Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) (25 page)

“Please help me?”

“Total hysterics. And I was cold, very cold and frightened and mad with myself for being so utterly stupid. I could hardly dial. I think I sort of lost it. Because behind me was a dead girl and in front of me was the power station. I know I was screaming by then, on and on. Got myself right freaked out until I couldn’t move at all, like we did as kids, imagining Hinkley Point was the Dark Places of the Inside, where the Mara lived. We loved to scare each other with that
Dr. Who
stuff, say the power station could transmit telepathically, and that the Mara was manifesting as one of us. We’d point to one of the gang and run screaming from them—the pure hatred and greed of the Mara and all that. It all came back to me. I was stuck there remembering that when the Mara manifested into its snake form it would destroy me. Like her. I’d got it in my head
that
was what had happened to her.”

She stopped, and wiped her mouth. “Madness. How your mind plays tricks.”

“What did you say?”

“That I went quite mad, really. Screamed so hard, I couldn’t use my voice for days, after—”

“No. Not that. The thing about Hinkley. What did you say about a snake?”

“Oh, I was just
frantic
, totally back to when we were kids. We loved scaring each other. We
knew
about nuclear power, but we
didn’t,
if you get me. We made things up. Even the signs are scary.
DO NOT ENTER
. To us, that meant,
enter at your peril.
It was Rick who started saying the power station was the Dark Places of the Inside. Said he could hear purring, but it wasn’t a cat, it was the Mara, who was, I dunno, this snake; a representation of all evil from another planet. It was what was on
Dr. Who
at the time.”

“The power station is …”

“I’d half lost my mind, Sabbie, be fair.”

“Yeah, I understand.” I did not understand at all, except to recall how the spirit wolf had spoken of a dark place. Was this the same? He hadn’t mentioned a snake. But, by then, I had already I met a spirit snake. Anaconda. Like I’d explained to Rey, the spirit world is full of twists and tangles.

“I don’t remember much after that,” Ellen was saying, bringing me back to the biting wind and bleak seascape. “I don’t know how long they took to come, and I made a complete prat of myself when they arrived. There was this nice copper who took off his jacket and covered me with it, mud and all. I made an awful mess of the lining. I must have given them my name because Keith was at the hospital; he was there when they got me out of the ambulance.”

“He was sorry,” I said. “That’s lovely.”

She gave me a look. “Yes. He was sorry all right. He’d made a suicidal business decision. Of course he was sorry. I could’ve have nailed his ass.”

_____

There were paradoxes and confusion. Tangles and twists. I had to return to the spirit world to unravel the puzzles.

“Trendle,” I called.

I could still faintly hear the drum, beating on the CD in my therapy room. Vaguely, I knew I was lying on my back, my hands clasped. My stomach was tensed. My heart raced. I didn’t ever want to meet Anaconda again, but I needed to find out where he came from. Was it a dark place … the Dark Places of the Inside? I had to know if there were links between Drea’s ice temple, the spirit wolf’s directions, and what Ellen told me about the power station.

“Trendle?”

Silence.

Winter had finally arrived at my spirit portal. The grass crunched beneath my feet. Hoarfrost decorated the trees and bracken as prettily as any window display in town. A sheet of ice covered the stream, a couple of centimetres thick. The landscape was soundless and still; frozen into place. It felt like Santa might be delivering presents from his sleigh across the next field.

Trendle was probably curled up in his hole with a good supply of half-frozen fish. But I could do nothing without the guidance of my spirit animal. I would certainly not leave this portal. I lay on the floor cushions in the therapy room only half into my trance, wondering if he’d chosen not to come because he thought my journey foolish. Ellen had watched
Dr. Who
as a kid. Who hadn’t? So it was some snake that they’d focused their scary game around. It could have as easily have been Daleks or Cybermen.

Tangles and twists. Mist and mirrors.

In my head, a design took shape, a web of connections. In the centre was Kizzy’s face, swollen and frozen in death. Around her the random symbols connected to my search for her. Except, I began to understand, they were not random. They were part of the Tides of the World.

“Trendle?”

A thin snake oozed its way over the frozen grass. Its green body passed my feet, nudging at my bare toes. I tried not to leap back in alarm but let it go on its way. It was heading towards the frozen brook. I watched as it reached a stick that lay on its path. It was the wolf stick, but it had changed subtly yet again. It had fully become a wand with notched carvings along its polished length. I had the feeling they were letters, words. I took a step to try to make them out, but the wand began rolling, as the snake poured his body over it. The momentum increased. The wand rolled down the bank and lay on the ice. The snake slithered away, but I kept my eyes trained on the wand. It seemed to give out heat. The ice sizzled under it. By the time I reached the bank, it had melted a thin slit of ice and sunk to the bottom.

