Still Waters

17

Tuesday afternoon, 3.11pm

Somewhere near Holmrook

If he were writing about this tiny triangle of South-West Lake District, Rowan would use the phrase ‘sleepy’ or ‘picture-postcard’ – rummaging around in the crumbs at the bottom of his bag of journalistic clichés for the simplest way to get the right picture into a reader’s head. In truth, this little straggle of cottages and barns is well past sleepy. It’s asleep to the point of coma. If it had nostrils, Rowan would be tempted to use a mirror to check for breath.

“You’re a genius, son,” he grumbles to himself, wincing each time his damp jeans touch his skin or he hears his sodden walking boots squelch. “Great idea, this. Fucking belter, you twat …,”

He’s reached the outskirts of a tiny place that he thinks might be Santon, or might be Santon Bridge, or which nobody has yet discovered and which is still up for naming rights. On a sunny day there might be shafts of golden light hitting the trees and turning the dew-damp earth into so many miles of crushed emeralds. Instead, he feels like he’s lurched into some gory dystopian TV show. He half expects to see some slavering zombie emerge from one of the forbidding little lanes that split off from the curving grey road like the legs of a giant millipede. Each leads to a barn or a cottage or half-forgotten farmhouse – and all sodden to the bone.

Rowan has been walking for 20 minutes. He’s been pissed off for 19. Earlier, Jo had been gracious enough to drop him off for a lunchtime shandy at the nice foodie pub in Nether Wasdale. He and Pickle had eschewed solids in favour of sampling the unexpectedly good range of single malts. Rowan’s debit card hadn’t worked when they’d come to settle the bill. He’d protested, appalled and embarrassed, plucking random numbers from thin air and claiming that the account contained that precise sum when he checked just a few minutes ago. In the end, Pickle paid cash, peeling off three greasy 20-quid notes from the unseemly roll in one of the pockets of his overcoat. He’d been happy to oblige, if only to ram his largesse down the throats of the snotty-nosed ramblers who’d looked at him with disgust when he’d shuffled in reeking of weed and wet dog. Pickle had been his reliable self, offering a listening ear and a few choice words of support. He agreed with Rowan – there could be a story in all this. What he couldn’t say with any clarity was whether that story could be turned into a pitch for a bestselling true crime novel before the New Year.

Over a measure of Lagavulin, Rowan had filled Pickle in on developments – brushing over the more physical details of his encounter with Sumaira. Pickle had nodded along. He didn’t know very much about Silver Birch, but he certainly remembered the old boy that lived in the woods and used his healing hands on anybody willing to park their cynicism and let him loose on their chakras. .

Before they clinked glasses for a final time, Rowan had mentioned to Pickle that Violet had accepted his ‘friend’ request, and that he was going to speak to her creative writing group the following evening. Pickle had asked that he pass on his regards and to tentatively enquire whether she would be willing to pick up some cargo from a friend of a friend if her pilgrimage happened to take her near Kandahar. Rowan, feeling warm and convivial, had prodded the screen of the mobile and painfully typed out a jaunty hello.

Pickle is missing you! Hope I’ve kept your seat warm.

She hadn’t replied. He’d chosen not to push it. Didn’t want to risk upsetting her before they’d even had a chance to meet. Over the past 24 hours he’d become such an expert in Violet Rayner’s social media profile that it could replace the poems of Seamus Heaney as his chosen subject on mastermind. He senses a yo-yo character – somebody able to project ecstatic highs and ink-black lows, with precious little in-between. He knows the books she likes – romantic, literary, New Age; a trio of self-deprecating comedienne biographies. Knows her favourite movies – Grosse Point Blank, The Notebook; Whale Rider. Has looked upon her seemingly endless photographs. It feels a little like a relationship: the ‘getting-to-know-you’ stage compressed into a couple of hours. He assessed her through critical journalistic eyes. Pictured each of the images as they will look on the pages of his new book: a little caption, a credit and a few solemn words; something sincere about ‘being pictured in happier times’. He knows how she looks dressed up in everything from a Christmas elf outfit to a glitzy dress on a works night out, by way of swimsuit and floppy-hat shots during a two-week break in Marrakech. She’d still been with her ex then – a surveyor from Carlisle by the name of Sam. Her relationship status had changed to ‘it’s complicated’ over a year ago. Rowan’s sifted through her family contacts, her work buddies; her old mates and new acquaintances. There’s been no photos of her since March. Each time she’s updated her profile it has been with a generic illustration or a random bit of far-Eastern philosophy. He’s beginning to wonder whether she might not just be playing a prank on everybody – whether she’s secreted away in a back room of her house, shoving down snacks and drinking beer from the can, revelling in the illusion of being a hippie on a global search for enlightenment.

As the rain doubles back on itself in an effort to slap him twice, Rowan is beginning to regret turning down Pickle’s offer to run him back to the Byre. It hadn’t looked as far as this on the small glowing rectangle of his phone. He’s cold, and the pleasing conviviality of a long liquid lunch has been replaced by a cold that seems to bleed into his bones. He keeps shivering inside his borrowed coat – some stiff, waxed affair that Snowdrop had purloined from a cupboard up at the big house and left on his doorstep along with a basket of warm pain-au-raisin, a coffee and a strip of Ibuprofen. She’d left a note too, incandescent over Serendipity’s insistence she join her at work rather than spend the day with her uncle. She promised that she’d be over later to ‘go over the files’.

Rowan ducks into the cover of a line of tall evergreens. Violet Rayner’s house is a little further up the road. She lives in a decent-sized Edwardian farmhouse at the end of a small row of terraced cottages. He can see its chimneys protruding over the big hedges that mark the boundary to the property. There’s no smoke. If he carries on past it he’ll emerge on the road to Holmkirk within 20 minutes – home within the hour.

“She’s not there, you tit,” he mutters to himself, tasting rain on his lips. “You should have stayed in the bloody dry.”

Rowan already knows what he’s going to do next. Even as he stands still, considering his next move, there is a part of him that is acutely aware he will go and poke around Violet’s house. Worse, he knows what he hopes to find. In 20 years as a journalist he has grown used to a life of moral duality. He’s been present at hundreds of murder sites and enquiries, countless for hunts for the missing-feared-dead. He has always hoped for two things. That they missing be returned unharmed, or that something truly unspeakable has occurred. Both are newsworthy. Both are tremendous stories. Rowan has often found himself hoping after two linked murders that a third corpse will be found, turning a half-decent yarn into a sudden front-page headline. Serial killers sell papers. He has a built-in calculator of a corpse’s journalistic worth. It’s a grotesque skill to have, but he has it nonetheless.

He lets himself in through the low, wrought-iron gate, slipping in to the long front garden as it swings open and clangs against the stone wall that circles the pleasant-looking house. It’s Victorian, looks to Rowan to be as sturdy and unmoving as Her Majesty herself. Six big sash windows surround a black-lacquered front door. Proper iron gutters criss-cross a dark series of lines across the house’s big stone face. Peeping out at the rear of the property are two brick outbuildings with faded white front doors. Neither looks locked, or particularly sturdy. Checking behind him, Rowan quickens his pace and steps from the path to the long, soggy grass, cursing as he crosses nimbly around the front of the property and scurries on towards the rear. He glances at the darkened downstairs window. Sees the vague outline of a standard lamp, a mirror, the back of large TV. Through the rain, almost slipping, he runs to the first outbuilding and uses his boot to pull at the unlocked door. He looks inside – a big white tank in one dusty corner and a complicated series of pipes and fuse boxes at the other. Boiler room. He spots a small white box on the dusty wall to his right and looks at the gauge. The tank is showing as empty. Rowan, shivering, manages to fumble his phone from the pocket of the coat. Quickly, painfully, he takes a couple of shots. He steps back into the rain and moves to the second building. Tries the door. It won’t budge. He yanks with his boot, toes under the lower half of the door, which hangs a few inches off the puddle-streaked stone floor. He hears the clank of a lock. He puts his face to the gaps in the damp wood, squinting, uncomfortable, peering into pitch blackness and flaking white paint from the wood with his eyelashes. He groans, lowering himself in begrudging steps down to the muddy floor. He pulls a face as he angles his head to look underneath – rain soaking his upturned face and trickling into his mouth. He manages to switch on the light of the phone and awkwardly shines it into the darkness. It takes him a moment to make sense of what he is seeing. The torch beam picks out a bare, grey room: the mortar gone from between the bricks, which seem to be held up by beams of rotten wood and great hanging veils of spider silk. The floor is broken up and dirty, a mulch of old papers and glistening black plastic piled in one corner. He changes the angle of the torch. There’s a rocking chair set back in the furthest recess: spindle-limbed and ribboned with cobwebs. In front, a fire sunk into the ground – ashes turned to dusts. He lets the light linger there for a moment, straining his eyes. Slowly he turns the beam. The chair is angled to face a bare wall. It has been painted white, and Rowan has a sudden fanciful notion that perhaps this is where Violet comes to project movies. He tries to picture her in the chair, feet on the lip of the fire-pit, watching old films flickering on the bare brick. He can’t imagine why she would. Can’t think why she …

He swallows, drily, as the image on the bare brick comes into focus. He thinks of cave paintings: ancient finger-paintings of elongated figures; ridge-back game and huge deer with splayed-finger antlers. Some of them overlap one another, layer after layer of stick figure, running, kneeling, holding hands. Something that might be stars spin around the crown of one larger figure: bearded, pink-prick eyes; a suggestion of tangled crown and beard. Beside it are three smaller figures, holding hands, like paper dolls. Rowan changes his position, breathing hard. Shines his torch at the entirety of the wall and feels as though somebody has stepped upon his insides. He breath catches in his throat as he takes in a colossal swirl overlaid handprints, of scratches and scuffs scored so deeply into the neatly-painted wall that in places it seems as though the outline has been scratched into the brick by bleeding, frenzied hands. Rowan sees perfectly round eyes. A face made up from swatches of different skin. It’s a patchwork pig mask; crinkled leather and a snarl of yellowed teeth and tusk. Rowan hears his heart thumping hard; a drumbeat, soft but insistent. It grows, louder, deeper, as he stares again at the great face on the wall. For a moment, in the light of the torch, the shapes upon the wall seem to move. They flicker, like tongues of fire; stick-men and long-dead beasts strobing in an orgy of ecstatic worship around the leering central figure.

A curl of paper pinwheels across the darkness, fluttering up and down like a dying moth. It skitters up against the gap beneath the door and Rowan, struggling to pull his eyes away from the mural, reaches out for it, painfully, with aching forefinger and thumb. His fingers close around a scrap of flimsy paper, a smudge of neat black typeface on its singed surface. The words swim in his vision. “…grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” It’s a Bible passage. He recognizes the line. Recognizes the paper too. A Gideon; the paper almost see-through. The edge is tattered, as if it has been torn. Something is nagging at him, some unpleasant feeling; the memory burrowing deeper out of reach; a tick somewhere in his flesh. He suddenly needs to meet Violet Rayner. Needs to know she’s okay. For a moment, the story doesn’t matter. He forgets all thoughts of headlines and front covers and stops composing opening lines and polished lies in his head. Thinks of her. Of them. Three girls who went into the woods. The two who came back. The one who never did.

“Excuse me …hello, excuse me …,”

Startled, blinking dirty rain out of his eyes, Rowan jerks away from the door, dropping his phone onto the unforgiving stone. He has a sensation of slamming back into himself, as if he has been drifting slightly outside his own skin. He blinks rapidly, tears running onto his cheeks. What the fuck was that thing? On the wall? Glaring out at him like he was prey…

“Yes, hello? Are you with the gas board?”

Rowan squirms on the ground, reaching out for the handle of the door, trying to pull himself up as his boots squelch on the grimy surface. His feet go out from under him and he lays sprawled on the floor. There’s no time to get up before the woman who walks towards him across the grass is upon him. He can see her waving, swatting at the air, all the while pulling a ‘I-don’t-mean-to-be-a-nuisance’ expression. He loves that about the English. Hyper vigilant, buy hyper polite. Willing to do time before causing an offence.

He adjusts himself so it looks like he’s laying down for some good reason, resting his head on his palm like a gigolo on a water-bed.

“Are you okay? Did you hurt yourself?”

She’s mid-thirties and trim, with hair dyed a pleasing shade, tied up with a Frida Kahlo bow. She’s holding what is either a very large baby, or a small fat man, on her hip.

“I’m grand,” says Rowan, struggling to be nonchalant.

“What are you doing?” she asks, trying to make it sound funny but clearly keen for an answer. He takes her in. Pretty, heart-shaped face. Brown eyes. A nice smile. She’s wearing flip-flops and messy dungarees: paintbrushes sticking out of the pocket on her front. Her shoulders are bare, the raindrops adding a sheen to tattoos of Flamenco dangers and delicate arum lilies. The thing on her hip looks like a Galapagos tortoise without its shell. It’s floppy and damp and looking distinctly unimpressed. It grips the lady like a gargoyle clinging to a cathedral roof.

“I think she’s forgotten,” he says, rolling onto his knees then gingerly climbing to his feet. He notices her glance at his hands. He raises them, guilty. “When they say you shouldn’t play with fireworks, they really are onto something. But yeah, I’m guessing Vi has forgotten about today.”

“You know Violet?” asks the lady, putting a hand, palm down, over the baby’s head. “Violet’s away.”

“Still?” asks Rowan, looking shocked. “Oh for pity’s sake. Well, that’s my best laid plans gan aglee.”

She pulls a face. “Is that from Of Mice and Men? I did that at school. The book, not the poem. But I liked the poem. Sorry, I’m gabbling. I’m Rosie. I live next door.” Her expression softens as she sees how sodden his clothes are. “Look, we’re getting soaked. I’m just next door. Do you want to pop in and I can grab you a towel or something? Awful day, isn’t it? Of course, it’s never exactly Barbados, but I do wish this mizzle would lift.” She jerks her head. “Coming?”

Rowan watches her as she turns away. Momentarily alone again, his mouth feels dry.

The thing in the bare brick room: the shape on the wall. They’ve unsettled him. He feels somehow unclean, as if his skin were rimed with some greasy lotion: big oily smears of bacon-fat streaking the vulnerable flesh beneath his drenched clothes.

He follows her down the path, and with each step further from the locked door and its unnerving contents, he feels the chill within him begin to thaw.

Turning away from a harsh gust of rain-filled wind, his eyes fall upon the small strip of untended flowerbed beneath the downstairs windows. He turns his back on the wind, narrowing his eyes. Wordlessly, he pulls out the phone, a fresh new crack glistening on the display, and takes a couple of quick shots. He inspects the images. The footprint is clear: a perfect impression in the wet mud. Five oval hollows and the deeper print of the arch and heel of a bare foot. Somebody has stood here recently, gazing in.

Rowan stares through the glass into the dark room: an explorer gazing into the untold wonders and mysteries of an unopened tomb. It feels as though millipedes and scarab beetles and are scuttling and wriggling upon his skin.

He turns away. Follows Rosie towards the light

18

Tuesday, November 14, 1988

Shell Farm, Borrowdale

1.04pm

This cold, dank air carries a trace of smoke; the memory of flame. It is not enough to disguise the putrid reek beneath. This is the smell of a wasted year; the obnoxious stench of a thousand bales of hay turning black and decaying: putrefying back into the earth after a season of endless rain.

DS Evelyn Cater knows the smell. She grew up in a small Yorkshire market town. Daddy always told her she should marry a farmer, if he could find one willing to put up with a lass who couldn’t resist asking questions and who looked like somebody had dressed a piglet in a pinafore dress. Always had a way with words, did Daddy. He said she’d never go hungry if she did. Said she should marry somebody who thought they were getting better value for money the fatter their livestock became. She hadn’t taken his advice. Never did. Became a copper back when women police constables were about as popular as an uninvited house-guest with chronic diarrhea. She’s done well at it too. The lads rate her highly. She’s put bad people behind bars. She can punch her weight and never backs down from a ruck. Some of the old boys even forget that she’s female – neglecting to shout ‘ladies present’ whenever some foul language spews forth from a beery lip, or a colleague raises an ample buttock off the barstool and blasts a gust of methane into the smoky air. She feels comfortable in most environments now. Even here. She certainly didn’t have to marry a farmer to get to understand the ways of the countryside. She’s been here a year now, a member of the briskly efficient CID team based at Whitehaven nick, and she’s getting good at reading the skies for signs of impending trouble. There will be violence tonight, she has no doubt. She can read the mood in the valley as clearly as she can foretell a storm from the pricking in her fingertips. Temper hangs in the air like a cloud of gas and she has no doubt that it will ignite before the dawn.

It’s been a Hellish summer. The torrent didn’t let up from June through to August, turning the sun-bleached fields of golden hay into mile after mile of ruined earth. A whole year’s harvest has been destroyed and the rivers have swollen so high that there is talk of redrawing maps. A farmer in the Eden valley reported maggots eating into the living flesh of a whole herd of Swaledales; the meat beneath the wool as rancid as the ground on which they feed. In times gone by, the farmers in Borrowdale might have bunched their fists at the heavens, demanding mercy after the ceaseless onslaught. Earlier still, there might have been sacrifices. Ceremonies with bone-handle knives and virgins dressed in white. Eve knows there will be violence tonight. Farmers have burned their crops – bundles the green-topped bales of useless hay into stinking feathery oblongs and thrown petrol and flame upon the whole fetid lot.

“Will it never dry out?” asks Eve, sitting on the shallow stone step at the back of Slater Farm: a squat, mucky white building that seems to be sinking into the khaki-and-coffee fell side, half a mile up from the Wast Water. She doesn’t understand how anybody can farm here – it’s all sheer rocks and scree. “I mean, can’t they stick it in a barn and see what happens? Does it need to be burned?”

Gordon Shell leans against the mud-clogged wheel of the old tractor, booth feet planted in a puddle rainbowed with spilled oil. He talks without removing the cigarette from his lips. “It rots in on itsel’,” he explains. “Can go off like a fertilizer bomb. Fire’s the only way.”

“Must be a kick in the teeth,” says Eve, sympathetically.

He nods, a tired irritability creasing his mucky, lined features. “Worst summer I can remember. That’s the worst of this life – those days when you work knowing you’re killing yourself for nowt. Breaking your back stacking bales that are going to go up in smoke. It’s not even like you can move on. There’ll be ugly great rectangles in the fields until Christmas, patterns on the new grass, showing just how bad it’s been. It’ll take a year or more to grow back.” He spits the tip of his cigarette on the ground. “1988 can fuck off, as far as I’m concerned, if you’ll pardon my French.”

Eve listens. Files the information away. Looks up at the smudge of grey clouds and can’t help wondering whether she could ever have tolerated a life like this. She reckons she could probably still play the role of farmer’s wife – she has the strong forearms and the round, red cheeks that she associates with cartoon caricature version of the role. She just isn’t sure about the making jam and the beating eggs and making packed-lunches for some taciturn husband. Can’t see herself rubbing blood and afterbirth off a new lamb with a fistful of damp straw. Can’t imagine tweezing white hairs from the black face of a champion tup. She’d rather just get on with what she’s good at. Get on with being a copper; a thief-taker. Not that her single-mindedness hasn’t cost her dear. Her last three lovers have all told her she’s too much like hard work. She’s felt sorrow at the end of each relationship but she has never felt regret. She’s 29, a Detective Sergeant, a respected copper with a record that shows more commendations than black marks. She had to move to this little corner of England to take a step up the career ladder but she doesn’t view it as a sacrifice. She’s learning to love it here, in this dull brown blob in the top left hand corner of the map. It’s only 40 miles from one side to the other but the variety is such that on any given day she could be called to locations as different in character as the sun and the moon. Cottages; castle; urban sink estates glaring out into the sea. She’d thought that all mountains looked the same. Now she feels able to recognize the different fells from description alone. She favours the wilder lands; the rugged mountaintops with their serrated edges and hidden hazards; sudden drops and concealed mine-shafts; waterfalls that pound the rocks with a cold, endless fury. She’s starting to fit in.

“You’ve given up on him, then,” says Shell, without rancor. He’s a red-faced, knotty specimen; middle-aged but with the sun-slapped, wind-whipped look of abandoned patio furniture.

Eve pulls herself up from the step. Arches her back. “We’ll never close the file,” she says, quietly. “He’s a missing person until he’s no longer missing. But as we told you at the time, he’s a grown man. We don’t even know we have the right name for him and there are more fingerprints in his bus than we could sort through in a lifetime.”

Gordon gives a whistle and two black-and-white dogs emerge from the gaping maw of the barn behind him. They nose around his feet and he pets them, absently, as he chews his tongue, searching for the right words.

“He wasn’t happy,” he says, at last.

“I know, you said that in your statement …,”

“But you’re not going to look for him anymore,” he adds, accusingly. “Even with the blood. With what I’ve told you.”

