Stakeholder Engagement
THE NEXT MORNING I called Beverley as soon as the sun touched the front of the cowshed—she wasn’t best pleased.
“If you’re going to stay,” I said, “you’re going to work.”
She was waiting for me in the gravel car park behind the Swan in the Rushes wearing a pair of high-waisted khaki army trousers and a purple T-shirt with the words I’M FROM HERE STUPID written across the chest. In one hand she had what I learned later, was a genuine army surplus gas mask case, and in the other a mug of coffee.
I opened the passenger door and gestured her in.
“Just a sec,” she said, and drained her mug. Then, holding it straight out toward the inn, she called out a name.
A young blonde photographer in skinny jeans and a red sweatshirt trotted out of the inn, smiled, took the mug and trotted back in. I gave Beverley the stare when she got in the car, but she just ignored me.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” I said.
“If you’re going to get me up this early in the morning, then you don’t get to complain when I smooth off some of the rough edges.”
I started up the Asbo and pulled out of the car park.
“How did you get a room there, anyway?” I asked. “I heard it was rammed.”
“Oh,” said Beverley, “the nice lady from Sky News let me have her room.”
“Just like that?”
“Not just like that, actually,” said Beverley. “I had to ask twice! I hate being this far from the Thames Valley.”
After a moment she said, “Where are we going?”
“I want your professional opinion about someone.”
“My profession in this instance being what?”
“Goddess of small suburban river in South London.”
She nodded and then reached over to brush the side of my face, which was beginning to swell nicely.
“When did you do this?” she asked.
“Yesterday evening,” I said. “I walked into a tree.”
After finding the phones we still had a couple of hours of daylight, and it wasn’t like the POLSA was going to need us looking over his shoulder. So we’d split up. Dominic went east onto the common with our favorite sexual pervert as guide and I went west into the woods.
“And you thought that was clever,” said Beverley.
“It’s a National Trust property,” I said. “It’s not like there were going to be giant spiders. The locals call it Fairy Wood. So I had to check it, didn’t I?”
“You think they were abducted by fairies?”
“I don’t even know if that’s a thing,” I said.
I’d asked Nightingale once I’d got back to the cowshed, and he’d said that while he never had a case in his lifetime, there were always rumors that it had happened. He promised to look through books and see what he could find.
“Is it a thing?” I asked Beverley.
“Not that I know about,” she said. “But it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Mum doesn’t hold with it, so someone would have to be pretty stupid to tell me about it.”
“And fairies?”
Beverley hesitated and then—“Peter,” she said, “some things you don’t talk about.”
“Not even to me?”
“Especially to the feds,” she said. “Double so the magic feds.”
I cordially hate the use of the word feds—I’d rather be called the filth, at least that would be English English. It’s the lack of imagination that pisses me off.
Just short of a crossroad hamlet called Mortimer’s Cross we rumbled over a stone bridge and Beverley jolted in her seat and asked whether the river we’d crossed was the Lugg.
“I think so,” I said, trying to remember the map on the GPS. “Is that important?”
“Nah,” said Beverley. “Just professional curiosity.”
I turned right onto the A410 which went north with suspiciously Roman straightness toward Aymestrey, which is less a village than a diorama of the last six hundred years of English vernacular architecture stretched along either side of the road. Then another stone bridge across the Lugg where it curved west toward Wales and then a tricky little turn-off that took us through Yatton and the weirdly named Leinthall Earls, where Stan the strange lived. To our right a steep escarpment reared up, topped by the ancient hill fort of Croft Ambrey and Whiteway Head—although our view would have been better if the hedgerows hadn’t been higher than our car.
“I’m not totally comfortable with the tops of hills,” said Beverley as we climbed up a steep wooded incline.
“Why’s that?”
“You know water,” she said. “Tends to flow downhill, tends to accumulate at the bottom.”
“That make sense,” I said. “How do you feel about bees?”
“Why do you ask?”
I told her about Mellissa Oswald’s unusual affinity for anthophila.
“And you think she’s a bee?” she asked.
“Let’s just say I think there’s more going on there than an interest in grow your own honey,” I said.
“And that helps us how?”
“Bees cover a wide area. Maybe they spotted something.”
“And told your bee girl?”
