Street Magic

'Now I remember why I walked away from you, Caldecott,' Jack said. 'This kind of treatment would convince a bloke to stay dead.'

'Well, I bloody danced a jig on your grave!' Pete shouted, but Jack slamming the door drowned her out.

Chapter Twenty-seven

The flat was silent after Jack left, suffocatingly so. Pete poked in the wardrobe in the bedroom, the kitchen cabinets, and found nothing except dust and damp. 'Sod you, Jack,' she muttered. He was running off, wasting time, and she was supposed to sit home. Not bloody likely.

Leaving the flat unlocked, Pete left via the front door and found herself in a narrow hallway that could have easily hosted gaslight trysts a hundred years ago. A rickety lift with a folding gate lowered her to the street and she walked until she found a bus shelter where she could talk unobtrusively. One lesson from Jack's reappearance that tickled her spine: Things didn't need to be near you to be watching you.

Pete dialed her mobile, waded through the voice directory for New Scotland Yard, and waited with her stomach flipping while the extension rang.

'Ollie Heath.' Ollie sounded as though he had a mouthful of shepherd's pie.

'Ollie, it's Pete.'

'Pete!' he shouted. 'Where the bloody hell have you been? Newell is shitting chestnuts!'

'That sounds uncomfortable.' Pete punched on speaker-phone and pulled up her mobile mail client. 'Look, I'm sending you a name and I want you to e-mail everything you find to my mobile.'

'You got a lead?' Ollie said.

'I will,' said Pete. 'Once I talk to him.' She tapped Ollie's e-mail into the address bar and sent the message.

'Got it,' said Ollie a moment later. 'Though Newell'll have my hide for helping you out.' He whistled. 'Caldecott, what the bloody hell are you doing messing about with Travis Grinchley?'

Pete drew in a breath. A pointed question and a good one. 'He has something I need to move the kidnapping cases. And to find Margaret Smythe,' she said.

'Be careful,' said Ollie. 'People that cross Grinchley end up in baggies. Little ones. For sandwiches.'

'Just send me the information when you have it,' Pete snapped, 'and don't editorialize.'

'All right, all right,' said Ollie. 'What should I tell Newell when he asks me yet again where you've gotten off to?'

Pete stepped out of the shelter and headed for the Stepney Green tube, weaving between taxis stopped at a red light. 'Tell him I went to the graveyard.'

In Hatton Cemetery, the headstones sat in neat lines, sentinels against the living. The grass stayed mowed and solitary figures and families moved among the rows, placing flowers or standing with their heads bowed.

Pete pulled a few weeds from the base of Connor's headstone. A vase of pink carnations with rotted edges sat in front, tipped over.

'MG, you sodding witch,' Pete muttered, picking up the carnations and dumping them into the nearest trash can. Her sister came up from High Wycombe, always managing to miss Pete's own infrequent visits, left cheap flowers purchased outside the cemetery, but never cleaned the grave.

Connor had encased MG's feet in stone when she wanted to fly, with peyote or boys or music. Pete's adventure in Highgate hadn't helped matters. MG never forgave either of them for clipping the wings of her wild, carefree, imaginary life.

'I know you wouldn't approve, Da,' Pete murmured, smoothing the turned earth over the grave. 'But I know you wouldn't have me leave a little girl to get murdered, either.' She sighed and stood, brushing the graveyard dirt from her knees. 'What I'm saying is, if I don't come around for a while… Jack will take care of your spot. I think I can at least count on him for that.'

Her mobile burbled, and Travis Grinchley's address and relevant personal details appeared onscreen. Pete stood for a moment longer, reading Connor's epitaph. May angels usher you on to paradise.

'I'm sorry, Da,' she said, and left between the rows of headstones before she lost her nerve.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Travis Grinchley's narrow Camden house was three stories of red brick veined with climbing ivy and granite-block bones. Someone had spray-painted no future across the bricks at eye level.

'Bloody hooligans,' said a reedy voice from Pete's left. A wizened man in a frock coat and spats clutched a cluster of plastic shopping bags filled with takeaway cartons.

'You live here?' Pete said, finding both the fact that Grinchley had a butler and that he dressed the poor man like this vaguely unbelievable.

'I'm Mr. Grinchley's manservant, among other functions,' said the gnome, pulling himself upright with a creak of spine. Pete stepped in and took the bags from him, flashing her warrant card with her free hand.

'It's imperative I speak with Mr. Grinchley. Is he in?'

The butler coughed once, in what may have been a laugh a few decades and a few thousand packets of cigarettes ago. 'Mr. Grinchley is always in, Inspector. Mr. Grinchley hasn't left his home in nearly fourteen years.'

Pete blinked at him, words failing. 'Well,' she said finally. 'Then it will be convenient for me to speak with him.'

'I doubt it, miss,' said the butler. He took an old-fashioned iron ring from the pocket of his coat and unlocked the double front doors with a skeleton key. 'Mr. Grinchley hates being disturbed.'

Pete mounted the steps after him, putting on her brightest official smile. 'I promise not to be a bother.'

