Lies Sleeping

28 I am Curious (Batman)

It started with me taking my shirt off so that Foxglove could get a good look at my rippling shoulder muscles, elegantly shaped biceps and my almost six pack. Not for the reason you might be thinking, because a) I ain’t that conceited and b) I’ve learnt that the fae don’t think like that.

But artists like the challenge of the naked human form – or at least that’s what Oberon and Effra tell me. And they’re from South London, so they should know. We also started straight after lunch, which was unusual and slightly worrying. I’d got the impression that Foxglove was off doing chores most of the day but now she seemed to have a lot of free time. I feared that one phase of Chorley’s operation was winding down in preparation for Punch Day.

I waited for a natural break in the rhythm of her work before asking how she came to be working for Martin Chorley.

Foxglove gave me a long stare, as if weighing whether I was serious, and then she made an elegant swooping motion with her left hand which ended with her fingers resting high on her chest. Her eyes locked with mine.

‘Yes, I want to know,’ I said.

So Foxglove started to tell me. It took ages to get the story out, and even after independently corroborating some of it there are parts where I’m not sure I interpreted her meaning correctly. I did suggest that she draw pictures, but either she didn’t understand the concept or she didn’t want to remember things that way.

The gist was that she had been traded by her queen for something valuable – Foxglove didn’t know what – to a strange man. The trade took place near the sea and definitely not in London. There’d been a group of them and at least two had been separated from the group immediately. Then they’d been put in a box on wheels drawn by horses – a carriage or a cart – and taken somewhere underground.

‘Where we are now?’ I asked.

Foxglove shook her head.

It got confused after that, but I think decades went by while Foxglove and her sisters worked in some capacity for their ‘owner’. I still haven’t discovered what work they were doing, but I think during that time Foxglove was taught to paint and draw. But not, I noticed, to read or write.

There was a break while Foxglove fetched supper, one of those incredibly greasy almost-but-not-quite KFC fried chicken buckets, which we divided up on paper plates and ate together sitting on the landing mat. Foxglove ate her chicken bones and all, happily crunching up the denuded drumsticks as if they were breadsticks. I offered her mine, which seemed to please her.

Afterwards we stayed on the mat drinking generic lemonade while Foxglove continued with her sad, sad story.

After some years they were put in a metal box, possibly a van this time, and taken to another place where they were put to work cleaning – I recognised some serious mop action in the mime show – and doing a weird strut while holding something aloft with one hand. When Foxglove mimed handing out drinks I realised she was waitressing. And when she demonstrated a smile of fake enticement I knew, with a sick feeling, which club she was waitressing in.

Albert Woodville-Gentle, Faceless Man the first, had owned a club in Soho in the 1960s and ’70s. Within its gilt and red velvet embrace he’d offered his exclusive clientele the exotic delights of people altered by magic to conform to their fantasies. There were real cat-girls and cat-boys, and other things that Nightingale has made a point of keeping from me. The place became known as the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau until Stephanopoulos threatened dire consequences if we didn’t drop the term.

Albert Woodville-Gentle was crippled in a magical duel in 1979 and finally died just after Christmas 2012 – a lucky escape for him. since I’m almost certain Nightingale had plans.

Which left the question of what had become of Foxglove and her ‘sisters’, of which two were left, after Woodville-Gentle was gone. The answer is: somebody put them in a pit, not unlike the one I was in, and left them in it for, I estimate, about fifteen years. They survived by luring rats and insects into the hole for food and licking moisture off the walls.

Foxglove was shocked by my reaction and so, frankly, was I. Us police are supposed to be tough, but there are limits. I hid my eyes with my hand and we both spent a long time staring at the ground.

We stayed that way as the light faded and we both climbed into our respective beds.

One day, I thought, I will find whoever it was put you in that pit.

And then what will I do?

Prosecute them for false imprisonment and/or attempted murder?

Make sure they were branded as sex offenders, that was for certain.

Having started her tale, Foxglove couldn’t wait to continue, even as I was having my breakfast the next morning. I was less ready. I had an inkling about what was coming next.

Then the darkness lifted and they were rescued.

‘Who by?’ I asked.

