What Abigail Did Tha Summer, Ben Aaronovitch [if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud txt] 📗

and twisted. Somebody had been wearing this tied up, poor white trash style. I wonder why they abandoned it. I gingerly sniff it, and smell floral body spray and a hint of sweat. Otherwise it’s clean – I don’t think it’s been here long.

‘Can one of you track this by smell?’ I ask the foxes.

There is an embarrassed silence.

‘The thing is,’ says Indigo, ‘we’re not very good on smell – good at hearing . . .’

‘We can orientate ourselves in relation to the Earth’s magnetic field,’ says Sugar Niner.

‘But not really with smell,’ says Indigo.

‘Sorry,’ says Sugar Niner.

‘We need a hound dog,’ says Simon, and Indigo huffs.

Holding the shirt at arm’s length to minimise contamination, I pull out my phone and flip through until I find the most recently added number.

Thistle picks up on the second ring.

‘Hello, Abi,’ she says. ‘You must want something.’

I explain what I need and she tells me no problem.

‘I’ll send Ziggy,’ she says.

Ziggy turns out to be the collie with the mismatched eyes that the foxes all call Alpha Dog. As he trots into the small clearing I can hear the foxes scrambling to clear the area. Only Indigo is staying, and she is cowering behind my legs and making occasional squeaking noises.

Ziggy is in front of me and gives me the hard stare, so I crouch down so he can get a good look at how unimpressed I am.

‘This is important,’ I say. ‘I need to see where this came from. Can you do that?’

According to this thing I saw on the internet, cats and dogs use expressions on us that they don’t use on each other. This being on account of the fact that we effectively co-evolved together. So unless sheep are susceptible to a look of long-suffering patience, I’m going to say that the one Ziggy gave me was reserved for humans.

I hold out the yellow shirt for him, and Ziggy sniffs it a couple of times and then saunters off towards the gap in the fence. Indigo runs up my back and tries to perch on my shoulders again.

‘The game’s afoot!’ she cries. ‘Follow that dog.’

21

The House

I’m standing outside a house on a lane off East Heath Road, a four-storey semi-detached place a bit like Simon’s house, only older. The house next door has a shallow roof and a half basement but this one, the house Ziggy has brought us to, is surrounded by a two-metre green wooden site hoarding and shrouded in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. There’s a builder’s placard halfway up, next to a blue and white sign with a drawing of a bodybuilder and WARNING ALARMED in red letters. There is an ordinary-sized door with a Yale lock and a double-sized gate with two heavy-duty padlocks next to that.

Ziggy pads over to the hoarding, puts his paw on the door and turns his head to give me a look.

‘Yes, I’m impressed,’ I say. ‘That’s some proper tracking there.’

The look turns long-suffering, like my history teacher when he thinks I’m going to ask him a question.

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘Give mad love to Thistle for me.’

Ziggy nods, turns and walks away.

Once the collie is out of sight, Indigo pops out of a hedge like a ninja and I spot Sugar Niner, Zebra and a couple of foxes I don’t recognise skulking in the gardens on either side of the house. Indigo jumps from a wall onto Simon’s shoulder. He doesn’t seem to notice, let alone mind, the weight.

‘Sugar,’ says Indigo, ‘take a team and check the back for access, put surveillance in place and report back.’

‘Roger,’ says Sugar Niner, and vanishes into the next-door garden followed by a couple of foxes.

‘Zebra,’ says Indigo. ‘Head back to Lucifer and report.’

‘Hold on,’ I say.

‘Wait one,’ Indigo tells Zebra, and then asks if I’ve got any instructions.

‘Ask Lucifer to take the teams off the perimeter and put them around the Tumulus,’ I say in my best Nightingale voice. ‘Track any Sugars coming out, but intercept any trying to get in.’

‘Intercept?’ says Zebra in shock.

‘We’re Charlie Fox,’ says Indigo. ‘Covert only. Dogs, cats, yes. But we don’t do human sanctions.’

‘Ow,’ says Simon as Indigo inadvertently digs her claws in, and I remember what ‘sanction’ means in spy talk.

‘Don’t be tapped,’ I say. ‘Warn them off. We just need to keep it clear until the Feds arrive.’

‘What makes you think they’re going to find it?’ asks Lucifer.

‘Because I’m going to call them and tell them where it is,’ I say.

Now, I should have called Nightingale. But, you know what? It never even occurred to me. Instead I pulled my precious emergency burner phone out of my backpack, because the Feds can track your SIM card and the IMEI number that identifies your phone. That’s why swapping out your SIM when you want to stay anonymous is a waste of time. The Feds can also identify your voiceprint if you’re stupid enough to leave a message, which was why I coached Indigo in what I wanted her to say. She memorised it first time – they’re good at remembering stuff, these foxes are. On account of them not being able to write shit down.

I hold the phone up so Indigo, still perched on Simon’s shoulder, can leave a message at Holmes Road station, for whom it may concern, as to what they can find at the Tumulus. Then I take the battery from the phone, just to be on the safe side, and tell Indigo to climb down off Simon.

‘Do we go in?’ asks Simon.

‘We should have a look,’ I say. ‘Make sure it’s the right house.’

I push at the small door, because you never know until you try, but it’s firmly shut.

‘Give us a boost,’ I say, and Simon puts his hands around my waist and lifts me until I’m sitting on his shoulder. Like we’re acrobats or something. On the other side of the hoarding is the remains of a front garden, flower beds crushed under a muddy yellow skip, and two pallets piled high with