Eve looks away. She’s already said all this to her Detective Superintendent. She’s not at all convinced that Arthur Sixpence just upped and left one day, leaving his possessions behind and saying no goodbyes. What’s more, the science officers and sniffer dogs have identified a substantial quantity of blood staining the roots of a yew tree near the spot where he parked his battered old campervan and did his best to live a quiet life. Eve’s spoken to plenty of people who knew him. None have had a bad word to say. He was quiet. A little timid. Kind. A bit awkward – perhaps a little odd. But gentle. That’s the word people keep using. He was a ‘gentle’ soul. Helped where he could. Did what he could. Eve is starting to wish she’d gone to the trouble of meeting him before upped and left. She’s heard about his healing ceremonies; his attempts to heal troubled souls. She’d liked to have seen how the trick was done.

Mr Shell, with whom Sixpence enjoyed regular campfire drinking sessions, had been clear when he made the initial call to the police: something bad had happened to his friend. He hasn’t changed his mind. Eve hasn’t been looking forward to telling him that her superiors have decided to scale down the operation. Eve’s turned up nothing to suggest that Mr Sixpence is worth any more of their valuable time. One of the pupils at Silver Birch gave the vaguest of descriptions about seeing him with a young man, dressed in ragged Hippy clothes, but both Mr Tunstall and Mr Rideal said there was nothing unusual about that. Lots of people from the travelling community made their way to Mr Sixpence’s bus over the course of any given year. Nor had they even been able to give much in the way of background detail on the man who offered ‘guidance and alternative therapies’ to pupils when life began to hit them harder than they could stand. He travelled a lot, that much they were clear on. South America; India; Indonesia, North Africa – even as far away as Papua New Guinea. This was according to the housemaster, who had once questioned him on the places he had seen and would like to see again. Eve isn’t sure how much to believe. Sixpence seems to have been in the habit of telling people stories that verged on the fanciful. He claimed to have visited parts of the Soviet Union; to have made his way behind the Iron Curtain to learn from mountain men in the cold darkness of Siberia. It was at that point that Eve realized that if Mr Sixpence didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t be.

“You know he had kids stay with him sometimes, don’t you?” asks Shell. “Kids with problems. Kids who saw things that weren’t there, or heard voices, or couldn’t help themselves pulling the wings off their pet canary. He’d try and help them. He was a good person. He tried.”

Eve sees genuine sadness in the farmer’s eyes – more than she would expect.

“I think I’d like him,” says Eve, as kindly as she can. “I like most people who want to help others.”

Gordon nods, stuffing his hands in the pocket of his overalls. “I don’t like that Rideal bloke,” he confides. “I don’t like very much about that whole bloody school. I don’t mind a bit of the hippy-trippy bollocks and if they want their kids to do all that bending and stretching instead of learning to play football, that’s their look-out. But I know they took advantage of Sixpence. Pushed him further than he wanted to be pushed. He didn’t mind giving the talks to the kids and helping people who needed it but Rideal was starting to use him like he owned him. He’d even had fliers and brochures done up talking about their remarkable on-site healer who led meditation classes and had studied spirituality all round the world. Sixpence was too much of a gentleman to ever make a fuss but it was wearing him out. He wanted to be free – that was all he’d ever wanted. And like I told you before, they weren’t happy about calling you in. It weren’t until we saw the blood that they got off their arses.”

“This mistake,” asks Eve, intrigued. “Did he ever elaborate?”

Shell shakes his head, angry with himself for never having pushed harder. “He spoke about one of the kids who’d stayed with him,” he says, screwing up his eyes in concentration. “Somebody who needed to find the lost pieces of himself. That’s what he said, and I know that sounds like nonsense but you’ve got to remember that’s how he talked. It was like being pals with a wizard sometimes, it really was. He just said that he should never have taken him through.”

“Through where?” asks Eve.

Shell shrugs again, blowing out air through his dry lips. “He wasn’t the easiest bloke to understand. He said stuff that made no sense to me, but I don’t think he understood half of what I was going on about neither. For all that, we were pals.”

“He might still turn up, Gordon,” says Eve, and it sounds a horribly weak platitude.

Shell shakes his head. “No, love. He’s gone. Passed through.”

Eve decides that silence is the best approach. She gives him a nod, and lightly squeezes his forearm as she moves past him, giving both soggy collies a rub behind the ear as she trudges through the yard: the grey mass of the valley opening out before her like the pages of an unfolded book. She’s left a uniformed constable waiting a little way down the hill, warm and snug in the patrol car. As she makes her way towards it she’s surprised to see that there is a large silver Mercedes parked nearby, wheels precariously close to the edge of the road and the tiered drop down to the lake’s edge. A burly man with receding hair and one too many chins is leaning against the bonnet, chatting to the PC. He’s wearing a dark coat over a black suit, the trouser-legs stuffed into green Wellington boots. Over the smell of the smoke and the farm; the cloying miasma of rotting hay; the iron tang of the distant lake, Eve detects a scent she remembers. It’s a blend of pipe-smoke, talcum powder and extra-strong mints. She finds herself smiling, unexpectedly, as the man on the bonnet comes into focus.

“Well, well, well,” she begins, wincing into the rain.

“It’s ‘ello, ‘ello, ‘ello,” says the visitor, and as he grins he exposes short, stubby teeth. “Did I teach you nothing?”

“Everything, sir,” smiles Eve, in return. She wonders if they’re on hugging terms or if she’d be better served by a handshake. She does neither. Just stands and smiles at him; a child happy to get a visit from a kindly Grandad.

By the edge of the road, the PC looks from one to the other; an umpire at a tennis match.

“This is Derrick Millward,” explains Eve, waving a hand. “My old boss.”

“DCI, as was,” says Millward, nodding to the PC. “Private sector now, of course. Better pay, shorter hours, not as many people trying to saw your balls off with a hacksaw …,”

“Don’t tell me you’re not nostalgic,” smiles Eve.

“Can’t let myself, Eve,” he says, affecting an air of wistful nostalgia. “My head's awash with memories already. You know I grew up here, don’t you? Farming’s loss was the navy’s gain. Then coppering since ’51. Bet that makes me seem ancient to you buggers, eh? Did you know, I caught one of the last murderers to get the death penalty?”

“Lucky you, sir,” says Eve, deciding she should have hugged him when she had opportunity. She’s missed him. “Are you here to see some old haunts or were you just keen to see how I’ve coped since you retired.”

“I’ve been watching with interest, Eve,” he replies. “Doing bloody wonderfully. Doing me proud.” He cocks his head and pulls a face. “Not so much with Arthur Sixpence though, eh?”

Eve listens to the sound of the wind playing with the branches of the trees below. Listens to the pink-pink-pink of grimy water falling from the mudguards to the puddles in the road. “Sir?”

“I think we might need a drink, love,” says Millward. “I reckon we can help each other out.”

Eve will always regret the speed with which she agrees.

19

Rosie lives in a sturdy, stone-built cottage that looks, to Rowan’s inexpert gaze, as though it may have stood here for the best part of 200 years. It’s an inviting, homely sort of place and seems to carry with an intrinsic whiff of home-cooking and freshly-picked herbs. Five big windows, painted sage green, spread out neatly around a big purple front door. The front lawn is slightly overlong but there are neatly labelled bamboo canes in the sodden flower-beds, predicting the names of the flowers that will bloom here soon. He glances up as he passes from the cold of the day to the heat of the house and spies a bushel of dried juniper; the berries black, tucked into the eaves of the porch. It’s a local superstition, a way to keep bad spirits away. Rowan wonders what she’s afraid of – why she came out so quickly when she spotted a strange man so obviously poking around in her neighbour’s garden.

He pushes open the front door and here’s her call out that she’s in the kitchen, drying off. He follows the sound of her voice, leaving footprints on her terracotta tiles, noticing the occasional imprint of her own damp soles upon the dry stone. He steps into the warm, yellow-painted kitchen; the drapes dark green. Used pots are stacked around a deep Belfast sink and the round kitchen table is a platter for a colossal buffet of pens, paints, papers and modelling clay. Pots, pans and old-fashion gypsy-style tea kettles hand from a wrought-iron range. The baby, now draped in a soft blue blanket, sits on the floor by an empty bowl for cat food, looking up at his mum with an expression somewhere between reverence and hunger.

“We got it for the view,” smiles Rosie, picking up an oven-glove and gesturing at the window. “Money well spent.”

Rowan, dripping onto the flagged floor, He looks past Rosie, who stands by the window, rubbing her hair into a great frizz of static. Beyond her, the fells are a blur: the merest suggestion of something there, beyond the cloud; brooding and immense.

“I’m not great with my hands but a towel would be appreciated,” says Rowan, apologetically.

“I’m using an oven glove,” responds Rosie, raising her eyebrows in a way that makes him warm to her at once. “I’m going to presume that’s not quite good enough.”

“I’m not proud,” smiles Rowan. “It’ll do…,”

“Stay there,” she commands, and disappears through the door, leaving Rowan and the baby to eye on another distrustfully. She pops back a moment later. She’s stripped off the vest and dungarees and pulled on a baggy T-shirt and a pair of flared cords. “That was bloody daft of me,” she says, exasperated with herself. She hands him a fluffy burgundy towel: her scent all coconut and poster-paint. He notices that she has a tiny ring through the cartilage of one dainty ear; a daith, rumoured to be good for preventing migraines.

“What was daft of you?”

“I keep leaving him places,” she explains. “My mind does have a tendency to wander. I’d like to blame the artistic temperament but I think it’s more a case that I’ve gravitated towards art because I was too scatter-brained for everything else.”

Rowan uses his fingertips to rub the towel through his hair.

“Sorry if I loomed up on you.” she says, looking embarrassed. “I’m not one of those nosy neighbours.” She grimaces, as if there’s something unpleasant under her tongue. “That’s not true. That’s a total lie. I am one of those nosy neighbours – I just don’t mean to be. I swear, I maybe look out the window half a dozen times a day and they always seem to be times when there’s something going on – not that very much goes on around here anyway.” She gestures at the table and Rowan sinks onto a chair, his damp trousers feeling vile against his legs.

“We go a bit mad here sometimes,” confides Rosie, busying herself filling a deep kettle and looking through chaotically-stacked cupboards. “Not that it’s not brilliant, of course. I mean, who wouldn’t want to raise a child here? It’s idyllic. But my husband has to work away a lot so for big chunks there’s really just us. I go to the playgroups and the mums-and-tots groups but it’s always a bit of an effort. Some days I could scream, I really could.”

Rosie leans up to fetch something from a high shelf in the sombre yellow light she takes on the likeness of a painting by Vermeer – an apple-cheeked serving girl with a glow that speaks of glowing embers; a rose-lipped embrace. He feels a vibration in his pocket. It takes him a moment to realise it’s his phone. Embarrassed, he apologises and fumbles for the phone. It’s a message from Matti, his half Finnish, half Jamaican agent, for whom a love of literature has not blunted his use of superfluous exclamation marks.

Sounds Great!!! Call me, asap. Mat.

Rowan isn’t sure whether to feel enthused or to slink further into the swirling vortex of panic that is swirling in his whisky and stomach acid. This has to be something, he tells himself. Has to be!!!

“That’s Violet,” he says, rolling his eyes: an old friend falling victim to a repeated pattern of behaviour. “Full of apology, as usual! What a donut, I’ll have her guts for garters when she gets back from her travels.”

“Oh you’ve heard from her, have you?” exclaims Rosie, excitedly “I was panicking, if I’m honest. Is she on now? Is she active? Put on her on Facetime, I’d love to see her!”

Rowan makes a show of stabbing at the display. Makes a face. “Isn’t coming back. Hang on. Violet? Vi…,no, she’s gone. Bugger. I can send a message from you if you like …,”

“Drat,” says Rosie, petulantly. “Oh. Oh well, if she’s on, just ask her if she’s able to transfer the money for the oil, as it’s been a few weeks and I don’t mean to be a pain, but … and does she want to it again this year? Split it, I mean?” She stops, worriedly wringing out Rowan’s towel, water dripping on her paint-streaked hands. “No,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s fine. Let her focus on her chakras or whatever.”

Rowan smiles. Affects the demeanour of one who’s had this happen plenty of times before. “Left you hanging, has she? Think of it as flattery. She only makes trouble for her really close friends.” He grins, hoping it’s true, and is grateful to see his smile mirrored in Rosie’s.

“It’s nice if she thinks of me like that,” says Rosie, a touch sadly. “I haven’t really made many good friends since we moved. It’s hard, and with not being allowed on Facebook any more, it’s almost …,”

“Not allowed?” asks Rowan, intrigued.

“Oh, my husband has banned me,” she says, and then makes an effort to make it sound less patriarchal. “I mean, with my consent, of course. It’s best - I get drawn in.”

Rowan nods, understandingly, adding Rosie’s husband to his mental list of people in dire need of a punch in the face.

Rosie deflates a little, putting Otto down on the floor and dreamily hanging him a lethally-sharp paintbrush and a water bill to scribble on. “It has been a bit of a nuisance, her being away this long without any warning,” says Rosie, looking genuinely pained for having spoken such a cruel thing. “I’m so pleased that she’s got the new lease of life and everything but she’s literally just toddled off without organising anything.” She pulls a face. “Sorry, she’s your friend …,”

Rowan laughs. “There are always casualties on the road to peace,” he says, philosophically.

“Even inner peace?” smiles Rosie. “I think it’s great she’s out of her slump, I really do, but I was there for her through a lot of things and now I’m here signing for parcels and turning away clients and talking to bailiffs because she’s in such a zen-like state she can’t be arsed to renew a Direct Debit.”

Rowan licks his lips. “Has it been that bad? How long has she been gone now?”

March,” she says, immediately. “I know that, because that was when we agreed to split the price of the central heating oil. She paid me in cash the first time but the last quarters have gone by and it’s getting expensive, paying for two lots. My husband is getting very irate.”

Rowan winces. On the floor, Otto sucks the tips of the paintbrush, his tongue turning slowly blue.

“I can’t wait to ask her about it,” says Rosie, happy again. She looks like she’s fighting the urge to clap her hands together. “She must have seen so many things. Felt so many things. Hopefully they’ve perked her back up”

“I did notice she’d been down,” says Rowan, vaguely, playing along.

“Well, you’ll have seen from Facebook, of course. Always the life and soul, always ready for Prosecco and Ladies Day at the Races. She was terrific when we moved in, before Otto came along. She was so friendly. Of course, she’s seen plenty come and go. We’re her eighth neighbours, she told me that on day one. But she’d made us this hamper with local products, local cheeses and crackers and jam and chutneys and stuff …,”

“Kendal Mint cake?” asks Rowan.

“Of course,” grins Rosie. She turns it inwards, smiling at a memory. “She and my husband never exactly going to become friends, I think that’s fair to say.”

“Dispute over a boundary line, is it?”

“In one way, yeah,” says Rosie, lowering her voice. “He thinks she’s a bad influence. Doesn’t let her in the house, though if he sees a way to save a few quid he’d make a pact with a Hell-beast.

“What’s happening with her post?” asks Rowan, nonchalantly. “I could sort it for you, if you ike. Get it to her and let her sort her own stuff out for a change.”

Rosie blinks, trying to look cheerful again. “Eve’s got most of it,” she says. “Do you know Eve? Older lady? Bit scary?”

Rowan nods. “Eve Cater,” he says. “They’re still in touch?”

“Well, you go through a thing like that I’d imagine it bonds you,” says Rosie, passing a pot of glue and a teaspoon down to her son, who has now taken on a distinctly Braveheart appearance.

“She’s spoken to you about it?” asks Rowan.

Rosie nods. “As much as she could, anyway.”

“As she could?”

“Well, obviously she doesn’t know what happened,” explains Rosie, and Rowan does his best impression of an idiot who’s just caught up. “That’s the big problem, isn’t it? I mean, people talk when they’ve had a few drinks and there was a brief period when she was over here most weeknights, helping me work through the alphabet of cocktails. And yeah, she mentioned it.”

“The abduction?” asks Rowan, playing the odds.

“Well she didn’t just blurt it out,” says Rosie, bringing him a mug of strong, dark tea. “There’s no sugar, by the way. Sorry. And yeah, she was telling me about how long she’s been here. I mean, it’s nearly 25 years so she had loads of interesting stuff to tell us about, and of course I remarked about how well she’d done to have such a lovely place when she must have been no more than 20, and she was smiling because I’d got the sums a bit wrong, but not by much. She said she came into some money – an inheritance. Bought her dream house and my goodness she’s done a wonderful job on it over the years. Some of those curtains cost more than my car.” She squeezes her face into an amazed smile at the thought of it. “Can’t be bad, eh? I tell you, if I suddenly inherited some dosh I’d buy me and Otto a big campervan and just take off, I really would.”

Rowan, resisting an urge to ask the current value of her husband’s life insurance policy, tries to keep his questions casual. He’s warming up. Feeling better. He sips his tea and nods appreciatively. ‘Thanks’, he adds, when it occurs to him she might not have heard the word for some time.

“Tickety-Boo” she says, proudly, as she tries to claw back her status as a progressive. “It’s Fairtrade.”

“I suppose that’s what makes it extra strange,” says Rowan, chewing his lip. “She loves the house, like you said. Leaving it to the elements and the bailiffs seems heartless.”

“I’ve said the same to my husband,” nods Rosie. She looks at Otto and his blue-streaked face. Nods, in approval. “I’ve been getting very concerned, if I’m honest. She answers like, one text in every five, and even then it’s hardly anything more than a few words. And with not being on Facebook I’ve only got what I heard third hand for proof that she’s even alive!” She raises her hands to her mouth, trying to return her fears to the place within her.

“What makes you say that?” asks Rowan, trying to show he takes her seriously.

“Well like you say,” mutters Rosie, over the edge of her mug. “I mean, she’s not short of money and owns the house outright so the only reason a bailiff would be round is if she’d forgotten to pay council tax or a car rental or something. And why would she do that? Even if she has found enlightenment it wouldn’t take a second to sort that out, would it? And the gutters needed doing in September and I got our guy to do it because I know she has it done every year, but …,” she stops herself. Looks at him intensely. “Van I tell you something?”

“Please do.”

“Look, it wasn’t my business, my husband’s right, but I couldn’t help poking around. I mean, over a few Proseccos she’d given me what she knew, and that wasn’t much. Whatever he gave them, it’s turned their memories to mush about what happened.”

“What he gave them?”

“The busker,” she says. “I mean, that’s all she remembers now, isn’t it? A few snapshots of these ripped-up memories. Something about dreadlocks and bare feet and a half a memory about smoking Bible pages as cigarettes, it’s all just gone. She said she’d been okay with that for a long time. And then of course she started wondering, and then really wondering, and she’d always been a bit of a hippy in her beliefs, hadn’t she? All that stuff about not being able to move forward while carrying baggage. That’s what this became. She wanted to know – for better or worse. And then it became about the other one.”

“Catherine?” asks Rowan, keeping up.

“No, Freya. The other one. After it all happened they didn’t get to see her again. The police made it clear, she was okay, she’d gone to be with family, it was all okay. I guess as she’s got older and wiser she’s started questioning that. She wanted to find her. Find this Freya.”

“So you helped?” asks Rowan.

“It wasn’t hard,” she protests. “I just went on a couple of forums. Websites helping people recover lost connections. All that ‘hello, I’m looking for the nanny who raised me in 1943’ stuff. I said I was looking to find Freya Grey, who’d been a pupil at her school and who I would love to make contact with. And of course I signed it as Violet, why wouldn’t I? So the next thing Violet gets a friend request from Freya – surname now Morgan.”

“Good work,” nods Rowan, approvingly.

“As far I was concerned that was it,” says Rosie. “Good for Violet – none of my business what comes next. But of course next thing I’m pregnant with Otto and my ‘friend’ from next door isn’t coming round anymore because she’s on this new journey, getting spiritual and talking about soul retrieval.” She looks at Rowan for confirmation that she’s said it right. He nods. “And when Otto comes along she barely even has time to say hello. All that banging, it’s no wonder she and my husband hiss like cats.”

“From next door, you mean?”

“Drumming,” winces Rosie. “Hours of it. I mean, it’s soothing at first, but it was making our heads spin and with a new-born baby in the house he had to have a word. He must have caught her on a bad day, enlightenment or not, and she gave him both barrels about …,”

“Yes?”

“About our lives, I suppose,” she says. “The way he treats me, or the way he seems to at least. Violet told him I was miserable. Really miserable. All part of her journey apparently – confronting that which needs to be confronted. He was furious. And he went on my Facebook profile and went back and back and back until he found something he didn’t like and said that was it, I was off.”

Rowan breathes in deeply. “Drumming?” he asks.

