“Huh.” Wendy slowed, then stopped. The hasp on the padlock securing the front door of the house she’d just passed was hanging loose, and when she looked she saw that the door was ajar. Not open, just not properly shut. “Well, then.” Taking a closer look couldn’t hurt, could it?
The police are the public and the public are the police had been drilled into Wendy during her Hendon days, back when she was training to be a copper. She could recite the Peelian principles in her sleep: the police were just members of the public who were paid to give full-time attention to duties every citizen should support. But I’m not a cop any more, Wendy reminded herself, and anyway the current government didn’t have much time for empowered citizenship. Trespassing and squatting had only been made criminal offenses in the current millennium, but the New Management had tightened up the penalties for almost everything, as if they thought the threat of sadistic and unusual punishments would distract the voters from noticing cuts to police numbers. But it’s my beat because I live here and nobody else is taking responsibility … Shit.
Wendy eyed the broken doorway apprehensively. Maybe it was kids, maybe it was homeless people, maybe it was crackheads or a neighborhood dealer: these were not exclusive sets. There were other possibilities, too, less obviously criminal ones. But whoever they were, they ought to know better, and Wendy hadn’t quite had all the community spirit beaten out of her. She felt responsible, although any gods that knew why remained silent on the matter when she cried, Why does it have to be me? And in the absence of any sworn officers to remind the squatters of the law (and also to check that they weren’t dying of neglect), it was a duty that fell to her. Peelian principles in action.
Breathing deeply, she glanced up and down the road to ensure she was unobserved, then hopped over the rotting wooden fence that surrounded the house. The tiny garden was overgrown, knee-deep in dirty grass concealing trip hazards and discarded refuse. A wooden hut with broken windows that gaped emptily stood between two dying trees and an overgrown hedge at the back. No wonder they’d picked this one, whoever they were. The rear aspect was concealed, and there were numerous escape routes across neighboring gardens. Good for them. The windows on the upper floor at the back weren’t boarded up: light shone from one of the bedrooms, a peculiar flickering blue like an electric arc—and suddenly, by the prickling in her fingers, Wendy knew that she had to check this out, just in case. She’d seen this kind of thing before, after all.
“Right, let’s do this,” Wendy muttered, nerving herself. She checked for watchers again, then willed a crowbar into existence as she approached the back door. Like the front, this too had been secured with a shiny aluminum latch and a padlock. It was cheaper than changing the original locks on a house destined for demolition and it signalled vacant possession, but the latch was only stapled to the doorframe. Wendy hefted the pry bar and with a practiced flick ripped the latch away. She pushed inside, then paused to listen while she let her eyes grow accustomed to the twilight within.
Unlike her own home, this house hadn’t been turned into an HMO or subdivided into cramped bedsits. In fact, it looked to have been left untouched since the 1970s. Peeling wallpaper still trapped the eye in endless paisley-print swirls of brown and orange. Wood-veneered kitchen cupboards flanked an ancient electric cooker with coiled heating elements on top. The lino was almost worn away in front of the fridge and the stainless steel sink. Beneath the latter a twin-tub washing machine had once been tucked for safe keeping. A strange smell pervaded the room, like a combination of malodorous socks, rotten vegetables, and chlorinated swimming pools.
Wendy inhaled slowly, arms and shoulders tense. Something was wrong. Responding to her unease, her crowbar transformed into a friction-lock ASP baton, the model she’d carried on duty. A muffled voice drifted from the darkened hallway, muttering imprecations, and then, amidst a sudden burst of hissing and crackling, a triumphant howl: “It lives! Ahahaha! Science!”
Wendy relaxed instantly. Of course it would be him. It’s like a tradition, or an old charter, or something. She strode through the darkened house, boots squelching softly on the soaking remains of the hall carpet. Reaching the staircase, she rapped on the wall with her baton. “Professor? It’s Wendy; I’m coming upstairs.”
“I told them they’d be sorry, the fools! But I—Wendy?” Prof’s voice abruptly dropped out of his Mad Science falsetto into something only a stone’s throw away from sanity. “Oh good, is it visiting time already? Wait, what are you doing? No, don’t eat her! She’s our friend—”
Wendy heard an overloud scuttling noise then a chirr of mandibles, cut off sharply. A bedroom door opened, spilling light across the landing. She sighed, exasperated. “You can’t keep wandering off like this, Prof!”
“Really?” Professor Skullface blinked at her in confusion. “Why ever not?”
“You know why! People will talk. Are you going to invite me in or—”
“Of course! Come in, come in, I’m forgetting my manners, would you care for a tube of tea?”
“Maybe,” she said doubtfully. She followed Prof as he retreated back inside his lair, tugging his grimy lab coat tight around his shoulders. He wore it with panache over striped pajamas and felt slipper-boots. One of them still sported a price tag. He’d refurbished the master bedroom, fitting it out with all the homely comforts of a mad scientist’s lab. (Or perhaps that should be MAD scientist: Prof could
