Chapter 4 – Finding Mabel [Trouble]

Joyce had been in her new post for three weeks, and already it felt older than the building itself.

The first had been chaos, chasing files across London as divisions closed and merged under the new order. The second had been consolidation, stacking lives into steel cabinets beneath humming lights. By the third, she began to wonder whether she had stepped forward into promotion or sideways into exile.

Her team, five fresh constables from Hendon, were eager and painfully green. She spent more time teaching them how to read a street than doing her own work.

And the station itself — a slab of 1960s concrete ambition — had no soul. It stood among bombed ruins and new council towers like a monument to efficiency. A future she wasn’t sure she wanted.

As to finding information about Easterwich, she had drawn a blank. Every attempt to source information, had either been fruitless, or the files were restricted, her rank would not allow access to them. Those files worried her. She may have gone too far with using internal requests for files, restricted meant the system may question that request. Her worst fears were realised the next day.

* * *

The fluorescent lights in the General Registry hummed with a low-frequency buzz that Joyce felt in the bridge of her nose. Her five “Hendon wonders” were busy at the steel carousels, the rhythmic thump-shick of filing folders the only sound in the sterile room.

The “Station Mother” sat at her desk, staring at a buff-coloured internal memo that had just been hand-delivered. It wasn’t the usual administrative query. It was a formal summons.

WPS 422 Turner. Report to Superintendent Harper’s office immediately.

Joyce stood, smoothed the front of her tunic—the heavy wool felt like armour—and walked out. Her heels clicked on the raw concrete of the corridor, a sharp, echoing sound that seemed to announce her guilt to the entire building.

She didn’t knock. She never did with George.

When she entered, the smell of the new building—fresh paint and floor wax—was cut by the familiar, stale scent of George’s pipe tobacco. He was standing by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the grey sprawl of Stepney. He didn’t turn around.

“The architects call this ‘functional,’ Joyce,” he said, his voice unusually thin. “They say the concrete represents a transparent future. No dark corners for the Old Bill to hide in.”

“It’s a tomb, George,” Joyce replied, her voice steady despite the hammer of her heart. “A tomb with better plumbing.”

George turned then. He looked tired. On his desk lay a printout from the teleprinter and a heavy red folder. The Discipline Book.

“I’ve got a report here from the Yard’s Records Office. Someone at a Divisional level has been making repeated, unauthorised inquiries into a town called Easterwich. A town that sits under a security classification we’re not supposed to touch.” He paused, his eyes pleading with her. “Tell me it wasn’t you, Joyce. Tell me one of your sprogs was playing with the machine.”

Joyce didn’t blink. “It was me, George. I wanted to know.”

George let out a long, ragged breath and slumped into his chair. “God help you. It’s been flagged as Discreditable Conduct. Misuse of Police Information, Breach of the Official Secrets Act… they’re lining up the gallows, Joyce. If this goes to a formal hearing, they’ll strip your stripes. You’ve got twenty-eight years in, but they’ll find a way to forfeit the pension. You’ll walk out of here with a cardboard box and a pittance.”

The silence in the room was absolute. Joyce looked at the grey walls, feeling the “Brutalist” weight of the building pressing in.

“I can’t bury this, Joyce,” George whispered. “The new system… it’s all logs and audits. The paper trail is a mile long.”

He leaned forward, lowering his voice even further. “But there is a stay of execution. A man came to see me this morning. Not Met. Special Branch, or someone even further up the food chain. He knew your name. He knew about the map case.”

Joyce felt the air in the room tighten, just as it had in the Property Store.

“He made an offer,” George continued, looking sick. “If you agree to a private briefing—away from the station, away from the books—the disciplinary file is ‘lost’ in transition. The inquiry into Easterwich becomes a sanctioned investigation, and your pension stays intact.”

Joyce gripped the edge of George’s steel desk. “And if I don’t?”

“Then the summons is served at eight a.m. tomorrow. You’ll be suspended pending dismissal.” George reached across the desk, his hand hovering near hers but not quite touching. “Go to the meeting, Joyce. Don’t let them take thirty years of your life over a few sheets of blank paper.”

Joyce looked at her old friend. The “Mother of the Nick” was being offered a deal by the shadows.

“Where?” she asked.

“A tea room in Chelsea. Tomorrow, two o’clock. Ask for a Mr. Vane.” George reached into his drawer and pulled out a small slip of paper with an address. “And Joyce… for the love of God, keep your copper’s brain switched on. These people… they aren’t like us. They don’t care about the truth. They only care about the secret.”

* * *

The tea room was a relic of an older Chelsea, tucked away from the neon glare and short skirts of the King’s Road. It smelled of lavender and buttered toast. Joyce felt conspicuously “Police” in her sensible navy coat, her shopping handbag clutched tightly to her side like a weapon.

