Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

‘I understand that,’ said Lady Ty. ‘What I’m asking is why you’re even risking it for this girl. God knows I’ve got close friends, but I wouldn’t go to prison for them – not for a packet of dodgy E’s.’

I’ve seen enough of these rows to know that we were winding up to DEFCON 1 and that my window for getting any coherent information out of either of them was small.

‘Whose idea was it to go to the party at One Hyde Park?’ I asked.

Mother and daughter turned to look at me.

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ asked Olivia.

‘You said you weren’t friends with Christina, so was it Phoebe that suggested you go to the party?’

‘I don’t have to answer that,’ she said, but I was pretty certain she already had.

‘Why are you doing this?’ demanded Lady Ty, turning back to Olivia. ‘What could you possibly owe this . . . girl.’

‘I love her,’ said Olivia quietly.

‘What?’

‘She’s my girlfriend,’ she said and then, to clear up any semantic confusion, ‘My lover,’ and then, because her mum was still staring at her with a stunned expression on her face, ‘we have sex, we’re lesbians, queer, dykes, we get out of the left side of the bed, we dance the face fanny fandango—’

‘All right,’ said Lady Ty. ‘I get it – you’re a lesbian.’

By this point I was eager to emulate Guleed and merge unobtrusively with the imitation French farmhouse fitted cupboard and counter unit behind me.

Lady Ty took a deep breath.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Since when?’

‘Since about I was eleven.’

‘And you didn’t tell me?’ Lady Ty turned to glare at me. ‘Does he know?’

‘Why the fuck would he know?’ asked Olivia.

‘Why the fuck don’t I know?’ said Lady Ty.

‘Because I thought you might react like this,’ said Olivia and, when her mum continued to just stare at her dazedly, continued, ‘Aunty Fleet said I should tell you.’

‘Fleet knows?’ said Lady Ty. ‘Of course Fleet knows! Why am I not surprised?’

‘I had to tell someone,’ said Olivia and then stopped mid-sentence to stare at me. Her mum turned to face me as well.

‘You’ve got what you wanted,’ she said in a strangely distant tone. ‘Now piss off.’

And off I pissed.

I found Guleed still in the car reading something off her phone. She’d taken the opportunity to change her hijab, the new one being electric blue with silver and black details. Hijabs, Guleed once told me, were like T-shirts – you could choose ones that uniquely expressed your personality. But, unlike a T-shirt, you could wear them with the sort of conservative suit that was de rigueur for serving police officers.

‘Do you get the impression that this Phoebe is more involved with the dead girl and Reynard than Tyburn’s daughter is?’ asked Guleed, once I’d filled her in.

‘Just a bit,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to ask.’

We were already heading for Phoebe Beaumont-Jones’ address in St Johns Wood. She lived just west of Primrose Hill, part of that band of posh that runs down from Hampstead Hill in the north to Mayfair in the south. Along the line, I couldn’t help notice, of the hidden river Tyburn. My dad says that when he was younger these areas used to have all sorts of people, but the artists, musicians and other undesirables had been leached out by London’s continuous house price boom.

I was pretty certain that, ten seconds after I’d left her house, Olivia would have phoned or texted Phoebe to let her know we were on our way, and we needed to at least have the house under surveillance in case she tried to leg it.

But before we got there Nightingale called and said that he and Lady Helena had found Reynard Fossman.

‘Where is he?’ I asked.

‘He’s gone to ground in Archway – at the Intrepid Fox.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Nightingale, ‘he felt that its very obviousness would be deception enough.’

Obviously not very experienced with the police then – we like obvious. Obvious is our middle name.

Since this was going to be an all-Falcon, plus ambiguous auxiliaries, operation Nightingale needed me immediately. Guleed promised she’d sit on Phoebe’s house until I had a chance to get back.

‘It’s all go in the Isaacs, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Where’d you get that name from?’ I asked.

‘Isn’t that what the Folly is called?’ said Guleed. ‘I’m sure I heard that somewhere.’

‘You’ve been talking to Bev, haven’t you?’

‘That would be telling,’ she said. So, yeah, she’d been talking to Bev.

God, I hoped it was Bev. Because if it was someone else—

Guleed dropped me off at Warren Street so I could get the tube to Archway.

When I was a kid, the Intrepid Fox was called the Archway Tavern, a notorious pub that stood at the centre of the Archway circulatory system and was definitely not a place where a well brought up Kentish Town boy would go drinking. The original Intrepid Fox was a famous metal pub stroke music venue which was driven out of Soho as an early casualty of the blandification of the West End. The venue moved briefly to St Giles and then to the unlamented Tavern and proceeded to paint the inside and outside as black as a teenager’s bedroom and stuck a ton of Goth iconography on the walls in the hope that Marilyn Manson would pop round for a pint. It actually closed down not long after we raided it, but just for once I can say with a clear conscience, it wasn’t my fault.

Archway is where the post-war dream of the urban motorway died in the teeth of local opposition and the inability of the designers to answer basic traffic management questions. Thus the A1 remained unwidened and what was then the Archway Tavern stood proudly like a combination tank trap and brick shithouse in the way of progress. Famously, the planning inquiry got so unruly that the Planning Inspector fled through a fire escape to escape the protestors.

I’ve often wondered if such ‘awkward’ spots in London are somehow sacred to Mr Punch – the spirit of riot and rebellion – and maybe that was why I thought I heard him laughing the afternoon we nicked Reynard the Fox.

Or it might have been carbon monoxide poisoning because me and Caroline were stuck on a strip of pavement thirty centimetres wide with nothing but a safety barrier between us and three lanes of congestion. We were there because this was where the Intrepid Fox had its back door, and where we expected Reynard to make his egress, at some speed, about two minutes after Nightingale and Lady Helena went in the front.

‘Whatever you do,’ I told Caroline, ‘don’t put your hands on him – if you physically touch him it gets legally complicated. If you think he’s going to get away see if you can trip him up with your magic rope trick and I’ll go sit on him.’

‘Do you like being a policeman?’ asked Caroline.

‘Love it,’ I said. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘You’re a bright guy – it just seems like a waste.’

‘You think I should be a stockbroker instead,’ I said. ‘Or a celebrity chef or something constructive like that?’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’re an idealist.’

I asked Caroline what she planned to do with her skills, then.

‘I’m going to teach myself to fly,’ she said.

‘With magic?’

‘Of course with magic,’ said Caroline. ‘I already have a pilot’s licence.’

‘And when you learn to fly,’ I said, ‘what are you going to do with that?’

‘What am I going to do,’ said Caroline, ‘is I’m going to fly.’

I felt rather than heard a thump from inside the Intrepid Fox and caught the scent of candlewax.

‘That was Mum,’ said Caroline.