‘If you’re sure,’ I said.
His face lost some of its livid mottling and his breathing its rasping edge.
‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said and directed me over to a chest that had been hidden under a dusty red floral cushion and two volumes of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. I opened it up and smelt camphor and the warm smell of old cloth. Inside was a long cylindrical khaki bag with a rough webbing shoulder strap. I’ve spent enough time rooting around in the Folly’s basement to know army surplus when I see it. Stencilled along the side of the bag was
Oswald, H. 262041
and it was held closed with three buckles. The contents were heavy – at least two or three kilos, I reckoned, when I lifted it out of the chest. Under Hugh’s direction I placed it on the floor in front of his feet and crouched down to unbuckle it.
When I got it open a thick booklet with a dull red cover fell out – written on the front was
Soldier’s Service and Pay Book
.
When I picked it up a photograph fluttered out from between the pages – sepia toned and faded, of a young man. Younger than me, I realised with a shock, stiffly posing in his uniform – unmistakably Hugh Oswald. I retrieved the photograph and handed it and the booklet to Hugh, who took them without looking at them. He nodded down at the bag.
‘What do you think?’ he asked.
Inside the bag were two staves the size and shape of pickaxe handles. At one end they sported grips made of wrapped canvas and leather and at the other an iron cap. Branded neatly into one side was the same number sequence as on the bag, at a guess Hugh’s service number, and the hammer and anvil sigil of the Sons of Weyland – British wizardry’s legendary smiths.
Makers of staffs.
‘Don’t be shy,’ said Hugh. ‘They won’t bite you.’
A couple of bad experiences has taught me a certain amount of caution when handling unfamiliar arcane objects, so at first I just let my fingertips brush the surface of the wood. I felt it at once, the rasping, dancing, wriggling honey-soaked warm intimacy of the hive.
‘Have you been keeping this in your attic?’ I asked.
‘As a matter of fact, yes. Well spotted,’ said Hugh. ‘Take a good grip. It won’t hurt you.’
I closed my hand around one staff and lifted it like a club. It was heavy and comfortable and could, if I was any judge, serve usefully as a hand-to-hand weapon in a pinch. Had it ever come to that pinch? Had this frail old man, who had to muster up his strength to eat toast, smacked some poor unsuspecting German with it?
Take that Fritz! Eat English Oak
. I felt the heart of it then, the beating of the hammers and the hot breath of the forge and behind that the rivers of steel and oceans of coal and the clang clang clang of Empire.
I don’t know about the enemy, but it scared the hell out of me.
‘I want you to have them,’ said Hugh
‘I’m not sure I should take these,’ I said. ‘Doesn’t Mellissa want them?’
‘Now you listen to me, lad,’ said Hugh. ‘In 1939 we had no inkling of what was to come – the end of the world can arrive with no warning at all and a wise man makes sure he has a big stick tucked away, just in case.’
I nodded.
‘Thank you,’ I said. I replaced the staff in its bag and buckled it up.
A more practical weapon, I thought, from a less civilised age.
‘What did happen at Ettersberg?’ I said. The question I’d been aching to ask.
‘Operation Spatchcock,’ said Hugh.
‘What went wrong?’ I said.
‘What went right? We got greedy, we thought the war was all but over and started thinking about after, what would be our role, what would be the Folly’s, the order’s, England’s, the Empire’s.’
He looked at the bottle of water he held, as if trying to remember what it was for. ‘Hubris is what it was.’ He took another sip and when he spoke again his voice was stronger.
‘Nightingale was against it from the start, said we should send in the RAF and bomb the camp from altitude. He said it was the only way to be sure.’ He gave me a puzzled look. ‘Did I say something funny?’
‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘You mentioned being greedy. Greedy for what?’
‘There were some bright young sparks before the war,’ said Hugh. ‘On both sides. People like David Mellenby, who said they thought it might be possible to formulate a theory that would unite magic with relativity.’ Hugh paused again, eyes unfocused. ‘Or was it quantum theory? Which one is the one with the cat?’
‘Schrödinger’s cat?’
‘That’s the bugger,’ said Hugh.
‘Quantum theory,’ I said.
‘Closing the gap, he called it,’ said Hugh. ‘Had lots of foreign friends, particularly in Germany – all practitioners or boffins – which was damned unusual, you understand. He took the start of the war very badly, saw it as a personal betrayal. You see, the Nazis took his work and . . . I’m not sure what the word is.’
