Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) (24 page)

twenty-three

The road to the
power station was as straight as the Fosse Way. In the slow-failing light, all I saw was a single fox. Its amber eyes flashed like a warning.

Hinkley Point loomed out of the growing darkness, defying the desolation of Bridgwater Bay. From a distance, it resembled a scattering of squares, like discarded Lego bricks, but it still provided electricity in the Somerset region.

I’d been watching for a turnoff, but the road carried on past a sign telling me I was now entering British Energy property. Buildings overshadowed me on either side, the gates secure.

Ahead was a luminous sheen of grey. The Bristol Channel.

My scooter bounced over the rough grass that fronted the beach and came to a stop. I pulled off my helmet and immediately the wind hit my face, lifting my sparse hair and biting at my scalp.

I stared at the grotesque buildings standing so close behind me. There was a gentle hum coming from somewhere. Did nuclear power make a noise as it generated electricity?

The only other vehicle parked on the scrub-grass was a carefully washed-and-waxed Mercedes. Although the lights were off in the car, its radio was beating a tin can rhythm from inside. I went over and tapped on the window.

The woman jumped, as if surprised that anyone had bothered to turn up. As if I might not be the person she’d agreed to meet. The window descended by a fraction.

“Ellen?” I said. “I’m Sabbie.”

“Oh, yes.” She got out of her car. She looked to be about ten years my senior. She was neatly made up, her lipstick perfect, with hair styled in a bob that had been so lacquered into place even this wind wasn’t moving it. She was sensibly coated in a padded jacket with fur around the collar, but her footwear wasn’t sensible at all … here was me in walking boots and socks and there was she in calf leather with four-inch heels.

“Thanks for coming here like this,” I said.

“I wanted to. Think I needed to come back.” She gazed out across the beach. The water shone like pewter in the dull light. She spoke in that direction, as if addressing the sea. “Can’t believe it happened only ten days ago.”

She began walking towards the beach as if it was beckoning her. When she got to the fence, she stopped and gripped it, her hands encased in soft leather gloves.

Like Ellen, I examined the desolation of the bay. The tide was low, and the stone causeway could be seen clearly, a formation of flattened boulders with a squiggly pattern across the far shore made up of shingle, rock, and mudflat. At its far edge was a ridge where hardness fell away into sea. A cold wind blew in, but the water only rippled slightly, as if it might be on its way to freezing.

From the deep water beyond rose a skeletal structure, ragged with seaweed. It felt as bare as bones, and the wind moaned through it. Or was it the cooling tower that moaned, in sheer misery of its location?

The cooling tower could have been a gallows, a complex gallows. I could see how it might trap a victim, cling on to her. I kept staring over the bay as the light failed, desperate to get my thoughts into shape, but my heart was racing too fast, keeping in time with the wind that flapped in my ears.

“This beach looks almost alien,” I said. “Like a moonscape or something.”

“Yeah, well it’s the submarine forest, isn’t it?”

“Whatever’s that?”

“Some sort of prehistoric thing.” She waved a hand to demonstrate her lack of expertise. “Where a forest grew millions of years ago, something like that. We used to take home some great fossil finds when we came here as kids. We’d dig around in the mud for them.”

I nodded, caught up in the idea of how landscape changes. Neither of us spoke for a while and in the silence the sun fell below the horizon to our left, painting the water with a spectral purple glow.

“It’s odd,” said Ellen, “because I didn’t think about it, when we agreed a time on the phone. But this was when I came here. The light was almost gone.”

I nodded. I’d known that. It was how I’d wanted it. “What were you doing?” I said, desperate to ask if she’d come in stilettos on that occasion. “Walking the dog?”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“No. The police never pass on personal details.”

“Looking back, I can see just how crazy I’d got. But it was a day out of hell. Complete hell. Had some hell-like days in my life, but God, not many worse than that.”

I stood next to her, also leaning onto the fence. “Do you …” I paused. I didn’t want to sound like a therapist, because Ellen was not my client. Even so … “Do you want to talk me through it? From the beginning?”

Ellen gave a damp sniff. “She was younger than you are, probably. Straight from university and so keen.”

