Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

And because in my line of business it pays to be sure, I asked – ‘Just so we’re clear, when we’re talking about a line of Reynards, are we talking multiple members of one family with the same name, or the same guy changing his identity with each generation.’

‘Oh he’s a nasty piece of work, but he isn’t that nasty,’ said Wanda. ‘Different guys with different names – Reynard’s more of a title, an appellation, a nom de bastard total. ’

‘And he’s a regular here?’ I asked

‘Well, we can’t bar people just for being unsavoury, can we?’ said Wanda. ‘We’d be out of business.’

I asked who, exactly, would be out of business. Wanda gave me a card with her area manager’s contact details and the name of the company who owned the business: CHIPMUNK CATERING.

‘Not that we see that much of them,’ she said.

I handed the card to Guleed, and while I asked about Reynard’s comings and goings Guleed texted the Inside Inquiry Office. I’d love to claim that I’d had a gut feeling about the owners, but really it was following routine. In policing, your gut might point the way – but it’s the shoe leather that catches criminals.

I showed Wanda Christina Chorley’s picture again and asked if she had ever seen her with Reynard. I used a different picture and made sure that I didn’t cue Wanda that this was a repeat viewing – if you can shift the context, people often remember new facts.

This time Wanda thought it was possible that she might have seen them together, but she was hazy on the details. In just about any other pub in London I’d have asked about CCTV footage, but me and Guleed had noted the lack of cameras on the way in.

I was going to roll the conversation back round to Olivia when Guleed showed me her phone and the answering text from the Inside Inquiry Office – CHIPMUNK CATERING DIRECTLY LINKED TO COUNTY GARD.

And County Gard belonged to the Faceless Man – shit.

‘How often do you see your area manager?’ I asked.

Wanda said she didn’t think she’d ever met him in the three years she’d been running The Chestnut Tree – which was entirely a good thing from her point of view. ‘It’s not like area managers ever have anything useful to say about running a pub,’ she said. ‘Is it? Especially a pub like this.’

She had interviewed for the job, here in this very room, and could provide us with a name and description but she didn’t understand why. I was tempted to tell her it was just routine but literally nobody ever believes that – even when it’s true.

‘It’s part of an ongoing inquiry into property fraud,’ I said, which was true, as far as it went.

‘Are there any storage areas in here?’ asked Guleed.

Wanda said that obviously they had food storage, dry goods, bottle storage, wine racks and a separate cool room for those casks that needed it.

‘Do have any storage you’ve never been in?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know about storage as such,’ said Wanda. ‘But there’s a couple of rooms we don’t use.’

‘You couldn’t give us a look, could you?’ I asked.

There was a corridor that was 1930s brick down one wall and 1970s breezeblock on the other. There were two doorways in the newer wall with cheap red doors made of medium density fibreboard and the kind of stainless steel lever handle and lock combination that you find fitted to schools and council buildings from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

Wanda opened them both with one of the keys from the bunch she kept in her pocket on a hoop key ring. Inside the first were a ton of stackable polyurethane chairs and, in the second, modular steel frame storage shelves that, judging by the dust, hadn’t held anything for years.

‘See,’ said Wanda locking them back-up. ‘Nothing extraordinary at all.’

‘What about that one?’ I asked.

There was a third door, this one in the old side of the corridor and made of what looked like wooden planks. It looked suspiciously as if one of the artfully rustic tables from the saloon bar had been hauled upright and jammed into the doorway.

‘Ah,’ said Wanda, looking over at the door. ‘Yeah.’ She bit her lip and looked back at us.

‘Do you have a key?’ said Guleed.

‘Yeah, I’m pretty certain we do,’ said Wanda and shuffled backward a couple of steps – away from the door. ‘But I don’t think I should let you open that door.’

I exchanged looks with Guleed. We both knew that the words ‘search warrant’ were heading for Wanda’s lips and we’d both been around enough weird bollocks to be suspicious as to why.

I suggested that we make our way back-up to the end of the corridor, and as we did Wanda became noticeably calmer. She asked if we’d seen everything we wanted to?

I suggested that perhaps I might borrow her key ring, just to do a security check you know, for advice purposes you understand, can’t be too careful, can you, don’t worry about it, it’s all part of the service.

Guleed rolled her eyes, but I got the keys and Wanda got to stay at the end of the corridor where things were less likely to disturb her. I left Guleed with her and walked back to the door, carefully, with all my electronic devices switched off and my tray in the upright position.

After a build up like that, the old wooden door was bound to look a bit sinister. But even up close I wasn’t sensing anything unusual.

There’s a device that Nightingale calls a demon trap, a sort of magical IED but with added animal cruelty. The Faceless Man has made use of them in the past, often to deadly effect – just another in a long list of things that my Governor would like to have a word with him about. A demon trap can be set to have a number of effects ranging from dead to really wishing you were dead via spending time at the secure mental institution of your choice.

Nightingale has taught me the basics of demon trap detection – the magical equivalent of carefully sliding the blade of your knife into the ground and waiting to see if it goes ‘ting’.

The visual inspection divulged nothing, no circles or enclosed shapes incised into the surface of the wood, no disguised metal plates inlaid underneath. The lock itself, a heavy iron thing, revealed no intaglio or pattern when I brushed my fingertips across it.

But there it was . . . just at the cusp of sensation, a whiff of gunmetal and the strop strop strop of the straight razor against smooth leather. It was a signum I had come to recognise as belonging to the Faceless Man.

It felt dusty and airless, like an old garden shed. Certainly I wasn’t feeling anything that would explain Wanda’s obvious psychological aversion to opening the room. Perhaps it only worked on fae . . . perhaps that’s why Wanda had been employed in the first place. That part of my mind that is forever a total bastard wondered if we could recruit some fae and map out all the places that they didn’t want to go. In the interests of science and public safety.

The lock was the obvious seat for any defence so, after a moment to warn Guleed to stand clear, I sheared the hinges and, nipping up the corridor myself, knocked the door in with impello .

Normally when I do a forced entry like that, the door twists as it pivots around the lock, but this door just fell inward with a crash and a backwash of dust. When I gingerly advanced to find out why, I saw that the lock’s bolt had been cleanly sheared off level with the strike plate, with the end still inside the socket. It had already been forced – and not by me.

‘Is it safe to come down yet?’ called Guleed.

I told her to give us a minute while I had a look round. It wasn’t that I was worried about her coming in – I was suddenly more worried about Wanda the manageress doing a runner. I pulled on my evidence gloves and went inside – cautiously.