Foxglove Summer

by Ben Aaronovitch

  ‘It had just been cleared,’ said Zoe. ‘There were stacks of trunks by the logging track – it looked really strange in the moonlight – like it was all made of ghosts.’

  She’d walked up the logging track, the same one which me, Beverley and Dominic had run down pursued by unicorns, and it was there that she encountered her alien. Pretty much where we’d found Hannah and Nicole.

  There was a bright light, like really intense moonlight.

  ‘Only now I think about it,’ said Zoe, ‘I think that was in my mind as well.’

  She was certain that the alien was real, though.

  ‘It was like when you meet someone famous,’ said Zoe. ‘And I don’t mean like Big Brother famous. I mean Marilyn Manson famous, proper famous, and it’s like a shock when you see them and you think, “Oh my god”. And no matter how cool you want to play it, you just talk rubbish. You know?’

  I said I did, even though the only time I’d met a celebrity of any stature I’d almost arrested him, and Lesley had to pin his minder to the pavement. It’s amazing how fast the famous become just another customer when there’s constabulary duty to be done. The joke amongst police being, Do you know who I am? Yes, sir – you’re nicked.

  Zoe described her alien as tall, human-looking, only with eyes that slanted downwards and had purple irises. She wore a cloak and carried a long staff almost as tall as she was.

  ‘How did you know it was a she?’ I asked.

  ‘She had tits all right,’ said Zoe. ‘Or at least she stuck out in the chest department. And there was the way she moved . . . but you’re right – why should aliens even have the same sexes as us? They could have a hundred different sexes, couldn’t they?’

  ‘What was she wearing?’ I asked.

  ‘A sort of spacesuit,’ said Zoe.

  ‘Describe it to me?’

  ‘Like a spacesuit,’ she said. ‘You know.’

  ‘What colour was it?’ I asked.

  Zoe had to think about that. ‘Silver,’ she said. ‘Definitely silver.’

  It took a lot of questions, but by the end I thought I’d managed to filter out any of Zoe’s embellishments. Dressed in silver definitely. There was also almost certainly two other individuals present, but they ‘weren’t in the light’, so Zoe didn’t get a good look at them. Zoe said that they had communicated telepathically, for which I could find no evidence either way, and in any case she couldn’t remember what they’d talked about.

  Nor could she be sure how long they’d talked for, but she did distinctly remember being given a drink which, disappointingly, tasted a lot like water. The next thing she remembered clearly was walking down the road near the top of Rush Lane and meeting her dad coming the other way in his car.

  ‘They went mental,’ she said. ‘Dad was yelling, and bloody Victoria had to be held back – that’s what I heard, anyway. The very next day my mum came and picked me up and took me away. I hadn’t seen her for months and suddenly she was there.’

  Zoe sighed and shook her head.

  ‘Wasn’t like I hadn’t run away before,’ she said.

  ‘Why do you think the reaction was different that time?’

  ‘See,’ said Zoe and gave me a shy smile, ‘that time I took the baby with me.’

  ‘You took the baby?’

  ‘Now you sound just like them,’ she said. ‘It’s not like Dad or my “babysitter” were paying any attention.’

  ‘What about your close encounter?’ I asked.

  ‘I didn’t know there were going to be aliens now, did I?’ she said. ‘How could I have known that was going to happen?’

  As attention-grabbing behaviour it was hard to beat. I had a horrible thought.

  ‘Did anything happen to the baby?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘I never let go of her.’

  I thought about the gaps in Zoe’s memory.

  ‘Her eyes didn’t change colour, did they?’

  ‘You think lady Victoria muckety-muck would have missed that?’ said Zoe. She got up and started piling the tea things in the sink where presumably they would stay until the next Good Samaritan arrived. I’d pretty much got everything I was going to get from that interview, but I thought a follow-up might be in order – perhaps I’d bring Beverley along to see if that would loosen her up.

