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Chapter Text

The whole thing had started harmlessly enough.

It was a nice sunny, if cold, autumn day and we were on our way home from a small village in Kent, where a group of mole-like (but bright purple) creatures had been causing trouble - namely, digging tunnels underneath the houses and streets and causing some minor structural damage. Fortunately nobody had been injured, and the creatures had readily agreed to stop their tunneling under the village after being shown a nice big empty field outside it where they could dig to their hearts' content.

"I do wonder why they spoke English," I mused as we drove off.

"Learned it by listening to the village inhabitants, I presume," said Nightingale.

"That doesn't explain the Northern accent, though..."

Nightingale gave a little sigh. "Do concentrate on driving please. I'd rather you not wreck my car."

"Sorry sir."

We travelled in silence for a few minutes before I glanced over and caught Nightingale smiling. "Sir?"

"How do you feel about horses, Peter?"

I blinked at the abrupt change of topic. "Uh... big animals who can both kick and bite, so I prefer keeping a safe distance from them?" Maybe that was an unfairly negative view, but in my defense I did grow up in a council estate with hardly any opportunities to interact with farm animals. "Any particular reason you're asking me this, boss?"

Nightingale explained that an old friend of his lived a few villages over from the one with the purple mole problem, and that said friend and his family bred Icelandic ponies. (It seemed animal care was a popular hobby for retired Folly wizards; Hugh Oswald over in Herefordshire had his bees, and this George Andrews fellow apparently kept horses.) "I phoned George after we got the call for this case, told him my apprentice and I would be in the area, and he invited us for tea," Nightingale continued.

"That's nice," I said. "I look forward to meeting another member of the old guard. But where exactly do the horses come in, assuming they're not invited for tea as well?"

"They're not; unfortunately they're too prone to knocking teacups and things off the table," Nightingale said in a perfectly serious tone, which he then promptly spoiled by smiling at me. "However, George and I had the idea that he could also give you a short horseriding lesson."

"Oh, there's no need for that," I said quickly as I slowed the Jag down and shifted gears to drive around a corner. "I mean, thanks for the offer, but if I wanted to learn how to ride a horse I'd have joined the Met's mounted unit instead of the Folly."

That earned me a disapprovingly raised eyebrow followed by a lecture on I'm aware times have changed but I'm still of the opinion that a wizard and gentleman should be able to ride a horse and You never know when that skill might come in handy, Peter, at which point I gave in. "Fine, but no laughing if I fall off and no taking pictures or videos on your phone."

"Deal," he agreed, an expression he must have picked up from Abigail. "Turn right at the next intersection please."

George Andrews, Nightingale had informed me, had only joined the Folly army regiment in 1944 because he'd been too young before that. "Well, he was still a bit too young when he did join but being quite tall and broad-shouldered he was able to pass for an eighteen-year-old," Nightingale had explained, which according to my mental calculation put Andrews' current age at about eighty-five.

It turned out he looked closer to sixty-five, though - a tall, white-haired, lightly tanned bloke dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, and sporting an impressive moustache. "So this is your apprentice, eh, Thomas?" he said after giving me a firm handshake.

"Yes sir," I said. "Nice to meet you."

"Likewise, young man. Now please come in, it's rather cold outside today. Well, unless you're on horseback." At my confused look he elaborated: "Riding doesn't mean just sitting on a horse and having it do all the work for you, constable; it's a physical exercise for the rider, too."

"It is," Nightingale agreed as we followed Andrews through to the kitchen of his old brick farmhouse. "Starting with keeping one's balance without disturbing the horse's movements or falling off, especially at higher speeds."

"You're not being very motivating, sir," I told him, prompting Andrews to glance back over his shoulder and give me a smile. "Don't you worry, young man, we'll put you on the calmest and friendliest horse we have. There's no sense in scaring a novice rider off horses in their very first lesson."

