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 downstairs for them 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 sanitised version of what had happened to us, and he explained that his people had searched the house and that Victoria and not-really-Nicole were missing.
16
Going Forward
The house of Puck, the Pokehouse, where will-o-wisps were wont to lead travellers astray – and cause police officers to break traffic regulations with extreme prejudice. I’d told Dominic to floor it, and that’s just what he’d done.
Whoever had smacked Derek Lacey on the side of the head, and my money was on Victoria Lacey in the kitchen with the bottle of Baileys, had a good twenty minute head-start. But, since they hadn’t taken a car, we might have a chance to cut them off – literally at the pass, as it happened.
The big Nissan roared as we did a ton down the B4632 towards Mortimer’s Cross. And, trust me, that is not something you want to do without an ejector seat. Behind us I saw lights and sirens as assets started piling in from Leominster – fuck knew what DCI Windrow was going to make of this.
‘I think we’re going to be asked some questions,’ I said.
‘What’s with the “we”, kemosabe?’ said Dominic. ‘I’m planning to blame you for everything.’
He made a sudden right into a turn I couldn’t even see, and we went bouncing up a slope. I caught a quick flash of an English Heritage sign and then we slipped about on a rough track until Dominic told me to get ready to open a five-bar gate. So I leaned out the window and knocked it off its hinges with an impello. The Nissan bounced noticeably as we ran over the flattened gate.
‘That,’ said Dominic, ‘was not compliant with the countryside code.’
As far as I could tell, we were bouncing across an open field – ahead of us something dull and metallic reflected in the headlights.
‘Another gate,’ yelled Dominic, and I leaned out and knocked that one down as well. The staff seemed to ripple under my hand as I used it, purring as the metal five-bar gate fell down flat with no fuss whatsoever.
Then we were jolting down a tunnel of trees, with flashes of light grey to our left. I realised we were on the same path that Zoe had followed with baby Nicole over a decade ago. One that really wasn’t designed to be driven down at speed.
I saw pale faces suddenly caught in the headlights – so did Dominic, and he hit the brakes. The Nissan skidded, fishtailed sideways towards the riverbank before recovering, and slowed to a halt a couple of metres short of the figures.
It was substitute-Nicole and Victoria. The woman had bound the girl’s hands with what looked like duct tape and wound a piece around her lower face to gag her.
We climbed out of the Nissan and approached carefully.
‘You can’t stop me,’ she screamed and started dragging the girl up the path.
When faced with a low-level hostage situation your first task is to calm the hostage taker down long enough to find out what they want. Then you can lie to them convincingly until you negotiate the hostage back, or are in a position to dog pile the perpetrator. Dominic got his torch out and kept it on Victoria’s legs to avoid intimidating her – that could come later.
‘What can’t we stop you doing?’ I asked.
Victoria gave me a puzzled look.
‘You can’t stop me getting Nicole back,’ she said.
I looked at the girl who was not-Nicole but probably her half-sister. She glared back over the duct tape as if it was my fault. Which technically, I suppose, it probably was.
So it was a hostage swap – which meant if we were clever we might be able to get Nicole back and keep not-Nicole as well.
‘Who are you making the swap with?’ I asked.
We were emerging from the tunnel of trees. To our right the treeless slope of Pokehouse Wood swept up the ridge. The white poles that protected the new saplings thrust up amongst brambles and the stands of foxglove stood grey and trembling in the moonlight. I smelt horse sweat and malevolence – I didn’t think we were alone.
‘The lady who owns Princess Luna . . .’ she said. ‘She came to see me last night. I thought it was a dream. But it couldn’t have been a dream, could it? Because you never remember your dreams, do you?’
Victoria started to drag the girl up the diagonal forestry track – it was slow going, not least because not-Nicole had gone limp in an effort to stop her.
‘This one is your biological daughter,’ I said.
Victoria stopped dead.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Remember when Zoe ran off with the baby?’ I asked. ‘This is where she came.’
‘For god’s sake, why?’
‘For the attention I suppose—’
Victoria cut me off with a disgusted sound.
‘Of course for the attention,’ she snapped. ‘I mean, why did she think it was a good idea to swap Nicky?’
‘That was an accident,’ I said. ‘She didn’t even notice it go down.’
‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘That makes everything okay.’ She shook not-Nicole roughly by the arm. ‘This isn’t mine,’ she said. ‘Blood isn’t everything – I want my daughter back.’
‘So do I,’ I said. ‘And when the other half of this swap-meet turns up, maybe we can do some bargaining.’
‘Um,’ said Dominic urgently. ‘That would be about now.’
I can’t say they materialised out of thin air, but it was as if when I turned my head they arrived in my blind spot, so that when I looked back in that direction they were there. It was creepy, and it was definitely showing off.
And they were real, there in Pokehouse Wood, on the last of the quarter moon. They were flesh and blood. Human shaped but tall and thin, with long delicate faces and hands and black eyes. A woman stood ahead of us dressed in armour made not of metal, but of overlapping stone scales, slate possibly, polished to a bright blue-grey sheen.
