Broken Homes

a freight train through it. Nightingale advanced on Varvara Sidorovna from its remains.
    He was wearing, I noticed, a charcoal-grey lightweight worsted suit in a classic sixties cut which he must have acquired about the same time he bought the Jag. It was, I thought queasily, a suit my dad would have been glad to wear. It looked completely pristine and as he approached he shot his cuffs and checked the links – a completely unconscious gesture.
    ‘Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina,’ he said. ‘I am arresting you for murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to murder, aiding and abetting before, during and after the fact and no doubt a great many other crimes.’ He hesitated and I realised he couldn’t remember the modern caution.
    ‘You do not have to say anything,’ shouted Lesley. ‘But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
    I cautiously picked my way through the debris strewn across the yard. Nightingale pulled a set of modern handcuffs and tossed them to me. I helped Varvara Sidorovna to her feet and asked her to put her hands behind her back and slipped the cuffs on.
    ‘For you, Major,’ I said, ‘the war is over.’
    Varvara gave me an exasperated look and then sighed.
    ‘If only that were true,’ she said.
    At which point the Essex Police arrived with the fire brigade just behind them and tried to arrest us all, on the very sound policing principle of arrest everyone and sort out the guilty at the station. There was a certain amount of waving of warrant cards, calls to superiors and veiled threats that what had happened to the farm buildings could easily be repeated if someone didn’t starting taking us seriously, thank you very much. They did take Max and Barry off our hands and a couple of hours later they found our third suspect, whose name turned out to be Danny Bates, five kilometres away, having run as soon as the fireballs started flying. Making him possibly the brightest there.
    We all ended up at Chelmsford nick, because not only did it have a brand new custody suite but it was also a short walk from Essex Police Headquarters. Which allowed the Local Response Team to quickly shove their problems all the way up to ACPO rank and then scarper back to Epping.
    Essex’s ACPO contingent, awed perhaps by Nightingale’s immaculate suit or, more likely, being equally desperate to punt the whole thing back to the Met, agreed to let us conduct our interviews on our own terms once the arrests had all been regularised. They gave us a windowless office to work in where me and Lesley promptly fell asleep. Nightingale woke us up with coffee, assorted fruit, cheese sandwiches and an interview strategy.
    We were going to start with Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina before she could recover her poise. And me and Lesley would do it, so we could escalate up to Nightingale if necessary.
    Nightingale eyed our less-than-enthusiastic faces.
    ‘I’ll ensure that more coffee is laid on,’ he said.
    ‘Can I have a taser as well?’ asked Lesley, but Nightingale said no.
    Varvara Sidorovna sat on the other side of the interview desk dressed in the cheap white T-shirt and grey jogging bottoms that have become the uniform of shame now that we’re no longer allowed to put our suspects in paper suits. There were no tapes in the double cassette recorder and while Essex Police might be taping the output of the CCTV camera mounted in a red perspex bubble above our heads, this was officially an unofficial interview. This had become our standard procedure, a chance for us and our interviewee to discuss issues that neither of us particularly wanted on the record.
    ‘Can you state your full name please?’ asked Lesley.
    ‘Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina.’
    ‘And your date of birth?’
    ‘November the twenty-first 1921,’ said Varvara Sidorovna. ‘In Kryukovo, Russia.’ Which I found, when I looked it up afterwards, was now part of the sprawling Moscow suburb of Zelenograd and, incidentally, the closest the Germans got to the capital during the Second World War.
    ‘Did you serve in the Soviet Army during the war?’ I asked.
    ‘365th Special Regiment. I was a lieutenant,’ she said, ‘not a major. Is the Nightingale going to show his face at some point?’
    ‘He’s about,’ said Lesley.
    ‘I’d heard rumours about him, but I’d always thought they were exaggerations. Man, he’s something.’ Varvara