And if I do fall off, at least ponies are closer to the ground than regular horses, I thought somewhat sarcastically.

But before I got onto any kind of four-legged creature we had to do tea time (we're British after all). Arriving in the kitchen, which was an odd mix of modern appliances and furniture that looked straight out of a museum, Andrews got the 'Eat and drink freely, no obligation' speech out of the way, served us tea and vanilla biscuits and introduced us to his grandson, a redhead named Jamie who I guessed was around my age. (He wasn't; in fact he'd turned forty a couple weeks before. Apparently good genetics that made you look much younger than your actual age ran in the family.)

"Well, I have to be off to my dentist appointment," said Jamie after emptying his tea, standing up with a half eaten biscuit still in his hand. "I'll go grocery shopping afterwards - granddad, do you need anything from the store?"

"I don't believe so," said Andrews. "If I do think of something I shall send a text message to that clever phone of yours."

"I know you know it's a smartphone," said Jamie, but without any real annoyance; it seemed like this was a longstanding inside joke between him and his grandfather. "Anyway, Peter, you can wear my spare pair of stable coveralls for your lesson to keep you warm and your clothes clean. We're about the same size, so they should fit you."

"Alright, thanks," I said. So we were really doing this riding lesson thing, and while Jamie was nice I was quite relieved that he wouldn't be present for it; one less person to watch me (possibly) make a fool of myself.

Thanks to one of my instructors being a bit of a horse nut, my police training in Hendon had included spending a day with the Met's mounted unit (which that instructor had originally wanted to join but couldn't due to her poor eyesight). Some of their officers had given a pretty impressive demonstration of how police horses could assist with crowd control, by using us trainee constables as the crowd. Let's just say a thousand-pound animal, even if it's just calmly walking towards you and not making any move to kick or bite, is a very strong incentive to make you listen to and do as its rider says.

The Met's police horses lived in individual stalls separated by wooden partitions on the bottom half and vertical metal bars above that, so they could see outside their stall. The Andrews family, by contrast, had several large, fenced-in areas that each held a whole group of ponies and a wooden shelter big enough for all of them. Having put on Jamie's spare coveralls over my street clothes, I joined Nightingale at the gate of one of those enclosures. "Where's Andrews?" I asked.

"Somewhere among that group of horses," said Nightingale, squinting against the afternoon sun. Not for the first time since meeting him I thought he wouldn't have looked out of place in some 1950s detective thriller, standing there in his impeccable dark grey suit; all that was missing were a fedora and maybe a cigar in his hand. "Oh look, there he is."

"Constable, meet Stari," said Andrews, stopping in front of us and nodding towards the black pony at his side. "Just hold out your hand and let her sniff it, she won't bite."

I cautiously did as told, feeling the pony's warm breath against the back of my hand. "Hello there," I said softly, feeling a little silly. "I hope you can carry me, you're kind of small for a horse..."

"Oh, she's actually on the large side for an Iceland," Andrews explained as he expertly opened the gate, led the horse through, and closed it again. "Good sturdy legs, too. And in any case you're not going to spend several hours on her back, just a short lesson."

He tied the lead rope around a nearby fence post, then showed me how to brush a horse's fur, clean its hooves, put a saddle on its back, and finally a bridle over its head. Nightingale held Stari's reins while Andrews handed me the riding helmet he'd brought along with the saddle and other stuff. "It's adjustable, like a bicyle helmet. Thank Heaven for that invention; finding a non-adjustable helmet that fits correctly is ususally a rather frustrating affair."

Helmet securily on my head, Nightingale gave me back the reins and Andrews explained how to lead a horse. "Make sure neither you nor the horse can trip over the reins or lead rope, and never loop them around your wrist or fingers - even the most calm and relaxed horse can spook and jump away from you, and you don't want any body parts caught in the rope if that happens. Other than that, simply start walking; Stari will follow along."

