Except those of us who are from Kentish Town, I thought.

‘Derek whisked me up here almost as soon as he heard I was pregnant,’ she said. ‘He already had the house by then, bought it off the church when the village lost its vicar. I’m glad he did, because there’s room for kids out here.’ She looked around the room. ‘Do you think they have missed something?’

I glanced around the room – there were still traces of fingerprint powder around the window frames, the door, and anywhere else an intruder might have touched. I estimated that more forensic time had been spent in that one room than in the last fifty local burglary investigations.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think they have.’

She started to cry then. I’m not even sure she was aware it was happening until she felt the tears trickling down her cheeks. I took a step towards her, but she whirled quickly around and fled.

I went downstairs and let myself out.

The next morning my phone pinged while I was in the shower. It was an email from Kimberly Cidre at the High Tech unit. There was an attached image which even my dinky phone display could expand enough for me to see a familiar pattern of microscopic pits and lesions. I forwarded them on to Dr Walid but I didn’t need his confirmation.

I know hyperthaumaturgical degradation when I see it.

The phones had been done in by magic.

Customer Facing

5

Customer Facing

‘Now you’re beginning to freak me out,’ said Dominic as I squatted down to get my face close to the old stone of the war memorial. ‘I still don’t see what you need me for.’

‘Local guide,’ I said.

It was late enough for the search teams to be out, but early enough for the air to still be cool and fresh. Stone retains vestigia longer than anything except certain types of plastic, but I’d wanted to check first thing and not waste any time. Magic powerful enough to damage a phone would have left a trace on the monument had it happened here. I know this because I’ve done experiments in a controlled setting to determine accurately the persistence of vestigia following a magical event. Or at least as accurately as you can using your own perception and that of a short-haired terrier called Toby.

‘Whatever happened to the phones,’ I said, ‘didn’t happen here.’

It hadn’t happened at the Lacey house either. Or, and I’d double checked that morning, at the Marstowe house. I was facing the possibility that I might just have to knock on every door in the village and have a sniff around. This is where it would have been useful to have another practitioner to split the work with.

‘So you think this is a Falcon case?’ asked Dominic.