Broken Homes

the girl in the pink tracksuit who went down swearing. Then Varenka spun to face me but with Lesley clear that was my chance to summon up the impello-palma combination that I feel is my own personal contribution to specialist law enforcement.
    Varenka reacted even before I’d finished the spell, and flung up her arm to protect her face as it slammed into her like a body block from an invisible riot shield. She rocked back on her heels and I realised the implications of her early reaction just in time to feel her building a counter spell. In the confines of the landing there wasn’t anywhere to go but back up the stairs, so I faked towards the landing door and then lunged up the steps.
    I felt the bite of cold metal and caught the smell of alcohol and wet dog. Something went past me with the instant violence of an articulated lorry slipstreaming a lay-by, wood splintered, somebody screamed and a billow of choking white plaster dust filled the landing. A metre-wide section of the doorjamb and the wall beside it had smashed open. Through the hole I could see chairs and tables and startled pale faces.
    ‘That’s it,’ screamed the girl. ‘You three are barred!’
    But it was just us up there, Varenka having scarpered.
    ‘Watch it,’ I yelled as Lesley cautiously peered down the staircase towards the exit. ‘She’s a practitioner.’
    ‘No shit,’ said Lesley and vanished down the stairs
    I followed her down using both hands for balance as I took the stairs three at time. When I reached the bottom there was no sign of the boy who’d let us in and I hoped he’d been smart enough to do a runner.
    Lesley was too good a copper just to bang through the door. She paused to check that Varenka wasn’t waiting in ambush before slipping out. She veered left as she went, so I veered right. Varenka was the other side of Grafton Road yanking open the driver’s side door of a silver Audi. When she saw us, she gave an exasperated snarl and flung out her arm in my direction. I did a dive behind the nearest car and slapped the pavement just in time for something to smash into the side of the vehicle with a noise of breaking glass. The car alarm went off, but behind the endless electronic hooting I heard the Audi pulling way. I thumbed the jury-rigged battery switch on my mobile and risked a glance over the bonnet just in time to be able to read the index on the back of the Audi as it accelerated south down Grafton Road.
    The other side of the car I’d been sheltering behind, a red VW Golf, had been smashed in and was white with what looked like frost. I resisted the urge to touch it, just in case. I looked over and found that Lesley was unhurt and walking to join me.
    My phone jingled to let me know it was finally ready. I rang Metcall, gave my rank and name and asked to speak to the supervisor for EK, meaning Camden. While I waited to be put through I wrote the index number on my arm with the biro Lesley handed me. When the supervisor came on I asked for an urgent circulation on a vehicle and gave them the index.
    ‘If seen it must not be stopped without Falcon assistance, repeat Falcon assistance,’ I said. Falcon was our brand new call sign and I said it twice because it doesn’t get used much and I didn’t want some poor sod in an IRV coming to grief tackling somebody as obviously dangerous as Varenka. I invoked Nightingale’s authority to back it up, since a chief inspector goes a long way to smoothing out any bureaucratic lumps and bumps. I looked over to confirm that Lesley had Nightingale on her phone and she nodded when she saw me and signalled ‘ten minutes’. Once I was sure Metcall was going to put out the action report, I hung up and trotted over to the Asbo to grab our airwave sets.
    ‘You know, if you’d grabbed your airwave first you could have circulated the report on the local channel,’ said Lesley when I handed over her set. ‘Just saying.’
    I noticed that my hand was trembling, not shaking you understand, but definitely a reaction. Lesley glanced at my hand and then gave me a wry look. We both looked back at the red VW Golf. The driver’s side door had been stoved in as if hit by a girder end on. Slashes of silver metal showed through where the paint had been stripped away.
    ‘You wouldn’t want to be standing in front of that, would you?’ said Lesley.
    Members of the public were beginning to arrive in numbers and Lesley stepped forward to shoo them back. There were a couple of gasps