Window of Opportunity
IF YOU ASK any copper why they stick at a job which exposes them to abuse from everyone from petty criminals all the way down to government ministers, they’ll say it’s the variety. It’s the not knowing when you go on shift what the rest of the day is going to be like. Accordingly, your training and experience emphasize a loose set of principles which can be applied to a wide variety of situations.
They are: make sure it doesn’t spread, make sure no one’s dead, make sure no one’s going to be dead soon—and make sure you call for back-up before you need it.
I had the Lacey place surrounded, now the next step was to ensure Victoria and Derek weren’t dead or injured. So I went back in, but not before I got Dominic to round up some beefy uniforms and wait outside with instructions to come get me if I wasn’t out within ten minutes.
I found Derek and Victoria in the kitchen, apparently unharmed except for the valiant attempt both were making to incur alcohol poisoning. They sat facing each other at either end of the vast oak kitchen table. Derek had two half bottles of Bell’s in front of him—one empty, the other mostly gone—while Victoria had two bottles of red wine and a dodgy-looking bottle of Bailey’s that I suspected dated back several Christmases.
“How are you two doing?” I asked.
“Fine,” said Victoria flatly. “Thank you for asking.”
Derek rolled his eyes and gave me a look-at-what-us-boys-have-to-put-up-with look which I ignored.
“Where’s Nicole?” I said, keeping my voice as bright and businesslike as I could.
“In the den,” said Victoria.
Before I went to look, I paused at the entrance to the kitchen and asked if either of them would like to leave the house.
“Now would be a good time to do that,” I said.
Victoria kept her back to me.
“Why would we want to leave?” she said. “Everything we want is here.”
They know something, I thought, as I cautiously made my way to the den. But what is it they know? It was hard to imagine that Derek had a tryst with the fae and hadn’t noticed anything odd—or maybe the mother of his child had just looked like a tourist or, possibly, a particularly attractive sheep. I really wanted to ask, but I doubted he was going to tell me right that instant. I mentally stuck it on the follow-up to-do list.
I heard her before I reached the door, a very pig-like snoring, and indeed I found her lying on her back asleep surrounded by sweet wrappers. She looked exactly like every annoying eleven-year-old I’d ever been forced to babysit for.
Again I considered just scooping her up there and then and making a run for it. But a run for it where? And to what purpose? I didn’t think that Herefordshire Social Services would be best pleased about me dumping a poorly socialized pre-teen with mind control powers on them. And, assuming we recovered the real fake Nicole, the one that had actually grown up in Rushpool, we’d end up one child surplus to requirements. In which case, we’d need to find someone to take care of her.
I let sleeping changelings lie and retreated out of the house before Dominic and the brute squad came charging in.
Dominic was outside leaning against the tailgate of the Nissan which he’d obviously backed into the Lacey’s drive to serve as a formidable road block. The brute squad, in actuality a couple of PSCOs from the safer neighborhood team, sloped off as soon as they saw I was okay.
It was getting into late afternoon, but there was no let-up in the heat and no sign of a breeze. I joined Dominic at the tailgate, which at least was in the shade of the trees that screened the rectory from the lane. He handed me an Evian that was, if not cold, noticeably cooler than I was. I turned my phone back on and checked for messages. Then I turned the disposable back on and checked that—the same.
I told Dominic I didn’t think anyone was going to go anywhere—at least not until it was dark.
“You seem very sure something’s going to kick off tonight,” he said. Which translated as You know something and you’d better tell me what it is.
“It’s the phases of the moon,” I said. “Hannah and Nicole went missing a fortnight ago when the moon was in the first quarter.”
“That’s half and half right?”
“And when I trawled through all the databases it was clear that all the confirmed events, and most of the suspect events, all happened between the first and third quarter. In other words the moon has to be at least half full for any of this shit to happen. And tonight . . . ?”
“Is the last night?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“Why would the moon have any effect on any of this?” I said. “What possible mechanism is in place?”
“Well . . .” started Dominic.
