The nakedness of the corpse was, not surprisingly, of great interest. Tara explained that, not long after arriving, Gotobed had simply torn off his clothes. These had been found ripped to shreds in the bathroom. Tara resisted the urge to ask about the black leather shoes with the little gold chains. But the detective who questioned her did let slip that a few remnants of clothing were actually found on Gotobed’s body.
“I never noticed when…” she began, trying to recall how the beast had looked, not remembering any trailing bits of cloth. “I mean, I didn’t notice. I was kind of distracted by how crazy he was acting.”
“Yes, about that… Why do you think he smashed through two solid oak doors when neither was locked?” the detective asked.
Tara had not expected the question. It had seemed obvious that a wild beast could not work a door handle, but she could hardly say that.
“I guess that was part of his… his mania, or whatever it’s called. The guy was not making a whole lot of sense before he changed. Changed into a crazy person, I mean.”
The cop did not seem convinced. Tara knew she was not a brilliant liar. But then the detective was called out to speak to a colleague, and when he came back, he asked her about Josh. They discussed her trauma, whether she had received counseling, if she was on any medication. This was the preliminary to letting her go, with a polite request not to try and leave the country for a few weeks. No charges were likely to be brought.
Tara went to get a coffee and sat opposite the main gate of St. Ananias in the cold, warming her hands on the cup. She watched the coroner’s team carry off the small burden that had once been a rich man. She wondered if Alfred Gotobed had set out to kill them both, or genuinely wanted help. Maybe the truth was somewhere in the gray area between the man’s weakness and what little sense of morality he had left.
“Can you spare some change, please?”
The beggar startled her. The man was thin, raw-boned, wrapped in layers of mismatched clothing, feet encased in ragged socks. Embarrassed, she fumbled for cash and found only a note, handed it over.
“Got no change,” she said unnecessarily.
The man stared at the note and then thanked her before walking on. Tara watched as he vanished around the corner occupied by a Starbucks. She thought about Alfred Gotobed, richer than most people alive on this planet could imagine, who could have housed every down and out in this city and not really felt it. Instead, he had decided to buy himself a one-way ticket to violent bloodlust.
Tara finished her coffee just before her phone chimed. They had let Mortlake go with a warning that he might be called in again by police or the coroner.
“No big deal,” he said. “I’m used to it by now. They always find a way to avoid asking me about the really strange stuff. They feel it makes them look a bit silly, and who am I to disagree?”
They met up in his apartment, which, apart from the wrecked doors, was surprisingly intact. Then he showed her up to the student room where she could stay for the rest of the semester, if she wanted. It felt odd to look at new accommodation so soon after a death, she observed. But she did need somewhere to sleep.
“Yes, but you’ve missed the last train,” he pointed out. “I’ll provide you with some sheets, pillows, and so on. Need a toothbrush? All right, no problem. I’ll be right back.”
Alone for a few minutes, she checked out her new home. It was stark, old-fashioned, an attic room whose modern amenities consisted of the bare essentials. Still, it was warm enough, and she had a view through a dormer window in the sloping roof. Then she noticed something else. The guttering just below the window was broken, hanging loose.
***
NAKED TYCOON IN UNIVERSITY DEATH PLUNGE
Mortlake glanced at the front page of the Cambridge Gazette, then put the paper down.
“At least that headline covered a few major demographics, so fair play to them,” he remarked to Monty. “Want to check the football results?”
Monty Carrington thanked him and started to peruse the sports pages. They were in the refectory of St. Ananias, a communal dining hall where the lecturers and students could mingle. But both academics were early risers and, this being a Sunday morning, the place was almost deserted. There were more faces in the portraits that lined the walls than there were at the long tables.
Staring up at various long-dead notables, Mortlake munched a piece of toast while Monty muttered darkly about transfer windows, the ludicrous sums paid for obscure young players, and the pernicious influence of V. A. R. Seeing Mortlake’s puzzlement, the older man smiled.
