Broken Homes

demon-trap planted in the flat, but it didn’t surprise her in the least. She’d moved Albert out of the place as soon our visit had finished and she suspected the device had been there as much to keep him under control as it was to catch someone like Nightingale or us.
    We asked her about Robert Weil and his body-dumping activities, but she denied any knowledge. Did she know why the Faceless Man might want to shoot a woman in the face with a shotgun?
    ‘If he wanted to delay identification,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps to cover up work he was doing on her face.’
    I felt Lesley stiffen beside me.
    ‘What kind of work?’ she asked.
    ‘You’ve met some of his menagerie,’ said Varvara Sidorovna. ‘Perhaps he’s looking to create new creatures.’
    Officially unofficial the interview might have been, but Varvara Sidorovna wasn’t going to incriminate herself beyond what she thought we already knew. She claimed to know nothing of County Gard and laughed out loud at the idea she might have offed Richard Dewsbury, the drug dealer, by inducing a breakfast heart attack.
    ‘Not my style, darling,’ she said.
    Nor was she forthcoming about what exactly they’d been up to with their dogs at the Essex Farm. When we asked her what she’d been doing there, all she’d tell us was, ‘Tying up loose ends. Imagine my surprise when I found you two poking your nose in.’
    I glanced at Lesley and she shrugged. It was obvious to us that the tying up of loose ends, had we not intervened, probably would have proved fatal for Barry, Max and Danny. We questioned her about that, and she asked whether the world would really be worse off without them.
    ‘Did you know about the wood nymph?’ I asked.
    ‘What wood nymph?’
    ‘The one that lived at the base of Skygarden Tower,’ I said.
    ‘I know a great many things,’ she said. ‘You’d be—’
    ‘Did you know about Sky?’
    I felt Lesley’s hand on my arm, and I realised I’d half risen from my chair. A white Styrofoam coffee cup rolled around on the table between us – fortunately empty. Varvara Sidorovna had flinched back and was giving me a wary look.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about it.’
    I took a breath and sat myself down.
    ‘I’m going check on that,’ I said. ‘If you do know, then it would be better to tell me now.’
    Varvara Sidorovna looked to Lesley, who gazed impassively back.
    ‘Somehow I doubt that,’ she said, and then held up her hand. ‘I swear I did not know. But it does explain what Max and Barry were burbling about when I picked them up this morning.’
    ‘You seem very relaxed,’ said Lesley. ‘Considering the severity of the charges against you.’
    ‘I have a longer perspective on life than you do,’ she said. ‘I was held prisoner by the SS – do you really think the Met frightens me? Or even the Isaacs? I love that nickname, by the way. “The Isaacs.” So very quaint. You must know that no conventional prison could hold me if I chose to escape. You’re not about to summarily execute me. And it would be an enormous waste of your time to guard me. No, sooner or later, we shall come to an arrangement. And in any case, I may yet prove useful.’
    ‘But you were going to kill us,’ said Lesley. ‘Remember?’
    ‘If you’re afraid of wolves,’ said Varvara Sidorovna, ‘don’t go to the woods.’

18
Space Left Over After Planning
    I t hadn’t really sunk in at the time, but my beloved Ford Focus ST was kaput. If the half a ton of bricks falling on it hadn’t written it off, the fact that an elephant had gone for a kip on the bonnet would have. Nightingale never could figure out whether that was something he or Varvara Sidorovna had done, and she just laughed in my face.
    Nightingale’s Jag had been safely parked a hundred metres further down the farm access road. He said he’d conjured the sound of his arrival to distract whoever was holding us in the barn while he sneaked around the back.
    We spent the night in the Chelmsford Travelodge. I had a room with a charming view of the nearby flyover, but at least the bed was soft and the shower worked. In the morning me and Lesley had a competition to see who could pile the most food on their plate at the continental style all-you-could-eat breakfast. There were no sausages, bacon or fried slice – neither Toby nor Molly would have approved.
    DCI Duffy arrived mid-morning with a car full of officers from Bromley and took over interviews with Max