The Hanging Tree

12 The 100 Metre Nonchalant Stroll

‘And you didn’t think to try pushing the door open first?’ asked Professor Postmartin.

I said nothing, mainly because he was the fourth person to ask that, after Guleed, Nightingale and Stephanopoulos.

Postmartin looked remarkably dapper in his noddy suit and was supervising approvingly as the SOCOs carefully catalogued the evidence with their hoods up and their masks on. Mind you, the Professor probably thought all books over five years old should be handled in this fashion – particularly by undergraduates.

I stayed in the corridor and tried not to get fingerprint powder on my sleeves.

‘Have you found anything else interesting?’ I asked.

‘Interesting, yes,’ said Postmartin. ‘How significant – I don’t know. Your hypothesis that this was the repository for the last offerings of the hanged is charming, but unsupported by the evidence so far.’

‘Any copies of the Principia?’ I asked.

‘Two in fact,’ said Postmartin. ‘One of them quite rare.’

‘But physically damaged?’

‘I’ve seen better kept copies,’ said Postmartin. ‘But the marginalia in one edition is quite fascinating.’

‘Christina Chorley and Reynard Fossman couldn’t read Latin,’ I said. The Second Principia, the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis, had never been published in English – as a deliberate policy to ensure that only people of the ‘right’ sort read it. ‘They didn’t recognise it for what it was – it probably just looked like a tatty old book to them.’

‘They understood the importance of the ledger,’ said Postmartin.

‘Yeah, they did, didn’t they?’ I said. ‘Which implies an outside source of information, doesn’t it?’

‘I’m afraid it does,’ said Postmartin and went back to his cataloguing.

I found Nightingale in the manageress’ office. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, as he watched a DC from Intelligence triaging the papers on the desk and packing them into evidence boxes that looked remarkably similar to those the Faceless Man had used to store his goodies in. I hoped they didn’t get them mixed up.

I asked where Guleed had got to.

‘Finishing the interview with the manageress,’ said Nightingale. ‘She seemed to think she’d get more out of the poor woman without me hovering in the doorway.’

‘You know she’s demi-fae,’ I said.

‘So Sahra explained.’

‘You don’t seem very surprised.’

Nightingale shrugged.

‘If Abdul ever gets his wish and finds a reliable . . .’ He frowned. ‘What does he call it – a genetic marker?’

Determining whether there was an actual genetic basis to being a fae was one of Dr Walid’s research priorities. I’m pretty certain that his keenness to employ Dr Vaughan had come from a desire to have more time to pursue it.

I confirmed that Nightingale was right and it was indeed a genetic marker. Although, of course, it was all much more complicated than that, genetics-wise. It always is.

‘Should he ever find his marker,’ said Nightingale, ‘and conduct his survey, I believe he will find that fairy blood is far more widespread than previously assumed.’

And most of them passing, I thought, like Wanda the manageress.

‘None of the items listed on eBay have been sold yet,’ I said. ‘So they must be stored somewhere.’

‘Indubitably,’ said Nightingale. ‘I think we must assume that our tricky fox has a hideaway he hasn’t told us about.’ All of Reynard Fossman’s last known addresses had already been searched over the weekend as well as a few likely lock-ups that had, as Nightingale admitted, quite tenuous connections to the man. Not to mention that we still hadn’t found the antique Renault 4 GTL that, according to the DVLA, was registered in his name.

‘It would be nice to find the Mary Engine,’ I said. ‘It could be the only original difference engine in existence. We could flog it to the Science Museum.’

‘You’d have to fight Harold for it,’ said Nightingale.

Postmartin took his role as archivist very seriously.

‘But it’s not a book, is it?’ I said. ‘That means we get first dibs. Do you know if they made any more – did anyone at the Folly have one?’

‘There was always a rumour that Babbage had worked on a mechanical device of some kind for the Folly,’ said Nightingale. ‘One which might have had applications in the practise – but it was just a rumour.’

‘Was there anything about Ada Lovelace?’ I asked.

Nightingale gave me a funny look.

‘Byron’s daughter?’ he asked. ‘I’m not sure I understand the connection.’

‘She worked with Babbage on the difference engine,’ I said.

‘In what capacity?’

‘She was a famously gifted mathematician,’ I said. Who I mostly knew about from reading Steam-punk, but I wasn’t going to mention that. ‘Generally considered to have written the first true computer program.’

