Broken Homes

metal which faded to leave no sign of a join.
    ‘Do we have time?’ I asked as we moved on to the next railing. ‘What with the Mulkern case and the Faceless Man?’
    ‘I’ve spent too long in the land of the lotus-eaters,’ he said. ‘It won’t profit me to find that faceless bastard.’ The railing shone white under his hands then faded. ‘Not if you and Lesley aren’t ready to take up your duties.’
    A gust of wind chilled me as I realised that Nightingale was planning against the possibility that he wouldn’t survive that encounter.
    ‘And the exercise will do me good,’ he said.
    When we were finished we walked up to join Lesley, who was packing up our stall. The last, I noted, to be taken down.
    ‘Notice anything odd?’ she said.
    I looked around. The cleaners had nearly finished and clear plastic bin bags stuffed with rubbish awaited collection along the paths. A man was walking his dog and a couple of curious teenagers in hoodies were watching us in the hope that we did something interesting enough to post on YouTube.
    ‘Not really,’ I said.
    Lesley tapped me on the shoulder and pointed up at our official Metropolitan Police crest with the reassuring slogan in script. Only someone had altered it while we slept. Someone with some proper skills, because if I hadn’t known it had changed I would have assumed it had always read – Metropolitan Police: Working Together For A Stranger London.

9
The Night Witch
    O nly London didn’t get any stranger. It stayed resolutely normal for the next week or so – at least on the surface.
    Operation Tinker, the investigation into the murder of Patrick Mulkern, was headed by Bromley Murder Investigation Team under DCI Duffy, although Nightingale made a point of attending every morning briefing in case something magical came up. My presence, or Lesley’s, was apparently not required.
    ‘You have a relationship with the Belgravia team,’ Nightingale had said as explanation. ‘And Westminster has a tradition of dealing with unusual cases that Bromley does not share. Inspector Duffy wants someone senior enough to shoulder the blame should things go seriously awry.’
    Still, there’s never any shortage of work for idle police hands, especially ones that double up as apprentices, so me and Lesley got on with our paperwork, chasing the paper trail made by our suspected Little Crocodiles and doing the preliminary reading for the detective exams we hoped we’d be taking by the end of the year. At least, I was hoping to take them by the end of the year. Lesley’s current status of being on semi-permanent medical leave was causing her grief.
    Professor Postmartin wrote me a letter in which he thanked me for the list of books at Stromberg’s Highgate villa and said that he was appending a list of texts in English, German and Latin that were associated with the 1920s. I dutifully passed this on to Bromley MIT to add to their inquiry database with flags to contact me if anything turned up.
    Despite the best efforts of the Spring Court it snowed that weekend, although it didn’t settle inside London’s urban heat island. It certainly didn’t deter Abigail, who arrived on Sunday morning for what Lesley insisted on calling Junior Apprentice . Then, as I did each week, I attempted to find new ways to keep Abigail occupied and out of trouble. Often this involved us following up things she’d put down in her notebook, working our way through the ghost-spotting books, playing what Nightingale called the Game of Jewels or, if we were really desperate, teaching her some Latin. The high point was usually tea downstairs in the atrium, especially since Molly had reached the cake section in the Jamie Oliver book.
    ‘What is Oberon?’ she asked that Sunday.
    ‘I don’t know,’ I said and looked at Nightingale.
    ‘Some variety of fae I presume,’ he said stirring his tea.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Abigail. ‘But fae just means different, don’t it?’
    Nightingale nodded.
    ‘Is he king of the fairies?’ she asked.
    ‘Royalty amongst the fae is a strictly protean concept,’ said Nightingale. ‘Why do you ask?’
    ‘There was this Asian kid that got lost and Oberon got into an argument with Effra about who got to keep him,’ she said and showed me his picture on the phone.
    He was a very handsome brown-skinned child with black ringlets and mahogany eyes. The kind of boy who was going to be mistaken for a girl until his teens and would leave a trail of broken