Like the scales of a fish, Zoe had said.
Victoria might have called her a lady but I know a Queen when I’m within genuflection distance.
She wore a silver circlet upon her head with a single large sapphire at her brow. In her hand she held a straight spear of white wood tipped with a leaf-shaped flint blade. I’ve seen enough Time Team to know how sharp a blade like that could be. From her shoulders hung a cloak of white wool, and sheltered under one hem I could see a small figure with a pale worried face. The real Nicole, I presumed.
For a mad moment I considered just stepping up and arresting the lot of them – as a plan it at least had the virtue of simplicity. Its principal drawback being that the Queen was flanked on either side by her beasts, real and stinking. I could see the sheen of sweat on their dappled flanks, and the one on the left had a nasty cut on its shoulder – a streak of dark blood down its side. That one had a particularly mad look in its eye, just for me.
‘There’s a pair of good looking IC7 boys behind us,’ said Dominic softly. ‘Carrying bows and arrows. And another two upslope.’
‘Good fields of fire,’ I said.
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘We’re okay as long as we don’t do anything stupid.’
‘You’re giving me this advice now?’ said Dominic.
Victoria grabbed not-Nicole by the shoulders and held her out at
arm’s length towards the Queen.
‘I’ve brought this one,’ she said. ‘Now give me back my daughter.’
The Queen narrowed her eyes and suddenly I knew I’d seen that expression on someone else’s face. She twitched back her cloak and gently laid a long-fingered hand on Nicole’s shoulder.
Victoria shoved not-Nicole, who was having none of it and refused to budge.
‘Move,’ hissed Victoria, and the Queen’s lips twisted into a thin smile. She shook her spear and not-Nicole’s shoulders slumped and her head drooped – she took a step forward.
What does it profit a copper, I thought, if he should gaineth one hostage but loseth another?
I put a werelight into the air above our heads, the biggest I’d ever attempted. The staff hummed like a beehive and the light came out the size of a weather balloon and bright enough to get three paragraphs in UKUFOindex.com and a special feature in the Fortean Times.
I’d been going for sunlight, and it rolled over us like a sudden summer, painting the unicorns in pinks and whites, rippling like an oil slick across the scales of the Queen’s armour and flashing off the sapphire at her brow.
‘This is the police,’ I said. ‘Everybody needs to keep calm and stay where they are.’
‘You moron,’ shouted Victoria.
The Queen turned her eyes on me and I felt the power of her regard push and pull and shove at me as if it were a festival crowd.
‘You wouldn’t believe the number of people who’ve tried that on me,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid you’re just going to have to talk instead.’
The pale flawless skin of her brow ruffled, and fuck me if I didn’t recognise that expression – every single time I failed to finish what was put in front of me for supper at the Folly. So far the Queen had kept her gob shut, but I was willing to bet she had a mouth full of sharp teeth and, behind them, a long and prehensile tongue.
I laughed for sheer delight at having that question answered.
Now I knew what to look for, the similarities to Molly were obvious. Not so much the physical, but the way they held themselves, the way they moved as if they were standing still and the world was obligingly rearranging itself around them.
So Molly was fae or, even better, this particular kind of fae – whatever this kind of fae was. And so we progress in our knowledge of the universe step by step, pebble by pebble.
‘Give me my child,’ shouted Victoria. The Queen glanced at her, and Victoria fell suddenly silent and slumped to her knees.
‘Stop that,’ I said.
The Queen looked back at me and inclined her head.
‘I can’t let you have either of the children,’ I said. And, because I was raised to be polite, ‘Sorry.’
The Queen’s expression went from annoyance to contempt, and on either side her beasts stirred, stamped their hooves and lowered their heads.
I fixed my eyes on my unicorn, the one with the bleeding wound on its shoulder, and feinted with my staff. It flinched and then backed away a couple of steps before rearing up on its hind legs with a frightened whinny.
The Queen shot it a poisonous look and I thought, Just wait till she gets you alone. You’re in so much trouble. The unicorn came down at her unvoiced command, but it stayed noticeably nervous.
Then the Queen turned back to me and smiled – this time showing her teeth.
And suddenly there were at least a dozen more armoured fae standing amongst the foxgloves and between the trees that grew down by the riverbank. They wore the same armour of blue-grey slate and in their hands they held half-drawn metre-long bows.
I took a deep breath.
‘Peter,’ said Dominic. ‘Can you even spell de-escalate?’
And I exhaled slowly.
‘Let’s not do anything hasty,’ I said, and lowered my staff.
I heard Dominic mutter something weird about a throne of blood. I looked at the girl half-wrapped in the Queen’s cloak, at her half-sister bound and fuming, and her mother on her knees and weeping silently. My mind was suddenly clear and free of doubt and, given what I was about to do, possibly devoid of thought.
‘My name is Peter Grant, I am a sworn constable of the crown and an heir to the forms and wisdoms of Sir Isaac Newton,’ I said. ‘I offer myself in exchange for the children, the mother and my friend. Take me – let everyone else go.’