‘Ah,’ said Nightingale. ‘So now we know who to blame.’

‘Reynard’s not going to tell us where his real lock-up is,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think he’s stupid enough to lead us to it. He must know we’re going to tail him once we release him. I suppose we could still charge him with whatever we’ve got lying around. Or ask for an extension.’

‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘I think we let the fox run. But not before we inform him that the Faceless Man might have him in his sights.’

‘He might bottle it there and then, ask for protective custody.’

‘So much the better,’ said Nightingale with a smile. ‘Because then we can extract a price for his protection. And if he doesn’t, then fear might just drive him back to his den. Might it not?’

‘And if we hang him out as bait and the Faceless Man offs him?’ I asked.

Nightingale put his hand on my shoulder and leaned forward.

‘I thought I might intervene before that happened,’ he said softly and then, straightening, said, ‘Besides, it will do Reynard good to play the hound not the fox for a change.’

I was thinking that it sounded like a fucking desperate plan to me, but Nightingale was the man who had walked home from Ettersberg and struck awe into the breasts of classically educated wizards from Hereford-shire to Vladivostok.

‘Do you think you can take the Faceless Man?’ I asked.

‘He’s started making mistakes,’ said Nightingale. ‘Something has put him off his game. And, if he’s scrambling, we might be able to bring him down with a good tap.’

He is making mistakes, I thought, but why? Yes, Reynard and Christina had pilfered his goodies from under his nose. But I couldn’t see any connection between that and Aiden Burghley. Especially not one which warranted that flashy dismemberment. And what was he doing questioning Phoebe in her underground pool? Unless the Faceless Man was her father, Jeremy Beaumont-Jones, and he thought Aiden Burghley was another link in a conspiracy that encompassed Christina Chorley and Reynard the Suspicious . . . In which case Olivia McAllister-Thames would be a target too.

‘We need to close down the other loose ends,’ I said.

‘Agreed,’ said Nightingale. ‘Let’s see how Sahra is doing.’

So we divvied up the jobs, subject to Seawoll’s agreement of course. Guleed would action a TIE on the ‘area manager’ who’d interviewed Wanda the manageress for her job.

‘I’m sure Carey will have finished with his escorts by then,’ she said.

Then both of us would head out to the fabled lands beyond High Wycombe to see whether Christina stashed her stolen goodies at her father’s house.

‘Isn’t Martin Chorley on the Tiger list?’ asked Guleed.

‘Our target’s made a big thing out of his anonymity,’ I said. ‘So assuming for a minute that he is Christina’s dad – which is unlikely, but possible – then he’s not going to reveal himself just because we want a look at his daughter’s room. Especially if we let him know we’re coming up.’

Guleed frowned – it’s bad practise to give people warning before you turn over their house, but if Martin Chorley was the Faceless Man, I reckoned the room would have been cleaned out by now anyway. It’s also bad practise to startle dangerous armed suspects – better to slowly and calmly take control of the situation. At least that’s the theory.

‘He’s not going to blow his cover if he thinks he can fob us off,’ I said. ‘And if he’s not our man then he won’t know what we’re looking for, so he won’t have a reason to hide it.’

Nightingale offered to authorise Guleed to carry a taser but she claimed to have never done the training course.

‘In that case you might want to carry a screamer instead,’ said Nightingale.

‘As long as you carry one too,’ I said.

‘What’s a screamer?’ asked Guleed.

I said I’d show her when we got back to the Folly, because Postmartin wanted us to cart a couple of crates over there and lock them in our secure evidence room. Actually, he meant the library because there was no way he wanted ‘his’ books stashed downstairs in the basement armoury.

Molly came out to meet us as we drove in the back gate. She glared at me and then tilted her head up towards the top floor of the coach house where I keep my widescreen, my desktop and any other bits of the technology that, for one reason or another, don’t work well in the Folly proper.

We left the boxes in the car and me and Guleed climbed the spiral stairs to find Caroline inside playing Shadow of Mordor on my PS4. Toby was curled up at her feet, thus once again demonstrating his true worth as a guard dog.

‘Thank god you’re here,’ she said, putting it down. ‘I was about to go mad with boredom.’

I did a quick inspection of my stuff, but nothing seemed out of place. I haven’t got so paranoid that I’ve started sticking hairs across doorjambs but between Nightingale watching the rugby while I was over at Bev’s, and Molly sneaking in whenever she thought I wasn’t looking to swap recipes on Twitter, I’ve taken to securing anything important in filing cabinets.

