‘That’s palm like the tree, not Pam like the woman’s name?’
‘That’s right,’ Henry nodded. He could see Blue approaching out of the corner of his eye and decided he needed to get away before she arrived to stick her oar in. It was hard enough keeping a story straight if you were the only one telling lies. Besides, he’d learned as much as he was going to from this policeman and the ambulance driver.
But Tyneside was looking at him curiously. ‘Didn’t get on all that well with your mother yourself, did you sir?’
Henry flushed again. ‘What makes you think that?’
Tyneside shrugged. ‘Moved out years ago, haven’t visited much. Not exactly the loving son, are you?’
‘I write,’ Henry protested. Which he did, albeit rarely. The letters were composed in the Faerie Realm (not always by Henry himself) then transferred by apport to a university professor in Wellington, who happened to be a Spiritualist and believed himself under orders from the Other Side to forward them to Henry’s mother.
‘You don’t happen to work in the explosives industry, do you sir?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Henry said firmly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse -’
‘What do you work at, sir?’
I’m King of the Fairies, Henry thought. What could he say? If he hesitated, the District Inspector would know at once he was lying. But the fact was, he’d never had a real job, not a real Analogue World job. He hadn’t even been to university: he’d married Blue straight out of high school and immediately taken up State duties in the Realm. And beside that, he hadn’t even known what he wanted to do.
‘I’m a teacher,’ he heard his mouth say. His mother had always wanted him to be a teacher. That would please her. If she was still alive.
The thought brought him up short. He really did need to get away from this man. Essentially Henry hadn’t learned much except that there was no confirmed bad news, while Tyneside had already winkled out enough false information to hang him twice over. He might easily suggest Henry take a little walk down to the station for further inquiries if Henry wasn’t very, very careful, and Henry didn’t have time to take little walks anywhere. His daughter was missing, and now his old home was blown up, his mother, sister and Anais were all missing, any one or all of them might be dead, God forbid, while Henry was faffing round getting nowhere as usual.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘my wife is very upset about all this, as you might imagine, and I’ve left her alone too long. We’ll be staying at the Dorchester if you’ve any news – or if you need me any further.’ God knew why he’d picked the Dorchester, except it was a posh London hotel that made him sound impressive and respectable (until Mr Tyneside calls and finds you’re not on the list of guests, a small voice whispered in his head). Then, before things could get any worse, he turned and walked away.
He headed Blue off by taking her arm. ‘They haven’t found bodies,’ he said with quiet urgency, ‘which is a good thing.’ His natural pessimism seeped through a little and he added, ‘Of course, they might find something yet, but there’s sniffer dogs, and I think if they were going to -’
‘Mella’s not here,’ Blue interrupted him. ‘There’s nobody here, nobody dead.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I used a follower.’
Henry looked at her in shock. ‘You used a what? ’
Followers were demons that followed people in the Faerie Realm, where they’d been illegal for centuries. Then he remembered they weren’t illegal any more, one of the many reforms that came in after Blue became Queen of Hael. But legal or not, they were still considered terribly disreputable.
Blue must have caught something of the thought in his look, for she said fiercely, ‘What do you expect me to do? She’s our daughter! ’
‘No, no,’ Henry said. ‘You did the right thing.’ He hesitated. ‘Did it bring you any other information?’
‘She was here,’ Blue said, ‘just as we suspected. She was here, but she’s not now and there are no bodies in the rubble.’
‘So where has she gone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Didn’t the follower tell you?’
‘It lost her in the explosion – I’ve sent it hunting for her again, but we’re not sure if she’s here or back in the Faerie Realm. It’s just possible she may have gone home.’
It sounded like wishful thinking, but it was cheering all the same. ‘What makes you think that?’ Henry asked hopefully.
‘Look at what’s happened,’ Blue whispered. ‘What does that remind you of?’
Henry blinked. ‘A bomb blast?’
‘Don’t be silly. Bombs blow things outwards. Look at your mother’s house now. I know there’s rubble blocking the road, but look where most of it is.’
Henry looked. Most of it was where the house had stood, a huge pile of broken bricks and mortar.
‘What does that remind you of?’ Blue repeated.
‘I don’t know,’ Henry said helplessly.
‘You know the old portable portals Mr Fogarty used to make – the early ones, before he’d quite got the hang of it?’
Henry nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘You remember what happened when you used them inside a building?’
It came flooding back to Henry now. It hadn’t always happened – in fact it hadn’t often happened – but there’d been at least two cases he could think of when the portal had caused a building to collapse. Both times there’d been injuries, but at least the people had been rescued alive. When the portal closed, it created a super-vacuum that caused the building to implode. Blue was right. The remains of his mother’s home looked more like it had imploded than exploded.
‘Oh my God,’ he breathed.
Blue said, ‘That man you were talking to – he’s waving at you. I think he may want to talk to you again.’
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Henry said urgently. They were approaching the police barrier and at least he’d had the sense to tell the taxi to wait. As they hurried through, he had that weird feeling of somebody staring at the back of his neck, but when he glanced around, he could see nobody.
Eighteen
Chalkhill wrapped the shadow cloak a little tighter and peered out from behind the dustbin. What was Brimstone doing in Seething Lane of all places? The old boy had once had lodgings down here, but they were long gone. And they’d both owned a business here – the Chalkhill and Brimstone Miracle Glue Factory – but that was long gone as well, demolished by the interfering young busybody Pyrgus Malvae in the days when he was heir to the throne. Was Brimstone heading for the old factory site? It seemed unlikely. The demolished buildings had been replaced by a school, but the contractors neglected to defuse the cobblestone minefield attached to the original plant, so neither the school nor its pupils lasted very long. After that, the city authorities turned it into a carriage park for a while, but the high rate of vandalism meant it was seldom used. Prickleweed eventually invaded from the nearby Wildmoor Broads, so that the old site was a complete no-go area now.
One thing was certain: Brimstone hadn’t come here to make the trip to Buthner as they’d agreed, any more than Chalkhill was looking for transport to Haleklind. Chalkhill knew the smell of bullshine when he heard it and he’d never bought Brimstone’s story about the pillar carved into a dragon with emerald eyes. But that wasn’t to say he didn’t believe Brimstone knew where Mella was. The old fart knew all right: he just wasn’t telling. Chalkhill could only presume he meant to grab the girl for himself, try to hold her for ransom or trade her as a slave. Complete madness, of course, but then – ha, ha – Brimstone was mad, wasn’t he? If he hadn’t been sent potty by the cloud dancer, he wouldn’t have been able to locate Mella in the first place. All the same, his madness meant that if you followed Brimstone when he tried to carry out his loony scheme, you found Mella. And once Chalkhill found Mella, all he needed to do was quietly dispatch Brimstone, who was no further use and too old anyway, then deliver the girl to Hairstreak for slaughter. Mission accomplished double-quick time, fat payment received and on to the next job. Hey-ho the holly!