“The Shamanic stuff. All of this yoga and Reiki and crystal-healing. It wasn’t doing her any favours on the looks front – she was looking really, well, haggard last time I saw her, which is why it’s great she seems to be picking up, but if something has happened, and somebody is pretending she’s okay when she’s not, how hard would it be to drop a few random posts on a profile?”

“No pictures of her,” says Rowan, softly. “Not since March.”

Rosie glances at Otto. “I hope she hasn’t done that stuff,” she whispers. “Has she said? On Facebook, has she said if she tried it? I suppose it must have, if she’s of travelling.”

“The stuff?” asks Rowan.

“Whatever it’s called. That medicine-man drug they do in South America. It takes you – what was the phrase – ‘through the veil’.”

Rowan sips his tea. “Ayuhuasca,” he says, quietly.

“Yes, that’s the stuff,” says Rosie, passing Otto a pair of scissors. “When I took her Christmas card round, getting-on for a year ago, well she was warm as toast. Is she always like that? Hot and cold? I mean, she’d had no time for me for ages and hadn’t given Otto a look, and now she was cooing over him and asking about what we’d been up to. I don’t know, maybe I’d imagined the coldness, and I guess if she was getting into all the New Age stuff she might have just had no time for anything else. I don’t want to sound mean.”

“You couldn’t,” smiles Rowan.

“But she said we should have one of our sessions next time my husband was away, a proper natter. She said she’d written something that had helped her with some stuff and she’d have some stuff to tell me. She called it a ‘chapter two’, whatever that meant. She said she’d read about recovering repressed memories, about these soul retrievals and ceremonies where you drink this potion and journey through the veil into whatever it is that’s out there. And she laughed as she said it.”

“Said what?”

“Said ‘don’t worry, I won’t be knocking back the ayahuasca’, and I didn’t know the word so she said it again. I Googled it later. It’s dangerous stuff.”

Rowan nods, remembering. Rosie puts her empty mug down on the table and picks up her son like a blanket. He appears to be missing a large triangle of hair from his crown. It’s stuck to his top lip.

“Of course, she didn’t come over,” continues Rosie. “And the drumming worse than ever. Next thing we get this curt message saying she’d gone away for a bit – it went to everybody so you’ll have seen it – and now here we are with me paying for her oil in a house that nobody’s in. If it wasn’t for Eve I’d be knee-deep in post.”

Rowan ducks into her eye-line. “I think you’ve been a very good friend,” he says, and means it. “I also think you’ve done the right thing in telling me. I’m getting concerned myself.” He stands up, business-like. “I’m going to go and see eve and see if she’s had any other contact with her.”

“But you just did,” protests Rosie. “That message. She’s okay, yeah?”

Rowan nods, unable to help himself. “Of course, I just think, well …it’s best to be belt-and-braces when it’s somebody you care about, yeah?”

“Yes, of course,” says Rosie, glancing distractedly at the window. “It’s still throwing it down out there, you should really wait it out.”

Rowan remains in a crouch, half up, half down. “It’s best I go,” he says, and it’s sincere. “I’ll go and see Eve, like you suggest. Do you have any post to take to her, just while I’m here?”

She nods, brightly. Returns with a small pile of white and brown envelopes along with some cellophane-wrapped periodicals. “Can I dry your clothes?” she asks, on impulse. “I can’t imagine anything worse than damp clothes.”

“That must be nice,” smiles Rowan. “I can.”

“I’m sorry, I know that must make me sound like some demented housewife,” she says, huffily. Her fringe flops down a little. “I’m not trying to get in your pants.”

Rowan changes his angle so he can look at her properly.

“I can’t even get them off,” says Rowan, smiling.

“Will you tell me what Eve says,” she asks, some of the light leaving her again. “Or just, y’know, ask her of a picture of herself – Violet I mean. Just something to show she’s okay.”

“Holding a newspaper with today’s date, yes?” smiles Rowan.

“And you’ll call back, yes?” she asks, and there’s less little girl in her voice.

Rowan looks around him. The bright walls, the posh curtains, the little plump baby and the delightful artist who’s just given away for free what might make him a lot of money. He feels the pang of conscience and decides the decent thing to do would be to leave her well alone.

“I’ll call back,” he says. He hopes he’s lying.

20

Tuesday, November 14, 1988

Nab Scar Cottage,

2.14pm

Derrick Millward is staying in a neat, white-plastered yeoman’s cottage overlooking the silvery stillness of Rydal Water. To the rear, the soggy green mass of Nab Scar provides a barrier of sorts from the driving rain, though the storm has still managed to spatter the dark, mullioned windows and almost obscure a black diamond date-stone above the porch: 1654. From the other side of the lake, Eve fancies that the house must look like a child’s drawing.

“Bloke who runs the place is a decent sort,” explained Millward, as he led her from the rain-spattered parking area into the warm comfort of the little B&B. “No awkward questions or slurs to your reputation if you were to trust yourself to be alone with me …,”

He’d said it with a twinkle but there was no disguising the note of regret in his voice. They both know she’s safe with him. Both know she wouldn’t give a damn what anybody had to say, even if he was to chance his arm.

“It’s cosy,” noted Eve, as she followed him along a corridor rough-plastered with the same off-white render she’d noticed outside. She gave the owners a mental tick for interior design skills, nodding approvingly at the clever placing of mirrors opposite the arches of the small cottage windows: doubling the light in an otherwise dark, oppressive space. The stairs had creaked like the beams of a longboat as they made their way up the dog-leg stair, passing potted plants polished to a waxy gleam.

“In here,” he’d said, unnecessarily, as he opened the dark wooden door and led her into a bedroom so murky that the walls and furnishings seemed to swallow the light. Eve had been pleased to see an Oriental, high-backed chair by the door to the bathroom, plonking herself down immediately and looking up at tobacco-coloured ceiling beams – the same dark staining as the floorboards, upon which a vintage green and pale pink Chinese wool rug has been vacuumed flat. The big four-poster bed faces the window - three arched panels of glass exuding a church-like air: a triptych of fell.

“I’d have thought you’d be at the Sharrow Bay,” says Eve, taking off her wet suede jacket and removing her glasses to wipe the drops away using the hem of her baggy blue jumper. “Times hard, sir?”

Millward crosses state to the windowsill and takes a bottle of brandy from behind the pleated curtain. He pours a measure into a glass from the bedside table and hands it to Eve, who takes it with a nod of thanks. He clinks the bottle against the glass and takes a swig from the lip. Eve takes a sip. It’s good quality but it’s not her favoured tipple. The lads all think she’s a hardened drinker but she’s always been happy with a Malibu and lemonade; maybe a packet of nuts or two. She’s a long way past doing whatever it takes to fit in with the men – quitting smoking because she couldn’t stand the taste of it and wearing clothes built for comfort rather than catching the boss’s roving eye. She’s comfortable in herself. Knows who she is. Most of that is thanks to Derrick, her mentor and champion. She’s never seen him drink from the bottle before. She only drinks the brandy out of solidarity – a way of showing him she doesn’t judge.

“I’m getting by,” says Millward, in response to the question Eve has almost forgotten she’d asked. “I thought about staying somewhere a bit posher but what’s the point? Depressing walking up those stairs to something that looks like the bridal suite when you know you’re only going to be hugging your pillow.”

Eve stays quiet while he removes his jacket and pulls a cardigan from a suitcase on the floor. He takes a towel from the rail by the window and tosses it to Eve. He pushes back his hair and sits down on the bed, looking at her with a likeable smile on his pinkish, waxy face.

“You’ve done well, Eve,” he says, at last. “Going to be a DI, I hear.”

“Fingers crossed, sir,” says Eve, wondering who he knows at the Nick. “We’ve had some good results.”

“We?” asks Millward, settling back. “You need to learn to take the credit. It was you, from what I hear.”

Eve rolls her eyes, deeming the flattery unnecessary. “We’re not having much luck with Arthur Sixpence,” she says. “You have an interest, sir?”

“I think ‘Derrick’ is all right now,” he says, raising the bottle to his lips. “I’m retired.”

“And a bona fide private detective, so I hear,” says Eve. “You always did like your detective stories. Who are you channelling, Marlow or Spade?”

“I reckon I’m more Miss Marple,” says Millward, wrinkling his nose. “I think you might have the wrong idea about what the job entails. I reckon I did too. It’s mostly legal work. Donkey work, if you like. Finding people who owe money, property searches, investigations into errant heirlooms and more probate than anybody should have to look into. I’ve got two staff but I’m not good at letting people do things I should be doing myself. I’d have a secretary but I’d end up making her coffee, I’m sure.”

Eve grins, remembering her boss’s reputation for being soft as cream with his underlings and hard-as-frozen-butter with suspects.

“It’s Blackpool that you’re based, still?”

He nods. “No shortage of clients and it pays to be somewhere that you have a few contacts and where people remember which favours are owed.”

“I’ll bet,” agrees Eve.

“Last April a woman came to see me,” says Millward, looking to the ceiling as if about to impart something that will tax him. “Siobhan Pearl. Wife of Deaghlan.”

“Irish?”

“What gave it away?” he asks, smiling.

“Sorry, I’ll shut up.” Eve mimes locking her mouth shut while he takes another drink. She glances at his neck as he reclines against the headboard. He doesn’t look well. His skin looks like butcher’s paper, the veins in his neck as clear as A-roads on a map.

“They own fairground rides,” he says. “Settled Gypsies, if you go back a generation. They’ve done well. A lot more money than the taxman knows about. They’re not people to be trifled with, if you’ll forgive such an old-fashioned phrase. Deaghlan and Siobhan live in a great gaudy castle of a place overlooking the beach at Lytham-St-Ann’s. I got to know them well during my time with Lancashire Police. Daddy’s solid. Fair. I trust what he says.”

Eve waits for more.

“They have a son. Cormac.” His hands tighten on the neck of the bottle. “Difficult boy. You might say he was troubled. Sometimes it happens, I suppose. You give a kid every advantage and it doesn’t matter - they’re just bad right the way through.”

“How so?”

“I reckon Siobhan knew it from the first. Said he was born with teeth and talons and I don’t know if she was joking. Either way he was a big brute of a lad. Walked early, talked early, a real early developer. By the time he was a year old he was big enough to swing the cat around by its tail.”

“Boys will be boys…,” begins Eve.

“He had visions,” says Millward, flatly. “Heard voices. They’d find him sitting talking to nobody and then he’d have these seizures where his eyes rolled back in his head like a shark. Mum and Daddy did all they could on the medical front. Doctors, specialists, but it was the things there didn’t seem any cure for that caused the problems. He was vicious, that was the truth of it. Liked to hurt things. He was a charming little sod when he wanted something but if he didn’t get his own way then all bets were off. When he was six he broke the back of the family dog. Jumped on the poor thing with both feet. They’d find him in the stables, setting traps for mice but he’d twist the hinge so that it only caught them, didn’t kill them. Daddy found him with a magnifying glass roasting one in his palm, happy as you like.”

“Jesus…,”

“Well, that were another bone of contention. Family were devout but he’d have none of it. Screamed like he was Damien in The Omen if they tried to get him into his Sunday best. And at school he was always getting sent home for playing too rough with the other children., Took a pair of scissors to a little girl in his class because he wanted to – and I’m quoting directly – ‘swap bones with her’.”

“Sounds delightful,” says Eve, wishing she’d savoured her drink rather than downed it. She could already use another.

Millward purses his lips, as if what he is about to say will be an effort. “When he was eight, he hurt somebody very badly. There was a knife. She’d be dead if Mum hadn’t heard the squeals coming from the stables and even then he’d already had his fun. Left her striped like a bloody zebra.”

Eve feels the tick start up in her cheek. She’s thinking ahead.

“They didn’t call the police in?” she asks, knowing the answer.

“Kept it in the family, so to speak,” says Millward. “Spoke to their priest who said the boy was rotten all the way through, though I think his feelings had been hurt because Cormac had once told him to go get out of his sight before he gave him a Stigmata with a screwdriver. Mum and Daddy were at a loss. That’s when they heard about your school.”

“Silver Birch?”

He nods. “Reputation for helping people find themselves, isn’t that right? Holistic teaching - more carrot than stick. I reckon they’d exhausted all other possibilities by then. The Daddy, Deaghlan, he’s an upright sort of a bloke, though he’s tough as iron when needs be. I honestly think he’d have put Cormac down like a bad dog if Siobhan hadn’t persuaded him to put faith in the school.”

“When was this, sir?”

’79,” says Millward, from memory. “They met with Mr Tunstall, with Mr Rideal. Took the tour, heard the pitch. Cormac dragged himself round there like he was a hungry man at a buffet car. He’d have made mincemeat of those children - the school was right to turn him down.”

“He didn’t pass the admission protocol?”

“The school said no to taking him as a pupil. But Mr Rideal did offer access to a healing treatment that he thought might be good for somebody with Cormac’s specific characteristics.”

Eve sits forward. “Sixpence?”

“The same. Deaghlan had to say plenty of Hail Marys and Our Fathers to make it right with his own faith, but Siobhan persuaded him to try. She said there was something wrong inside him and that anything which could heal him had to be worth a try.”

“And?”

“And the boy spent the next four years living part of the time at home with Mum and Daddy – and the rest of the time up here, sharing Sixpence’s old bus with him.”

“Did it change him?”

Millward smiles, and there’s no mirth in it. “Hard to say. He was better, certainly. Always super polite at home. Helpful, kind, good with the younger children. I don’t know if Deaghlan believed he'd changed or had just learned to hide it better but he wasn’t roasting mice in the barn anymore and that was a positive step.”

“How did you come to be involved, sir?”

Millward stretches, loud clicks coming from both elbows and wrists. He looks at Eve as if he wishes he didn’t have to share any of this: that he regrets having to offload the burden of what he knows onto somebody he cares about.

“He came home for good aged 15. Deaghlan was vague about it, no matter how hard I pushed, but something happened to spoil the status quo. Sixpence had told him he wasn’t welcome any more.”

“Doesn’t sound like the sweet man I keep hearing about.”

“I never got the story on what led to the fall-put, but home he came – all dreadlocks and hand tattoos and looking like something you’d find in a riverbed the day after Woodstock. Even so, as far as Deaghlan was concerned he was pretty much a grown man now and could be put to work. He started him off running one of the slot machine places on the seafront. Changed the name of the place to ‘Cormac’s’ and tried to keep him on the right track. Didn’t take long to go wrong. Went wild on a young lass who worked with him – I’ve asked around and nobody knows what it was that flipped him, but he just grabbed her as she went past him. Those who saw it reckoned he was like a dog that just couldn’t help itself. Dragged her into a storeroom and throttled her until one of her eyes went black. Took three members of staff to drag him off and they’re all too bloody scared to talk about it. All I could get from one of the lads was that he kept talking about ‘healing’ her – about swapping her bones. It was a bloody miracle she survived. Even bigger miracle that she took Deaghlan’s money and kept quiet.”

Eve feels an overwhelming desire to lock up both father and son. “Where is Cormac now?” she asks, tightly.

“True love conquers all, apparently,” says Millward. “Fell for a pretty girl he met playing the penny-slots on Blackpool prom. A ‘hippy girl’ – that was how the family described her later. Boots and no bra, no make-up. The ones who got the stuffing knocked out of them on the drive to Stonehenge. Mona was part of that crowd. The hippies, the nomads, the alternatives. She turned Cormac’s head. Told his parents he didn’t want the life they led. Wanted her. Wanted to bed down beneath the stars and to find his own little patch of Paradise. He started quoting people Bob and Bridget had never heard of – Johannes Guttzeit, Isadora Duncan, Carl Jung, Gustav Graser …,”

“I’ll check them out.”

Millward takes another pull of brandy. ““Cormac left the family home in the first week of July, 1985. He took with him a canvas rucksack, a change of clothes, a handful of paperbacks, a toiletry bag containing a toothbrush and some Euthymol toothpaste, a hair-comb, nail scissors, an empty exercise book, three blue pens, a bicycle repair kit and the battery from his father’s imported Plymouth Turismo. According to an eyewitness, he was picked up in a dark green Military-style vehicle with canvas sides. We think it might be a catering vehicle. The eyewitness reported two females in the back already. He climbed into the back and the vehicle drove off, heading east.”

Eve realises she’s uncomfortable in the chair. Stands up and crosses to the bed, reaching out to take the bottle from her old boss. “And where is he now, sir?”

“That’s what the Pearls are paying me to find out,” he says, pressing his teeth together. He looks at her with deep, inscrutable eyes. “Are we still friends, Eve?”

“Of course, sir,” she says, automatically. “You know me better than anyone.”

He smiles at that, a memory hovering in his line of sight. “You were never cut out to be a WPC. People didn’t know they should be scared of you until you’d kicked them in the shine and stamped on their balls. Too good a brain to go to waste on woodentop work. I’m damn proud of what you’ve achieved, I really am. You were the only person I wanted to see at my retirement do.”

“Sorry sir,” she says, genuinely remorseful. “I couldn’t. That was the weekend of the sergeant exams.”

“You chose right, the way I always knew you would,” he says, fatherly now. “You know the right thing and the wrong thing and there aren’t many coppers I can say that about. So I’m going to tell you something and imagine that I’m talking to my old pal Eve, and not soon-to-be Detective Inspector Evelyn Cater.”

“You think he’s hurt Mr Sixpence,” says eve, pre-empting him.

Millward looks past her, gazing into nothing. “That and so much more. He’s been busy.”

“Busy with what?”

“Healing through pain, I think you’d call it. He’s bedded down in the Travelling community, and the last thing they ever want to do is talk to the police. But those who’ve been willing to share a beer and a bong with a private investigator – they’ve all heard the rumours.”

“Rumours, sir?”

“A predator. Moving from place to pace, camp to camp, following the stars and working his way around some old route made up of laylines and forgotten permissive paths. He finds the people who are vulnerable; replaceable. Charms them into believing he can help them. Drugs them, takes them. Those that have come back are never the same. Whatever he spikes them with, they see things nobody should have to see. One poor girl I met near Salisbury, she’s not much more than an animal after what he did. Just sits with her crayons and draws these terrible stick-men. They’re like cave paintings: all these frightened people fleeing this thing with the face of a pig.”

“And you’re saying this is Cormac?”

“I’m saying that I’m looking for Cormac Pearl, and that the person who may or not be committing these crimes matches his description. Used to, anyway. He’s got braids in his hair, according to one witness. Another said he wears different coloured contact lenses, somebody else spoke about him being barefoot with green toes. All we know is that somebody is snapping up vulnerable people like a whale with plankton. Camp to camp, festival to festival, always keeping moving. The only thing we know for certain is that he likes people to come to him willingly. He turns their heads. In several cases we’ve seen the same book on the shelves of those who have gone missing. A French book, translated into English. Shamanism: Archaic techniques of Ecstasy. It’s a study of the history of this… well, it’s not exactly a religion – more a way of life.

“Any tangible evidence, sir?” she asks, a note of caution in her voice. “Any actual bodies?”

Millward looks at her like she’s a puppy who’s just learned a trick. “There was a body found beneath the roots of a yew tree in March. Been identified as a travelling musician by the name of Bingo. We’re looking for a proper ID.”

“Cause of death, sir?”

“The pathologist found a small puncture wound right through the breastplate, corresponding with a perforation in the heart. Not a knife. A screwdriver, possibly, but more likely something used by a leatherworker or a carpenter. Do you know the sort of pressure it takes to push a blade through the breastplate? He’s strong.”

Eve nodded, picturing it. “A fight with a rival, sir? I presume it was all very ‘free love’ …,”

“There’s more,” says Millward, looking at her hard. He’s reciting information from memory – reading from the reports he knows word for word. “A young, well-built male, found ploughed into a farmer’s field near Minehead. A small, round-faced girl, no more than 17-years-old, found in a shallow grave in woodland outside of Banwell. A male and female, their bodies dumped at the same time in a marshy area of wetland off the road to Glastonbury. They were buried face to face – the skin fused over time. They were cheek to cheek when they were found. Uncoupling them tore most of the flesh away but it was still clear they were young, and fit. All with the same holes in the heart. All bearing marks of having been associated with what we call a ‘counter-culture’. The same people that we knocked lumps out of at Stonehenge.”

“Why haven’t I read about these cases, sir?”

“You have,” he said. “You’ve probably spotted a line in a national paper about a body found here or an appeal for a missing person there. But you’ve never read another word about it afterwords, I guarantee it. Because these victims, these poor young people – they’re the drop-outs. They’re society‘s throwaway people. “

“And they’re definitely murders? I mean, if the skin was fused then you’re suggesting that he was carrying out these murders while still at school. While still saying with Sixpence …”

“No,” he said, flatly. “Not definitely. Not conclusively. And you’re right to question whether I’m a daft old man who’s made a picture from a few random scraps of paper. They could be suicides. Could be accidents. Could be the victims of all different types of misfortune. But there are enough similarities for me to believe we’re looking for one person.”

