Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

Frank Caffrey, fire investigation officer, former para and Folly liaison is very clear that when entering a room you think might be rigged, the first thing you don’t do is automatically reach out and flip the light switch.

As he points out, that’s got to be one of the cheapest and most reliable triggers an IED can have. ‘I mean, it’s even got its own power supply,’ he said. And he likes to point out that the Faceless Man may like his magical weapons, but he’s not so stupid as to rely on them alone.

You know . . . I used to be worried that they were going to assign me to undercover work in Operation Trident – I obviously didn’t know when I was well off.

It was another store room with metal frame variable-height shelving lining the walls from floor to ceiling. About half the shelf space was occupied – mostly those at waist height for easy access. There was a thin layer of dust over the shelves and the floor. It’s hard to tell with dust, but I’d spent enough time on the job with my mum to reckon a couple of months’ worth. On the shelf closest to the door was a row of standard seventy-five litre plastic storage boxes with red clip-down lids. Their contents were a collection of angular shadows visible through the semi-transparent sides. The dust around them had been disturbed and there were clear hand-prints on the edges of the lids.

Staying on the fallen door to avoid contaminating the floor any more than I had to, I carefully levered the lid off the nearest box and had a peek inside. It looked suspiciously like old hardback books with stiff cloth-covered covers. The topmost book had the rough green cover I associated with the limited editions published by Russell House Press – one of the Folly’s own publishing arms. I picked it up and flipped it open to the title page.

It was a 1912 reprint of Meric Casaubon’s A true and faithful relation of what passed for many years between Dr John Dee and Some Spirits. And, yes, at the bottom Russell House Press . A second edition – obviously Casaubon had been popular amongst British wizards.

I was willing to bet real money that Jonathan Wild’s last ledger had once languished in one of these boxes. The Mary Engine too, not to mention the genuine wizard’s staff and the bloody tedious Victor Bartholomew book. Which begged the question why the Bartholomew had ended up on eBay and not the Casaubon. From a magical perspective they were both about as useful, although as cures for insomnia the Bartholomew had a slight edge.

Because the Casaubon was a second edition?

Carefully I checked the other books in the box. All of them were either second editions from the 1920s or the 30s or had significant damage to their covers or their interior pages. I was pleased to see that even back in the glory days of the Folly people left their mugs of tea on their magical textbooks.

At the bottom of the box I found part of a map that had been ripped down its centrefold – a 1:40,000 scale depiction of a place called Ootacamund, which turned out on later research to be a British Hill Station in Tamil Nadu. A Hill Station being a place where colonial administrators and the like could use altitude to avoid the oppressive Indian summer heat, since the sensible solution, i.e. abandoning colonialism and moving back to Surrey, obviously never occurred to them.

I considered checking one of the other boxes, but my mystic powers of precognition bestowed a vision upon me of a full forensic search with noddy suits and fingerprint powder and people taking their sunglasses off in a dramatic fashion.

I did stop on my way out to examine the lock a bit more carefully. Again I felt the razor strop of the Faceless Man’s signum and it was definitely centred on the point where the bolt was sheared right through.

A hypothesis was forming in my mind. If County Gard belonged to the Faceless Man, then The Chestnut Tree did too. Perhaps it was even an asset inherited from his predecessor, which meant that, possibly, this was his storeroom – these had been his things.

Which had been looted by Christina Chorley and Reynard Fossman.

Did they know who they’d stolen from?

He was bound to be a bit miffed . . . I’ve only met him a couple of times, but he didn’t seem the type to take that sort of thing with a light and forgiving heart. Which might explain why Aiden Burghley’s face got laminated to a tree and what the fucker had been doing in Phoebe Beaumont-Jones’ basement . . . looking for accomplices?

Presuming he wasn’t her dad.

Christina and Reynard – they’d taken the stuff that looked valuable – possibly over a period of weeks. Then one day the Faceless Man pops down to check on his booty, or maybe he had a burning desire to brush up on his basic thaumatology, and finds that the door is locked.

Let’s assume the key he’s got doesn’t work for some reason – he burns the lock, steps inside and finds half his stuff’s been jacked. So Action 1 for me – fingerprint team for the corridor and the room, because nobody wears gloves all the time.

Next the Faceless Man’s going to go ask Wanda the manageress just who she’s been letting into the storerooms, possibly using seducere to fog her memory, or maybe she’s a much better liar then we thought. So Action 2 – re-interview Wanda, this time under caution plus two, which leads us onto Action 3, trace the rest of The Chestnut Tree’s staff and interview them as well.

Rule of thumb for lowly constables – once you’re up to three actions it’s time to kick the buck upstairs.

‘And you didn’t think to try pushing the door open first?’ asked Professor Postmartin.

I said nothing, mainly because he was the fourth person to ask that, after Guleed, Nightingale and Stephanopoulos.

Postmartin looked remarkably dapper in his noddy suit and was supervising approvingly as the SOCOs carefully catalogued the evidence with their hoods up and their masks on. Mind you, the Professor probably thought all books over five years old should be handled in this fashion – particularly by undergraduates.

I stayed in the corridor and tried not to get fingerprint powder on my sleeves.

‘Have you found anything else interesting?’ I asked.

‘Interesting, yes,’ said Postmartin. ‘How significant – I don’t know. Your hypothesis that this was the repository for the last offerings of the hanged is charming, but unsupported by the evidence so far.’

‘Any copies of the Principia ?’ I asked.

‘Two in fact,’ said Postmartin. ‘One of them quite rare.’

‘But physically damaged?’

‘I’ve seen better kept copies,’ said Postmartin. ‘But the marginalia in one edition is quite fascinating.’

‘Christina Chorley and Reynard Fossman couldn’t read Latin,’ I said. The Second Principia , the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis , had never been published in English – as a deliberate policy to ensure that only people of the ‘right’ sort read it. ‘They didn’t recognise it for what it was – it probably just looked like a tatty old book to them.’

‘They understood the importance of the ledger,’ said Postmartin.

‘Yeah, they did, didn’t they?’ I said. ‘Which implies an outside source of information, doesn’t it?’

‘I’m afraid it does,’ said Postmartin and went back to his cataloguing.

I found Nightingale in the manageress’ office. He was leaning against the wall, arms folded, as he watched a DC from Intelligence triaging the papers on the desk and packing them into evidence boxes that looked remarkably similar to those the Faceless Man had used to store his goodies in. I hoped they didn’t get them mixed up.