“Possibly.”
Beverley kissed her teeth.
“Not unless the missing girls were covered in sugar they wouldn’t,” she said.
“They might have seen something and not known what it is.” It was beginning to sound pretty thin even to me.
“Have you ever dissected a bee?” asked Beverley. “One look inside its head and you’d know that ‘not knowing what stuff is’ is practically the definition of how a bee operates.”
“When have you ever dissected a bee?”
“I did biology at A level,” said Beverley. “Mum insisted. She’s still hoping that one of us will qualify as a doctor.”
“And?”
“I’d rather eat a frog than dissect one,” she said. “And I’m certainly not going to start putting my hands on any sick people.” She shuddered. “But since I was stuck in the country,” she raised her fist and I dutifully flinched, “I did pick up a bit of ecology, if only because that’s what all the Thames boys go on about.” She punched me in the arm, but gently this time, leaving hardly any bruising at all.
“And let me tell you that I wouldn’t be reading too much into the eusocial behavior of bees if I was you—they’re little honey-making machines, that’s all.”
“Why don’t you wait until you meet Mellissa,” I said. “And we’ll see what you say then.”
It was breathless, bright and hot on the flint road outside the Bee House. I left the windows on the Asbo wound all the way down, because it would be better for it to get stolen than to have the dashboard melt off its frame.
Beverley paused to look at the tower.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” she said. “Nightingale should live here—it’s a proper wizard’s tower.”
The front door opened before we could reach it and Mellissa stepped out to greet us. She was dressed in orange Capri pants with a fake tie-dye pattern and a matching sleeveless T-shirt that revealed the soft blond down on her upper arms and shoulders.
“Hello, Ms. Oswald,” I said. “I wonder if I could have another word with you and your granddad.”
Mellissa crossed her arms. “And what do you want this time?”
“First off,” I said and indicated Beverley, who gave Mellissa her best friendly smile, “let me introduce my friend Beverley Brook.”
“Hi, Mellissa,” said Beverley and took a step forward.
Mellissa’s eyes narrowed and then she relaxed and smiled in a sort of delighted way that I was sure she wasn’t aware she was doing.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, and they shook hands.
Interesting, I thought. There’s instant recognition, but only if they look for it—they could slip past each other in a crowd.
Mellissa remembered that she was supposed to be hostile and glared at me.
“What is it you want?” she asked.
“We need your help.”
“And why should we help you?”
“Two eleven-year-old girls are missing,” I said. “Their names are Hannah—”
“I know their names,” said Mellissa sharply, and then softened. “What is it you think we can do?”
“Provide local knowledge,” I said. “Of a particular kind.”
Mellissa nodded.
“You’re not to over-tire him,” she said and turned to lead us inside.
As Beverley crossed the threshold, I swear I heard a deep rumble from upstairs in the tower. Mellissa sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Just a second,” she said to Beverley, and then slammed the bottom of her fist into the wall. “Stop that,” she said and the rumble cut off. “Some of us are not used to visitors here.”
“Family?” asked Beverley.
“You might say that,” said Mellissa and gestured for Beverley to follow her in.
“I know all about that,” said Beverley.
I followed them both in and tried not to look too obviously smug.
“He’s upstairs in his study,” said Mellissa. “If you go up I’ll bring some tea.”
I made my way up the cool dimness of the spiral staircase to the first floor where I found Hugh Oswald behind his desk, reclining comfortably in a cracked brown leather chair. He looked better than he had the last time I’d seen him, his face more animated and less drawn.
“Ah, if it isn’t the starling,” he said. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”
“I’m sure she’ll appear,” I said and, remembering this was a man prone to falling asleep at random intervals, I got on with it. “I was hoping you could help me,” I said.
“Of course, dear boy,” said Hugh. “Pull yourself up a pew.”
I cleared half a meter’s worth of Bee Improvement Magazine off a wooden swivel chair and sat down.
“Nightingale suggested that I talk to the local vicar because they often take an interest in local folklore,” I said.
“I believe that many did,” said Hugh. “But once upon a time being a pastor was a great deal more leisurely occupation than it is now.”
“But then I thought, why chase down the poor hard-working vicar when I have a fully qualified practitioner living in the area,” I said. “Taking an interest.”