“How much of this can you prove, sir?” asked Eve, as a chill raises the hairs upon her arms and the base of her neck. She fights to suppress a shiver.

“Not enough to interest any of my former colleagues,” says Millward, with a flash of regret. “Not enough to get any serving force to take a proper look at this. Not even enough to take it to the press in the hope people will learn to be on their guard. But I know enough to make catching him and stopping him the most important thing in my world. Enough to be able to persuade an old protégé to let an old dog try a few new tricks.”

Eve realises she’s taken a fistful of the bedsheets in her hand. She doesn’t know if she believes him, but she can see that there is something in his eyes, in his manner, that means this is all very real to him. “This family,” she says. “The Pearls. If you found him, what would they do?”

Millward holds her gaze. She realises that the muscle in her cheek is twitching again. She can hear the rain against the glass and the constant shushing of traffic on the nearby road.

Millward seems to make up his mind. Leans forward and lowers his voice.

“I’d let them put him down,” he says, without blinking.

Eve gives a nod.

And a bargain is struck.

21

Rowan feels a little like a giant bumblebee. He’s wearing dark jogging pants along with an Australia rugby jersey, and is reclining in one of the brown wing-back chairs that fan out around a circular, bright yellow table. He doesn’t know if Serendipity planned it this way when she pulled the first two items of clothing she could find out of the laundry pile and insisted he sit in front of the Aga in the kitchen and warm himself up.

He raises his glass, toasting his sister. Saint Serendipity - always willing to blow-dry a drowned rat.

Serendipity has looked after him like she always has, fussing and clucking and doing everything but press her lips to his sore hands and kiss them better. He’s been fed – an acceptable vegetarian lasagne with some ghastly avocado and pumpkin-seed flapjack for afters. Had his glass refilled enough times to make the world a softer, gentler place. His hands have been re-wrapped; the wounds healing well; his hands and fingers more able to move under the new wrappings. Now the drowned sailor who stood on her doorstep two hours ago has been replaced with a slightly healthier version of her younger brother. She keeps smiling at him, looking like she wants to pat his head.

It’s nice here, in Serendipity’s madly-patterned kitchen, at the heart of the large stone farmhouse that Jo has spent a very keenly worked out budget on transforming into a home of distinction. Warm, with the Aga belting out heat. The walls are a mixture of burgundy and teal and the low roof and dark wood beams make him feel as though he’s sitting in some marvellous Victorian tavern, tankard in hand and pipe cupped in a grimy palm. He’s having to squint a little to keep up the charade. Jo is seated at the other end of the kitchen table, a hunched preying mantis with whom his bee is sharing a sunflower.

It doesn’t take long to spoil it for himself. Slowly, inexorably, the doubts wash in. The questions about what is real and what is projection. Does he really believe something has happened Violet or is he just pretending to so he has something to tell his editor and agent? He’s worked this way before – starting with a headline and trying to make the story fit the mould.

“Were you sleeping?” asks Snowdrop, appearing in the doorway. She’s in huge pyjamas and slippers made to look like half-peeled bananas. She looks recently scrubbed, her hair dried and brushed and dried and brushed so that it gleams like wet coal.

“Not at all,” says Rowan, shifting position and smiling. “How are you doing, Scoop?”

“Scoop?” asks Snowdrop, muttering a ‘hello Jo’ to the silent, spindly figure who taps away at a typewriter and puts circles around an expenses sheet at the far end of the table.

“Somebody claim an extra mile on the round-trip to Kent, did they?” asks Rowan, raising his voice and winking at Snowdrop.

Jo, a sleeping lioness, does not look up from her calculations. “We have those odometers fitted for a reason Rowan. If you take a wrong turn, it shouldn’t be the company that pays for your incompetence.”

“You’re all heart,” says Rowan, and thinks he sees a little smile on his sister-in-law’s tightly pursed mouth.

There’s a screech as Snowdrop drags a chair towards him across the checkerboard paving, crunching up the end of a large rag-rug. “So,” she says, expectantly. “Tell me what’s next. Tell me what we’ve got. When do we start writing? Will we have a joint byline, or will I be like an ‘additional reporting’ credit, what do you reckon?”

Rowan listens. Listens to the chatter as it begins to find the beat of the raindrops upon the glass; the pinging of hot metal in the fire; the rhythm of Jo’s fingers moving across her screen. Deep down, far back in his skull, trapped in there like a fly, he hears the faintest whisper of something dark. Looks into his niece’s trusting eyes and asks himself the question he has refused to look upon. Why haven’t you called the police? The answer bubbles up like hot, sulphurous air; a speech bubble from his gut. He hasn’t called the police, because right now, this is all his. He doesn’t know yet whether there’s even a story to write, but he does know he has enough little snippets of intrigue to start whetting publishers’ appetites. If something bad has happened to Violet Rayner, it makes for a better story. If the sins of the past have returned to haunt a woman kidnapped as a teen, it all gives the story weight. And if he’s the one who raises the alarm, and hands the police a dossier full of cover-ups and crimes unsolved, it’s going to look damn good on a book-jacket. And if it turns out that Violet spent a weekend in Blackpool getting pissed back in 1991 and that she really is having a ball on a round-the-world adventure, he can at least do his damnedest to charm her into talking to him about how it has felt to live with such a big part of her past missing. He could probably get a few hundred quid for that off one of the women’s magazines, which could keep him in liquor money and phone service until the right story does land in his lap. He just needs to keep them all away for a while. If he can show them he’s working, the publishers might grant a contract extension, giving him time to find a replacement story, twice as good. He just needs time. Time, and a few hundred thousand pounds.

“Speaking to Eve Cater is going to be key,” says Rowan, as Snowdrop sets about scribbling down a plan of attack in her multi-coloured jotter. She puts wiggly underlines beneath the date and uses a love-heart for the dot over of the lower case ‘i’ in Investigation.

“The old police officer, yes?” asks Snowdrop. “Do you think she’ll be keen to talk?

Rowan shrugs. “She and Violet are close, or so it seems. If Eve’s collecting her post for her, they must have a pretty good relationship, which means she might know plenty that will help, and might well be only too happy to tell us the truth about 1991.”

“What do we think that is?” asks Snowdrop, scribbling furiously.

“I’ll let you know when it comes to me,” smiles Rowan. “Either way, she’s very high on the list. And we need to know more about Derrick Millward, about the school, who worked there, what they remember.”

Snowdrop stops writing. “Uncle Rowan, erm, surely if Eve thought there was something to worry about she would surely have contacted the police. Doesn’t that suggest Violet is exactly where she says she is and that there’s nothing going on untoward? I know that would be a blow but maybe we’re getting carried away.”

“Nothing’s set in stone,” says Rowan, optimistically. “I mean, yes, of course she could well be absolutely fine …,”

“Pity,” mutters Jo, from the far end of the table. “Maybe one of the other ones will be in a more marketable state of peril.”

Rowan regards her, wondering if he should defend himself. He catches Snowdrop’s eye and she gives a little shake of the head. It doesn’t matter. They’re both writers, in this together.

“Catherine,” says Snowdrop, brightly. “Catherine Marlish. What’s the plan, Batman?”

“No social media profiles, no obvious way in,” muses Rowan. “So it comes down to the creative writing class. I’m going to have to play it by ear.”

“I’ve heard that phrase – what does it mean?”

“Make it up as I go along,” says Rowan, draining his glass. “In the best scenario, Catherine will be delighted to have the chance to tell her story. She clearly got a desire to be heard – why else would she want to write? I need to show her that I can be trusted.”

Jo laughs, a hard, dry sound. “But you can’t!” she snaps. “You demonstrably can’t be trusted to use her story in a way that will help her. Listen to you!”

“That’s not fair!” begins Snowdrop. “This is Uncle Rowan’s job. He’s a writer who can’t use his hands and he’s still managed to grab the tail of a story. Look how much he knows already! Catherine can trust him – trust us! – to tell the truth.”

“Snowdrop, he doesn’t care about Catherine,” says Jo, looking pained. “He doesn’t care about what may or may not have happened to Violet. He cares about his bloody deadline and the alarming lack of funds in his bank account.”

Rowan turns towards the fire, an attempt at a smirk carved into his features. It feels as though the words in his head have found a mouthpiece in his sister-in-law.

“You shouldn’t talk to him like that,” huffs Snowdrop, slumping in her chair. “He’s not well.”

Jo shakes her head, coldly. “Where was he, eh? When things were going well? How often did you see him? What about those trips to TV studios or placements on newspapers or free entry to museums that owed him a favour? None of it happened. Too busy. Too busy living high and living well. No thought for you until he literally had nobody to wipe his backside and suddenly he’s the uncle of the year? Bollocks.” She gathers up her stuff, her face contorted. “I’m going to work in the study. Snowdrop, don’t be long. And Rowan, if you drink the last of the bottle you’ll find some methylated spirit in the garage. There’s cranberry juice in the fridge if you need a mixer.”

Snowdrop tries to put herself into Rowan’s line of sight. He listens to the sound of Jo’s footsteps echoing away into the corridor then manages to drag his attention away from the fire. “Sorry,” he says, squeezing one eye shut. “She’s right about all that stuff. I’ve been rubbish.”

Snowdrop shakes her head. “Depends how you look at it. You do a lot of the things you say you will and I know you only don’t do the other stuff because you’re busy. And anyway, you’re here. We’re being journalists. Writers. You’re making up for lost time!”

Rowan manages a smile. Nods a curt little thankyou. Turns away before she sees the moisture in his eyes.

“I think we need to know precisely what led Violet into going away for all this time,” says Snowdrop, trying to squeeze a felt-tip pen between her nose and top lip. “And it was Mum who gave her the details on who to contact for the Shamanic stuff.”

Rowan considers it. Thinks of drumbeats and the fire-pit and the maze of cave-painting on the bare brick wall. She’s trying to remember, that much is clear. She’s been trying to journey – to seek lost parts of herself. She spoke of ayahuasca.

“Do you think you could ask your mum?” he asks Snowdrop. “I mean, I could probably spend an evening going through her Facebook friends and cross-referencing with shamanic groups but it would be easier of she just said who it was she put her in touch with. You could sort of just bring it up in conversation, see what she thinks.”

He looks into a huge grin. “Didn’t even need to come up with a cover story,” says Snowdrop, wide-eyed. She said to me before you turned up sopping wet – she’d messages her friend and said that her brother and her darling girl were keen to know more about shamanism. That’s okay isn’t it? We don’t need to mention Violet by name – just see what sort of path she was on. Anyway, she’s a lady called Sharon. That’s funny, don’t you think? Sharon the Shaman? I did, anyway. Her surname’s Durning. There’s nothing funny about that. She lives in a place called Redcar and she’s a Shamanic practitioner, Reiki practitioner, a crystal healer and something to do with Egypt as well. I Googled her. She was an estate agent before she got the calling to become a, well, whatever it is she uses as a title for all that stuff. Anyway, she’s happy to talk to us about what it is she does and how it works.”

Rowan feels like a proud dad watching their first-born score the winning goal in a cup final. He’d offer a fist-bump if it didn’t hurt. “You are a marvel,” he manages. He gestures at his phone, sitting on the table-top like a neglected paperweight.

“You’ve got messages,” says Snowdrop, reaching across and scrolling for him. “Your agent’s still waiting to call back, your BT bill is available online, Roxanne wants to know if you remember where her passport is – that’s a bit rich, don’t you think? – oh, and you’ve been accepted into Facebook groups for Friends of St Olaf’s Church and …what’s this word?” she asks, spelling out ‘alumnus’. “Ok, alumnus. They’ve accepted your request so you can now view discussion groups and photos from the ‘glory days’ of the Silver Birch Academy, 1974-1992. Is that where they were pupils? Right, right.”

Rowan chews his lip, mulling things over. He hasn’t heard back from his message to Violet and his earlier request to find Freya Grey online have proven ineffective. There are plenty of red-haired women of a certain age who answer to the name. He’s messaged them all, claiming to be a friend of a friend. He might be well served by posting a message in the Facebook group. A simple ‘does anybody have a number for Freya’ might at least provoke some memories. But to do that he might risk alienating the people who may come in useful when he is fleshing out the book. Stories can rise or fall on such judgement calls.

“Oh, you’ve had a message from somebody called Rosie,” says Snowdrop, narrowing her eyes. “There’s a picture attached. Apparently she’s thinking of you …,”

Rowan lunges forward, grabbing the phone. He looks up and sees Snowdrop grinning at him. “I knew you liked her,” she says. “You went all doe-eyed when you mentioned her.”

“Oh shush,” says Rowan, rearranging his position. He’d like a cigarette and another glass of something warming for the road.

“Cup of tea?” asks Snowdrop, reading his thoughts. She looks at him with such hopefulness in her eyes that he feels unable to disappoint her.

“Perfect,” he says. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

22

Rowan:

Hi, and Namaste. My name is Rowan and I believe you’re good friends with my sister, Serendipity. She mentioned you might be able to help me out with some details and background for a project I’m working on. Would you be able to help?

Sharon:

I do know Serendipity, and her lovely daughter. She mentioned you may need a bit of info so please, fire away. What is it you need?

Rowan:

A precis. Shamanism explained. What you’re into, how you do it, how people respond …

Sharon:

There are some great books that could help you. There’s one called Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy – that’s what got me started.

Rowan:

Great, thanks, I’ll try and track it down. You’ve been doing this a while, have you?

Sharon:

Started when I was in my teens. I can’t imagine another way to live now.

Rowan:

Who got you into it? I saw on your website you’ve been trained in all sorts of disciplines. How good are you? Can you get rid of my headaches from there?!

Sharon:

Some people think so. There are shamanic practitioners who offer remote services. They find your frequency and promise to fix whatever ails you no matter where you are. I’m not saying they can’t do it but I have enough doubt about my own ability to not offer it as a service. If that’s what you’re after there are people I can recommend.

Rowan:

That’s amazing, I didn’t even know that was a thing. I keep wondering what it is that you actually see when you’re in a trance. I grew up a little bit outside the mainstream so I’m open to new ideas. In a nutshell, what is it you do?

Sharon:

I personally do power retrieval, soul retrieval, & shamanic extraction medicine.

Rowan:

Soul retrieval sounds fascinating. How does it work?

Sharon:

I use the drum, my main shamanic tool, and beat it to the 'eagle beat' (quite rapid, this is the same beat as the theta brainwaves when we're asleep) This induces an altered, higher state as it were, and once I connect to the client, set my intention to spirit in the Upper World (where lost soul parts are nurtured & looked after) that I wish to find and return lost soul parts for the healee. The feeling I liken it to, is more like a lucid dream, I journey upwards, calling on my shamanic guides for assistance & protection. Each experience is different, but generally I am met by various, ancestors, guides, & occasionally totem animals that are connected to the client. They are taking care of the soul parts in readiment for them to be returned, they are never truly lost. The ancestor/guide etc gives me an item, could be anything, and I ask them what soul part it represents, ie. an arrow for their direction, a candle to bring their fire back, and so on. Then I give that ancestor something back in return as a thank you, energetically of course. I carry on doing this until I'm told by my guides that all parts have been returned. The feeling is very spacey but also quite euphoric. I bring the soul parts back to the physical world, and each part is blown into the heart chakra of the client, then again into the crown chakra, a rattle is then shook around the crown chakra, sealing the soul parts back where they belong.

Rowan:

This is fascinating

Sharon:

All different shamanic cultures have their own way of doing this, however, the basis always seems to be very similar.

Rowan:

Maybe it’s the cynic in me but it sounds as though it might be open to mischief. People could easily prey upon the sort of person attracted to that level of ‘power’. You must have met people you wouldn’t feel comfortable allowing to ferret about inside your higher consciousness?

Sharon:

I used to have a client who felt like that. I can’t mention names, I have known a couple of people, usually male, that have manipulated vulnerable people in various ways, to boost their own ego, bank balance, sense of power, or libido. But I guess that happens in all walks of life. Please just ask if you need me to elaborate on anything to do with the healing I’ve just described, as Ive just given you a basic idea I guess.

Rowan:

It’s fascinating. Would love to be able to go on one of these journeys with you some time.

Sharon:

Shamanic healing takes between 90mins to 2 hours. That includes the consultation either side of it and dependent on the time it takes, it's between £45 & £60 x

Rowan:

Just while I have you, from the perspective of the plot I'm working on, I've read that in ancient cultures some shaman used their gifts for less noble purposes. Could you maybe elaborate on that?

Sharon:

That's not a weird question compared to what I've heard in the past 😂 It’s all about intention of the shaman and if the recipient 'believes' it can happen, as no doubt the shaman will make sure that the recipient knows hes going to do it, a bit like a gypsy curse, if you get me? I, personally, dont believe it can actually be done, and only soul 'parts' can be lost ( but they can be returned) but a lot of bad luck can be stirred up. And yes, someone with a 'dark heart could really believe it's in their power. Hope this helps lol x

Rowan:

Is there any atonement or morality based afterlife? A Heaven or Hell of sorts? Big one, eh?!

Sharon:

I think that different cultures believe different things, but generally, the belief is that everything has come from light and will go back to it, whether good or evil. I guess there are different levels. But to be honest, no one really knows

23

Monday, July 4, 1990

Silver Birch Academy

Wast Water

“They’re just going to make you take it off again, Violet.”

“They’re just going to make you take it off again, Violet.”

Catherine sighs. She’s grown used to having her own personal echo. Every time she says anything even vaguely conformist, Violet takes it upon herself to imitate her. She wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t such an excellent impression. She even manages to get the slightly apologetic note into her voice; the sense that it’s an awful responsibility having to impart such bothersome information. Violet believes that Catherine has chosen to model herself on the wrong literary heroines. Whereas she feels a kinship for Cathy, for Jane Eyre, for Estella Havisham, Catherine has chosen to identify with Anne from the Famous Five.

“I’m just saying …,”

“I’m just saying….,”

Catherine slumps back against the cold, damp wall. It was painted bright yellow last summer but it seems to be fading, as if the old brickwork is leeching the vibrant hue from its surface. She watches as Violet applies an extra coat of lipstick. It’s a dark, plummy colour and it makes her look as if she’s been eating chips with too much vinegar.

“Like it?” asks Violet, smacking her lips together. “I nicked it from boots. Walked right past the security guard. He was too busy looking at my tits to notice.”

Catherine decides not to follow the security guard’s lead. She gives an encouraging smile, and forces herself not to ask any of the questions that are demanding attention in her mind. When did she go to Boots? How did she get there? When were they apart? She has learned how to handle her best friend, and knows that above all things, Violet hates to be caught out in a lie.

“Bet that Freya will be jealous as Hell,” says Violet, looking at herself in the mirror. She seems to like what she sees. She looks more grown-up than Catherine. Boys notice her. Her hem-line keeps travelling north and she manages to look as though she’s seen it all, done it all bought the T-shirt, which surprises Catherine, who knows for a fact that the most she has done with a boy was a rather sloppy kiss at the Young Farmers disco.

“Freya?” asks Catherine, glancing at her watch and hoping that Violet will finish up soon so they can make it to drama class before the lesson actually ends. “Why would she be jealous?”

“Cos she thinks she’s all that, doesn’t she?” shrugs Violet. “Like she’s something special.”

“She seems okay,” says Catherine, who hasn’t really given the new girl much thought since she arrived the previous month without so much as an introduction to the form group. She hasn’t spoken to them much. Hasn’t spoken to anybody really.

“Okay? She’s all look-at-me, look-at-me. Trying to be all mysterious, with her weird little spell-books and her nail varnish. God, it’s pathetic.” She sucks her cheek. “Cool shoes though.”

Violet can’t make up her mind about the new girl. Catherine quite likes seeing her friend so conflicted. She looks at her the way dogs consider one another, weighing up whether this newcomer is a threat. She wears a certain expression whenever she considers the red-haired, Irish girl. It’s one Catherine knows so well. It’s a sullenness, an air of being spectacularly unimpressed. Elora had put it best when she said that sometimes, Violet looked as though her mouth was full of somebody else’s sick. Elora has a way with words.

“Her voice is nice,” says Catherine.

“Why don’t you marry her then,” snaps Violet, baring her teeth. There’s lipstick on her incisors.

“I was just saying.”

“I was just saying.”

“What were you just saying?”

Both girls turn towards the door as the soft Irish voice startles them. Freya is watching them. She looks like she may have been watching them for a long time. Catherine is struck, again, by how much older than them she looks. She could be 16 at least, and though she wears no make-up and lets her tangled red hair fall over her face, she looks more like a woman than a child.