I looked down into the water. Under the ice, weeds moved with a slow ripple. I saw the wand, a pale line along the stony bottom. And something else. Something glinting. Two silver clasps. I knelt on the frozen bank and peered closer. It was a case with shiny metal fasteners. A suitcase, dropped into the water by error or design. Mirela’s suitcase.

I pushed at the ice layer with the heel of my hand. It didn’t budge. I got up and balanced over the water, slamming my heel down on the thin break the wand had created. The ice crashed open and I toppled into the brook. The water hit me like a returning fist. The cold burned into me. I grabbed the handle of the case and struggled back to the bank. For several moments, I could only gasp and wheeze. Water was dripping from my chin, my fingers, the hem of my long dress. Its arctic touch closed my lungs and stopped my blood.

I turned to the case. My fingers shook as I forced open the clasps and the lid sprang open.

Like her life, Mirela’s packing was haphazard. Her clothes lay knotted together, fusing into a sort of beige colour. Despite the soaking in the brook, everything was perfectly dry and the suitcase radiated the sour smell of dirty underwear. Lying on top was the tiny picture of Mary I’d used to find the spirit wolf. Below it, I could see the envelope that contained the letter from Kizzy.

My body convulsed with cold. A wind was forcing its way in from the north; Boreas, it was called. I sometimes summoned it when I wanted an answer to questions that were earthy or dark but not yet solid in themselves. I stood and stared up at the stand of beeches on the summit of the first hill behind the meadow. Would my northward guardians help me to make sense of this? The wind slapped my wet dress against my legs. I grabbed at a matted wool jumper from the suitcase, pulling it over my freezing shoulders.

Something bumped and fell from the folds of the jumper into the soft whiteness of the frosted grass. It lay there, shining and dark, like a polished piece of jet.

It was a mobile phone. Funny, because Mirela didn’t have one; the only number she’d given me was for the telephone that had rang like a church bell in the hall of her lodgings.

I stooped to pick the mobile up, turning it over in my hand. Immediately I knew I’d held it before. Awareness coursed through me, followed by a deadening feeling of alarm. This was the gift of the spirit world. The iPhone that Gary Abbott had dropped on the night he was killed.

I was instantly returned to the therapy room. My eyes were wet. I couldn’t tell if they were running from the cold or if I had been crying.

_____

Bundled into a fleece, I wrote in my shamanic journal, scribbling things down before the images left me. There were so many images and symbols now, I was afraid of becoming confused.

I recalled the web I saw in the journey. I rummaged around until I found an old roll of wallpaper under the stairs. I cut off a piece slightly longer than it was wide, and pinned it down on the kitchen worktop with an empty mug on each corner. I propped my journal beside it and fished a set of coloured felt tips from a drawer.

I took my time with the images. I wanted to make this look good. I used all the colours in the pack, leaning right over the surface with my tongue peeking from my closed lips as it had when I’d drawn as a child.

There was much to depict. I placed Kizzy’s face centrally, as I first remembered it. Her bright black eyes, glittering earrings, and curtain of hair. Around her, I placed all my otherworld images: the gypsy dancers, the violin they’d danced to. The wolf’s howl against a full moon. The stick he’d dropped at my feet and the way it had changed into a wand. The four places he’d directed me.

There was Mirela’s suitcase with her letter, the icon of the Madonna, and the iPhone. The girl on the shelf in the vast ice temple. The megalithic structure of the power station which was the Dark Places of the Inside. The beach of rock and mud that led to the cooling tower and the cave that led to Hades, the candle flickering in the dark and my haunting cry,
Don’t look back!,
from the dream I had the first time Mirela came to my house.

Spiralling through all this, I drew the sinews of Anaconda, his body longer than sleep.

It was gone eight by the time I’d done, and I’d had nothing since my lunchtime sandwich. I had lost my appetite of late. I chopped up one of the apples from my veg store, tossing the good bits in a pan of porridge. It bubbled away. Doing something practical often helped jog my thoughts when the messages from a journey overwhelmed me.

I whipped the porridge off the heat and poured it into a bowl, drizzling over a spoonful of honey. Like the three bears, it was too hot to eat, but that was just as well because I was desperate to take a metaphoric walk in the woods.

I tacked my wallpaper diagram to the kitchen door. I wrote in red,
Everything is connected.
That’s how the spirit world worked.
Spirit connects the paths,
I’d told Rey.
When things feel clear in that world, they become snarled in this one.

