Broken Homes

door and ran for the lift. Unless it’s a fire, the lift is always going to beat twenty-one flights of stairs. I had my trainers on by the time the lift arrived and stuck my foot in the closing door as I wrangled my Metvest out of the bag – it felt clammy against the bare skin of my chest and back.
    Lesley arrived wearing her mask, leggings and Zach’s outsized red Clash T-shirt. She followed me into the lift and I withdrew my foot. The doors closed in Zach’s face as he came running, half naked, to join us.
    ‘I think he wants his T-shirt back,’ I said to Lesley as she struggled into her Metvest. I pulled out my airwave and keyed in Nightingale’s number – he answered within ten seconds. I told him we were heading downstairs to investigate strange noises.
    ‘How strange?’ he asked.
    ‘Machine tool noises, possible scream,’ I said.
    ‘I’ll move to the perimeter at Station Road and hold there,’ he said.
    Given that Nightingale was heavy artillery, we didn’t want him piling in if this turned out to be common or garden criminality. Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure we should be piling in – at least not while kitted up and with The Fuzz written on our foreheads.
    This is why proper undercover operations have rules and procedures for handling this kind of shit.
    The lift was too old and vandalised to go ‘ding’, so the doors merely opened on to the ground floor and me and Lesley dashed out, and then slowed to creep through the foyer doors and out onto the walkway.
    We heard it as soon as we were in the open air, a power tool whine over to the right and men’s voices below and to the left. Unmistakably the sound of two people who were having a knock-down, drag-out argument while trying desperately not to raise their voices.
    Then I recognised the noise the power tool was making, the crunching yammer of a chainsaw cutting into wood. I felt a cold flush as I realised what was going on and what the likely consequences were.
    ‘They’re going after the trees,’ I hissed. ‘We have to stop them now.’
    ‘Peter, it’s just trees,’ she whispered back. ‘They can plant new trees.’
    I didn’t try to explain because there’s no pithy way of explaining that you believe that Sky the wood nymph is likely to be symbiotically linked, certainly to her own particular tree but also I suspected, to all the trees in the garden. At least no way I could think of on the spur of the moment.
    I keyed Nightingale, warned him they were going after the trees and, before Lesley could ask any questions, ran for the ramp down to the garden.
    Lesley followed me.
    I came off the ramp at a dead run and headed straight for the chainsaw noise. With only the walkway lights the garden was a confusion of shadows. But I’d walked Toby down there enough times to keep me from running into a tree.
    Then a bright light blossomed overhead and I thought wildly that a police helicopter had stupidly turned its sungun on the wrong person, when I realised that the light was everywhere.
    Ahead of me was a chunky white guy in jeans and a leather biker jacket who was using a chainsaw on one of the cherry trees by the dismantled playground. The vibration had dislodged the blossom which swirled like pink snow in the harsh white light.
    ‘Oi,’ I yelled as I charged him. ‘Step away from the tree.’
    Startled he turned to face me and instinctively raised the chainsaw. I skidded to a halt and eyed the whirring chain warily. If you’re an old school zombie or trapped in a lift, a chainsaw is a fearsome weapon. But outside, where there’s room to manoeuvre, you end up being more worried about what the stupid gits might do to themselves with it than anything they might do to you.
    ‘Police,’ I shouted. ‘Put the chainsaw down before you hurt yourself with it.’
    He paused and then took a hesitant step forward as if he was actually going to charge me with the thing, but then I think it dawned even on him how stupid that would be.
    ‘Dave,’ called a voice some distance behind him. ‘We are leaving?’
    Dave vacillated for a second then slowly shrugged out of the shoulder strap.
    He’s going to throw it at me, I thought, just as he threw it at me and ran.
    I dodged right, stupidly because it barely travelled a metre and a half towards me, which gave Dave a lead as he hared off towards the New Kent Road. I went after him but he was utterly reckless and I was unlucky enough not to notice the felled silver birch lying across