“Video Assistant Referee,” Monty explained. “Stopping the game, going off to look at what’s just happened from different angles. Terrible, pernicious influence on decisions. Making a mockery of the offside rule, for a start, which as you know…”
Mortlake held up a toast crust. He had sternly refused to have the offside rule explained to him on a regular basis for over fifteen years. Monty sighed.
“Seriously, Marcus, I thought you were from the North, but you know nothing about football, cricket, rugby—are you a changeling or what?”
“I was a great disappointment to my family, they wanted a world-class goalie,” Mortlake said. “Worth noting, though, that looking at things from different angles is no bad thing.”
Monty sighed and put the paper down.
“All right, old chap, which particular angles am I supposed to be peering from? I assume this is about that banker or whatever he was?”
Mortlake poured himself another coffee, pondered it for a moment, then dropped in two lumps of sugar. He felt the need for energy.
“Alfred Gotobed,” he said. “Was he always planning to turn on us or did he genuinely want our help? Or is it more ambiguous than that? Did he want to change sides but, at the last minute, doubted whether he could?”
Monty dabbed some marmalade on the last piece of toast.
“Changing sides implies changing back, doesn’t it? And is there a way for them to stop being—you know whats? Without dying? I don’t think you’ve quite settled that, or have you?”
Mortlake shook his head. He went through the pros and cons again, hoping that Monty might have something to add. The old man was notoriously easy to befuddle on everyday matters. But he had a keen mind when more esoteric matters were concerned. His gift for postcognition had given him insights into so many lives that he could call upon a vast fund of half-remembered knowledge and experience. Not very efficiently, but he could do it.
“If we can’t cure them, and we can’t kill them, we have to find some way of stopping them,” Mortlake pointed out. “But, as Tara observed, none of the supposed solutions are very credible.”
“It might help,” Monty said, “to find out a little more. That’s what you’re leading up to, isn’t it?”
Mortlake shifted uncomfortably.
“You know I wouldn’t ask…”
The old man reached across the table and laid his fingertips lightly on the back of his friend’s hand. Mortlake jerked away instinctively, as Monty sighed and looked up at the roof beams.
“Oh yes, I see it,” he said. “A glimpse, at least. Quite a monster. Not much of a man.”
Monty gulped, closed his eyes.
“Going a little further back, I sense—yes, he did meet the others, Gonfallon and the rest, a few days ago. After he met Tara. He felt stung by their condescension, but you knew that. Wanted to prove himself to them. But conflicted. Yes, right to the moment of truth he was undecided. I feel—I can’t be sure, but—if you’d offered him some hope of a cure then and there, he’d have turned against them. But instead, he heard you talking about him. Harsh words. Rage at being slighted yet again. That did it.”
The old man opened his eyes and gazed across the table at his friend.
“No need to tell Tara, of course. Not her fault. The man made his choice. Just like Cassandra Tallantyre.”
Mortlake paused, coffee cup halfway to his lips. Monty shook his he
ad, wagged a finger. It reminded Mortlake of an old headmaster who had called him clever but far too imaginative.
“Really, my dear fellow, she is long gone, but there you go seeing her in the street,” said Monty quietly. “You should have consigned her to the past, not keep seeing her in some random passerby.”
Mortlake shook his head.
“It was just that one time, a chance resemblance,” he insisted. “I know she’s probably dead. But… I can’t be sure, can I?”
The old man shook his head. Mortlake knew what was coming next, or at least had a pretty good idea.
“She was bad for you then, what makes you think she’d be any better for you now?”
***
It was a Sunday morning, and Tara was in no hurry to wake and start her day. Instead, she dozed under the sloping roof of her spartan accommodation. She never slept well in an unfamiliar bed, and her dreams had been a jumbled mixture of rapacious monsters chasing her across the rooftops of Cambridge, which was also London, and her mother spraying choking quantities of Raid around the house in summer. She eventually got up, showered, dressed, and got down to breakfast in time to meet Monty coming out of the refectory. She asked him how he was, and if Bigglesworth had recovered from his shock by now.
