‘I know circumstances are fraught,’ said Nightingale. ‘But do try to be discreet.’
I checked my tablet and found I had an email with Walid’s instructions on how he wanted the samples collected, labelled and transported. I don’t need to tell you how important getting a DNA sample from a changeling might be, he wrote. We’d discussed setting up a database of ‘interesting’ DNA samples, but apparently there were legal issues. Patient confidentiality and human rights and all that.
Dominic’s mum had a fully equipped office.
‘From when she thought she was going to run this place as a B&B,’ said Dominic, as he helped me print off the consent forms I was required to get the parties to sign. ‘Do you want me to help?’
‘Your governor doesn’t want you involved,’ I said. ‘Besides, you must have actions piling up back at the nick.’
‘They’ve got me reviewing statements during the initial investigation,’ he said. ‘Occasionally I punch myself in the face to keep awake.’
‘If anything exciting happens, I’ll let you know,’ I said.
To avoid just that, I started with the Marstowes. And, to avoid the posse of photographers at the end of their cu-de-sac, I cut through the adjacent woods, hopped over their back fence and knocked on their kitchen door. Andy answered. He gave me a puzzled look as if trying to work out who the hell I was.
‘You’d better come in,’ he said.
He sat me down in the kitchen and offered me a beer which I declined in favour of a cup of tea. Despite the open window the kitchen was stuffy and there was the starchy overheated smell of baby food. Andy said that Ethan was poorly and that Joanne was upstairs dosing him with Calpol and would be down in a minute.
I asked him for samples and showed him the forms. He asked why and I decided to tell him the truth.
‘If Nicole is not really Nicole, then we should be able to tell by comparing her DNA to her parents,’ I said.
‘I get that,’ he said. ‘Why do you need ours?’
‘In case Hannah was the one that was swapped,’ I said. ‘This saves us having to make two trips to the lab.’
I watched his face as he parsed that and then he chuckled grimly.
‘Belt and braces,’ he said and signed the forms.
I took the swab using the collection kit that I’d borrowed from Dominic who, I realised, had left the Boy Scout scale behind and was now verging on Batman levels of crazy preparedness.
When Joanne came down, Andy persuaded her to sign and swab and then she persuaded Hannah – who wouldn’t stop giggling. Then I mounted a detector at the front and back doors, or rather I watched as Andy neatly screwed them into position himself.
‘Just a precaution,’ I said.
‘I don’t like the idea of being watched,’ said Joanne.
‘This doesn’t detect you,’ I said. ‘It’s not a motion sensor.’
‘What does it do?’ asked Andy.
‘Hopefully,’ I said, ‘if certain conditions are met, it will stop working.’
I slipped out over the back fence and made my way down the backs of the village gardens to the Old Vicarage and the Laceys. On the basis that what the eyes don’t see the mouth can’t complain about, I planted a detector in their huge back garden before banging on their back door.
They met me in what estate agents call a reception room, what I would have called a living room and no doubt Nightingale called a parlour – unless it was a drawing room. In a country home this is not a sign of favour.
They didn’t offer me tea.
Derek made a big production of checking the consent forms while Victoria sat beside him on the sofa with her lips compressed down to a line and her hands jammed between her knees.
‘I really don’t see why this is necessary,’ he said.
‘A big case like this,’ I said, ‘even forensic evidence can get challenged. You know, as to collection and that sort of thing. Better to have two sets of samples – that’s why they’ve got me collecting it because I’m not from West Mercia Police and I’m going to send my samples to a lab in London. Separate force, separate samples, separate lab, separate chain of custody.’
Derek was nodding his understanding but Victoria was just staring at me, not angry or hostile, just impatient with one more aggravation she didn’t need right now – thank you very much. Still, like the Marstowes, they signed the consents and opened their mouths for the cheek swab.
Victoria insisted on accompanying me when I took the sample from Nicole. I didn’t tell her that I was pretty much legally required to have an adult present – it’s easier to manage people if they maintain a sense of agency. She led me to the den where Nicole sat amongst a pile of discarded sweet wrappers and empty 600ml plastic Pepsi bottles. She had one in her hand when I walked in and was banging it idly against the floor – fascinated by the boing noise it made when it hit. The flat screen TV was showing Hotel Transylvania with the mute on – I judged it had got about halfway – and one of the Wii controllers nestled in an empty box of Milk Tray chocolates.
‘Nicky, love,’ said Victoria. ‘There’s someone here to see you.’
Nicole stopped banging the Pepsi bottle and turned to look at us.
I’d made a point to study pictures of Nicole Lacey taken just prior to her disappearance. In them she’d looked pretty but slightly odd, the combination of the straight blonde hair and the dark brown eyes meant that even with her photograph face on she stared out of the pictures with a peculiar intensity. She looked exactly the same in the flesh and if the eyes were different or changed then I couldn’t see it.
For a moment I was sure that my changeling theory had been totally wrong, but then Nicole smiled at me. It was a wonderful it’s my birthday and I’ve got a pony smile. As sincere as a cash donation and equally as suspect.
‘Who are you?’ she asked, springing to her feet.
‘My name is Peter Grant,’ I said.
