Ben Aaronovitch - Broken Homes

I went in through the double doors at the front on the basis that I almost never used them and if somebody, if Lesley, was laying an ambush she’d do it at the back door. I paused at the guard booth in the lobby to listen and, hearing nothing, I slipped past the statue of Isaac Newton and into the atrium.

Molly was waiting for me. She took the instructions from Nightingale with the same grave expression with which she accepted menu requests. Then she went silently gliding up the stairs — hopefully to check that the upper floors were clear.

The telephone in the Folly atrium has its own desk complete with blotting pad, notepaper and bendy lamp. I picked up the Bakelite handset and dialled, literally dialled, Nightingale’s mobile. He answered almost immediately.

He gave me a series of instructions and told me to call him back once I’d followed them.

I went down the back stairs, turned left, went past the door to the firing range and paused in front of the armoury. Inside, we had some 9mm Browning Hi-Power automatic pistols that Nightingale had planned to teach us to shoot with. I was tempted to fetch one, but Frank Caffrey had once told me that you should never carry a weapon you don’t know how to use. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if push came to shove I could shoot Lesley. And that was Caffrey’s other maxim — don’t point a gun at someone unless you’re prepared to shoot them with it. I checked to see that the door was still firmly locked and moved on. Then right down a rectangular, brick-lined corridor that, being unlit and damp smelling, I’d never bothered to walk down. And, judging by the dust and cobwebs, neither had Molly or anyone else in the last couple of decades. At the far end was a crude wooden door, the sort you might find on a garden shed. I opened it to reveal another short corridor and a much more formidable grey door of what, I learned later, was face-hardened battleship steel. There were no handles or visible locks, instead a series of overlapping circles were incised into the metal. They looked disturbingly like the payload zones of a demon trap and even more disturbingly like modern Gallifreyan.

None of the circles appeared damaged or disturbed in any way and I for one had no intention of touching them.

I went back up to the atrium and called Nightingale.

‘Thank god,’ he said. ‘That was my worst fear.’

‘You never told us about that door,’ I said.

‘And that has proved to be a wise precaution, has it not?’ said Nightingale.

I knew better than to ask what was behind it over the telephone, but the question definitely went to the top of my to-do list.

It took eight hours for Nightingale to arrive back at the Folly. As Lesley’s senior officer and line manager it was down to him to meet with the Department of Professional Standards. Because he didn’t dare leave Varvara Sidorovna unsupervised, she had to be towed around behind him like an unwanted younger sister. While he was spending quality time with the DPS at their offices in the Empress State Building in Brompton, I was stuck guarding the Folly. Not that I had to do that alone, because Frank Caffrey turned up with a number of his mates, all mature but suspiciously fit men with short haircuts and camera cases full of things that weren’t actually cameras.

Nine hours after the Skygarden tower collapsed, Toby turned up at the back door, barked to get Molly’s attention and then settled into his basket with a sigh and a couple of sausages. He must have walked home from Elephant and Castle on his own. A distance of about four kilometres, I pointed out, less than an hour’s walk but who knows? Maybe he stopped off to take in a show at the Lyceum. I’d have berated him a bit more, but Molly shooed me out of the kitchen.

Nightingale arrived back at the Folly at three in the morning, looking as rumpled and as pissed off as I’ve ever seen him. He still had Varvara Sidorovna in tow and informed Molly that she would be our ‘guest’ until further notice. I could hear the quotes around the word ‘guest’ and so could Molly, who took up watching the woman from the shadows as a sort of hobby.

‘What is she?’ Varvara Sidorovna asked me one day when Molly was safely out of earshot.

‘You don’t want to know,’ I told her.

Nobody was happy with us that month except maybe Sussex Police because at least Operation Sallic showed a result when Robert Weil finally pleaded guilty. He claimed to have attacked and killed a complete stranger, shot her in the face and buried her in the woods all on the same night. The fact that Sussex MCT couldn’t find the shotgun, hadn’t identified the body and plainly just didn’t believe the motive for one moment was irrelevant. They had a confession and enough supporting forensic evidence to take to court, so up the steps Robert Weil did go.

Operation Tinker, Bromley MIT’s investigation into Patrick Mulkern’s horrible human kebab impression, essentially stalled on all fronts. Sky remained an unidentified adult female found dead in suspicious circumstances, but since there were no signs of violence and Dr Walid could find no discernible cause of death that was probably going to end up as death by misadventure. All they had to show for a homicide investigation was a criminal damage case against Max and Barry.

No doubt both cases would have garnered more interest in the media had not a tower block been blown up right on top of them. That case went straight to Counter Terrorism Command and became Operation Wentworth before mutating into a joint case with the Serious Fraud Office when the apparent motive was revealed to be removing Skygarden Tower, a Grade II listed building, as a barrier to the massively lucrative redevelopment of Elephant and Castle. It’s a case that could take years to come to court and I expected the Faceless Man had a couple of expendable colleagues to throw, as Varvara Sidorovna put it, out of the troika to keep the wolves busy.

I went to see Mr Nolfi, our impromptu children’s entertainer, now released from hospital, at his home in Wimbledon. I took Abigail along, to teach her how to interview a witness without getting bored and fidgeting.

‘Good Lord,’ he said. ‘Is it bring your daughter to work day?’

‘My cousin,’ I explained.

‘I’m doing a project for school,’ said Abigail.

‘How enterprising,’ said Mr Nolfi.

We asked him if he’d managed to replicate his magic trick since he’d been released home and he conjured a werelight right in front of us.

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he asked, despite my horrified expression. ‘I tried doing them for weeks after I got out and then just two week ago it was like somebody has turned on the electricity.’

‘You mustn’t tell anyone about this,’ I said.

‘Why ever not?

That was a good question.

‘Because it’s like the magicians’ circle,’ said Abigail. ‘A magician must never reveal his secrets.’

Mr Nolfi nodded sagely. ‘Mum’s the word eh?’ he said.

‘Believe it,’ said Abigail.

I found Zach behind a bar in a pub situated ten metres below Oxford Street and accessible only via a Crossrail service tunnel. It had a vaulted ceiling and walls that were covered in something that looked like faded wood panelling until you ran your finger across it. The clientele were all men and dressed universally in moleskin trousers, leather waistcoats and high visibility jackets. They sat around the tables, hunched over their beers, heads almost touching and talking in whispers. A Zodiac jukebox stood by the bar and played Dire Straits very, very quietly.

I leaned over the bar and whispered, ‘You’ve been avoiding me.’

‘Do you blame me?’ asked Zach.

‘Did you know?’

‘Did I know what?’

I held up my hand to stop him.