I asked how long she’d been hanging out on her own.

‘We came over to talk to your experts,’ said Caroline, who made it clear that she’d been dragged over as reluctantly as any child to an art gallery. Despite tea and cakes Caroline thought she’d just about reached peak boredom when Professor Postmartin was called away.

‘You’re not interested in The Third Principia?’ I asked.

‘It’s not going to have anything about aerodynamics in it,’ she said. ‘Is it?’

‘Aerodynamics?’ asked Guleed.

‘Caroline wants to fly,’ I said.

‘Does she know about your swan dive off the top of Skygarden Tower?’ asked Guleed.

She does now, I thought.

‘The one that was blown up?’ said Caroline.

‘As it came down,’ said Guleed, who wasn’t making any friends just then.

I busily rooted around in the equipment rack for a couple of screamers while Caroline fished for information. Had I actually been flying, or gliding, or otherwise retarding my fall through the use of magic and if so – how?

‘Retarding,’ I said while I checked that the screamers were working. ‘Only it was the Faceless Man doing it, not me.’ I handed the screamer to Guleed and showed her how to use it.

Caroline wanted to know whether I’d seen how the Faceless Man was controlling his descent, and I remembered the tower falling, the screaming, the smell of brick dust and the whole wide world rushing up to smack me in the face.

‘I was a bit distracted at the time,’ I said. ‘But he had to concentrate to maintain it.’

‘So what happened to Dr Walid and Lady Helena?’ said Guleed who always liked to keep things moving along.

‘After the professor rushed off, your pair of mad path ologists asked my mum whether she’d like to see their unparalleled collection of horrible things,’ said Caroline. She explained that she hadn’t really fancied it herself. She would have done a bit of exploring around the Folly, only Molly kept on following her, so she came into the yard and found the tech cave.

‘It wasn’t locked?’ I said.

‘No,’ she said, and smiled innocently. ‘Was it supposed to be?’

‘Generally I keep it locked.’

I chivvied her out and she ended up helping me and Guleed carry the boxes of books up to the library.

‘Anything in these for Mum?’ asked Caroline.

‘She can take that up with the Professor,’ I said. But that’s when I decided to take Caroline with us to check Christina Chorley’s room.

It was all going perfectly fine until I noticed Martin Chorley’s watch. After that, as Nightingale might say, it all rather went downhill.

The Chorley house was just the other side of Lane End, itself a village just the other side of High Wycombe which could, I suppose, be described as a small town just the other side of London. Since we’d managed to catch the M40 during a rare moment of decongestion we made it there in less than an hour, not counting the stop off at Marks and Spencer’s for snacks.

We’d checked the location on Google Earth, so unless there’d been some drastic landscaping in the last couple of years, the house had two L-shape wings and was situated just below the brow of a wooded hill that overlooked the valley and the motorway that snaked through it. It was reached by a private driveway that peeled off the main road and looped up through the woods – Martin Chorley certainly liked his privacy.

We stopped off at the entrance to the drive for a quick pre-arrival conference and the last of the Percy Pigs.

I didn’t want Caroline to come up to the house.

‘On the remote chance he is the Faceless Man,’ I said, ‘then he might know about you and your mum. Better if he doesn’t know we’re working together.’

‘You expect me to wait in the car?’ said Caroline

‘Actually, no. Because we’re going to park the car right outside,’ I said. ‘I thought you could wait in the pub we went past back there.’

‘Back there?’ said Caroline.

‘About five hundred metres,’ I said. ‘It looked like they did food.’

‘And you didn’t think to stop when we went past?’

‘I didn’t think of it until we got here,’ I said. ‘Look, we’ll drive you back down the road and come back.’

I expected a longer argument but Caroline gave me a look, put up her hands and said she’d walk.

‘Can you bag us a table for when we’re finished?’ I asked as she started back down the road – she didn’t answer.

‘And that was in aid of what, exactly?’ asked Guleed.

‘I don’t trust them,’ I said. ‘I don’t trust her or her mother. I couldn’t leave her rattling around the Folly and I definitely don’t want her getting first dibs on anything Christina has stashed at her dad’s house. Particularly if she had a copy of The Third Principia.’

‘You think Caroline’d try and steal it?’ asked Guleed.

