‘Why do you wear it all the time, then?’ I asked, although I probably shouldn’t have.
‘I don’t know,’ said Althea. ‘I just always do.’
Danni turned and frowned at me before turning back to Althea and asking if she remembered anything unusual happening.
‘Like what?’ asked Althea.
‘Like your sleep being disturbed, dreams, nightmares?’ said Danni, showing that she had been paying attention to Nightingale’s ‘witness perception displacement’ lecture. Otherwise known as the ‘weirdness filter’, in which witnesses and victims of Falcon events often rationalise things that they don’t understand into things they do. Even if, like little Megan, what they understand is shape-shifting aliens. I blame Doctor Who for that.
‘I had a nightmare,’ said Althea brightly.
‘What was it about?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Althea. ‘It was a nightmare – I woke up in a fright but I don’t know why.’
‘Was that before or after you noticed the ring was missing?’ asked Danni.
‘Before, I think,’ said Althea. ‘I woke up and went to the loo and then back to bed.’
Something in the rote way Althea said the phrase ‘and then back to bed’ caught my attention.
‘I know this sounds strange,’ I said. ‘But memory, especially between sleeps, can be a bit funny. So do you remember anything odd about your trip to the loo?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like anything unusual,’ I said.
‘Like what?’ she asked again.
I didn’t have a good answer, so I suggested that we reconstructed her journey from her bed to the loo. I think she would have liked to have told us to piss off but had concluded that humouring us was the fastest route to getting us out the door.
So she lay down on the bed and then, like a child in a primary school play, mimed waking up, pulling back an invisible duvet and rolling out of bed. She headed for the bathroom at the back of the flat.
‘Hold it there a moment,’ I said.
Basement flats were gloomy at the best of times, but this one had heavy curtains – the kind used by people who could only sleep in complete darkness.
‘Did you turn a light on?’ I asked.
Althea thought about it and said she was pretty sure she didn’t.
‘I think it was already on,’ she said.
‘Do you often go to sleep with the light on?’
Althea chuckled.
‘Not when I’m sober,’ she said. ‘Even at night I have to draw the curtains to keep out the light pollution.’ Althea stopped and stared at me for a moment. ‘Oh shit,’ she said. ‘You think they were already in here, with me, when I went to the loo.’
I said it was a possibility, and after we’d got Althea calmed down again we walked her through her movements. But she was adamant that she saw or heard nothing amiss. That she had gone back to bed unmolested. Although she admitted that she couldn’t know for sure whether she was still wearing the ring around her neck.
I made a note to point forensics at the light switches in case the intruder had got careless and left a print.
We assured Althea that we were taking her safety very seriously and asked whether there was someone she could stay with for a few nights.
‘You think they might come back?’ said Althea, getting alarmed again.
‘Best to be sure,’ said Danni.
I left Danni to organise that while I went outside and called Nightingale.
‘And you’re sure about the lack of a coherent signare?’ he said.
It had started drizzling again so I was sitting in the Asbo.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you think it was deliberately obscured – as a forensic countermeasure?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ he said. ‘But some practitioners can have a confusingly murky signare. Particularly if they had a varied magical education.’
He hadn’t seen anyone lurking on the street either, coming or going.
‘I like to think I haven’t got so old that my basic counter-surveillance training has atrophied,’ he said.
I asked him whether he’d had a chance to handle the ring that morning.
‘It was most definitely enchanted,’ said Nightingale. ‘And I agree with you about Miss Moore’s reluctance to part with hers, although as Abdul would no doubt say, “correlation is not causation”.’
‘Could you tell what it was enchanted to do?’
‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘But then my contact was brief. Miss Moore was quite insistent that I hand it back. One thing of interest – the ring was far too heavy to be made of silver. At a guess I’d say it was platinum.’
‘Does that have any magical connotations?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Nightingale. ‘Iron, steel and silver were always preferred for enchantment. I understand that platinum is a difficult metal to work with, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Merely beyond my skills – such as they are.’
‘Could this be something to do with the Sons of Wayland?’ I asked.
They’d been the metal-bashing arm of British wizardry since before the Folly was founded. I had one of their World War Two era battle staffs and Nightingale had taught me basic enchantment. I’d been working on an armband, less conspicuous than a staff, when I’d been suspended the year before. Perhaps, I thought, I should start the project up again.
‘Peter?’ said Nightingale.
‘Sir?’
‘I said that we have to do some digging in the library,’ he said. ‘And, Peter?’
‘Yes?’
‘Try not to get distracted.’
‘No, sir,’ I said.
We wrapped up so I could concentrate on my notes. I was about halfway through those when the duty officer from Richmond Borough marched up and rapped on my windscreen. Being an inspector, she didn’t have to wait for me to answer and instead she immediately opened the passenger door and slipped inside. Her high-viz jacket was beaded with moisture and she had resources on her mind.
‘When am I getting my people back?’ she asked, gesturing at where PC Walvoord and a couple of response officers were loitering in the half stairwell – out of the drizzle. Response officers being such a rare commodity these days that there were bound to be shouts she needed them for piling up.
I sighed and started negotiating. Her name was Samantha Milocab and she was one of those fast-tracked graduates that had arrived at their rank already well versed in management-speak. So when I told her that I was waiting for Belgravia MIT to deploy the appropriate personnel to secure the scene in accordance with standard procedure, she just gave me a weary look.
‘Tell your boss,’ she said, ‘if he wants my officers here any longer he’s going to have to cough up the overtime money himself.’
See, this is what happens when these graduates fall under the influence of the rank and file. They start getting ideas below their station – worst of all possible worlds. Luckily, at least from my point of view, detective constables – however ambitious they may be – do not make these kind of administrative decisions. So it was with a light heart that I called up Nightingale again and made it his problem.
‘I see,’ he said after I’d explained. ‘Please inform Inspector Milcocab that we’re taking budgetary responsibility for her team’s deployment outside the scene, but ask her if she could supervise until I can get there.’
I was stunned – Nightingale had just used the phrase budgetary responsibility. Talk about bad influences. I was going to have to start watching my language around him.
‘When will that be?’ I asked, knowing that that would be the first thing Milocab asked me.
‘We’ve removed the body and I’ve finished my supplementary sweep,’ he said. ‘We can leave the routine actions here to Stephanopoulos. You and Danni might as well go off duty and we can have an early start tomorrow.’