Foxglove Summer

  Before I could reach her, the door opened and Sharon Pike recoiled violently as a small pale figure stepped out to face her. Whatever she’d been planning to say choked off. And in the sudden quiet I heard the little girl say:

  ‘Why’re you hitting yourself?’

  Sharon Pike smacked herself and the girl giggled and told her to do it again.

  I reached them just in time to see Sharon Pike punch her own face hard enough to draw blood.

  Some policing situations are the same wherever or whatever you’re dealing with. I put myself between Sharon Pike and the girl and spoke in my command voice.

  ‘Stop that!’

  Probably-not-Nicole sneered at me.

  ‘I don’t like you. Go away.’

  ‘Stop it!’

  ‘Go away,’ she yelled.

  ‘Look me in the eye,’ I said, and waited until she reluctantly lifted her head to do so. ‘That doesn’t work on me.’

  Not-Nicole squinted at me.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked.

  ‘Because I’m police and it’s my job to beat small children if they misbehave.’

  ‘You won’t,’ she said.

  ‘I can and I will if you don’t behave yourself,’ I said.

  ‘You wouldn’t!’

  You think that because you are small I will not beat you. But I am your mother and I know what is best for you. And if I have to beat you, then that is what I will have to do – it’s true, I thought. As you grow up you turn into your parents.

  ‘Go inside and behave,’ I said. ‘We will talk about this later.’

  She gave me a sullen look before turning and walking back into the house. She wanted to slam the door but she didn’t dare.

  Sharon Pike was standing with the dazed look of someone who’s been hit by a bus. I decided to take her to the parish hall, which would be suitably neutral ground. As I took her by the arm, she gave me one of those vaguely thankful looks that you get from members of the public when they realise you’re taking them away from whatever mess they’ve got themselves into.

  The place had been cleared out since the celebratory sheep roast, but there were still a couple of Evians in the fridge behind the serving counter. Sharon Pike took hers gratefully and once I had her sat down on a folding chair she took a dainty sip. I unfolded a second chair and sat down to face her, close enough to be intimate but far enough away to be non-threatening.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  ‘You’ve been put under a form of suggestion,’ I said. ‘A bit like hypnotism.’

  Sharon took another sip of water and then shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s not possible.’

  ‘Normally, no,’ I said. ‘This is a special case.’

  ‘By whom? Who did it to me?’

  ‘I can’t say,’ I said.

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ she asked, the confusion wearing off. I didn’t think I had to worry about her rending her clothes, but my window for getting useful information was shrinking as she segued from victim to journalist.

  ‘It’s part of an ongoing case,’ I said. ‘But you just stood up and accused the West Mercia Police of conspiring to cover up the kidnap of two children and you did it in front of the whole press corp.’

  Sharon held up a hand to make me stop. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ she said. ‘I was there. Oh god – it’s all on tape.’

  ‘Ms Pike,’ I said. ‘This is important. Can you remember where the ideas come from?’

  ‘You’re PC Peter Grant,’ she said. ‘I looked into you, you work for the Special Assessment Unit – the Met’s very own X-Files. I heard you investigate ghosts and aliens and psychics . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Psychics,’ she pinched her forehead. ‘Jesus Christ.’ She looked at me, eyes narrowed.

  ‘Psychics?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s an ongoing investigation,’ I said.

  ‘You know I’d love to say that little monster made me do it. But I think she just pushed me in the right direction, and I went off and did it to myself.’ She sighed. ‘It would have been such a good story, too – pretty little girl, chav family, police incompetence – you’ve got to admit it had everything.’

  ‘You’re sure it was the girl?’ I said. ‘Not Victoria or Derek?’

  ‘Oh it was little Nicky all right,’ said Sharon. ‘Victoria, I’m sure you may have noticed, has no backbone. And Derek is no better than he should be.’

  ‘Derek?’ I asked, wondering what that meant.

  ‘Anything with a pulse,’ she said. ‘Even me once or twice.’ She sighed again and drank more of the water. The good thing about the glamour is that it’s all in the mind – she was going to be okay. ‘Best lay I ever had.’

  ‘All the names and details you listed in the press conference—’

  ‘You’re determined to keep bringing that up,’ said Sharon.

  ‘Did you provide the details?’ I asked. ‘Or did Nicole?’ I thought it better not to raise the possibility that the girl was a changeling. Not when Sharon was so obligingly thinking herself down a cul-de-sac.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I provided all the details – so much for professionalism.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘Is Nicole psychic?’

  ‘We don’t use that term,’ I said.

  ‘Really? What term do you use?’

  ‘We just refer to them as people who are unusually good at getting other people to do what they want,’ I said. ‘It’s disconcerting, but luckily it’s a bit on the rare side.’ As was my ability to talk bollocks, I thought.

  ‘And Nicole is one of these unusual people?’

  ‘Inquiries are ongoing,’ I said.

  Except they weren’t. Because I was stuck waiting for the DNA tests to come back.

  First step was to get some bodies out in the field behind the Old Rectory to ensure fake Nicole didn’t do a runner out the back. Fortunately, I was in Windrow’s good books for so promptly dealing with Sharon Pike.