  I thought about Mellissa the bee woman, and how Zoe’s eyes had changed. Back in the nineteenth century Charles Kingsley had written of fae and demi-fae and also of people that had been ‘touched’ by the fae – so that they themselves seem strange even to themselves. He seemed to think such people lurked under every hedgerow and I’d wondered whether back then there had been way more activity than in my time. Or it could have just been Kingsley’s overactive imagination. Dr Walid often complains that, despite the order being founded by Isaac Newton, for most of the early wizards the Baconian method was something that happened to other people.

  ‘You believe me?’ asked Zoe. ‘You believe I met aliens?’

  ‘I believe you met something,’ I said, and gave her one of Dr Walid’s cards. He makes me carry them around for just this purpose.

  ‘I’m going to ask a friend of mine to contact you,’ I said, as Zoe gave the card a dubious look. ‘He’ll be interested in why your eyes changed colour. He’ll want you to come down to London for a chat.’

  And an MRI, I thought, and blood tests, DNA swabs and anything else he can think of. Although, judging by Zoe’s expression, she was thinking a lot worse.

  ‘I can come with you, if you’ll feel more comfortable,’ I said.

  ‘Why me?’ she asked.

  Does she want to be a special snowflake or an ordinary person? I wondered. And compromised.

  ‘You’ve come across some weird shit,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s an everyday thing. But it has happened to a few others – we can help.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. And then almost eagerly asked, ‘When do you think he’ll be in touch?’

  ‘You need to call him,’ I said, and tapped the card in her fingers. ‘This is about you, not us.’

  Pokehouse Wood, I thought as I walked back to the Asbo. It all keeps coming back to Pokehouse Wood. I paused by the car to check my notebook. I’d been right, 2002 was listed as the last time before this year that the wood had been clear-felled. The time before that, 1970, had been the same year as the ghostly lollipop lady on the Roman Road nearby. I knew where the first set of detectors was getting planted early tomorrow morning.

  I called Beverley, who answered with her mouth full.

  ‘I’m having supper with Dominic’s mum,’ she said.

  I could hear cutlery clinking in the background and the sound of the TV being ignored.

  I told her I was on my way back, but she said that Joanne Marstowe had popped round and asked if I could come see them. I asked why Joanne hadn’t rung me directly.

  ‘She said she didn’t trust her phone,’ said Beverley.

  ‘Did she say why?’

  ‘Just that she needed to talk to you,’ said Beverley.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Why she didn’t trust her phone?’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t ask,’ said Beverley. ‘I told them you’d pop in as soon as you got back.’

  Bromyard to Rushpool is half an hour by car, and I knew the route well enough to do that automatic thing when you start preparing for turn offs before your conscious mind has registered where you are. Third exit at the roundabout where me and Beverly had paraded past the locals, left at the next roundabout to cut through Leominster past the Dale factory where the half of Dominic’s family who didn’t work as cab drivers were gainfully employed bashing metal into structural members. My interview with Zoe had taken long enough that, by the time I reached the turn-off into Rushwater Lane just past Lucton, the sun was starting to flirt with the horizon. I drove up past the village pond and the Swan Inn, past the church, and then left into the Marstowes’ cul-de-sac.

  Andy opened the door – w
hich surprised me.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said when he saw it was me. ‘You’d better come in.’

  He led me back to the kitchen where Joanne was staring out the back window to where Hannah was playing with her brothers. Ethan was sitting primly in his high chair, his little pink fists waving in cheerful anticipation. He gave me a hopeful look, no doubt believing that my presence signalled the imminent arrival of dinner – or at least the start of the floor show.

  ‘If I told you something crazy,’ Joanne said without looking round, ‘would you believe me?’

  ‘It depends on how crazy,’ I said.

  Andy stepped up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder, and she put her hand over his.

  Does he know? I wondered. That his wife’s been banging Derek Lacey for over a decade and – if I’m any judge of body language – still is? Or maybe he does know, and this is one of those weird unspoken arrangements that nobody ever speaks about.

  Joanne turned and let Andy put his arm around her shoulder. Behind her, through the window, I saw Hannah scramble to catch a ball thrown by one of her brothers.

  ‘What if somebody thought that somebody was not the person you thought they were?’ she asked.

  I glanced back out the window at Hannah.