“That’s assuming I took an interest,” said Hugh. “I have broken my staff, after all—lignum fregit.”
I nodded at the nearest bookshelf. “You kept all your books.”
Hugh smiled.
“Ah, yes,” said Hugh. “Nightingale’s starling. Tough and clever, that’s what he always said he was looking for—had he been looking for an apprentice at all.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask who Nightingale had said this to, or when, because we were interrupted by Mellissa and Beverley arriving with tea and toast. While Mellissa set down a tray on top of a precarious pile of books I introduced Beverley—by her full name.
Hugh looked a bit wild eyed as the implications sank in, but recovered enough to be passably charming. Beverley was charming back and, after giving me the side-eye for no justifiable reason that I could see, accompanied Mellissa back downstairs again.
“Good Lord,” said Hugh. “Where did she spring from?”
“Nightingale sent her,” I said, watching as he buttered his toast with painful slowness. I was tempted to do it for him, but I didn’t think he’d like that.
“Things must have changed back at the Folly,” he said and, toast finally buttered, he lifted the lid on a little white china pot and scooped out some orange marmalade. “Still, the Nightingale was always a little bit unorthodox in his friends. There used to be this creature, slip of a thing, worked below stairs—never spoke.” He paused looking for the name.
“Molly?”
“Yes, that was her name,” said Hugh. “Molly. Used to terrify all us New Bugs, but not the Nightingale.” Hugh smiled. “There were rumors, of course,” he said. “It was scandalous.”
He bit decisively into his toast.
“Why does everyone call him the Nightingale?” I asked.
Hugh chewed industriously for a moment, swallowed and caught his breath.
“Because he was so singular, so extraordinary—or so the seniors said. Of course most of us didn’t believe a word of it, but we used it as a nickname—irony, or so we thought.”
He was looking in my direction, but his gaze was somewhere back in time to his young self. My dad does the same thing when he talks about seeing Freddie Hubbard with Tubby Hayes at the Bulls Head in 1965 or being at Ronnie Scott’s and hearing Sonny Rollins solo live for the first time.
There were so many questions I wanted answered, but I began to fear that he was drifting off—or worse.
“You should have seen him at Ettersberg,” he said softly. “It was like standing before the walls of Troy. Aías d’amphì Menoitiádei sákos eurù kalúpsas hestékei hós tís te léon perì hoîsi tékessin, but Ajax covered the son of Menoitios with his broad shield and stood fast, like a lion over its children.”
He grew quiet again, and I saw that I’d worn him out and utterly failed to get the information I’d wanted. Lesley would have been well pissed off with me for that.
Children are missing, she would have said, and you’re sitting around talking ancient history.
“I was going to ask you about local magic and folklore,” I said.
Hugh was obviously relieved to change the subject, because he brightened right up.
“I may have just the thing,” he said.
It turned out to be large shabby hardback book with Folklore of Herefordshire picked out in gilt on a burgundy cloth cover. It was Ella Mary Leather’s classic 1912 work and I had a copy of it on my tablet—after a recommendation by Nightingale. I was about to politely refuse on the basis that it was obviously a valuable antique, when I opened it up to find that the inside pages were covered in handwritten annotations, some in pencil but many in a spiky cursive hand. There was also a stamp that indicated that the volume had been nicked from Gloucester City Library.
“When I first moved up here my doctor encouraged me to go for long walks,” said Hugh. “But I’ve always been a bit of an explorer rather than a traveler.”
I wanted to ask more, but I could tell that I’d worn him out. I gathered up the tea things and took them downstairs leaving Hugh alone to “rest his eyes for a moment.”
There was no sign of either Beverley or Mellissa in the kitchen or in the garden, so I texted Beverley that it was time for us to go. I let myself out the front door just in case she’d gone back to the car, and heard her voice from the other side of the hedge.
I looked over to see Beverley and Mellissa emerge from the cottage next door. The older man with the Australian accent and his sons followed them out to say good-bye. As they did so I got a sense of intimacy between Mellissa and the men—nothing overtly sexual, but a lingering touch on the arm of one of the younger ones, the brush of her shoulder against the older man’s chest. Beverley saw me and waved, then she turned back to Mellissa and they had a quick exchange. One of the men was sent back inside for a pen and Beverley wrote a number on the palm of her own hand. Then there was another round of goodbyes and Beverley joined me by the Asbo. We paused for a bit with the doors open to let the inside temperature fall below the boiling point of lead.