  ‘Who is where?’ he asked when I called him up.

  ‘In her cottage having a lie down,’ I said.

  ‘Any sign of the media?’ he asked.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘What was the reaction after Ms Pike left?’

  ‘Confused,’ he said. ‘I think they may just pretend it didn’t happen.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ he said.

  So I got some bodies in the fields and on the main lane with instructions to watch out for any comings and goings, but not to intervene unless asked to. I was just trying to figure out what to do next when Dr Walid called.

  ‘In the first instance,’ he said, ‘Hannah and Nicole are half-sisters, they both share Derek Lacey as their father.’

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘Sharon Pike wasn’t kidding about Derek.’ And then the implications hit me. ‘Wait. If you could tell that, then the sample I gave you must have come from Nicole Lacey.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Dr Walid. ‘The samples taken from the drink bottles were definitely of the child of Derek and Victoria Lacey – assuming you didn’t get the samples mixed up.’

  I didn’t bother asking him if he was sure. When Dr Walid gives a DNA result you can take it into court – literally.

  He obviously correctly interpreted my silence as proof that I was floundering, because he went on to tell me that he’d contacted the labs which had processed the DNA samples for the investigation.

  ‘The bottle samples match the blood sample from the strip of cloth you found, but not the baseline samples that were taken from the Lacey house at the start of the investigation,’ said Walid. ‘Hair follicles, I believe they were. Although they have a parent in common.’

  ‘Derek Lacey?’

  ‘Very good,’ said Dr Walid.

  Boy, I thought, he really does get about.

  Eleven years ago Zoe Lacey ran away with her baby half-sister, met the fae and came back with a different half-sister. And the Laceys had spent eleven years raising a changeling,
until a week ago. When the fae, for whatever reason, had swapped them back.

  What was I going to tell DCI Windrow? I’d only just managed to sell him on the idea of a changeling. And what was I going to tell Victoria Lacey – actually, genetically, the monster in your den is your biological daughter.

  And why were they physically identical?

  ‘What do you plan to do next?’ asked Dr Walid.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to think of something.’

  15

  Window of Opportunity

  If you ask any copper why they stick at a job which exposes them to abuse from everyone from petty criminals all the way down to government ministers, they’ll say it’s the variety. It’s the not knowing when you go on shift what the rest of the day is going to be like. Accordingly, your training and experience emphasise a loose set of principles which can be applied to a wide variety of situations.

  They are: make sure it doesn’t spread, make sure no one’s dead, make sure no one’s going to be dead soon – and make sure you call for back-up before you need it.

  I had the Lacey place surrounded, now the next step was to ensure Victoria and Derek weren’t dead or injured. So I went back in, but not before I got Dominic to round up some beefy uniforms and wait outside with instructions to come get me if I wasn’t out within ten minutes.

  I found Derek and Victoria in the kitchen, apparently unharmed except for the valiant attempt both were making to incur alcohol poisoning. They sat facing each other at either end of the vast oak kitchen table. Derek had two half bottles of Bell’s in front of him – one empty, the other mostly gone – while Victoria had two bottles of red wine and a dodgy-looking bottle of Bailey’s that I suspected dated back several Christmases.

  ‘How are you two doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Fine,’ said Victoria flatly. ‘Thank you for asking.’

  Derek rolled his eyes and gave me a look-at-what-us-boys-have-to-put-up-with look which I ignored.

  ‘Where’s Nicole?’ I said, keeping my voice as bright and businesslike as I could.

  ‘In the den,’ said Victoria.

  Before I went to look, I paused at the entrance to the kitchen and asked if either of them would like to leave the house.

  ‘Now would be a good time to do that,’ I said.

  Victoria kept her back to me.

  ‘Why would we want to leave?’ she said. ‘Everything we want is here.’

  They know something, I thought, as I cautiously made my way to the den. But what is it they know? It was hard to imagine that Derek had a tryst with the fae and hadn’t noticed anything odd – or maybe the mother of his child had just looked like a tourist or, possibly, a particularly attractive sheep. I really wanted to ask, but I doubted he was going to tell me right that instant. I mentally stuck it on the follow-up to-do list.

  I heard her before I reached the door, a very pig-like snoring, and indeed I found her lying on her back asleep surrounded by sweet wrappers. She looked exactly like every annoying eleven-year-old I’d ever been forced to babysit for.

  Again I considered just scooping her up there and then and making a run for it. But a run for it where? And to what purpose? I didn’t think that Herefordshire Social Services would be best pleased about me dumping a poorly socialised pre-teen with mind control powers on them. And, assuming we recovered the real fake Nicole, the one that had actually grown up in Rushpool, we’d end up one child surplus to requirements. In which case, we’d need to find someone to take care of her.

  I let sleeping changelings lie and retreated out of the house before Dominic and the brute squad came charging in.

  Dominic was outside leaning against the tailgate of the Nissan, which he’d obviously backed into the Lacey’s drive to serve as a formidable road block. The brute squad, in actuality a couple of PSCOs from the safer neighbourhood team, sloped off as soon as they saw I was okay.

