by Mark Hayden
She took her phone out of her bag just as it started to ring: Big Wayne.
‘Hello, Wayne, something terrible…’
The screen showed Wayne’s name, and another: PBirk. The Management.
‘What have you done?’ said the woman, her voice a mixture of pain and fury. ‘What have you done to him, you little bitch?’
Fae was stunned. How did they know? ‘Nothing. We were attacked. Ambushed.’
‘Where are you? Wayne? Go and get her.’
Fae had already disconnected before Wayne could answer. She dropped the phone on the floor and grabbed her shoe. She gripped the toe and smashed the heel into the screen time and time again, until it got stuck inside. She yanked it free and ran to the micro-bathroom where she threw the phone in the toilet. There. Take that, you bastards.
‘Taxi will be here in one minute,’ said Jana. ‘You can wait downstairs.’
‘Thanks. Thanks so much. I won’t forget this,’ said Fae, flinging her arms round the woman’s shoulders for a second. She reached into her bag and took sixty pounds out of the wad of cash.
‘This is for the trainers. You can keep the shoes and sell them on eBay for a couple of hundred, easy. Stop panicking, Jana, I’m off.’
Fae saw something else she needed sitting on the desk that doubled as kitchen counter and dining table. She grabbed the packet of cigarettes and lighter and shoved them in her bag.
When she got to the bottom of the stairs, she could hear the taxi’s diesel engine rumbling outside. With a quick check down the street, she dived into the back and passed forty pounds to the driver. ‘Head for Bolton Station.’
14 — Cherchez le Gnome
It took us two hours to get Kirk/Fae’s story into order. We had breaks for tea, tears and cigarettes, not to mention several calls from Amy, worried about her little brother. One thing that was both really obvious and inexplicable (at first) was that Kirk’s voice dropped a good octave during the interview. Inexplicable until Karina told me that being around human magick hastens the metabolisation of Fae dust, the “drug” that Kirk had been fed to change his voice and enhance his aura on stage. It had also saved his life: giving him the power to smash women in the nose and shatter their metatarsals with high heels.
Morton handled the interview much better than I could have. He rarely interrupted and asked few questions when Kirk was in full flow, saving them for breaks and the beginning of a session. Here are some of the questions and answers that came out of further probing:
Morton: What did you do when you got to Bolton Station?
Kirk: Got a coffee and waited until the first train to Preston at half past five in the morning. I spent an hour in a homeless shelter until the real psychos came in and started hassling me.
Morton: Why didn’t Wayne mention the PA, Auntie Iris?
Kirk: How should I know? She used to keep the drugs. Goodness knows where she got them, because she never left the flat.
Morton: What drugs?
Kirk: Poppers, G, weed, coke and the special stuff for my vocal chords.
Morton: When you said “The Judge”, did you mean a real judge?
Kirk: Not going there. Never going there. Not saying a word about the Well of Desire.
Morton: We’ll leave it there. For now.
Kirk: Now and forever more.
Elaine: Why do you call him Big Wayne?
Kirk (with a smirk): Why do you think?
Me: Are you sure there were eight men?
Kirk: I think so.
Me: Think carefully. Very carefully.
Kirk (after some thought): I definitely saw eight. 100%. There might have been eight thousand in the shadows, though.
Me: And eight women?
Kirk: Same. I’m sure there were eight.
Morton (giving me a strange look): Where were the women from? Any clues? Did they use names?
Kirk: Like I said, the bride was Leah. She said she was from Essex. The chief bridesmaid was German. I heard her speak in German to one of the others. Just one. The rest were all English. English and Irish. The German lass said they all flew out of Manchester.
Morton: Can you describe the men?
Kirk: No. They were all short and wearing black. Oh, yeah, they all had bits of white skin showing, and when I’d calmed down, I reckoned I was wrong. They were too broad to be kids, really.
We had to leave it somewhere, and Morton called a halt when it looked like Kirk might faint from hunger. I was feeling the same way.