We made our way to a rectangled, sandy arena enclosed by a low hedge, and before I could think too much about it I was sitting on Stari's back. "Did I say she was small? Well I stand corrected, I'm pretty high above the ground here," I joked, trying to hide my nervousness.

"Relax," said Nightingale, giving me a little smile and patting the side of Stari's neck. "I'm going to lead her at first so you can focus on George's instructions and just get used to the horse's movement."

"Okay," I said, tentatively running my palm along Stari's neck under the thick black mane. Other than a twitch of her ear the horse didn't react, which I took as a good sign. "Why's she called Stari by the way? Does that name have a special meaning?"

"It's Icelandic," Andrews explained before giving me a rather cheeky grin. "Stari - the starling. One of the reasons I picked her for your first riding lesson."

"I thought you picked her because she's calm and friendly, George?" said Nightingale, and even without seeing his face I could hear the raised eyebrows in his tone. 

"That too," Andrews agreed, still grinning. "Now Thomas, if you could start leading her around the arena counterclockwise? Constable, you just try to feel the horse's one-two-three-four rhythm for now and relax into it. That's it - don't hold yourself too stiff but don't flop around like a wet noodle either."

"Easy for you to say, you're sitting in a nice stationary plastic chair, not on a bloody big animal that moves," I grumbled quietly enough only for Nightingale to hear. But gradually I became used to the feeling of being on a horse, and eventually dared to unclench first one and then the other hand from my grip in Stari's mane.

"Good," said Nightingale. "Ready to change direction? Only I'm getting a little tired of walking in counterclockwise circles and so is the horse." Stari snorted in agreement, or maybe because her nose was itchy. You never knew with horses.

After a few more circles around the arena I was allowed to pick up the reins myself and ride freely, which was probably not what people would call actual horseriding (Stari still wasn't going any faster than a walk, for one) but still made me feel a little proud. I beamed at Nightingale and Andrews as I rode past them, getting twin smiles in return. "He's doing quite well for a novice rider," I heard Andrews say.

"Indeed," Nightingale said approvingly. "However, I'm afraid we should leave soon, what with still having a bit of a drive ahead of us."

So I steered my mount into the centre of the arena and just like I'd been taught, sat back and gave a little tug on the reins to make her stop. Scrambling off Stari's back wasn't exactly my proudest moment, but I didn't mind too much because I only had an audience of two and one of them had already witnessed me looking stupid numerous times. Between the three of us it took just a few minutes to free Stari from her saddle and bridle, give her a carrot as a treat, and return her to her field, where she quickly muscled her way between two of her fieldmates to bury her nose in a big bale of hay.

"Thanks for the invitation and the riding lesson, sir," I said to Andrews after struggling out of my (well, Jamie's) coveralls, folding them and handing them to him. "I'm not about to change my career and become a professional rider, but it was still an interesting experience."

"You're very welcome," he replied, smile partly hidden under his moustache. "One last bit of advice: Take a hot bath when you get home tonight; horseriding can cause muscle aches in places you didn't even know people had muscles."

"Roger that," I said, watching Nigthingale and Andrews do something halfway between a handshake and a one-armed hug like they weren't quite sure how much physical contact the other one was comfortable with. I suppose that's what growing up an upperclass boy in the early 20th century did to you - stiff upper lip, not showing your feelings and all that. They also seemed to be whispering to each other, although it was too quiet for me to understand.

"To be honest I don't believe he'll come to the Folly," Nightingale confessed as we got into the car.

"Sir?"

"I told him he'd be welcome to stop by at the Folly next time he's in London, and he didn't outright say no, but..." He gave a little 'half-shrug and staring into the middle distance' combination. "Most of the old guard no longer feel comfortable in the Folly. It has too many ghosts, both real and metaphorical ones... anyway, you seem to have changed your opinion about horses and riding?"

"Eh, they're alright," I said, going for the humourous approach to try and improve Nightingale's sad mood. "Or at least this particular horse was quite sweet, and I didn't fall off either!"