‘Perverted it?’
‘No,’ said Hugh. ‘We thought they might have closed the gap, but the methods they used . . .’ Hugh was trembling and I considered calling his daughter, but then I saw the look in his eyes and realised it was anger. Not just anger, but rage – even seventy years later. ‘They did terrible things to live prisoners, to men and women and the fae and . . .’
He stopped, his chest heaving, and looked around his study, blinking his eyes.
‘And, being German,’ he said finally, ‘they wrote it all down, typed it up in triplicate, cross-referenced it and filed it neatly in a hundred filing cabinets in a central bunker in a camp near a town called Ettersberg.’
‘Oh shit,’ I said. I realised the implications. Hugh gave me a reproachful look. ‘They wanted the research data,’ I said. ‘That’s what the operation was all about.’
‘We couldn’t let the Russians have it, or the Americans, or the French for that matter,’ he said. ‘It was obvious to everyone by ’45 that this was the Empire’s last hurrah. The Russians were gearing up to win the Great Game and the Yanks couldn’t wait to get us out of the Far East. I think some believed, including David, that this could put us back in the game.’
‘What game?’
‘Precisely,’ said Hugh and looked so pleased with me that I didn’t explain that I meant the question literally. ‘And we secured the library, the Black Library we called it after that, for all the good that it did us. Nightingale’s job was to cover the extraction, and by god that’s just what he did. But even he couldn’t save the men who were cut off at the camp.’
And so Operation Spatchcock had fallen apart and the raiding force, over eight hundred men in all, was broken up and destroyed in detail while the remnants fled west in squads or as individuals – werewolves on their tail.
‘Were they real werewolves?’ I asked. ‘Or just special forces?’
‘Nobody knows for sure,’ said Hugh.
Nightingale being among the last of the few stragglers that made it across the Allied front line.
‘He made sure the wounded were on the gliders with the Library, me amongst them, and he gave up his own place so that David could escape,’ said Hugh.
‘David Mellenby got out?’ I said. ‘I thought he was killed in action.’
‘No,’ said Hugh. ‘Took his own life, sadly. Locked himself in his lab and shot himself in the head. Wasn’t the only one, certainly not the only one, come to think of it.
‘You have to understand, Peter,’ said Hugh. His voice was shaking and I saw there were tears in his eyes. ‘I regret nothing, and if I could go back in time to my young self I would tell him to stop being a weak sister and get the job done. Sometimes you have to make a choice and sometimes you have to act on blind faith and trust that your mates won’t let you down.’
I heard his granddaughter call his name from below.
‘But when you do that, Peter,’ he said, ‘make sure you know who your mates are.’
Mellissa bounced into the room and made her displeasure known to both of us. I let myself be chivvied downstairs. Hugh looked done in and I didn’t want him to hurt himself. I grabbed the staves along with my other stuff, the heavy wood clonking against my hip as I swung the strap over my shoulder.
In the kitchen I found Beverley seated behind a stack of cardboard pallets containing squat green glass jars with home-printed labels on them.
‘I hope you made her pay for those,’ I said to Mellissa.
‘Got my money’s worth,’ she said and winked at Beverley, who laughed.
‘You can help get them into the car,’ she said.
If I couldn’t speak to Hannah, I figured I could talk to the next best thing. Her mum. So I called up DS Cole and asked if I could interview Joanne. She said in fact Joanne had been asking after me, so I could visit straight away? Providing I agreed to keep it informal. Which is police speak for waiting until the subject can’t see you before taking down your notes.
I was getting good enough at navigating the lanes around Rushpool that I could swing around to drop Beverley off at the Swan and then go on to the Marstowe’s without having to do any reversing or tricky three-point turns. I did notice that some of the press pack were back in the Swan’s car park and, when I turned into the Marstowe’s cul-de-sac, I spotted a photographer staking it out. He fired off a couple of shots as I passed, but it was an automatic gesture. Routine.
I also noticed that Andy Marstowe’s Toyota wasn’t parked outside the house, so imagine my state of unsurprise when I found Derek Lacey with his feet firmly ensconced under the kitchen table. I followed Joanne inside and he jumped up when he saw me and shook my hand.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
And then, surprised to find he was still holding my hand, he let go and offered me a seat opposite him and Joanne.
