The Furthest Station Page 10

  And then he was gone.

  Chapter 9:

  THE REFUGEE'S

  DAUGHTER

  And that was that.

  Thames Valley Police were happy—kidnapper identified, victim saved, Operation Polygon resolved in less than thirty-six hours. Good bit of heart-warming media coverage and the clear-up rate enhanced. Beer and commendations all round, thanks for the help boys, don’t let the ticket barrier hit you on the way out.

  We still had no idea what inspired Geoffrey Toobin to kidnap Brené McClaren. He didn’t leave behind a note, diary or even a creepy vlog. There might be stuff on his laptop, but TVP technical forensics are holding that and cracking it is not exactly a priority job. From a policing perspective, motive is always going to be less important than means and opportunity.

  Who knows why anybody does anything, right?

  But I couldn’t help wondering what effect sleeping night after night over that basement full of concentrated ghosts might have had on Geoffrey Toobin. Abigail has dug out of the archives and George Buckland and his grandson Walter weren’t the firmest pair of bananas in the bunch, even before they had themselves walled into a cellar. TVP actually found their bodies in a separate niches behind the jars, and there was a brief moment of panic that Toobin had been a serial killer until the pair were dated and turned over to the archaeologists.

  Abigail thinks they were looking to extend their life by becoming preserved ghosts themselves. Judging by the Latin George quoted as he went, it hadn’t been a total success.

  Once Brené McClaren was fit enough to be interviewed, she confirmed that she’d picked up her tea from Janusz Zdunowski, then, feeling strange, she’d allowed herself to be led out into the car park at the back. We have CCTV of Toobin in the Costa with Brené on that morning and he’s close enough to slip something in her tea. We can’t prove it, but we reckon that must be what he did. Brené loses track of events in the car park before coming to her senses in a strange, brightly lit basement.

  She confirmed that when she was held there, there had been a camp bed with sheets and a duvet as well as a bottle of Evian and a Tupperware sandwich box complete with sandwich. Brené said that she had no doubt what had happened to her, and so disassembled the camp bed to yield a suitable club to beat the shit out of whoever her kidnapper was as soon as he came through the door.

  Only he never did.

  Brené’s last clear memory was of sitting up against the far wall of the cellar and trying not to fall asleep. By the time TVP allowed us to conduct a separate Falcon follow-up interview, the memories of what happened next had obviously started to fade.

  “I think I dreamt about Alice in Wonderland,” she said. “There was tea on the lawn and a girl dressed in a Victorian costume. In fact everybody was dressed in costume. No, sorry, it’s gone. I wasn’t scared, though, I just remember being puzzled by a strange sound.”

  We asked about the sound and she said it was like that fluting you get when you run a finger around the rim of a wine glass.

  She assumed that she went to sleep still leaning against the wall.

  And that wall is another thing that bugs me.

  I know recent brickwork when I smell it and I’d swear that that cellar wall had been intact for at least a hundred years. In which case, how did Brené McClaren escape into the glass palace? If there was a secret door that I missed, then the evidence was obliterated when Nightingale went all “Hulk smash” on the wall. And if she teleported or dimension-shifted or whatever, I don’t even want to think about what that does to our understanding of the nature of reality.

  And even if I did want to think about it, it wouldn’t help me with my detective exam.

  We have the rose jars in boxes downstairs in a disused servants’ room near the armoury. Me and Nightingale had to do the clearing out ourselves because obviously we didn’t want any random builders knowing the layout of the Folly’s basement. Molly provided tea and moral support, Frank Caffrey fitted the smoke detector, helped drink the tea and made sarcastic comments about how level the shelves were. Harold Postmartin, our archivist, promised to see if he could dig out any additional references to both the jars and catching ghosts in general from the semi-secret stacks at the Bodleian.

  Abigail wrote a report on George Buckland, his descendants and their Ghost Palace which I couldn’t read because it was in Latin. Harold read it and agreed that it was excellent Latin and if only the current crop of undergraduates at Oxford conjugated half so well.

  “Cicero would have been beside himself,” he said.

  Abigail crossed her arms and gave me a hard look.