“Is she . . . ?” I nodded back toward the cottage.
“None of your business,” said Beverley.
“What, all three?”
“Like I said,” said Beverley, “none of your business.”
“Damn,” I said.
“You should be so lucky,” said Beverley.
I realized that Dr. Walid was going to want a full report on Mellissa Oswald when I got home. He’d probably like me to get a tissue sample or lure her down to the UCH in London so he could get one himself. I wondered what possible conversational gambit I could slip that into—Are you certain you’re completely human? Would you like to find out for sure? Then come on down to Dr. Walid’s crypto-pathology lab where we put the “frank” back into Frankenstein!
“I’m sure she could fit you in,” said Beverley.
“Did she say if her bees had spotted anything unusual?”
“Unlike some people, I’m not tactless,” said Beverley. “You just don’t go asking people about their business like that, making assumptions about what they do and how they do it.” Beverley tapped her finger on her chest. “I merely inquired as to whether Mellissa may, or may not have, noticed anything out of the ordinary.”
“And had she?”
“She said she couldn’t be sure, but she thinks her boys . . .”
“Her boys?” I asked. “Are we talking them next door or the buzzy ones?”
“Her buzzing boys,” said Beverley. “They’ve been avoiding the south-west section of the ridge, from the edge of Bircher Common to where the river is.”
Whatever had killed the mobile phones had been on the edge of that area, and I didn’t need to check my map to know that Stan’s missing stash had been right in the middle.
“Could she relate it to the missing kids?”
“If she had, she says she would have told you when you first came.”
“I can’t go to Windrow or Edmondson with this,” I said. “Even if I persuaded them to change the search area, I don’t think it would be a good idea.”
“I’m sure she’ll keep her antenna tuned,” said Beverley. “Got any other leads?”
“Just something I picked up from one of the statements—I’m waiting for Windrow to okay a fresh interview.”
“In that case, can we—”
My phone rang—it was Dominic.
“Are you still up at Wyldes?” he asked.
I told him we were just finishing.
“One of the search teams found something you might want to look at,” he said. “Just down the road from where you are now.”
“Is it related to the search?”
“Honestly,” said Dominic, “I don’t know. I thought you might be able to tell me.”
I may be a city boy, but I’m fairly certain that the greasy purple and red squishy bits are supposed to stay inside the sheep and not be sprayed across a surprisingly large area.
“Animal attack?” I asked.
Both Beverley and Dominic gave me pitying looks. Stan, who’d been the one to discover the dead sheep and call in Dominic, actually snorted.
“Not unless that puma’s come up from Newtown Cross again,” she said.
We were standing in a large field just off the Roman road and near where it crossed the Lugg. The wooded slopes of the ridge rose up to the east and, hidden on the reverse side, was School Wood and Stan’s late lamented stash. It was even hotter down here in the valley and missing the breeze we’d had up around the Bee House. Nothing really to dispel the smell of rotting sheep.
“Mind you,” said Dominic, “when it comes to finding new ways to get themselves killed, sheep are bloody geniuses.”
The sheep lay on its side. It had been sheared recently, giving it a forlorn naked look and making it all too easy to spot the bloody gash in its stomach through which most of its innards seemed to have been pulled out. I’m not very fond of animals, even when they’re on their way to the dinner table. But you don’t do policing by holding your nose and looking the other way. I put on my surgical gloves and squatted down to have a look and do my due diligence.
The edges of the wound were ragged, suggesting tearing rather than cutting, and the glistening viscera looked like they’d been dragged out, widening the hole. Had she been caught on a hook of some sort? Agricultural machinery looked pretty fearsome to me. Plenty of dangerously sharp bits of metal attached to ridiculously over-torqued diesel engines—an accident waiting to happen. But I couldn’t see any tire tracks in the short grass around the body. I got my face as close to the wound as I could, closed my eyes and held my breath.
There was a kind of vestigia associated with the body. Very faint, nothing that Toby would get out of his basket for.