“You’re going to ask about the tides, aren’t you?”
“Um, no,” he said. “I was going to say that the mechanism is irrelevant at the moment.”
“Tonight’s the night,” I said.
“So what about the tides, then?” asked Dominic.
“Gravity,” I said. “That’s the mechanism with tides.”
“All living things have water in them,” said Dominic.
“Gravity affects the oceans because they slosh about,” I said. “Not because they’re made of water.”
“That’s me told, then,” he said.
“Damn right,” I said.
“So the moon effects magic, why?”
“I’m working on several theories,” I said. “But I’m currently favoring the hypothesis that the moon has a seemingly arbitrary effect on magic because it likes to piss me off.”
“That’s a theory with a high degree of applicability to other spheres of life,” he said.
“Yes it is,” I said, and we spontaneously fist bumped.
The thing about back-up is that when you want it, you want it now, not two to three hours away in London. So, as I schlepped back to the cowshed for a shower and a change of gear, I was rehearsing what I was going to say. I was just trying to find a form of words that would imply that none of what happened was my fault when the disposable phone rang.
Has to be a wrong number, I thought as I answered. But it wasn’t. It was Lesley.
“Hello Peter,” she said.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Like I’m going to tell you,” said Lesley, her tone the same as if we were still proceeding down Charing Cross Road with our thumbs hooked in our Metvests. I stopped walking and sat down on a low garden wall. It took me a moment to catch my breath.
“You’ve got to come in, Lesley,” I said. “This is not going to end well.”
“Listen,” she said. “Listen, I called to make sure you were all right.”
“Whether I’m all right?” My voice actually went up an octave. It was embarrassing. “You’re the one who’s up to their neck in shit.”
“Yeah, but at least I know what I’m doing,” she said.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not wasting the little time we’ve got talking bollocks,” she said. “Are you banging Beverley yet?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I want you to be happy, you pillock,” she said. “Because you spend too much time worrying about shit that’s not important. And you never know . . .” She hesitated, and this time I heard a catch in her voice. “You never know when it’s all going to get taken away.”
“I tell you what,” I said. “You come in and I’ll let you run my love life.”
I heard something that might have been a laugh, might have been a cough.
“Yeah, that’s tempting,” she said.
“You want to make me happy, Lesley?” I said. “Meet me somewhere—so at least I know you’re safe.”
A real laugh for sure—a bitter one.
“I crossed a line Peter,” she said. “I’m never going to be safe again.”
“No,” I said.
“And I did it with my eyes open,” she said. “You always said that people need to accept the consequences for their actions—this is me doing that.”
“You know I was talking bollocks. And anyway, coming in would be a way of accepting the consequences.” I said.
“You’ve got about a year, Peter,” said Lesley. “Then it’s going to kick off for certain—if you keep your head down I might just be able to keep you out of it.”
“Keep me out of what?” I asked.
“Time’s up,” said Lesley. “Take care.”
The phone cut off.
The evening sunlight sliced across the tops of the trees, a car slowed as it passed me and then accelerated up toward the parish hall. Something tweeted insanely in a bush a couple of meters from my head.
What the hell was that supposed to be—a friendly warning? Something to assuage her guilt? Or second thoughts? Was it part of a plan, and if it was—whose plan was it? A year? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why a year?
Too late I reached for my own phone to call Nightingale, but there already was a text from Inspector Pollock. No contact until auth. Meaning I wasn’t to contact Nightingale, or anyone related to Operation Carthorse—the operation to apprehend Lesley May. I’d like to think that Pollock was worried that I was being monitored. But it was more likely that he still hadn’t yet ruled out to his satisfaction that me and Lesley hadn’t been working together.
So, no back-up until further notice.
I got up and jogged up the lane to the cowshed. I needed a shower to calm down, a change of clothes and a plan.
Containment, then. Stop the little monster currently residing at the rectory from happening to other members of the public. Prevent any further breaches of the peace by Princess Luna and friends. Which left Nicole, our reverse changeling, stuck with the faeries until Nightingale could get up here and lend a hand.