I used a thick black marker to draw lines of connection.

The ice of the brook, the shelf of ice. The ice temple, the power station. The icon of the Madonna, the Lady of the River. The dark place, the Dark Places of the Inside. The length of wolf wand, the length of the snake.

The symbol of the snake was universal. Snakes had represented certain things for millennia: wisdom, intuition, evil, cold-bloodedness, fear, and of course danger. Drawn with its tail in its mouth, it depicted eternity; drawn as a caduceus, it represented the healing energy of the chakras. Because snakes shed their skin, they symbolised rebirth.

I’d seen it in my spirit journey, and on the banner at CORE. Ellen believed it lived within the power station.

I stared at my diagram, but nothing made any further sense. I swallowed up my porridge and hoped it would help me sleep tonight.

twenty-four

By Saturday, Mirela had
been missing for thirteen days, a dark trench of time that made my stomach curl each time I thought about it. And it was five days since I’d seen Rey. He hadn’t given me as much as a text. I knew Rey wasn’t going to be running, except after the bad guys, but I had thought he’d get back to me to ask how my interview with Ellen had gone. In fact, I had almost nothing to report back. Somehow, I didn’t think he’d be interested in
Dr. Who
characters. Before setting out for my shift at the Egg, I’d texted him
:
Fancy quick pint?
A nice casual invite, no pressure, no hint of the screaming female raging inside me. The illogical terror I’d felt as I’d looked down on his sleeping form hadn’t left me for one moment. It wouldn’t just be hard to keep Rey as mine; it would likely be impossible. That thought weakened me.

By the time Nige and I were hanging the damp tea towels over the beer taps and pulling on our coats, I had bitten my knuckles raw over the silence of my phone. He was busy. He had murders to solve and missing Romanies to locate. Why would he even reply, let alone turn up?

Fergus hadn’t come to drink ale on his usual bench, either. That might have been because the group tonight had been punkish, way too loud and brash for the sensitive Fergus Quigg. But the idea of chatting to Fergus filled me with dread anyway. He hadn’t had the same relationship with Mirela as I’d had, and his response to Kizzy’s death had been, well, too “professional” for me. He was sorry, but not
sorrowing
, and right this moment, I really didn’t want to pull the Brouviches to pieces. And last Saturday, he’d invited me to his flat. I hadn’t stood Fergus up … had I? Truth was, Rey was the only bloke I could think about.

“I’m shattered,” I told Nige, as we left the pub and headed towards our late-night taxi. “But I won’t sleep, I know it. I haven’t slept all week.” I didn’t mention that I’d hardly eaten all week, either, and that being sick in love was at least partly to blame for both situations.

“Want to come back to mine? Watch a DVD?”

The invite caught me off-guard. Was Nige just being a mate?

“Sorry,” he said, lighting up. “You’re probably seeing your boyfriend. The one that was talking to the boss.”

“Rey? Was here? Talking to Kev?”

“That his name? Anyway the Irish one. I was out in the yard, having a puff. They were by the corner gate. Kev was passing him paperwork, something or another. It was probably not him … someone like him, you know?”

“Yeah, Nige. It couldn’t be Fergus, he’d’ve stopped for a chat with me.”

“Whoever, man,” drawled Nige. “He was deep with Kev, anyway. Talking low, meaningful, you know?”

I didn’t reply because I was suddenly aware that a Nissan was parked right behind the taxi. A man stepped out of it.

I pointed. “That’s my boyfriend.” I could feel my chest puff with pride as I said the words.

“Looks like Daniel Craig after a heavy stunt,” said Nige, casting an abstract eye over Rey. “Is he the copper?”

“Yep.”

Nige burst out laughing. He had an incongruous sense of humour. Clearly he thought I was the wrong sort of girl for a cop. Probably, he was right. I didn’t stop to work it out. I was running over the cold pavement. I desperately wanted Rey to hold me, but I stopped a metre short of his arms.

“Thought you’d be too busy.”

“Even I’ve got to eat sometime.” He slid his fingers under my open coat, probing my ribs. “I want to feed you up. Steak or something.”

“Rey! I’m a vegetarian.”

“Or something then.”

We picked up a Chinese for two and some Cokes and drove to mine, where at least there was a breakfast bar to eat at. I put on some of the Dolmen’s music I had on download because Taloch’s husky voice and pensive lyrics suited my mood. We shared out the foil containers—the meaty ones for Rey, the veggie ones for me. I sat opposite him and kicked off my shoes, ready for another game of naked footy, but he didn’t notice; he still had his big policeman boots on. “We ordered too much,” I said, waving a hand at the food.