She made me wait, didn’t she? Of course she did.
Then her smile grew wider and she inclined her head in gracious acceptance.
‘Dominic,’ I said.
‘You idiot,’ said Dominic.
‘Take the girls and Mrs Lacey and get out of here as fast as you can and go to the nearest place indoors where there’s lots of people – a pub will do,’ I said.
The Queen banged the butt of her spear against the ground.
‘I’ll be right with you,’ I said, and then to Dominic, ‘You’ve got to get a message to my governor, DCI Nightingale. Tell him that wherever they’re taking me it will be via Pyon Wood Camp, okay? The castle must be somewhere beyond that, in Wales I think.’
Two sharp raps with the haft of the spear – no more time.
‘They don’t like the Roman road,’ I said quickly, and handed Dominic my staff. ‘That would be a good place to intercept.’
Before Dominic could say anything I stepped forward until I was between Victoria and not-Nicole and the Queen. The unicorn I’d injured snorted and pawed the ground – I gave it the eye.
‘Now the girl,’ I said.
The Queen nodded cheerfully and set Nicole in motion towards her mother. She passed me, a small figure dressed in what looked like a woollen shift. I heard her mum sob with relief.
‘Dom?’ I called without looking round. ‘Have they cleared out of your way?’
‘Yes, they have,’ said Dominic.
‘Then off you go,’ I said and stepped forward.
You swear an oath when you become a police officer – you promise to serve the Queen in the office of constable with fairness, integrity and impartiality, and that you will cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property. The very next day you start making the first of the many minor and messy compromises required to get the Job done. But sooner or later the Job walks up to you, pins you against the wall, looks you in the eye and asks you how far you’re willing to go to prevent all offences. Asks just what did your oath, your attestation, really mean to you?
I could have bottled it and not offered the swap. No disciplinary inquiry would have found me lacking in my duty had I merely sought to contain the situation and wait for back-up – in fact that would have been proper procedure.
And it’s not like my colleagues wouldn’t have understood. We’re not soldiers or fanatics, although I think I would have heard the whispering behind my back in the canteen whether it was really there or not.
But sometimes the right thing to do is the right thing to do, especially when a child is involved. And I reckon there wasn’t a copper I’ve worked with who wouldn’t have made the choice I did. I’m not saying they would have been pushing their way to the front of the queue, and they certainly wouldn’t have done it with a glad song on their lips, but when push comes to shove . . .?
So I did it. Because I’m a sworn constable and it was the right thing to do.
Plus I fully expected Nightingale to come rescue me.
Eventually.
I hoped.
They followed the Queen as she turned and walked up the logging track. The unicorns wheeled and cantered ahead. Her heralds, I decided, and the manifestation of her desires. Around me the rest of the party moved in a loose formation, some on the track, some drifting silently amongst the saplings. It was hard to pin down how many there were.
I heard the Nissan start up and, after what sounded like a slightly desperate three-point turn, roar away. The engine sounded weirdly muffled, but at the time I just put that down to distance and the intervening trees.
Either we
turned off the logging track or it petered out, because soon we were walking a narrow trail that threaded between mature trees. There was some moonlight to see by, but I found it hard to keep up and the Queen had to stop a number of times to wait for me. Whenever she did, I heard a familiar rhythmic hissing sound from her retainers – I recognised it from Molly. Laughter.
After a long time we emerged onto the bare crown of a hill. One of the unicorns crowded me then, pushing its shoulder against me and guiding me roughly into a hollow between two grassy banks. There the Queen and her retainers made camp, sitting down and wrapping their grey cloaks around themselves. There was a chill in the air, so when one of the retainers offered me a cloak I took it gratefully, although it did smell suspiciously of horse.
The unicorns took station at either end of the hollow and, under their watchful eyes, I slept.
I dreamt that I’d pulled over a flying saucer and was trying to determine whether to charge the occupant with driving while unfit under section 4 of the Road Traffic Act (1988). Which was stupid really because it was a flying saucer and they’d have to be charged as being unfit for duty under part 5 of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003. Not to mention breaches of various CAA regulations, and of course Illegal Entry into the UK under the 1971 Act.
I woke to grey skies and damp grass.
Croft Ambrey, that’s where I reckoned I was, in one of the ditches that put the ‘multi’ into multivallate Iron Age hill fort. I smelt wood smoke and, looking over, saw a group of grey-cloaked figures crouched around a campfire.
Never mind Nightingale, I thought, the National Trust are going to have conniptions about that. Quietly, I got up. And angling away from the campfire, I made my way up the side of the lower of the banks. If I was at Croft Ambrey it might be possible to make a dash down the slope towards Yatton. Despite the low cloud it was humid and I was sweating by the time I reached the top.
Stretching away below me was an unbroken sea of trees. Not the ordered ranks of pine and western hemlock, but the spreading multi-coloured tops of oak and ash and elder and all the traditional species of the ancient woodland. I recognised the outline of the hills and valleys from Google Maps and from when I’d stood at the Whiteway Head further up the ridge.