‘Peter wants to take a—’ started Victoria, but Nicole didn’t seem to hear.
‘Mummy,’ she said. ‘There’s no more chocolate. Can I have some more chocolate?’
I felt the glamour underneath, and it was strangely harsh and commanding. A play-princess type of glamour, pink and sparkly and hard as plastic. Still, it had its effect. Victoria bobbed her head.
‘Of course, Princess,’ she said. ‘Anything for you.’
The little girl kept her eyes on Victoria’s back until she was safely out of the room, before turning her smile on me again.
‘You’ve got a funny face,’ she said.
‘I’m here to take a sample,’ I said, mainly just to buy time while I tried to work out what I was dealing with.
Was she a changeling? Nicole and Hannah had only been missing seven days. How would they, whoever they were, produce a duplicate in that time? Mind you, there was a spell, dissimulo, that could warp flesh and bone to fit a certain image. Could a substitute have been sculptured to look like Nicole? That would be very bad – when dissimulo let go the warped tissue fell apart. It was how Lesley had lost her face. I felt a twist of fear in my stomach that must have shown on my face because the little girl, who may or may not have been Nicole, frowned at me.
And the frown was like a slap in the face – or would have been, had I not built up a resistance to this sort of thing. Still, the girl didn’t have to know that. I made a point of looking stricken.
‘Do you like chocolate?’ she said. ‘I like chocolate – I don’t know why anybody eats anything else.’
‘Chocolate’s nice,’ I said. ‘So your name is Nicky, is it?’
There was a smear of chocolate in the corner of her mouth and a sticky sweet wrapper caught in the hair behind her ear.
‘I’m Nicole,’ she said primly. ‘But you can call me Princess.’
‘Well, Princess,’ I said, and pulled up out my sample kit and showed her the cotton bud. ‘I need to swab the inside of your cheek.’
‘What if I don’t want you to?’ she asked.
‘That wouldn’t be very nice,’ I said. ‘A proper princess would want to be helpful.’
She gave that comment the consideration it deserved.
‘I think no,’ she said, and I got the full changeling Princess Barbie effect complete with Ken’s house pool and the train-to-trot homicidal unicorn collectible set with realistic neighing. ‘But I don’t mind if you think that you did.’
You’re so busted, I thought.
I was just dithering about what to do next when I was saved by the return of Victoria with another woman in tow.
I recognised her at once.
‘Aunty Sharon’s here to see you again,’ said Victoria.
The journalist cooed hello to the fake Nicole before turning her beady eyes on me.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I’m just on the way out,’ I said, and with that I beat a hasty retreat. But not before half-inching a couple of empty Pepsi bottles. The consent forms merely specified collected biological sample – it didn’t specify how I had to collect it.
14
Media Compliant
Now, I was pretty sure that the girl currently living with Victoria and Derek Lacey was a changeling, swapped out by a unicorn-employing supernatural person or persons unknown some eleven days previously. But I didn’t have any proof. Yes, she was alarmingly weird. But then so were a lot of children – including, it has to be said, some of my relatives. And, yes, she displayed an ability – the glamour – that I’d assumed resided only with practitioners, Genius Loci like Beverley Brook and the fae. On the other hand, her appearance was unchanged and her own parents fully accepted her as their child. Worse, the media in the form of Sharon Pike, weekend cottage owner and newspaper columnist, had decided that the child was truly Nicole Lacey.
After a careful risk assessment, I determined that rushing in mob-handed and seizing the child would be hazardous, if not actually illegal. In the meantime, I suspected that the girl currently known as Nicole wasn’t facing a substantial risk of anything other than hyperglycaemia.
We were going to have to wait for the DNA tests which, according to Dr Walid, would be ready by the next afternoon at the earliest. I spoke to Nightingale, who said he would ask DCI Windrow to maintain a close watch on ‘Nicole’ and make sure she didn’t wander off anywhere.
‘Any chance of you getting up here?’ I’d asked.
‘That rather depends on how Lesley responds to your last text,’ he’d said. ‘Whatever Inspector Pollock thinks, we are ultimately responsible for Constable May. And it would be risky in the extreme if he tried for an arrest without me present.’
I told Nightingale I couldn’t see Lesley falling for such an obvious trap, but he disagreed.
‘Not consciously,’ he’d said. ‘But nobody changes their allegiance so absolutely overnight – she may be looking for a way back.’
I thought of the Lesley May I knew, who was more decisive than a bag full of judges. I still thought it was unlikely, but what did I know?
Nightingale did agree that if Lesley hadn’t responded within another twenty-four hours, he’d move on site and review my risk assessment in situ – he didn’t say it exactly like that of course.
‘Give it a day,’ he’d actually said. ‘If we still haven’t heard anything, I’ll pop up in the Jag and see what’s what. Abdul assures me that all the blood tests will be completed by then.’
So, once I’d ensured the samples were couriered off, I met up with Beverley, Dominic and Victor two villages over in the back garden of the Boot Inn where I had lightly battered Scottish cod fillet, hand cut chips and garden peas.
It was late enough for the sunlight to be slanting into the garden from the west and be cut into shadows by the shades over the tables and splash on the potted trees arranged along the fence.
