At least a couple of those had probably taken an interest in the goblin fairs and had perhaps written a useful tome on the subject. It was just possible that one day I might stumble upon it in the library or an Oxfam in Twickenham — you never know.
Still, as Lesley said, why do it the hard way when we could just call Zach.
According to Zach, the next fair was due the day after and was in north London. Athlone Street, off Grafton Road, Kentish Town — my manor, as it happens. One of my first girlfriends used to live up the other end, so I’d walked down it enough times.
‘Did you get any?’ asked Lesley as we parked the Asbo. We were suffering a standard grey London drizzle, the sort that makes it clear that it can keep it up all day if needs be.
‘I was twelve,’ I said.
‘I bet you were precocious, though,’ said Lesley. ‘She was older, wasn’t she?’
‘Why’d you say that?’ I asked. It was true. Her name had been Catherine and she’d been a year above me in school.
‘It was your big brown eyes wasn’t it?’
I didn’t know what to say. When I was twelve, introspection was not my most prominent characteristic.
‘We were in the swimming club together,’ I said.
The address was a strange Victorian wedge of a building that backed into a railway viaduct. The ground floor was given over to a print shop, and according to Lesley’s intelligence there should be a sign advertising this. This intelligence came from Zach Palmer, who was half human and half — we weren’t really sure what, including the possibility that the other half might be human as well. But anyway he was hooked into what Nightingale insisted on calling the demi-monde.
Speaking of which. .
‘You know the Fleet runs under here,’ I said.
Lesley groaned. ‘Do you think she’s in there?’
‘Believe it,’ I said.
‘At least it will be out of the rain,’ she said.
There was a sign — a sad bit of damp cardboard cut into the shape of an arrow with the word ‘VENUS’ handwritten and pointing to a side door. Lesley knocked.
‘What’s the password?’ shouted someone from inside.
‘It’s a slippery slope,’ I shouted back.
‘What?’ shouted the voice.
‘It’s a slippery slope,’ I shouted louder.
‘What kind of slope?’ shouted the voice.
‘A fucking slippery one,’ yelled Lesley. ‘Now open the bloody door before we kick it down.’
The door opened to reveal a tiny hallway and a flight of stairs leading upwards. Peering cautiously around the door was a small white boy of about ten, wearing a black and white bobble hat, fingerless gloves and an adult-sized lime coloured lambswool cardigan that was draped over him like a rain cape.
‘You’re the Isaacs,’ he said. ‘What you doing here?’
‘Why aren’t you in school?’ asked Lesley.
‘I’m home tutored,’ he said.
‘Really,’ said Lesley. ‘What are you learning at the moment?’
‘Never talk to the filth,’ he said.
I told him that we didn’t want him to talk to us.
‘On the contrary,’ said Lesley. ‘We just want to get out of the rain.’
‘Nothing’s stopping you,’ said the boy.
We stepped inside, but before we could troop up the stairs the boy tapped Lesley on the arm.
‘Miss,’ he said. ‘You can’t-’
‘I know,’ she said and took off her mask.
‘Oh,’ said the boy staring up at her. ‘You’re that one.’
‘Yes I am,’ she said and then waited until we were safely up the stairs to whisper, ‘That one what?’
I said that I hadn’t got the faintest idea.
At the top of the drab staircase was a windowless hallway lit by a forty watt bulb in a red Chinese paper lamp shade that managed to make it seem even darker. We had a choice of going up another flight of stairs or out through a door, but before we could even express our indecision the door slammed open and we were confronted by a young white woman in a pink tracksuit with an Adidas logo on it. I recognised her as one of the waitresses from the Goblin Fair we’d visited back in December.
‘What can I do you for?’ she asked.
‘We’re here to buy some stuff,’ said Lesley.
‘Yeah? What kind of stuff?’
‘Stuff from the far off land of mind-your-own-business,’ said Lesley.
‘Scrap metal,’ I said. ‘Stuff that’s a little bit — you know.’ I wiggled my fingers.
Lesley gave me a theatrical glare. ‘Have you quite finished broadcasting our business to all and sundry?’ she asked.
The girl gave me a sympathetic look. ‘Upstairs,’ she said. ‘You want to talk to the gentry.’
‘Thanks,’ I said and wondered who the hell the gentry were, and if they were like the Quiet People or the Pale Lady. What was it with this general lack of personal pronouns? I remembered that I’d heard Nightingale referred to as ‘The Nightingale’ and realised that I’d only assumed that was his actual name.
I followed Lesley, who was having trouble stopping herself from laughing, up the narrow staircase.
‘The far off land of mind-your-own-business?’ I whispered.
‘I didn’t want to seem too obvious,’ she whispered back.
‘No, that wasn’t obvious at all,’ I said.
We were two thirds of the way up the stairs when the door at the top opened and a woman stepped out onto the landing. She was white, middle aged, with dirty blonde hair cut into a neat business-like bob. She wore an expensive charcoal grey skirt suit of conservative cut and carried a slim burgundy attache case. Her eyes were a faded blue.
Recognising faces is a key cop skill, and although she was looking younger and happier than we’d last seen her I remembered her immediately — Varenka Debroslova, probably an alias — former live-in nurse to one Geoffrey Wheatcroft a.k.a. the Faceless Man version one.
She recognised us at the same time — well, Lesley’s very distinctive — and took an automatic step back. Lesley didn’t hesitate. She lunged up the last couple of steps and I followed her.
The normal thing to do in Varenka’s situation would be to bolt back up and out the door. But instead she lifted her attache case in both hands and shoved it into Lesley’s face. As Lesley recoiled backwards into me, Varenka practically launched herself headfirst down the stairs towards us. Lesley was knocked back towards me and I had no choice but to catch her and try and twist us both out of the way as Varenka landed on us. She’d obviously planned to surf down the stairs on top of us, but I wasn’t playing that game. I ducked down over Lesley and let the other woman roll across my back towards a hard landing.
Or that was the plan, anyway. Unfortunately, the staircase was too narrow and too steep, so we all bumped down it together. Stairs are a killer and we all might have ended up with sundry cracked ribs and broken legs except we were jammed in so tight we went down in slow motion. Even so, my shoulder slammed into a riser hard enough to make my teeth click, somebody’s knee slammed into my back and I definitely smacked my head on the rough plasterboard wall at one point.
Lesley yelled in fury as we tumbled out onto the landing. In a fight, if you want to be the last man standing it’s important to be the first guy back on your feet. So I levered myself off Varenka’s back and tried to grab her arm. But she had other ideas. She sprang to her feet and used my own grip on her arm to pull me off balance and slam me against the wall. It would have gone much harder on me if Lesley hadn’t grabbed a handful of expensive suit jacket and climbed up Varenka’s back.