He didn’t let her drive.
The Hammersmith property wasn’t far; they arrived there just after 10:00 p.m. It made up part of a more commercial section of town over the river, and consisted of a mostly finished exterior that looked, to Jo, like an excessively tall supermarket. Three floors were more or less complete; a fourth one was in process. Heavy equipment haunted the grounds; in the dark they reminded her of articulated museum dinosaurs. MacAdams switched off the beams and coasted quietly under streetlights. The building site butted up against the road and had been cordoned off with fencing. A sign on the side said Hammersmith, and someone had tagged it with spray paint: “u wankers.”
“Where’s the entrance?” Jo asked—because they weren’t driving machinery over the curbs. MacAdams looked at the map on his phone.
“There’s a road that runs along the rear of the property; it’s also the delivery road for a warehouse.” He pulled off to the side and parked the car. “I’m going to take a look through the fence. Supposedly there has been some movement over here. Could be nothing.”
“Flashlights,” Jo said.
“I have a torch in the glove compartment—”
“No, I mean there are flashlights,” Jo said, leaning across him and pointing. On the third floor of the building, a rapid flicker bounced across the windows. Almost as if they imagined it . . . but then there was another. It helped that her distance vision was quite good, but whoever it was wasn’t being terribly careful.
“Shite.” MacAdams rolled down his window for a better view, then took out his phone. He pulled up a number, but didn’t call, his index finger hovering over the screen.
“Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“You’re thinking of sneaking up on them by yourself.”
“I’m not.” MacAdams wet his lips. “I am, but only for a look. I don’t want uniform—or a squad car—spooking them.”
“Is that a good idea?” Jo asked. Because it didn’t sound like one. MacAdams handed her his phone, then reached over her knees to the glove box.
“Copy the number. It will call the squad car directly; they are in the neighborhood. Be here in minutes.” He pulled out the torch—actually a penlight—and checked battery power. “If anything goes wrong, or I take too long, you have my permission to call.”
She didn’t need to ask this time. This was a terrible idea.
“How am I supposed to know? And how long is too long?” she asked, but MacAdams was already half out of the car.
“Give me a half hour.” He took off his suit jacket and left the coat in the back—then shut the door (quietly). She wasn’t entirely sure why until he got to the chain link fence and proceeded to climb it. Granted, it wasn’t very tall. But MacAdams was a lot nimbler than he looked.
Jo was pretty nimble, too. And lighter than him, if also a lot shorter. She knocked her boot heels together and flexed her fingers. How hard could it be? She waited until he was well over, then another few minutes to give him a start.
* * *
MacAdams crossed in the shadow of the yard. The building’s entrance faced west, and he could see a vehicle parked at the north end. Too dark to see make and model, but just the sort of grand SUV he hated, the kind that took up two spaces and too much room on the road. It’s presence, however, made the situation suddenly more ominous. The kind of people who drove hundred-thousand-dollar automobiles shouldn’t be breaking into a building site with flashlights. It wasn’t teens or vagrants, at the least. He crept more carefully to the front doors.
An apparent Hammersmith standard, they were double glass panes, steel handles. If locked, he wouldn’t be getting them open, but they weren’t locked. They weren’t even closed. One door had been propped open with a stray brick. What did that suggest?
MacAdams craned his neck but had lost sight of the torches at this angle. Someone was on the third floor; he could tell this, at least.
Were they stealing something? What could you steal from an empty building? If he waited till morning and a search-and-seizure warrant—he’d never find out.
MacAdams turned on the penlight and let it play over the first floor. Not just complete, finished. Shiny, complete with an open lobby and what looked like glassed-in shop spaces beyond. And yet, the top floor was a skeleton of spikes and concrete and cables. It made him think, suddenly, of Nagamaki Plaza, though he wished his mind had not chosen that particular American classic as a reference point. For one thing, MacAdams was about a stone too heavy to be climbing in the ventilation.
He found the stairwell on the east wall; no lights and no windows. MacAdams followed the penlight’s tiny circle up the first flight; by the time he reached the landing, he could hear noises above: a grating noise, like a trolley, heavily loaded. Then sounds of muffled effort, occasional indistinct voices. MacAdams passed by the second floor, heart hammering, and waited on the landing before the third. Two voices, male, one Cockney.
“Be careful with that—fuck’s sake!”
“Wot? You fink I wan’ be here all nigh’? C’mon. These boxes are bloody ’eavy.”
“Fair. All right. Let’s get these down.”
MacAdams ducked back down the stairs to the second-floor door, begging it not to be locked. The handle turned, and he darted into the black space; he’d gone somewhere windowless and shut off his light.
“Mate, shoulda figured no lift—we’re daft getting these down apples and pears.”
“You’ve a trolley, for Christ’s sake, lean it on your hip as you go.”
MacAdams watched light flicker through the door crack and heard them wrestle their burdens down the flight. Neither voice was familiar, certainly not the kid who sold him crisps from the butty van—nor was either a Geordie, nor Yorkshire bred.
These voices were from out-of-towners. Property workers? Hired hands? If so, hired by whom?
