Lies Sleeping

16 Stupidity Led

We arrested Zach for obstruction of justice but not for possession – mainly because most of the evidence was missing and Carey had become worryingly cheerful. There was definitely something up with David Carey, but I wasn’t sure what to do about it – you can’t talk to a senior officer without dropping your mate in the shit. And your average police, especially your average male police, don’t like you insinuating that the job’s getting a bit much for them.

There were probably some guidelines somewhere, but I expect they were above my pay grade.

I stayed at the open-plan flat overnight just in case Lesley was stupid enough to come back, while a couple of specialist DCs interviewed Zach for eight hours straight before coming back the next morning and doing it again for at least another six hours. If Zach told the truth at any point in the fourteen hours total, then nobody was able to prove it. The National College of Policing now use excerpts of the tapes for their advanced interview training course.

We gave up on any notion that Lesley was going to appear that morning and, around ten o’clock I went back to the Folly for a wash. As I came in the back Toby ran up, barking in what would have gone into a police notebook as ‘an agitated fashion’.

‘I’m going to bed,’ I said. ‘I don’t care.’

But Toby kept up sharp little yaps in the manner of a dog who had been putting in some practice recently, and could probably keep the noise up indefinitely.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Go on, then.’

Toby danced back a couple of lengths and then turned and ran up the east stairs and up another flight until we were outside one of the teaching labs on the first floor. Toby scratched on the door and I heard the unmistakably Welsh Dr Jennifer Vaughan say, ‘For God’s sake don’t let him back in.’

Just to be safe, I knocked on the door. In the Folly you never knew what you might be walking in on.

Dr Vaughan asked who it was. I assured her it was me, and the door opened enough to reveal her face – albeit half covered by eye protectors and a filter mask. She looked down at Toby.

‘Get back, fiend from hell,’ she said. And then, to me, ‘You can come in as long as you keep him out.’

It took a bit of effort to arrange, but once I’d got myself in I got a whiff of something that made me wish I’d stayed outside with Toby. Dr Walid and Abigail were dressed in the same style paper smocks, eye protectors and filter masks as Dr Vaughan and they were all clustered around a bench. On the bench was what I recognised as a stainless steel dissection tray.

In the tray I caught a glimpse of pink and red viscera surrounded by russet red fur, before deliberately moving away so I couldn’t see any more. It had been large – dog- rather than cat-sized.

I heard Toby scrabble on the other side of the door.

‘We can’t tell,’ said Dr Walid, ‘whether he’s upset over what we’re doing, or thinks we’ve started lunch without him.’

Dr Vaughan picked up a scalpel and moved in to make another incision – Abigail leant forward to look over her shoulder.

‘What is it? I asked.

‘It was brought into the animal hospital in Islington,’ said Dr Walid. ‘But it died before it could be treated. We think it may be one of Abigail’s friends.’

He looked at Abigail, who shrugged.

‘What make you think that?’ I asked.

‘Well, he’s much bigger than we would expect from an urban fox,’ said Dr Vaughan as she worried something with the tip of her scalpel, ‘and its brain is noticeably larger both in gross size and ratio to body mass. And, while I’ll admit that I am not a veterinarian, the fact that the arrangement of the larynx resembles that of a human is a bit of a giveaway.’

‘Are you sure we should be cutting it up quite so casually,’ I said, ‘if it’s one of the talking ones?’

‘We are not being casual,’ said Dr Vaughan. ‘This is a post mortem, not a dissection.’

‘That’s why Jen’s doing the cutting,’ said Abigail.

‘Do you have a cause of death?’ I asked.

‘Multiple injuries caused by massive blunt force trauma,’ said Dr Vaughan.

‘Hit by a car,’ said Abigail.

‘Most likely,’ said Dr Vaughan.

‘Notification is going to be a bit tricky,’ I said.

Not that I wanted the job of telling this fox’s nearest and dearest.

‘Abigail’s thought of that,’ said Dr Walid proudly.

Abigail held up a large brown paper forensic envelope and opened it so I could see the white towelling face cloth inside.

‘I rubbed it over his fur,’ she said. ‘Other foxes should be able to identify him by his smell.’

‘They’ll probably know he’s dead by the smell, too,’ said Dr Walid.

‘Handy. That’ll save you doing that part of the notification at least,’ I said, which got me stony looks from all three.

‘Don’t go anywhere without telling me first,’ I told Abigail, and then deliberately let Toby in on my way out. I admit that was a bit petty, but in my defence I hadn’t had much sleep and I was worried about Carey.

I went to my room, set my phone alarm for later that afternoon and climbed into bed.

I didn’t really feel like I’d slept much when the alarm woke me, but I had my part to play in the continuing interrogation of Zachary Palmer. We’d done good cop, bad cop, patiently-trying-to-understand cop, and now we were going to try ‘I’m on your side really’ cop. By rights the last one should never work in a million years, but you’d be surprised. Certainly some people currently doing time have been.

I selected my wardrobe with care – jeans, trainers and my Adidas hoody of urban invisibility. Then I picked up a basket of surplus cakes from Molly, climbed into the Hyundai and headed off to Belgravia to liberate Zach the goblin boy.

‘I bought you a present,’ I said once he was out and we were safely in the Hyundai, and I passed over the basket.

