incident.

A paramedic checked me over and I asked him if there were any casualties.

‘There were two people on the roof when it went down,’ said the paramedic. ‘But they haven’t been found yet.’

And that’s when I should have told them I wasn’t dead. But as I explained to the subsequent investigation by the Department of Professional Standards, I’d just survived having a tower block collapse on me so they should cut me some slack. The real reason was that they would have asked too many question that I couldn’t answer until I’d talked to Nightingale.

I told the paramedic I wanted to call my dad and could he lend me his mobile. He handed it over but only after assurances that my dad wasn’t living in Rio or Somalia or somewhere exorbitant like that. I called Nightingale and I could tell he’d been worried by the tone of his voice.

‘What the hell happened?’

‘I had him sir, I had the Faceless Man. Had him bang to rights and Lesley tasered me.’

There was a shocked pause.

‘Lesley tasered you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘To facilitate the suspect’s escape?’

I believe this is the moment of decision.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Are you in any doubt about Lesley’s participation?’

That wasn’t part of the deal.

‘No, sir.’

‘Peter,’ said Nightingale, ‘as your first priority you must secure the Folly and inform Molly that Lesley is off the guest list. You must do this now regardless of instructions from any other senior officer. Once you are there contact me again — was that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘Get a move on.’

I can have trouble getting taxis as the best of times, but nobody was going to stop for me when I was white with dust. To avoid disappointment I merely stepped in front of the first black cab I saw and used the combination of my warrant card, a twenty-pound note and hints that I was part of a vital anti-terrorist operation to get my ride. He got me back fast enough — he was in such a hurry to get rid of me he didn’t wait for a tip.

I went in through the double doors at the front on the basis that I almost never used them and if somebody, if Lesley, was laying an ambush she’d do it at the back door. I paused at the guard booth in the lobby to listen and, hearing nothing, I slipped past the statue of Isaac Newton and into the atrium.

Molly was waiting for me. She took the instructions from Nightingale with the same grave expression with which she accepted menu requests. Then she went silently gliding up the stairs — hopefully to check that the upper floors were clear.

The telephone in the Folly atrium has its own desk complete with blotting pad, notepaper and bendy lamp. I picked up the Bakelite handset and dialled, literally dialled, Nightingale’s mobile. He answered almost immediately.

He gave me a series of instructions and told me to call him back once I’d followed them.

I went down the back stairs, turned left, went past the door to the firing range and paused in front of the armoury. Inside, we had some 9mm Browning Hi-Power automatic pistols that Nightingale had planned to teach us to shoot with. I was tempted to fetch one, but Frank Caffrey had once told me that you should never carry a weapon you don’t know how to use. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if push came to shove I could shoot Lesley. And that was Caffrey’s other maxim — don’t point a gun at someone unless you’re prepared to shoot them with it. I checked to see that the door was still firmly locked and moved on. Then right down a rectangular, brick-lined corridor that, being unlit and damp smelling, I’d never bothered to walk down. And, judging by the dust and cobwebs, neither had Molly or anyone else in the last couple of decades. At the far end was a crude wooden door, the sort you might find on a garden shed. I opened it to reveal another short corridor and a much more formidable grey door of what, I learned later, was face-hardened battleship steel. There were no handles or visible locks, instead a series of overlapping circles were incised into the metal. They looked disturbingly like the payload zones of a demon trap and even more disturbingly like modern Gallifreyan.

None of the circles appeared damaged or disturbed in any way and I for one had no intention of touching them.

I went back up to the atrium and called Nightingale.

‘Thank god,’ he said. ‘That was my worst fear.’

‘You never told us about that door,’ I said.

‘And that has proved to be a wise precaution, has it not?’ said Nightingale.

I knew better than to ask what was behind it over the telephone, but the question definitely went to the top of my to-do list.