“I was saying I like your shoes,” says Violet, all smiles. “How are you? Settling in?”

Freya glances at Catherine, giving he the tiniest wink. She knows she’s caught them out but isn’t going to make a thing of it. She gives them a smile. It’s the first time they’ve seen her teeth. Catherine is surprised to see that they’re not in great condition; stained with a peculiar patina that makes her think of the inside of a teapot.

“Bit weird isn’t it?” confides Freya. “I mean, I just go wherever but this feels a bit like we’re in a cult or something. I did the morning yoga session my first day – all that downward-facing dog stuff with my arse right up in the air. There was only me and the teacher! You buggers could have told me it was optional.”

Catherine laughs. “We’ve done plenty of that. I still like the meditation sessions but there aren’t as many as there used to be. Mr Sixpence did all that stuff. And the Reiki.”

“Yeah, I saw that in the brochure. Reiki? I thought it was something you did to your garden in Autumn.”

Violet laughs, a little too loud. “Do you need the mirror? I was doing my make-up …,”

“Yeah, looks great. I don’t really wear it. Sensitive skin. I hate my freckles though. Do you think you could do mine some time?”

Violet can’t help but grin. “Yeah? I mean, yeah, sure. Like, whatever.”

“Who’s this sixpence bloke I keep hearing about?” asks Freya, coming closer to the mirror. Up close she smells nice, like biscuits and old soap.

“Old hippy who lived in the woods,” shrugs Violet, making room. “Sodded off one night. The police came and everything. It was cool.”

“Yeah? What happened to him?”

Catherine feels herself being excluded and decides not to let it happen again. “Police have left the file open but they seem to think he’s just gone off on one of his pilgrimages. He used to give assemblies about it. He was a shaman.”

“A what?”

“They talk to the dead,” explains Violet. “Or they think they can. They travel between this world and the other world. I dunno if it’s rubbish but he was nice.”

“Wish I’d met him,” says Freya, smoothing her eyebrows in the mirror. The cuffs of her jumper ride up. Catherine sees white lines across the blue veins of her wrists. She looks away before the new girl can see.

“He won’t be back now,” says Violet. “His van’s still there because they can’t get it back to the road but they’ve had a bonfire with his stuff.”

“They?”

“Tunstall. Rideal.”

“I met them. They seem nice.”

Violet snorts, scornfully. “Tunstall’s alright, but he’s wetter than an otter’s pocket. Rideal’s just a posh wanker.”

“What do your parents think of this place?” asks Freya, chattily.

“I couldn’t care less what they think,” snaps Violet, angrily. “They pay the bills and leave me alone and don’t make a fuss when I get in trouble. They’re perfect parents, really,” she adds, nastily.

“Your dad seems nice,” says Freya, plaiting her fringe and then unplaiting it again. “He’s the vicar, yeah? I met him on my induction day. Friendly.”

“He does his best,” says Catherine, loyally. “He didn’t know you were joining, actually. He was surprised that there was a new girl. He’s on the Board, you see. He was a bit miffed. Said so to Mummy.”

“Mummy,” snorts Violet.

“It was all a bit last minute,” shrugs Freya. “My family work away. My guardian’s out in Saudi Arabia making money but the school I was at before couldn’t take me for the whole summer so they got me in here, last minute.”

“Your guardian?” asks Catherine.

“I’ve moved around a lot,” says Freya, pushing her hair up like a matinee idol. The action exposes a patch of torn scalp; a perfect patch of ridged flesh, completely hairless. Violet spots it too and Catherine has to reach out and squeeze her arm to stop her commenting.

“What about your mam? Your dad?”

“Are you two coppers or something?” asks Violet, looking from one to the other. Then she grins. “Do you smoke? I’ve only got a few cigs left? Do you know anybody who might pop to the shop for us? I’ll share if you do.”

Catherine doesn’t get a chance to answer. Violet jumps in for both of them. “Smoke? Yeah, I love a ciggie. Trying to kick them but you know how it is. I reckon you could get served. We go shopping in Keswick sometimes. It’s boring unless you like fell-boots but I need some things and I’m good at getting stuff past the security guard in Boot’s. There’s a bus on a Tuesday. Do you want to come?”

Freya turns from the mirror and looks from one to the other, weighing them up, surveying them like she’s choosing a Christmas turkey. At length, she nods. “I’m Freya, in case you didn’t know. Like the goddess.”

“The goddess?” asks Catherine, and she feels a strange prickling anxiety all over her skin.

“I’ll lend you some books,” smiles Freya. “I’m into things that not everybody understands.”

”Like what?” asks Violet, brightly.

Freya rolls up her sleeve. On her forearm, picked out in fine white scars, is a stick figure. He carries a spear, and shield, and there are crude tusks protruding from the ruined mass of his face.

“Like this,” she says.

24

12.48pm

An unnamed road on the north bank of Wast Water

“Second…. Snowdrop, second yeah… up and to the right, that’s third …now turn the radio up….Christ, that really is some view….sorry, nearly lost control there, bloody silly wooden steering wheel, who’d have thought that was a good idea? …fuck, are you hot, I’m roasting….here, can you light this when you get a free hand?.... good lass, cheers…aye, turn it up, turn it up…,”

Rowan’s fingertips slip from the steering wheel and the little car lurches to the right, the tyres on the driver’s side briefly chewing gravel and air. Beneath them is a 15-foot drop down to sharp rocks and icy black waters. Swearing, Rowan grabs at the wheel, swinging them painfully back onto the winding grey road that hugs the curve of the lake.

“Don’t mention that to your mum,” mutters Rowan. “Or any of it, really. We went for a nice walk. I wanted some air. We bonded.”

“Do I have to fib? She might be okay with it.”

Rowan shoots his niece a look. “I’m going to educate you, little one. Pay attention, after you’ve lit that fag. Look, lies are horrible, terrible things. They’re a virus. They’re bad for the soul and can spread like cancer. When coppers and politicians use them, they should be roasted on a spit. It costs me a little bit of myself every time I have to resort to an untruth or exaggeration. But - and like the rear end of your mother’s wife, this is a big butt – they’re also a kindness. You see, it’s the people who respond poorly to the truth who force people like me, and you, to employ the compassionate balm of fiction. Fabrication. Duplicity. One day, we’ll all be able to tell each other things with full and frank honesty. Until then, best say shtum.”

“Shtum?”

“Aye. It’s an onomatopoeic word. It’s the sound of a truth suffocating behind superglued lips.”

“Sorry?”

“Don’t be.”

Rowan looks out at the burnished pewter bowl of the valley, f ringed in places by dense, spiky woodland. It’s a brutally cold day, the wind and rain assaulting the car like fists and boots. It’s his first time behind the wheel of the vintage Nissan Figaro that Serendipty and her wife like to use for picnics when they feel like treating themselves to a little luxury. It’s recently been restored to the pale blue of the factory floor. It’s Jo’s pride and joy. She takes the family Kia to work each day just so that using the Figaro feels more like a special occasion. Dippy hadn’t believed her uncle when he said that her two mums wouldn’t object to him borrowing it. But he’d shown her the message on his phone; a carefree acquiescence and instruction to ‘be careful’. Rowan had been quite proud of the speed with which he had typed the message with his bandaged hands, and the ease with which he had mimicked his sister’s text-voice. Mud streaks are already making a mess of the white-wall tyres.

In the passenger seat, Snowdrop is doing her best to obey his multitude of requests, holding his mobile phone to his ear while changing gear, operating the radio and attempting to light a cigarette on the broken lighter by the gearstick.

Rowan glances down to the lake. A VW Transporter is parked in a small bay a few feet above a shingly cove at the water’s edge. It is being investigated by half a dozen Herdwick sheep. In the water, two men stand bare chested, their skin alabaster white; steam rising from their shoulders and from swimming caps that make them look like spent matches.

Rowan rolls the car to a halt in the parking area at the end of the road. The copse of trees that surrounds St Olaf’s is a couple of hundred metres ahead. There are several vehicles in the car park; mostly working vehicles; flat-bed pick-ups and bottle-green Land Rovers. There’s a blue BMW, a black Jeep and battered red works van; its mudguards clogged up with torn grass and thick mud. Beyond the car park, the road peters out at the front of the big hotel. It’s a long, imposing building that looks up to the task of doing daily battle with the elements. Its front is the colour of old butter and thick black gloss serves as thick mascara around the dark windows. Rowan scanned the website before they left, taking a mental note of the names of the owners and a little about the place’s history, in case he needed a tool with which to start a conversation with a taciturn local. He now knows that this is where British climbing began. It has been a hotel for two centuries or more, providing much-needed lodgings for the peddlars, merchants and tradesmen who laboured over Black Sail, Sty Head and Burnmoor passes to ply their trade in adjacent valleys. It has played host to the great men of British climbing; Victorian upper-class daredevils who pitted themselves against the towering crags and made daily wagers with the elements. Many of those early pioneers are buried in the consecrated ground of St Olaf’s.

Rowan climbs out of the car, wincing as his fingers touch metal. It’s a cold, desolate spot. A cold breeze seems to lift from the lake, casting patterns onto the still silver surface, lifting the dead leaves from the pock-marked car park. For a moment Rowan’s mind seems to spin and eddy, as if some part of him were drifting into the dank gloom. He feels cold all the way through.

Sharp air chafes his cheeks. Beneath the smeared pink salve, Rowan can feel virgin skin turning duck-egg blue.

“Good God, you look like Shane McGowan’s stunt double!”

Rowan turns at the unexpected greeting. It takes him a moment to recognize the small, bald-headed man who stands in front of a budget hatchback. Last time he saw Damien Crow was 20 years back and then he had seemed a colossus of a man: lantern-jawed and straight-backed the sort of Biblical icon that Charlton Heston did so well. Age has withered him. He’s probably a little shorter than Rowan and there’s a touch of a stoop to his posture. He wears glasses atop a prominent nose and looks cold inside his waterproof and fleece. His smile shows teeth that are all his own, though whether he cherishes them is open to debate. They’re a colour that Rowan could best liken to salted caramel.

“Bloody hell,” says Rowan, returning the smile. “Good job we’re meeting at a graveyard – you look like you need the lie down!”

Pleasantries exchanged, Rowan holds up his hands. “Ouch,” says Crow, wincing in solidarity. “Have you got the little bastard who did it yet?”

Rowan nods. “Wasn’t so little, to be honest. If he’d been little, it might not have happened.”

“That was the problem, was it?” asks Crow, closing the car door and crossing to where Rowan stands. “Just too big for you?”

“That and the crowbar, yeah.”

“I always imagine opened a place called The Crow Bar,” says the old reporter, wistfully. Up close, Rowan’s gratified to get the smell of lunchtime ale and last night’s fags. There’s something reassuring about somebody who sticks with their vices in the face of all the evidence.

“You were always better this side of the bar,” says Rowan, as Snowdrop comes and joins him. She smiles, politely. “This is Snowdrop, my niece.”

“A pleasure, love,” says Crow, and the flat vowel sound betrays his Yorkshire roots. He’s been a local reporter since 1981 but is still an outsider in the valley. He gives Rowan his attention. “You didn’t mention whether there might be a fee for my expertise.”

Rowan grins. “There’s the pleasure of my company,” he says, doubting it will be enough. “And an acknowledgement when the book comes out. And a chance to remember a time when you were as young and good-looking as I am now.”

“You always were a gobshite,” smiles Crow, then mouths an apology at Snowdrop. “You should have seen this one on his first day in the job. Purple hair, tattoos all over him, earring in each ear. We thought the gaffer had gone mad for hiring him and by Christ he was a pugnacious little sod. Do you know what that word means?”

Snowdrop nods. “Fighty?”

“Not far off,” smiles Crow. “Told me on day one he was going to have my job inside a year.”

“I never did,” says Rowan, surprised at the accusation.

Crow looks at him with intelligent blue eyes and nods, fulsomely. “You bloody did, son. Couldn’t tell whether to laugh or smack you in the face. I decided neither would end well for me. You’ve done well for yourself.” He narrows his eyes. “Could have done better, of course, but couldn’t we all?”

Rowan nods in the direction of the church. They fall into step, crunching over the pitted, damp floor.

“So, no fee?” asks Crow, a little disconsolately.

“I’m a one man band,” says Rowan, apologetically. “And if this story doesn’t work out, I’m going to find myself in more debt than Germany circa 1919.”

“Chris said it was a book – not a story…,”

“I don’t know what it is – I just know it’s got legs.”

“It’s my story,” butts in Snowdrop, as they approach the little track that leads to the copse of yew trees that hide St Olaf’s. “We’re going to share the credit.”

“I’ll bet,” laughs Crow, giving Rowan a knowing look.

“Chris told you what I’m looking into, yeah?” says Rowan, hurriedly.

“The girls in ’91?” Crow nods. “I looked out my old notes for you. You must know something I don’t because it wouldn’t even make a footnote in my memoirs.”

Rowan looks away, over the low stone wall to where a ram with the largest testicles Rowan has ever seen, is trying to mount a ram with the second largest testicles Rowan has ever seen.

“Bloody hell,” mutters Crow beside him, as he subtly manouvres Snowdrop out of the way.

“Country folk with country ways,” mumbles Rowan, and they share a nice moment as they arrive at the lych-gate. Even in the dreary grey weather, the churchyard looks inviting.

“Smallest church in England,” says Crow, with a touch of pride. “Highest mountain, deepest lake. I’ve never much liked this valley though – a bit too bleak for my tastes. Always makes me want to go and become a painter or a poet or something.”

“Let me know how you get on with the ‘something’,” says Rowan, leading the way. He knows from a quick glance at a local history website that there has been a place of worship on the spit for 500 years, but the current scout-hut style building has only been here since 1892. The roof-timbers are said to come from Viking ships. Before the grounds were consecrated, people from the valley had to carry their dead across the old Corpse Road to St Catherine’s at Boot. He’s read grisly tales about processions of mourners becoming lost in the fog crossing the fells – of horses, coffins, wagons and mourners all swallowed up by the elements. He wonders how much is exaggeration and how much fact. Wonders when that started to matter.

“He’s over yonder,” says Crow, gesturing towards the furthest corner of the graveyard. Around them, headstones rise from the damp ground like shark-teeth. He glimpses a perfect rectangle of polished black – a memorial to a climber lost on great gable in 1919. Steps between family plots: weathered inscriptions alongside fresh memorials, bright bouquets beside little plastic flowers weathered down to a translucent white.

Rowan ducks beneath the boughs of the overhanging yew and looks upon the grave of Derrick Millward. His name, together with date of birth and death, are etched in white letters on a simple grey headstone. There is a space beneath, and in the centre, a line by Yeats.

Step Softly: A Dream Lies Buried Here.

“It was a good turnout,” says Crow, stopping to look past the church to the mass of Great Gable beyond. “There weren’t many people knew he was a valley lad when he first moved back here and this is a place where they have a hell of a long memory.”

“Space looks to be at a premium,” says Rowan, glancing at the shark’s mouth of gravestones crowded in the small space.

“He was the last one to be planted,” says Crow, his hands in his pockets – a cigarette suddenly clamped between his teeth. He rocks on his heels, the heel of one shoe grinding into some greenish gravel atop the nearest plot. “He got preferential treatment because he’s from the valley but even then there were some buggers kicked up a fuss.”

Rowan can’t help but imagine what lays beneath his feet. He crouches by the grave, a tired sort of tightness across his back.

“Some people come and scatter their ashes here without asking permission,” explains Crow, as Snowdrop looks for the right expression for her face to relax into. “They’ve had to put a stop to it because it was starting to look like there’d been a dirty snowfall round here, so your chances of buying a plot are zilch. You can still be buried if there’s a family plot though even then it’s a pain for the ground staff.”

“I didn’t know he had children,” says Rowan, focusing on the space on the headstone that waits for the next inscription.

“That’ll be for her,” says Crow, a smile in his voice. “He must have had to properly twist the vicar’s arm to get him to agree to that. An unmarried couple in a joint plot? It’s a good job everybody in Wasdale’s so open minded.”

Rowan glances back at him. “Go on….,”

Crow grins, delighted to know something that the younger man doesn’t. “She told me at Millward’s funeral. They’re going to be buried together. She wouldn’t marry him but she’s happy enough to go in the ground with him. She said she agreed to it because it was what he wanted. They’d been thick as thieves for 30 years and neither have any kids so I guess it was a comfort to him. By the end he deserved all the comfort he could get. Not that he’s been allowed to rest in peace.”

Rowan stands up, legs creaking. He turns and leans against the grave, willing to flatter Crow if it means filling in another piece of the puzzle. “Go on Damian, educate your junior reporter.”

He sheds the years like an exotic dancer casting off veils. He makes himself comfortable, one flabby buttock wedged atop the headstone of a hard-working Borrowdale farmer. Locates a cigarette and lights it from the tip of his last one and blows out a plume of absolute satisfaction.

“You’ll know the name Rideal,” says Crow, and seems gratified to receive a nod in return. “He’s the money behind the hippy school.”

“Silver Birch,” chips in Snowdrop.

“Well done, love. Aye, that’s the place. I was still in short pants when it opened but it was always one of the schools that people knew little bits about – always a rumour about some celebrity or pop star or an artist having a nipper boarding there. It had decent enough grades from what I recall but it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny now. You can have all the New Age philosophies that you want – Ofsted wants to know you’re doing things properly. That wasn’t the case back then. They couldn’t even give you a straightforward price on tuition fees and boarding. None of that was particularly important as the people at the top. They ran it more in a spirit of philanthropy than as a business.”

“Rideal was happy to lose money?” asks Rowan.

Crow smiles. “I don’t know about ‘happy’, but ‘willing’, certainly. Never had to struggle, that one. The way I heard it, he met Tunstall when he was at university.”

“Tunstall was the head teacher?”

“Aye, that’s him. Scholarship lad from Consett, over near Newcastle. Went to one of the posh universities in Edinburgh. Rideal was studying economics while Tunstall was studying philosophy. Unlikely bedfellows but it was obviously a firm friendship because when Tunstall wanted to start his pioneering new alternative education provision, his old pal Rideal bankrolled it.”

“To the tune of how much?” asks Rowan, looking down the lake in the direction of the stately home where Silver Birch had previously flourished.

“Hard to say,” shrugs Crow. “Rideal already owned the old Hall and the building that’s now Tunstall’s pad – up there through the woods. Even so, it can’t have been cheap.”

“What was in in for Rideal?”

“You cynic,” smiles Crow. “It was a chance to do good, of course. Though he was a slippery sod, there’s no doubt about that. It took Marlish a lot of his creative writing skills to come up with something good to say about him at the memorial service.”

Rowan shoots Snowdrop a look. She doesn’t see it in time to keep quiet. “He’s dead?”

“I should hope so, love,” says Crow, licking his palm and stubbing out his cigarette. “Took ill on the mountain, out hiking with Tunstall. This must have been ten years after the sale had gone through. Tunstall came barreling back down the Screes for the Mountain Rescue but they couldn’t pinpoint him. The smart money says he’s under the mountain. Under the Screes. There are mineshafts and crevices and smuggler holes all over this valley. I’ve no doubt that wife of his didn’t wait the obligatory few years to have him declared dead. That’s somebody who knows how to spend.”

Rowan realises he’s rubbing his sore hands along the smooth edge of the headstone. “The Mountain Rescue have had their money’s worth out of that school,” he muses. “I’ve heard an intriguing whisper about the two girls they found.”

“Three, wasn’t it? There were three, I’m sure.”

“No, two were found out at Borrowdale. We’re interested in what happened to them – and whether there are any truth to the rumours about the third girl. Some say she’s in the lake.”

Crow closes an eye, staring a hole in Rowan. “I think I’d know if that were true, lad.”

“There was something on Facebook,” protests Snowdrop, unimpressed with his attitude. “And Pickle says Violet has remembered all sorts of horrible things.”

Crow looks scornfully from one to the other. “Facebook? And if you mean Pickle the stoner, I wouldn’t trust him to count his own legs.”

“Rude,” mutters, Snowdrop, pouting and turning away.

Rowan suddenly feels utterly ridiculous. He needs this to be rule. Needs to be onto something with meat at its centre.

“There’s more,” he says, trying to sound positive. “I’ve heard whispers about them being found not wearing a stitch – strange markings on their bodies …,”

Crow shakes his head. “Hey, if it helps it sell you say what you like, mate – I just don’t know anything about that. You’d be best speaking to Eve Cater, though she can be a cantankerous sod. I heard some charity was going to establish an award in her name. She’ll be loving that. Always was a proud one.”

Rowan pulls a face. “I can’t make sense of it, Damian,” he admits. “I’m not saying she wasn’t a good copper but of the two cases she was involved in that I’ve looked into, she came up blank both times.”