  Just under two years ago I’d stupidly said that I’d teach her magic when she passed her Latin GCSE, and according to Harold this was A-star A-level standard at the very least.

  As Nightingale says—“Sometimes it’s wise not to take the craft too lightly.”

  We talked about it at the next magic boxing session—which is the traditional, manly way wizards are supposed to learn how to fling spells while avoiding being hit in the head.

  “The time has come,” said Nightingale. “To make a decision about Abigail.”

  We’d both been avoiding this for at least three months, mainly because we didn’t like the implications.

  “Do we have to?”

  “She’s already cavorting with the mysterious and the uncanny,” said Nightingale. “At the very least she needs to be able to protect herself.” And to further emphasise his point he attempted to impello me across the room. In response I did the patented Peter Grant shield shimmy, where you flick up a shield and angle it so the impello slides off. I like to combine it with a side step and a right-hand jab.

  It didn’t land—I should have gone left instead.

  “It’s not our decision to make,” I said.

  “If not ours, then whose is it?” said Nightingale. “We are the responsible parties in this respect—we cannot evade it.”

  “You’re not getting me, boss,” I said. “We both know that from the Folly’s point of view she has to be trained but…it’s her parents who are legally and morally responsible for her wellbeing. We can’t usurp that authority—can we? And we can’t just pretend it’s one more youth activity. This is the craft, this is the forms and wisdoms—it’s bare serious stuff.”

  “No,” said Nightingale. “You’re right, of course. We’ll have to make a full disclosure and explain the risks.”

  I asked how it was done in Nightingale’s day, and unsurprisingly found that it was assumed that a chap’s parents already knew what it was they were sending their children to wizards’ school to learn. He admitted that those rare types that took up an apprenticeship in their teens did so with the consent of their parents—or at least their father, which in those days was deemed to be the same thing.

  “Do you want me to do it?” I asked.

  “Good Lord, no,” said Nightingale. “Much as I appreciate the offer.”

  So, having slipped out of one ethically complex task, it was time to address the baby elephant in the swimming pool.

  I had done my due diligence—there were no missing children of the correct age and description reported anywhere in the UK that could have turned up on Allen and Lillian Heywood’s back garden on the night in question. Not even if we assume they were snatched as babies and kept somewhere else until that night.

  I entertained the possibility that Chess might have been smuggled in from Eastern Europe. But, if so, how could I prove it? I was going to have to find a way to bureaucratically normalise his relationship with the Heywoods, which wasn’t going to be easy. Getting the permissions for Abigail’s one-girl youth club had taken most of a week and a couple of ethically questionable acts of magic to facilitate, but proved that sort of thing was doable with application of sufficient juice.

  Which left the fact that Allen and Lillian were raising a young river god with no earthly idea of what they were about. They needed some support both physically and spiritually, and f
ortunately I had a notion how to get it.

  So I took my favourite goddess to see Chess who, I was pleased to note, was properly awed to be in her presence. For about two seconds…before he grabbed her hand and started to drag her through the house, out through the garden and towards his river. Beverley allowed herself to be dragged, although she did pause to strip off down to the Cressi Termico swimsuit she was wearing under her clothes. It always pays to anticipate.

  Allen and Lillian followed us out into the garden in a worried huddle and then stared mutely at me—waiting for an explanation.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “This is perfectly normal.”

  “Is she from social services?” asked Lillian.

  There was a double splash behind me as Bev and Chess went into the river.

  “Think of her as part of a support group,” I said.

  “Does she know how to swim?” asked Allen, starting to look worried. “Only they haven’t come up yet.”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Brilliant swimmer.”

  “How long are they going to stay down?” asked Lillian with rising panic.

  “Until they get bored,” I said.

  There was a long pause.

  “So, how about a cup of tea,” I said. “And maybe some of those nice teacakes?”

  Technical Note

  There was no third parsonage at Chesham although the history of the split advowson is broadly true. High & Over House is a real place lived in by real people so if you do go and have a look do not disturb them. The foxes are keeping an eye on the place so I’ll know if you do.

 

 

  Ben Aaronovitch, The Furthest Station

 

 

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