He gave me a sour look before opening the basket and extracting a cupcake decorated with a bunny face in blue and white icing. He brandished it at me.

‘Do you think this makes everything all right?’ he asked, but took a bite anyway. ‘It’s not going to work,’ he said through a mouth full of crumbs.

‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked.

‘It’s not going to work.’

‘What isn’t going to work?’

‘You don’t get all friendly, give me cake and then think I’m going to lead you to my secret hideout.’

‘Do you have a secret hideout?’

‘See.’ Zach had a rummage in the basket to see what else he could find. ‘Want something?’

I said I was trying to cut down.

‘More for me,’ he said.

‘Lesley said that you can’t stay in the same place for long. She said it was a compulsion because you’re part fae.’

‘That there is one of them things, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘One of what things?’

‘One of them things that is sort of true. But at the same time not really true. I like to move about, but I have stayed put once or twice – like in Notting Hill.’

Where he’d happily lived in the unfortunate James Gallagher’s flat for at least three months without moving on.

‘I get restless sometimes,’ he said. ‘And sometimes I don’t.’

Then to my surprise he snapped the basket closed, put it on his lap and folded his arms firmly over the lid.

‘Maybe you should leave Lesley alone,’ said Zach, after we’d sat in silence for a bit. ‘It’s not like there’s nothing else going on, is it?’

People are often willing to tell you all sorts of secrets when they’re trying to hide something from you. You should always make a mental note – it may not be your case today but you never know, it might come round later.

I asked what else was going on.

‘For one thing, the Vikings have gone at Holland Park,’ said Zach.

‘The Vikings?’

‘There used to be loads of ghosts at Holland Park.’

I said I’d never had any reports of mass ghost sightings at Holland Park and Abigail had done a really serious search the year before.

‘Not on the main tube tunnels,’ he said. ‘The other ones. The secret ones.’

A secret bunker had been adjacent to the station during World War Two, which was now used as a private nightclub by my least favourite pair of Bev’s sisters and also connected to the Quiet People’s warren under Notting Hill.

‘Vikings?’

‘Danes maybe, Northmen certainly,’ said Zach. ‘Raiders from across the sea what got themselves done in by Alfred or Æthelred. One of them early kings.’

‘You saw them?’ I asked.

‘Nah,’ said Zach, ‘but you could hear them, couldn’t you? All screaming and yelling and lamenting.’

‘And now they’re gone?’

‘Leaving not a single solitary moan behind.’

‘You’re taking the piss, aren’t you?’

‘On my life,’ he said.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘do you want to go home or not?’

Zach paused to give it some thought but in the end he relented – as I knew he would.

‘Stanmore,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a place in Stanmore.’

We knew all about it of course – but I didn’t tell him that.

I drove via Neasden to avoid the traffic and we were just crawling along the semi-detached and taxi gardened wasteland of Dudden Hill when Zach unexpectedly spilled the beans.

‘They want to summon Mr Punch,’ he said.

‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘Whatever for?’

Lesley had been possessed by Mr Punch, aka the restless London spirit of riot and rebellion – or possibly by the ghost of an eighteenth-century actor who thought he was Mr Punch. It had all got a bit confusing towards the end of that particular case.

‘Lesley’s not . . .’ I started, but didn’t know where to go with the question. Not still working with Mr Punch? Under his influence? Possessed?

‘What do they want him for?’

‘Oh,’ Zach waved his hand airily. ‘They’re going to kill him.’

I braked sharply to avoid hitting the back of a Volvo.

‘Isn’t he already dead?’

‘You tell me,’ said Zach. ‘You’re the one who’s met him.’

‘Can he be killed?’

‘Anything that’s alive can be killed. But I think this is more in the way of a sacrifice. You know, for the power.’

‘For the power of what?’

‘He’s not your ordinary ghost, is he?’ said Zach. ‘He’s something else again.’

‘I meant what do they want the power for?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Zach. ‘For something big. Old Faceless wanted to use the juice from Skygarden, but you put the kibosh on that, didn’t you? He was well vexed with you, bruv, but I’ve got to say Lesley was impressed – I think. At least she couldn’t believe you stayed in the block with the bombs.’

I can’t believe I stayed in the tower that day either. Sometimes I dream I’m outside, and however hard I try I can’t make myself run inside to warn the residents. Then the bombs go off and down it comes, one floor on top of the other, and above the roar of it I can hear the screams.

‘It’s not like I had a lot of choice, is it?’ I said. And then, ‘Would sacrificing Punch generate much power?’

‘A raging revenant from the dawn of time? I think there might be a certain amount of wattage in that. Don’t you?’

‘So what does Martin Chorley need Lesley for?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Zach. ‘But I know he does because Lesley thought it was really funny in that, like, totally unfunny way that sometimes things are funny.’

‘To do what, Zach?’ I said. ‘What the fuck does Chorley want to do?’

‘Lesley never said. And, you know what? I never asked. Because it was none of my business.’

‘I want you to tell Lesley that we need to meet,’ I said. ‘On her terms if she likes, but we’ve got to talk.’

Zach turned away from me and stared out his window.

‘She’s not going to risk seeing me again,’ he said. ‘Not after the shit you pulled.’

‘I didn’t tell her to change sides,’ I said.

‘You didn’t exactly help her stay on yours, though,’ he said. ‘Did you?’