So starting with the bookshelves – any genuine Newtonian magic books like what I might find in the Folly library? None. Any occult or secondary works by known Newtonian authorities such as Richard Spruce, Samuel Erasmus Wolfe and Charles Kingsley, but not counting The Water Babies. None. Any general occult or other religious books that show a serious interest in spiritual topics but don’t generally show up in the Mind, Body, Spirit section in Waterstones. Possibly – a couple of books that looked like Catholic theology. I made a note of the titles in the box provided.
Then you check for paraphernalia, always bearing in mind that the line between cosplay, magic practice and niche sex play can get pretty blurry. The only ritual item we found was a large wooden and silver crucifix mounted in the hallway. We hadn’t noticed it on entry because it was hidden behind the open door, and it was definitely unusual. The wooden cross was made of varnished mahogany, while the Christ figure was silver and abstracted to the point where the face was a drooping featureless blob and it was impossible to tell where his flesh ended and his loincloth began.
‘It’s melted,’ said Danni, and I saw it was true.
When I got close I caught a hint of the same concussive light I’d got from the fulgurite tube. Now that I knew what I was looking for, the trace was getting easier to spot. I had Danni confirm before we moved on to the bedroom.
The first thing we did was pull back the bed, to check underneath as well as get better access. This revealed splatters of blue paint at the base of the wall. It had been painted over in haste and without any protection for the floor. I did the first assessment, letting my gloved hand rest on the middle of the patch, and felt nothing except maybe a persistent salt tang which I reckoned as an old vestigium from when the London docks were still in operation. I made a note of the sensation while Danni confirmed – although she thought the vestigium was more fishy than salty.
I left Danni on guard while I popped down to the Asbo to grab my hooley bar to carefully lever off the plywood sheeting. It was only held in place by the sort of masonry nails you might use to hang framed pictures on a wall, and they mostly spanged out when I put my weight on the bar.
Gouged so deeply into the door that it had penetrated past the surface laminate and into the compressed hardwood beneath were three marks. The centre design, despite being made of only three lines, was unmistakably a Christian cross. To its right another three lines made a smaller, inverted cross, while on the left three gouges of different length branched out in jagged lines from a single point – like lightning.
When I touched it, it was indeed like being hit in the back of the head by an angry maths teacher. Once Danni had confirmed the vestigium I called Stephanopoulos and arranged for a search team and a forensic sweep, starting with the painted patch in the bedroom.
‘My money’s on blood,’ said Danni. ‘What’s next?’
‘Some initial house-to-house,’ I said.
Danni was not happy going door to door.
‘I signed up for Falcon to avoid this shit,’ she said.
I knocked on the next door along.
‘Some things are unavoidable,’ I said, and was proved right when a white man with no neck, tattoos and a Rottweiler opened it and demanded to know what the fuck we wanted.
The Rottweiler was huge and snarling and straining at its lead. I could see the man was having to exert some pressure to hold it back. His expression indicated that he was perfectly willing to let go if we gave him an excuse.
Nightingale’s got this spell that can make a dog go to sleep, but unfortunately he hasn’t taught it to me yet. Fortunately, to my amazement, Danni crouched down and stuck her face out at the forty-odd kilograms of solid muscle.
‘Who’s a beautiful girl?’ she said.
The unlovely, flat-faced lump of genetic killing machine immediately lurched forwards, tail wagging so that Danni could stroke its head, all the while telling it what a beautiful, lovely, happy baby it was.
Danni looked up at the owner, who was looking as amazed as I felt.
‘What’s her name?’ she asked.
‘Beatrice,’ he said.
‘Who’s a lovely girl, Beatrice?’ said Danni, flinging her arms around the dog’s neck. ‘Yes you are, yes you are.’
After all that, the only logical next step was being invited in for a cup of tea.
The interior of the flat contained more chintz than I was expecting, given its owner, so I wasn’t surprised to find out that he’d only recently moved in with his nan. His name was Craig Sandwell and, judging from how scrupulously clean he kept the flat, I was guessing that he’d spent most of his life being institutionalised. Prison or the armed forces? I was reluctant to ask because he was being so co-operative, and in any case someone in the inside inquiry office could look him up later.
His nan was asleep in the main bedroom. Craig had moved in after she’d had a stroke, and acquired Beatrice the throat-ripper to keep her company while he was at work. He worked nights as a security guard at the Crossrail works at Canary Wharf and worried about burglars.
‘Some of the kids round here are well out of order,’ he said.
When we steered him around to it, he told us David Moore had been quiet and standoffish.
‘Typical posh leaseholder,’ said Craig. ‘He’d nod if he met you on the walkway but he wouldn’t get in the lift with you.’
When we asked whether he’d shown any recent changes in behaviour, Craig said he hadn’t noticed any but his nan had.
‘She said he’d started singing in the middle of the night,’ said Craig. ‘Said it sounded like hymns to her.’
Craig wasn’t about to let us wake up his grandmother to confirm, so we moved on to the next flat for even more hearsay.
We were kept on the doorstep by a cheerful, angular, middle-aged white woman with ex-blond hair, unseasonable shorts and a green sweatshirt with ‘Fuck Off I’m Busy’ written across the chest. The colour and lettering had faded enough for me to think that this was a relic of an enjoyably misspent youth.
The sweatshirt lady didn’t have much to do with her neighbours, apart from next door, where she would check on the old lady and take Beatrice for a quick spin. She wasn’t even sure if she could pick David Moore out of a line-up, although she was willing to try. She hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual recently but her daughter, Megan, had said she had. She was at school at that moment but we could come back later if we liked.
‘She said she saw an alien,’ said Megan’s mum. ‘Last weekend. If that’s any help?’
‘Did she say what it looked like?’ I asked.
‘She might of,’ said Megan’s mum, ‘but to be honest I wasn’t paying attention.’
We were saved from further house-to-house by the arrival of forensics and some hand-picked bodies from Belgravia who’d been designated the H2H team. Hand-picked, that is, by Stephanopoulos on the basis of who’d irritated her the most recently.
I did say I’d personally come back and interview Megan the alien-spotter when she was back from school.
‘Are there aliens?’ asked Danni as we climbed back into the orange Asbo.
‘Out there?’ I said. ‘Very likely. Down here? Not so far.’
We were going to head back to Belgravia for tea and paperwork but Stephanopoulos called us before we could pull out.
‘We’ve been going through David Moore’s phone logs,’ she said, ‘and we’ve found something you might want to get on to.’
David Moore had made no less than twenty-three calls to the mobile phone of one Preston Carmichael between six in the morning and seven in the evening on the same day he’d visited his ex-wife.
Two days after Megan had allegedly seen an alien.