‘Nobody ever says where they get their goods from,’ said Hyacinth. ‘And if they do say, you figure they’re lying.’
‘So what did Kevin Nolan say?’ I asked.
‘He said he got them from Mordor,’ she said.
‘Morden?’ asked Lesley. ‘What, in Merton?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Mordor as in “where the shadows lie” from
‘Is that the place with the volcano?’ asked Lesley.
‘Yes,’ said me and Hyacinth at the same time.
‘So probably not the source of the goods,’ said Lesley.
I was about to say something incredibly geeky when we felt the demon trap go off.
It came as a shock, a sensation like a machete being hacked into the side of a carcass, like biting an apple and tasting maggot, like the first time I’d met a dead body.
Last time I’d felt anything like this had been in the decaying grandeur of the Strip Club of Doctor Moreau, when Nightingale had done his IED routine. It was so strong I could turn my head to face the direction it came from.
So could at least two thirds of the denizens of the nazareth, including Hyacinth. I couldn’t be certain, but I had a sick feeling that we were all facing across the river towards the City and Shakespeare Tower. Where Nightingale had gone to interview Woodville-Gentle.
‘Demon trap,’ I heard someone whisper. ‘Demon trap,’ it was repeated fearfully around the garden.
And then everybody turned to look expectantly at me and Lesley.
Lesley looked back with as much of a curled lip as her injuries would allow.
‘Oh,
12
Barbican
when you need to get somewhere fast you go blues and twos. It’s just like TV. You turn on your siren and stick the spinner on the roof of your car so that the average driver knows to get the fuck out of the way. What they don’t show is that the spinner keeps falling off the roof and usually ends up dangling by its wire from the passenger window and that there’s always someone on the road in front of you who think the rules apply to someone else. A sheet of glass, a pile of empty boxes, an inexplicable fruit stall – I wish. I nearly rear-ended a BMW on Borough High Street and had to swerve around a Toyota with a Blind Driver on Board sticker in its rear window, but I had her up to sixty as we crossed London Bridge. There was a strange random gap in the traffic and we sailed over an iron- grey Thames in a weird bubble of peace.
Because I went via Moorgate we couldn’t see Shakespeare Tower, despite its height, until we were as close as Chiswell Street. I don’t know what I’d expected, streets littered with broken glass and fluttering paper, a gaping hole in the side of the block. We’d felt the concussion six kilometres away – surely there must be something. But we didn’t even find a police presence until we turned into the underground car park and found a City of London Police van waiting for us.
A uniformed sergeant clambered out of the van as we drew up.
‘Grant and May?’ he asked.
We showed our warrant cards and he said that we were expected and that Nightingale had said we’d know our way up to the flat.
‘He’s okay?’ I asked.
‘He looked just fine to me,’ said the sergeant.
Me and Lesley, being both English
‘Be discreet on your way up,’ said the sergeant, ‘we haven’t had to evacuate yet and we don’t want to start a panic.’
We promised we’d be good and headed for the lifts. Along the way we passed a familiar fire-engine-red VW transporter with LFB livery and Fire Investigation Unit stencilled on its side.
‘That’ll be Frank Caffrey,’ I told Lesley. Ex Para, Nightingale’s contact in the Fire Brigade and, if necessary, head of the Folly’s own Armed Response Unit. Or, depending on which end of the barrel you were standing at, its very own extra-legal death squad.
He was waiting for us when the lift opened; a solid man with a broken nose, brown hair and deceptively mild blue eyes.
‘Peter,’ he said nodding. ‘Lesley. You got here fast.’
The lobby had been turned into a staging post for the forensics techs. Caffrey said they’d caught a break because the inhabitants of the other two flats on the floor were away for the Christmas holidays.
‘Cape Town,’ said Caffrey. ‘And St Gervais Mont-Blanc. All right for some, isn’t it? Good thing, too, otherwise we’d probably have to evacuate the whole tower.’ According to Frank if you evacuate one set of families from a block all the others will want to know why they weren’t evacuated too. But if you go and evacuate everyone as a precaution then a good quarter will refuse to leave their flats on principle. Plus, if you evacuate them you become responsible for finding them a safe haven and keeping them fed and watered.
‘Shouldn’t we evacuate them anyway?’ I asked as I suited up.
‘Your boss says there’s no secondary devices,’ said Frank. ‘That’s good enough for me.’
I really wished it was good enough for me.
‘Did he ever tell you what a demon trap was?’ asked Lesley.
‘I got the impression they were like a magical landmine but he never said how they worked. It’s probably more fourth-order stuff.’
‘Oh, strictly second order, I assure you,’ said Nightingale, who was standing in the doorway watching us. ‘Any fool can make a demon trap. It’s rendering them safe that takes skill.’
He beckoned; we followed.
It was even stuffier than on our first visit and there was a strong odour of spoiling fish. ‘Is that real?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid so,’ said Nightingale. ‘Salmon left out in the kitchen. A very bright young man estimated that it had been there since Monday evening.’
‘Which means they scarpered right after we interviewed them,’ said Lesley.
‘Quite,’ said Nightingale.
I noticed something odd about the bookshelves in the hallway. ‘These are out of order,’ I said. ‘The O’Brians are mixed up with the Penguins.’ Somebody must have taken them all out and then put them all back, hurriedly and out of order. No – it was simpler than that, I saw. ‘They took out a block of Penguins and a block of the O’Brians but put them back the wrong way round.’
I lifted out the mismatched block and found nothing. Neither was there anything behind the second block of books. Well, obviously there was nothing there because whoever had moved the books had taken what was behind them. But if they’d been in a hurry? I started stripping books on either side until I found something. It was a 5 cc disposable syringe, empty but with the cap seal broken. I removed the cap and sniffed the needle to find a faint medicinal smell. Used and discarded, then. I showed it proudly to Nightingale and Lesley.
‘She was a nurse,’ said Lesley. ‘It could be legitimate?’
‘Then why is it hidden in the gap behind the books?’ I asked. ‘It’s not very secure, so it must be something she needed to access in a hurry.’
‘They’re on the higher shelves,’ said Lesley. ‘Out of reach of someone in a wheelchair. So not for him.’
I sniffed it again, to no avail. ‘I wonder if it’s a sedative?’ I said. ‘Perhaps our Russian nurse was there to do more than look after him?’
I put the syringe back where I’d found it.
Lesley pointed down the corridor behind me where a couple of men and women in noddy suits were systematically pulling books off shelves and checking carefully for voids and hiding places.
