Especially when in 1801 our butcher’s boy on the make ligged a brand-new purpose-built headquarters on the south side of the newly developed Russell Square. It had a grand front entrance and over the double doors carved into the Portland stone pediment were the words Scientia potentia est – Knowledge is power.
It also had a mews in the back, which is where I parked the Asbo first thing the next morning. I put it in the converted coach house between the Ferrari and the backup Asbo, and as far from the haunted Bentley Speed 6 as I could get. Nightingale’s Jag was missing – he’d gone early to Westminster Coroner’s Court to oversee the post-mortem on Preston Carmichael.
As I closed the garage doors behind me, a small white and brown mongrel terrier came up the steps from the kitchen door. This was Toby, the ghost-hunting dog, who was either pleased to see me or pissed off that I hadn’t been round to visit for so long. Barking continuously, he followed me up the spiral stairs fitted to the outside wall to give access to the top floor. Once a hayloft and tack store, then servants’ quarters, then a den for gay young wizards in the 1920s and, finally, where I keep all my job-related tech, widescreen TV, Airwave charger and my old PlayStation 3. It had to be here because according to Nightingale the Folly proper was surrounded by powerful mystical defences against unspecified threats and running fibre optics inside might create a weak spot that could be exploited by malignant entities.
I had my doubts, but since Nightingale swore that it couldn’t be replaced without a full cadre of qualified wizards he didn’t want to take any risks. I kept meaning to ask whether it could be temporarily deactivated but had never got round to it. Beverley says that secretly I like having a corner of the Folly that is my domain, and she may be right.
And inside the Folly the Wi-Fi works in most of the rooms on the ground and first floors.
The master power switch for the Portakabin is kept safely in a locked metal cabinet bolted to the wall. Toby watched with bright eyes as I unlocked it and threw the master switch – he knew what this meant. Unlimited leftovers – small dog heaven.
I walked into the Folly proper through the scuffed oak splendour of the rear corridor, with Toby scampering at my heels, and out into the main atrium. Waiting for me was a supermodel-tall white woman with a narrow oval face, hazel eyes and a cascade of black hair down her back. This was Foxglove, and today she was dressed in an orange tie-dyed kaftan and yellow and black striped leggings and clutching an A3 artist’s pad to her chest. As Toby did an excited circle around her, she bounced up and down on dainty bare feet and smiled – showing slightly too many teeth.
I was about to ask where Molly was, when the prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck informed me that she had crept up behind me. Four years of practice means I no longer jump when she does that, although Beverley says I should at least pretend to be terrified for Molly’s sake.
‘You want to keep her happy, after all,’ said Beverley.
So I winced and said, ‘Please don’t do that.’
Molly was as tall as me, thin and sinuous even in her Edwardian maid’s outfit, with the same waterfall of black hair as her sister, that framed a long narrow face with a sharp chin and black almond-shaped eyes.
When she smiled at me she showed even more teeth than Foxglove.
I told her that we were opening up for an operation and we were going to need operational feeding for ten to twenty, plus coffee and snacks. She nodded gravely and glided off towards the kitchen stairs. I wasn’t fooled. She was practically skipping when she vanished into the gloom.
‘It’s sausage heaven for you, Toby,’ I said, and the dog scampered off after Molly.
I turned back to Foxglove, but she, too, had vanished. No doubt to stock up her art bag in anticipation of a fresh wave of artistic subjects.
Where possible, the Special Assessment Unit attaches itself to an existing police operation. In the past this was because of Nightingale’s cavalier attitude to procedure. But these days it’s because it allows us to pass unremarked outside what we now call the policing community. Inside said community it gets remarked on quite a lot – some of it in words even I have to look up.
‘Don’t pay any fucking attention,’ Seawoll once told me. ‘Coppers like to fucking moan. It’s when they stop you’ve got to worry.’
But the Folly is on the books, through a complicated leasing arrangement, as a proper police station complete with a recently installed and PACE compliant custody suite. I spent a very dull hour downstairs in the suite going through the checklist to make sure all the appropriate first-aid kits, prisoner-need essentials and approved microwave dinners were present and correct. When I went back upstairs I found Seawoll and Stephanopoulos lounging in a pair of overstuffed green leather armchairs, drinking tea and enjoying what I suspected was a second breakfast. Before I could join them Nightingale returned with Guleed and we were off to the races.
There are three types of police briefing. The one you see on the TV where people stand around pointing to things on a whiteboard. Or, more often, the one where we sit around like we’re at a particularly dull book club meeting while the SIO goes through a list of the actions we’re supposed to have done but haven’t got round to yet. The third is when a clique of senior officers sit around a table and thrash out what the hell they’re going to do about … in this case, Lesley.
I try to avoid these, but for some reason they keep dragging me in. I don’t know what Guleed’s excuse was. At least this time we got tea and halal sandwiches.
Stephanopoulos held up a copy of last night’s letter – the original was at the lab.
Across it written in black pen was Something powerful and strange is doing these killings. Watch your back.
I’d recognised the handwriting immediately. God knows I’d copied out her notes for forms and paperwork enough times.
‘First things first,’ said Seawoll, who was staring up at a point on the balconies above. ‘Do you think she’s doing the murders herself?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘If that was so, why would she tip us off?’
‘I’m hesitant to say she doesn’t have the capability,’ said Nightingale. ‘She obviously learnt some questionable skills from the late Martin Chorley.’
Otherwise known as the Faceless Man mark two, an ethically challenged magician responsible for murder, death, kidnapping and serious property fraud. Lesley May had worked for him once, before they had a theological falling-out and she shot him in the head.
‘But?’ said Stephanopoulos.
‘The manner of the killing seems too extravagant for Lesley,’ said Nightingale. ‘She always struck me as being a great deal more straightforward than that.’
The others looked at me and I nodded.
I’d been standing next to Martin Chorley when Lesley had ‘straightforwardly’ dealt with him.
‘They never did find her source,’ said Stephanopoulos.
Even after her ‘retirement’ from the Met, Lesley had obvious access to the kind of information that only came with log-in privileges to the Met’s IT system. The Directorate of Professional Standards had gone looking for the scrote or scrotes unknown that had been feeding her information, but without success. Despite the best efforts of the government, the Met still employed over 43,000 people – which was a lot of needles to find a paper clip in.
Seawoll sighed.
‘In that case, what is her interest?’ he asked.
‘I think she stole the ring,’ said Guleed. ‘Perhaps there’s a connection between the ring and the attack.’
‘Perhaps it’s supposed to be a protective charm,’ I said, and Seawoll winced.
‘Magic rings,’ he said. ‘God help us.’