Foxglove Summer (16 page)
Gaby’s mum gave a little humourless chuckle. ‘We didn’t inquire too closely as to where the sheep had come from.’
‘Nice,’ I said. I turned to Gaby. ‘Did you see Princess Luna?’
‘Don’t be silly. You can’t see Princess Luna – she’s invisible.’
‘Of course she is.’
‘Nicole and Hannah were feeding her sheep,’ said Gaby, and for a second I thought I’d misheard her.
‘They were feeding Princess Luna some of the cooked sheep?’
‘Yep,’ said Gaby. ‘I would have given her some of mine, but I’d eaten it all. I let her lick my fingers, though.’
I felt her mother practically start out of her chair, and then subside again.
‘What did it feel like?’ I asked.
‘Like a big tongue,’ said Gaby.
‘And was it low down or high up?’
Gaby jumped off her chair and demonstrated by sticking her arm straight out in front of her with her palm turned up. About a metre twenty above floor level, but the way she held her hand suggested an animal of some kind.
‘What kind of animal is Princess Luna?’ I asked.
‘She’s a pony, silly,’ said Gaby brightly.
A little klaxon went off in my head.
Aruga aruga
, I thought.
Set condition one throughout the ship.
When you’re police sometimes you’ve just got to stop and think about what you’re doing – even when you’re on Day 5 and fears, as the media always say, are growing. I needed somewhere to work, I needed peace and quiet, and I needed a secure internet connection. So I headed back to Leominster nick, because two out of three ain’t bad.
A quick chat with Beverley would have been useful, only her phone went to voicemail. She’d said she was going to have a quick look up and down the River Lugg, so it was possible that she was either in a dead area or currently underwater. I didn’t have any luck with Nightingale, either, and calling the Folly just got me the long ominous silence that indicated Molly was the only one answering the phone. I left a message anyway – Nightingale always gets them. I don’t know how. Perhaps she writes them down.
I sneaked past the incident room, hid myself in Edmondson office and fired up HOLMES II. First I wrote up Gabriella Darrell’s new statement from my notes and sent it off to be processed and then I checked my emails to see if anyone had bothered to solve any of my problems for me – fat chance. Then I opened the annotated copy of
Folklore of Herefordshire
that Hugh Oswald had given me, skipping to the index and looked for
abductions
, of which there were none. Nor was there anything under
changelings, children
but there was something under
The Fairy Changeling
. Ella Mary Leather reported an account of a baby that never grew up and was strangely hairy, who turned out to be a changeling and was tricked into revealing the location of the true baby by an older brother. Leather suggested that such changeling stories might be the result of hypothyroidism or other conditions to which Hugh had noted in the margin
Likely, but what if no gross phys. changes found? What if grows to adult? Oth, rec. foxglove tea (digitalis) to drive baby away – justified infanticide? No evd. Fae this case.
I was about to move on to
horses
, supernatural or otherwise, but Hugh’s annotations led over to the next page where the name Aymestrey popped out at me. This was in the section on Hobgoblins, which Ella Mary Leather associated with brownies, which she claimed was the Herefordshire name for Robin Goodfellow, the Puck of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
. A name associated with Pokehouse Wood which was located, according to Google Earth, half a kilometre from where Beverley stuck her head in the river and my unfortunate sheep said goodbye to its entrails. It was also on the Mortimer Trail, the same right of way that ran past Stan’s stash, and, I found when I checked Inspector Edmondson’s Ordnance Survey map, close to the gate where the girl’s phones were damaged.
There a traveller was once so tormented by Puck in the woods that he left a bequest the remuneration from which paid a local to ring the church bell at a certain time of night – to guide future travellers home.
By this Hugh had written:
No ev. of ac. rcntly. wood now F.C. replanted with cons.
I took a brain break and googled Princess Luna – who turned out to be a character from
My Little Pony
, and a unicorn, and not noticeably invisible.