  It was getting into late afternoon, but there was no let-up in the heat and no sign of a breeze. I joined Dominic at the tailgate, which at least was in the shade of the trees that screened the rectory from the lane. He handed me an Evian that was, if not cold, noticeably cooler than I was. I turned my phone back on and checked for messages. Then I turned the disposable back on and checked that – the same.

  I told Dominic I didn’t think anyone was going to go anywhere – at least not until it was dark.

  ‘You seem very sure something’s going to kick off tonight,’ he said. Which translated as You know something and you’d better tell me what it is.

  ‘It’s the phases of the moon,’ I said. ‘Hannah and Nicole went missing a fortnight ago when the moon was in the first quarter.’

  ‘That’s half and half, right?’

  ‘And when I trawled through all the databases it was clear that all the confirmed events, and most of the suspect events, happened between the first and third quarter. In other words the moon has to be at least half full for any of this shit to happen. And tonight . . .?’

  ‘Is the last night?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘Why would the moon have any effect on any of this?’ I said. ‘What possible mechanism is in place?’

  ‘Well . . .’ started Dominic.

  ‘You’re going to ask about the tides, aren’t you?’

  ‘Um, no,’ he said. ‘I was going to say that the mechanism is irrelevant at the moment.’

  ‘Tonight’s the night,’ I said.

  ‘So what about the tides, then?’ asked Dominic.

  ‘Gravity,’ I said. ‘That’s the mechanism with tides.’

  ‘All living things have water in them,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Gravity affects the oceans because they slosh about,’ I said. ‘Not because they’re made of water.’

  ‘That’s me told, then,’ he said.

  ‘Damn right,’ I said.

  ‘So the moon affects magic, why?’

  ‘I’m working on several theories,’ I said. ‘But I’m currently favouring the hypothesis that the moon has a seemingly arbitrary effect on magic because it likes to piss me off.’

  ‘That’s a theory with a high degree of applicability to other spheres of life,’ he said.

  ‘Yes it is,’ I said, and we spontaneously fist bumped.

  The thing about back-up is that when you want it, you want it now, not two to three hours away in London. So, as I schlepped back to the cowshed for a shower and a change of gear, I was rehearsing what I was going to say. I was just trying to find a form of words that would imply that none of what had happened was my fault when the disposable phone rang.

  Has to be a wrong number, I thought as I answered. But it wasn’t. It was Lesley.

  ‘Hello, Peter,’ she said.

  ‘Where are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Like I’m going to tell you,’ said Lesley, her tone the same as if we were still proceeding down Charing Cross Road with our thumbs hooked in our Metvests. I stopped walking and sat down on a low garden wall. It took me a moment to catch my breath.

  ‘You’ve got to come in, Lesley,’ I said. ‘This is not going to end well.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Listen, I called to make sure you were all right.’

  ‘Whether I’m all right?’ My voice actually went up an octave. It was embarrassing. ‘You’re the one who’s up to their neck in shit.’

  ‘Yeah, but at least I know what I’m doing,’ she said.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m not wasting the little time we’ve got talking bollocks,’ she said. ‘Are you banging Beverley yet?’

  ‘Why do you care?’

  ‘Because I want you to be happy, you pillock,’ she said. ‘Because you spend too much time worrying about shit that’s not important. And you never know . . .’ She hesitated, and this time I heard a catch in her voice. ‘You never know when it’s all going to get taken away.’

  ‘I tell you what,’ I said. ‘You come i
n and I’ll let you run my love life.’

  I heard something that might have been a laugh, might have been a cough.

  ‘Yeah, that’s tempting,’ she said.

  ‘You want to make me happy, Lesley?’ I said. ‘Meet me somewhere – so at least I know you’re safe.’

  A real laugh for sure – a bitter one.

  ‘I crossed a line, Peter,’ she said. ‘I’m never going to be safe again.’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘And I did it with my eyes open,’ she said. ‘You always said that people need to accept the consequences for their actions – this is me doing that.’

  ‘You know I was talking bollocks. And anyway, coming in would be a way of accepting the consequences.’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got about a year, Peter,’ said Lesley. ‘Then it’s going to kick off for certain – if you keep your head down I might just be able to keep you out of it.’

  ‘Keep me out of what?’ I asked.

  ‘Time’s up,’ said Lesley. ‘Take care.’

  The phone cut off.

  The evening sunlight sliced across the tops of the trees, a car slowed as it passed me and then accelerated up towards the parish hall. Something tweeted insanely in a bush a couple of metres from my head.

  What the hell was that supposed to be – a friendly warning? Something to assuage her guilt? Or second thoughts? Was it part of a plan, and if it was – whose plan was it? A year? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why a year?

  Too late I reached for my own phone to call Nightingale, but there already was a text from Inspector Pollock. No contact until auth. Meaning I wasn’t to contact Nightingale, or anyone related to Operation Carthorse – the operation to apprehend Lesley May. I’d like to think that Pollock was worried that I was being monitored. But it was more likely that he still hadn’t yet ruled out to his satisfaction that me and Lesley had been working together.

  So, no back-up until further notice.

  I got up and jogged up the lane to the cowshed. I needed a shower to calm down, a change of clothes and a plan.