‘Believe it,’ I said.

‘What does Nightingale think?’

‘Maybe he just likes having someone to talk shop with, but he seems a bit too trusting to me.’

‘Maybe he’s picked up some bad habits,’ said Guleed.

‘Yeah – who from?’

Guleed looked down the road to where, despite the curve, we could just see Caroline trudging back towards the village.

‘Is there some reason why we’re still standing here?’ she asked.

‘I want to make sure she doesn’t double back,’ I said. ‘Also, she might fly.’ I got out of the Asbo for a better look.

‘When you’re finished I’ll be in the car,’ said Guleed.

Disappointingly, Caroline didn’t launch herself into the air. So I climbed back into the car and we drove up the winding drive to Chorley central.

It was a beautiful house, if you like fine detached William and Mary villas in the middle of nowhere. Still had a lot of its original features, and I was surprised it wasn’t at least Grade II listed, but that hadn’t shown up on the IIP check during the initial stages of the investigation. It had a nice sensible tarmac drive with discreet drainage channels built into verges – not that they were going to flood this far up a hill, but Bev would have approved.

Checking the roof, I spotted solar panels on the south facing slopes and I was willing to bet the gutters directed rain into storage barrels against the possibility of hose-pipe bans. I pulled up next to the BMW 5 series that was parked outside the garage that made up the ground floor of the barn conversion next door. Presumably the Ferrari 288 GTO also registered in Martin Chorley’s name was kept inside. I spotted what definitely looked like an office attached to one end of the garage and made a mental note to check it – if only to sneak a look at the Ferrari.

‘What do you think?’ asked Guleed as we approached the door.

‘Puzzled but co-operative,’ I said.

‘Resigned but obstructionist in a passive-aggressive fashion,’ said Guleed.

‘That’s very precise.’

‘I’ve done more notifications than you,’ she said and rang the doorbell.

It turned out we were both wrong.

Martin Chorley, knowing we were coming, had had time to clean the kitchen, tidy the living room and hide his porn stash. I’m kidding about the cleaning because after five seconds in that house it’s clear he had a cleaner in three days a week at the very least.

He looked less haggard when he opened the door, the smudges under his eyes having receded and the pain lines around his mouth seemed less prominent. It looked like he was beginning to settle into his grief, but there was a feverish aspect to his eyes that I didn’t like. He was dressed in khaki chinos and a white and black check shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There was a smudge of something black, oil or ink I couldn’t tell which, on his left shoulder.

‘Please,’ he said when he saw us. ‘Come in – make yourselves at home.’

Guleed gave him a sharp look.

‘Can I ask how you’re feeling, sir?’ said Guleed.

Mr Chorley gave her a puzzled glance and then shrugged.

‘Bloody awful,’ he said. ‘But thank you for asking.’

The entrance hall was low ceilinged, made lower by the original roof beams that crossed it. There was a staircase with bare wooden risers varnished a dark brown leading upstairs, a square archway into what I learnt later was called the snug, with a real fireplace, old leather furniture and the sort of worn throw rug that really needed to have an Irish wolfhound curled up asleep on it.

I glanced at the staircase and Guleed took up the cue – asking whether we could see Christina’s room first. Mr Chorley was welcome to supervise, she said, although in reality we were both hoping he didn’t.

In the end he led us upstairs to the first floor where the hallways were covered in a thick cream carpet that must have been a bugger to clean.

‘She pretty much had the run of this floor,’ he said, although officially the main bedroom with its en-suite was hers and the other rooms were for guests. Then he left us to it, thank god, and said that when we were finished there was coffee in the kitchen.

The main bedroom and bathroom were far too neat, the modern reproduction brass bed was neatly made, a ghastly pink vanity and matching wardrobe had their drawers closed and when we opened them to look inside we found the clothes neatly folded – even the underwear. Guleed tutted. The room had been practically scrubbed clean, probably since Christina’s death. That was odd. Grieving parents often put off making any changes to a lost child’s things. But grief smacks everyone in the face in a different way, so I didn’t read anything into it.

There was no school work – presumably that had all been in her dorm room back at St Paul’s – but there was an interesting collection of books. Lots of YA in the American ‘drown the sister’ school of social realism, plus various Malorie Blackmans, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll.

‘A bit more Goth than I was expecting,’ said Guleed, and I remembered that we’d collared Reynard in that Gothic paradise in Archway. Perhaps that’s what they had in common.