Vane was already seated in a corner booth, framed by a lace-curtained window that looked out onto a quiet mews. He was a man who looked as though he had been bleached by the sun—pale suit, pale skin, and eyes the colour of a winter sea. He recognised her as she entered the tea room.

“Joyce,” he said, rising just an inch. He didn’t offer a hand. “I’ve already ordered a pot for the table. The Darjeeling is quite acceptable here.”

Joyce didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink at the use of her Christian name. She simply pulled out the chair and sat, her movements economical and deliberate. She placed her shopping handbag on her lap, her hands resting on top of it—still, steady, and ready.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Mr. Vane,” she said, her voice like gravel on silk. “Blackmailing a Sergeant two years from her pension just to have a cup of tea in Chelsea. I hope the biscuits are worth it.”

Vane’s eyes thinned. He had expected a flush of anger or a stammer of confusion. Instead, he was met with the impenetrable wall of the “Old Guard.”

“I’m not a blackmailer, Joyce. I’m a solution to a problem you created the moment you opened that map case.”

“The problem isn’t the case,” Joyce countered, leaning in just enough to reclaim the space. “The problem is that for the first time in thirty years, the files don’t match the facts. I’m a copper. I don’t like discrepancies.”

She reached into her bag and withdrew the single, blank page. She laid it on the lace tablecloth between them. She didn’t look at the paper; she kept her eyes fixed on Vane’s face, watching for the slightest “tell.”

“I spent all night with this,” she said. “I’ve seen men hang on less evidence than what’s written on this sheet, even if I can’t see the ink yet.”

Vane reached out. As his shadow fell across the cream-coloured surface, the “magic” reacted. Joyce watched the ink bloom—swirling, elegant, and impossibly fast.

HE IS A FRIEND JOYCE. YOU CAN TRUST HIM.

The writing pulsed with a faint warmth before settling into a deep, permanent black.

Joyce looked down at the words, then back up at Vane. Her expression didn’t change. No gasp, no widening of the eyes. She simply reached for the teapot and poured herself a cup, her hand as steady as a rock.

Joyce took a slow, deliberate sip of her tea. It was perfectly brewed, but it tasted of copper and old secrets.

“Well,” she said, the steam rising between them. “The paper seems to think you’re a friend. I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve finished my tea. Now, tell me about Easterwich, and tell me why the Crown is so terrified of a town that isn’t on the map.”

Vane sat back, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. He had met prime ministers and double agents, but he had never met anything quite like a London Police Sergeant with nothing left to lose.

“You may remember that certain towns and villages that were requisitioned during the war for build up to D-Day. Training exercises, and all that. As for Easterwich, the official line was that the town was essential for the war effort. We announced that we were moving the villagers out, and that the military would move in. We boarded up the windows, and let the tanks roll over the cabbage patches. It was a convenient lie, a cover up.”

“Most military intelligence is,” Joyce countered. “So, what was the truth?”

“The truth is that Easterwich has never been an ordinary English Town. The families there… they go back to the Heptarchy. They were the King-makers, Joyce. And the King-breakers. They carry a bloodline that doesn’t care for Parliament or the Met. They have… sensibilities.”

He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial hum that barely carried over the clink of teacups at the next table.

“In the Forties, we used them to keep the Ahnenerbe—Himmler’s occultist lapdogs—from curdling the English Channel. But the war didn’t end in ’45 for Easterwich. It just changed frequency. Today, it’s a ‘listening station.’ That’s what the budget says. But they aren’t listening for Soviet radio waves, Sergeant. They’re listening for the psychic ‘probe’ of the CIA’s Remote Viewers and the Kremlin’s mediums.”

Joyce set her cup down with a controlled clack. “You’re telling me the village is a fortress for spooks and crystal-gazers?”

“I’m telling you it’s a psychic hub that defends this realm from things your ‘Hendon wonders’ couldn’t imagine in their worst DTs,” Vane said sharply. “But the secret is failing. The map case you found wasn’t ‘lost’ in Commercial Street. It was stolen in 1939 by a man who wanted to sell the King-makers to the highest bidder. And now that you’ve woken it up, the Americans, the Russians, and the Department are all going to be looking for the woman who holds the key.”

Joyce looked at the paper again. HE IS FRIEND A JOYCE. “Twenty-eight years of stopping pickpockets and punch-ups,” she said quietly, her eyes hard. “And two years from the finish line, you want to hand me a war I can’t even see.”

“I don’t want to hand you anything, Joyce,” Vane replied, finally offering a thin, cold smile. “The case already chose you. I’m just here to make sure you don’t get killed before you reach the village gates.”