Бен Ааронович - The Hanging Tree

I asked how long she’d been hanging out on her own.

‘We came over to talk to your experts,’ said Caroline, who made it clear that she’d been dragged over as reluctantly as any child to an art gallery. Despite tea and cakes Caroline thought she’d just about reached peak boredom when Professor Postmartin was called away.

‘You’re not interested in The Third Principia ?’ I asked.

‘It’s not going to have anything about aerodynamics in it,’ she said. ‘Is it?’

‘Aerodynamics?’ asked Guleed.

‘Caroline wants to fly,’ I said.

‘Does she know about your swan dive off the top of Skygarden Tower?’ asked Guleed.

She does now, I thought.

‘The one that was blown up?’ said Caroline.

‘As it came down,’ said Guleed, who wasn’t making any friends just then.

I busily rooted around in the equipment rack for a couple of screamers while Caroline fished for information. Had I actually been flying, or gliding, or otherwise retarding my fall through the use of magic and if so – how?

‘Retarding,’ I said while I checked that the screamers were working. ‘Only it was the Faceless Man doing it, not me.’ I handed the screamer to Guleed and showed her how to use it.

Caroline wanted to know whether I’d seen how the Faceless Man was controlling his descent, and I remembered the tower falling, the screaming, the smell of brick dust and the whole wide world rushing up to smack me in the face.

‘I was a bit distracted at the time,’ I said. ‘But he had to concentrate to maintain it.’

‘So what happened to Dr Walid and Lady Helena?’ said Guleed who always liked to keep things moving along.

‘After the professor rushed off, your pair of mad path ologists asked my mum whether she’d like to see their unparalleled collection of horrible things,’ said Caroline. She explained that she hadn’t really fancied it herself. She would have done a bit of exploring around the Folly, only Molly kept on following her, so she came into the yard and found the tech cave.

‘It wasn’t locked?’ I said.

‘No,’ she said, and smiled innocently. ‘Was it supposed to be?’

‘Generally I keep it locked.’

I chivvied her out and she ended up helping me and Guleed carry the boxes of books up to the library.

‘Anything in these for Mum?’ asked Caroline.

‘She can take that up with the Professor,’ I said. But that’s when I decided to take Caroline with us to check Christina Chorley’s room.

It was all going perfectly fine until I noticed Martin Chorley’s watch. After that, as Nightingale might say, it all rather went downhill.

The Chorley house was just the other side of Lane End, itself a village just the other side of High Wycombe which could, I suppose, be described as a small town just the other side of London. Since we’d managed to catch the M40 during a rare moment of decongestion we made it there in less than an hour, not counting the stop off at Marks and Spencer’s for snacks.

We’d checked the location on Google Earth, so unless there’d been some drastic landscaping in the last couple of years, the house had two L-shape wings and was situated just below the brow of a wooded hill that overlooked the valley and the motorway that snaked through it. It was reached by a private driveway that peeled off the main road and looped up through the woods – Martin Chorley certainly liked his privacy.

We stopped off at the entrance to the drive for a quick pre-arrival conference and the last of the Percy Pigs.

I didn’t want Caroline to come up to the house.

‘On the remote chance he is the Faceless Man,’ I said, ‘then he might know about you and your mum. Better if he doesn’t know we’re working together.’

‘You expect me to wait in the car?’ said Caroline

‘Actually, no. Because we’re going to park the car right outside,’ I said. ‘I thought you could wait in the pub we went past back there.’

‘Back there?’ said Caroline.

‘About five hundred metres,’ I said. ‘It looked like they did food.’

‘And you didn’t think to stop when we went past?’

‘I didn’t think of it until we got here,’ I said. ‘Look, we’ll drive you back down the road and come back.’

I expected a longer argument but Caroline gave me a look, put up her hands and said she’d walk.

‘Can you bag us a table for when we’re finished?’ I asked as she started back down the road – she didn’t answer.

‘And that was in aid of what, exactly?’ asked Guleed.

‘I don’t trust them,’ I said. ‘I don’t trust her or her mother. I couldn’t leave her rattling around the Folly and I definitely don’t want her getting first dibs on anything Christina has stashed at her dad’s house. Particularly if she had a copy of The Third Principia .’

‘You think Caroline’d try and steal it?’ asked Guleed.

‘Believe it,’ I said.

‘What does Nightingale think?’

‘Maybe he just likes having someone to talk shop with, but he seems a bit too trusting to me.’

‘Maybe he’s picked up some bad habits,’ said Guleed.

‘Yeah – who from?’

Guleed looked down the road to where, despite the curve, we could just see Caroline trudging back towards the village.

‘Is there some reason why we’re still standing here?’ she asked.

‘I want to make sure she doesn’t double back,’ I said. ‘Also, she might fly.’ I got out of the Asbo for a better look.

‘When you’re finished I’ll be in the car,’ said Guleed.

Disappointingly, Caroline didn’t launch herself into the air. So I climbed back into the car and we drove up the winding drive to Chorley central.

It was a beautiful house, if you like fine detached William and Mary villas in the middle of nowhere. Still had a lot of its original features, and I was surprised it wasn’t at least Grade II listed, but that hadn’t shown up on the IIP check during the initial stages of the investigation. It had a nice sensible tarmac drive with discreet drainage channels built into verges – not that they were going to flood this far up a hill, but Bev would have approved.

Checking the roof, I spotted solar panels on the south facing slopes and I was willing to bet the gutters directed rain into storage barrels against the possibility of hose-pipe bans. I pulled up next to the BMW 5 series that was parked outside the garage that made up the ground floor of the barn conversion next door. Presumably the Ferrari 288 GTO also registered in Martin Chorley’s name was kept inside. I spotted what definitely looked like an office attached to one end of the garage and made a mental note to check it – if only to sneak a look at the Ferrari.

‘What do you think?’ asked Guleed as we approached the door.

‘Puzzled but co-operative,’ I said.

‘Resigned but obstructionist in a passive-aggressive fashion,’ said Guleed.

‘That’s very precise.’

‘I’ve done more notifications than you,’ she said and rang the doorbell.

It turned out we were both wrong.

Martin Chorley, knowing we were coming, had had time to clean the kitchen, tidy the living room and hide his porn stash. I’m kidding about the cleaning because after five seconds in that house it’s clear he had a cleaner in three days a week at the very least.

He looked less haggard when he opened the door, the smudges under his eyes having receded and the pain lines around his mouth seemed less prominent. It looked like he was beginning to settle into his grief, but there was a feverish aspect to his eyes that I didn’t like. He was dressed in khaki chinos and a white and black check shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There was a smudge of something black, oil or ink I couldn’t tell which, on his left shoulder.