Foxglove Summer

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘So the search teams don’t waste their time on it when they get here,’ said Dominic.

  ‘You think they’ll come up here, then?’ asked Stan.

  ‘The teams will be here by tomorrow’ said Dominic.

  ‘Oh,’ said Stan. ‘You’re still going to help. Right?’

  ‘Help with what?’ I asked.

  Stan made a little helpless gesture at the gaping hatch.

  ‘They stole my stash,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘All the illegal stuff you had hidden away so that the law didn’t catch you?’

  ‘Rabbits isn’t illegal,’ mumbled Stan.

  ‘Who do you think took your stuff?’ asked Dominic.

  ‘Thought it might have been a pony,’ said Stan.

  ‘Why would a pony get into your stash?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re a bugger for food,’ she said.

  I asked Dominic if there were any ponies nearby.

  ‘There are some a couple of fields over,’ he said. ‘More down the hill towards Aymestrey. But I’ve never heard of them drinking diesel before.’

  ‘What about the drugs?’ I said. ‘What would diazepam even do to a horse?’

  We both looked at Stan, who shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve never given it to a horse.’

  ‘Maybe we should notify local vets,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t a horse,’ said Stan. ‘I had the door wired shut.’

  She showed us the black iron loops on the door and the frame – remnants of a deadbolt, I thought. Stan said that she always pushed a double loop of heavy gauge steel wire through the loops and then twisted it to keep it shut. I asked where the wire was and she showed me where the unwound strands had been dumped. I picked them up and had a look – they hadn’t been cut or melted through or, as far as I could tell, been exposed to magic. In fact there was bugger all in the way of vestigia around the stash at all. Vestigia being the trace that gets left behind when magic happens.

  Flora, your actual growing things, retain vestigia really badly and this makes the countryside, leaving aside poetry, not a very magical place. This caused a great deal of consternation to the more Romantic practitioners of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Particularly Polidori, who spent a great deal of time trying to prove that natural things in their wild and untamed state were inherently magical. He went bonkers in the end, although that could have been a result of spending too much time with Byron and the Shelleys. His big claim to fame, beyond writing the first ever vampire novel, is his work attempting to classify where whatever it is that powers magic comes from. He called it potentia because there’s nothing quite like Latin for disguising the fact that you’re making it up as you go along.

  He was amongst the first to postulate that things other than animals must generate potentia. Forests, for example, would produce potentia silvestris and rivers potentia fluvialis. And it is from these sources that the gods and goddesses and spirits of a locality gain their strength.

  I’ve stood in the presence of Father Thames and felt his influence wash over me like an incoming tide. I’ve seen a lesser river goddess send a wall of water from one end of Covent Garden market to the other. That’s sixty tonnes of water over a distance of thirty metres – that’s a lot of power, at least 70 megawatts – about what you get from a jet engine at full throttle. And I nearly kissed her just after she’d done it too – makes you think, doesn’t it?

  We know that power has to come from somewhere, and Polidori’s theories were as good as anyone else’s. But sticking a Latin tag on a theory doesn’t make it true. Not true in a way that matters.

  If there had been some kind of supernatural activity, I would at least have expected to get something off the door, or the concrete of the foundations, both of which stayed stubbornly neutral. Absence of evidence, as any good archaeologist will tell you, is not the same as evidence of absence – I made a note to ask Nightingale about how things went in the countryside.

  ‘What’re you looking for?’ asked Stan.

  ‘I was looking to see if there are any tracks,’ I said.

  ‘There aren’t any tracks,’ said Stan. ‘If there’d been any tracks I’d have seen them.’

  ‘Stan’s good with tracks,’ said Dominic.

  The sun had got high enough to shine directly onto the back of my neck.

  ‘So, no tracks?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Stan.

  ‘So why did you think a pony did it?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Stan. ‘That was just the first thing that came into my head when I found it open.’

  We were all silent for a moment – something high- pitched yodelled out amongst the trees. The heat seemed to grow around us. I realised that my bottle of water was still in the Nissan.

