The Shadow Cabinet (14 page)

I looked at the pile of papers. There had to be something in here, but my brain was so weary, so stretched out and stressed. What I wanted to do was sleep, or walk every street in London looking for Stephen, or both at the same time. What I had to do was figure out a job for myself that somehow involved these papers.

“Did you find anything else useful?” Freddie said.

“The way I got to the cemetery was this,” I said, pulling the
A–Z
out of another pile. “It looks like Stephen was tracking activity at different locations.”

“This could be very useful,” Freddie said. “We could plot it on a map. It might give us a geographical distribution. That might tell us something. Is there a large map in here?”

“There has to be,” I said. “Stephen loves maps. There's usually one on the wall of the flat. I think Boo took it. It should be in here.”

We both dug through until Freddie found it, still in one of the bags. It was a well-worn map of London. We spread it open on the floor. It had old pinholes in it from where he'd marked information before.

“If you mark an
x
anywhere there was an encounter, we'll be able to get a large-scale picture,” Freddie said.

This was something I could do. It made sense. It was a task when I needed a task. I found a pen in the middle of the mess and climbed onto the map, pulling the
A–Z
with me. Each page of it covered a small zone of London. The book was a few hundred pages long and far more detailed than the big map. I would have to work zone by zone, moving slowly across the city with my pen, finding streets or guessing where they should be if the big map didn't have them in detail. Freddie tucked herself up on the sofa with the notebook and a pad of paper. The time started to slip by very quickly. I worked through page after page, crawling around the map of London. There were a few little pools of activity, a few large blank spaces. Nothing I could see that seemed important. I'm not sure how much time went by. The curtains were closed, and it had gotten dark a long time before.

“All right,” Freddie said, breaking the silence. “I'm fairly certain it's not a standard substitution code. It looks like it needs a key. Did you find any single pages that seemed to be completely in gibberish? Charts of letters . . .”

“I would have noticed that,” I said.

“Of course. Well, all right. Why would Stephen code his own book? What would he want to use it for? That might tell us something about how he keyed it.”

“He was careful about everything,” I said.

“But was anything else written in this code?”

“No,” I said. “Everything else is pretty normal.”

“Then this book is different. This book contains some different information. You only record things you need to remember, so why would he—”

The kitchen door opened, and Thorpe hurried into the room.

“They've got a hit,” Thorpe said. “Get your coats.”

14

T
HORPE
DROVE
QUICK
L
Y
N
O
W
,
M
U
C
H
M
O
R
E
Q
U
I
CKLY
THAN
I think you're allowed to drive in London. He was dipping into bus lanes and swerving around other cars. No one stopped him. There must have been something about his car that signaled to the police that he was to be left alone. He did stop at red lights when we hit them, which would send us bucking forward.

“The house was under the name Mick Dunstan,” he said. “Real name Michael Phillip Dunstan, born 1952, arrested six times between 1968 and 1973 for possession and selling of cannabis. No records of any kind at all for nine years, until he bought a house in 1982. It's in East Acton, near Wormwood Scrubs, which explains quite a lot.”

“What's Wormwood Scrubs?” I said to Freddie.

“I believe it's a prison,” Freddie said.

“It's also a nature preserve,” Thorpe said. “It's one of the largest green spaces in London. It's the country in the city.”

The country.

“She's there,” I said.

“I think it's likely.”

“So going to see Clover was useful,” Freddie said eagerly.

“Yes, Freddie,” Thorpe said. He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a phone, which he tossed onto my lap.

“Write a text message to Jerome. Tell him you're fine. Don't hit Send. Pass it back to me.”

This was kind of an intense moment to be writing text messages to Jerome, so after a minute or two of thinking, I came up with:
I'm fine.

I passed it to Thorpe, who eyed it before hitting Send. The reply came quickly.

How do I know this is you?

I considered this, then typed another reply and showed it to Thorpe for approval as we stopped at a red light. Approval was given with a terse nod.

I'm fine dumbass

For much of our ill-fated romance, Jerome and I had traded insults with our affections.

That's more like it
was the reply.

“That's enough,” Thorpe said, taking the phone back.

A little under an hour later, we arrived in a residential area, somewhere I'd never been before in London. There was a British Gas van sitting in front of the house and a few people in uniforms going in and out. One of them came over to the car and rapped on the window, and Thorpe lowered it.