My phone pinged and I picked it up expecting it to be Beverley or Dr Walid. Instead I read –
WTF R U doing in sticks? <3 LESLEY
Enhanced Interrogation
I woke in the hour before dawn, stuck in that strange state where the memory of your dreams is still powerful enough to motivate your actions. Believing that I’d heard someone outside the cowshed doors I’d stumbled to my feet and slid them open. In the moonlight I thought I saw serried ranks of what I now recognised as apple trees filling the pasture out to the old wall, an orchard of silver and shadow. Above their topmost branches was a white point of light, too bright to be a star. A planet – probably Jupiter. There were a couple of bright stars and there, just visible through a gap in the trees, an orange spark that even I could identify – Mars. In that half-dreaming state I was certain that there was a path running through the orchard and beyond the walls was a darker and thicker forest full of secret places and hidden people.
Then I blinked and it was just a pasture, an old wall and fields of grain beyond.
Back in the cowshed I dug around in the trunks which Molly had sent from London and extracted the antique brass primus stove. It sloshed heavily when I shook it, so there was plenty of paraffin inside.
As soon as I’d got the text from Lesley I’d called Inspector Pollock at the Department of Professional Standards, who was my designated point of contact with the team that was investigating Lesley’s criminal misconduct. I informed him that Lesley had made contact and gave him the details. He told me not to make any response until he’d had a chance to make an assessment. I told him to assess away.
The primus came in a handsome wooden carrying case complete with a brassbound saucepan and lid and a reservoir of white spirit for getting it started. I’ve practised lighting one of these using lux to vaporise the paraffin, but I didn’t want to turn my phone off in case Lesley texted again. It took less than five minutes to fetch water from the bathroom, pump up the pressure, light the white spirit, watch the main burner catch and give a merry flame under the saucepan. Nightingale said that Amundsen had used one of these on his way to the South Pole and that Hilary and Tensing had hoiked one up the slopes of Everest.
Further down in the trunk I found a battered biscuit tin containing half a packet of digestives, loose teabags, some teacakes wrapped in rice paper and a bottle of Paterson’s Camp Coffee that was so old that on the label the Sikh was still on his feet proffering a tray to the seated Highland major-general. I decided not to risk it – not least because Camp Coffee is famous for not having any caffeine in it.
After briefing the DPS, I had called Nightingale and told him about Lesley. He seemed rather impressed with it as a tactic.
‘Rather neatly pins us, doesn’t it?’ he’d said. ‘I was considering following you up to Herefordshire.’
‘What about the comrade major?’ I’d asked.
‘Oh, I think I’d have brought her too. And Toby,’ he’d said. ‘Might have made quite a jolly outing. But if Lesley knows you’re out of town I can’t get further than a quick rush from the Folly.’ And whatever it was that was hidden behind the door in the basement. Whatever it was that Nightingale, I was beginning to suspect, had stayed in his position at the Folly to protect. He wasn’t going to leave that exposed.
So no back-up. Apart from Beverley, who seemed more interested in the River Lugg than in the case. I wanted to ask Nightingale about Ettersberg and what, precisely, was behind the black door in the basement of the Folly – but I bottled out and asked him to check the literature on unicorns and brownies.
He said he’d see what he could find, although he was almost certain that brownies were considered entirely mythical.
Inspector Pollock called back and said that I was to engage Lesley in conversation. ‘Stretch it out,’ he said. ‘And if you can entice her to talk directly on the phone, so much the better.’
He didn’t have to say that all communication is the policeman’s friend, that even if we can’t trace your call the mere fact that you’re talking tells us something and every cryptic clue, every denial, every weird utterance tells us something. Even if it’s just that you’re in a desperate need to talk to someone.
He didn’t have to say that they were monitoring my phone.
So I texted back:
I’m working where R U?
And then I did my paperwork and, after that, to bed to dream of apple trees in the moonlight.
Mercifully I didn’t have to do the briefing in Windrow’s narrow little office, but instead on the first-floor terrace that stuck out in front of the canteen like the flying bridge on a landlocked boat. It may have been an unconscious desire to avoid conferring too much legitimacy on the Falcon assessment, but it was most likely so that Windrow could have a crafty fag. We stood there in the cool morning shade enjoying the chill air as the eastern horizon turned gold under a powder blue sky.
It was Day 6 and things were getting a little bit desperate. Edmondson handed me a newspaper with the headline. POLICE FAILING HANNAH AND NICOLE SAY VILLAGERS.