There was nothing under the bed, inserted into the mattress or taped into an envelope under the knicker drawer. The lone stuffed animal propping up the headboard had no suspicious lumps, zips or loose seams, and valuable seventeenth century magical artefacts were definitely not lodged under any loose floorboards.

We widened our search, softly stepping out into the corridor and moving as quietly as possible into the bathrooms and guest bedrooms. It’s not that we were creeping about, but we figured what Mr Chorley didn’t hear us doing wouldn’t worry him – us police are thoughtful that way.

We also have no shame, so once we’d found nothing of note on the first floor we split up, Guleed to check the second floor, where Mr Chorley had his domain, while I went downstairs to keep an eye on the man himself and, with a bit of luck, look at his motor.

I found him in the kitchen where he offered me tea, but I asked if I could see the garage. He asked if I liked cars and, when I said I did, he gave me a wan but genuine smile.

‘Then you’re going to like this,’ he said.

The garage was clean and, judging from the perfectly balanced temperature and humidity, had the sort of environmental control system that Postmartin demands for his most fragile historical documents. The brickwork was painted a bright glossy white with just the Pirelli Calendar and an immaculate tool rack to break up the sterility. All the better for us to appreciate the car.

The Ferrari was a ridiculously beautiful motor, fire brick red with proper sleek 70s sci-fi lines so that it looked like any second the wheels would fold down to become lift engines and the vehicle would launch itself back to the future that never was. It also had a completely insane de-bored 2.8 litre V8 engine that could do nought to a hundred in less time than it takes to say it. And, from the point of view of the magic police, no electronic transmission — which meant you couldn’t accidentally wreck your own motor when in hot pursuit. I’m not saying that Nightingale should have traded in the Jag, but would it really have killed him to lay down a couple of Italians from the golden age of supercars? Just as an investment, if nothing else.

I asked Mr Chorley if he ever took it out for a spin.

‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘There’s no point owning a car like this if you never drive it.’

I was just wondering if there was a way I could wrangle a ride or, failing that, just a go in the driving seat with the engine on when Martin Chorley checked his watch. It was a slim steel coloured Montblanc Timewalker, two grand and change from reputable stockists and the sort of high quality wind-up that any practitioner would be proud to wear.

I literally nearly shat myself.

I was suddenly certain that I was bonding over a motor with the Faceless Man, and if it was him then he already knew who I was. Which meant that either he was just playing with me or was still hoping to maintain his cover. I considered whether I could tackle him right then – but he was fast and ruthless, and if I didn’t take him down with the first blow I probably wasn’t going to get a second attempt.

He didn’t turn his back on me or lift the engine cover and conveniently bend over so I could concuss him with the first blow and, to be totally honest, I bottled it – which, surprisingly, is approved police procedure.

Evacuate, report and contain – that’s what I was going to say in the ever-expanding Falcon Operations Manual – assuming I lived long enough to finish writing it.

I sighed, trying not to make it theatrical, and said that I would love to stay and talk about cars but we had to get back to London. He asked whether we’d found anything useful and I explained that we hadn’t but you had to cross your I’s and dot your T’s.

‘I’m just pathetically grateful that you haven’t closed the case,’ he said.

I assured him that the full might and majesty of the Metropolitan Police was focused on finding the truth behind his daughter’s death. If he would like a Family Liaison Officer to be assigned to him I’d be happy to oblige.

And I was thinking that now I understood the ferocity with which Aiden Burghley had been dismembered. Not because he was an obstacle, or as warning to others, but because Martin Chorley held him responsible for his daughter’s overdose.

Damn, but Phoebe must have been seconds from death – the arrival of the Americans had saved her life.

He shook my hand; his palm was warm and dry, his grip firm but not macho. A salesman’s shake, a grifter’s shake, a psychopath’s handshake. He gestured for me to proceed him through the garage door. A line of sweat ran down my back as I turned away and stepped outside.

‘I’ll just call my colleague and let her know we’re going,’ I said and thought, shit, shit, shit, over-thinking it, stupid, stupid, stupid. I pulled out my phone and called Guleed.

‘Yeah, they need us back at Belgravia,’ I told her.

The garage was parallel to the back edge of the house and there was a good six metres of drive between me and the Asbo. I lurched at a sudden grinding sound but it was only the motorised garage door closing. I disguised it by converting it into a half turn and cheery wave for Mr Chorley who stayed by the garage and watched me go.