It took eight hours for Nightingale to arrive back at the Folly. As Lesley’s senior officer and line manager it was down to him to meet with the Department of Professional Standards. Because he didn’t dare leave Varvara Sidorovna unsupervised, she had to be towed around behind him like an unwanted younger sister. While he was spending quality time with the DPS at their offices in the Empress State Building in Brompton, I was stuck guarding the Folly. Not that I had to do that alone, because Frank Caffrey turned up with a number of his mates, all mature but suspiciously fit men with short haircuts and camera cases full of things that weren’t actually cameras.

Nine hours after the Skygarden tower collapsed, Toby turned up at the back door, barked to get Molly’s attention and then settled into his basket with a sigh and a couple of sausages. He must have walked home from Elephant and Castle on his own. A distance of about four kilometres, I pointed out, less than an hour’s walk but who knows? Maybe he stopped off to take in a show at the Lyceum. I’d have berated him a bit more, but Molly shooed me out of the kitchen.

Nightingale arrived back at the Folly at three in the morning, looking as rumpled and as pissed off as I’ve ever seen him. He still had Varvara Sidorovna in tow and informed Molly that she would be our ‘guest’ until further notice. I could hear the quotes around the word ‘guest’ and so could Molly, who took up watching the woman from the shadows as a sort of hobby.

‘What is she?’ Varvara Sidorovna asked me one day when Molly was safely out of earshot.

‘You don’t want to know,’ I told her.

Nobody was happy with us that month except maybe Sussex Police because at least Operation Sallic showed a result when Robert Weil finally pleaded guilty. He claimed to have attacked and killed a complete stranger, shot her in the face and buried her in the woods all on the same night. The fact that Sussex MCT couldn’t find the shotgun, hadn’t identified the body and plainly just didn’t believe the motive for one moment was irrelevant. They had a confession and enough supporting forensic evidence to take to court, so up the steps Robert Weil did go.

Operation Tinker, Bromley MIT’s investigation into Patrick Mulkern’s horrible human kebab impression, essentially stalled on all fronts. Sky remained an unidentified adult female found dead in suspicious circumstances, but since there were no signs of violence and Dr Walid could find no discernible cause of death that was probably going to end up as death by misadventure. All they had to show for a homicide investigation was a criminal damage case against Max and Barry.

No doubt both cases would have garnered more interest in the media had not a tower block been blown up right on top of them. That case went straight to Counter Terrorism Command and became Operation Wentworth before mutating into a joint case with the Serious Fraud Office when the apparent motive was revealed to be removing Skygarden Tower, a Grade II listed building, as a barrier to the massively lucrative redevelopment of Elephant and Castle. It’s a case that could take years to come to court and I expected the Faceless Man had a couple of expendable colleagues to throw, as Varvara Sidorovna put it, out of the troika to keep the wolves busy.

I went to see Mr Nolfi, our impromptu children’s entertainer, now released from hospital, at his home in Wimbledon. I took Abigail along, to teach her how to interview a witness without getting bored and fidgeting.

‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘Is it bring your daughter to work day?’

‘My cousin,’ I explained.

‘I’m doing a project for school,’ said Abigail.

‘How enterprising,’ said Mr Nolfi.

We asked him if he’d managed to replicate his magic trick since he’d been released home and he conjured a werelight right in front of us.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he asked, despite my horrified expression. ‘I tried doing them for weeks after I got out and then just two week ago it was like somebody has turned on the electricity.’

‘You mustn’t tell anyone about this,’ I said.

‘Why ever not?

That was a good question.

‘Because it’s like the magicians’ circle,’ said Abigail. ‘A magician must never reveal his secrets.’

Mr Nolfi nodded sagely. ‘Mum’s the word eh?’ he said.

‘Believe it,’ said Abigail.

I found Zach behind a bar in a pub situated ten metres below Oxford Street and accessible only via a Crossrail service tunnel. It had a vaulted ceiling and walls that were covered in something that looked like faded wood panelling until you ran your finger across it. The clientele were all men and dressed universally in moleskin trousers, leather waistcoats and high visibility jackets. They sat around the tables, hunched over their beers, heads almost touching and talking in whispers. A Zodiac jukebox stood by the bar and played Dire Straits very, very quietly.