‘If you don’t feed the dogs,’ said Windrow, ‘you’re going to get bitten.’
I checked the by-line, because it always pays to know who not to talk to next time you’ve got something juicy to trade. But I didn’t recognise the name – Sharon Pike.
‘Writes columns in a couple of the nationals,’ said Edmondson.
‘What’s she doing on the front page?’ I asked.
‘She considers herself a local,’ said Windrow.
‘She has a cottage in Rushpool,’ said Edmondson. ‘I hear she spends most of her time in London, though.’
I suddenly remembered her from me and Dominic’s fruitless search for village
vestigia
. She’d been a slight white woman with black hair, dressed in skinny jeans and a salmon-coloured cardigan. I remembered that she’d asked a lot of questions and I hurriedly reviewed my memory to see how much trouble I might have talked myself into.
Windrow must have seen my expression. ‘Hasn’t mentioned you yet,’ he said.
I didn’t like the sound of that ‘yet’ one bit.
Windrow lit a second cigarette off the first and took a deep drag as if trying to fill every cubic centimetre of his lungs.
‘I’m stocking up for when I have to go back inside,’ he said.
Edmondson checked his watch and glanced at where the sun was springing up above the distant hills.
‘So what’s your assessment?’ he asked.
‘Before I start, sir, I need to ask you how much actual Falcon information you want to hear.’
Edmondson blinked and Windrow scratched his chin.
‘How much do you normally give out?’ asked Windrow.
‘As much as people are comfortable with,’ I said. ‘Some people don’t like to use the M-word. Some don’t mind that, but want explanations for things we can’t explain.’
‘Lad,’ said Windrow, ‘we’re so desperate we’ll take whatever we can get.’
I started with what I’d already told them – that the phones had been fried by magic up on Whiteway Head where the Mortimer Trail crosses onto Bircher Common. That there was something supernatural moving around in the woods to the south-east along the trail which might, if it was the same thing as Nicole’s invisible My Little Pony, be related to her and Hannah’s disappearance.
‘If the invisible pony really turned up at the birthday party,’ I said, ‘then we have a clear path from Rushpool, up to Whiteway Head and then west down the Mortimer Trail to where we found yesterday’s dead sheep.’
‘We were going to have to go into those woods sooner or later,’ Edmondson said to Windrow.
‘I do have indications that something weird is localised to that area. And there are historical leads to run down, and I’d like to deploy some specialist help,’ I said.
‘This would be Beverley Brook, aged twenty, resident of Beverley Avenue, London SW20?’ asked Windrow.
Well, of course they’d done an IIP check – they’d probably had Dominic do it.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And who is she?’ he asked. ‘Exactly?’
‘Best to think of her as a consultant,’ I said.
‘Good god,’ said Edmondson. ‘Are you saying she’s a . . .’ He hesitated as his mandated diversity training caused him to trip over the word voodoo or possibly witchdoctor – I couldn’t tell which. ‘A traditional spiritualist?’ Which impressed the hell out of me, and I was tempted to agree just to reward such a valiant effort. But it’s one thing to withhold information from a senior officer and quite another to feed them false data.
‘Not really, sir,’ I said. ‘It’s just that there are some people who’ll talk to her who wouldn’t talk to us.’
‘People?’ asked Windrow dryly.
‘Special people, sir,’ I said. ‘Bees are avoiding the area in question. That’s why we think something is going on there.’
I waited for one of them to ask whether the bees were ‘special people’, but luckily both of them had more important things on their minds.
‘What’s your next step?’ asked Windrow.
‘I’d like to re-interview both sets of parents,’ I said. ‘See what they know about the invisible Princess Luna. And then I’d like to have a look at Pokehouse Wood and a couple of other places that have come up in the literature.’
‘You’re going to have a hard time getting Derek or Andy to interrupt their search,’ said Edmondson. ‘So I’d talk to them as soon as possible – before we restart operations.’
‘I’ll ask Cole to facilitate a second interview with the mothers,’ said Windrow.
There was the sound of voices from inside the canteen – members of MIU arriving and looking for coffee.