Ahead of me Guleed sauntered out of the front door and over to the Asbo where she leaned against the bonnet. She raised a hand in a lazy salute, aimed behind me so presumably it was for Mr Chorley, who I deduced was still watching me go. I slipped my keys out of my pocket and, without pointing them at the car or doing anything else obvious, I pressed the unlocking remote.

Nothing happened.

I tried again and still no clunk or beep or flashing tail lights.

Either the remote had chosen that exact moment to break or the electrics in my car had been nobbled – no prizes for guessing which. And that meant the fucker had disabled the Asbo while me and Guleed had been upstairs in his daughter’s room. My guess was that in his head I was going to point my fob at the car, it would fail, I would click it again and again before futilely trying the door handles.

How he would chuckle as puzzlement turned to stricken realisation, I would look over at him and our eyes would meet. Then he would strike, nothing fatal to start with, so probably impello to knock me down, or something fancy and fifth order that I’d not even heard of.

The way the Asbo was parked meant that there was a two metre gap between the driver’s side door and the corner of the house. So two metres to put us out of his line of sight. Once we’d managed that, I’d worry about what do next.

I picked up my pace. I didn’t want our friend getting impatient and kicking off early.

I called out something to Guleed but I can’t remember what I said. It was enough to get her off the bonnet and meet me in front of the car. There we stopped as if having a quick chat before leaving.

‘Martin Chorley is the Faceless Man,’ I said.

Guleed’s eyes widened and her head jerked back as if trying to escape the news, but she kept her body language neutral and disguised her reaction with a tolerably convincing laugh.

‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Nightingale is an hour and a half away. Does Chorley know we know?’

‘I think so,’ I said.

‘Plan?’

‘I’m going to walk to the car,’ I said. ‘You keep going round the corner until you’re out of sight, then chuck the screamer and run like crazy.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to do exactly the same thing but in a different direction,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep him occupied. You organise the perimeter.’

If Guleed was going to say anything along the lines of ‘No, no, I can’t let you sacrifice yourself for me,’ it was too late, because we’d reached the car and in any case she knew it had to be this way.

Careful not to look, I heard the tempo of her sensible shoes as, once out of Mr Chorley’s sight, she took off towards the treeline.

I took out my key-fob and pointed it at the car. Nothing happened. I made a show of trying it a couple of times more, tried the handle and then, with a quick prayer to Sir Samuel, the patron saint of policemen, I looked back at Mr Chorley.

He was still standing in front of the garage, hands casually in his pockets.

He nodded amiably at me and I saw his eyes flick to my right – he was wondering where Guleed had gone.

And while he was distracted I gave him everything I had.

Now, I’m not up to Nightingale’s standards and 100mm of case-hardened steel is a bit beyond me, but I have progressed a bit from that first time we met on a rooftop in Soho when the Faceless fucker snatched my fireball out of the air. The flash git.

What he got was a flashgun bright fireball followed by an impello palma. The idea is that the target spends all his time worrying about the bright light coming at his face and doesn’t notice the invisible wall of force rushing along at waist height.

It might have worked, for all I know, but I didn’t stick around to find out. As soon as the spells were loosed I turned and legged it for the trees.

You don’t run straight away from someone with a ranged weapon unless you want to get shot in the back – you’re supposed to zig-zag at random intervals to present a constantly shifting target. It’s one of those things I’ve always known intellectually but, fuck me, it’s difficult to do in practise.

So I went left as if I was trying to get out of sight around the house and then right, picking a number at random and counting down the paces, eleven, ten, nine and then a horrid thought that maybe eleven was too high. So I turned at six and had gone one pace when something huge and orange shot past my head, close enough for the wind of it to stagger me. As I recovered, I looked up long enough to see the Asbo go tumbling into the trees, splintering branches and spinning round as the front clipped the trunk of a full grown oak.

I thought I’d been running flat out . . . but, you know, I think now I added a couple of kph and shaved some time off the world record. I feinted right again, went left and suddenly I was in amongst the trees and the under-growth and running downhill towards the main road.

The previous summer I’d done the exact same thing while being chased by an invisible unicorn – so at least I had form. I fumbled my screamer out of my jacket pocket, pressed my thumb hard against the activation slot and threw it as far as I could to the left.