Stuck where? Hannah’s pink and orange and blue castle.
I kept the shower cool in the hope it would kick-start my brain.
Get through the night and then ask permission to interview Hannah. Maybe do a little bit of magic to show her I was on her side. Longer term, extend the detector grid out to possible faerie sites. Restatement Zoe Lacey re: aliens and interview Derek Lacey re: his random sexual encounters with the supernatural.
I got out of the shower to find my tablet bleeping at me. The detectors at Pyon Wood Camp and at the crossroads on the Roman road had stopped broadcasting. Coincidence? Don’t make me laugh.
I had a pair of khaki combat trousers which were strictly for cleaning jobs and definitely not street wear, unstylish but reinforced at the knees and with lots of pockets. I pulled them on plus my PSU boots.
We could also drag in folklorists and vicars and starting working up lists of likely castle sites, plus Professor Postmartin could dig out the County Practitioner records for Herefordshire and the surrounding counties—somebody was bound to have noticed a faerie castle.
East of the Roman Road the detector at Yatton went out.
Next, I put on my utility belt with extendable baton, pepper spray, handcuffs and then my Metvest over what I realized had to be one of Beverley’s T-shirts because it was tight on me and had STOP STARING AND GET OUT OF MY WAY written across the chest. As I pulled it on I smelled Beverley, not her vestigia but a human smell of sweat and clean skin.
I considered the shotguns—but I’d probably only shoot my foot off. The same probably applied to Hugh Oswald’s staffs, but when I pulled one out of their bag it felt solid and comforting in my grip.
The night may be dark and full of terrors, I thought, but I’ve got a big stick.
“Is there something I should know?” asked Dominic when I rejoined him outside the Old Rectory. I showed him the detector track on my tablet and told him that back-up was on hold. He sighed.
“You were right,” he said. “Tonight’s the night.”
“Looks like it,” I said.
“Have I got time to get changed?” he asked.
“Yeah—I don’t think anything’s going to happen until the moon gets up.” I checked my notebook. “Which isn’t until about half past ten.”
So, while Dominic was off girding his loins, I called Beverley who seemed to be attending a party in a steam organ.
“I’m negotiating,” she shouted over a background of hurdy-gurdy and screaming children.
“Negotiating what?” I shouted back.
“River stuff,” she shouted. “I’ll tell you all about it when I get back—don’t wait up.”
Dominic returned half an hour later wearing cargo pants and real authentic farmer’s wellington boots. Apparently you can tell they’re authentic when the muck has permanently discolored the rubber up to the ankle level. He’d brought his own extendable baton and his stab vest in the beige “undercover” sleeve.
He’d also brought a folding table, a pair of folding chairs and a picnic hamper. We set them up at the back of the Nissan, sat down and had a drink.
“Outstanding,” I said. “Now all we need is a deck of cards.”
As the sun set, the detector at Croft Ambrey went offline and we called Stan, who lived close by in Yatton Marsh, to see whether she’d noticed anything. Dominic shouted into the phone for Stan to turn the music off but to no obvious success. He grimaced and turned the phone in my direction so that I could hear a burst of a raw sounding cover of Children of the Revolution before Dominic cut the line in disgust.
“She’s been sniffing aggro diesel and listening to 9XDead again,” he said. “There won’t be nothing coherent from her until Wednesday.” He put the phone away. “Do we actually have an operational plan for dealing with the unicorns?” he asked, and then laughed. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Priority one, protect members of the public,” I said. “Priority two, if we can, follow them back to wherever it is they come from in the hope that we can recover the real Nicole.”
Dominic decided to risk a dash for some drinks. While he was away I amused myself by piggybacking onto the Laceys’ wifi and looking at the online newspaper front pages. The Express went with a new Diana conspiracy theory, the broadsheets went with Syria and a side order of fracking, the tabloids with cricket and the Royals. Windrow had been right. Sharon Pike’s little meltdown was being quietly forgotten. It made sense. No profession likes to wash its dirty laundry in public.
