‘Don’t tell me it was cursed,’ said Seawoll.
‘I doubt it,’ said Postmartin. ‘But it is exactly the sort of rare and exotic material that attracted pre-Newtonian practitioners.’
‘If there was a magical opposition to the Inquisition,’ I said, ‘then there was bound to be pushback by the Inquisition. They’d have needed a way to deal with the resistance.’
‘I’ve never heard of Monsignor something Prado,’ said Postmartin, ‘but the name sounds Spanish. Perhaps he was influential in Peter’s hypothetical magical inquisition.’
‘Good God,’ said Nightingale. ‘I think Leon all but told me.’
Back in the 1920s, when they’d all been young – or at least that’s how it felt – and drinking in the Lamb off Guildford Place to stay out of the way of the old bores that ran the Folly. Nightingale had mentioned to Leon and some other friends, over a pint, that he was planning to travel up to Manchester.
‘I’m curious as to how the Sons do their enchantments,’ he’d said.
‘Did you put him up to this?’ Leon had asked David Mellenby, who was already famous as one of the new breed of scientific practitioners.
‘Good Lord, no,’ David had said. ‘I believe he’s looking to make his own staff.’
‘It’s a total bore,’ said Leon. ‘Take it from me. My family have been silversmiths and enchanters since biblical times, and the best thing my father did was agree to send me to Casterbrook.’
David, of course, had been instantly interested and asked whether Leon’s family had truly practised enhanced metallurgy …
‘That was David’s term for it,’ Nightingale told us. ‘I’m almost certain that he coined it himself. He wanted to know whether it really dated back to the ancient world. David had this notion that a great deal of wisdom had been lost with the fall of the Roman Empire and the Christianising of the East.’
Leon Davies had admitted that he didn’t know whether his family’s skills really dated back to the time of Abraham, but they’d definitely been famous as makers of amulets and cunning devices in Muslim Spain. Indeed, had been men of substance until they were driven out by the Spanish Inquisition.
‘Being crafty made them particularly suspect in the eyes of the Church,’ Leon had said, ‘who weren’t above employing their own sorcerers.’
‘Did he say any more?’ asked Postmartin eagerly.
‘Not that I remember,’ said Nightingale, and Seawoll sighed.
‘Are you really saying that the Catholic Church had its own version of the Folly?’ he asked.
‘Might still have,’ said Postmartin. ‘For all we know.’
‘But not the bloody C of E, I hope?’
‘No,’ said Nightingale. ‘That was part of the post-war settlement.’
‘Thank fuck for that,’ said Seawoll.
Apart from anything else, Francisca being a weapon of the Spanish Inquisition would explain the archaic Castilian. But it still left the question of who Francisca was, or rather had been, before she was an instrument of divine justice. With this in mind, for the next interview we switched Heather to the Folly’s very own Achieving Best Evidence suite, which is furnished with a comfortable leather sofa and matching overstuffed armchair salvaged from one of the unused lounges on the fourth floor. The shift in venue wasn’t lost on Ms Hoopercast, who – no doubt rightly – surmised it marked a shift for her client from suspect and co-conspirator to member of the public caught up in events beyond her control. Practically a victim in her own right. A new status that would only be helped by full and enthusiastic co-operation with the forces of law and order. Just to make the point, we threw in a pot of tea and a round of tuna sandwiches. I think Ms Hoopercast was somewhat taken aback by the willow pattern china teapot, but she rallied and continued to glower at us for the rest of the interview in the approved manner.
‘She was a skivvy,’ said Heather, when I asked what she thought Francisca had done back in Seville. ‘Like she should have gone to university, but never got the chance and had to do shit jobs for a living. She might have been one of those modern slaves you hear about, only I thought they were mostly Filipino or something.’
Weirdly, we’d done being a servant in olden times at school with Miss Redmayne, who was one of those dead-keen humanities teachers straight out of training and ready to dismantle patriarchal capitalism one lesson plan at a time. In fact, being a top-class servant in the late medieval period was a prime job because of access to the great and powerful – plus perks. But being a skivvy and a cleaner was every bit as shit as modern slavery.
A person might clutch at any opportunity to escape that.
Especially if that opportunity was blessed by the highest moral authority you know.
I asked whether Heather thought Francisca truly believed that the blasphemers deserved to die, and she said that she did.
‘Besides,’ said Heather, ‘I don’t think she thinks she’s going to be free until they’re dead.’
‘Free from what?’ I asked.
Heather shrugged. ‘She promised,’ she said. ‘And she always keeps her promises.’
15 Earthworks
They were wrapping up at the Kensal Green moorings, so I popped in to look at a hole in the ground. I parked up in the Sainsbury’s car park and showed my warrant card to the PCSO guarding the gate out onto the towpath. To keep our secure area manageable, we’d moved Heather’s narrowboat along the canal to the Sainsbury’s stop-and-shop mooring. Guleed was sitting on the roof with Danni and an armed response officer called Cecil.
A Crime Scene Examiner in a noddy suit was waiting by a small tent erected on the towpath.
‘Are you the one doing the Falcon Assessment?’ he asked.
I said I was and apologised for keeping them waiting.
The Crime Scene Examiner shrugged and said he was on overtime.
Usually these white and blue crime scene tents are a horror, because they use them to protect bodies and bits of bodies from the elements and the prying eyes of the media. But this time it was just the point on the towpath that Francisca had struck with her spear.
It was a big hole. I’d seen the geyser of earth and concrete when it hit but I was still surprised by its size. It also had a very clearly defined shape, as if it had been gouged out by an enormous ice cream scoop – the same as the wounds on Preston Carmichael and David Moore.
No wonder they’d found a film of vaporised blood and skin all over the Silver Vaults – I really hoped they’d invested in some deep cleaning afterwards.
And, like with the terrible wounds in Preston’s and David’s chests, there was a short tube of lightning glass left at the bottom. I reached out with a gloved hand and brushed it with my fingertips.
Now I was used to it, the bell-like silence was louder than ever, and I was starting to get undertones of orange blossom and incense. You have to be careful with this stuff or you begin to sound like a wine taster – with about the same amount of meaningless bollocks.
Definitely the same vestigium as on the lightning glass and in Preston Carmichael’s flat.
I sat on my heels and thought it through.
I’d got good and close to the spear at our last encounter, close enough to see that the tip was made of a blunt tube of lightning glass. I would check later, but it looked to me that the section of glass in the crater before me was the same length as the sections left inside the previous victims’ chest cavities.