“It's clean,” he said to Thorpe in a low voice. “No one in there. Recently vacated, though. Food out in the kitchen. Fresh rubbish. Shall we process it?”

Thorpe looked at the house for a moment.

“Move your team out for an hour or so. I want a look first. Maintain a perimeter. If you see any of them in the area, you move in.”

“Right.”

The man looked at me and Freddie but said nothing. He returned to the group and made a quick hand signal, and everyone returned to the van. We waited for a while, until they pulled away, and until Callum and Boo came running up to the car.

“Tube bollocksed up today,” Callum said. “Took forever.”

Thorpe reached across me, opened the glove compartment, and removed some latex gloves.

“Everybody puts these on,” he said.

“Are we going
inside
?” Freddie said.

“We are. We need to be the first in there before the scene is processed. Don't touch or move anything unnecessarily.”

I had to admit I felt very
CSI
snapping on the gloves.

From the outside, this was about as ordinary a house as you could imagine. I had come to be suspicious of ordinary-looking houses. Inside, the first thing we were hit with was a faceful of incense—not quite as strong as the bookshop, but similar in scent. It definitely looked like people had recently been there—gross people. There were food wrappers and trash all around. Candles had been burning all over the place, stuck into wine bottles and beer bottles, cemented to whatever surfaces they sat on in their own wax drippings. There was a fine grit over the floor, and the remnants of a rubbed-out chalk circle.

“They doing some kind of rituals in here?” Callum said. “Like witchcraft?”

“They could be doing anything,” Freddie said. “From the sound of it, they're into all sorts.”

“What they're into is Monster Munch,” Boo said, flicking a pink snack bag with the end of her nail. There really were a lot of bags around.

“I think they use a lot of pot,” I said. “Maybe they have the munchies?”

“That does make sense,” Freddie said. “Many of the ancient Greek rituals were dependent on the ingestion of psychotropic substances, most likely ergot. It's basically nature's version of LSD.”

“So they get stoned and eat snacks,” Callum said. “That describes half the people I went to school with.”

Thorpe was looking up. I looked up too. There was a little device in the ceiling.

“There's a sprinkler system,” I said, pointing. “At least they're careful stoners.”

“That's a bit odd,” Freddie said, “a sprinkler system in a house like this.”

We moved on to the kitchen, where Boo felt the side of the kettle.

“Still warm,” she said. “Someone was here not that long ago. Must have just cleared out.”

“Funny, that,” Callum said. “Them clearing out right before we got here. It was almost like they knew we were coming.”

They both looked to Freddie, who was backing ever so slowly up against the table.

“She didn't,” Thorpe said.

“How do you know?” Boo asked. “Didn't she know all those freaks? Didn't she just take you right to some people who knew Jane? She comes in, and all of a sudden we find this place? Even if Stephen did vet her . . .”

“I didn't!” Freddie said. “I promise you.”

“But you did meet Jane, didn't you?” Thorpe said. “You said she was well known, but that wasn't it, was it?”

Freddie's skin turned faintly purple.

“When I first got the sight, I tried to find other people who had it as well. I met someone at the bookshop who introduced me to Jane. He took me over to her house for dinner once. Just once. They were very nice to me, and it was the first and only place I could really talk about what had happened to me. It was just so good to have someone to talk to. They made me feel normal.”

I knew that feeling.

“They talked to me about having the sight, but they didn't tell me any of the things they told Rory. After that night, I never saw them again.”

“Why not?” Boo said. “If you liked them so much.”

“I didn't like them,” Freddie said sharply. “I liked how they made me feel like there was nothing wrong with me, but there was something else in their manner that I didn't like at all. Something I couldn't place. They were too welcoming, too interested in me. I excused myself at one point and had a quick sneak around the upstairs and looked at some of the books. Once I saw some of the titles on the spines, I had some idea that I was dealing with very strange people indeed. I went down and finished my dinner and thanked them, and I never went back. They never did anything to me, but I always felt very uncomfortable about them. When I saw Jane at your school, Rory, I asked around a bit more, and Clover finally told me a few things. That's the truth.”

Boo and Callum exchanged a look. I kept my eye on Freddie, who was grasping fearfully at the edge of the table.

“I think she's telling the truth,” I said.

“As do I,” Thorpe added. “In fact, I know she didn't contact anyone. I put a trace on her mobile and her computer, and I had someone go to her room at her house at the college and go through her things. That same person kept an eye on her as she was packing.”