  ‘To recap,’ I said. ‘Your stash is gone but the kids are not stuck down there. It must have been people not animals. But they didn’t leave any tracks.’

  ‘I thought it might be aliens,’ said Stan. ‘Because there’s no tracks.’ She made a motion with her arm – like a claw dangling down.

  ‘Let’s hope their saucer runs on diesel, then,’ said Dominic. ‘Otherwise I think they’re going to be a bit disappointed.’

  I used an app on my phone to get a GPS fix on our location and then I suggested that we head back to the Nissan before calling it in.

  ‘How are we going to explain what we were doing here?’ asked Dominic as he crawled back out of the rhododendrons. I said he could blame it on me doing my due diligence. ‘I thought that was the plan.’

  Dominic admitted that this was true, but still wanted to know what I was going to say.

  ‘Tell them that I wanted to check on a World War Two military installation,’ I said. It wasn’t that much of a stretch. The foundations had been the right dimensions for a standard hut and had been made from the poor quality ‘economy concrete’ used for throwing up pillboxes and air raid shelters in a hurry. In the scramble that followed the fall of France in 1940 a lot of sites had just fallen off the bureaucratic radar.

  ‘Is that part of your brief, then?’ asked Dominic.

  ‘Why not?’ I said. ‘There are all sorts of secrets from back then.’

  We pushed our way out of the bracken and back onto the path. It was getting hotter and I could smell the warm resin scent of the trees around me. Potentia silvestris, Polidori called the power derived from a forest, the power from whence sprang the antlered gods of Celtic myth, Lemus, Cernunnos and Herne the Hunted – although probably not the last one.

  ‘Who uses this path?’ I asked.

  ‘Dog walkers,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Ramblers,’ said Stan.

  ‘Tourists,’ said Dominic, and explained that it was part of the Mortimer Trail, which stretched from Ludlow in the North East, along the ridge that overlooked Rushpool, down into Aymestrey where it crossed the River Lugg and then up to Wigmore, famed in song and story as the ancestral seat of the Mortimer Family. Dominic was a bit hazy about who the Mortimers were, beyond them being powerful Marcher Lords during the middle ages and getting seriously involved in the War of the Roses.

  ‘We did do them in school,’ he said. ‘But I’ve forgotten most of it.’

  The trail was popular with casual ramblers because of its relative ease and the number of excellent pubs along the route.

  ‘And ufologists,’ said Stan.

  ‘Bit of a hotspot,’ said Dominic.

  ‘Window area,’ said Stan.

  There having been a spate of sightings ten years previously, including lights in the sky, cars mysteriously breaking down and a cattle molestation, although Dominic admitted that there might have been an alternative explanation for the last.

  ‘We used to have UFO parties,’ said Dominic, in which apparently there was the traditional drinking of the cheap cider, bouts of vomiting and occasional snogging – hopefully not in that order.

  ?
??Ever had a close encounter?’ I asked Stan before I could stop myself.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Stan. ‘But I don’t like to talk about it.’

  We reached where we’d parked the Nissan Technical. Dominic offered Stan a lift but she said she was fine walking home. She lived with her family on the other side of the ridge near somewhere called Yatton. I watched as she lurched off down the track, making the occasional zigzag and halting every so often to get her bearings.

  ‘She went headfirst into a tree,’ said Dominic. ‘Spent six months in hospital. The doctors were amazed she walked out on her own feet – everything after that is a bonus.’

  Yeah, I thought, that’s a mate you’re going to go to the wall for.

  Despite Dominic having parked it partially in the shade, a gust of hot foetid air struck us in the face when we opened the Nissan’s doors. Underneath the aroma of dried shit I could smell rotting vegetables and half- melted plastic.

  ‘Christ, Dominic, what does your boyfriend do for a living?’

  ‘He’s a farmer,’ said Dominic, as if that explained everything.

