The timing was clever, too – Lesley coming in with the tail end of the rest of the police staff, minimising the risk of an acquaintance talking to her while still using them as cover as she walked in the front door, bold as brass.
She probably thought her main risks were Molly and Toby – who both knew her by smell. But they were safely downstairs in the kitchen with Foxglove, with instructions to stay low until told otherwise. Once she was in the atrium, she could head for either of the two main staircases, or even the side stairs, and it would have been interesting to know where she would have searched first.
But when she was halfway across, I stepped out of the servants’ corridor and called her name.
It was clever, coming as a man, because we were expecting a woman. I would love to say that it was something subtle, like the fact that Nathan always takes his parka off the moment he steps inside and never walks with his hands in his pockets. But really it was because she hadn’t quite got his face right. Lips too thick and nose too wide – he looked like he’d stepped out of an early Asterix comic.
Subconscious racism, I thought – it will fuck you up every time.
She flinched and even from behind I could see that she was swearing. Then she turned to face me. I walked over and stopped a nice safe three metres away. She gave me a rueful grin – it was Lesley’s smile on a cartoon character’s lips.
‘I see your security is still as shit as it ever was,’ she said, and her face changed.
It wasn’t the first time I’d seen it happen, but it wasn’t getting any less weird to watch. The skin on her face rippling like some undersea creature settling into the seabed. The brown colour not so much fading as being squeezed out, as each fold rolled and merged, rolled and merged. It looked painful.
‘We seem to have caught you,’ I said.
‘Only after I was all the way inside,’ she said.
Then she paused, clocking the now-closed doors front and back, the absence of any civilian collateral and, more importantly, the fact that Molly had removed all the breakable objets d’art. Including our first edition copy of the second Principia.
‘No …’ She sounded almost impressed. ‘You didn’t?’
‘Didn’t what?’ I asked.
‘You sly fucker,’ she said. ‘You laid a trap. You knew I’d want the rings back and you knew that I still have access to the police network. I’m so stupid. Nice touch having Danni make the breach of security – new girl and all that? I was in two minds this morning until I read that text.’
Danni had put the location of the rings on CRIMINT that morning, in the hope that Lesley’s contact in the Met would pass it on. Obviously they had, and equally obviously the Department of Professional Standards would try and trace who the leak was.
I really should have said three birds with one stone.
‘How’s she working out, by the way?’ asked Lesley.
‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘She’s good with dogs and canal boats.’
Lesley was looking around the atrium, not bothering to hide that she was checking the angles and looking for an escape route.
‘Where’s Thomas the tank eater?’ she asked.
‘That would be telling.’
‘And Frank Caffrey and his merry bunch of part-time murderers?’ She craned her head, checking the balconies for snipers.
‘He’s got the day off,’ I said – lying.
‘So, what next?’ she said.
‘I thought we might try a bit of de-escalation,’ I said, thinking that one day it was going to work. ‘We have tea and biscuits.’
Lesley laughed then – not a cynical laugh, but a genuine burst of good humour as if I’d done something that delighted her.
‘I’m not redeemable, Peter,’ she said. ‘I know that, you know that, the Crown Prosecution Service knows it, too.’
‘So do you have any weapons on you that I should know about?’
‘Why don’t you search me?’ she said. ‘That’s what comes next, isn’t it? Off to Belgravia and into the hands of the custody sergeant. If I’m not going to get a Molly breakfast, I might as well have something …’ She stopped suddenly and made a half-amused, half-exasperated huffing sound. ‘Wait, you’re not actually—’
And suddenly the atrium was full of vengeful angel.
‘You total cunt!’ shouted Lesley, but she was proud of me – I could tell.
Francisca had arrived in full Samuel L. Jackson furious vengeance mode, wings of fire extended, a crown of light blazing behind her head and, of course, a burning spear tipped with lightning glass.
You can generally tell when and by whom a spell was perfected by the name it’s given. Old Newton himself was crap at names, or more precisely didn’t really give a shit. Thus we get telescopium for the telescope spell and kisef for a spell that is supposed to determine the purity of gold but really doesn’t. In the period between Newton’s publication of the second Principia and the founding of the Society of the Wise, the diverse bunch of quacks, ambitious apothecaries and dangerously independently minded women who were his immediate heirs named their spells however they liked. Dancing Dog does what it says on the tin, although you can use it on most mammals, not just dogs. Not that I’ve seen it in action, on account of ethical considerations, and Toby would probably bite me if I tried. I think the posh women that went on to become the Society of the Rose used ancient Greek for some reason, and then there are spells named things like Shazorami!, with an exclamation mark, which comes straight from the music hall.
The pedantically precise Latin of such spells as clausurafrange come from that era when the newly formed Society of the Wise was clawing for respectability and royal patronage. By the first half of the twentieth century, the language opened up again but there is a marked difference between serious spells such as aqua ex vestibus exi and the Treacle Foot spell I threw at Lesley as she legged it across the atrium.
According to Nightingale, this was a spell that was passed around and down by the boys at Casterbrook School for gentlemen wizards. It was considered a frivolous spell because it basically caused someone’s shoes to stick to whatever they were standing on. Nightingale said it was used during rugby matches.
‘Magic while playing was encouraged,’ said Nightingale, when I asked whether this was cheating. ‘But strictly forbidden to spectators and, of course, equally forbidden when playing against teams from mundane schools.’
So while the serra obscura and the narrow-gauge fireball officially called lux bodkin were perfectly adequate for chopping up your enemies and brewing up their tanks, for a peacetime copper Treacle Foot was as nice a non-lethal way to neutralise a suspect, and was just what the Officer Safety Policy Unit asked for.
Lesley, who’d sensibly been legging it for the side door, suddenly found the soles of her shoes sticking to the floor tiles. Her best bet would be to yank her feet out of her trainers, but I didn’t have time to watch because Francisca was trying to kill me.
I ran to my pre-planned position at the north end of the atrium – my back to the entrance – and put up the best shield I could. This was the first test.
I saw the movement in her shoulder that telegraphed her strike. Even as the spear darted forwards, I was jumping back. Whatever else she might be – former housemaid, devout believer, angel of death – nobody had bothered to train her to use a spear. She overextended, so that when the tip hit my shield she was at full stretch and off balance.