‘Thanks,’ he said again. ‘It seems such an inadequate word.’
There were two open bottles of wine on the kitchen table and two glasses. As I sat down, Derek, obviously familiar with the kitchen, located another wine glass and plonked it down in front of me.
‘Red or white?’ he asked.
I went with white. After all, I was under instructions to keep it informal. The beauty about the whole ‘coppers don’t drink on duty’ rule is that people think that if you’re drinking you’re not on duty. They’re wrong, of course. We’re always on duty. It’s just that sometimes we’re a little bit unsteady as well. Although, strictly speaking, I should have sought pre-authorisation by a senior officer of Superintendent rank or above before I emptied my glass.
I tasted the wine. A year sitting at Nightingale’s table meant I could at least tell good from bad – and this was not bad.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ said Derek. ‘South African.’
‘So how’s Nicole?’ I asked.
‘Don’t they keep you informed?’ asked Joanne.
‘I’m just a constable,’ I said. ‘I’m pretty much the last person that anybody tells anything to.’
‘She’s coming home tomorrow morning,’ said Derek. ‘That’s why I’ve been sent ahead to make sure everything is shipshape and Bristol fashion.’
‘So she’s over the shock?’ I said.
‘Not entirely,’ said Derek and drained his glass. ‘But the doctors think that familiar surroundings might help.’
Help what? I wondered, but sometimes it’s better just to look interested and hope for the best.
‘She’s having trouble talking,’ said Derek. ‘She keeps forgetting words – aphasia, the doctors call it. She was completely
non compos mentis
when we first saw her, but much better now.’ He paused to fetch another bottle – a Sauvignon blanc this time. ‘I’m just relieved to have them back.’
‘Peter,’ said Joanne, and then stopped and looked at Derek, who took a breath.
‘If something had happened to the girls . . .’ he said. ‘The police wouldn’t keep it from us – to spare our feelings?’
‘No,’ I said.
Not unless you were suspects, I thought, and even then . . .
‘Definitely not,’ I said.
‘You’re sure?’ asked Joanne.
‘Do you think something happened?’ I asked.
Derek filled his glass and topped up mine.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They’ve always been such happy girls – ask anyone. It’s worrying to see Nicky so withdrawn and uncommunicative.’
‘And we were worried the last time,’ said Joanne.
‘The last time?’ I asked.
Derek sighed.
‘It’s not the first time one of mine has run away,’ said Derek.
This was not in any case summary I’d read and, believe me, in missing kid cases ‘has run away before’ tends to be pretty prominent in the initial assessment.
‘Nicole ran away before?’ I asked. ‘When?’
‘God, no,’ said Joanne. Her glass was empty so I topped it up – it was only polite.
‘This was a long time ago,’ said Derek. ‘And it wasn’t Nicole. It was my eldest – Zoe.’
‘I didn’t know you had an eldest,’ I said and thought – if it’s in the files Lesley would be so pissed off with me for missing that.
‘By Susan, my first wife. She’s all grown up now,’ he said. ‘Lives over in Bromyard.’
I filled my glass and took a sip – the second bottle wasn’t as good. Not that Derek seemed to notice. I filled his glass as well.
Given the amount of wine we’d necked, I decided to just come out and ask them what happened.
‘Zoe was always a difficult child,’ said Derek.
‘She was a perfectly good girl,’ said Joanne.
‘Well, she loved you, didn’t she?’ said Derek to Joanne.
Joanne turned to me and said in mock confidence, ‘I used to babysit her when she was small.’
‘And spoil her,’ said Derek. ‘And listen to her stories.’
‘She had a wonderful imagination. Loved Harry Potter and all those fairy books,’ said Joanne.
‘Did she say why she ran away?’ I asked.
‘No,’ said Derek. But he said it way too quickly, and his eyes shifted unconsciously to look at Joanne, who was pretending to be taking a long sip of her wine while she thought of something convincing to say. I gave her as long as she needed.
‘It was just a silly argument,’ she said, and then uttered the phrase you should never utter in front of the police. ‘It wasn’t anything important.’
‘And we found her quickly enough,’ said Derek.
‘Just in time,’ said Joanne. ‘We were just about to call you lot.’