by Mark Hayden
‘Busy weekend?’ said Elaine. ‘Mina coming up?’
‘She is. I can’t believe it’s only three days since she left. Seems a lot longer.’
Morton couldn’t resist it. ‘Aren’t you used to separation and limited physical contact?’
Elaine gave him a dark look. ‘Don’t go there, sir.’ She turned to Karina. ‘Are you in a relationship?’
Karina shook her head and stared at her empty glass. It was time to go.
Karina and I left via the beer garden, where I nipped into the smoking shelter and Karina stood well clear. It was time to put the Fae, Gnomes, Russians and Calabrese behind us and focus on important things. ‘Have you decided what to wear for Saturday’s trip to Manchester?’
She frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘What do you think I mean? We’re meeting the Malchs. You, me and Mina. I know I only mentioned it in passing, but you can’t have forgotten.’
‘No, of course I haven’t forgotten. You said it wasn’t an occasion for uniform so I’m going to wear my Forester robes.’
‘Not on public transport, you’re not. I told you: we’re doing a park-and-ride from Stockport.’
‘So? I’ll put a Glamour on.’ She shrugged. ‘What are you going to do about the Gnomes?’
‘It’s up to the Boss. I’ll ask her when we report in tonight.’
‘Won’t she want to know before then?’
It was my turn to shrug. Expansively. ‘No one’s life is at risk. She trusts me, even if she does think I’m a total liability.’
Karina frowned. ‘She said that, but I don’t think she meant it. Not really.’
There was nothing I could say to that without wading into a swamp of irony, empathy and motivational psychology. One thing I was certain of was that Hannah would not be my first phone call tonight.
‘Let’s go, Karina. No shop talk on the way back.’
‘So what are we going to talk about?’
I gritted my teeth. ‘Whatever you want.’ Under my breath, I repeated the mantra: Anything but the bloody Dragon. Anything but the bloody Dragon. Anything but…
‘Can you tell me again about the Dragon?’
‘Of course I can. What do you want to know?’
Tom Morton watched carefully as Clarke and Karina left the pub by the side door and turned towards the beer garden. When they were out of sight, he hurried Elaine along and went not to his car but Clarke’s. He walked round it, taking a good look inside and stopping by the number plate.
‘Look,’ he said. He squatted down and tickled his fingernail under the edge. A tiny corner of clear plastic film came loose. ‘Clarke has form when it comes to false number plates. I’m sure this is the real one because he knows I’ll check, but I’ll bet he’s got a stash of false indices inside the car, ready to use when he wants to stay off our radar.’
He stood up and looked inside again. ‘I’ll bet they’re in that locked steel box. You can just see it under the dog blanket.’
Elaine followed his gaze. ‘Looks like a secure gun cupboard to me. All in order.’
‘I know, but look at the size of it. You don’t need that for a handgun. Let’s go before he appears.’
‘I think Conrad Clarke is a bad influence on you,’ said Elaine when they got back to their car. ‘That’s twice this week you’ve had chips for lunch, and it’s only Thursday. If he rattles you that much, why did you agree to take the case?’
Tom started the engine and tried to suppress his irritation. The trouble with giving people the right to speak their mind is that they sometimes use it. A bit like democracy, really.
When he didn’t answer straight away, Elaine went even further. ‘And you’ve rubbed your scar more since he reappeared in your life than you have for months.’
‘You’re right. He literally gets under my skin. I thought about that all the way back to Southport after the trip to the Fairy Gardens. I think I know the real answer now.’
‘And are you going to share? Just so I know why I’ve ended up on the wrong side of the looking glass.’
‘It’s not going to sound good, I’m afraid. I may need your forgiveness on this one. I think I took the case for two reasons. First, to save some other poor sod from having to work with him. He did need a crack team of detectives to find Fae Klass, and his lot seem to have the sort of budget we can only dream about. They’re paying Leonie a fortune for our time, and I couldn’t inflict Conrad Clarke on some unsuspecting colleague.’
