Foxglove Summer

  There a traveller was once so tormented by Puck in the woods that he left a bequest the remuneration from which paid a local to ring the church bell at a certain time of night – to guide future travellers home. By this Hugh had written: No ev. of ac. rcntly. wood now F.C. replanted with cons.

  I took a brain break and googled Princess Luna – who turned out to be a character from My Little Pony, and a unicorn, and not noticeably invisible.

  My phone pinged and I picked it up expecting it to be Beverley or Dr Walid. Instead I read – WTF R U doing in sticks?
  7

  Enhanced Interrogation

  I woke in the hour before dawn, stuck in that strange state where the memory of your dreams is still powerful enough to motivate your actions. Believing that I’d heard someone outside the cowshed doors I’d stumbled to my feet and slid them open. In the moonlight I thought I saw serried ranks of what I now recognised as apple trees filling the pasture out to the old wall, an orchard of silver and shadow. Above their topmost branches was a white point of light, too bright to be a star. A planet – probably Jupiter. There were a couple of bright stars and there, just visible through a gap in the trees, an orange spark that even I could identify – Mars. In that half-dreaming state I was certain that there was a path running through the orchard and beyond the walls was a darker and thicker forest full of secret places and hidden people.

  Then I blinked and it was just a pasture, an old wall and fields of grain beyond.

  Back in the cowshed I dug around in the trunks which Molly had sent from London and extracted the antique brass primus stove. It sloshed heavily when I shook it, so there was plenty of paraffin inside.

  As soon as I’d got the text from Lesley I’d called Inspector Pollock at the Department of Professional Standards, who was my designated point of contact with the team that was investigating Lesley’s criminal misconduct. I informed him that Lesley had made contact and gave him the details. He told me not to make any response until he’d had a chance to make an assessment. I told him to assess away.

  The primus came in a handsome wooden carrying case complete with a brassbound saucepan and lid and a reservoir of white spirit for getting it started. I’ve practised lighting one of these using lux to vaporise the paraffin, but I didn’t want to turn my phone off in case Lesley texted again. It took less than five minutes to fetch water from the bathroom, pump up the pressure, light the white spirit, watch the main burner catch and give a merry flame under the saucepan. Nightingale said that Amundsen had used one of these on his way to the South Pole and that Hilary and Tensing had hoiked one up the slopes of Everest.

  Further down in the trunk I found a battered biscuit tin containing half a packet of digestives, loose teabags, some teacakes wrapped in rice paper and a bottle of Paterson’s Camp Coffee that was so old that on the label the Sikh was still on his feet proffering a tray to the seated Highland major-general. I decided not to risk it – not least because Camp Coffee is famous for not having any caffeine in it.

  After briefing the DPS, I had called Nightingale and told him about Lesley. He seemed rather impressed with it as a tactic.

  ‘Rather neatly pins us, doesn’t it?’ he’d said. ‘I was considering following you up to Herefordshire.’

  ‘What about the comrade major?’ I’d asked.

  ‘Oh, I think I’d have brought her too. And Toby,’ he’d said. ‘Might have made quite a jolly outing. But if Lesley knows you’re out of town I can’t get further than a quick rush from the Folly.’ And whatever it was that was hidden behind the door in the basement. Whatever it was that Nightingale, I was beginning to suspect, had stayed in his position at the Folly to protect. He wasn’t going to leave that exposed.

  So no back-up. Apart from Beverley, who seemed more interested in the River Lugg than in the case. I wanted to ask Nightingale about Ettersberg and what, precisely, was behind the black door in the basement of the Folly – but I bottled out and asked him to check the literature on unicorns and brownies.

  He said he’d see what he could find, although he was almost certain that brownies were considered entirely mythical.

  Inspector Pollock called back and said that I was to engage Lesley in conversation. ‘Stretch it out,’ he said. ‘And if you can entice her to talk directly on the phone, so much the better.’

