Broken Homes

whatever had been laid under the tarmac surfaced inside the garage or carried on.
    When I leant closer I got a flash of straight razor and snarling dog that made me take a step backwards.
    ‘You know what those remind me of?’ I said.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Lesley and we all took a step backwards, except for Zach who took two.
    ‘We’d better get Nightingale to look at this,’ I said and closed the garage door as gently as possible.
    Lesley and Zach went back upstairs because one person standing around in the rain looks less suspicious than three, and popped back down with Toby. Because one man standing in the rain with a dog is practically invisible. Nightingale arrived ten minutes later and spent half an hour staring at the things in the garage.
    ‘I’ve never seen anything remotely like this before,’ he said at last.
    ‘Any idea what they’re for?’
    ‘I’d have said they were demon traps,’ said Nightingale. ‘But I have no sense of the malice one gets with a true demon trap. At least not in the concentration I would expect from this many weapons all in one place.’
    ‘Same technology, though?’ I asked.
    ‘Technology? Yes, I suppose it is a technology,’ said Nightingale. ‘It was probably too much to expect our opponent to respect the fine craft tradition embodied in British wizardry.’
    ‘Probably,’ I said and closed the garage door.
    The rain and overcast meant the evening got dark early and the abandoned blocks that surrounded the tower loomed over the garden.
    ‘This much is certain – having invested so much here they’re unlikely to abandon it now,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘County Gard keep turning up,’ I said. ‘It might be time to wind up here and go after them directly.’
    ‘Missing Molly already?’ said Nightingale. ‘Let’s give Bromley and Sussex another twenty-four hours to see if they find a connection, and decide then.’
    That agreed, me and Toby returned to our gardenless flat in the sky and found that Zach and Lesley had already gone to bed.
    Fortunately, the internal speakers on the new TV were adequately loud.
    I had the dream where I was lying in bed between Beverley Brook and Lesley May which I’d been having every two to three weeks for the last year or so – and trust me it is not as erotic as it sounds – even if Beverley is wearing a wet suit. I hadn’t told anyone about the dream, not least because Lesley always appears with her beautiful face intact and that always seemed like a betrayal. The bed we’re in changes from dream to dream. Sometimes it was my bed in the Folly, sometimes the double bed that had belonged to Lucy Springfield who had rich parents and a desperate need to parade me up and down in front of them at breakfast. Occasionally it was my old bed at my parents’ flat – which was improbable since it barely fit me, let alone three fully grown adults. But mostly it was an improbably wide and soft hotel bed – the sort of bed that James Bond might share with two women. And he wouldn’t let the fact that one of them was in uniform, including her Metvest, cuffs and pepper spray slow him down either. So in my dream they lay there looking beautiful in the way only someone you love can look while sleeping, and all I could think about was that it was all right for some, because they were getting a good night’s sleep and I was lying between them and staring at the ceiling. Which, as I’m sure either of them would have hastened to point out, was stupid because of course I was asleep, having the dream.
    But tonight someone started screaming outside the window.
    I woke up standing in the middle of the living room, my hands clenched into fists. But the flat was silent.
    If you’re police you quickly learn to recognise a real scream when you hear it and this had been a real scream – only I couldn’t tell whether it had been confined to my dream.
    I pulled on my jeans and hopped out onto the balcony.
    At first all I could hear was the city grumbling out beyond the empty blocks, but then I heard an engine noise much closer. Not a car, a small engine like that on a lawnmower or a power tool, and coming from the garden below.
    Then I heard the scream for real. A woman. Pain, despair, fear.
    Lesley sat bolt upright when I banged open the bedroom door. Zach lay sprawled next to her, naked, one leg hooked possessively around her thigh.
    ‘There’s an incident in the garden,’ I said. ‘Hurry.’
    I grabbed the go bag, flung open the front