“Sorry. No … she was from Bulgaria. A Roma.”

Ellen took at my perplexed frown and yapped a laugh. “God, no, I’m talking about Coriander.”

“Coriander?”

“You said start from the beginning.”

She was right. She’d tell the story in the best way for her. If we’d been in my therapy room, I wouldn’t have queried her at all. She needed to have her head.

“Would you believe I actually took Coriander on? I had to persuade Keith. We’d always said we’d use graduates, and she looked ideal.” She paused, forming the story in her mind. “She was nice, friendly, you know, and I guess I made a friend of her while I showed her the ropes.”

“And the ropes are?”

“Conservatories. Small firm—Keith and me started it. Coriander had done business studies and marketing. We wanted to expand our client base. We gave her a brief to see how she could do that as effectively as possible.”

“And …” I struggled for the right prompt. “Did she fulfil her brief ?”

“She’d been sleeping with my bloody husband. I think he fulfilled hers!” She brushed her hands across her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. It was a gesture of rage. “I did think it was odd, the way Keith kept encouraging me to take time off—go out more. ‘Now we’ve got Coriander, you ought to take advantage.’ Those were his very words, and believe you me, I should know, they’re engraved on my heart.”

I
could
believe that. People often give themselves away with their words. “So he … took advantage … while you were out.”

“The knitting and stitching group in Stogursey. Every Sunday afternoon from two in the afternoon. I’d finished a tapestry and I’d been too shy to bring it to show them. They made me go home and fetch it.”

“And when you got back,” I said, light beginning to dawn.

“Yes. They were so bloody absorbed in what they were doing they didn’t even hear my key in the door. And do you know, I might have come in and gone back out without ever knowing, if my tapestry hadn’t been in the bedroom.” She brushed at her eyes again, but still no tears. “At least they had the duvet over them. I should be grateful for that.”

“Was that why you came here?”

“This is a good place, if you want to scream or something. It was where our gang chilled out. Played make-believe games.
Dr. Who
, it was back then, that and
E.T.
Expect it’s something different now, though who knows?”

“You’ve always lived round here?”

“Yep, it’s Keith who’s the newcomer. When he left Universal Windows we set up our own company in a unit on that commercial estate on the Taunton Road. We had a starter home in Minehead and we remortgaged it to the hilt. It was prosper or perish. Luckily, by time the banks were all failing a few years back, we’d more or less got established. I wanted something better than the terrace in Minehead. I spotted this nice detached cottage outside Stogursey … bespoke kitchen, antique quarry tile floor, everything. We bought it this summer.”

She was crying now, looking away from me into the wind.
Poor Ellen
, I thought.
She’s poured her life into things that could be snatched away with one hump under a duvet.

“And I love it. I’m right back at my roots. Mum lives a mile away.” She gave a bleary grin. “You’d think I’d have driven over to her, wouldn’t you, but no way. She still doesn’t know. We’re that sort of people.”

Ellen swung round, away from the sea, and leaned her back against the fencing. She was quiet for over a minute. She was regaining her composure. “We’d tramp here of a school holiday,” she said eventually. “We thought the power station was a scary place. Dared each other to get over the fence and explore it. The Dark Places of the Inside, we called it. Got chased off a load of times. But actually, it’s the sea—the beach—that’s really dangerous.” She gestured towards the sea. “The other dare was getting out there … to the cooling tower.”

I imagined a gang of youngsters, picking their way across shingle and flat rock, listening to the hum of the monster building. Better than an adventure playground.

“But no harm came to any of you?”

“Nah. We were fine. The boys used to chase each other out to the sea. The girls were more circumspect, I’ll admit. I never went right out. I wasn’t that keen on mud.”

I looked at her careful makeup and her nut-brown Jimmy Choos and nodded. “So you came here … ten days ago … to have a good scream?”

“I dunno.” She dug her hands into her pockets. “I don’t know how I felt, except I knew that I would go all the way. Right to the ridge. I’d never done it before, but I was determined. I didn’t care what might happen.”

I touched her arm, a tiny brush of my fingers. “I can believe how you could leave it to fate.”