‘Don’t I count?’
‘No.’ He grinned at her. ‘You knew what you were letting yourself in for when you didn’t ask for a transfer after the Sevenbridge case. And didn’t you spot that I called us a crack team of detectives?’
‘I know we are. What’s the other reason you took the case?’
He concentrated on the road for a while until they came to rest at some lights before the M6 junction. ‘I wanted to see if he’d really turned gamekeeper or if he was still a loose cannon.’
‘Tom, that metaphor was bad. Even by your standards. And what’s the verdict?’
‘I think he’s a bit like that dog of his: useful if kept on a tight leash. From what I’ve heard of Hannah Rothman, she’ll do exactly that. A bit like what I imagine went on at the Well of Desire. I should think that there were a lot of collars and leashes there.’
She groaned. ‘I so wish you hadn’t said that. I do not want that image in my head. Do you reckon we’ll ever hear from Clarke again now that we’ve found his witness?’
‘If we don’t, there’s always the nuclear option.’
‘Now you’re scaring me.’
‘Did you notice Clarke’s phone? It didn’t have GPS. He won’t have it because he thinks people will track him. I don’t think he’s plucked up the courage to tell Karina that, because she used it to find the pub. We can always track her. I get the impression that Clarke’s going to keep her very close while they’re on duty.’
‘You’re not joking. I still can’t get over the way she tackled Kirk Liddington. You’d have been proud to put in a tackle like that. Even Rob would have given her full marks, to say nothing of the way she vaulted over that fence. I’d swear she had springs in her trainers. I went through the gate.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind. And then there’s the Dragon. Did you notice that Clarke denied that Ms Lewis was guilty of growing cannabis and ignored the Dragon. It was the thing that Karina was most guilty about mentioning.’
‘I think you’re imagining things, sir. Should we ask for a report from the Cheltenham CID?’
He sighed. Clarke really had got under his skin, and yet the man seemed genuinely concerned about this case. Clarke was handling the investigation as if it were an unstable explosive, and Tom didn’t want to knock him off balance. ‘We’ll leave it for now. At least we can have the weekend off. I’ll help you with the CCTV tomorrow, then I’m taking Lucy to the Cloister for the weekend.’ He glanced at Elaine, whose face had gone neutral as soon as Lucy was mentioned. ‘I’ll have a word with Dad about the judges on the Lancashire circuit.’
Elaine grinned. ‘Oh yes? To see who might have a membership card for the Well of Desire tucked in their purse?’
‘Without spelling it out, of course.’
‘Of course.’
15 — Duty of Care
‘How’s he been?’ I said to Evie when we got back to Middlebarrow Haven.
Scout had bounced up to the windows like he was on a trampoline as soon as Karina had parked the Volvo. Evie heard the barking and came out to say hello.
‘He spent half an hour sniffing around looking for you then came to pester me. It’s a good job I needed to clear my head at lunchtime, so we went for a walk. He calmed down a bit after that.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘I am not doing that again in a hurry unless it’s an emergency. There’s a doggy day-care place just up the road. I looked.’
‘Point taken. Thanks Evie.’
I turned to Karina, ‘I’ll get mysel
f a flask and take him out for a long walk, or we won’t have any peace tonight. You can start writing the report.’
She looked appalled. ‘Me? What if I make a mess of it?’
Evie snorted and said, ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘Yes, Karina, you are going to write the report, and when you’ve gone to bed tonight, I shall read it through carefully.’
‘But what do I put in? What do I leave out?’
Oh dear. This could be more of a hurdle than I thought. ‘Try to imagine that we disappear in a puff of smoke and Vicky has to take over. What does she need to know? And Iain Drummond, what does he need to know if there’s going to be a case in the Cloister Court?’
She put on a brave face. ‘Right. Is it okay if I go to the altar first?’
‘Of course.’