  ‘Not Hannah,’ said Andy.

  ‘Nicole?’ I asked, not liking where this was going at all.

  Joanne nodded.

  Ethan started yelling – the floor show having been a bit of a disappointment.

  Career criminals and Old Etonians aside, people generally like their police to take control of whatever situation they find themselves in. You don’t call the police unless things have already gone pear-shaped, and it’s nice to have a group of people you can shunt all the responsibility onto. As police, how you assert control ranges from hitting people with an extendable baton through making everyone speak slowly and clearly, to asking them to make you a cup of tea in their own kitchen.

  The last being what I did that evening and soon Ethan had his dinner, Hannah was fetched in from the garden, I got a cup of tea, and we all sat around the kitchen table in a calm and productive manner.

  ‘Tell Peter what you told me,’ said Joanne.

  Hannah screwed up her face.

  ‘Do I have to?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said her mum.

  ‘But I want to watch TV.’ She slumped in her chair and started sliding off it by inches.

  ‘Hannah,’ said Andy gently. ‘Just you tell Peter here what you know and then you can be off.’

  At her dad’s words, Hannah reluctantly straightened up and, after a great sigh, looked straight at me.

  ‘Nicky isn’t Nicky,’ she said. ‘She’s somebody else.’

  The drama of the moment was somewhat undercut by Ethan, who demonstrated a new mastery of the mysteries of angular momentum by banging his hand down hard on the edge of his bowl, causing it to cartwheel off his tray and create a, no doubt interesting to him, Catherine-wheel effect with his dinner.

  The resulting scolding, cleaning and fussing at least gave me a chance to try and think of something more sensible to say than, Are you sure? Of course she was sure, I could see that in the set of her face. But what did she mean? I was willing to believe that families ran a bit different in the countryside, but I doubt it went as far as Victoria accepting a strange child as her own. Presumably, the Nicole currently recuperating at the Lacey house looked and sounded like the one who had gone missing ten days before.

  ‘How can you tell?’ I asked Hannah while her parents were distracted.

  ‘Just can,’ said Hannah.

  ‘But she looks the same?’

  ‘Looks the same, yeah,’ she said. ‘But she isn’t the same.’

  I asked about clothes, dress, speech, smell – which made Hannah giggle – but she couldn’t give me a single bit of verifiable evidence that Nicole Lacey was anyone other than Nicole Lacey. Not that Hannah knew who the imposter could be.

  ‘Just isn’t Nicky,’ she said stubbornly.

  When the brothers came in from the darkening garden it seemed prudent to release Hannah to watch TV. She shot off, and I found myself sharing a table alone with Andy as Joanne put Ethan to bed.

  ‘Is it a good job, policing?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s varied,’ I said. ‘You never know what you’re going to be doing when you go on shift.’

  ‘I was thinking of joining the army,’ he said. ‘But then Hannah came along and I couldn’t do that to the girl.’

  ‘I can see that,’ I said.

  ‘Plus I wasn’t keen on the whole notion of killing people,’ he said.

  ‘He’s such a softy,’ said Joanne as she sat down next to her husband.

  ‘Do you believe Hannah?’ asked Andy.

  ‘There’s something going on, but I’m buggered if I know what it is,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Joanne. ‘But do you believe her?’

  ‘It’s not about what I believe,’ I said. ‘Let’s just say that it’s going to form part of an ongoing investigation.’

  They gave me the look I’ve seen from Brightlingsea to Bermondsey, in council flats and interview rooms, from people who remember the Blitz and from kids that are below the age of criminal responsibility. Yeah, the look says, we’ll believe it when we see it.

  ‘The important thing is that everyone stays calm while we get to the bottom of this,’ I said and, because the universe likes a bit of irony, it was just then that the wheels came off.

  ‘Mummy,’ called Hannah from the front room. ‘There’s people outside.’

  There’s no other sound on earth like coppers turning up mob-handed outside your door, two to three vehicles drawing up but leaving their engines running, multiple car doors creaking open in quick succession and then not being closed, the sound of heavy people in big boots piling up with muffled efficiency outside your front door.

