Whispers Under Ground

room next to mine?’
    Molly gave me a long stare and then inclined her head at me, exactly the way Ziggy the dog had, before gliding off towards the stairs. Possibly to put fresh linen on the guest bed or possibly to sharpen her meat cleavers – it’s hard to tell with Molly.
    Toby had stopped yapping and instead snuffled at Zach’s heels as he made his way across the atrium towards the podium where we keep The Book, well not The Book exactly but a really good late eighteenth-century imprint of The Book open to the title page.
    He read the title out loud: ‘ Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Artes Magicis .’ With the erroneous soft ‘c’ sound in principia and magicis – Pliny the Elder would have been pissed. I know it annoyed Nightingale when I did it.
    ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ he said and turned to point an accusing finger. ‘You can’t be part of this, you’re … common. This is the Folly, this place is strictly toffs and monsters.’
    ‘What can I say,’ I said. ‘Standards have been falling lately.’
    ‘The bloody Isaacs,’ he said. ‘I should have taken my chances with the Nolan brothers.’
    I wondered if Nightingale knew we had a nickname. I also wondered how come someone like Zachary Palmer knew what it was.
    ‘So what are you then?’ I asked – it had to be worth a try.
    ‘My dad was a fairy,’ said Zach. ‘And by that I don’t mean he dressed well and enjoyed musical theatre.’

10
    Russell Square
    I t was the yelling that woke me up the next morning. I rolled out of my bed, grabbed my extendable baton and was out the door before I was fully awake. All those nights being terrorised by Molly had obviously paid off. It was still early enough to be dark, so the first thing I did was hit the hallway lights.
    I stood there in my boxers chilling quickly in the winter air thinking that maybe it had been a nightmare, when the next door along slammed open and Zach ran out wearing nothing but a pair of purple Y-fronts and swearing at the top of his voice. He saw me and waved something in my face.
    ‘Look at this,’ he said.
    It was his filthy gym bag, the one that had stunk up my car, only now it was marvellously clean, the frayed seams had been stitched and reinforced with leather and the Adidas logo touched up with blue thread. Angrily he yanked it open to display the clean and neatly folded clothes inside within a waft of lemon and wildflowers. Only one person I know folds clothes to that level of precision.
    ‘Molly must have cleaned it,’ I said.
    ‘No shit,’ he said. ‘She didn’t have no right. It’s my stuff.’
    ‘Smells nice though,’ I said.
    He opened his mouth to say something but it snapped shut when Lesley came running around the corner carrying her baton in one hand and a heavy-duty torch in the other. She’d taken the time to fasten on her mask, but nothing else, and was dressed in a pair of skimpy red and white polka dot low-rise shorts and a sleeveless thermal vest under which her breasts bounced distractingly. Me and Zach both stared like a pair of teenagers, but I managed to drag my eyes back up to her mask before she could hit me with the baton.
    ‘Good morning,’ said Zach brightly.
    I introduced Zach to Lesley and gave her the potted history. ‘I couldn’t leave him in the snow,’ I said. She told us to stop making so much noise and that she was going back to bed.
    As she walked away I realised I’d forgotten just how shapely her thighs were and how beautiful the dimples that formed in her buttocks when she walked.
    Me and Zach both watched in rapt silence until she’d gone round the corner.
    ‘That was amazing,’ said Zach.
    ‘Yes she is,’ I said.
    ‘So,’ said Zach. ‘Are you two fucking?’
    I glared at him.
    ‘Does that mean you’re not?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘She’s—’
    ‘Sex on legs,’ said Zach and took a moment to sniff his armpit. Apparently satisfied, he squared his shoulders, twanged the elasticated waist on his Y-fronts and said, ‘Good. There’s nothing like an early start.’ He made to follow Lesley but I stopped him with a hand on the chest. ‘What?’ he asked.
    ‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said.
    ‘You can’t have it both ways, bruv,’ he said. ‘Make up your mind.’
    ‘Did you not notice …’ I hesitated, ‘the injuries?’
    ‘Some of us look beyond the superficial,’ said Zach.
    ‘Some of us look beyond someone’s tits,’ I said.
    ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Did