I leaned over the bar and whispered, ‘You’ve been avoiding me.’

‘Do you blame me?’ asked Zach.

‘Did you know?’

‘Did I know what?’

I held up my hand to stop him.

‘No,’ he whispered.

We drank in silence for a bit.

‘Have you talked to Beverley?’ he asked.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because she came here to talk to me about you,’ he whispered.

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Suddenly everyone seems to think I’m the Peter Grant expert.’

‘Really? Who else?’

‘Your boss, for one,’ whispered Zach. ‘Then Lady Ty snuck up on me while I wasn’t looking and nearly scared me to death. And Oberon wanted to know on behalf of Effra who probably was asking on behalf of Beverley.’

‘How’s Nicky?’

‘Not a happy camper, but she’s young and immortal,’ he whispered. ‘She’ll get over it eventually.’

With a worryingly creaky mechanical sound the jukebox flipped records and started playing Sultans of Swing.

‘Why Dire Straits?’

Zach waved his hand at his whispering clientele. ‘They’re working their way through the last hundred years of popular culture. It was the early 70s last month.’

‘But Dire Straits?’

‘They were getting a little bit too fond of Marc Bolan,’ he whispered. ‘I did consider introducing them to the lo-fi percussion and funky R amp;B goodness that was the Washington Go Go sound, but in the end I reckoned that might be just a bit too much for their tiny little minds to cope with.’

‘You could try Public Enemy,’ I whispered.

‘I hear you’re living with the Night Witch,’ whispered Zach. ‘What’s that like?’

‘Creepy in a sort of charming Bond villain way,’ I whispered. ‘We’re all very polite and careful around each other. We’re getting rid of her soon.’ Nightingale was forging a bracelet that he planned to seal around her wrist using his magic metal-fusing powers so she couldn’t get it off without more magic or some serious bolt cutters. To prevent the former it was fitted with the guts of an electronic tag that reported her location every sixty seconds — if Varvara Sidorovna used magic it would blow the chip and sound the alarm.

‘Nightingale’s told her that if he has to track her down again he’ll deport her back to Russia,’ I whispered.

‘Won’t they just give her a medal?’ asked Zach. ‘Heroine of the Great Patriotic War and all that.’ He caught me staring at him. ‘I did a history GCSE you know. I liked the Russians — I could relate.’

‘Shoot her or recruit her,’ I whispered. ‘The point is she becomes their problem not ours.’

The jukebox flipped to Who Wants To Live Forever by Queen.

‘You’re kidding me?’ I said too loudly and got glared at.

‘We have karaoke nights,’ whispered Zach. ‘This is the favourite followed by I Want To Break Free.’

I finished my pint and made to leave.

‘Have you considered the idea,’ asked Zach, ‘that Lesley might be doing this as a way of worming her way into the Faceless Man’s organisation — under cover double agent style of thing?’ He trailed off.

‘He’s promised her her face back,’ I said.

‘You can’t know that,’ hissed Zach.

No, but I knew that Dr Walid had found chimeric cells on a woman who’d had her face erased by a shotgun blast. Covering evidence of experiments by the Faceless Man aimed at restoring Lesley’s face. A bait he must have reckoned she couldn’t resist — how could anyone? He’d probably planned to keep her in the Folly and get her to spy on us. Nightingale had said that the Faceless Man wasn’t Moriarty, but from my perspective he was doing a really good impression of the man.

‘That’s the only motive that makes sense,’ I hissed back.

‘It might be both,’ whispered Zach. ‘You’ve got to at least consider that possibility.’

I shook my head.

‘If she gets in touch with you, will you let me know?’ I asked.

‘What do you think?’

I thought that there was not a chance in hell he would.

‘Fair enough,’ I said and went home.