  ‘Peter,’ said Joanne. ‘What’s going on?’

  Through the kitchen windows I saw flickers of light in the back garden as officers with torches quickly made their way up the side passage to block the rear entrance.

  ‘Peter?’ asked Joanne again – rising panic in her voice.

  The doorbell rang, twice, three times – insistent.

  ‘Stay here,’ I told Joanne and Andy and walked up the hallway to answer the door. I opened it to find DCI Windrow and DS Cole on the doorstep. Behind them waited a line of uniforms.

  Windrow was surprised to see me.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘Joanne said she had information,’ I said.

  Windrow nodded quickly to himself.

  ‘Who’s inside?’ he asked.

  ‘Joanne and Andy in the kitchen. Hannah is in the living room with Ryan and Mathew,’ I said. ‘Ethan is upstairs in his cot in the master bedroom.’

  ‘Any sign of firearms?’

  What the fuck?

  ‘No, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Windrow.

  I thought very carefully about everything I’d seen that evening and made damn sure.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Good boy,’ said Windrow. ‘Go out the front and stay with Dominic until I have a chance to come and see you.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said and got out of their way.

  DS Cole led the mob in, calling out Joanne and Andy’s names in her best reassuring we’re-just-here-to-have-tea voice. I headed down the garden path and out of the immediate operational area as fast I could go. I did notice that none of the cars had their light bars on and that the entrance to the cul-de-sac had been closed off with tape.

  Someone called my name – Dominic standing by an unmarked pool car. I joined him and when I asked him what was going on he handed me a copy of the Daily Mail.

  NICOLE & HANNAH KIDNAP AN INSIDE JOB?

  13

  Operational Compartmentalisation

  I think I must have been awake for some time already, be
cause I distinctly heard the ping from the disposable phone, despite it being muffled under the pile of yesterday’s clothes. With a bit of careful wriggling I managed to loosen Beverley’s embrace enough to get an arm free to grab the phone and get it in front of my face. The text read, WTF have U done now?

  I thought for a moment and ended up sending back. WASNT ME, because the disposable had crappy predictive text and Beverley’s spare hand had grabbed my attention at a crucial moment.

  I looked at my watch and wondered why Lesley was awake at five thirty in the morning. Thankfully, Beverley let go of my dick and rolled over, dragging the sheet with her until she became a white lump in the middle of the bed. I took this as my cue to get up and, as quietly as possible, have a shower and get dressed.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked the lump in the bed while I was pulling my boots on.

  ‘I’m off to conduct science experiments,’ I said. ‘Want to come?’

  Beverley lifted her head and looked at me suspiciously.

  ‘What kind of science?’

  ‘Thaumatological,’ I said.

  ‘You’re taking the piss,’ she said.

  ‘Straight up,’ I said.

  Beverley unwound from the bed, stood up and arched her back – palms pressing against the low ceiling of the cowshed. Then she shook out her dreads before looking at me, head tilted to one side.

  ‘Is it important?’ she asked.

  I was so tempted to say no, but you can’t keep putting shit off.

  ‘A bit,’ I said.

  ‘Give me ten minutes for a shower,’ she said.

  While I waited I pulled up the day’s headlines. The Daily Mail had the scoop but the media had caught the smell of blood in the water and twenty-four-hour news outlets were running the bulletin every half an hour, with a teaser on the quarter in case your attention span was that short.

  According to the Mail, who seemed to be the only outlet with any actual facts, Nicole Lacey had accused Hannah’s parents of luring them out of their homes with the promise of free gifts. Then they and persons unknown were supposed to have kidnapped them, or at least Nicole, and made them walk all the way to Wales where they had to sleep in a tent until they were made to walk all the way back again. Sharon Pike speculated in a separate column that making the children walk was a cunning ploy to avoid CCTV and automatic number plate recognition systems. She wrote of the existence of a network of temporary camps frequented by new age travellers, migrant labourers, gypsies, asylum seekers and Romanians who were, allegedly, responsible for the shocking increase in rural crime, unemployment and, some said, spreading foot and mouth.