  We decided to leave the Nissan with the doors open to air out while Dominic called in with his Airwave which got, much to my surprise, better reception than either of our phones. I was that thirsty that I’d just started psyching myself up to brave a rummage in the Nissan when Dominic lowered his handset and beckoned me over.

  ‘Were you expecting a delivery?’ he asked.

  Dominic’s mum was a round woman who barely came up to my chest. Her chestnut hair was streaked with grey and tied up into a rough bun at the back of her head. She’d obviously caught the sun that summer, because her skin was brown and she wore streaks of sunblock across her cheekbones. She came hurrying out of the bungalow as soon as Dominic had parked outside and thrust out her hand for me to shake. Her skin was warm and as soft as chamois leather and the bones underneath felt delicate like those of a small bird.

  ‘It’s nice to meet you at last.’ She was breathing hard as if the short dash from her front door had left her out of breath. ‘Is the room all right?’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said.

  She nodded and withdrew her hand. I gave her a moment to catch her breath before asking about the delivery. She pointed to the paved area by her front door where two old-fashioned oxblood leather-bound trunks had been left side by side.

  I sighed and asked Dominic to give me a hand.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said when he tried to lift his end. ‘How long were you planning to stay?’

  ‘It’s the housekeeper,’ I said. ‘She gets carried away.’

  Dominic gave me an odd look.

  ‘Housekeeper?’

  ‘Not my housekeeper,’ I said as I tried to avoid knocking over a garden gnome. ‘Our nick has a housekeeper.’ Which I decided sounded even weirder.

  ‘Okay,’ said Dominic. ‘Well, Leominster nick’s got vibrating chairs in the rec room.’

  ‘Vibrating chairs?’

  ‘You know. You sit in them and they vibrate,’ he said. ‘It’s very relaxing.’

  The inside of my room, a.k.a. the cowshed, was boiling, so once we’d dumped the trunks we retreated back outside with a jug of homemade lemonade provided by Dominic’s mum. When the air had a chance to cool inside, me and Dominic had a rummage in the first of the trunks. The top layer, thank god, consisted of about half the contents of my wardrobe, freshly laundered and the creases ironed to a knife edge – which just looks weird on a sweatshirt. The trunk was equipped with a number of convenient drawers and compartments which yielded a miniature brass camp stove with matching pot and kettle and a leather case which contained a cut-throat razor, a shaving brush and a stick of dehydrated soap that smelt of almonds and rum. I wondered if this was all Nightingale’s stuff or whether Molly scavenged it from elsewhere in the Folly. A lot of men must have left their belongings behind in 1944 believing that they were coming back.

  I put the shaving kit back where I’d found it.

  The second trunk contained a tweed shooting jacket, matching yellow waistcoat, a vintage Burberry trench coat, riding boots, a green canvas camp stool and a shooting stick. It was therefore less of a surprise when at the bottom, disassembled in their own oak and leather case, I found a pair of two-inch self-opening shotguns. Judging from the chasing on the mechanism they were Nightingale’s two Purdey guns that he kept in a locked case in the billiard room.

  I looked at Dominic, whose eyes were bugging out.

  ‘You didn’t see that, okay?’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘The Glorious Twelfth was Monday,’ he said. ‘So grouse is in season.’

  I suddenly wondered if Nightingale’s contemporaries had bothered with shotguns, or whether they’d trooped out to the countryside and banged away with fireballs. I say, good shot there, Thomas! Winged the blighter, by god. It occurred to me that I was currently less than a half hour’s drive from a man who might be able to tell me – if the bees didn’t sting me to death on the doorstep.

  ‘What the fuck?’ said Dominic and, straightening up, looked back towards the front of the bungalow. I joined him just in time to see a column of vehicles roar past the front drive – I recognised a blue Peugeot from the public car park at Leominster nick, likewise a battered green hatchback. A pair of motorbikes with photographers riding pillion raced past, followed by more cars and a satellite van. It was the pack in motion and it was actually quite impressive – like a posh version of Mad Max.

  ‘Shit,’ said Dominic. ‘They must have got wind of something.’