“You are going to get your share down you,” said Rey. “I want you safe from malnourishment.”

I took a big gloopy mouthful of mushroom chow mein, trying (unsuccessfully) to suck the noodles off my chin and so remain appealing. Rey was pushing his black bean beef around the foil container. He had stuff on his mind, I could tell.

“We did a check on that chap you told me about.”

My mind raced. “What chap?”

“The fairy story? The Grimm one?”

“Andy?” I felt my mouth sag, noodles and all. “You did a check on Andy Comer?”

“No, of course not. I’m talking about the preacher.”

“Wow—you actually listened to something I said!”

“I wouldn’t say that. And we don’t have a lot a spare time at the moment for chasing bigamists. But a crime is a crime, so I got a uniformed constable onto it. Turns out he is as clean as a baby’s bottle. Perfect upstanding member of society.”

“He’s married to three women Rey. I saw them, and the two babies he’s had with them.”

“He’s not married at all, Sabbie. You can go through a religious ceremony without actually applying for a marriage certificate. There are no records of Eric Atkinson ever getting hitched.”

Relief washed over me. Drea was free. If Andy could persuade her that she’d been tricked into believing she belonged to Atkinson by law, she might finally agree to leave him. I needed to tell Andy. But that could wait for a while at least. I had other thoughts in my mind.

“I was wondering,” I said, trying to stay cool, ease the information out of him, now he was in the mood to talk, “if you ever found Gary’s iPhone.”

“Of course not,” said Rey. “The gypsy took it. And she was pretty bare when we found her. No pockets full of useful clues, I’m afraid.” He eyed me. “Why are you asking that now?”

“It made an appearance in one of my shamanic journeys.”

Rey lifted his hands clear of the table. “Oh, for God’s sake, Sabbie! Please grow up!”

I felt my neck glow with warmth. I tried to swallow a mouthful of fried rice; it grated at the back of my throat. “I thought we’d agreed. Spirit world messages can be important … in their own way.”

Rey was scrabbling in his pockets for cigarettes and a lighter, clearly desperate. “You’re beginning to think you’re part of the investigative team.”

I exploded. “Don’t be an idiot! After the way Abbott treated me back in the spring?”

His look was raw. “Gary was a good cop. A great detective.”

“Yes, of course.” Rey was stricken by his death. There was no point now, examining his flaws. “But I was wondering if Kizzy might have been in St. Mary’s Lane
because
of Abbott, rather than by coincidence.”

He tried a grin, but it didn’t really work. “Unbelievably, we’ve already thought that through. Surprising though it might sound to you, Bridgwater CID are way ahead of the lay shaman.”

“Okay. I’m sorry.”

Rey shrugged, not the answer I was hoping for. “I’m going out for a fag.” He strode off without looking back. I stayed perched on my stool.

You are bad for me
. Too nosey by half, I fired up my stressed-out detective at the least opportunity. Rey was dealing with three murder enquiries and, as far as I was aware, none were getting solved.

I felt the chilled evening air on my face, fingering through the open door. I’d dreamed for months of having Rey in my bed. I wasn’t going to shatter that dream over one tiny issue.

He was on the park bench by my hut full of wrinkling vegetables. He could not sit on it in a conventional manner; he’d perched his bum on one wooden arm with his feet resting on the slats. I climbed up, copying him in mirror fashion, so that our feet touched in the middle. Mine were still bare.

“Didn’t mean to pry,” I said. “Of course you can’t tell me everything. Need to know, and all that.”

He blew smoke into the night. “I’d be dancing if I could find something that connected Kizzy Brouviche with Gary’s death. But it’s not going to happen. The MO’s … well, Kizzy was killed in a very specific way, and the pathologist has been able to work backwards to the other girl, re-examine the previous forensics.”

“Has that given you … leads?”

“Yeah. Difficult to follow up, mind you, but we’re trying.” He leaned down and took my foot in his warm hands, caressing it. “Sometimes you have to be circumspect. Diplomatic.”

“We’re not talking buccal swabs here, then.”

“I fancy those are going to be a slightly different line of enquiry.”

I waited for him to elaborate, but naturally he didn’t. “Was Gary on that investigation?” I asked. I was wondering if the girl found at Dunball Wharf might have been “watching out” at some other shooting. But this was Bridgwater. Abbott was the first person to be shot in this sleepy town for a very long time.

“Yep, alongside me.” Rey frowned. “He was odd about that case.”

“Odd?”