At the end, Morton passed over the top grade iPhone that Wayne had given him. ‘I’ve checked it,’ said Morton. ‘There are no tracking apps or anything, and you can do a full reset on it. I think they wanted you to have it.’
Kirk took the phone and held it like a contaminated specimen. He turned to me. ‘Is it safe to get in touch with them?’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they mean you any harm, but they’re desperate to know what you know. It may not be safe for you to tell anyone yet. We’ll talk to them and let you know what happens. Don’t worry, Kirk, we won’t leave you hanging, and believe me, you are ten times safer now you’ve spoken to us.’
He frowned. ‘How come?’
‘Because you are an innocent victim, which protects you from the People, and you can’t identify the attackers directly, so that protects you from the assassins.’
He didn’t look convinced. I don’t blame him.
By unspoken agreement, we walked in silence to the car park, and Karina surprised me by being the one to break it.
‘While you were talking, I looked up places to eat. There is a place called the _____ ____ nearby that scores very highly on Trip Advisor. It has cask conditioned beer and steak pie.’
Elaine looked in her handbag. Morton looked at his car keys. ‘What about you?’ I said.
Karina blinked. Twice. ‘I can eat vegetarian. They have options.’
‘Sounds good. See you there, Tom.’
‘Right.’
As soon as I’d turned on the engine and Karina had entered the postcode into the Satnav, I said, ‘Well. What do you think?’
‘I think the attack was carried out under a Glamour. I don’t think we can trust what he said.’
I pulled slowly out of the car park behind Morton’s BMW. ‘Why not?’
‘Because it sounds like Gnomes did it. I can’t believe that. It must be other Fae who are trying to set up the Gnomes.’
‘Take a leaf out of Tom Morton’s book, Karina. Consider the evidence.’
She waved her hands in a complicated pattern of magick, and a small garden gnome appeared on the dashboard. Or the illusion of one did.
‘What value can we put on mundane evidence?’ she said. The gnome vanished.
‘A good point, and you have to weigh that in the balance. What evidence do we have that definitely isn’t Glamoured?’
She struggled for a moment, and I had to remind myself that she was greener than the grass at Middleforth Green. The Socratic method might not be appropriate here.
‘The women,’ I said. ‘They were definitely human, or Fae Klass wouldn’t have escaped. The People wouldn’t use humans like that. At least one of the trolley dollies pursuing Fae would have been Fae. If you see what I mean. Shall we just call him Kirk for the avoidance of doubt?’
She nodded.
‘And there’s the method. That’s exactly how a gang of Gnomes would have acted. I’ll bet that method has never been used before. It’s ingenious and it solves several problems at once, both very Gnomish characteristics.’
She looked upset. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never met a Gnome.’
‘What? Never? Not even when you were Handmaiden to Oma Bridget?’
‘They’re not welcome in the Forest. For obvious reasons. And she never took me with her when she went to see them. The Foresters didn’t have much to do with them.’
Of course. The Arden Foresters were very close to the Fae Prince of Arden, and he wouldn’t be happy with Gn
omes sniffing round his domain.
A flash of excitement crossed her face. ‘I remember now. Boss Hannah said you had a Gnome at your party. She even showed me a picture.’
‘She did? How did that come up in conversation?’
Karina looked puzzled, as if she hadn’t wondered why a senior officer was going around showing pictures of a Bollywood party. ‘I don’t know.’ She shook her head as if the question were irrelevant. ‘Do you carry the Clan Sword with you?’
‘It’s in the back, in the weapons cabinet. It’s too big to take anywhere unless the threat level is high, as Tom Morton would say. I’ll show you when we’re back at the Haven.’
‘He’s creepy.’
‘Who? Tom? What makes you say that?’
‘It’s the way he knows what people are thinking.’
‘It’s a bloody good job he doesn’t really know, or we’d be up shit creek without a paddle. He’s a very good detective, that’s all.’ We followed the man himself into a car park. ‘Right, Karina, it’s show time.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’ve got to lie my way out of a very sticky corner. Feel free to back me up at any point.’