Crow cocks his head. “You mean the old hippy? What was his name? Arthur Farthing, or something?”

“Arthur Sixpence,” he corrects him. “Caretaker-cum-spiritual adviser.”

“We got about 15centimetres out of that, nowt more,” says Crow dismissively.

“I don’t understand,” butts in Snowdrop.

“It’s the way you measure columns in newspapers,” says Rowan. “It’s not very much.” He gives Crow his attention. “I’m surprised it wasn’t worth more – even if you’d just got a couple of complaints from parents about police traipsing over the posh school where they sent their little darlings, it’s worth more than that.”

Crow breathes out, long and slow. “Editor of the day was a golfing pal of Rideal’s,” he says. “You know how the funny handshakes and the nods and the winks go around here, and around plenty other places too. I won’t say I was leaned on but there was no appetite for more. It was a shame too – I’d got some decent quotes from the farmer who called the coppers in.”

Rowan flashes a smile. “Willing to share?”

Crow shrugs. “I doubt it makes much difference now. Gordon Shell - I think he’s still alive but he’ll be geriatric-and-a-half by now - he was quite pally with this Sixpence chap. Reading between the lines, I think Gordon might have enjoyed having the occasional smoke on the old peace pipe, and that isn’t a euphemism, before you start. He told me he’d meet up with Sixpence a couple of times a week, just to have a few can and chat about the world. He said sixpence had been around, seen the world. Spoke about him like he was a guru, which I suppose isn’t that far of the mark.”

“Explain,” says Rowan. Then adds: “For Snowdrop.”

“Well, Gordon was pretty clear that there was a damn sight more to Sixpence than some old hippy in a school bus. He’d travelled. Knew old languages – languages people don’t even speak any more. Fascinated with all the old caves up that way too – the mineshafts they dug centuries back. Forever looking for new ways into the ground. The way Gordon told me, it was like he was a sort of faith healer. He’d help people if they asked. If you got migraines he could talk to you until they went away. If you were feeling under pressure he could help put you back together. I mean Gordon was very cautious about telling me this – it was the mid-eighties and your lot were hardly popular.”

“My lot?”

“Crusties. Hippies. New Age Travellers. The Peace Convoy.”

Rowan says nothing. The silence becomes uncomfortable.

“I have got something underlined in my notes – a quote we never carried,” says Crow, quickly. “Reverend Marlish, he was there with Tunstall and Rideal and a few of the parents and pupils, putting on a united front. He said Sixpence was ‘a prophet’. Seemed strange to me a religious man would use that word. It was Tunstall who corrected him – he said Sixpence was a shaman.”

Rowan stares at the grave of Derrick Millward, trying to fit the bits together.

“Sixpence had no kids?”

“I’ve got a quote from Detective Sergeant Eve Cater,” he says, rummaging in his pocket for his phone. He squints at the screen, clearly looking at photographs of notes dragged out of storage after having his curiosity piqued. “She said he’d done a lot of good by a lot of people and he had a family of sorts, but that was too vague to use and as it happened, we never ran much more than you’ve seen. She was grateful for that, as far as I can recall. Slipped a few exclusives my way. ”

Rowan suddenly feels an urge to hold Eve Cater upside down and shake her until the secrets fall out. “My brain’s hurting,” he admits, and looks around in search of liquid sustenance.

“That way,” smiles Crow. “Hotel and bar and the birthplace of British rock-climbing, if you’re interested. I’d sit there and have a good hard think.”

Rowan nods. ‘Thinking’ certainly rhymes with his plan.

25

Tuesday, October 28, 1991

The Coffin Road, Boot

4.44pm

Winter is on its way. There’s no snow on the fells but there’s a sawtoothed sharpness to the air. The russets and golds; the honeys and caramels of a few days ago are yielding to the bleached bone and pure velvet blackness of the year’s end.

Eve breathes deep as she climbs. Sucks in the grey-green aroma of sheep-shit and grass. Her boots crunch over the pitted surface of the rock-strewn path: a noise like teeth crunching through ice. She can make out the village of Boot spread out below: little white houses scattered across the lower fells like seeds tossed by a giant hand. She’s already two miles up the Corpse Road. The view is far from picture-postcard but there is a timelessness to it that makes her want to write something poetic.

She looks up as she heard footsteps on stone. Sees Derrick. Smiles at the sight of him, in his big overcoat and woolly hat, moving over ground that he seems to have sucked up through the soles of his shoes since he moved back to the valley three years back. He’s sold the agency in Blackpool. He exists for one case now. One investigation. One pursuit that has become an obsession. She’s forced him to come along today – to make the walk up to Burnmoor Lodge – to sit at the edge of the tarn, feet bobbing in water cold enough to squeeze the breath from their lungs. They go at their own speeds – that’s the unspoken agreement between them. He’s better on the fells than her and she’d rather walk alone than be responsible for slowing somebody down. Their relationship is built on many such unwritten contracts. He never tries the door to her bedroom but she never brings anybody home when there is a chance he might see. He has never known if he sees her as wife or daughter.

“Slow down, I’ll get to you, don’t hurt yourself …,” she stops, short, as she sees the look on his face. His eyes are wide – his face, still puffy despite drastic weight loss, ripples like a disturbed lake as he careers towards her. His breath is raspy, like there’s a boot on his windpipe.

“The vicar,” he splutters, reaching for her and grabbing her, hard, by the forearms. He’s in her face, spittle flecking out from his lips. “Marlish. He’s at the Lodge, up top. Gordon Shell came over on the four-wheeler, shouting like it was closing time…. Him and Rideal – that slippery fucker – they were up there walking. Shell all but grabbed the vicar by the middle and slung him on the quad….,”

“Easy, Derrick, tell me again ….,”

Millward bends double, panting. “His daughter’s gone,” he gasps. “Gone missing. Her and her friend, the girl you know from Silver Birch. They were due back from Keswick hours ago…,”

“Okay,” says Eve, soothingly. She tries to calm him. “Derrick, it’s not even late – they’ll be back before we know it. Violet’s turning into a bit of a terror, so they say …,”

“No,” he shouts, making fists. “They went off with a man. A busker.”

Eve feels as though there are cold fingers creeping up her neck and teasing through her hair. “No… there’s no way …,”

“Him,” nods Derrick, his chest heaving. “He’s here. He’s took them. He’s took them to show us he can …,”

Eve takes his arm and steers him onto one of the big stones that mark this choppy, disjointed section of the Coffin Path.

“Derrick, he wouldn’t come back here. He’s known here…

“We took Pearl’s money, Eve,” hisses Millward, eyes bulging. “We could have stopped this. Told the proper coppers what we were doing; what we knew …,”

“I’m a Detective Chief Inspector,” growls Eve, furious. “I’m a proper copper. I’m the proper copper! And I’ve indulged you in this wild goose chase because I like being with you and because I think Cormac Pearl might have something to do with the disappearance of Mr Sixpence. But we know nothing. Not real. Not for sure. So if you go blundering in telling my colleagues we know about this – that we know who they should be looking for …,”

“That doesn’t matter,” says Derrick, shaking his head. “You know what he’ll do…”

“No we don’t!” snaps Eve. “We have nothing that can help. Let me manage things properly, Derrick. Keep things in-house. Keep things small ….,”

“There’s already a piece going out on the evening news,” gasps Derrick, trying to stand and losing his footing. “Eve, I’d never do anything to cause you any problems, I wouldn’t tell them you knew anything, but I need to go in to the station and speak to whoever’s running this …,”

“I’ll run it,” says Eve, firmly. “I’ll tell the team what they need to know. I swear to you, this isn’t him. There might not be a him.”

“I’ll never tell them about the money,” says Derrick, looking deep into her. “I’d die before I betrayed you.”

“There was no money,” hisses Eve, in his face. “You got that? I’m a good copper. I’m changing the way things work, Derrick. I’m making a difference. “

“We need to stop him. He knows this area. If he his Sixpence he can hide the girls …,”

Eve feels as though there is a hot snake coiling and uncoiling in her stomach. She’s worked so hard. Given so damn much. She doesn’t deserve to lose it all.

“The school,” she says. “You search the grounds then – I’ll organise things my end and try to get you some space to manoeuvre. I’ll keep them away until you tell me you need me.”

Eve begins to move down the mountain. There’s a police radio in the car. In five minutes she could be with Rev Marlish, telling him the importance of keeping this investigation strictly low-key, promising to do whatever it takes to get their daughter back safe. Things might be okay. They might still all work out …

“Eve,” shouts Derrick, and the tone of voice makes her stop and spin back, facing into a wind that carries the smells of sweat and rain and the old, newly stirred earth.

“What else?” she asks, and it feels as though there is a steel band inside her bones, thrumming with an electrical current.

“There’s a third girl. Catherine. Violet. And a new girl – Freya. She’s a redhead.”

Eve swallows, drily. Crime scene phots flash in her mind. The man they’re hunting has a thing for redheads. He cut the hair off one when he was a boy. He left Blackpool with one.

“Go to the grounds,” she instructs. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. It will be okay, Derrick. For everybody…,”

As she turns and starts to run down the path, Eve feels a wave of self-loathing wash over her. She shakes it away. She doesn’t want to look at the thought that was chewing at her skull as she stood listening to Derrick. Doesn’t want to admit that while he spoke of bribes and secrets, she had glanced down at the rocky floor and sought the perfect sized stone with which to smash his head until it came apart: until all the things he could use against her spilled out onto the muddy grass.

26

The rain has started coming down harder here, on this quiet mountain road clinging to the lower lip of the Borrowdale Valley. It blackens the pitted grey surface: its fissured shell twinkling, like iron ore, beneath the yellowed moon.

Were it a brighter day, Glebe House would glisten salmon pink, a million-million grains of sandstone reflecting back the sunlight. Here, long past sunset on a wet Thursday in November, the stately home looks as though it has been made out of mud-bricks. In this light, with the storm blowing in across the fells, it is a cardboard cut-out: a black silhouette picking out pointy chimneys, steep-sided rooves; a bar-graph topped with spikes. Beyond it, behind it, past the high stone wall that marks the end of the private land, there are only fells and straggled copses of woodland. They’d stopped at the aptly named ‘Surprise View’, flicking the headlights to full beam to gaze upon the valley’s famed ‘inverted clouds’ – a meteorological phenomenon caused by cold temperatures and high pressure. They had briefly been above the clouds, looking down upon a carpet of soft, dirty fleece.

“Like beaks on a coffin lid,” says Rowan, broodingly, as the raindrops peck furiously at the roof of the car. They’ve parked with their backs to the fells; looking up towards the grand property with its imposing doorway, great crinkled columns of granite: a crush of dazzling black and white. The lights of a silver Range Rover glare, too bright, through the rain-streaked glass. Rowan closes his eyes but an image remains oddly stamped on the darkness; an ultra-violet outline of a middle-aged man in a baseball cap, fumbling about with the windscreen wipers and headlamps while chatting into a mobile phone. An old, conked-out looking Volvo clatters into a space beside them: a damp clanking of chassis and surging gutters. Rowan’s happy here, in the dark of the classic Nissan Figaro. It’s peaceful. He’d heard some nearby church bells chime a few moments ago; a pleasingly old-fashioned sound, rolling out of some mist-wreathed bell-tower with a low and sonorous authority, shushing the raindrops and the cars like impudent children. He’s content. Maudlin, but acceptably so. He’s beginning to regret sucking down a lungful of Pickle’s finest before they’d bundled him into the car: a downcast figure trudging beneath a big umbrella wearing a newly pressed shirt, good jeans and a crumpled corduroy jacket. They’d even given him a shave. He looks piratical with his sharp goatee, his pupils big Kalamata olives. His heart’s racing. He feels paranoid and nervous. He can feel pressure building in his head. So many problems. So many deadlines. So much money! You’ll fallen so far, lad. How did you fuck it up, howdidyoufuckitup? How, lad?

“You’ll be great,” says Snowdrop, in the back seat. “I’ll cough three times if you start to get into trouble.”

Serendipity, driving, gives her daughter a look of pure love. Dippy’s almost glowing tonight, so proud of her baby brother and her unstoppable newshound daughter. She’d cranked up her happy pop music so loud on the journey that the Figaro’s long-suffering windows rattled in the frames.

“There’s not even anything to worry about,” she says, brightly. “Uncle Rowan’s been talking to people since he was little. He’s a great public speaker. That’s why the politicians wanted him – he’s got a way with words and manages to say what he means without coming across as too much of an arrogant sod. If it wasn’t for all the skeletons in his closest he could be making big decisions by now.”

Rowan looks at her as if she’s mad. “Dippy, I sometimes wonder whether you’re watching the same film as everybody else. I’m living in a cow barn, unemployed …,”

“Self-employed,” they chorus.

“…and I’m about to talk about creativity to people who are already better than me.” He looks at her sadly, a labrador full of apology for having eaten the Easter eggs. “Can’t you say I’m ill?”

Serendipity laughs as she shakes her head and opens the car door. At once, a swirl of wet air rushes inside the little car, bringing a squeal from Snowdrop. Rowan raises his hands and looks at the brown, calfskin driving gloves they had forced him into amid a symphony of curses, screeches and tears. Beneath, the wounds appear to be healing. There was less seepage this morning when they changed the bandages and he only took the recommended number of painkillers with his morning coffee, rather than doubling up.

Grumbling, Rowan steps from the vehicle and gives it a pat on the roof as if it were a gun-dog that had brought back a golden eagle. Dippy’s driving style is a tad gung-ho for Rowan’s tastes. The half-hour journey from Holmkirk has been a succession of near-death bends and vertical drops and the Figaro’s narrow wheels span over nothingness on more than one occasion. Rowan has a memory of locking eyes with a terrified Herdwick as they blared past in a riot of stones and spray. He’s sure it had given him a sympathetic glance as it jumped over the low stone wall.

He hears Snowdrop running around from the rear of the car to join him, her feet made elegantly clunky buy big rainbow-patterned Doc Martens. She’s paired them with polka-dot tights and a pair of dungarees. Her brown charity-shop Duffel coat gives off the slight aroma of moist canine but Rowan finds it quite a warm, comforting scent. He feels Serendipity press against him as they troop across the driveway towards the bright lights of the big front door. She smells good; all home baking and cherry tobacco. He leans towards her, rubbing her head with his own. The hessian of her chunky coat is tickly against his cheek. He’s overcome with a sudden gratitude for her; her presence in her life, her enduring affection for him despite his countless failings and absences. He wants to say something kind but can’t seem to find the words. He’s always been better written down.

“You look nice, Dippy,” he manages. “Thanks for coming.”

She looks pleased and makes a show of tossing the tassels of her woolly hat, offering a glance at the purple-grey dreadlocks that snake down into the hood of her denim jacket. Serendipity is always fun to look at. Tonight, she’s wearing a pleated tartan skirt and mismatched knee-socks: her pink toddler knees turning white in the teeth of the rain. Her make-up, phone, purse and snacks are stuffed into a bag-pack that bears the legend ‘So Geek – So Chic’. She’ll be 45 on her next birthday.

Rowan looks up as two glowing white headlamps rake through the darkness, illuminating high walls and pointed black spikes. Rowan thinks of searchlights. He looks at the rain-slicked vehicles lining on the grand driveway. Range Rovers cheek-by-jowl with tatty farm vehicles and utilitarian hatchbacks. The new arrival is a boxy people-carrier. Rowan glimpses a dint in the bonnet on the offside. He catches sight of the passenger: a small, pale-faced woman with glasses and frizzy hair. The tall, angular-looking man at the wheel gives a little flick of a salute by way of greeting. Rowan is aghast to see he’s also wearing driving gloves.

“That’s Catherine,” says Serendipity, leaning over. “You’re in luck”

Despite her initial reservations, Serendipity has embraced Snowdrop’s foray into Rowan’s world and is now keen to see where their little investigation might go. She doesn’t seem to be able to conceive of it as an actual marketable story – something for the page or the screen. But she’d like to find out what happened to the three girls thirty years ago and whether it prompted Violet to seek out the services of her shamanic practitioner friend. She’s on nodding terms with Catherine Marlish, and has managed to flesh out her knowledge of the vicar’s daughter through a few conversations with the most indiscreet of the local gossips. She seems eager to fill in the gaps for Rowan, despite his repeated assurance that he just wants to get this evening over with, then sink onto the sofa with a warm whisky and a cold compress.

“That must be her man, driving,” says Serendipity. “Terence. One ‘R’, which tells you all you need to know.”

“Dippy, I’m trying to concentrate …,”

“Works at the power station. Some kind of engineer. They’ve been together a couple of years. He’s got a daughter from a first marriage but Catherine’s never had kids. She’s still tied to the apron strings by the sound of it – lives in Mum and Dad’s pocket. She’s got her own place – Terence lives there now too – but she’s home at the vicarage in Seascale most of her time, so I’m told… oh look out, here’s trouble …,”

The security light above the arch spurts into life as the front door opens, eclipsing the warm sepia lamplight which bleeds out through the stained glass. A broad-shouldered, thick-set woman stalks onto the porch like a ship’s captain demanding a closer view of the approaching icebergs. She’s all pleated skirt and comfortable, wide-fitting shoes. Her brown jacket is fastened over a soft plum-coloured jumper and even from this distance, Rowan can tell that the jewel which sparkles on the surface of the locket around her neck, is very real. Two cats streak out from the open doorway behind her. Rowan would like to think of them as pets seeking a breath of fresh air, but the speed with which they move suggests they’ve been held captive for some terrible purpose.

“You must be the writer,” she says, over the sound of rain hitting stone. “I’m Marjorie. Anybody who knows me will vouch for the fact I’m an easy-going individual but it had been hinted during the last meeting that perhaps tonight I would be giving the address. Goodness knows I’ve waited long enough.” She waves a hand airily. “This is my house, by the way. It’s Glebe. A lot of people say Globe, which suggests either an epidemic of myopia, or that nobody has the common sense to concentrate any more. I have a granddaughter who simply will not sit still! Can’t concentrate – always has to have something going bibbety-bip in her hands. I’ve banned it from the house.” She frowns, a deep groove in her forehead, like a coin-hole in a slot machine. “Everybody seems late tonight so it’s not really a problem. Still, one does think that perhaps Moses miscounted. Thou Shalt Be Punctual would have made such a difference.”

Despite the rain, rowan, Dippy and Snowdrop stand still, shoulders hunched, each seemingly disinclined to walk up the steps to receive their less than enthusiastic greeting. Rowan detected Surrey in the accent. He has a feeling he isn’t far from a kitchen with an authentic Italian barista machine and fancies that the residents of this lavish pad have their courgettes and hummus delivered in wicker baskets.

“Well, don’t dither. They’re waiting for you.” She glares at the newcomers with eyes that make Rowan think of the cheap nylon bears won at the fair. Her mouth is a glossy smear of red jam and the corners dip further down in tandem with each noticeable augmenting of her nostrils. Her gimnlet gaze sweeps left and the nostrils flare like an exhausted horse. “Oh, how delightful. I see Ms Marlish has deigned to bring another infant. How nice that will be for everybody”. She looks a hole in Snowdrop. “I suppose you will have somebody to talk to at least. But don’t touch the piano if you’re eating sticky sweets – it’s just been French polished.”

Rowan turns to look at where Catherine and a doughy, bowl-haired girl of seven or eight are removing a treasure-trove of items from the rear of the people-carrier. Catherine is gathering up water-bottles and food wrappers. A fistful of discarded paper and a white carrier-bag flutter out of the door and are whipped away on the wind, tangling in the branches of a dark, spiky tree. In the driving seat, the man Rowan assumes to be Terence is smoothing his hair in the little vanity mirror. As Rowan watches, Catherine straightens up, arms full of assorted detritus. The girl – a vague outline in a school uniform and an anorak – stands mutely beside her. Catherine moves to the driver’s seat, perhaps intending to say goodbye. She has to dart backwards as Terence slams into reverse and screeches back across the gravel. He could easily have crushed both Catherine’s toes, and the girls. Rowan glares a hole in the side of his head as he drives past, giving the same cheery salute.

“Well,” mutters Rowan. “What a fucking knob.” He puts his hand out for Snowdrop, who has the sense to take it softly. “Go see if she needs a friend,” he says, leaning down to her ear. “Not for the story – just because she might really need it.” He stands up again to find Serendipity smiling at him.

“You’re not such a bad sort, Rowan.”

Mrs Hawkins leads them into a lavish, high-ceilinged entrance hall. Beneath deep, Arabic rugs, the floor is flagged with rough, local stone; a checkerboard of dark greys and boggy greens. The walls, a toned-down teal, form a gallery space for huge, gold-framed landscapes, interspersed with fine lithographs and a handful of blocky, inexpert oil paintings; portraits that appear to have been done using the back of a spoon as both paintbrush and mirror.