“Do you see any horse tracks around here?” I asked.
“Do you mean hoof prints?” asked Dominic as I stood up.
I told him that, yes, I did in fact mean hoof prints and we all spent five minutes looking around the scene to see if we could find any—with no luck.
“Why did you think a horse had got into your stash?” I asked Stan. “Were there tracks? A smell?”
“Don’t know,” she said. “It’s just what came into my head when I found it.”
Vestigia for certain. Which meant what? Something unnatural was buggering about in the countryside, but I hadn’t seen any indication, beyond the dead phones, that it had anything to do with Hannah and Nicole. For all I knew, this was everyday life for country folk. What I needed was some of your actual evidence. Or, failing that, a couple of hours with Hugh’s folklore book.
“It’s Falcon,” I said. “But it’s not necessarily anything to do with the kids.”
“Should I call Windrow?” asked Dominic.
I considered just how much fast talking it would take to explain exactly why I wanted West Mercia Police to put some of their forensic resources into autopsying a sheep, and then phoned Dr. Walid.
He said he’d be delighted, and if I could protect the corpse and maybe pick up some samples, he’d send some people over to collect it.
“What kind of people?” I asked.
“There’s a couple of firms that specialize in biohazard removal and forensic preservation,” said Dr. Walid. “I consult for them occasionally, and in return they send me anything I might find interesting.”
I got the GPS coordinates and texted them to him and he indicated what he wanted in the way of samples. I relayed this to Dominic, who said we should file a report just to be on the safe side.
Beverley said that, although messing with a mutilated sheep seemed like a pile of fun, she was going to take herself down to the pub by the bridge. “I’m going to have a quick word with the river,” she said. “Come pick me up when you’re finished.”
“A quick word with the river?” asked Dominic once Beverley was gone.
“I’d tell you, but then you’d have to section me,” I said. “Have you got anything for samples?”
Dominic had a proper Early Evidence Kit in the back of the Nissan, complete with a fingerprint kit, sketchpad and clear plastic evidence bags—the proper ones with individual serialized numbers and a tear-off strip to maintain chain of custody. We took photographs using a high-end digital camera that Stan fetched from her parent’s house.
“For UFO hunting,” Dominic told me when Stan was out of earshot.
“Do we put the entrails back in the sheep?” I asked. “Or put them in a separate bag?”
Nobody had a clue, so I phoned Walid again and he told us to wrap the intestines in plastic sheeting and then place them by the corpse. I’ve done some nasty things in my time, but that was genuinely one of the worst. I never did get the smell of dead sheep out of my clothes.
Once our sheep was bagged and tagged we paid Stan to stay with it until Dr. Walid’s people turned up. Well, I was the one that had to cough up the cash because, as Dominic pointed out, I’d declared this a Falcon operation. I made a point of noting it down with the rest of my expenses. Dominic said he’d talk to the farmer while I picked up Beverley.
“Won’t the farmer mind us taking stuff off his land?” I asked.
“You’re joking,” said Dominic. “The farmer has to pay for the safe disposal of animal carcasses—we’re doing him a favor.”
The Riverside Inn was a sprawl of a building that had accreted around a solid sixteenth-century half-timbered core. Its restaurant was well known and it was best, I was informed, to book in advance to avoid disappointment. Fortunately you could get snack type food for eating in the pub garden, although their idea of cheese on toast was mature cheddar melted onto a slab of brioche and topped with mustard seeds and cress. As well as a garden terrace, the inn kept a strip of lawn hard on the riverbank just by the stone bridge and it was there I found Beverley relaxing at a wooden picnic table with the aforementioned posh cheese on toast and an open bottle of Bordeaux. She offered me a glass as I sat down.
“Try it,” she said. “It’s on the house.”
“Can’t,” I said. “I’m on duty.”
“So you are,” she said, and poured herself another glass.
A smart-looking white girl in a black skirt emerged and on Beverley’s recommendation I had the steak baguette which practically came with a genealogy of the cow and a half-page essay on fresh bread making in Northern Herefordshire. After all that, it was probably just as well that it was delicious if a bit under-seasoned by my standards. Beverley waited till I had a mouthful before asking me to keep an eye out, and without another word she lay down on the bank and stuck her face and head in the water. I swear she stayed in that position for over a minute, her locks waving like seaweed in the current.