‘Are there no just-pub pubs around here?’ I asked.
Dominic blamed Ludlow which, having become a major foodie centre, had raised the pretentions of all the eateries within a fifty miles radius.
‘Even the places in Wales,’ he said.
‘Good for business, if you can get plugged into the supply network,’ said Victor who, bizarrely, turned out to be a vegetarian. ‘I don’t mind raising and slaughtering them,’ he’d said when I asked him about it. ‘I just draw the line at eating them.’ He had the roasted shallot tarte Tatin, roasted pepper, goat’s cheese, artichoke and roasted pepper salad.
‘That’s one too many roasteds in the menu,’ said Dominic.
I checked my mobiles at regular intervals – both of them – the disposable and my second-best Android which Call Me Al had rigged to alert me if anything tripped a detector.
Neither made a sound for the rest of the evening, until me and Beverley were back at the cowshed putting the flagrant back into in flagrante when, in accordance with the iron principles of Sod’s Law, my Android rang. Since Beverley was the only one with at least one hand free at the time, she got to the phone first, glared at it, and stopped bouncing long enough to read it.
‘It’s just three numbers – 659,’ she said, over her shoulder.
‘It’s one of the detectors,’ I said, and extricated my right hand from under her bum and held it out. Instead of handing the phone over, she lifted her hips a fraction and pivoted around to face me – a sensation that managed to be both hugely erotic and uncomfortably weird at the same time. When she finally let me have the phone, I confirmed the numbers.
‘I’ve got to check this out,’ I said.
Beverley sighed and flopped forward onto my chest.
It took me ten minutes to get out of the cowshed, and it probably would have been longer if Beverley hadn’t decided that she wanted to come with, and so obligingly dismounted without an argument.
The detector that had gone off-line was the northernmost, planted on the Roman road where the lane from Yatton crossed and became a public footpath. Dominic had attached it amongst the bushes by the stile, so there was a good chance it might have just been vandalised.
In the darkness I could only make out the surrounding hills by the way they blotted out the stars, but according to the map on my tablet the shadow to the west was Pyon Wood and to the east Croft Ambrey, with a waning moon hung above like a banner. The Roman road was a straight grey strip between the black hedgerows. I parked the Asbo on the grass verge and left the hazard lights on. Beverley held the torch while I detached the detector from its mount and carried it back to the car. I cracked open the PVC case to expose the bare innards of the device.
‘That’s a mobile phone,’ said Beverley, leaning over my shoulder to look.
I explained that it was, and that the detector worked on the simple principle that a powerful enough source of magic would break the phone and cause it to stop pinging the network, which would then alert the custom program on my tablet.
‘So basically it only works once,’ she said.
I used a jeweller’s glass to scan the electronics, but I couldn’t see any visible pitting.
‘That’s the trouble with magic,’ I said. ‘It’s slippery stuff.’ I shrugged. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘You could bundle four or five phones together and automatically rotate through them,’ said Beverley, as I bagged and tagged the phone for shipping back to Dr Walid. ‘That would extend the life a bit.’
I installed one of my spare detectors by the stile and packed up.
‘But the switching mechanism can’t be a microprocessor,’ I said. ‘And I haven’t had time to test the effect of magic on transistors yet – you might have to use valves or electromechanical switches.’
‘Do you know why it happens?’ asked Beverley as we drove back to the cowshed.
I admitted that I did not have the faintest idea how magic did anything – let alone why it reduced microprocessors to sand and brains to Swiss cheese.
‘When you do magic . . .’ I said.
‘I don’t do magic,’ said Beverley quickly. ‘You get me? It
’s not the same thing.’
‘When you do . . . things that other people can’t do . . .’ I said, ‘it doesn’t damage your phone.’
‘Not unless the waterproofing fails,’ she said.
‘I wonder why that is?’
‘That’s easy,’ said Beverley. ‘I am a natural phenomenon. So I do less damage than you.’
‘Have you visited Covent Garden recently?’ I asked. ‘They’ve almost finished the rebuilding.’
‘That was collateral,’ she said. ‘And entirely your fault.’
The next morning I decided to check out Pyon Wood Camp – I took Miss Natural Phenomenon along with me, so she could tell me what all the plants meant.
‘They mean,’ said Beverley when she saw them, ‘that in lowland Britain if you don’t chop the trees down you get a forest.’
Pyon Wood Camp is a scheduled monument described in the catalogue as a small multivallate Iron Age hill fort. What it looked like was a round hill covered in trees. When I looked up the meaning of the word multivallate I found it meant a hill fort with three or more rings of concentric defences. Since the easiest way to start an argument amongst archaeologists is to ask them what purpose hill forts actually served – as defended villages, refuges of last resorts, ritual centres, palaces of tribal chiefs, cattle herding stations – none of that information was particularly useful.
Neither was Beverley Brook.
‘More Silurian limestone,’ she said. ‘Topped by the usual suspects – oak and ash, some beech, a couple of birch.’
It was particularly hot that morning. Victor had complained that the recent hot weather was buggering up his harvesting schedule, but he hoped that some of the rain they’d had in Wales would shift over his way.