Broken Homes

and one half shriek from the crowd.
    What now? I thought and looked around to see if there was a new threat or a body or something equally unpleasant. I wondered about the boy at the door again, but saw that he was back at his post. I checked back with the crowd to see what they were staring at, and realised that it was Lesley.
    She’d come out of the fair without her mask. She looked at me and I could tell from her expression that she’d only just realised it too. A couple of white teenaged girls had their phones up and had them pointed at Lesley. A third girl was too transfixed by the sight to do more than clap her hand over her mouth.
    ‘Shit,’ said Lesley softly. ‘I must have left it inside.’
    ‘Oi.’ I turned to the gathering crowd. ‘Back you go. You’ve all watched enough telly to know we need to keep the area clear.’
    Behind me Lesley walked briskly back towards the Goblin Fair.
    ‘Back up,’ I shouted. ‘Nothing to see here.’

10
Game Relish
    V arenka abandoned the Audi five minutes’ drive away on the Chalk Farm Road and presumably ducked straight into Camden Lock where she could lose herself amongst the crowds and leave the area on no less than five modes of transport, including canal boat. We could have pulled all the surrounding CCTV but we didn’t have the manpower, budget or stamina to wade through that much tape. Besides, as Lesley pointed out, this was Camden Lock where she could have bought a complete change of clothes, had her hair dyed, sipped a fresh latte and acquired a nice handcrafted henna tattoo before leaving.
    That didn’t stop Nightingale screeching to a halt outside in true Sweeney style and striding into the Market, kicking down doors and putting the frighteners on the locals with some pithy Latin tags. At least, I’d like to think that’s what he did. But I wasn’t there because me and Lesley were under strict instructions to secure the crime scene around the Goblin Fair, and see if we couldn’t dig up any witnesses. Only everyone including the boy from the door and the girl in the pink track suit had vanished – all except Zachary Palmer.
    ‘They all went out the emergency exit,’ said Zach.
    I’d found him on the roof sitting at a round café table covered in a red-and-white checked tablecloth and laid out for dinner for two. A fluted glass vase with a single yellow rose sat in the centre and a champagne bottle in a frosted brass ice-bucket sat on a separate stand at his elbow.
    The roof was triangular in shape and littered with scraps of plastic, abandoned white polystyrene cups rolling around in the breeze and free copies of the Metro . They’d taken all their stock with them, so it couldn’t have been that much of a panic.
    ‘You know,’ said Zach, ‘until you came along I used to be the local loose cannon. Now people have started warning me about the dangers of associating with you.’
    A London Overground train growled past us. The tracks were less than a metre from the edge of the roof and the carriage windows were level with our kneecaps.
    I gestured at the waiting champagne.
    ‘We didn’t interrupt your dinner, did we?’
    ‘Nah,’ said Zach and tapped his foot against a wicker hamper with F&M stencilled on its side. ‘I’m just waiting for your colleague. It was part of the deal.’
    I went downstairs to where Lesley was searching the room at the bottom of the landing – the one Varenka had blown a hole in. It was full of overstuffed furniture, chintz and white plaster dust. I contacted Nightingale on the airwave to see if we were needed, but he said no.
    ‘She’s long gone,’ he said. ‘I’m going to arrange for her car to be towed away and then I’ll be with you in an hour. Any luck your end?’
    I told him that nobody was left except Zach.
    ‘At least getting him to talk shouldn’t be that hard,’ said Nightingale and signed off.
    ‘Isn’t that Peter O’Toole?’ asked Lesley who was pointing to a row of framed photographs on the wall. It looked like a publicity still from Lawrence of Arabia and had been signed. The other photographs were also vintage actors in black and white portraits, most of whom I recognised in the it’s-that-guy way you do with people who were famous before you were born.
    ‘If you’ve got time for refs,’ I said, ‘then your boy Zach is upstairs and waiting.’
    ‘I did promise,’ said Lesley.
    ‘Save some for me,’ I called after her as she went up the stairs and then wondered what