The light vanished and the thuds grew distant. The silence of the building now felt pregnant; he could hear something. Or imagine that he did. Breathing.
A flutter of second thoughts assaulted MacAdams, but he pushed them away. Get it together; he needed to see the third floor before they came back. And they were coming back.
The third floor offered a large open space. Faint light came through the window wall onto a long central table. It was presently clear, just a metal surface from which a lot of things had no doubt been swept away.
MacAdams dared turn on the minitorch and played the beam along the walls. There were boxes stacked along a makeshift shelving system, all of them taped shut. He stuck the penlight in his mouth to free his hands, then used his serrated door key as a knife and worked through the heavy layers.
A moment later, McAdams was sweating. Beads ran down his forehead as he pried the box apart. He gripped a heavy plastic bag and lifted, shining the penlight on its contents with his other hand, bracing himself to find stacks of cash or drugs or—
Pottery?
Broken pottery, at that. MacAdams lifted a shard; in the dim light he could see complex designs painted on the glazed side. He tore open the next box. Tile, this time, pictographic. Even in pieces, it was possible to make out the semblance of broad-leaf plants.
Footsteps. They’re coming back. But he hadn’t made sense of anything yet; he couldn’t back away now. He wrestled with a third box; this one made a whisper of displaced contents as it moved. He set the light down this time, hurrying to pull away the tape. When he shone it back inside again, the beam reflected golden. MacAdams couldn’t help but stare: before him was a box of earrings, pendants, bracelets, rings—all of it delicate, intricate and almost exactly like the photo he’d just sent to Jo. Open work, Struthers said. Arabesque designs.
MacAdams shone the light once more on the tile, only now he understood what he was looking at: a mosaic, probably ancient, absolutely black market. He’d just stumbled into a trade, not of illicit drugs or the usual suspects, but—stolen artifacts.
This realization was followed by a whisper of displaced air. The sounds of atoms scattering out of the way as an object went slicing through empty space. MacAdams didn’t have time to guess its heft or its shape. It connected solidly with the back of his head and the stars exploded.
He crashed to both knees as his vision turned to gray mist. Through it, he could just make out a shape—a man above him—swinging something heavy.
“Stop! Police!” A light suddenly shone in the dark. The figure froze, the arm didn’t swing.
“Drop your weapon!”
He didn’t drop the weapon. He threw it at the source of light—then bolted. There was noise, commotion, except MacAdams wasn’t sure if it was coming from inside or outside his brain. He groped his hands toward the ground, hoping to find it solid.
“Omigod, omigod—are you all right?”
MacAdams raised his throbbing head. But there were no police. There was just Jo Jones.
“James, that was the guy!”
“The—who?” he begged, dabbing at his head and coming away bloody.
Jo got one arm under him and hobbled him to standing.
“The driver of the butty van!”
* * *
When Jo was twelve, she took on a bully, Chad. He was in eighth grade and big for his age. He used to pick on a boy down the street from her aunt’s house. One day, Chad took the kid’s bike and then refused to give it back. Jo didn’t remember deciding to act; she just remembered taking Chad at a run and shoving him sideways. He lost his balance and fell off. Jo stood over him feeling like some sort of Athenian warrior, despite probably looking more like an angry Chihuahua. Perhaps it was just the shock of it that disarmed Chad. She didn’t even get much credit, anyway. The kid claimed she only stood up to Chad because she was a girl and knew he wouldn’t hit her. It wasn’t true. Jo hadn’t thought of that. She hadn’t thought of anything. It wasn’t bravery so much as override, self-preservation momentarily shut off.
“That was a very dangerous thing you did,” MacAdams said. He was sitting in the back of a police SUV with a cold compress on his head.
“At least I ducked,” Jo said, which was true. The assailant narrowly missed clocking her with the pipe he’d thrown—a pipe presently being dusted for fingerprints. MacAdams winced a bit.
“Yes, and good. But I meant pretending you were the police.” His words were coming through gritted teeth, and one eye kept blinking on its own. “What if he hadn’t been fooled?”
“I had at least already called the police,” Jo reminded him.
It took Jo rather longer than anticipated to climb the fence; the toe of her Doc Martens didn’t fit right into the links, so there had been a lot of scrambling. By the time she made it over, MacAdams had gone into the building, and two other people had come out. She’d waited in the dark until the ones unloading began making noises of return—then she ran in ahead of them to warn MacAdams to hide. At least, that had been the plan.
“Ms. Jones?” an officer asked. “Can you please give your statement?”
“Now?” Jo looked back at MacAdams, who nodded she should, then looked sorry he’d moved his head that way.
“I had just got into the stairwell. It was pitch-black, so I was crawling up and there were twelve steps instead of eleven per flight. It should end on an odd number because most people step off with their right foot.” Jo pinched her own thigh. Stop doing that. “Sorry, um.” Architectural Elements and Design, 2014. “The door on the second floor opened and I saw someone climb to the third.”
“Where Detective MacAdams had gone,” the officer clarified.