Foxglove made a gesture as if elegantly placing a mask upon her face. The same gesture she’d used to describe Albert Woodville-Gentle. This would be the Faceless Man mark two – Martin Chorley. He was their new master, and a much kinder master he proved. There were soft beds and good food and clean clothes and, best of all, he not only let Foxglove paint but encouraged her to do so.

She disappeared after lunch and returned with a plastic bucket stuffed with art supplies. Then she proudly showed me her museum-quality oils and acrylics and a truly astonishing range of brushes kept in a series of baked beans tins, round-tipped and pointed, sable or bristle haired depending on style.

More than that, she went on to tell me, on some nights Chorley would lead her out of the club and to big houses where rows and rows of paintings hung.

Foxglove fetched some of the copies she’d made, all stored in a genuine brown leather A1 sized art case that was probably older then my dad and definitely better maintained.

Most of her pictures were portraits and mythological scenes, of the diaphanous dress and cherub school of slipping one past a disapproving censor. My limited art knowledge pegged the majority as post-Renaissance to Victorian. One I did recognise was of a white woman in a blue dress drawing a magic circle around herself while a brazier belches a column of white smoke into the sky. The Magic Circle by John William Waterhouse, which I’d stumbled across while researching Martin Chorley’s taste in art. It stuck in my mind because of the subject’s flagrant health and safety violation. As any competent practitioner will tell you, you always complete your protective circle before you start your workings.

The steel blue of the sorceress’s dress was brighter than I remembered from the original and the belt sash a deeper, richer burgundy. The crows that watched her were the same midnight black as her hair.

Perhaps, I thought, this is what the painting looked like when Waterhouse turned it out in the 1880s – before the years dimmed its canvas.

Now, my brushes with fine art have mostly involved magic pots and guilt-ridden Old Soldiers, but I seriously doubted that Martin Chorley had been encouraging Foxglove’s hobby out of the goodness of his heart.

I reckoned that when I got out there were going to prove to be some serious gaps in some famous collections.

If I got out.

I told Foxglove, truthfully, that her painting was beautiful and she beamed.

Then her head cocked to one side – as if she were listening.

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

Foxglove snatched her work from my hands and, springing over to her bed, stuffed them and the art case under her mattress. She turned to glare at me and put her hand across her mouth.

‘Not a word,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

‘Foxglove,’ called a voice from above – Chorley. ‘Where are you?’ He sounded like an adult trying to restrain their impatience with a child. ‘Chop-chop. All hands on deck.’

Foxglove jumped up. And for the first time I got a sense of how she was doing it – the ripple in the fabric of the bubble that propelled her upwards as if it were coughing her up.

‘Don’t get too comfortable with him,’ I heard Chorley say. ‘He eats your kind for breakfast.’

I heard footsteps moving away and waited in silence – listening.

There was the occasional echo of a door slamming in the distance, Somebody, I think it might have been Lesley, very clearly shouted – ‘Fuck shit bugger!’

Followed by a metallic crash and a deep resonant chime whose harmonics actually caused the fairy bubble to resonate around me.

It was the bell. Something was happening, and it was happening soon.

Or maybe not, because Foxglove was on time with supper, which was a set of disappointing ham sandwiches of the type you bought from garage shops. I ate them wistfully, thinking of Molly and daydreaming of coffee while Foxglove hopped impatiently from foot to foot. She was obviously dying to show me something but wanted my full attention.

I forwent the final sandwich – it wasn’t much of a sacrifice.

From her art case Foxglove drew an A4 sized ring-bound sketchpad. It had seen some use – one of the corners had been blunted by a hard impact, and the cover was smudged with fingerprints where Foxglove had handled it while drawing.

The first picture was of a young woman with eyes slotted like a cat’s and ears that rose to a tufted point. The style was what they call in posh art circles hyperrealism – Foxglove had lovingly captured the luxurious fur that covered face, head and shoulders. She looked like really good cosplay but I didn’t think she was somebody having fun on the weekend. And Foxglove had captured a haunted look in her eyes.

I must have grunted something suitably encouraging, because Foxglove cheerfully flipped the pad to reveal another young woman drawn in the same hyperrealistic style. A pale, high-cheekboned face with a cascade of long black hair, and the disturbing turn of the mouth as if hiding too many teeth. Somebody I recognised, although I hadn’t known her long. And most of the time I had known her she’d been trying to kill me. It was the Pale Lady that I’d chased into the Trocadero Centre, who’d hit me so hard I thought I’d felt my ribs creak. Who I’d knocked over a balcony five storeys up and who’d fallen to her death in complete silence.

