Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

Then, with astonishing speed, they swept away out through the servants’ door by the east staircase.

That’s one problem down, I thought. Time to call Bev.

Only then Dr Walid arrived and did, fairly unobtrusively, medical things to me right there in the atrium before declaring that I seemed fine. But if I felt dizzy, fatigued or nauseous I was to let him know immediately. I said, while guiding him firmly towards the front door, that of course I would. But what I was really looking forward to was my bed. Thank you for your concern.

‘And likewise if you have any psychological symptoms,’ he said, which made me pause.

‘What kind of symptoms?’ I asked.

‘Recurrent memories, flashbacks, upsetting dreams, avoidance, negative feelings, emotional numbness and memory problems,’ he said.

I informed him that if any of that happened he’d be the first person I’d call, which mollified him enough to get him out the door.

‘Don’t forget to call your parents,’ he said, as I practically closed the door in his face.

So I called my parents on the Folly landline and got my mum’s voicemail, thank God. I left a brief reassuring message and was about to finally call Beverley when I heard Toby bark and found him sitting beside me with his lead in his mouth.

‘Five minutes tops,’ I said, but in the end the walk was more like fifteen.

Then I phoned Beverley.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

I told her and asked where she was.

‘Outside the back door,’ she said.

‘Why didn’t you come in?’

‘You know why,’ she said.

So I ran to the back and found her waiting for me in her emergency work jeans and the purple sweatshirt she wears when everything else is in the wash. She grabbed me and kissed me and we snogged on the doorstop like we were both fifteen and had disapproving parents. She tasted of liquorice and seawater and that first ever rum and Coke I’d sneaked, courtesy of an older cousin, at a christening.

‘Are you sure you can’t come in?’ I asked during a break.

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’ve been camping in your Tech Cave since you went missing.’

So I followed her up the spiral staircase to find that she hadn’t been so distressed that she hadn’t brought in an inflatable mattress and nicked bedding from Molly to cover it. Any of my stuff that had got in the way had been pushed to the sides and then covered with a layer of discarded underwear.

I didn’t care. I was so pleased to see her I didn’t even think of tidying up until the next morning.

There was no sign of Molly, or breakfast, the next morning. So me and Guleed picked up something on the drive down to Coldharbour Lane. Nightingale had stayed overnight to supervise the POLSA team and to step in, in the event of demon traps or vengeful spirits – and to deal with the curious foxes.

‘Abigail’s big talking ones,’ said Guleed.

The ‘factory’ as we were now calling it was, like most of London’s vestigial industrial capacity, built beside railway tracks. It had been put up in the 1930s complete with its own goods sidings to supply raw materials. Once freight had shifted firmly to motor vehicles in the 1950s the sidings went derelict before being redeveloped as an industrial park in the 1980s.

Since London’s railway tracks have long served as conduits for its urban wildlife, it didn’t surprise me the foxes were taking an interest. I asked if Nightingale had taken a statement.

‘They might have spotted something,’ I said.

‘Abigail’s doing that this afternoon,’ said Guleed. ‘I think you’ll find it’s on your action list.’

The place was smaller than I remembered it, consisting of two workshops, a loading bay, a row of rooms that included the one I’d been in when they de-hooded me, two obvious storerooms, one with the sort of sad kitchen seen in every small office, shop and workshop in the country. Once I’d had a look in the fridge I was glad they’d been feeding me takeaway.

‘Yeah,’ said Guleed when I slammed the fridge door shut. ‘Nightingale thought there might be something alive in there.’

I thought of the Quality Street tin of vampire and really hoped their biocontainment had been somewhere else.

Someone had put a ladder down into the oubliette so that forensics could have a good rummage. I didn’t go down, but the mildew and damp smell was strong – had Foxglove’s bubble of faerie somehow inhibited decay? Or had it just masked it, like perfume over sweat?

One of the forensic techs asked if I wanted anything brought up.

‘Just any clothes and art you find down there,’ I said.

Foxglove would get her drawings back, although I did hear a rumour that a particularly fine but unfinished sketch of me imitating the centrepiece statue of Piccadilly Circus found its way into the Charing Cross canteen.

I made a point of bagging any art materials I found and labelling them as evidence to be shipped to the Folly.

What we didn’t find was a bell or any vehicles in the loading bay.

All the businesses in the industrial estate had CCTV, but by an amazing coincidence none of them covered the access road. The camera positioned at the street entrance to the estate had perfect coverage of both the access road and Coldharbour Lane. It had already been digitally copied and farmed out to teams at Charing Cross and the Folly. Meanwhile house-to-house teams were confirming what traffic movements belonged to the other businesses on the estate, even as our forensic accountants investigated to see if they were connected to Martin Chorley in some way. Guleed estimated that at least eighty people were now working directly off this one scene.

‘I can’t help worrying that this might be the entire purpose,’ said Nightingale.

‘He’s tricky, isn’t he?’ I said.

‘Worse,’ said Nightingale. ‘He builds his plans with multiple redundancy. Had you not escaped then we would be deprived of a major asset. But since you did, we’re forced to expend matériel chasing leads.’

‘That’s to our advantage though, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘We have personnel and an overtime budget.’

‘Not an unlimited budget. Not for this level of operational tempo.’

I pointed out that Chorley must have a deadline too.

‘Why else grab me?’ I said. ‘And Lesley practically said as much.’

‘Yes,’ said Nightingale. ‘I’m not sure that’s much comfort.’

What was comforting was that one of the CCTV teams had managed to identify the Sprinter van that been used to deliver me to the factory. It was clearly visible turning off the lane at one in the morning and then departing two hours later, sporting different plates. Between then and my escape a total of twenty-eight separate vehicles had come and gone the same way. All but a couple had been traced, their owners interviewed and their current whereabouts ascertained.

The lack of bell disturbed me.

‘The bell was in there,’ I said.

‘Well, it didn’t go out the front,’ said Guleed. ‘And we haven’t found a back door yet.’

‘Let’s see what the Fox Whisperer finds out,’ I said.

One of the police staff dropped off Abigail before lunch and we pushed our way through some scrub down to where a fence marked the border of the railway tracks. We stopped there and Abigail extracted a Tupperware box from her shoulder bag and opened it. Inside were genuine Molly-baked cheese puffs.

I asked whether Molly was cooking again, but Abigail said no.

‘I keep a stash of these in the fridge just in case,’ she said.

‘So what now?’ I asked, making a sly grab which got my hand slapped.

‘On past form, anything from thirty seconds to five minutes,’ she said, ‘With an average arrival time of around two minutes.’