“Lovely place,” begins Rowan, bur Mrs Hawkins cuts him off.

“You have no books to sell, is that right? Well I suppose that’s something. One does sometimes feel that these authors turn up just to turn one’s home into a market stall.”

Rowan gives her a sympathetic look. “One does indeed.” Behind him, Serendipity lets out a tiny laugh. Mrs Hawkins chooses to ignore it.

“We have some fine writers,” says Mrs Hawkins. “Very fine. If you’ve planned to give some kind of lecture I must warn you that it may be a case of preaching to the converted. We’re all writers together here, this isn’t a tutor and pupil scenario.” She draws herself up and Rowan smells dusky floral perfume and a whiff of dry vermouth. “Before my marriage I was a teacher of English Literature at a very fine school in Leatherhead….,”

The door bangs open as Catherine, arms full of rubbish, pushes her way inside. Her face is pale as milk and her fronds of tangled black hair cling to her skin, her collar, her steamed-up spectacles.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh Mrs Hawkins I tried to phone but there was such poor signal and Terence does like to listen to Radio Three when we’re on the road so I had to whisper when I left the message so you might just have a recording of some garbled words and a lot of Mahler …,”

Rowan finds himself smiling at her. She strikes him at once as a sort of pleasing disaster: a whirlwind of good intentions haplessly executed. He’s met her, or those a lot like her, countless times before: scatter-brained and stressed to the point of aneurysm, terrified of causing offence or upsetting anybody. Her voice is soft and breathy and fast and Rowan gets the impression that if she were to receive one word of kindness or a squeeze of the shoulder, she would burst into tears and disintegrate. With her arms full, her elbows stick out like wings.

“I’m Catherine, well, Kitty – actually, that’s a pet name, so not everybody knows me as that, so Catherine’s fine…,” her eyes dart from one to the other, all nervous energy. Raindrops fall from her coat onto the burgundy wool of an expensive rug. “We’ve met, I think,” she says to Serendipity. And this is your daughter, I presume. Snowdrop, yes? What a lovely name. And what a lovely young girl. She and Imogen here are going to be such friends, I’m sure.”

Beside her, Imogen is stuffing a plump damp hand into a large bag of Monster Munch, eating them methodically, joylessly: crumbs on the front of her school jumper. Snowdrop gives Rowan a look that says ‘I tried, but look what I’m working with’.

“I haven’t missed it, have I?” gasps Catherine, looking worried. “I heard there was a writer …,”

Rowan can’t seem to help himself. He gives a little flicked salute, scouts-honour, two fingers toughed to his forehead. She clocks the driving gloves. Colours, as she makes the connection.

“I’m Rowan,” he says, warmly. “Kitty, was it? And no, you haven’t missed it. I’m it – or if you ask my sister here, I’ve always thought I am. You take a moment to get yourself situated.” He twinkles a little: one of his better smiles. “I was only killing time until you arrived.”

Mrs Hawkins coughs, pointedly. “We are assembled in the Orangery,” she says, haughtily, and Rowan is delighted to hear Snowdrop laugh out loud.

“Orangery!” she repeats. “Ha! Is there an Appley? Do we get there by walking down a Lemony Snicket? Orangery – that’s funny …,”

Rowan screws up his face, suddenly very tired, and very nervous. He doesn’t know what to say to these people. Doesn’t know who he is or what he’s for or what sort of piss-poor excuse for a life he’s going to be living by the New Year. He feels Serendipity move closer to him and squeeze his forearm. “You’ll be great,” she says. “if nothing else, you’ve stolen this old cow’s thunder for an evening. That’s a win, if nothing else.”

“Do you mind if we sit with you?” asks Catherine, breathily. “I always used to come with my friend but she’s off on her travels and if I’m honest I sometimes fell a bit, well, on my own …,”

Up close, Rowan realises that she’s actually classically pretty. Green eyes in an almond-shaped face, a nice smile and skin so soft and pale it looks like warm alabaster. She certainly doesn’t act like somebody aware of their own attractiveness. She reminds Rowan of the uncool crowd at school – the sweet kids who would blush tomato-red if smiled at or spoken to by one of the sporty boys. He leans towards her, sharing a secret.

“You have to promise me that even if I’m dreadful, you’ll talk to me afterwards,” says Rowan. “Don’t run screaming for the hills. And if you’re asleep, you have to give me permission to wake you, okay? I don’t need accusations of inappropriate touching.”

Catherine colours, hiding a smile behind her hand. “I promise.”

27

Saturday, November 2, 1991

Seascale Vicarage

11.06pm

Violet dreams, her body stiff as death. From here, face down in the damp bracken, the girl across the clearing could be mistaken for a marionette. She drifts through the darkened forest in boneless, liquid half-steps: a fleshy white poppet trailed on invisible strings. Her arms are raised, yet her hands dangle down at the wrist, so that from elbow to fingertip both limbs take on the likeness of murdered swans.

Occasionally, eyes shut, she pats at the air.

“Catherine,” she says, in the clutch of the dream. “Catherine, don’t …,”

Her bare feet catch on tree roots; risen from the muddy ground like swollen veins. Sharp pebbles puncture her skin: the sting eclipsed a moment later by the sensuous suck and pull of warm mud and dew-moistened grass. She is only dimly aware of these sensations. Could not speak if she wanted to. Her throat is afire: her tongue swollen; the taste of rotten bark filling her mouth and nose.

“You have been chosen,” comes a voice: an icicle melting in the centre of her skull. “You will be reborn ….,”

Violet is adrift in delirium, her thoughts a jumbled mass. She is at once herself, and another. She feels like a skin-suit, stitched tight over more entities than she can contain. She sees him. The man with the green toenails. He had given them something to drink. Something sweet and sticky. He had taken them somewhere at once foreign and familiar. She had seen things. Been things. Done things, had she not? She remembers a voice, right in the centre of her head. And something dark. Something animal. She remembers fear.

The senses fade. For a moment she is back within the dream. She sees her friend, dressed in a long white nightdress. The hems are torn and the delicate embroidery is obscured beneath splashes of mud. In places, the material clings to her skin. She’s plump and pink. There are patterns on her flesh; serpentine sigils and jagged circles, daubed in sticky fingerprints on the ripe fruit of her skin. She has motherly hips, rounded ankles. There is nothing in her eyes.

Violet tries to remember. To see clearly. He had sung to them in a language they did not understand. And there had been a man, reduced to sticks and scraps of skin. She has a memory of coming to. Of being face down above a slithering, crawling mass of sticks and leaves and twisting serpents. She had turned her head and in the darkness seen the flame-red of Freya’s hair, clashing the pale whiteness of her freckled skin as the man daubed symbols upon her flesh. Had it been at the same moment? Was she both beside her and beneath. And Catherine. Where was Catherine?

“Freya,” she whispers. “What happened …,”

Her throat is agony. Her mouth is bitter with the taste of burned herbs, a tingling numbness in her tongue and gums. She is in a place between memory and fantasy, reality and nightmare. She is asleep on the neat, laundered sheets of her bedroom at Catherine’s house. And she is beneath the earth, rolling from the table with a hard thud, landing, naked upon the hard damp floor. She is seeing firelight reflected in countless bottles. She is looking up at half-made man dangling from the bottom rung of an old iron ladder. She is turning, terrified beyond understanding, as the thing with the pig-face looms from the blackness like a nightmare made flesh.

There is blood on her hands now. Blood on her chest and on her face. And she can feel Catherine’s hand slipping wetly into hers as they drag each other, deliriously, for the tiny chink of light high above.

And now it is fading. The memory is coming apart like damp paper. Somebody is shaking her. Stroking her. Whispering her name.

She opens her eyes into the large, round face of Rev Marlish. He is smoothing back her hair, whispering her name, saying the same thing over and over, like a spell.

“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. Please …,”

“Catherine,” croaks Violet, again.

“She’s okay,” says Rev Marlish, cuffing the tears away from his eyes. “You had us so worried. You got lost. Do you remember that? You got lost in the woods. Gave us quite a scare…,”

“A man,” whispers Violet. “There was a man. A musician. I can’t remember. We were in Keswick.” She looks at herself, clean and scrubbed and dressed in soft pink pyjamas. “How did I get here? Where’s Catherine?” She closes an eye. “Where’s Freya?”

“Don’t you worry about that now,” says Rev Marlish. “Catherine’s fine. Sore head but she’s the same as you. I think you took something. Maybe you ate some mushrooms in the wild, eh? Sqw some peculiar things. Freya’s heading back to Ireland, I think. We’ll sort all that out later.”

Violet tries to sit up. There is a man with dark hair in the corner of the room, watching the exchange. He’s old. Skinny. Neatly-dressed.

“Who’s he?” asks Violet. She feels wrong. It’s as if there’s a hole in her brain and things are pouring away like paint down a drain.

“Don’t worry yourself,” smiles Rev Marlish. “We all make mistakes. You get some rest. Don’t think about this any more. It doesn’t matter. All’s well.”

Violet sinks back against the pillows. Suddenly she starts forward. She has a memory of the small, goblin-faced copper. Remembers her reaching out. Remembers lashing out. Can see her laid out on the damp forest floor, bleeding into the earth. Then the picture is gone.

She closes her eyes. Feels it all fade away. Slips into sleep, and darkness, and nothing.

The last thing she sees is the face of a wild boar; yellow eyes and monstrous tusks, eyes that burn like cigarettes.

And then it is gone.

28

Later, after the laughs and the questions and the futile attempts to legibly sign a half dozen books with his seeping fingers, Rowan is able to make his way back to Serendipity and Snowdrop for what he expects to be a more candid assessment of how the gig has gone. They’re waiting for him in the shadow of some exotic-looking tree. Fairy-lights wind their way around the armadillo-shell trunk.

“You were great!” says Snowdrop, grinning at him and stopping just short of going straight in for a hug.

Serendipity, behind her, gives a tight smile. Her eyes are damp; her face flushed.

Behind her, one of the nice ladies from the second row are waving, thanking him again, wide-mouth vowels and bitten consonants, indicating that their sides are still sore.

He’d spoken for an hour. Where the writing journey began, his idyllic childhood and criminal adolescence; anecdotes from his time as a hack; indiscreet celebrity anecdotes; a story or two about ways he’d tricked his way into people’s confidences: giving himself a bit of a roguish polish. He’d enjoyed himself. Julie, the librarian, had been seated front and centre and he could tell by halfway through that she was feeling good about herself for having snagged him as their group speaker. He hadn’t been able to see his sister or niece but he’d been gratified to see Catherine grinning, sometimes even chuckling, as he did his best to speak like somebody who actually meant what he was saying.

“Oh I’m so pleased we came!” gushes Catherine, bustling up behind Serendipity. She still has a big armful of assorted rubbish. Rowan can’t understand why she wouldn’t just ask to use a bin. “Oh we were in stitches, weren’t we? I hoped it would be informative but it was actually properly funny! Imogen was laughing too.”

Rowan looks at Imogen. She’s staring at the screen of an iPhone, hair flopping forward, one cheek grotesquely pushed out to accommodate what could well be anything from a fistful of Fruit Pastilles to rack of lamb.

“I wasn’t sure if I struck the right tone,” says Rowan, uncertainly. Behind her, Julie the librarian is asking for any members who had handwritten their short stories should hand them in now, and for others to email the usual address. He hears the phrase “disseminated among the editorial panel’ and raises his eyebrows at Catherine. She is looking at her shoes, awkward, flicking glances at her partner’s daughter and clearly fighting the urge to say ‘this is nothing to do with me’.

“Shall we go and say our goodbyes to the lady, Mum,” asks Snowdrop, nudging her mum. Serendipity looks mildly surprised at the question but seems to read something in her daughter’s eyes that strikes some kind of chord. Serendipity plays along, making a grew show of shouting “Marjorie” in her most affected jolly-hockeysticks voice.

Rowan gives Catherine his full attention. “There’s an unedited version, you know,” he smiles. “Much more X-rated.”

“You haven’t got a story to hand in?”

“No.” She shakes her head at that, as though a voice has told her not to be such a bad girl. “Well, I have, but I think I’ll chicken out again. I’m struggling with a bit of the old self-doubt. I used to write when I was very young and I suppose if I’m honest I thought I’d be a real writer by now and in truth it’s just ramblings and bits of silly poetry …,”

“Some of the best books are nothing but ramblings,” says Rowan. “You’ll be in good company. Personally, I admire anybody who just does it, you know? Who just sees it through to the end. The difference between a published writer and an unpublished one is that the published writers actually finish the book. Don’t give yourself such a hard time.”

Catherine looks away, muttering something about Imogen needing to get into a hot bath. Rowan has an image of a chicken simmering in a slow-cooker. “You’re nice,” says Catherine, and it is said so directly that he finds himself a little off-balance.

“Am I? Even for a journalist.

Catherin’s laugh has a schoolgirl sound, a high, nervous giggle. She claps her hands like a Southern dame. “Honestly, I’m so pleased I came tonight.”

“So am I.”

She suddenly pulls a face, as if agonising with a truth. “I don’t normally like journalists,” she giggles. “I don’t like people poking into stuff. It’s grubby.” Her face changes, and she takes a small bite out of the air: a dog leaping at a moth. She makes a small squealing noise, pig-like to Rowan’s ear, then erupts into more giggles. “They’re swine, they really are.”

“You’ve had a lot of dealings, have you?” asks Rowan, glancing up to see another of the enthusiastic writers promising to get in touch on Facebook. Behind her is well-built blonde woman in a waist-length Harrington jacket and bike leathers, who he hadn’t noticed during the talk. She looks back as she follows the older woman out the door. There’s a toughness to her, as if she’s been hit plenty without ever tiring of hitting back. She gives the older woman a squeeze on the shoulders, congratulating her for something.

“All swine?” he asks, looking back to Catherine.

“Not you, I’m sure.”

“Oh yes. Worst of the lot. Don’t talk to me, I have the integrity of a particularly sneaky gutter rat. I mean the sort of rat that other rats are disappointed in – like they ask him how he could stoop so low. That’s where I’m at.”

“You’re very clever,” says Catherine, and a tiny alarm sounds, way back in some distant bell-tower in his mind. Just for a second, she’d sounded like she was mocking him. He swills the thought around like mouthwash and spits it back out. He’s thought the worst of people before and it has always cost him dear. He wants to get tonight over with. A drink and a joint by the open fire and brief bit of basking in an okay day.

“Am I boring you?” asks Catherine, ducking into his line of sight. “Oh God, I am, I know I am. Terence is always telling me that I’m such a bore. I’m sure you must talk to so many interesting people, must just be such a snooze-fest. You drifted off right in front of me …,”

“That is unforgivable of me,” stuttered Rowan, genuine in his remorse. “I was thinking of what you were saying, actually and my brain just followed it because it was interesting…,” he realises he is recovering splendidly, “…that happens to me sometimes – I’ll follow a good idea like I’m a butterfly collector and it’s a High Brown Fritalarry …,”

“A what?” laughs Catherine.

“Oh it’s quite rare, I assure you. You’re not a butterfly catcher, are you? I literally only have one point of reference for butterflies. No further technical tames. I’d be denounced as a fraud by any lepidopterist..,”

“You do make me laugh,” smiles Catherine. She glances at Imogen, distracted. “I really do have to get Imogen home,” she says, squirming. “Terence will want supper. It’s Thursday, you see. He has his meetings on Thursdays.”

Beside her, Imogen looks up, eyes full of scorn. “Yeah, whatever.”

“They were supposed to the pictures tonight,” whispers Catherine, mouthing each word. “She was a bit disappointed. This was a poor second.”

Imogen nudges her stepmum’s leg. Gives her a look of mild interest then slowly turns to look at Rowan. “It was all right. He’s not that funny, but I liked it when you talked about the dead people.”

Catherine cringes. “I’m sorry …,”

“She’s a sweetie, she really is.” He drops his gaze, suddenly bashful. “I’d like to talk to you again. How do I get in touch with you?”

“Oh I don’t think Terence would …,”

“I promise, no funny business. I’ve a book project on the go and I need some respite.”

“Really, there’s no way …,”

Feeling her fading from him, he makes an impulsive lunge. “Did I hear your dad’s a vicar? I’m sure somebody said that while I was doing the signing. It’s just, well, a character I’m struggling to get to grips with, she has a similar back-story to you and I really think you could help me find her voice.”

She cocks her head as if somebody has tugged her hair. She looks frightened. “I don’t think Terence would like that.”

“It could be a secret,” he whispers, trying to be charming.

“No,” she shakes her head, mouth a tight line. “No, I can’t do secrets.|”

Rowan backs off, hands raised. He can feel the opportunity fading from his grasp. “It’s okay, I won’t push. I just need some company that’s all and you seem like you might be good to talk to.”

“I’, really not sure …,”

“Let’s not get into that again.” He starts to reach into his pocket for his cards and realises that to do so would be to take the skin off his hands. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, “Could you reach into this pocket and grab it …,” He nods at his pocket and replays how everything that he’s just said and done must have seemed to somebody who doesn’t know that their opposite number has badly injured hands.

Imogen is sniggering and Catherine doesn’t seem to know what to make her face do. “I don’t think Terence would like …,”

“He said!” snorts Imogen, and something high in saturated fats blasts out of her nostril. “He asked you to put your hand in his pocket! Oh my God, dad’s gonna do one …,”

“Please,” hisses Catherine. “Please don’t …,”

Rowan runs his teeth along the back of his teeth. “I only wanted to give you my card,” he says, deflating.

“I know,” she says, meeting his eyes. “I read about your hands.”

“I thought you didn’t know about me before tonight?” he asks, and immediately wonders if he was wrong to catch her in the lie.

Unexpectedly, Catherine reaches into his pocket and retrieves the card. She twirls it in her fingers, her manner suddenly less mumsy and mouse-like. She grins at him, impish and considerably more attractive. “Thanks for tonight. You’ve inspired me.”

“Sorry?” he asks, confused.

“I’m going to hand it in,” she says, proudly. “My story. Violet’s not here to object, is she? Had to go running off looking into things nobody wants to remember. I want people to hear the truth – or the way I remember it, at least. ”

On the drive home, Snowdrop reaches into Rowan’s pocket and stops the recording device. He feels her do it but doesn’t comment or move. He’s hugging himself, cold in the passenger seat, icy wind whistling through the blowers and condensation streaking the windows. Driving, Serendipity stares into nothingness, her thoughts seemingly lost in the churning black sky and the brooding mass of the fells. She doesn’t see Snowdrop slip the folded wedge of paper into her uncle’s coat. Four pages, double-spaced, A4. Printed black on white and folded lengthwise. Snowdrop is still tucking it in when her mum spins around to ask her if she is okay, and telling her it would be straight to bed when they get home. Snowdrop smiles back madly, wide eyes and a too-wide grin. Immediately she directs her mum’s attention back skywards, pointing to some invisible kestrel hovering above a tar-black tree. Quickly, Snowdrop tucks the gleaming white fold of paper inside the dark folds of the coat. Rowan squeezes her fingers through the fabric. She breathes out, relieved. The last thing she wants is for her mum to spot the words ‘by Catherine Marlish’ on the title page. She doesn’t want to get caught before Rowan has a chance to read it. She doesn’t want to have stolen it from the pile of papers for nothing.

29

Sunday, November 3, 1991

Allerdale Private Hospital, Kendal

10.04am

Eve wakes up like a switch has been flicked. A moment before there had been bright lights and screeches and the desperate, rushing noise of tyres on wet gravel. There had been words; prayers and pleas, but they were just background chatter; a smudge of blurred pencil strokes, bisected clean by that one, inescapable voice. He’d told her to stay. To stay, in the place between the darkness and the light.

Now there is only the soft drone of a fan radiator and the click-click-click of the moth that flaps fatly at the glass behind the blinds.

She keeps her eyes closed until her senses return. Everything hurts. She feels like one colossal tooth-ache; that cold, sharp agony of an infected root. She has to fight to keep her face still. She wants to grimace. To grimace and roar.

Slowly, she takes inventory. Her legs feel jelly-like; numb, as if she’s sat on a hard surface for too long. There’s a sickening headache kneading away at her temples and her mouth feels dry; a sun-baked slug of tongue sticking to the white crust on her lips.

The pain in her guts is like the worst stitch she has ever had. The skin feels tight, as though two folds of flab have been pulled taught and glued together.

She can smell disinfectant and pot-pourri. Can smell talcum powder and rum.

She becomes aware of the soft, prayer-like intonation droning at her bedside. Adjusts the frequency in her head until she can hear Derrick clearly. His voice is so full of sorrow it almost seems to turn to rain in the air.

