11 Communication
Police work can be frustratingly slow at times – you’re always hanging around waiting for backup or a prisoner van or forensics, or for a suspect to arrive home, or just sometimes waiting for a witness to calm down enough to give a statement. Police work out of your area can be even slower because you have to keep explaining things to senior officers who have never heard of you and have their own problems, thank you very much, without a bunch of Londoners turning up and telling them what to do. According to Caroline, Seawoll’s accent grew noticeably more regional during these conversations, see-sawing between Glossop, Bolton and Stockport with occasional pure Manc when he was swearing. To be honest, it all sounded the same to me. But I’m a soft southerner so what do I know?
One thing you learn early on in your career is how to fit refs into your shift. Especially now that senior management have decided to reduce the influence of ‘canteen culture’ by closing all the canteens. I can live without the racism and the misogyny, but I miss the food – and the camaraderie, of course.
These days you can drop a copper anywhere and they will have sussed out the nearest and most economical takeaway, greasy spoon, kebab shop or, if all else fails, fake KFC establishment. Out here on the outskirts of Glossop, and far from civilisation, we were treated to a Grace Yutani special – which seemed to be pan-fried tofu in a teriyaki sauce with rice and steamed mini-broccolis.
‘What about the ladies?’ I asked, as I helped Caroline lay the table.
‘They don’t eat tofu,’ said Caroline, ‘and they’re perfectly capable of feeding themselves.’
I immediately thought of soup bowls full of raw meat, and it must have shown on my face because Caroline laughed.
‘They’re not obligate carnivores and they definitely have to cook their food,’ she said. ‘The bastard didn’t alter their biochemistry that far. The evil fucker was only interested in surface appearances anyway.’
We ate in silence so that Caroline and Grace could use both hands for eating. Before we’d finished, Seawoll got a call that the GMP were about to arrive at the bottom of the hill to start their evidence sweep and house-to-house inquiries. Pausing only to finish his rice, my rice and the leftovers in the pot, he left and took Danni with him.
This suited me because I wanted to talk to Grace and I didn’t think she’d talk with Seawoll in the room. I wanted to know if she knew why the remaining leadership of the Sons of Wayland had kept their new archive secret from the Folly.
‘There were plenty of senior practitioners left at the Folly in 1946,’ I said. ‘Ones that hadn’t been on active duty. I’m guessing this was true of the Sons of Wayland, too.’
‘Not so many Sons,’ Grace signed. ‘Many of the senior masters were killed when their headquarters was bombed.’
‘I heard about that,’ I said. ‘Unlucky.’
‘Maybe not luck,’ signed Grace. ‘Maybe treachery.’
‘Treachery by who?’ I asked, not liking where this was going.
Grace gave a complex shrug that Caroline didn’t need to translate.
‘There was always a rivalry,’ signed Grace. ‘Resentment at the skills of the smiths. And there’s the whole north–south thing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You think someone at the Folly leaked the location of the Sons of Wayland’s secret wartime HQ to the Nazis because they preferred rugby union to rugby league?’
Which got a blank look from Caroline even as she translated, and an equally blank look from Grace when she saw the signing.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘What’s your evidence?’
‘There was a famous V1 raid on Christmas Eve 1944,’ signed Grace. ‘Two flights of Heinkel He 111s approached the coast of Yorkshire and launched forty-five …’ There was another flurry of conversation as Caroline checked her translation … ‘Cruise missiles aimed at Manchester.’
Fourteen fell into the sea and most of the rest fell onto open fields. Only a couple did proper damage, killing forty-two people and injuring just over a hundred more. One landed in Hollingwood, completely destroying the wartime headquarters of the Sons of Wayland.
‘It’s a puzzle,’ signed Grace. ‘The missiles came down from Spennymoor to Northamptonshire. Do you really think it’s a coincidence that of the two that did real damage, one of them took out the headquarters?’
‘Coincidences happen all the time,’ I said. ‘And if the V1s were that inaccurate, how would they aim it at one particular building? Especially one in a built-up area?’
‘The Germans originally planned to use radio for terminal guidance,’ signed Grace – I think she had to spell out terminal. ‘But that proved impractical. I think for this particular attack they may have used magic.’
‘How?’ I asked, and Caroline opened her palms and banged them together.
‘I’ve been up on the moors,’ signed Grace, ‘and found all the crash sites I could. You’d be surprised how much of a bomb survives its detonation. Most of the wreckage had been recovered after the war, but there was enough for me to determine that in at least three instances there had been significant enchantment associated with a missile. A definite vestigium associated with all three. The sense of a raven in flight.’
I thought of the ghost of the raven – a ghost that had responded to German commands, that had so confidently joined the other ghosts, the human ones, for their final departure. Could you train or enchant ravens to fly a V1? Weirder shit had happened during the Second World War, including gigantic Catherine wheels, anti-tank dogs and incendiary bats.
‘That would be evidence that the Ahnenerbe were experimenting with V1s,’ I said. The Ahnenerbe being the mystical branch of the SS. The ones that had weaponised the pre-war German magical establishment and run the camp at Ettersberg. ‘Not that somebody at the Folly betrayed the Sons of Wayland.’
‘It doesn’t matter if it’s true,’ signed Grace. ‘The surviving masters thought it might be – that’s why they kept this location secret.’
‘Not from the Society of the Rose,’ I said, which got a gratifying double take out of Caroline.
When the gentlemen of the Society of the Wise froze out the women, perhaps they imagined they would return to ‘proper’ feminine pursuits. Which just goes to show that the Society of the Wise was no such thing, because many female practitioners formed their own society. Although they never had a hope of getting royal patronage.
‘When did you learn that name?’ she said – which was a mistake, of course, because now my suspicions about her, her mum and the ‘others’ that helped out with the Ladies were confirmed. She’d have been better off pretending not to know what I was talking about.
I looked directly at Grace.
‘This is not sustainable,’ I said. ‘We have to establish some form of co-operation between all the magical disciplines or people like Lesley are just going to walk all over us.’
Grace made that hissing laugh sound again and signed something, with unmistakable smugness, at Caroline, who hesitated before translating.
‘Catch the thief, return the property – then we’ll talk.’
Seawoll put me on the train back to London while he and Danni stayed to see if they couldn’t track our escaped angel from the Manchester end.
‘I don’t want your missus coming after me,’ he said. ‘Plus I think the people this angel woman is after are probably all in London. You’d be better deployed as a counter there.’
I went back in economy class with a delay for engineering works, feeling a bit like a chess piece in somebody else’s game.