She left to get changed and I went to make some tea. When Scout and I left the Haven, I went in the opposite direction to the grove. I had some phone calls to make and I didn’t want Karina sneaking up on us for hunting practice. I gave Scout a good long walk, then found a tree to sit under while I poured my tea and got out my phone. As I said, the first call was not to the Boss, it was to Oma Bridget.
The leader of the Arden Foresters is Oma (“Grandmother”) Bridget, who really is a grandmother. Her son is my friend, Chris Kelly, the Earthmaster of Salomon’s House; they have a difficult relationship.
‘Conrad,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised it’s taken this long for you to call me. Karina’s been with you for over a week.’
‘She’s been with me for two days. Did Hannah call you?’
‘The Constable? No. How is Karina doing? If I didn’t know that you have her interests at heart, and that your job can be very dangerous, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.’
‘Thank you, Oma. She’s doing her best, I’ll say that. What can you tell me about her? We were working with a mundane but very astute detective today, and he thinks she might be autistic.’
‘And what does that mean? We’re not in favour of labels like that in the Foresters.’
There aren’t many in the RAF on the autism spectrum, partly because the medical form specifically says you can’t join if you have it, and I know that because I had a class 1 medical in the summer and read all the exclusions. Even so, the few people I’ve met who are on the spectrum all said that their lives became a lot easier after they were diagnosed. However, that was not a conversation for today.
‘How did she get on while she was your handmaiden? Why did you choose her?’
I could almost hear her shifting in her comfy chair by the fireplace in Foresters’ Hall. ‘This really is between us, Conrad? You won’t put it in a report and fire her?’
‘I want her to succeed. I also want both of us to stay alive.’
‘I understand.’ She took a breath. ‘I chose her because she was struggling to fit in to the advanced classes. She wasn’t being bullied, as such, she just wasn’t fitting in. Perhaps you should think about PTSD instead of autism, if you want a diagnosis. Losing her mother like that is bound to have a lasting effect. I thought that if she had the authority of being handmaiden she might have a chance to find her feet.
‘I got her brother, Colwyn, to mentor her, and she did make progress. She’s better than she was, it’s just that she has a chronic need to fit in at the same time as finding social situations very difficult. Instead of hanging out with her peers, she preferred to wander in the Forest.’
I pulled my lip. There was no easy way to approach this. ‘About the Forest. Just how much of a taste for Fae dust did she develop?’
‘Why do you think I sent her on that pilgrimage? She had to complete it without forest manna, which is what we call it. I made sure she had stopped before I let her join you. As you’ve no doubt discovered, she takes her commitment to the Goddess very seriously, and I told her that forest manna is not a gift from Mother Nature.’
‘That’s good to know, Oma. Perhaps it’s common knowledge in the Foresters, but I only have her file to go on, and it’s pretty sparse. What happened to her mother?’
‘She was killed when Karina was barely a few days old. That was in Kent, of course, hence her surname, and I know nothing of the details.’
Poor kid. No mother and an older father who hadn’t planned to be in her life and who palmed her off to the Foresters when she hit puberty. Perhaps Oma Bridget had a point about PTSD vs autism.
I had one last question. ‘Tell me, if you would, what did you find worked best with her?’
‘Have you put her on the spot yet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’ll know it’s not always the most successful approach. I wish I could help more, but I really believe that practice and patience are the keys.’
‘And I am grateful for your honesty, Oma. If you don’t mind me asking, how did it go with Chris and your granddaughters?’
‘I do mind you asking, but you have the right. What did you say to his wife that allowed him to bring them here?’
‘Me? Nothing. Mina may have said something.’
‘Then I am grateful to her. It was horribly painful, Conrad. Only now do I truly realise what I’ve been missing. It makes the whole mess even more painful. I cannot, I will not have anything to do with that creature, yet she is the mother of three beautiful children. I have been praying for guidance. None has been forthcoming as yet.’
‘How was Chris?’
‘As torn apart as me. He only got through the visit by pretending to himself that they were orphans. I think that’s what he does at work. I’m only telling you all this because you and Mina are the first to get inside their bubble. I’m sure the Goddess smiles on you both for that. And now I must go. May She walk by your side, Conrad.’