‘Very fine,’ I said. ‘Who is she?’

Foxglove touched the sketch with two fingers and then transferred them to her chest about where everyone thinks the heart is located. My own heart hurt. There’s no other word for it. And suddenly I felt sick.

‘Your friend,’ I said, and Foxglove nodded.

She flipped the pad to show me another familiar face. Also someone I’d met quite briefly while, coincidentally, they were trying to kill me. It was the nanny from Richard Williams’s house. Again Foxglove touched first the picture and then her heart.

When me and Lesley were doing our probation at Charing Cross nick our duty inspector was Francis Neblett. He was a proper old-fashioned copper, not like what the public thinks is old-fashioned, which is all TV bollocks, but so upright and steeped in the Peelian Principles that if you sliced him in half you’d have found BOBBY running all the way through him like a stick of rock.

He once told me that the problem was not that criminals were evil but that most of them were pathetic – in the proper sense of the word. Arousing pity, especially through vulnerability or sadness. Recently I’d learnt the Greek root: pathetos – liable to suffer.

‘You’ve got to feel sorry for them,’ he said.

And you didn’t have to be in the job long to see what he meant. The addicts, the runaways, the men who were fine unless they had a couple of drinks. The ex-squaddies who’d seen too much. The sad fuckers who just didn’t have a clue how to make the world work for them, or had started so beaten down they barely learnt to walk upright. The people who shoplifted toilet paper or food or treats for their kids.

‘This is a trap,’ he’d said. ‘You’re not a social worker or a doctor. If people really wanted these problems solved there’d be more social workers and doctors.’

I’d asked what we were supposed to do.

‘You can’t fix their problems, Peter,’ he’d said. ‘Most of the time you can’t even steer them in the right direction. But you can do the job without making things worse.’

I looked at the sketches and back at Foxglove’s expectant face.

What would Lesley do? I wondered.

She’d lie, or at least mislead – imply that she knew exactly where Foxglove’s sisters were and if only Foxglove helped her escape they could be reunited.

You’re in a hole, Peter, Lesley would say, there’s nothing helpful you can do for anyone until you’re out of the hole, is there? Escape first. Then you’ll be able to be all compassionate and thoughtful.

But I’m not Lesley or Nightingale, or even Neblett, am I?

‘I know them,’ I said. ‘But I’m afraid they’re both dead.’

It took a moment to register and then her eyes widened and her lips parted in dismay. She took an involuntary step backwards and clutched the sketchpad to her chest. I tentatively held out my hand but she flinched back, her face suddenly broken in its grief. She half turned and took a couple of steps towards her bed. I took a step to follow, but she threw up her hand to stop me.

I stayed where I was and watched as, bent over in pain, Foxglove stumbled back to her bed and lay down curled around her sketchpad, face towards the wall. Not knowing what else to do, I retreated to my bed and sat down to watch over her.

The light began to dim and I called out her name, but even to me my voice sounded flat, dull and unhelpful.

I became aware of a smell of dampness and mildew and old brick. The smell of cellars – the smell, I realised, that the oubliette should have had from the start. Once I thought to look, I sensed the bubble beginning to fray.

I called Foxglove’s name but she didn’t respond.

This was my chance, I realised. Quickly I pulled the sheet I’d nicked and stripped the second one off the mattress. Then I pulled off the duvet cover and ripped it apart at the seams so that I ended up with two separate sheets. You’re supposed to tear the sheets into strips and braid them to make a proper rope, but I didn’t think I had that much time. So I knotted them in the traditional cartoon fashion and hoped for the best.

I conjured a werelight and this time the forma stuck – a bit hesitantly, but I could feel the fairy bubble shivering and failing. It looked like magic was back on the options menu.

You can’t lift yourself with impello. Nobody knows why. You also can’t hold on to something or wear a harness attached to something and lift that with impello. Once, Nightingale had discovered me experimenting and he gave me a couple of notebooks which detailed the numerous ways the wizards of the Folly had tried to get round this limitation. Many of the contraptions in the notebook looked like something Dastardly and Muttley would pilot, and provided a good laugh, if not any actual hope that I was going to fly any time soon.