"Indeed you didn't," Nightingale agreed, kindly not mentioning that I'd only ridden at a walk today and probably would have fallen off if I'd tried to go any faster. "Do you remember the way from here back to the main road, or would you like me to give you directions?"

"I'll be fine, thanks."

Chapter Text

In the weeks following my first time riding a horse, it seemed the bloody animals followed me everywhere. Not literally - that would've been awkward - but for some reason there were lots and lots of old Western movies airing on TV, and Nightingale had me read a lenghty Latin text about Roman agriculture that also heavily featured horses (or equi, in Latin. That's where the English word 'equestrian' comes from, in case you're wondering).

So I guess it wasn't too much of a surprise that our next case also involved a horse.

I was out walking Toby one early Sunday morning when I spotted a big, white, mud-streaked car pulling into a curbside parking space at the edge of Russell Square. It made my copper sense tingle for two reasons; one, cars that dirty are an unusual sight in central London, and two, it had what looked like a horse trailer attached to it. (The trailer was a bit smaller than the one I'd seen at George Andrews' place, but had the same general shape and a line drawing of a horse along its side.) Now this could of course mean something perfectly boring and mundane, like someone moving to a new home and using the horse trailer to transport a large piece of furniture, but something about the sight made me stop and call Toby to heel.

As I watched, two people – probably young, male, IC1 but I couldn't be sure as it was still pretty dark out – exited the car and one of them walked around to the horse trailer. Meanwhile, the other person opened the back door of the car, took out a pair of inline skates, and sat on the edge of the backseat to pull them on. Inline skating seemed a bit of a strange activity for an early winter morning; not illegal though, so I stayed where I was and kept watching.

The first person had by now wrestled open the rear hatch of the horse trailer and was leading a small pony down the ramp. Toby let out a quiet growl; I wondered if he generally disapproved of horses or if there was something magical going on with this particular pony, and/or the two human strangers? In any case none of the three seemed to have heard Toby, or at least the humans looked rather surprised when they entered the park and spotted us. The pony just looked kind of sleepy.

"Oh! ...uh, morning," said the person without skates who was leading the pony. Their voice sounded female, but between the bobble hat covering their head and the thick winter coat obscuring their body shape I wasn't quite sure.

"Morning," I replied. “Out walking your pet too, eh?"

"Yup," said the person on skates before giving me a suspicious once-over and then turning to whisper to their companion. I could make out the words nuts and clicks, which told me precisely nothing. Fortunately the discussion quickly wrapped up and the person on skates turned back to me. "Hey mister, d'you have a minute?"

"Depends on what for," I said – interacting with the demi monde has taught me not so say a clear yes until I'm absolutely sure I know what I'm saying yes to, and sometimes this carries over into conversations with non-magical people.

"We need someone to film us, at least on the first try to see if this works," said the person without skates. Now that sounded like some kind of stupid, dangerous, or stupidly dangerous internet challenge and because it's my responsibility as a police officer to keep people safe, I told the two strangers so.

"Nah, it'll be fine," the person on skates disagreed this time. "Course, it's fine if you don't wanna do it but whatever you do, please don't tell anyone about this." I could feel a hint of a glamour in their voice (so Toby had been right to growl after all), but quickly shook it off. "I don't think so-"

"Brian," the person on skates finished the sentence, then winced at the automatic reaction and the elbow to the side from his companion. "Sorry Flo- ouch!"

'Flo' rolled her (?) eyes. "Let's do this before we get any more of an audience. I'll lead Pinky for a test run and then we can start filming."

"Oy, wait a second," I started and then stopped short, because I couldn't think of any specific law against riding horses while wearing roller skates that I could have quoted at Brian and Flo. It didn't matter anyway; by the time I'd finished speaking Pinky the pony was happily trotting away from me, with Flo jogging next to it and holding its lead rope and Brian standing straddled over its back, holding on with his knees so the pony's movement propelled him forward. "Whooohooo!" he whisper-shouted, and then "Ashitgodfuckindamnit!!!" (or something to that effect) when his left skate got caught on a bump in the path, sending him crashing down onto Pinky's back crotch first. The pony gave a startled snort and jumped forward, but luckily Flo was able to hold onto it and calm it down.