  He didn’t have to say that all communication is the policeman’s friend, that even if we can’t trace your call the mere fact that you’re talking tells us something and every cryptic clue, every denial, every weird utterance tells us something. Even if it’s just that you’re in a desperate need to talk to someone.

  He didn’t have to say that they were monitoring my phone.

  So I texted back: I’m working where R U?

  And then I did my paperwork and, after that, to bed to dream of apple trees in the moonlight.

  Mercifully I didn’t have to do the briefing in Windrow’s narrow little office, but instead on the first-floor terrace that stuck out in front of the canteen like the flying bridge on a landlocked boat. It may have been an unconscious desire to avoid conferring too much legitimacy on the Falcon assessment, but it was most likely so that Windrow could have a crafty fag. We stood there in the cool morning shade enjoying the chill air as the eastern horizon turned gold under a powder blue sky.

  It was Day 6 and things were getting a little bit desperate. Edmondson handed me a newspaper with the headline. POLICE FAILING HANNAH AND NICOLE SAY VILLAGERS.

  ‘If you don’t feed the dogs,’ said Windrow, ‘you’re going to get bitten.’

  I checked the by-line, because it always pays to know who not to talk to next time you’ve got something juicy to trade. But I didn’t recognise the name – Sharon Pike.

  ‘Writes columns in a couple of the nationals,’ said Edmondson.

  ‘What’s she doing on the front page?’ I asked.

  ‘She considers herself a local,’ said Windrow.

  ‘She has a cottage in Rushpool,’ said Edmondson. ‘I hear she spends most of her time in London, though.’

  I suddenly remembered her from me and Dominic’s fruitless search for village vestigia. She’d been a slight white woman with black hair, dressed in skinny jeans and a salmon-coloured cardigan. I remembered that she’d asked a lot of questions and I hurriedly reviewed my memory to see how much trouble I might have talked myself into.

  Windrow must have seen my expression. ‘Hasn’t mentioned you yet,’ he said.

  I didn’t like the sound of that ‘yet’ one bit.

  Windrow lit a second cigarette off the first and took a deep drag as if trying to fill every cubic centimetre of his lungs.

  ‘I’m stocking up for when I have to go back inside,’ he said.

  Edmondson checked his watch and glanced at where the sun was springing up above the distant hills.

  ‘So what’s your assessment?’ he asked.

  ‘Before I start, sir, I need to ask you how much actual Falcon information you want to hear.’

  Edmondson blinked and Windrow scratched his chin.

  ‘How much do you normally give out?’ asked Windrow.

  ‘As much as people are comfortable with,’ I said. ‘Some people don’t like to use the M-word. Some don’t mind that, but want explanations for things we can’t explain.’

  ‘Lad,’ said Windrow, ‘we’re so desperate we’ll take whatever we can get.’

  I started with what I’d already told them – that the phones had been fried by magic up on Whiteway Head where the Mortimer Trail crosses onto Bircher Common. That there was something supernatural moving around in the woods to the south-east along the trail which might, if it was the same thing as Nicole’s invisible My Little Pony, be related to her and Hannah’s disappearance.

  ‘If the invisible pony really turned up at the birthday party,’ I said, ‘then we have a clear path from Rushpool, up to Whiteway Head and then west down the Mortimer Trail to where we found yesterday’s dead sheep.’

&nb
sp; ‘We were going to have to go into those woods sooner or later,’ Edmondson said to Windrow.

  ‘I do have indications that something weird is localised to that area. And there are historical leads to run down, and I’d like to deploy some specialist help,’ I said.

  ‘This would be Beverley Brook, aged twenty, resident of Beverley Avenue, London SW20?’ asked Windrow.

  Well, of course they’d done an IIP check – they’d probably had Dominic do it.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And who is she?’ he asked. ‘Exactly?’

  ‘Best to think of her as a consultant,’ I said.