“…did the right thing. It wouldn’t have made a difference, I know that. And they’re ok, that’s the thing. So don’t you be thinking of dying on me, yeah? There’s so much life in you, eve. I saw that from the first. You’re the first person I’ve ever met that I could truly see the point in. I know that sounds awful but you don’t know what my life was like growing up. So much of the kindness was kicked out of me. I still became a copper though, didn’t I? Tried to make a difference. And I swear, I cared about the victims in every case I ever policed. But I did my duty because it was my duty, do you understand? I never thought the lives I might be saving or the deaths I might be getting justice for – I never thought they were lives that properly mattered. But you, eve. You’re somebody who the world needs. I know you understand how it’s all supposed to work. How people tell whatever truths the world needs to hear and that underneath it’s all just about trying to find the most credible lie to live with. I know that wherever you are right now, you’re giving yourself Hell thinking you’re a bad person. But you’re not, love. They’re okay. The girls, I mean. Violet and Catherine. They don’t remember much and Rev Marlish did as you asked him and kept everything small. Violet’s Daddy’s neither use nor ornament and the mum’s like a whipped dog. As far as anybody knows, you were involved in an altercation in the woods while searching for the missing teenagers. When I found you I got on the radio to Mountain Rescue and they found them in no time. It’s all going to be okay. They don’t remember anything. Violet kept gibbering about the pig-face man but she’s so pumped full of the home-brew he gave them it’ll be like remembering a dream….

Eve clears her throat, painfully. She opens her eyes like a Hollywood glamour-puss waking from a swoon.

“Did you catch him?” she croaks. “Cormac …,”

“We never say that name,” comes a voice from the other side of the bed. She blinks, rapidly, taken by surprise. She barely notices the surroundings into which she wakes – propped up on comfortable pillows in a mahogany bed; plush patterned paper clinging redly to walls decorated in Art Deco mirrors and George Stubbs prints.

In the chair by her bed sits a big man. He’s pushing 50 and looks it, but there’s an air of solidity about him that suggests he would be a formidable physical opponent. Big, clean, hairy-knuckled hands grip the arms of a wicker-backed mahogany chair. He’s wearing a vest and a cardigan, and there’s a strip of blue cloth wrapped around his neck, all but obscuring the gold crucifix beneath. A round, swarthy face is topped by a head of dark curls. He has a face that looks as if has been beaten into shape by a hammer and an anvil: flat features here and risen, lumpen bones there. He’s looking at her dispassionately: watching her as if she’s a cloud drifting across the sky.

“Mr Pearl…,” croaks Eve, trying to sit up. She flashes angry eyes at Derrick. “What’s he doing here.. if anybody sees…?”

“Nobody will see, Detective Chief Inspector,” says Mr Pearl, his accent a soft, velvety County Wexford. “This is a private hospital. The best. Better than most five-star hotels, so they say, though I’ve not spent much time in any of those. Spent time in hospital, though. Spent plenty. Never liked it . Always felt as though I’d been trapped, you understand. Always my biggest fear, that. Waking up with my hands tied. Daddy used to use a manacle on me and my brother, can you believe that? All to be frowned on these days but you knew you were in for a whipping when you felt the steel go on. There was a hatch in the hayloft. Nasty, smelly place. He’d hang us from a beam, dangling there with our shirts off while he went to town with the lash. Gave me long arms but I don’t know if that’s much compensation.”

Eve swallows again. Derrick moves to get her some water from the elaborate bedside table. Pearl sits him back in his seat with one hard look.

“Mr Pearl, there was no choice. I was hurt. Bleeding to death. We had to get the girls to safety. We’d have called you in but there was no time …,”

“You were bleeding to death,” says Pearl, flatly. “That can’t be nice.”

“No, it wasn’t,” spits Eve, bristling.

“But you were paid to find my son,” he says, and turns his eyes on Derrick. “You were given a lot of money for a simple job.” He swings the searchlight glare onto eve. “And you have done very well from the information I’ve provided you, and from the many cash gifts that have been deposited in your account.”

Eve shakes her head. “No. I never took money.”

“No? Odd. I have a savings account that shows regular payments to an account in your name, eve. Regular as clockwork.”

Eve looks to Derrick, shaking her head.

“I’ve paid for you to have the best care that money can buy,” he says, drily. “That’s because I want you well. I want you in tip-top fighting form so you can take me to my son.”

“Your son’s a murderer,” growls Eve. “He’s gone. He’s missed his chance with the girls here but he’ll need his fix somewhere. He’ll turn up, but I won’t be helping you find him. I should never have started on this road. Neither should Derrick. If we ever find him, he won’t be getting handed over to you. He’ll go to prison like any other killer.”

“No,” says Pearl. “He wouldn’t like that. He’s a child of nature – that is why I had such hopes for Mr Sixpence. He failed me. He helped my boy grow stronger. Darker. Gave him a taste for things he would never have discovered alone. He has gone too far now. He needs putting down.”

Eve shrinks into the pillow, wrinkling her lip. “You wouldn’t kill your own son.”

Pearl shifts in his seat, straightening his back, and a shaft of light falls across his face. The irises of his eyes are completely black: fat scarab beetles that swallow the light.

"If any man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father or his mother, and when they chastise him, he will not even listen to them, then his father and mother shall seize him, and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gateway of his hometown. They shall say to the elders of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey us, he is a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his city shall stone him to death; so you shall remove the evil from your midst, and all Israel will hear of it and fear.”

“You’re not in fucking Israel,” spits Eve, her throat all but closing up as she speaks. She shuffles upright, the heavy woollen blankets slipping down. She realises she is naked. Sees the huge bandage, stuck to her skin: all gauze and blood and puss.

“The girl,” says Derrick, quietly. “There was a third girl. Freya.”

Pearl lets a tiny smile disturb the mill-pond of his face. He nods. “Turns out she hasn’t got much in the way of family. Nobody making a fuss. She’ll write to the school, or maybe to that nice vicar – tell them she’s doing fine. And the police will leave well alone. Give it time and people will forget there ever was a third girl.”

“No,” says Eve, shaking her head. “That isn’t how things work. We can still find her. Can make a story work …,”

“She’s gone,” says Pearl. “You did right. Everybody’s happy. The other two remember nothing. It’s over. Rest easy.”

“Deaghlan, please ..,” begins Derrick.

“Don’t,” says Eve, glaring holes in Pearl’s forehead. “I’m a DCI. I’m Evelyn Fucking Cater. People have been hurt. People killed. Cormac took those girls and it’s only pure good fortune that two of them got out alive. We can still find the other one. Still find Freya. I’d rather die than let somebody like you have a hold over me …,”

“There is no Freya,” says Pearl, quietly.

“Derrick, hand me the radio, I’m calling all this in …,”

Pearl jumps forward so quickly that it seems as though a bomb has pitched him forward. In an instant his nose is against hers, his eyes distorted and huge against her own, and he’s grinning into her mouth, baring his teeth like a cornered rat.

“You’ll do what I tell you to do, Eve. You’ll show me where he’s been playing his games. And when I’ve done what needs to be done, I’m going to go and lay down beside my wife and we’re going to drink a fine Jameson’s full of all her lovely pills. And we’re going to fall asleep and go to Mother Mary our Blessed Virgin, and we are going to hold hands with Jesus for all eternity. And if Cormac’s soul ever gets there, I will embrace it. And the only speck of darkness in that perfect place will be my memory of a debt unpaid. It will be my memory of you, taking my money and my information and promising to deliver my son to me, and failing in that task. So you will do what you’ve been paid for Eve, or I will come back from Paradise just to stick my fingers in that hole in your gut, and pull you apart until you burst.”

Eve refuses to let the fear show. Holds his stare.

“Try,” she whispers. “I’m a DCI, you wouldn’t …,”

She doesn’t even see his fingers move. Just feels the grotesque, burning penetration. The sound of tearing skin is almost lost beneath her scream.

Creative Writing Assignment,

By Catherine Marlish

His feet are naked; toenails painted a shade of green that makes me think of old glass bottles and mint jelly.

I’m 14, and I’ve never seen nail polish on a man before. Never seen a man in baggy harlequin trousers or with braids in their scabby beard: wrists wrapped up in a gaudy maypole of beaded bracelets; lips singing around a cigarette. I certainly never imagined I would see such things today. Not so close to home. Not in the little subway beneath the footbridge on the edge of Keswick town centre. Not on a Tuesday.

“He looks so cool..,”

“Does he heck as like, he looks a proper tit. Looks as if he’s been swimming during a fly-fishing contest!”

“He must be freezing.”

“Don’t look. Come on, he hasn’t seen us …,”

“Go give his feet a rub, then. Stick them in your armpits.”

“You’re gross.”

“You’re gross.”

The stranger stands with one foot half submerged in a puddle, the other planted on the grimy cement. The bulbs in the underpass are bathing him in a warm, sodium glow. His shadow, stretching away to the far end of the subway, has the likeness of a gnarled and knotted tree.

“You fancy him.”

“You fancy him.”

“Let’s go say hello then.”

“Piss off!”

The singer’s eyes are closed, head raised slightly, as if preparing to receive the sacrament. His fingers, grimy around the nails, inked across the knuckles, move lightly over the strings of the battered guitar, hanging from his neck on a length of cord; half as thick as the ratty dreadlocks which gather in the hood of his sodden purple coat.

We’re sheltering beneath the little pagoda by the park. Freya is sitting cross-legged on the floor, a pile of books spread out around her as if for sale. I suppose we look out of place in this touristy part of Lakeland: a black smudge among the green and brown. There are guest houses and mountaineering shops a little further up the street; all crampons and Gore-Tex and fleece. The shops are mostly empty today. Many have shut early, including this blue-painted kiosk that offers a little protection from the swirling wind. In summer, it sells ice creams and Kendal Mint Cake, rents out old golf clubs and gaudy pink balls to families willing to endure a round of crazy golf. On this ugly February day, the shutters are down. It was the same up at the boating lake. Nobody was renting out the rowing boats. The ducks and geese pecked miserably at the gravel near the water’s edge. The quacks seemed decidedly half-hearted.

From where we’re huddling, we have a perfect view of the busker, his guitar case open in front of him, two solitary coins catching the light.

“What the hell is he wearing?” asks Violet, scornfully. “Oh my God, he looks like he needs to be sheep-dipped. Can you imagine kissing that? Bet he tastes like shoes.”

I laugh, the way I always do when Violet says something loud. I don’t agree with her though. I actually rather like the look of him. And his voice. There’s something hypnotic about it. Something that makes me think of honey.

“What’s he expecting to make today anyway?” asks Violet, unthreading her hair from the inverted crucifix necklace that hangs, as if for extra blasphemy, in the shallow cleft of her expensive and somewhat unnecessary bra. “There’s nobody daft enough to be here. Keswick’s so boring.”

“I think he’s just singing because he likes it,” I say. “Shall we give him some money? I’ve got my bus fare. I can just keep 10p for the phone and ring Dad for a lift …,”

“I need to borrow that for some chips anyway,” says Violet, carelessly. “I spent my allowance on the new boots.”

“Oh, right. Sorry,” I say, automatically. I make a mental note to start saying ’allowance’ instead of ‘pocket money’. She still hasn’t forgiven herself for saying ‘playtime’ instead of ‘break’ in front of Freya.

I sit silently for a while, staring out through the misty rain. Keswick rain. That’s what Mam and Dad call it: a kind of haze that hangs in the air and soaks to the bone. It blackens the tarmac, which twinkles, like iron ore, in the light of the half moon. It darkens the trunks of the trees: turning sycamore and elder into great columns of steaming charcoal.

“Crusties – that’s what people like him are called,” says Freya, quietly. “New Age Travellers. There’s something called the Peace Convoy, people living this kind of gypsy life. They smoke pot and campaign to stop nuclear bombs and bring down Thatcher and stuff. I saw one of them on the news. He wore a cloak and said he was the true heir to Camelot, or something. I’m pleased they’re on our side.”

“Our side?” I ask, wondering what she means.

“Outsiders,” smiles Freya. “Alternatives. Goths. They’re against the machine, just like us.”

I like this feeling. Like being part of the same swarm as Freya. I look at her out of the corner of my eye. So cool, so stylish: sitting there with her spell books and her dog-eared grimoires. Today she’s reading a tatty paperback: a strange abstract painting on its cover. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. She’s promised to loan it to me once she’s done. I’ll have to hide it from Dad. He doesn’t object to the blasphemy but he wants me concentrating on school work. Things have changed at school these past couple of years. The inspectors have been in. We have uniforms now and the yoga and reiki are strictly timetabled. All that stuff started being phased out once Mr Sixpence moved on. We still get pupils who haven’t done so well at other schools but we don’t spend as much time putting them right. Freya certainly doesn’t seem to have any issues. Doesn’t hear things or see things or spend her spare time holding the carp’s gills closed down at the ornamental pond. She’s just nice. She could have had her pick of friends. Instead she chose dowdy old me, Catherine Marlish, and Violet, who everybody else is a little bit afraid of.

“They wear those in Peru,” I say, pointing at his tatty coat. I’m remembering a picture in the parish magazine. “They’re made of alpaca.”

“What’s an alpaca?” snorts Violet.

“Like a lama. Apparently they’re dead warm, and they dry quickly too. They make them at one of the missions Daddy raised money for …,”

“I told you, stop saying ‘Daddy’,” snaps Violet, embarrassed. “It makes you sound like a baby. I’ve started calling my dad by his first name. He hates it. Then when I get in bother I call him ‘Dad’ and he’s like a toddler with a sweet. You should try it. Or call him Reverend! Did you hear that Freya? Did you hear what I said?”

Freya, chuntering to herself, makes a show of rummaging in her rucksack to find her cigarettes. Makes a show of lighting up, her black fingernails artfully chipped, skin pale against the black of her fingerless gloves. I suppose to the untrained eye we are all dressed pretty similarly but it is Violet who looks as though a lot of money has been spent to appear this carefree. She wears a black pleated skirt, eye-wateringly short, with knee high stripy tights and brand new Doc Martens. Her ankle-length greatcoat is black with silver buttons and matches the woollen hat that holds back her sleek black hair. Mummy brought it back for her from a trip to Camden Market, a place so remote and exotic to me that it may as well have been purchased at a vintage boutique on the moon.

I feels shabby by contrast. My coat came from a pile of donated men’s clothes, dumped in the doorway of the vicarage. It smells of old men; all talcum powder and slippers, Old Spice and fatty food.

“That language is mad,” says Freya, cocking her head towards the music. “What is it? I can’t make it out.”

“Probably gibberish,” laughs Violet, dripping with disdain. She doesn’t seem to be enjoying her cigarette. She winces with each drag. I can’t help notice that the smoke doesn’t seem to be going into her lungs. It just hangs around in her mouth before she blows it back out.

“He’s all right,” confirms Freya, casting a slightly more expert eye over the busker whose song echoes off the walls of the underpass. “He’s his own person. Nice voice.”

“I suppose,” says Violet, correcting herself. She’s in awe of the new girl.

“He’s stopping,” I mumble. “Oh God, he’s looking, he’s looking!”

It seems to take an age for the final note to fade. It echoes off the walls of the underpass. The singer has almost crossed the short distance between us before the cadence disappears into the misty air.

I glance at Freya. She’s altered her pose. Looks suddenly older. More like an adult than a child: eyes burning like cigarettes. Violet, at her side, allows a sulk to slip onto her perfect features.

Different colour eyes, I think, as his features become clear. One brown, one green.

All the little pieces of him drop into my mind like coins into a slot.

He’s got a tattoo on his neck.

There’s a silver cuff on his ear.

He’s wearing clown trousers.

Chest hair. Proper chest hair …

Her smells funny. Like the bottom of a pond. Like foxblood. Like raw meat.

He stops in front of us. He seems to be listening to something nobody else can hear. Violet gives a little giggle.

“Namaste,” he says, at last.

“Eh?” asks Violet, the noise coming out like spit. “Where’s that from?”

“It’s a greeting. A blessing. Loosely, it means I bow to the God within you.”

I already know what Namaste means, and Violet should too. Mr Sixpence used to say it – the quiet, kind man who used to talk to us about the colours of the soul and the importance of feeling at once with the universe. Up close, the singer sort of reminds me of him, though he’s probably forty years younger.

“You’re smoking a Bible?” asks Violet.

I look at his right hand. A thin grey-blue smoke is rising up from the thin cigarette he holds like a pen.

“That’s a Gideon, isn’t it?” asks Freya, quietly. She plays with her hair, red and fiery, and he looks at her the way I’ve always wanted to be looked at. .

He raises his cigarette to his lips and I hear myself let out a tiny gasp as I realise that his tobacco is contained within a page of a hotel bible. I see the word ‘mercy’ being devoured by the glowing red flame.

“I liked your song,” says Freya, head cocked, plaiting her hair with her fingers. “What language was it?”

Lazily, he flicks a glance in her direction. “I don’t know,” he says. “It just comes out of me. I think it might be Sanskrit.”. His voice is hypnotic. Accentless. “It’s the voice of those who walk with me. Of my guide. They lend me their strength as I search for my own.”

“What are you doing here?” asks Violet. “Not much money to be made on a damp Tuesday in Keswick …,”

“I go where I’m needed,” he says, and his smile shows teeth edged in brown tobacco stains. “Perhaps where I’m called.”

“What does that mean?” asks Freya.

He ignores her. Looks back at me. “You have an interesting aura,” he says, eyes fixed on hers. “Emerald green. You could be a healer. And the pink, it’s almost luminous. Sensitivity, compassion – you understand more than you allow others to comprehend.”

There’s a sudden gorgeous warmth inside me. I feel a pricking sensation across her shoulders; a suppressed shiver tickling the backs of her knees. It feels for an instant as if I can see the outline of things; the indigo-purple framework of the trees, the lights, the white-painted guest-houses with their rain-pummelled hanging baskets. It feels as if I could reach out and smear the colours into a new shape; as if I am looking at a world still painted in unfixed oils.

“The spot behind your heart,” says the man. He leans forward and touches my chest. “That is where our ancestors believed we kept our soul. If you concentrate, you can feel it. I can teach you how to feel it.”

I feel Violet’s hand at my hip, a slight tug upon my coat. Hear a rhythm, a beat like a train moving over railway sleepers. I become aware of a delicious golden heat spreading throughout my body. It is as if I’m elongating; stretching like a cat, becoming more. I feel sensuous. Feel delicious.

He steps back. Surveys each of us in turn. His gaze lingers on Freya and for a moment he seems about to speak to her. He stops himself: an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Raises his blasphemous roll-up and takes a drag. Proffers it to me. I find myself leaning in, nose and lip touching his dirty fingers. I inhale the profane offering. Freya, moving quickly, does the same.

“What are you doing?” asks Violet, looking shocked. She’s staring at me like I’m a stranger. She looks like the girl I met by the water’s edge, lost and thoughtful, back when we were little more than girls. I wonder if she’s jealous and like the thought.

“Chill,” I say, and it feels so silly in my mouth that I start giggling. “We’re not harming anybody.”

“You’ll get germs,” snaps Violet. Her world seems to be shifting and I’m enjoying it. Enjoying the limelight; the attention.

“Forest green,” says the man, his eyes moving over Violet’s body like searchlights. “Sensitive to criticism. Jealous. Lacking in personal responsibility. A pretender. Unkind.”

“You can’t say that to me,” says Violet, and her eyes start to fill. “You don’t know me, you don’t know anything about me …,”

“I do,” he says, and somehow his voice is a calm and kindly thing, like a damp flannel upon fevered skin. “I see things. I understand. I see what is within. I can help you.” He looks at each of them in turn. “Don’t you want to be whole again? Don’t you want to put the pieces of yourself back where they belong?”

“Don’t be mean to her,” says Freya, shaking her head. “She’s nice. She’s been nice to me.”

Violet wipes a tear away, defiance and misery making her striking features suddenly seem very young. “You’re just a smelly man,” she says, petulantly. “Just a man with no shoes. With no money. Her dad’s a vicar. She’s never even kissed anybody so I don’t know why you’re going all mad ga-ga over her. I bet you live in a caravan or something.”

At this, his smiles. Smiles so wide that his ears seem to move, like a cat’s.

“Do you want to see?” he asks. “All of you.” He turns gimlet eyes on Violet. “I would dearly love to help you find your path, as I have found mine. I am a healer. A guide.”

“I knew a guide once,” I say, and my voice sounds dreamy. “He talked like you.”

The singer stares at me, his mismatched eyes blending, cyclcops-like, into one shimmering orb. I feel like he’s pulling me towards him with his mind.

“I would love to help you both,” he says, to Violet and me. He shoots a quick glance at Freya. She holds his gaze as something passes between them. Something I’ve taken a long time to understand.

In a swift movement, he turns away. Walks, sure-footed, across the damp grass.

I’m the first to follow.

Freya next.

In time, Violet will come too.

She would rather die than be left out.