‘Do I get to keep it?’ she asked. ‘After the course is over?’
‘If it’s still working,’ I said, ‘be my guest.’
The shop’s laptop was easier to open and, like Phillip Arnold’s phone, just as buggered. The whole chipset had basically disintegrated, leaving nothing but the connector pins, the cables and the motherboards behind. It had a physical hard drive, which at least meant that the Arnold family might be able to recover any crucial data off it. Although I had no doubt Sahra would be trying to winkle any mention of Althea Moore out of their off-site storage.
We checked a CCTV camera that had been two metres from the body, then a cash register that had been four metres away, another camera at six, and so on at two-metre intervals until we found one, another iPhone, at twelve metres that showed no visible damage.
‘Still “inoperative”,’ said Danni, reading off the evidence label.
‘It doesn’t take much to knock out a chip,’ I said, and used my jeweller’s glass to spot the tiny pinprick-sized craters in the surface of the silicon.
Once we’d established the probable radius of visible effect, we went back and checked the items we’d picked up within that circle. It was a laborious process because we had to take pictures of the damaged components, then relabel them and package them up neatly for the forensic guys. Once we had everything plotted, it was clear that whatever magical happening had happened to our victim had happened just outside the door to Samuel Arnold & Co.
‘There’s a shock,’ said Danni as we started packing up. ‘What I don’t get is if there was enough magic to knock out all cameras and stuff, why didn’t it leave a vestigium?’
Points, I thought, for correct use of the singular.
‘I’ve got a theory,’ I said. ‘Do you want to hear it?’
‘Is this like the one about the sentient tree?’ she asked.
‘This one has a bit more data behind it,’ I said.
‘Data?’
‘Verifiable data,’ I said. ‘All carefully noted down and ting.’ As my cousin Abigail would say.
Danni sighed and finished the label she was working on.
‘You know, when I volunteered for this course not one person warned me that a science background would be an advantage,’ she said.
‘What were you expecting? Ouija boards and tarot cards?’
‘Yeah, actually,’ she said. ‘Something like that.’
‘I think I saw a crystal ball in one of the labs,’ I said. ‘But we are modern go-ahead police officers. We stick to the facts and operate in a rigorously empirical environment.’
‘It’s been a long time since your last foot patrol, hasn’t it?’
‘Do you want this theory or not?’
She made me wait, carefully folding over an evidence envelope and putting it in the plastic travel box with the others.
‘What’s the theory?’ she said.
‘I’m glad you asked,’ I said, and explained while we carried the boxes back to the forensic staging post and signed them back over to the SOCOs.
‘We think when you cast a spell you’re doing two things,’ I said. ‘One, you’re sucking in magic. And then, two, using that magic to create an effect. Like the werelight I showed you on day one.’
‘That was a bit of a shock, I can tell you.’ she said.
‘When you cast a spell, as well as the magical effect, you are also putting out excess magic,’ I said. ‘The same way that when you turn on a light bulb you get heat as well as light.’
‘So the heat bit is what leaves the vestigium,’ said Danni.
‘Correct. So the magic is drawn from yourself and, for some reason, microprocessors,’ I said.
I didn’t add that possibly it was a boundary effect caused by our universe rubbing up against parallel universes. Because, A, that’s an even more unproven theory than the first one. And, B, it makes me sound like an episode of Doctor Who.
Danni frowned.
‘So that’s what does the damage,’ she said. ‘The same way it damages brains?’
‘You did the brain tour with Dr Walid?’
The Folly’s chief cryptopathologist liked to emphasise the dangers of practising magic by displaying the results of hyperthaumaturgical necrosis – or cauliflower brain syndrome, as those of us without medical degrees call it. We’ve got quite a collection sitting in jars back at the Folly.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Right after breakfast, too.’
‘So we also know that there’s some things that can draw magic from the wider environment,’ I said. ‘They suck up everything magical around them, including vestigia – so no trace is left behind.’
‘Some things?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not people, then?’
‘Depends on your definition of people.’
‘Only I’ve heard stories …’
‘Like what?’
‘Like there was a thing, like a ghost, that got inside people’s head and made them do stuff,’ she said. ‘And that’s what caused the Covent Garden riots. And when it was finished with you, it would rip your face right off the front of your head. And that happened to some poor sod in the Belgravia MIT.’
And her name was Lesley May, and we came up from Hendon together and her face was broken and destroyed by just the thing that Danni was talking about. Her face wasn’t ripped off, but the bones, cartilage and muscles that held it together fell apart.
Happened right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do.
‘You said you’d brief me once we’d finished evidence collection,’ she said. ‘So brief me.’
‘The thing you’re describing is called a revenant,’ I said. ‘You can think of it as a super-ghost.’
‘You said ghosts were harmless,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s what makes them super,’ I said. ‘They can’t get in your head unless you let them. They try and play on your weaknesses.’
‘That’s not reassuring,’ said Danni. ‘I have a lot of weaknesses.’
‘As far as we know, there’s only one confirmed revenant,’ I said. ‘And he’s been dealt with.’
Sort of.
I actually had written provisional guidelines for encounters with that particular revenant. Admittedly they amounted to Run back to the Folly as fast as you can and hide under Foxglove’s bed.
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘If Mr Punch had been here we’d know about it,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t like to do his work anonymously.’
‘Mr Punch?’ said Danni.
‘It’s in the briefing material I gave you,’ I said, and Danni gave me the bright, interested look of a trainee who has skipped a vital bit of reading but doesn’t want to admit it.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I remember.’
We were stripping off our noddy suits when the undertakers wheeled the body bag out of the vault.
‘What next?’ asked Danni once it had clattered past.
‘Now we find out what happened to that poor sod,’ I said.
2: Scalpel
If you’re dead, in England and Wales you belong to the local coroner. Invested with powers that predate the Magna Carta, they’re the ones that are charged with finding out what exactly did you in. Originally this was to determine whether the Crown had a right to hoover up your estate – royalty always being short of cash in those days. Nowadays, their job is to separate the accidents and illnesses from the acts of malice or despair. A combination lawyer and doctor, the job is a West African parent’s wet dream, and it amazes me my aunties never bring it up when discussing their plans for their kids.