  ‘Good god,’ said Edmondson. ‘Are you saying she’s a . . .’ He hesitated as his mandated diversity training caused him to trip over the word voodoo or possibly witchdoctor – I couldn’t tell which. ‘A traditional spiritualist?’ Which impressed the hell out of me, and I was tempted to agree just to reward such a valiant effort. But it’s one thing to withhold information from a senior officer and quite another to feed them false data.

  ‘Not really, sir,’ I said. ‘It’s just that there are some people who’ll talk to her who wouldn’t talk to us.’

  ‘People?’ asked Windrow dryly.

  ‘Special people, sir,’ I said. ‘Bees are avoiding the area in question. That’s why we think something is going on there.’

  I waited for one of them to ask whether the bees were ‘special people’, but luckily both of them had more important things on their minds.

  ‘What’s your next step?’ asked Windrow.

  ‘I’d like to re-interview both sets of parents,’ I said. ‘See what they know about the invisible Princess Luna. And then I’d like to have a look at Pokehouse Wood and a couple of other places that have come up in the literature.’

  ‘You’re going to have a hard time getting Derek or Andy to interrupt their search,’ said Edmondson. ‘So I’d talk to them as soon as possible – before we restart operations.’

  ‘I’ll ask Cole to facilitate a second interview with the mothers,’ said Windrow.

  There was the sound of voices from inside the canteen – members of MIU arriving and looking for coffee.

  ‘It’s about time we got in there,’ said Edmondson. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘One more cigarette,’ said Windrow.

  Andy had reached the point where he was going to keep going until someone told him he could stop. Even in the bright morning sunshine he looked grey and tired. The next search was staging at Bircher Common, where there was enough room for police and volunteers to park. I took Andy Marstowe aside behind a Peugeot Van with battenberg visibility strips and a West Midlands Police crest, and asked him whether he knew anything about Nicole Lacey’s invisible friend. He just stared at me blankly and said he didn’t know what I was talking about. I’d have preferred it if he’d demanded to know why I was wasting his time. Which just shows, you should never wish for things you don’t really want to get.

  ‘What the fuck is this bullshit?’

  Derek Lacey stared at me after I asked him the same thing. He was red-faced and erratic and, if I was any judge, about a day away from coming apart at the seams. His voice was angry but his eyes were sad, pleading, wanting to know why I was tormenting him with these stupid questions. I got him calmed down using the patented reasonable police voice while making sure I stayed out of reach. Fortunately, it’s easier to settle people in plain clothes, the uniform has a tendency to set people off, but either way the important thing is to remain calm but firm. This is where doing your two-year probation in the West End comes in really handy.

  I explained that we, and it’s always ‘we’ when dealing with aggravated members of the public, were double checking every possible point of contact between Hannah and Nicole and the outside world.

  ‘When kids talk about imaginary friends,’ I said, ‘sometimes they’re talking about a real person. You see, say you don’t want a child’s parents to know you’re talking to them . . . so you tell the child not to tell anyone, tell them that bad things will happen if they do. But kids like to talk, they especially like to talk about their friends. Especially if they’re interesting or naughty. I mean, what is the point of interesting or naughty if you can’t talk about it to someone else?’

  A strange look came into Derek’s eyes and I wondered whether maybe I should have avoided the whole ‘stranger danger’ aspect of my little speech. Served me right for making this stuff up as I went along. Then he pushed his hand through his thinning hair and took a deep breath.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see now – apologies. What was the question?’

  I repeated the question and he shrugged.

  ‘Oh, yeah, I remember Princess Luna,’ he said. ‘I thought that had sort of stopped. Nicky used to demand extra sweets for Princess Luna and then scoff the lot herself. Vicky got very uptight about it – all those childhood obesity articles in the women’s section of the Sundays.’

  Apparently, there was one of those mother-daughter power struggles – like those that so enliven the lives of my mum’s relatives – which Derek had made a point of staying out of. Finally, Nicole stopped talking about her imaginary friend, and Derek just assumed it had been a phase.

