What Abigail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch (most read books TXT) 📕

late and I’ve had a chance to see how it messes with your head and makes you wavy when you should be thinking straight.

He is a boom ting, though.

*

It is a hot day and I am jamming in Simon’s tent at the far end of the garden. Ahead of me is a wooden door that leads out onto Hampstead Heath, set into a two-metre wall topped with a double strand of barbed wire. This is, Simon says, to stop burglars and is the reason why he has to escape over the side door at the front. It doesn’t seem to stop the foxes, who ooze through it at will.

Simon’s garden is divided into two bits. The two-thirds closest to the house has a patio, a lawn and neat flower beds. There’s a white enamel garden table and red wooden folding chairs. Angelica the housekeeper has promised sandwiches and ginger beer for laters.

The other third of the garden, starting about where Simon’s escape tree stands, is deliberately messy with a trio of smaller trees, long grass and what Simon says his mum calls a rockery. This is obviously his bit and is littered with loads of old toys. Not far from the tent is a big plastic tank manned by a small teddy bear wearing an old-fashioned army helmet, keeping watch from the commander’s hatch.

‘Commander Ted,’ Simon says when he spots me looking. ‘Guarding the back door.’

Lucifer has taken up position behind me in the tent and Simon, now that his mum has left for work, has rushed in to get the Chubb key for the garden gate from the hiding place she thinks he doesn’t know about.

‘So you could have gone out of the back whenever you liked,’ I said when he told me about it.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But then Mum might notice and hide it somewhere else.’

Lucifer nodded in approval and said that it showed good tradecraft – no wonder Simon gets on with the foxes so well. I have my isochrone map hidden in one of Simon’s sketchbooks. He has a ton of these in his room and another ton of crayons, pencils, watercolour sets although, real talk, he doesn’t seem to use them much.

Still with Lucifer’s help, I make a list of our assets, twenty-four foxes in all, operating in pairs for safety.

‘Strictly speaking,’ says Lucifer, ‘a proper surveillance team should have three foxes for daylight operations – five would be better.’

But we need twenty-four teams to cover the main access points on and off the Heath – especially since we have to have what Lucifer calls ‘operational redundancy’ in case there is more than one set of Sugars, which is what Lucifer called the teens we were watching for.

‘Sugars?’ I asked.

‘Subjects,’ said Lucifer. ‘Sugar for S, as opposed to targets which would be Tare for T.’

I actually had to deep that a bit before I realised that Lucifer was using a phonetic alphabet again, but not the one everyone uses now. When I asked Lucifer why they used that particular alphabet, she gave me a very human-looking shrug and said that it was the one the foxes had always used. Which at least was more than I’d got out of Indigo.

This was supposed to be Camp Simon’s House, the nerve centre of the combined human/fox intelligence-gathering effort – serious business, right? Up until the point where Sugar Niner and Indigo discovered Simon’s garden trampoline. After a couple of experimental bounces they start doing the strange jump-dive thing foxes like to do, and then it’s all of five minutes before Simon is joining in.

‘I swear,’ says Lucifer, glaring at the two other foxes, ‘it’s like herding humans. You two – we’re working here.’

‘I thought you guys were professionals,’ I say.

Sugar Niner starts using Simon as a platform to jump from and is making delighted squeaks as he bounces.

‘I blame you for this,’ says Lucifer.

It’s not like we’ve anything to be professional about for the next couple of hours, and eventually the foxes curl up in a heap at the back of the tent for a nap and only wake up when Angelica brings out tea.

‘What are those?’ asks Sugar Niner after Angelica has gone.

‘Cheese puffs,’ says Simon with his mouth full.

Sugar Niner says something but since his mouth is full of cheese puff, all I get is showered with crumbs. Lucifer rolls her eyes, but I notice she and Indigo are too busy nomming their own cheese puffs to speak.

Fortunately for me and Simon, the cheese puffs keep the foxes busy long enough for us to bags the sausage rolls and cheese and tomato sandwiches. I make Simon swap places with me and sit in the tent – I’m worried about him getting sunburnt, and I need the vitamin D.

‘If you could do anything,’ asks Simon, ‘what would you do?’

Simon likes to ask these questions at random intervals. The last one was if you could be any superhero, and I said Dr Manhattan and then had to explain what that was all about.

‘I’d learn to fly,’ I say – lying. ‘What would you do?’

‘Climb Nanga Parbat,’ says Simon.

‘Which is what?’

‘A mountain in Pakistan,’ he says, and explains that it’s the ninth highest in the world and considered the third most dangerous to climb. But apparently this was not the reason Simon wanted to climb it.

‘It’s so beautiful,’ he says, and I think that his mum would do her nut if she found out his plans. Or maybe she has, and that’s why she doesn’t like to let him out of her sight.

I’m about to ask why he thought it was beautiful but a little vixen called Zebra slinks over the garden wall and through the long grass towards us.

‘Got a report,’ she says once she’s reached the safety of the tent.

‘You’ve tracked one of the Sugars?’ I ask.

‘Not exactly,’ says Zebra.

19 As far as we can tell, Simon’s mother, BLACK REDACTION OVER NAME, is a Grade 7 civil servant working for the Home Office. Peter knows