‘Thank you, Oma.’
I looked down at Scout, who was taking a power-nap. ‘What do you make of that, eh? Anything we can do?’ He opened his eyes. ‘Don’t bother waking up, lad, I’ve got to talk to the Boss first.’
‘What’s up?’ said Hannah. ‘I was expecting you to Facetime me.’
‘Later, if that’s okay. This is a clear-the-air call with just you, me and Scout.’
She groaned. ‘What misery are you going to heap on my head now?’
‘We’ll start with the pictures of the Bollywood party, the cannabis plants in Myfanwy’s herb garden and, I quote, “Conrad isn’t safe to be let out on his own. He’s a total liability and I’m his minder.” She actually said that to Tom Morton.’
There was a long silence. ‘You know what, Conrad, I’m trying to feel guilty and failing. You recruited her, not me. I was just doing my best. I’m sorry that she spouted it to DCI Morton. That was out of order of her, and a lesson for both of us.’
‘If she had said it to the Queen of Alderley, I might be bothered, but Tom knows me too well.’
‘Apart from that, how was she?’
‘She hasn’t had to do much, yet. I won’t say any more than that.’
‘Fine. I know you’ll take care. So what happened?’
‘We have a lead, but I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so I’ll call you at six, if that’s okay.’
‘Make it six thirty. I’ll make sure I’m at home.’
‘Until then, ma’am.’
Later that evening, I was very glad I didn’t tell her about the alleged Gnomish participation in advance. She couldn’t have faked her reaction, which was to say, ‘Karina, tell me he’s joking.’
And do you know what Karina said?
‘Not this time, ma’am.’
Hannah shook her head mournfully. ‘This I do not need. Are you going to talk to your friend, Conrad?’
‘I don’t see any other option. If I go charging into the local clan with no more evidence than this, they might not let me out alive.’
‘You’re right. Tread very, very carefully. And have fun at the Institute.’
‘We’ll do our best.’
My final call that ni
ght was made from Scout’s kennel, and it was to Mina. ‘I can’t wait to see you tomorrow. How’s it going?’
‘It’s like deja vue, Conrad. Like being back at the accountancy practice when I had my own family, my own teeth and no knowledge of magick. At one point today I found myself talking about the mummified head of a Forest Elf. A mummified head with enhanced properties. I was treating it like a piece of art in a divorce case. I’m afraid I found it very funny.’
‘Did you do many divorce cases?’
‘A few. I was very good at finding the things that husbands don’t want their wives to know about. Let that be a warning to you.’
‘Consider me warned.’
‘And then Marcia thought I was eating Myfanwy’s hash cake when I started giggling. You know, Judge Bracewell has levels of scary that we can’t even begin to imagine. If I thought I might have to face cross-examination from her, I’d quit my job now. I mean it. Having her as a boss is bad enough, never mind having her as an avenging angel. Tell me something about your day.’
‘I need you to get in touch with Anna. I can’t see anyone tapping her phone.’
‘Of course. Why?’
‘Tell her I need to have a totally untraceable, off-the-record conversation with Lloyd about a very serious matter.’
‘This does not sound good, Conrad. What happened?’
When I’d finished telling her, she went quiet. ‘I shall text Anna and tell her to meet me on my way up to see you tomorrow. I shall pretend it’s to talk about our wedding.’
‘Thanks. Talking of our wedding…’
You don’t want to know the rest of the conversation. It would spoil the surprise. I did have one last thing to say before we said goodnight. ‘I’m on a mission to the library tomorrow.’
‘The Esoteric Library? Do they have a branch in the North?’
‘No. The regular library. I need to consult the electoral roll.’
‘Aah. Project Piers. Good luck.’
Thick grey clouds had settled over Stockport when we got on the train, and by the time we’d arrived at Manchester Piccadilly, it was chucking it down. Mina handed the oversized umbrella to Karina and said, ‘He is too tall to keep me dry properly. You can hold it.’