  ‘Unless it was real,’ he said. ‘And just wandered off one day.’

  And how many invisible friends are not imaginary, I asked myself as he walked off to join the search team. What if this stuff is way more common than even the Folly thinks it is? What if it wasn’t just children – what if it was schizophrenics as well?

  I carry a notebook with a list of these kinds of questions, and it gets longer every month – especially since Nightingale made answering them conditional on my advancement through the forms and wisdoms.

  According to DS Cole, Victoria Lacey and Joanne Marstowe were spending the morning together at the Marstowe house while kind relatives, of which Joanne had almost as many as my mum, were taking the two older boys out for a day in Hereford. When I arrived in the suddenly – and suspiciously – neat and tidy kitchen I found the two mothers seated on either side of the table while DS Cole sat at the end and acted as de facto referee. You could have fried an egg in the space between the two women, and I almost turned on my heel and walked back out again.

  ‘Peter,’ said Joanne. ‘Would you like some tea?’ She was already up and bustling before I could answer, so I said I would and deliberately took her seat to break up the confrontation.

  Victoria stared at me as I sat down, her face a mask. ‘Is it true you’ve been asking about Nicky’s silly imaginary friends?’

  I gave her the same flannel I’d given her husband and I think she bought it, or at least was willing to convince herself that the police hadn’t suddenly gone completely bonkers.

  ‘Who wants tea?’ asked Joanne.

  I said yes again, Victoria said no and DS Cole gazed longingly at the kitchen door.

  ‘You know what it’s like with children,’ said Victoria. ‘Once they get an idea in their head they won’t let go – the more you try to stop them the harder they cling on to it. But you can’t just appease them forever – can you?’

  Joanne plonked a mug of tea in front of me and I asked her if Hannah had ever claimed to have met Princess Luna.

  ‘Hannah said you could only see her when it was a full moon,’ said Joanne as she sat down with her own tea. ‘I remember because she insisted we have her bloody birthday party on that particular night.’

  ‘I wondered why you’d done that, and it went on so late,’ said Victoria.

  ‘The moon wasn’t up until past nine o’clock now, was it?’ said Joanne. ‘I thought they’d got that nonsense from that Hobbit film.’

  ‘I don’t remember a unicorn in The Hobbit,’ said Victoria.

  ‘No, it was the writing in that,’ said Joanne. ‘On the map.’

  Victoria picked a thread off the shoulder of her blouse.

  ‘I don’t think I was paying that much attention,’ she said. ‘It all seemed rather
daft.’

  ‘They made us take them to the film twice,’ said Joanne. ‘They were looking forward to the next one.’

  Joanne sipped her tea and looked out of the window.

  I took the opportunity to surreptitiously check the phases of the moon on my phone – April 26th had been a full moon.

  ‘I remember when they first went missing we thought they might have sneaked out to look at the moon,’ said Joanne. ‘Didn’t we, Vicky?’

  That hadn’t been in their initial statements – I saw DS Cole blink.

  Victoria nodded her head reluctantly.

  ‘Following the moon,’ said Joanne. ‘Just like last time.’

  ‘I think I will have a cup of tea now,’ said Victoria. ‘If that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Joanne and got up.

  ‘They’d run away before?’ asked DS Cole about two seconds before I could wrap my head around the implications.

  ‘No,’ said Victoria. ‘Not Nicky and Hannah, they hadn’t, but they used to talk about it. As a game – following the moon.’

  ‘They had a song,’ said Joanne, extracting a teabag and flicking it into the sink – ‘In a minute soon we’ll run away to follow the moon.’

  ‘It doesn’t really scan, does it?’ said Victoria.

  I asked some follow-up questions, but Victoria had been trying hard to ignore the whole ‘imaginary friend situation’ as she put it and Joanne had three boys under the age of ten and could rarely hear herself speak, let alone Hannah.