Nightingale called at last.
They’d triangulated the signal from Lesley’s phone to a flat in the Dog Kennel Hill estate in Dulwich, and after the requisite amount of time charging about shouting “police” and “clear” Nightingale had walked into the kitchen to find an envelope on the table with his name on it.
“It was one of those white envelopes you get with greeting cards and inside was one such, with a cat on the front licking its paw and the inscription With Sympathy in pink letters. Inside were written the words NICE TRY.”
“I told you,” I said.
“She could have left us a demon trap,” said Nightingale. “Or something mundane and equally unpleasant. It’s quite maddening, really. I’m certain she’s trying to communicate something to us, but I’m damned if I know what. Did she say anything significant to you on the phone?”
“I’d rather tell you about that call in person,” I said.
“Quite,” said Nightingale. “How are things your end?”
I gave him a quick briefing.
“I think things may be kicking off soon,” I said. “I could use some help.”
“I’ll set off as soon as I’m sure that Lesley has really left the area,” he said. “That should put me in your vicinity in four to five hours. Can you last until then?”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Remember, Peter, the fae are like peacocks. They strut and they boast and they will expect you to do the same,” he said. “Put on a good show and you may be able to avoid an actual physical confrontation.”
“And if I can’t avoid a physical confrontation?”
“I’d really rather that you did,” said Nightingale.
“And if I can’t?”
“Fight like a policeman,” he said. “That should take them by surprise.”
But what kind of policeman? I wondered.
Nightingale said he had to go, and hung up. I sat staring into the growing dark while a robin made a valiant attempt to trill its guts out. But at least the bloody wood pigeon had shut up by then.
Dominic came back with a flask of coffee and we sat in silence for a while, as something in the distance imitated the music from the shower scene in Psycho.
“Song thrush,” said Dominic.
The tablet chimed and all the detectors in Pokehouse Wood dropped out—all of them.
“It always comes back to Pokehouse Wood,” I said. “It’s like that’s the hinge around which everyone travels.”
“The hinge?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Axis, roundabout, entrepôt, gateway?”
“Do you think we should check it out?” asked Dominic.
“No need,” I said. “I think they’re coming here.”
We drank our coffee and listened to the birds and waited.
“Victor wants to get married,” said Dominic.
“Congratulations,” I said.
“I’m not that keen,” said Dominic.
“Really?”
“Christ, no,” said Dominic. “I don’t want to spoil what we’ve got.”
“Why would it spoil it?”
“For one thing, I’d have to go live on his bloody farm,” he said. “It’s not like he’s going to move into my flat. This is David Cameron’s fault you know—he had to have his trendy bloody Same Sex Couples Act.”
“Tell him you want a long engagement,” I said.
Dominic sighed.
“Would you marry him?” he asked.
“Who, Victor?”
“Of course Victor.”
I gave it some thought.
“Nah,” I said. “Not with the hours he works—it’s bad enough on the Job when you’re doing shifts. But farming, dawn to dusk—no thanks.”
“That’s my point,” said Dominic.
“I bet he’s going to stay fit, though,” I said. “All that hard work.”
“There is that,” said Dominic. “Even if he does smell of cow shit. What about Beverley?”
“What, marriage?”
“Why not?”
I remembered Isis, wife of the River Oxley, telling me that I shouldn’t be in a hurry to go into the water. “It’s not a decision you want to rush into,” she’d said. But I had, that night on the banks of the Lugg. Rushed in like the fool I am.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it,” I said.
“Peter,” said Dominic.
“Yeah?”
“All the birds have stopped singing,” he said.
We both slowly got to our feet and listened.
I could just hear the sound of a TV coming from a house up the road and a low rumble of voices that was probably the crowd outside the Swan in the Rushes. Far away a car with a diesel engine was laboring up a steep slope.