“Yes,” she said, fiercely, “that’s it, exactly. If I made it out there, had a good scream, a good, good, scream, then made it back …
that would be how it was. If I didn’t, well, that was in the lap of the gods. Or
that
thing.”

I looked at the looming buildings, the glow from their windows almost cosy. In the silence the hum I’d heard as I parked became louder in my ears. “I was surprised you can get so close,” I said. “Security seems a little lax.”

“Not for much longer. They’ve got the go-ahead to build Hinkley C. Twenty-first-century nuclear power. They’re going to stop traffic coming anywhere near this place. Quite a lot of villages will be affected too. Everything will change.”

“It always does, doesn’t it?”

She looked at me as if I’d made a deeply profound statement. “I still don’t know why he did it. He tried to explain, but frankly, I didn’t believe him. I think it had something to do with … being able to … you know?”

I certainly did. But we’d moved far away from Kizzy. I could almost see her, hanging across the bars of the tower, the grey sea tugging at her hands and feet and hair.

“You spotted the dead girl’s body, didn’t you. When you arrived?”

“Not then.” She put her hand over her mouth, as if she’d forgotten the actual reason we were here, she was so caught up in story of Keith and Coriander. “I was concentrating on my dare.” She snorted through her nose. “Not that anyone had dared me, but … I had dared myself, I guess. See, I was looking at my feet a lot. Even the flattest boulders are slippy and in the dusk the mud doesn’t look much different.”

“Were you wearing those boots?” I
had
to ask.

“I had on the stuff I wore to the knitting and stitching group. Light casual. Sneakers.”

“Right. Good dare gear.”

She tried a laugh. “Yeah. Those shoes got me quite a way. They were totally wasted, but I didn’t care. I was doing the dare and spiting Keith, if only he knew it. Actually, he was already ringing round looking for me. Even my mum. Later we had to make up some story about walking a neighbour’s dog.”

“You’re still together?”

“Oh yes. Of course. Coriander’s out on her ear. Well, we couldn’t
sack
her as such, but we’ve persuaded her to go. We’re sole partners in the business.”

She said this as if it explained everything, and I guess it did. It allowed me a peek into a world I’d never known—the world of the couple that present a solid face against all adversity and rely on each other to shore up the nest they’ve built with fragile twigs.

“I s’pose I was about three quarters of the way to the ridge when I looked up properly for the first time and took stock of where I was. That ridge seemed touchable. I knew I could do it. My plan was to sit on it, dangle my feet off it. I don’t know if that would’ve been easy, but I could remember the boys jumping all over it.
Sit on it
, I thought,
and think things through. Have a scream.
I’m staring at the ridge, really. Not the cooling tower. Then I look up, and there’s this pale bit. I had a … sensation … you know? I kept walking forward, but I was looking at the cooling tower, not the ridge.” Her voice had gained enthusiasm, as if telling this macabre side of events took her further away from the desperation of adultery. “Now I’m looking so hard, I keep missing my footing. I’m up to my ankles in bloody mud. I’m on my knees, scrabbling forward. By then I knew.”

“That all was not well?”

“I felt like shit, but this was separate to that. Above it. Like the music from
Jaws
. That pale bit. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want it to be …
”

“Her face?”

“Yes. Her poor, dead face.” She screwed her eyes tight, clutching the fencing, as if Kizzy was still out there. “Like a moon was caught in the bars, with eyes, as big and dark and hollow as craters.” Her body convulsed. She wrapped her arms around herself as if it had been the cold. “They’re talking about her being slashed. When I think about it now, I keep seeing blood. I’m imagining it, really. It’s the way the light goes down out here. It catches things. Like the rocks, now.”

She was right. The mud flats and boulders that rose out of the fingers of water gave off a glow, as if they were alive with nuclear energy.

“But honestly, I didn’t do that ‘good citizen’ thing at all—take note of the crime scene, whatever. I was way too spooked. I backed off, totally forgetting about the mud. Covered in it. Pulled myself flat onto a bit of rock and didn’t move for a very long time. Then I realised that my mobile was in my back pocket, where I’d dumped it after switching it off the first time Keith tried to call me. It was mired; almost slid out my hands. I didn’t think,
must report a murder
, anything like that. It was more …”