  We exchanged looks – neither of us liked the implications. Dominic pulled out his phone and called the outside inquiry office. After talking for a minute his face relaxed – not bodies, then. He glanced over at me and then told whoever he was talking to that indeed I was here and ready to spring into action – as soon as instructed as to which direction.

  ‘They want you over at the Marstowes’ house right away,’ he told me. ‘Before the thundering herd come rushing back.’

  ‘Have they found something?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really,’ said Dominic. ‘That’s the problem.’

  Even with all the windows open, the Marstowes’ kitchen was stuffy and smelt of hot laminated chipboard. DS Cole had Joanne and her husband sitting on one side of the table and us on the other. Ethan was asleep upstairs and Ryan and Mathew had been packed off to an aunt in Leominster for the afternoon.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Andy Marstowe as soon as we had our legs under the table. He was a short man, just a bit taller than his wife and built with that kind of solidity you get from doing manual labour all your life. He had a pointed chin and deep-set hazel eyes. His light brown hair was receding sharply and he’d obviously decided to bite the bullet and cut the rest of it short. He looked like the classic sawn-off psychopath I used to dread meeting doing the evening shift in Soho, except there was none of the angry violence in his eyes – only fear.

  ‘First,’ said Cole, ‘let me assure you that we have not found any indication that either Hannah or Nicole have been harmed in any way.’ Andy and Joanne didn’t look particularly reassured. ‘Normally we wouldn’t bring something like this to your attention, but unfortunately the media got hold of it and we wanted you to have all the facts before getting a garbled version from them.’

  The pack had swept back into the village less than ten minutes after they’d left, and come boiling up the cul-de-sac like the return of a tide, licking at my heels as I ran up the path and only stopping at the hedge line because it was held by a special constable called Sally Donnahyde who was a primary school teacher in her other job and so wasn’t going to take any lip from a bunch of journalists. The kitchen was at the back of the house, but I could still hear them as a restless murmur, like surf on a pebble beach.

  I watched the parents shift in their seats and brace themselves.

  ‘We found a child’s knapsack just off the B4362, four hu
ndred yards from the assembly point. But it was immediately apparent that the item had been lying there for at least ten years, so we don’t think it’s connected to the case.’

  Andy’s fists unclenched and Joanne let go her breath. DS Cole opened the case on her tablet and showed them a picture of the knapsack. It had been laid out on plastic sheeting and had a ruler placed next to it for scale. It was made of see-through plastic and although it was fogged by age and neglect it was obvious that any contents had been removed. Cole asked, she said purely as a matter of routine, whether either of them recognised it.

  They said they didn’t, but I thought Joanne hesitated just a little bit too long before speaking. Then she sprang up and asked if anyone wanted tea. Cole took the opportunity to fill them both in on the current state of the search. Andy fidgeted throughout, and in the first pause said if that was all he’d like to get back to the search now, thank you very much. Then, either not noticing or ignoring his wife’s angry look, he got up and left.

  I’d have liked a chance to talk with Cole about Joanne’s hesitation, but Cole obviously didn’t want to leave her alone. I wondered if I should press Joanne on the subject myself, but I figured it would be a mistake to pre-empt a senior officer. It was probably nothing . . . but that sounded a little bit too much like famous last words.

  ‘He’s not dealing with it,’ said Joanne when her husband was safely gone. ‘He’s just keeping himself busy.’

  ‘I’m not sure there is actually a way to “deal” with it, Jo,’ said Cole.

  ‘Peter,’ Joanne said suddenly, and turned to me. ‘Truthfully – what are the chances?’

  Now Cole was staring at me, too – no pressure there.

  ‘I think the chances are good,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ Joanne’s eyes were wide, desperate.

  ‘Because they went out together,’ I said. ‘If someone had harmed them locally we’d have a lead by now. And if it was someone from outside we’d have sightings of them coming in.’

  Joanne subsided. It was all bollocks, of course. Not even very plausible bollocks at that. But I didn’t think Joanne wanted facts – just an excuse to hold it together.