Broken Homes

County Gard?’ I said. Normally I’d have tried to avoid asking such a direct question in case it garnered suspicion, but I didn’t think Jake would notice. He was one of those people who constantly seems to be having a conversation with someone other than the person he’s actually talking to – presumably someone much more politically committed. And interested.
    ‘Lackeys of the capitalist class,’ he said. ‘Although it has to be said they are full service lackeys, offering a comprehensive range of products and services designed to keep the working class in their place.’
    Because they didn’t just secure the flats against squatters. They were also the debt collection agency responsible for collecting rent and poll tax arrears. ‘Although you only find that out if you’re willing to spend some time in Companies House,’ he said. ‘There’s a whole series of nested shell corporations it takes ages to work through.’
    ‘Suspicious,’ I said.
    ‘Par for the course really,’ said Jake. ‘All part of the tax avoidance merry-go-round.’
    County Gard, along with the companies behind them, were desperate to get the development going. ‘There’s no commercially owned land this close to the City that wouldn’t be so expensive it would cut into their profits.’ So instead they looked to gull cheap land out of local councils desperate for cash.
    ‘Why pay full whack when you can get it off the back of the lorry cheap?’ said Jake. ‘Council land is essentially cheap land because the councils are desperate to increase their housing stock, but don’t have the funds to do it. All these developers have to do is promise to have some so-called affordable housing and it’s money in the bank.’
    ‘They must have been pissed off when this place stayed listed,’ I said.
    ‘That was down to the trees, that was,’ said Jake. Because English Heritage, being a bastion of middle class privilege, were that much more concerned with rare trees than they were with common people.
    ‘But they’re just plane trees,’ I said.
    Apparently not, because we got through another beer on the subject of the local arboreal diversity before I could make my excuses and leave. I did wonder whether this diversity had something to do with the presence of our favourite wood nymph. Or vice versa.
    Once I got back to the flat I called the inside inquiry team at Bromley MIT and suggested they check to see whether the recently cooked-from-the-inside Patrick Mulkern had any connection to County Gard. It was a long shot, but the rule of a major investigation is always throw everything into the pot. You might not find that bit of okra tasty, but somewhere deep in the bowels of the investigation some DC on a mission might snap it up.
    I remote-checked my messages at the tech cave and found that I had three. Two from my mum re: my dad’s teeth and one from Professor Postmartin who, having trawled through the list of Stromberg’s books provided by English Heritage, had found one that was of interest.
    ‘It’s called Wege der industriellen Nutzung von Magié ,’ said Postmartin when I called him back. ‘I’ve already asked them to deliver it to the Folly.’
    ‘What does that translate as?’
    ‘ Towards the Industrial Use of Magic ,’ said Postmartin.
    ‘Have you read it?’
    ‘Never heard of it before,’ said Postmartin. ‘But, by a stroke of good fortune, we’re listed as having a copy here.’ Here being the semi-secret stacks of the Bodleian Library. ‘I thought I might spend today and tomorrow reading it so I can give you a précis. Although I believe I can make a wild guess based on the title that it’s a treatise on the industrial uses of magic.’
    ‘Impressive deduction,’ I said.
    ‘Merely an outgrowth of my mad academic skills,’ said Postmartin.
    ‘Indubitably,’ I said.
    When Lesley hadn’t returned by early evening I decided I might as well get some practice in. I figured that casting in the flat, with the consequent effect on the surrounding electronics, would be anti-social. So I went downstairs to what I now thought of as Sky’s garden. That way it would be a combination practice, dog walk and wood nymph observation.
    Having been lectured by Jake Phillips on the arboreal variety of the gardens I’m fairly certain that I correctly identified the shorter bushy rowan trees, including a couple of small ones that looked like they’d grown from seeds. And the crab-apples were easy to spot, with