Across the canal.
I saw the soles of her trainers slapping the surface of the water as if there were a concrete causeway just below.
‘Peter!’ yelled Nightingale, running past me.
We sprinted for the bridge and across, but by the time we made it into the cemetery our angel was long gone.
14 Love
We arrested Heather Chalk for assisting an offender and took her home with us to the Folly, where we keep the least-used, nicest-smelling and best-catered PACE-compliant suite in the Metropolitan Police Service area in the basement.
More importantly, the suite here was magic-resistant – so long as we persuaded Foxglove to sleep in her own basement studio, so that her anti-magic field, or whatever it was, extended to the cells. Not that we were worried about Heather doing magic … but we weren’t sure that Francisca wouldn’t stage a rescue.
I remembered the comfortable way they’d walked together down the towpath and thought a rescue attempt a real possibility. Or so I hoped.
Meanwhile, we had to check Heather in with the custody sergeant and store her shopping safely so it could be returned to her in the event of her release. Since assisting an offender is a serious offence, we arranged to have a solicitor come in even before she asked for one. In response we got a posh white woman in her fifties, in a tailored black pinstripe skirt suit and a tooled leather briefcase. This was not what we were used to in the way of legal aid briefs, so I took a moment to make friends. She turned out to be a senior partner in the local criminal law firm, who had heard so many weird stories about the Folly that she’d come to check them out. Her name was Cynthia Hoopercast.
Good for upholding the principle of legal protection for all – not so good for your working police.
‘So where did you meet Francisca?’ I asked.
‘I don’t have to answer that,’ said Heather Chalk, and Ms Hoopercast nodded approval.
I was flying solo on this interview since Nightingale, Guleed and half of the Belgravia mob were trying to track down Jacqueline Spencer-Talbot, the remaining member of the Manchester Bible studies group unaccounted for, while my FBI contacts at least tried to confirm that Andrew Carpenter and Brian Packard were still safely in the States.
At least Danni and Seawoll were on their way back.
‘I’ve stuck Barry’ – one of his up-and-coming detective sergeants – ‘with the follow-up with GMP and points in between,’ Seawoll had said.
I think the rush to get back was to provide cover for Stephanopoulos because of our failure by the canal. Now, to the rest of the Met Stephanopoulos continues to be the single most terrifying police officer who ever put the fear of God into a subordinate, but to Seawoll she was still his bright-eyed protégée. Would probably still be when she was chief constable of some county force and he was living in the Sunshine Home for Retired Northern Detectives on the seafront at Scarborough.
If Scarborough has a seafront – I’d have to check.
‘Don’t you dare get our Miriam into any more trouble,’ he’d said, and then sent me everything he had on the Thelma and Louise of the Macclesfield Canal.
‘We know you met at the halfway house in Stockport,’ I told Heather.
‘Then why did you ask?’ she said.
‘Because we need to know your side of the story,’ I said.
‘Like you care,’ she said. ‘Like you give a fuck about me.’
We did twenty minutes of the woe is me nobody cares I’m just an insignificant nothing until she cracked. Proper professional criminals can keep schtum indefinitely but ordinary people always want to explain themselves. However hard the Ms Hoopercasts of the world frown at them. You just need to stay calm and look sympathetic and eventually out it comes.
‘What are you after her for, anyway?’ she asked. This was a genuine question and my first real opening.
‘We think she may have seriously hurt people,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Heather, but the slight edge of desperation in her voice meant she knew something, at least. ‘Not a chance, she’s nice.’
‘We’re worried because we think she may be acting under duress,’ I said, and Ms Hoopercast looked suddenly interested, as I was hoping she would. ‘We think she may have been abused and conditioned to carry out a series of attacks.’
‘Are you saying she’s a terrorist?’ said Heather before Ms Hoopercast could stop her.
‘Why would you think she was a terrorist?’ I asked.
Heather looked at Ms Hoopercast, who shook her head and then back at me.
‘You said she was,’ said Heather, causing a pained crease to appear between Ms Hoopercast’s elegantly plucked eyebrows. ‘Whatever else she is – she’s not a terrorist. She’s a beautiful soul.’
‘In what way?’ I asked.
‘She was touched by the numinous,’ said Heather.
‘What’s the numinous?’ I asked.
‘It’s that feeling you get when you’re in church,’ said Heather. ‘Or a bit stoned, but in a good way. You saw it, didn’t you? You was there, weren’t you? She’s an angel. A real angel – from Heaven.’
‘She has power,’ I said. ‘But we don’t think she’s a messenger from God.’
Ms Hoopercast stopped making notes and stared in amazement, first at me and then at her client, and then back at me – her eyes narrowing.
‘Ah,’ she said softly. ‘So it’s true.’
I ignored her and kept my eyes on Heather. Love is a terrible thing in an accomplice – you can’t turn one suspect against another if they put the needs of the other ahead of their own.
You have to sneak in through the back door instead.
‘We think she might be being forced to attack people,’ I said.
‘Against her will?’ asked Heather.
Ah, I thought, she knows something for sure.
‘We think so,’ I said, even though she’d looked pretty enthusiastic to me. ‘Did she say where she was from?’
‘Seville,’ said Heather. ‘It’s in Spain, but I think she was from somewhere a bit rural, if you know what I mean?’
‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.
Because Heather had had to teach her how to turn on a cooker, let alone use a phone. She’d been suspicious of the toilet, took really long baths and thought the Hoover was the best thing since sliced bread. She did know how to make bread, though, and she knew exactly how to use the wood and coal stove on the narrowboat.
It never seemed to occur to Heather that Francisca might be a refugee from the dim and distant past – not even when she fainted at her first sight of an airliner. I’d have sussed it on the first day – which just goes to show why more science fiction should be included in the National Curriculum.
‘Was she religious?’ I asked.
‘In what way?’
‘Did she go to church?’
Heather shook her head.
‘Did she pray?’
‘All the time to herself,’ said Heather. ‘In Spanish, I think.’
‘Did you ever see her with the spear?’ I asked.
Heather hesitated.
‘What spear?’ she said, and I had a sudden memory of the spear as it swung through the air towards me … Flames streaming from what I realised was a blunt tip. The flames had made it hard to see, but the top quarter of the weapon had been a narrow cylinder. Grey-green, roughly textured with organic swirls and dribbles.
Lightning glass, I thought, and realised that both Heather and Ms Hoopercast were staring at me.
‘The burning spear,’ I said.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Heather, but I could see that she did.