“Almost over-keen, which is not how a cop should be … emotional. Objectivity is how we work.”

“Gary Abbott, emotional? As in caring?”

“Almost.” He paused. And then he told me what had happened when they’d hauled that first dead girl from the wharf. How Gary had touched her hair and spoken sharply to the technicians about her treatment. How, in the months after, he’d been touchy, almost urgent about the case, and yet less than keen to share.

“Was there something he wasn’t telling you?”

“He would never have retained evidence. Never. But it was as if the girl meant something to him, even though he clearly did not know her.”

I had a sudden thought. “Or Kizzy? He couldn’t have known Kizzy, could he?”

“Can’t see how. Okay, that theory would tie up lots of loose strings. It would explain why Kizzy was at the location. It would even explain why he was so wound up about the first death.”

I felt my stomach lurch as the pieces fell into place. “It’s the hair, isn’t it? Kizzy had long, dark hair, like the first girl.”

“Good try, Sabbie, but ‘long, dark hair’ is not a line of enquiry that’s going to take us any useful place.”

“You said the forensics were the same,” I mused, working backwards through the things Rey had let slip.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Rey. “It’s simply that the pathologist can now make some deductions, looking at what Kizzy’s shown us.”

“A DNA link to the same killer.”

“Not so much. The killer wears gloves. The girls were both clean.”

“I can’t blame you for not wanting to count me in, Rey. Not exactly empirical, the way I think.”

“But then there’s how you hit the nail on the head last time. And that’s the sticking point.”

“Why?”

“You end up in such
scrapes
.”

“Jolly good scrapes,” I said, using Lettice’s crystal tones. “But is there one killer? Someone who’s done this to two women? And might do it again?”

Rey took the cigarette out of his mouth and examined it. “God, it’s hard not to tell you things, you inquisitive minx. But I won’t have to fill you in on the DNA result; it will be public knowledge in”—he checked his watch—“exactly five hours.”

I gasped. “You’re about to make an arrest?”

Rey nodded, the tiniest movement. “Yeah. We’re hopeful. ’Course we are.”

I stared upwards. The sky glittered with stars. I could see Saturn clearly, a fat pinprick of white light.

But Rey wasn’t looking at the stars. He was digging his fingers into his scalp so that the palms covered his eyes. A flash-flood of pain rushed through me. Like a heroin rush it was, although, even in my bad old days, I’d never been that daft. The electric pain of love. I put my hand to his night-chilled cheek. My action seemed to explode in him. He wrapped his arms round my ribs, crushing the breath from me and we were kissing, kissing, and all around us was velvet night, swirling stars, and scented breezes.

I thought I heard nightingales, although it was more likely to be distant sirens up on the dual carriageway.

_____

Rey took a shower and was gone by five on Sunday morning. He left me tossing about my bed, unable to get back to sleep. I wondered how long it would be before details of the arrest were made public.

After an hour of letting this revolve in my head, I dragged myself under the shower in the hope it would clear my mind. Luke-warm water trickled down on me—the last, dripping straw. Rey had used up all the hot. Why was it that when the weather was coldest, my shower was at its least proficient? I rubbed myself dry and, for a treat, lavished some rose-scented oil over my body. By then, I knew I wasn’t going back to bed, so I let the hens out at the first glimmerings of light, fed them their pellets, and checked their water. I downed a cup of tea and slurped my way through a bowl of Weetabix drizzled with honey, almonds, and warmed soya milk.

I opened the blinds in the therapy room. Andy Comer was walking down to the paper shop for the Sundays, his shoulders hunched. I waved, but he didn’t see me, so I tapped on the glass. He came to a halt, trying to isolate the noise. I tapped and waved again. He crossed the road to my gate.

I needed to pick my words carefully. I wanted him sitting down before I explained Atkinson’s marital status. “Do you fancy a quick coffee?”

He gave a brief nod and I let him in.

_____

“I haven’t found her,” Andy said, as I made coffee and Barleycup. I didn’t tell him I could already see that, in every movement of his body.

“You went down to Exeter?”

“Yes. They wouldn’t let me through the front door. I don’t even know if Eric was there. She’ll be where he is; he takes his wives with him when he travels.”

I had him in my mind’s eye, the big navy four-by-four full with wives and children. “I’m so sorry, Andy.”

He looked out, across the room, into the past. “It’s kidnapping, surely? I’ve reported it to the Exeter police. They were nice about it. Sympathetic.”

“But they couldn’t do anything,” I sighed.

“Friday, I went to Charter Hall again. I didn’t get past the welcoming committee. I tried to sneak in, but …”