Dominic used his Airwave to call the spotters we’d stationed in the field to the west of the village, sitting in a Toyota that had a good view of the off-road approaches to both the Old Rectory and the Marstowes’ house. They were under instructions to report any movement, strange lights and/or other general weirdness, and to not get out of the Toyota unless told to. So far they hadn’t seen anything. Dominic advised them to stay sharp.
“You don’t actually have to do this with me,” I said, as I tested the grip on Hugh Oswald’s staff and hefted it about a bit.
Dominic laughed.
“My patch, my village,” he said. “Probably my folklore. So, yeah—actually I think I do.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “If something weird gets behind me, watch my back and smack anything that’s not a small child. As hard as you can—you want to put them down as fast as possible.”
“Put what down?”
“I wish I knew.”
“So, to summarize,” said Dominic, “we guard the Laceys, prevent anything supernatural happening, follow any . . . thing back to where it came from.”
“Which will probably be Pokehouse Wood.”
“And rescue any missing children we might find lying around. Is that about it?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
Which, right that moment, fell completely apart.
My tablet played the red alert sound from Star Trek, which indicated that one of the detectors in the village had dropped offline. I turned, naturally, to look at the Old Rectory—walking to the side a bit to see if I could get a look around the back—but there was nothing. Same deal from our spotters in the Toyota—nothing.
I checked the tablet and saw that the other village detector had dropped off—the one at the Marstowe house.
It was at least four hundred meters from the Old Rectory to the cul-de-sac and me and Dominic did it in less than a minute and a half, which is pretty impressive considering all the kit we were carrying and the fact that it was fricking uphill.
There were crashing sounds from inside the house and high-pitched screams, which meant we may even have picked up the pace before a flash lit up the ground floor windows. Followed by the distinctive boom of a shotgun, which caused us to clatter to a halt at the front door.
We stood clear either side of the doorway and I nudged the door open with my foot. It was unlocked and swung inward.
These country people, I thought, don’t half neglect the basics of home security.
We heard Andy cursing, saw another flash and heard another boom.
“Andy, mate,” called Dominic, “is that you with the shotgun?”
“Yeah,” called Andy from inside. “The bastards are trying to get in the back.”
Double flash, two blasts close together, the sound of plate window glass shattering.
“We’re coming in the front,” yelled Dominic. “Don’t you dare fucking shoot us.”
“Right-oh,” called Andy, almost casually.
Dominic went in first. It was his idea, after all.
We found Andy flattened against the wall by his kitchen door, shotgun at the ready.
“I tried to call you lot,” he said when we joined him. “But all the phones were buggered.”
“Where’re the kids?” asked Dominic.
“Upstairs with Joanne,” said Andy.
I peered around the doorframe. The kitchen light was off and half the windows blown out. The upstairs lights spilled down into the garden, illuminating the swing set, the rotary clothes dryer and a gleaming shape—like a horse spun out of glass. It snorted and its great head swung back and forth—looking for an opening.
Andy meekly handed over the shotgun when Dominic asked for it.
“Out of shells anyway,” he said. Nonetheless Dominic cracked it opened and checked. I wondered if Andy had a shotgun license, but decided now was not the time to ask. Dominic laid it carefully down and kicked it into the living room.
“Andy,” I said. “I want you to go upstairs, pick the most secure room and barricade yourself, Joanne and the kids inside.”
I expected him to argue, but he seemed to have a touching faith in the police and did as he was told.
“What do we do now?” asked Dominic once Andy was safely upstairs.
“We go forth,” I said. “And we de-escalate the situation.”
Dominic nodded. “De-escalation,” he said. “One of my favorites.”
Peacocks, Nightingale had said.
I squared my shoulders, hefted Hugh’s staff and walked into the kitchen, fixed the beast outside with my eyes and said, “Oi, sunshine! Cut it out.”
The unicorn turned in my direction, the moonlight flashing on the ridges of its spiral horn, and for a moment we stared at each other through the smashed window of the kitchen door. Then, faster than I would have believed possible, it lowered its head and surged toward me.