The butler grunted and stepped aside to let her in. 'Police are always a bother, miss. Usually, they make appointments. Out of respect for Mr. Grinchley's status in the community.'

'No offense meant,' said Pete, 'but Mr. Grinchley's status is exactly why I came here.' She stepped over the threshold and extended the bags, but before the butler relieved her, pain hit like an iron pipe across her skull.

Pete dropped to her knees on the Persian carpet in the front hall, head bulging with agony. It was as though everything she felt and heard, all those little inklings of magic that she tried to push away, were hugely amplified and splitting her forehead apart.

A pair of black leather driving shoes drifted into her field of view, rapidly blurring as she clutched her head, trying to shut out the avalanche of whispers, the sheer pressure of power causing a trickle of blood from her right nostril.

'Those are my home's protection hexes,' said Travis Grinchley. 'Designed to keep out unfriendly persons and things.'

'I know what a protection hex is,' Pete ground out.

One of the shoes, smelling of hide and polish, went under her chin and lifted Pete's face to gaze into Grinchley's. He wore spectacles and had the jaw of a matinee idol. 'Interesting. I must say, you don't look terribly unfriendly, miss. Does she look unfriendly to you, Perkins?'

'The inspector asked to speak to you on a matter of some import,' said Perkins. 'And I got your curry for tea, sir.'

Grinchley shoved his spectacles up his nose and reexamined Pete. 'An inspector. Goodness. A vast improvement over the last clod the local constabulary sent out.' He smiled, lips closed, stretched and bloodless. 'In that case, Inspector… do come in.'

The scream of feedback in her head ceased immediately, and Pete went on all fours, feeling sweat along her back sting the scratches left by the bansidhe. 'Are you this hospitable with all of your visitors, Mr. Grinchley?'

He took her hand, laid a kiss that crawled along her skin on the back of it, and helped her to her feet. 'Only with lovely ones.'

Pete took her hand away too quickly and shoved it into her pocket. 'Is there somewhere we can talk in private?'

Grinchley's eyes glittered darkly. 'Of course. Perkins, bring in a tray when the tea's ready.'

Perkins inclined his head and shuffled away like the macabre monster given life. 'That makes you the mad doctor, then,' Pete whispered at Grinchley's back as he led her into his study. A fire burned in the grate, gas whooshing in the closed space, heating the low-ceilinged room to incubatory temperatures. Grinchley kept his curtains drawn. They could be anywhere, in any time or place. Pete felt her skin dance with chill despite the fire.

'Something stronger than tea?' Grinchley held up a crystal decanter and a cut glass.

'I'm on duty,' Pete lied. Grinchley poured himself a tipple.

'Pity.' He swirled the whisky and swallowed. All he needs is a bloody monocle and tailcoat, Pete thought. 'What did you want to speak with me about, Inspector?' said Grinchley. 'I can hardly have witnessed a crime or been privy to confidential information. As you can see.' He gestured at the dark oak bookshelves filled with artifacts and leather tomes. Jars and animal skulls shone in the firelight. 'I'm quite comfortable within my four walls.'

'I'll be blunt,' said Pete, turning her back on the rows of curiosities. 'Four children have been snatched in the past three weeks. Three have turned up blinded and traumatized beyond speech. The fourth is still missing.' She pulled Margaret's picture from the pocket of her jacket and thrust it at Grinchley, who took a disdainful step back. 'This child is ten years old, Mr. Grinchley. A close friend of mine believes you have the means to assist in finding her.'

Grinchley frowned, a studied gesture with just the right crinkling of skin between his eyes and thoughtful concern twisting his mouth. Pete saw it then—the flatness behind Grinchley's blandly handsome face. Jack did something similar when he lied, but the difference was that Jack did feel, underneath his calculated masks. Grinchley was simply empty.

'You know what a protection hex is and you haven't asked me about anything in my collection that would indicate your unfamiliarity with the arcane, so I can hardly play innocent, Inspector. How can I help with your esoteric problem?' Grinchley inclined his head.

'Your Trifold Focus,' said Pete. 'Give it to me.'

Just for a moment, Grinchley tensed, the lines around his eyes growing darker. Then he smiled again, easy and predatory. 'Why, Inspector. Someone's been telling you tales. I'm a collector, it's true, but I don't possess anything on the magnitude of that particular item. I can only wish.'

'Leave out the act, Grinchley,' Pete snapped. 'Unlike you, my friend isn't a liar… not about things of this nature, anyway. You have it.'

'Your friend should check his sources,' Grinchley said, his smile fleeing. He downed the last of the tumbler and slammed it on his desk. 'Now I believe I've accommodated you long enough, Inspector. Please leave.'

Pete breathed in, and out. Margaret, she reminded herself. 'No,' she said.

Grinchley froze, his face twisting into a thunderous frown. 'No? Inspector, I can assure you that contradicting me is a very stupid move. Did your friend tell you that as well?'

'Give me the Focus and I'll leave,' said Pete, calm as if she were ordering a pint. At the base of her spine, fear uncoiled and crawled upward. 'I'm quite serious about this, Grinchley.'