‘I’m not very good at lying. Sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I’m very good at lying, and who’s the one with a smashed leg? Are you going to have a drink?’
She brightened up a little when I said that. ‘If I say no, will I have to drive back?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll have mineral water, thanks.’
Her first answer was the mildest bit of banter you could imagine, and I wouldn’t have reported it normally. What made me tell you is that I’d swear she was repeating a line from some TV show that she’d learnt by heart, and her smile had come from finding a chance to use it. I knew she wouldn’t be drinking, because she’d eaten the beef bourguignon but refused the burgundy that went with it.
We got out of the car, and I would have gone for a cigarette if I hadn’t seen the predatory look in Elaine Fraser’s eye. She would love to get Karina on her own and give her the third degree. Poor kid wouldn’t know what had hit her.
We had to hunt around for a table with some privacy and spent a minute ordering. I sent Karina to the bar and settled back. ‘While we wait, I was wondering, Tom, how do you access the electoral roll without going through the police?’
I half expected him to scowl and think this was a wind-up. That he didn’t, I took as a good sign. ‘Do you have a tame hacker?’
‘I’d rather not use his services on this one.’
‘Then you just walk into the nearest public library to your target and ask to look at it. And prepare to get a funny look from the librarian. They’re a suspicious bunch.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Mmm,’ said Elaine, sucking diet Pepsi through a straw. ‘That reminds me. Who the hell is Myfanwy Lewis and why is she living in your house?’
‘And why is there no trace of her on the system until this year?’ added Morton, with just enough menace to let me know the long arm of the law could stretch down to Gloucestershire if it wanted to.
‘You tell them, Karina.’
She nearly choked on her mineral water and she blinked furiously before saying, without punctuation, ‘She’s Conrad’s best friend’s fiancée and his housekeeper and his gardener and she does the cricket team with Mina and she grows cannabis and she’s under house arrest for conspiracy to release a Dragon.’
She paused, drew breath and went red. ‘InthenameoftheGoddess no she isn’t.’
Elaine’s mouth had dropped slightly open; Morton retained more decorum. ‘No she isn’t what?’ he asked with the mildest of airs. Karina’s jaws clamped shut.
‘The cannabis belongs to my little sister,’ I said. ‘Myfanwy is only guilty of not digging it up. She didn’t plant it.’
‘Mmm,’ said Morton. ‘The quiche is going to be a while, so you’ve got plenty of time to tell us what the hell is going on. I take that you believe our witness, that the Count really was murdered by javelin wielding assassins?’
I moved my pint glass further away from me. ‘Yes I do. Every word, pretty much.’
‘So do I. He left a few things out, of course, but I believe him. So, in that case, who are the People?’ He sat back and smiled. He was looking forward to this.
‘The People are just that: people. It’s the translation of a word in their own language. Imagine you were in New York, Tom,’ I said. ‘Imagine you were some sort of law enforcement supremo. Sheriff, perhaps.’
He managed to keep a straight face. ‘In New York it would be captain or Chief of Detectives, but go on. I’m intrigued.’
‘Some Russians come to you. Russians who are just this side of the line when it comes to criminality.’
‘Russians who call themselves The People. I can go with that.’
‘They’ve come to you because one of their number has been assassinated. There’s been pressure internally for them to settle it themselves, but the patriarch says no, we can’t be legit and undertake vendettas.’
Morton leaned forwards again. ‘Are you saying that’s what happened? You were called in because there might be a chain of reprisals?’
‘Yes. This is not about a cover-up, Tom. This is about avoiding violence, which is why the People mustn’t know what Fae Klass saw that night. Not until we’re ready to tell them.’
‘I see.’
‘Let me take it further. Imagine you came across a tape recording of the assassination, and on the tape recording, the killers speak nothing but Calabrese. What would you think?’