Its head fit through the broken window, but its shoulders smashed into the frame, ripping it out of the brick work with a noise like a JCB ram-raiding a DIY store. Between the kitchen units and the table I had no room to dodge, and turning my back on half a meter of spike did not strike me as a good idea.
But I wasn’t some terrified peasant, I was an apprentice and I had been trained by the man who led the rearguard at Ettersberg. And we were about to find out how good that training was.
Anticipate, Nightingale had drilled into me, formulate, release . . . and for god’s sake Peter, you have to have the follow-up ready the moment you release the first spell.
I had anticipated the charge and I was speaking the spell even as splinters of wood clattered off the ceiling. It was my shield, famously capable of stopping seven out of ten pistol caliber rounds—on a good day. Had the beast hit it face-on, that horn would have gone right through it. But I didn’t have it held face-on—I had it deflected at an angle so that point slid off to my right, because the surface of the shield is well slippery.
And I knew that not from some ancient text but because I’d logged hours on the range, conjuring the thing at different angles while Molly poked at me with a stick.
The thing bellowed with rage as its horn slid uncontrollably to its left. And where the horn went, head, neck and shoulders were sure to follow. It hit the kitchen table at just over knee height and went down on its side amidst splinters of laminated chipboard. Its great hooves scrabbled on the lino as it tried to get them back under itself. But I had my follow-up ready—I twisted and swung Hugh’s staff as hard as I could. I would have liked to have landed one on its head, but my reach wasn’t good enough and instead the staff’s iron cap scored its way down the unicorn’s shoulder.
It bellowed with pain and frustration.
Cold iron, I thought, the stories are true.
I hit it again and it screamed.
I kept the shield aimed downward to keep it pinned and raised my staff once more.
The unicorn stopped struggling to rise and lay there quivering, staring at me with a mad brown eye—in the darkness it seemed real and solid and all there.
“Are you going to be a good boy?” I asked.
The mad eye rolled in its socket, but the head slumped down among the splintered wood of a kitchen unit, stainless steel cutlery and the remains of Joanne’s best china.
“Dominic,” I said. “Are you still there?”
“Yeah,” he said. “That was interesting.”
“We’re going to be stepping back into the hallway,” I said. “Give Princess Luna here a chance to get up.”
Dominic put his hand on my shoulder and guided me backward—as I went, I lifted the shield away from the unicorn, although I made a point of keeping it between me and the beast.
It hesitated at first, but then in a crackle of broken glass it got to its feet. I thought it might have another go, but it started turning immediately, incidentally smashing the sink off the wall and bringing down the last intact wall unit. Water hit the ceiling as the cold tap sailed through the air and out one of the broken windows. Even as it sauntered out through the ruins of the kitchen door it had begun to fade, until it was nothing but the sound of hooves vanishing into the night.
“Aren’t we going to follow it?” asked Dominic.
“I know where it’s going,” I said.
“You know,” said Dominic, “I think I’m going to marry Victor after all. An experience like this puts your life in perspective.”
“Really?” I said. “Mine is still passing in front of my eyes.”
“Okay,” said Dominic as we retreated to avoid the widening pool caused by the water fountaining out of the broken sink. “But are you sure what you’re seeing is not just the rest of your life?”
The next step was to get the Marstowes safely out of the house. We played rock, paper, scissors to determine which one of us would explain to Joanne why she was going to need to wrangle a new kitchen out of Herefordshire County Council—I won. We were waiting for them downstairs to grab some overnight clothes and Dominic had just unshipped his Airwave to get some support in when we heard the siren.
It had the slower tone change that marked it as an ambulance. We heard it come up the slope and then stop further down—about where the Old Rectory was.
“Oh shit,” said Dominic.
By the time we got there Derek was being wheeled out of the house on a trolley. He was wearing a neck brace and an oxygen mask—there was a pressure bandage covering the side of his head. Inspector Edmondson had taken over the scene. We gave him the sanitized version of what happened to us, and he explained that his people had searched the house and that Victoria and not-really-Nicole were missing.