MacAdams made noises of agreement. Jo took a moment to look back at the building. They had floodlights on it, and the actual electrics inside were on, too. A crew from Newcastle were sweeping through each floor.
“Right. I followed, and I saw him get hit.” Jo winced in spite of herself, not least because Ronan Foley had been murdered that way. “I didn’t know what else to do, so I shouted ‘Stop! Police!’”
“And you say you recognized the man? How?”
“I turned my phone light on when I yelled,” Jo said. The hope was to blind him and keep him from seeing her. There he was, the same sallow, heavy jowls, eyes squinting over grimace. A big brick of a human. “He owns a butty van I’ve seen in Newcastle and Abington.”
“About that.” MacAdams pulled out his phone and stared at it blearily. “Green has the license for the other butty van. We need to fast track.”
MacAdams was now on the phone, and it seemed he’d not been the first to call Green.
“Yes, I’m fine. Mostly fine . . . Yes—all right, yes, I’ll have myself checked over at A&E,” he was saying. Accident and Emergency, Jo translated. She’d make sure he actually did it. “Listen, Green, we have a building full of what I think are artifacts of some kind—and a getaway SUV we’re still trying to track down.”
He looked up to the officer for an update.
“Nothing yet, sir,” she said.
“And so far nothing—but the assailant was the driver Jo saw in Newcastle.” MacAdams stopped talking for a moment to close his eyes tight. The on-scene medic declared it “not dangerous,” but even a minor head injury could cause concussion, nausea, plus a star-spangled headache. “Green—Hammersmith is high profile, so word is going to get out about this. I don’t know how fast, but you need to try and capture the other van. Tomorrow morning, ASAP. I’ll be there by tomorrow afternoon . . . Yes—”
Jo had been watching MacAdams talk. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring at him like that, but now he was looking back. He blinked a few times before going on.
“I’m in good hands,” he said.
* * *
It turns out he was right. Jo knew how to drive a standard, and despite her supposed trouble getting around York, she managed to find the emergency center with no trouble at all.
“I’m not sure it’s really necessary,” MacAdams said.
“You can’t lie to Green,” Jo told him, and she was right of course. His shirt had blood on it from the collar and down his left arm, so he put the jacket on despite the fissure of light that kept opening up in his head when he moved his neck.
“Been through the wars,” he sighed. Jo was surprisingly quiet.
Follow the Blue Line said the sign on entry. Nine at night and the waiting room had a considerable number of people already. They settled into chairs at the far corner, Jo at a diagonal and still watching him intently.
“I know you have a headache; do your ears ring? Do you feel dizzy? Blurred vision?” She inched forward to stare right into his pupils, “Your eyes are dilated.”
“It’s bright in here, Jo.”
“It’s not that bright. What if it’s a mild traumatic brain injury? We need our brains. You and me especially,” Jo said, putting both hands in her lap. They were in little fists. He’d seen her do that before. Angry? No. Nervous. Anxious.
Worried.
“I’m . . . fine. I’ll be fine,” he said, trying to placate.
Jo’s head darted up in a way his might never do again. “You might have been very not fine! That guy—big guy—” she aped a Herculean figure “—had an honest-to-God-Clue-murderer lead pipe! And I saw him, and I didn’t even stop him hitting you!”
Her fists returned to her lap, squashed between knees. She wasn’t looking at MacAdams anymore but at the floor, worry lines creasing her brow between strands of hair dislodged from her ponytail. MacAdams could blame things on the incessant pounding at the base of his skull or on the sudden influx of new case information, which included an apparent rare artifacts trade happening in Yorkshire, of all places. Or maybe he was just too unforgivably thick to make the realization that—first—Jo just saved his life. Second, on some level, despite having absolutely no grounds in reality, she was blaming herself for not preventing the attack. Often Jo baffled him, but especially in this moment. Five feet and a few spare inches of unaccountable behavior. She once jumped out the window of a (burning) building; tonight, she broke into one to keep him getting his head knocked in.
“Jo? Can you look at me?”
“Probably.”
“Try.”
Jo slumped her shoulders and looked up, and the semipetulant expression would have been funny except it wasn’t. MacAdams took a breath against his pounding headache.
“What you did was dangerous and reckless. And brave and selfless. Thank you for doing it. And—” There was a compliment swimming around in MacAdams brain. And, they would not have taken an interest in the butty van without her. And, they wouldn’t have known his assailant was connected to it without her. Fucksake, she made a better detective than half the people on the force. How did you wrangle that into words? Jo was still waiting on him to finish, perched forward on an uncomfortable chair with her knees together and her feet apart, all scuffed Doc Martens and dirty jeans.
“Honestly? I’m just glad you’re here,” he said finally.
“Really?”
“Yes. If I don’t look appreciative it’s because someone hit me with a lead pipe.”
“It’s not an improvement on you,” Jo said. And it was funny enough to laugh at, but he was afraid his brain might explode.
“James MacAdams?” the desk clerk announced, and he hobbled off to have his war wounds dressed, knowing Jo would be there to drive him back to the murder hotel. And that was just fine.