“The cleaner?” she said, her eyes widening. “The one who told me to keep my door open because they'd sprayed for insects?”

“So you were never alone,” Thorpe said. “I had Rory sit with you in the house. She was never going to allow you to be alone with Stephen's papers.”

“You let her look at Stephen's things if you thought she was a risk?” Boo said.

“I didn't believe she was,” Thorpe said. “I believe she is an asset.”

“So who told them someone was coming?”

“Perhaps no one,” Thorpe said. “It could be a coincidence. But I don't really put much stock in those. I imagine it was someone who saw us go into the bookshop.”

“Not Clover,” Freddie said. She was slowly releasing her grip on the table. “He hates Jane.”

“Anyone around that bookshop could have alerted them,” Thorpe said. “I imagine we made an impression going in. Whoever it was, I know it wasn't you. So let's keep going. Upstairs.”

Boo and Callum still regarded Freddie with some uncertainty. She put her head down. We headed upstairs, which was only slightly less gross than downstairs. There were three bedrooms. Two of them had no beds, just some mattresses and blankets on the floor. The one bathroom was dirty, with a pile of wet towels in the corner and an unpleasant, scrummy ring around the inside of the tub. There were a few toothbrushes lying bristles down in a small pool of something thick and filmy—most likely congealed toothbrush drippings. This bothered me most of all.

“Looks like about five or six people have been staying here,” Thorpe said.

“Six disgusting people,” Boo said.

The main bedroom did have a bed in it, as well as a white area rug. It had an en suite bathroom, which was cleaner than the other one. In this bathroom, the towels were hung and the toothbrush stored upright.

“Jane probably stayed in here,” I said. I went to the wardrobe and opened it, revealing a few outfits. They were more conservative than Jane's usual getups, but they looked about her size.

“Take the toothbrushes,” Thorpe said to Callum and Boo, passing them some plastic bags he had in his pockets. “Take hairbrushes. Look for anything with any identification.”

“This floor is very poorly laid,” Freddie said, looking down. I guess she was right—there were gaps between the boards, like someone hadn't bothered to make sure they all lined up correctly.

“Who cares?” Callum replied.

“It's not that I care, but . . . don't those windows look lower than the windows downstairs?”

She went over and pulled back the long drapes. She was right—these windows were definitely lower to the floor.

“Again,” Callum said, “who . . .”

In answer to that half-asked question, Thorpe got down on one knee and felt the floor. He poked his nail into the spaces between the boards. Then he looked at the windows again.

“This floor is raised. Something's under here, and this is ventilation. Lift up that bed. Lean it against the wall. Get the rug up.”

Callum and Boo lifted the bed and tipped it against the wall, and Thorpe and I dragged back the rug. Freddie was now flat on the floor, her face against it, looking into one of the cracks.

“I think it's open space below here,” she said.

As soon as we pulled back the rug, there was a clear outline of a hatch. Thorpe got down and worked on prying it open, and when he did, a crawl space about two feet deep was revealed.

Charlotte was resting on her back, her red hair spread out, her hands peacefully folded on her chest. Thorpe stepped down into the space and felt Charlotte's neck and cheek.

“She's breathing,” he said. “Charlotte, can you hear me?”

No response. Callum knelt and helped Thorpe lift Charlotte out of the crawl space. They set her gently on the floor, where Thorpe continued to check her over, lifting her eyelids, listening to her chest. There were no cuts or bruises, no signs of injury. She was simply asleep, lying in a hatch in a floor under a rug and a bed in some random house in London.

“I'll call 999,” Boo said.

“No,” Thorpe replied. “Bring the car around. Now.”

“She's okay?” I asked, getting down on the floor next to her.

“We need to get her to a doctor,” Thorpe said, sitting back on his knees. “I know someone. Wrap her in a blanket and get her to the car. Put her in the back. Be as low-key as you can about it.”

He pulled out his phone and sent a text as Callum lifted Charlotte up. Her head rolled back.

“Freddie, Rory, you're in the car with me,” Thorpe said. “Rory, you stay in the back with Charlotte. Callum, Boo, you keep eyes on this place.”

I got into the back, and Charlotte was carefully shifted in, her head resting on my lap. This was perhaps the strangest moment of all, looking down and seeing Charlotte's face, her red hair against my legs. A few minutes into the drive, I felt her head turn.

“I think she's waking up!” I said. “Charlotte?”