I walked over to them, resolving not to make any 'Pinky and the not so brainy Brian' jokes - the pain in a very sensitive body area was enough of a punishment for the boy. "I won't tell your parents if you don't ever do anything like this again. Deal?"

"Deal," said Flo, accepting my handshake. Brian just nodded; he still had both hands gingerly pressed against his crotch.

"Alright, off you go. I trust you actually have a licence to drive that car, young lady?" (Shit, had I already reached an age where I called people 'young man' or 'young lady'? Well, I could always blame A. Nightingale's influence and B. the fact that the girl looked about fifteen.)

She gave me an unimpressed look before reaching into her coat pocket and producing a shiny new driving licence. "Just got it last week, officer." And to Brian: "C'mon, little brother."

I watched them go (Brian was still walking - well, staggering in his skates - a bit bowlegged), load Pinky into the horse trailer and drive off, then tugged at Toby's leash. "Let's go home, I'm hungry and cold and so are you probably. Well, the hungry bit at least because you're always hungry."

Toby whuffed. I chose to take it as agreement.

And this could have been the end of it, a strange encounter in the park one early winter morning that made a funny story to tell Nightingale and Molly. (The former one didn't seem to find it funny, probably because I had to explain internet challenges to him first and explaining a joke tends to ruin its punchline. The latter, however, covered her mouth and made a lot of the kind of hissing noises I've come to interpret as laughter.)

Anyway, it soon turned out I hadn't seen or heard the last of Flo, Brian, and Pinky the pony.

Just two days later we got a call from Sahra Guleed, relaying information about two teenagers caught shoplifting in a Tesco supermarket (of all places) near Baker Street station. "Where does Belgravia's murder team come into this?" I asked. "Did those teenagers also kill someone while shoplifting?"

"No, but the Tesco's employees reported feeling some sort of compulsion to look the other way and ignore the teenagers."

Glamour?, I scribbled down in my notebook. "Then who called the police?"

"Another customer who had just entered the store when the kids walked past the checkout queue without paying," said Guleed. "I guess he managed to call 999 before they saw him. Anyway, Seawoll then told me to call it in as possibly Falcon-related, so that's what I did."

"Okay thanks, we'll look into it."

Being the lower ranking Falcon officer, it was obviously me who had to make a detour via the aforementioned Tesco to question the employees while Nightingale drove over directly to Belgravia nick, where the young shoplifters had been locked up in the special Falcon cells. My interviews confirmed the information I already had: two IC1 teenagers, a boy of about fourteen and an older boy or girl ("Looked mostly like a girl, but with the thick winter coat and really short hair it was a bit hard to tell") had walked into the store together, and shortly after that the employees had started to experience a strange compulsion to ignore the two teens, which had remained until they'd left.

Then I drove over to Belgravia and found Nightingale in one of the interrogation rooms, along with Brian, Flo, and a white woman who looked like a basketball player and was probably their mother. The teens wore almost identical sulking expressions which didn't even change when their mother started shouting at them that We don't use the glamour for criminal purposes, your father and I raised you better than that! and I expect you to set a good example for the twins! For the record Nightingale's expression didn't change either; I guessed that growing up with half a dozen siblings, he'd witnessed his fair share of parental shouting. 

"Sorry," said the woman when she was done and had taken some deep breaths to calm down. "Please carry on with your questioning, Inspector."

"Thank you ma'am," he replied, ever polite, while I walked over to the door of the interrogation room and knocked. "Now, Florence and Brian- yes?"

I poked my head into the room. "Hi boss. I spoke to the Tesco employees; they confirmed what Guleed already told us over the phone."