‘I’d think What’s Calabrese?’ said Elaine. ‘Unless they’re talking broccoli, which I doubt. You fed me Calabrese once, didn’t you, Tom? He’s a bit of a foodie, is our DCI.’
‘It’s a dialect of Calabria, southern Italy. South of Naples,’ said Morton. His hand was already under his jacket, rubbing the top of his left arm. His eyes met mine, and I looked down. He flinched and drew his hand out. ‘I’d think 'Ndrangheta, that’s what I’d think. I’d also think that the recording could be a plant or a bluff. And that there are many 'Ndrangheta families.’
‘So you can see my position. I need to proceed with extreme caution and pass this one up to the Boss before I even plan an approach.’
Elaine frowned. ‘Just to be 100% clear, you’re not talking actual Italians and Russians here, are you, Conrad? You two are doing my head in with this code.’
‘Sorry. I wish we were dealing with real Calabrese,’ I said. ‘Here comes the food.’
When we’d started on our food, Morton went back to some of the loose ends.
‘They may not have been dealing drugs at the Fairy Gardens, but what about the other place? The Well of Desire? Talking of which, who are you trying to protect there?’
Elaine had her two pennyworth as well. ‘And what’s this business with Kirk’s voice. I’ve never heard anyone’s voice go that high. It was bloody creepy at first.’
I had a particularly juicy bit of steak on my fork at the time, and I waved it round in a circle. ‘It’s all connected,’ I said. I popped the beefy chunk in my mouth and chewed thoroughly. ‘And this is the real reason MI7 are involved.’ I pointed my empty fork between Morton and Elaine. ‘Which of you gets the short straw this weekend? Who’s going to be searching the CCTV for Trolley Dollies on Tour?’
Elaine blushed and held her hand up. ‘That would be me.’
‘Then watch carefully. I’d be very surprised if you see them. Try and watch for the gaps.’
Her face creased into incomprehension. ‘You what?’
‘This was an assassination. They knew exactly what they were doing, didn’t they?’
Morton nodded. ‘They certainly clamped the Count’s Rolls. They knew he’d have to walk. I bet there was a plan B in case he didn’t walk along the canal.’
‘Precisely. They would have visited the Gardens in advance and known where all the CCTV was, and that’s why they wore the sashes.’ I ga
ve them a steady look. ‘The Calabrese are specialists in technology; the People are at the cutting edge in genetics and pharmaceuticals.’
‘You’re joking,’ said Elaine. ‘A trashy hen party sash isn’t going to fool CCTV cameras.’
I looked at Morton. ‘You’ve talked to Commander Ross, haven’t you?’
He nodded, and it was his turn to use his fork to point at me. ‘Conrad’s associates caused a coffin, complete with corpse, to appear in a locked police compound with no forensic evidence whatsoever, never mind CCTV.’ He put the fork down before turning to Karina. ‘And that’s your brief, isn’t it, Karina?’
She nodded. I crossed my fingers under the table for her. When she spoke, I could almost hear a North London accent. ‘Conrad isn’t safe to be let out on his own. He’s a total liability and I’m his minder.’
I sighed inwardly. Another item to put on the list for discussion with Hannah.
‘What my comrade is trying to say,’ I said, ‘is that the Calabrese used technology to jam the Count’s mobile signal. Hence the poles. There was just enough time for a distress call to get away, which is what Saerdam Wayne was trying not to tell you.’
Elaine nodded thoughtfully. ‘Makes sense. Doesn’t explain the javelins, though.’
‘No, it doesn’t. That’s down to ethnic traditions. I think. Along with the way they disposed of the body. You don’t want to know about that. Any more questions?’
Morton looked at Elaine. She shook her head. ‘Not for now,’ he said.
‘Then I’ll follow up what I can,’ I said. ‘Shall we agree to meet on Monday unless I message you otherwise? I’ll decide on the venue when I know more.’
‘Busy weekend?’ said Elaine. ‘Mina coming up?’