I was just about to tap her on the shoulder when she straightened suddenly, an arc of water from her hair spraying back into the car park and landing on the bonnet of an overheated Mondeo where it sizzled.
“Social call?” I said.
“Nobody home,” said Beverley flicking out her locks. Water made a sheen on her neck and shoulders and soaked the top of her T-shirt so that the zip of her sports bra poked through the material.
“Sad really,” she said.
“What is?” I asked, standing clear as Beverley flicked her locks again and tied them back with a waterproof scrunchie.
“The terrible Teme trio told me about it,” she said. “The spirit of the river was done in by Methodists in Victorian times. That really pissed them off—Miss Tefeidiad said you expect that kind of behavior from the English, but Welsh boys should have known better.”
My phone pinged and let me know that my restatementing of Nicole and Hannah’s friend had been actioned. I told Beverley, and asked if she wanted to be dropped off somewhere.
“Can I come to the interview?” she said.
“How would I introduce you—‘Hello, my name’s Peter Grant. I’m with the police and this is my colleague Beverley Brook who is a small river in South London?’”
“You used to introduce me like that,” said Beverley.
“Yeah, well,” I said. “I didn’t know what I know now—did I?”
A2457 H TST GABRIELLA DARRELL RE: INVISIBLE FRIEND MISC
Gabriella—just call her Gaby, she won’t answer to anything else—Darrell was a stolid little girl who was either preternaturally dull, on Ritalin, or biding her time to wreak an appalling revenge on her mother for being clingy and overbearing. Her mother Clarissa was short and unhealthily thin with a narrow intense face and, as far as I could tell, no sense of humor whatsoever.
The barn conversion where they lived just beyond the village of Orelton was seriously nice, its spacious rooms laid out in an uncluttered linear sequence with big windows framed in hardwood and lots of earth tones. It was a Channel Four sort of house with a Channel Four vibe. Mr. Darrell was CEO of a mid-sized building services company based in Birmingham.
I didn’t need to inquire into their lives since there was already twenty plus pages worth of information on him and his family, because Gaby claimed to be BFFs with Nicole Lacey and so they had been thoroughly TIEd, IIPed and statemented. West Mercia Police had even gone so far to as check Gaby’s claims about her relationship with the missing girls—and had concluded that they’d been BFs maybe, but BFFs? No way!
“I’d like to ask you about Nicole’s invisible friend,” I said.
Gaby opened her mouth, but before she could answer her mum spoke instead.
“Why do you want to know about that?”
Gaby rolled her eyes and sighed—see what I have to put up with? I winked back and pretty much from that point on we were allies.
“We’re following up any possible point of contact,” I said. “We like to make sure we haven’t missed anything first time round.”
“I see,” she said.
“Gaby,” I said. “When you talked to my colleague he asked you to make a list of everyone that Hannah and Nicole might know—do you remember that.”
Gaby nodded.
“And you said that Nicole had an invisible friend—is that right?”
Gaby nodded again. Her mother opened her mouth to speak, but I held up finger to stop her. She gave me a poisonous look, but she kept her mouth shut.
“But an invisible friend is not the same as an imaginary friend, is it?”
Gaby nodded—she obviously planned to make me work for this.
“Did Nicole’s friend have a name?”
Gaby screwed up her face realizing, reluctantly, that she was going to have to communicate. “Princess Luna,” she said.
I looked at her mother to see if this meant anything to her, but she shook her head. I turned back to Gaby, but before I could ask another question she asked me why I was brown.
“Gaby,” said her mother in a shocked voice.
“Because my mum’s from Sierra Leone,” I said.
“Where’s that?” asked Gaby.
“West Africa,” I said. “Did you ever meet Princess Luna?”
Gaby nodded.
“When was this?”
“At Hannah’s birthday party,” she said. “Mummy didn’t want me to go.”
“I thought it started rather late and they had a bonfire,” said Gaby’s mother. “But Little Miss here put up such a stink . . .” She shrugged.
“When was this?” I asked.
“Mid-March,” said Gaby’s mother. “I could look up the date if you like.”