The hardy men of the Bow Street Runners were used to working alone and thus relied on a loud voice to raise the hue and cry, alert the populace and, occasionally, scream with pain as they were savagely beaten by a criminal gang. The new men of Peel’s innovative civilian police force were, in contrast, equipped with the latest in communications gear – the hand rattle. A Peeler could summon aid by shaking his rattle while in hot pursuit of a felon and hoping that people would stop laughing long enough to help. The rattle was soon superseded by the whistle, whose principal advantage was that, not only could you have a number of prearranged signals for a variety of situations, but you didn’t look like a total tit using it.

Once the telephone had been invented, it was only a matter of time before the police got in on the new technology and, first in Glasgow and then in London, the police box was born. Here a police officer in need of assistance could find a telephone link to Scotland Yard, a dry space to do ‘paperwork’ and, in certain extreme cases, a life of adventure through space and time.

Finally, radios got small enough that a constable on the beat could carry one on his person, call in back-up, report crimes and lie about how long he was taking on refs. Then we got Airwaves, which could be integrated with every other emergency service network all over the country – now a copper under threat can get help anywhere from anyone. There’s even a panic button that opens your mic and broadcasts everything it picks up over the emergency channel. It’s the sort of thing that saves the lives and, even more frequently, the tender parts of police officers.

But then along comes magic, and suddenly we’re supposed to go back to rattles and whistles. Not this PC – I like my tender parts abrasion free.

So I invented the screamer, patent pending. Built around the guts of a disposable mobile phone, it has a felt cover for grip and is weighted for throwing. It’s got a recessed hook slide – you thumb it sideways and release and a clockwork timer starts. Then you throw the bloody thing as far as you can, hopefully outside the area of immediate magical effect, where two minutes later it basically phones the Met control room and screams help, help, serious magic shenanigans here – send help – preferably Nightingale.

I have a guy in Leominster who makes them for me, although he still thinks I’m using them to track UFOs.

As the screamer went flying into the undergrowth I shifted axis again, caught my ankle on something unseen and collapsed, flailing, into the bushes. Against my instincts, I stayed down, face pressed against the layer of decomposing leaves that Beverley assures me is a vital part of the arboreal ecosystem, and forced myself to take deep and regular breaths, even as random spores made my nose tickle.

There was wind in the treetops and I heard a vehicle go past, no more than twenty metres downhill – the main road. The trees around me were tall, with straight trunks supporting wide deciduous canopies . . . judging from the variation in colour and density there were at least two or three different species, not that I could identify them. Their lowest branches were too high up for me to climb and, apart from the bush I was lying behind, there was little ground cover.

I considered bolting for the road, but then what?

This wasn’t a unicorn I was dealing with. Martin Chorley wasn’t going to be stopped by any landscape feature short of a three metre concrete wall, and even then it would only slow him down for two, three seconds tops. Better, I decided, to rely on stealth – at least until I had a better idea of where he was.

‘Peter,’ said a voice far too close by. ‘This really is an exercise in futility.’

It sounded like Martin Chorley, only richer and with the timbre of confidence that posh people put on to convince themselves they know what they’re talking about. There was money in that voice, and breeding, and behind it all the mace, the whip and the bowler hat. I also didn’t think it was entirely natural.

‘I’ve done a deal with Lesley,’ said the voice. ‘I promised that no permanent harm will come to you.’ It seemed very close now – metres, spitting distance.

He had to know that I got a message out, and that it was only a matter of time before Nightingale descended on him in all his glory. Likewise he had to know that it was goodbye Faceless Man, hello plain old Martin Chorley, nominal and prime suspect.

‘Look Peter,’ said the voice. ‘I don’t have all day, so why don’t we get this over with?’

How not to be seen, lesson number one: Don’t stand up.

It started to rain, a persistent invisible drizzle that worked its way through the canopy and started soaking the back of my jacket and trousers. What with being overcast, it was beginning to get dark and I wondered who that would favour – me or him.

‘We both know the only reason you’re still alive,’ said Martin Chorley, a couple of centimetres from the back of my head, ‘is because I have a soft spot for Lesley May.’

God, it was hard not to move. But I knew that Nightingale could throw sounds about the place. And if Chorley had really been behind me I doubted he would have been so chatty.

‘What I don’t understand, Peter,’ said Martin Chorley – but now his voice seemed to be coming from a spot three or four metres to my right – ‘is your loyalty to these institutions. The police, the Folly – you swore an oath to the crown for god’s sake – institutions with hardly the best track record with regards to you people.’