But I didn’t need to fly. I just needed to fix one end of my bedsheet rope to the lip of the hole firmly enough for me to climb it. And I had just the spell for that. All I needed was something separate and robust enough that I could use to pin the top of the rope to the brickwork. I picked up my copy of The Silmarillion – that would do nicely.

I took rope and book to the landing pad and tried another werelight – this time it burnt brightly – the bubble was almost gone. I extinguished the light and concentrated.

Then I threw my copy of The Silmarillion upwards and used impello to guide it and scindere to stick it upright on the edge of the hole. I’d fashioned a noose at one end of the rope and reckoned it should be a simple matter to throw it up and over the book as if it were a mooring bollard.

I looked back at Foxglove, who was a dim shape in the darkness.

‘I’m going to get help,’ I said.

I got the noose around The Silmarillion on the third try and put my whole weight on it as a test. Totally solid – which did surprise me a little bit.

I looked back again at Foxglove, who still hadn’t moved. Just to be on the safe side I went back to check.

She was completely still and I couldn’t hear any breathing. I cautiously touched her neck – the skin was cool and I couldn’t find a pulse.

I was CPR qualified but I’d never had to do it for real and even if I did, it’s a temporary measure to maintain oxygen supply to the brain until help arrived. But if I didn’t escape help wouldn’t arrive.

Common sense said I should scarper. But as anyone will tell you, me and common sense have always had an open relationship. And anyway I was remembering Simone and her sisters when I found them quiet and cool amongst the shadows of the Café de Paris.

Duty of care and all that.

You can’t do CPR on a mattress, so I grabbed Foxglove’s arm and dragged her off the bed. I rolled her onto her back, and as I did that I saw a definite flicker of expression. I pushed her sketchbook downwards and out of the way so I could put my ear to her chest. There it was. A heartbeat, clear but slow.

Whatever ailed Foxglove, it was clearly psychosomatic. And the speculation about how it worked so quickly would give Doctors Vaughan and Walid months of fun. If I could just bring them a live subject.

‘We need you, Foxglove,’ I said. ‘For science.’

She was still clutching the sketchbook to her stomach.

If Foxglove was literally dying of despair then the answer was obvious.

‘Foxglove,’ I said, ‘you know the two friends who were separated from you at the beginning? I think I know where one of them is.’

I was actually expecting a pause, but instead Foxglove’s eyes flew open. Her face was a pale oval in the darkness, registering surprise and anger.

I heard a slithering sound from the entrance followed by a thump as my copy of The Silmarillion hit the landing mat.

‘Bollocks,’ I said.

Then Foxglove was on her feet so fast I was thrown onto my back. I swear she trailed a weird luminescent wake behind her as she ran to the centre of the oubliette and jumped away.

I stayed on my back because I couldn’t think of a good reason to get up. Although it wasn’t totally dark, I noticed the entrance hole was a disc of slightly lighter tone among the blackness.

When I was in primary school I had a general education teacher called Miss Bosworth, who thought I was slow. She was very nice about it, was Miss Bosworth – she just made sure she explained everything to me very clearly and made a point of not asking me to do anything particularly difficult. I thought she was great, and she was probably my first love if you don’t count my Lego Space Station Zenon kit.

I remember overhearing her telling my mum that while I was a lovely boy, if a bit boisterous, she probably shouldn’t hold out much hope for an academic career. I don’t remember what my mum said. But looking back I can’t help notice that was the last parent-teacher conference they ever had.

I don’t actually remember what Miss Bosworth looked like any more. I think she must have been white and had brown hair, but that’s it. The Space Station Zenon kit, on the other hand, came with three minifigs, several 1 × 8 plates and the forty-five degree sloping pieces and canopy that allowed you to make really cool hypersonic jet planes. I like to think it’s still out there in Sierra Leone somewhere, being used to make dreams and inconvenience parents in the middle of the night.

If she stays away long enough, I thought, the bubble will collapse again.

I pulled myself to my feet and cautiously felt my way over to the landing mat. But before I could recover my makeshift rope and copy of The Silmarillion, Foxglove jumped down, grabbed me around the waist and jumped out again.