Бен Ааронович - Lies Sleeping

It was less than sixty seconds later that a large dog fox strolled up with the ‘Yeah, what?’ of a creature who’s figured out that they don’t allow hunting dog packs in built-up areas.

‘Wotcha, Abi.’ Its voice was breathy but surprisingly deep and cockney.

‘All right,’ said Abigail.

‘Is that a cheese puff?’ said the fox, sidling closer.

‘What do you think?’ asked Abigail.

‘Is there any chance of that becoming my cheese puff?’ he said.

‘Don’t know,’ said Abigail. ‘It depends on whether you’re going to be helpful or not, don’t it?’

The fox bobbed his head.

‘How can I be of service?’ he said.

‘Who’s been watching this place?’ she asked, and I thought – what the fuck?

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said the fox. ‘Honest.’

Abigail folded her arms and tapped her feet.

‘All right,’ said the fox. ‘Here’s my problem, right. If I bring you the one who might have been keeping an eye on this place, then they’re going to be rewarded with a cheese puff – yes?’

‘Possibly,’ said Abigail.

‘But what of I, the one which facilitated this engagement without whom no information would be exchanged,’ said the fox. ‘What reward for myself?’

‘I might give you a cheese puff,’ said Abigail.

Reaching into the box, she produced a cheese puff and handed it to me. The fox watched me intently as I took a bite – it was delicious.

‘Cheddar with a hint of thyme,’ I said. ‘Also, crumbled bacon.’

The fox gave a low whine.

‘Might give me one?’ he said. ‘How might “might” become “will”?’

Abigail took out another cheese puff, took a bite and waved the remainder around for emphasis.

‘That depends upon how long me and this one have to spend waiting for you,’ she said.

‘I see,’ said the fox, turning and vanishing back into the undergrowth.

I eyed up the remaining cheese puffs.

‘Do you think he’s going to be long?’ I asked.

‘Nah,’ said Abigail. ‘The watcher will be his mate – he knew what we were after, but by talking to us first they get two bites of the cherry, don’t they?’

‘That’s sly,’ I said.

‘That’s foxes, isn’t it?’

The fox came back with his mate, a vixen with a particularly long face. They sat on their haunches side by side.

‘Hello,’ said the vixen. ‘Let’s have it then.’ Her voice had a higher register but seemed just as cockney.

‘Have what?’ asked Abigail.

‘The cheese puff,’ said the vixen.

‘Let’s get your report first,’ said Abigail. ‘Then we’ll talk baked goods.’

‘This is a bit of an impasse, isn’t it? Because I’m not about to cough up what I’ve got without something upfront,’ said the vixen.

Abigail removed another cheese puff, broke it in half and threw one bit to each fox. They caught them neatly out of the air and ate them in a single bite. Long tongues emerged to lick the crumbs off their muzzles.

‘Now,’ said Abigail. ‘Your report.’

The report was oddly full of jargon. The foxes spoke of being covert and not wanting to risk being blown by being too obvious while they maintained eyes on the opposition assets. Some of it was incomprehensible: mouse-time , first and second dark all related to times of day, and Abigail had to translate. Still, since the vixen had watched with great interest as me and Foxglove had run down the access road in our rush for freedom and a local convenience, we had a fixed point to work our timings around.

Two big smelly metal boxes had left the factory the previous mouse-time, which Abigail translated as early evening. Two vans which had not registered on the CCTV camera that covered the entrance from Coldharbour Lane.

I backtracked a bit and asked questions in various different ways, but the vixen was better than most people, better than most trained professionals in fact. I let them have the rest of the cheese puffs. Abigail disapproved.

‘You shouldn’t spoil them,’ she said after we’d watched them disappear into the undergrowth.

‘Watchers?’ I asked as we walked back to the factory. ‘Assets, reports, covert? Is there something you want to tell me?’

‘It’s not me,’ said Abigail. ‘They think they’re spies.’

‘Working for who?’

‘They won’t say. I’m not sure there is anyone. I think it’s part of the process that made them big and smart.’

We didn’t see Molly for two whole days and everybody had to make do with takeaway until she resurfaced. Well, except for the second day when I cooked jollof rice, groundnut chicken, stock fish, palava sauce – with way too much palm oil – and fried plantain. Admittedly, I did have my mum to help. And I did have to physically restrain her from putting a year’s supply of pepper in the soup. We compromised and had a pot of what she called properly seasoned Tola sauce, which proved surprisingly popular with some of the analysts. One white guy kept coming back despite the fact that he’d turned bright pink and was damp with sweat.

‘I know it’s killing me,’ he said. ‘But it just tastes that good.’

Stephanopoulos filled her plate with a blithe disregard for thermodynamics and later asked my mum for the recipe for groundnut chicken.

Even while turning pink, the CCTV teams managed to establish that the footage from the entrance camera had been doctored – presumably to hide the departure of the two vans the vixen had seen. One of them, probably, carrying the new bell.

But even Chorley couldn’t get to every camera on Coldharbour Lane. And by suppertime the day after we’d fed the foxes, we had the colour, make and index of both vans. Not that we expected the indexes to remain the same – in fact we were working on the assumption they’d be changed. The City of London Police and CTC had spent a great deal of the last thirty years waiting for the next big truck bomb – be it IRA, IRA classic, various varieties of cryptofascists or jihadists – and they had systems for finding vans with dodgy numbers.

Nightingale insisted that me and Guleed got as much rest as we could.

‘Whatever happens next,’ he said, ‘is likely to be the final operation of the campaign. I need you two to be fully combat-fit, as it were.’

I always worry when Nightingale goes all Band of Brothers on us, which is one of the reasons I took up feeding the multitudes as a distraction. Still, at least after a worrying silence from Molly we got reassurance that Foxglove was settling in.

On some nights the full moon rises above the skylight and floods the atrium with cold light. On those nights Molly turns all the electric lights off, including the Emergency Exit signs, even though I’ve told her she’s not supposed to, and glides around the atrium and the balconies in weird random patterns. I’d got so used to it that I could walk down from my room to the kitchen, looking for a snack, without paying any attention to the silent shadow that darts here and there – always in the periphery of my sight.

The first such moonlit night after Foxglove joined us I was out in search of a nightcap when I realised that Nightingale was standing on the upper balcony. Silently he beckoned me over and pointed down to the atrium floor.

Below I saw Molly flit across the tiles, her hair streaming out behind her like a shadow. Behind her came a second figure, Foxglove, dressed in a loose silk shift that looked blood red in the moonlight. In her right hand she trailed a long ribbon of white fabric. Then Molly turned, grabbed Foxglove around the waist, and swept her around in a circle – the white fabric looping around them as they spun in place. I don’t how long we watched them dance, silent but for the swoosh of their clothes and Foxglove’s streamer, but when they finally vanished into shadows I heard Nightingale sigh.