Because the alternative is you, I wanted to shout back. But the second lesson on how not to be seen is: Don’t answer back.

He knows he’s short of time, so he’s trying to provoke me, I thought. Next, escalation – threaten somebody else.

‘I’ve got your Muslim partner,’ he said. And this time I spotted the voice wow-wowing back and forth through the trees. I thought I might even be able to sense, just a little, the formae he was using to do it. ‘You have a reputation for gallantry – are you perpared to do the gallant thing now?’

Now, he might have Guleed, although I doubted it. But even if he did, I knew he wasn’t going to just swap me for her. He was trying to provoke a response so he could zero in on me.

And if he did have Guleed?

I thought it better to establish the facts before I started worrying about that.

I decided to give him a response.

Lux is really the most ridiculously versatile of the formae and it has been the subject of experimentation by literally thousands of practitioners since the Folly was a bunch of likeminded weirdos and charlatans meeting in a London coffee house. As a result, a young person with an inquiring mind can find the most extraordinary things written in the margins of his textbooks. Now, I have the advantage over my nineteenth century peers of knowing what infrared is and how it relates to imparting heat energy to a small cloud of gas so that it expands with a humorous farting sound – oh, how they must have laughed. Thus I can make my farting sound louder and funnier – to the point where it can shake the branches on a small bush.

Ipsa scientia potestas est.

I call them noisemakers because I haven’t thought of a decent Latin tag yet.

So I flipped one as far to my right as I could, where it made a sound like a deflating bellows and made a bush shake.

Let’s see what you make of that, I thought.

A tree five metres to my right exploded. I was looking right at it when the trunk shattered at head height and blew out in a cloud of pale brown dust and splinters. Even as I clamped my arms over my head and tried to burrow my way into the leaf mould, chunks of wood were thudding down around me. I yelled into the ground as a heavy bit bounced off my back.

Another tree exploded, closer; I knew it was a tree because I heard the top half of the trunk crash through the surrounding branches before smashing into the hillside with a sound that went vibrating up through my chest. A third explosion followed the crash so quickly that the sound became one long physical blow. A fourth and fifth followed, but further away to the right – below the pain threshold.

I risked lifting my head a fraction. The air was full of yellow and brown dust and the sick smell of broken wood. Flames were visible through the murk, licking up the shattered stump of a tree. Less than ten centimetres from my face a rough splinter the size and pointiness of a fencepost had been driven into ground.

I couldn’t stay where I was. Martin Chorley might not know I was here, but one more near miss by whatever he was exploding trees with and I was going to look like an involuntary hedgehog. I drew my legs up and braced to scramble towards the road.

Another couple of explosions – much further to my right.

Sometimes courage is easy, and sometimes you have to scream at your own body to act in its own bloody best interest, and sometimes it refuses the call altogether. And the pisser is that you never know which one it’s going to be until you try.

This time my body was in full agreement with flight mode and off we went.

We got maybe five metres before a weight landed on my back, wrapped something solid around my chest and hoisted me into the air. I would have screamed like a little girl but whoever had a grip on me had their hand clamped over my mouth. There was the scent of saffron, the sharp bite of clean sunlight over a windswept hillside and the sight of far horizons.

You lying little toerag, I thought, you can fly.

The soaring effect was ruined by the leafy twigs that smacked me around my head and shoulders and then we stopped in a green space and I was dumped onto a branch next to the tree trunk which, while being alarmingly thin at this altitude, I grabbed hold of gratefully. Caroline’s hand squeezed my mouth for emphasis before letting go.

I looked around – Caroline sat casually, legs swinging, on a branch on the opposite side of the trunk and Guleed was on a branch a metre below. We were near the top of the tree and the branches below us had been bent back and up to create a sort of natural hide. Suspiciously, none of them had broken in the process and I couldn’t see any string or wire holding them in place.

I looked at Caroline, who gave me a bland look in return.

Then I flinched at a nearby explosion, then another and another and then two more moving away.

We sat in terrified silence for another half an hour, but heard nothing more.

The likelihood was that Martin Chorley had cut his losses and scarpered, but none of us felt like betting our lives on it. Besides, he could have left booby traps and/ or weird hybrid things behind.

So we waited quietly in the gathering dark for someone to come along and rescue us.