"Good," he said at the same time as Brian blurted out, "Holy crap, you're with the filth? - Ouch!" Since she wasn't in a good position for an elbow jab this time, Florence had gone for a slap to the back of the head that nearly sent Brian's face crashing into the tabletop in front of them.

Hey Brian, how are your balls?, was what I didn't say. I can be professional if I have to, and besides the boy was already digging a nice deep hole for himself without any help from me.

It turned out that Brian had wanted to impress some "cool" boys in his class and also a female classmate he fancied, and recruited his older sister into filming his stunt with the pony and the roller skates. The pony belonged to their younger sister, who'd been given it when she was seven and really into the colour pink, hence the name Pinky.

"Really, Florence, you're almost eighteen years old and should know better," said their mother, shaking her head in disappontment.

"I know, mum," Florence said miserably, looking down at the table. "He was blackmailing me, though." Brian, she elaborated, had seen Florence and some friends of hers smoking cigarettes behind their school one afternoon, something their parents had strictly forbidden them after a grandparent had died of lung cancer. By threatening to tell their parents about this Brian had then ensured his sister's cooperation for his little impress-my-classmates plan.

Nightingale and I looked at each other, trying to decide if we wanted to make this an officially recorded case - at the risk of Brian and Florence glamouring their way out of it - or let them off with a warning and leave any other consequences to their parents. The mum at least seemed to be plenty capable of being strict, and Nightingale apparently thought so too, because he went with the second option. "Consider this your yellow card, you two. Pull anything like this again and it's a red one."

"Thanks sir," Brian and Flo chorused after a pointed throat-clearing from their mum. Then the three of them filed out of the room, with the mum already starting to consider some punishments (grounding her kids for a month, temporarily revoking Florence's driving licence, and Brian's beloved roller skates, among other things).

"Red and yellow cards, sir?" I said to Nightingale as we left the nick. "I thought you were exclusively a rugby man."

"Normally yes, but if you recall I've also happened to be in the 'tech cave' while you were watching football a few times."

"Touché," I replied, mostly for the purpose of seeing Nightingale wince at my (deliberately) bad French pronunciation. He didn't elaborate on it though, instead suggesting an early dinner at a pub-slash-small-restaurant he knew, just down the road from Belgravia nick.

"Fine by me," I said. "But you can explain to Molly why we didn't show up to eat the food she made."

"No worries, I explained everything to her before I left for Belgravia earlier," said Nightingale. "Besides, our guests might want to accompany us to the Folly later, which would give Molly a chance to serve us some tea and bisquits."

The guests - as I maybe should have guessed - were George Andrews and his grandson Jamie, both looking a bit intimidated by London's big city crowds when we greeted them on the pavement in front of the pub. But thanks to beer, good food, and some joking around ("Stari couldn't make it, constable, but she sends her regards") they soon relaxed and we started exchanging stories from London and the small village in Kent where the Andrews family lived. After the meal they even agreed to a short tour of the Folly; Jamie was openly fascinated (especially by the libraries) while his grandfather looked a little uncomfortable. Must be all those ghosts Nightingale had mentioned, I thought.

Nevertheless they promised to stop by again during their next visit to London, a promise that Nightingale and Andrews senior sealed with a proper (if very short and manly) hug this time. I preferred to stick to a handshake.

"That went well," I remarked after the two Andrews' had driven off and Nightingale and me were standing in the Folly's atrium together.

"Indeed," said Nightingale, still with a soft little smile on his face. "We even managed to get through the evening without any inappropriate jokes from George." Private Andrews, Nightingale explained, had been quite notorious in the Folly army regiment for telling dirty, often horse-themed jokes - the drunker he was, the dirtier the jokes. "I remember one about riding into the sunset..."

"Alright, I don't want to know!" I quickly interrupted, which made him grin. "Good night, Peter."

"Night sir."