“Thank you,” I said, and she fished out her iPhone and started flicking through the calendar.
“We had sparklers,” said Gaby.
“April the 26th,” said her mother.
I asked where the party had taken place.
“Rushpool,” said Gaby’s mum. “In that field behind the parish hall.”
“And they roasted a whole sheep on a spit,” said Gaby. “And I got grease all over my fingers.”
Gaby’s mum gave a little humorless chuckle. “We didn’t inquire too closely as to where the sheep had come from.”
“Nice,” I said. I turned to Gaby. “Did you see Princess Luna?”
“Don’t be silly. You can’t see Princess Luna—she’s invisible.”
“Of course she is.”
“Nicole and Hannah were feeding her sheep,” said Gaby, and for a second I thought I’d misheard her.
“They were feeding Princess Luna some of the cooked sheep?”
“Yep,” said Gaby. “I would have given her some of mine, but I’d eaten it all. I let her lick my fingers, though.”
I felt her mother practically start out of her chair, and then subside again.
“What did it feel like?” I asked.
“Like a big tongue,” said Gaby.
“And was it low down or high up?”
Gaby jumped off her chair and demonstrated by sticking her arm straight out in front of her with her palm turned up. About a meter twenty above floor level, but the way she held her hand suggested an animal of some kind.
“What kind of animal is Princess Luna?” I asked.
“She’s a pony, silly,” said Gaby brightly.
A little klaxon went off in my head.
Aruga aruga, I thought. Set condition one throughout the ship.
When you’re police sometimes you’ve just got to stop and think about what you’re doing—even when you’re on Day 5 and fears, as the media always say, are growing. I needed somewhere to work, I needed peace and quiet, and I needed a secure internet connection. So I headed back to Leominster nick, because two out of three ain’t bad.
A quick chat with Beverley would have been useful, only her phone went to voicemail. She’d said she was going to have a quick look up and down the River Lugg, so it was possible that she was either in a dead area or currently underwater. I didn’t have any luck with Nightingale, either, and calling the Folly just got me the long ominous silence that indicated Molly was the only one answering the phone. I left a message anyway—Nightingale always gets them. I don’t know how. Perhaps she writes them down.
I sneaked past the incident room, hid myself in Edmondson office and fired up HOLMES 2. First I wrote up Gabriella Darrell’s new statement from my notes and sent it off to be processed and then I checked my emails to see if anyone had bothered to solve any of my problems for me—fat chance. Then I opened the annotated copy of Folklore of Herefordshire that Hugh Oswald had given me, skipping to the index and looked for abductions, of which there were none. Nor was there anything under changelings, children but there was something under The Fairy Changeling. Ella Mary Leather reported an account of a baby that never grew up and was strangely hairy, who turned out to be a changeling and was tricked into revealing the location of the true baby by an older brother. Leather suggested that such changeling stories might be the result of hypothyroidism or other conditions to which Hugh had noted in the margin Likely, but what if no gross phys. changes found? What if grows to adult? Oth, rec. foxglove tea (digitalis) to drive baby away—justified infanticide? No evd. Fae this case.
I was about to move on to horses, supernatural or otherwise, but Hugh’s annotations led over to the next page where the name Aymestrey popped out at me. This was in the section on Hobgoblins which Ella Mary Leather associated with brownies, which she claimed was the Herefordshire name for Robin Goodfellow, the Puck of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A name associated with Pokehouse Wood which was located, according to Google Earth, half a kilometer from where Beverley stuck her head in the river and my unfortunate sheep said good-bye to its entrails. It was also on the Mortimer Trail, the same right of way that ran past Stan’s stash, and, I found when I checked Inspector Edmondson’s Ordnance Survey map, close to the gate where the girl’s phones were damaged.
There a traveler was once so tormented by Puck in the woods that he left bequest the remuneration from which paid a local to ring the church bell at a certain time of night—to guide future travelers home. By this Hugh had written: No ev. of ac. rcntly. wood now F.C. replanted with cons.
I took a brain break and googled Princess Luna—who turned out to be a character from My Little Pony, and a unicorn, and not noticeably invisible.
My phone pinged and I picked it up expecting it to be Beverley or Dr. Walid—instead I read—WTF R U doing in sticks? <3 LESLEY