“Oh, that old reprobate, it takes a lot to rattle him,” Monty said. “Did I mention he’s become a father? I could have sworn I had him done, you know, but apparently, I forgot. It seems he’s been seeing a stray tabby that hangs around the kitchens. And now there are kittens. You wouldn’t like one?”
Tara turned down the offer but promised to ask her friends. Then she went inside to get scrambled eggs and talk to Mortlake. She found him meditative, preoccupied. He asked her if she had any thoughts about yesterday’s unfortunate events, as he called them.
“Well, yeah,” she said. “Firstly, that spray of yours could be a good deal stronger. Second, why the hell didn’t you get any wolfsbane? I know you said your friend was on a skiing trip, but did you try elsewhere?”
“Two good points,” he conceded. “First, I didn’t want the spray to be lethal, so perhaps I diluted it too much. Secondly, it’s hard to find a toxic wild plant in January. Herbalists tend not to stock them, and none of my contacts could help. But, with luck, we’ll have some soon.”
He paused, but Tara sensed he wanted to say something else. She had an inkling what it might be.
“Spit it out, professor,” she said finally. “You have a point to make, I guess?”
He looked past her right ear as he talked—in general terms—about psychokinetic forces, such as those found in poltergeist phenomena. He discussed adolescent girls and how they sometimes displayed unusual powers. He suggested that these might be of use to restrain or repel physical attacks.
“That’s enough!” she said, so loudly that heads turned at the next table. “Enough, please. That was all a long time ago and it was mostly just me acting up—hell, I was acting crazy because my folks were getting divorced.”
“Just over six years ago,” he put in. “Not so long.”
“Whatever!” Tara was resentful, angry, and confused. “I guess I can’t stop you Googling my background, but it still feels kind of deceitful. And whatever happened, it’s in the past.”
Mortlake met her gaze at last, his own eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. He started to talk about experiments, subjects he had worked with in the past. There were ways, he assured her, to cultivate unusual powers.
Tara dropped her fork onto her plate with a clatter and crossed her arms.
“I won’t press the point,” Mortlake said, in a more conciliatory tone. “But like calls to like. If you do have something—let’s say an aura about you—it will attract the paranormal, the strange, the dangerous. And if you were to cultivate your abilities rather than deny them, it might help.”
“I have no abilities!” she insisted. “Sometimes, the boring, rational explanation is the right one. I just went through a phase, stuff happened, it’s over.”
She drank down her glass of orange juice and stood up.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I have a train to catch.”
***
Mortlake wished he had been more tactful with Tara. He decided to call her later and apologize after she had gotten home. Then he changed his mind and resolved to call her on the train. Then he wondered if she had chosen the quiet coach. Finally, he sent her a message saying he was sorry and asking her to call him.
He stared at his phone for a while. His messages to several other people had been answered, with one exception. He scrolled through emails, checking them carefully. He had failed to get through.
He thought, perhaps, it was impossible. Sometimes, you can’t stop people getting hurt.
Finally, he called Rob Westall for an update from Scotland Yard.
“Bottom line,” Westall said, “is that we’re not being called in. The regular mob are handling it. It’s sometimes treated as a security matter if a very rich bloke dies but not in this case. Seems Gotobed had no sensitive political connections, nothing like that. Just a man with more money than most.”
“And a lot less sense,” Mortlake muttered.
Westall agreed and asked about Tara.
“People who’ve been through repeated traumas sometimes get a bit twitchy,” he pointed out.
“I upset her,” Mortlake admitted. “I—I was tactless.”
Westall gave a dry chuckle.
“Surely not? You, an aging Cambridge academic who’s lived alone for years, turned out to have problems relating to an American in her early twenties? What other signs of the apocalypse can we expect? Two-headed calf born in Omsk?”
Westall paused for a beat, then continued.
“So, those contact details—has the bastard deigned to reply yet?”
“No,” Mortlake admitted. “I was just checking. No email, no text. I’ll try the direct approach next. Not relishing it, I must admit.”
Westall grunted noncommittally.
“Well, let’s put it this way. I happen to know—don’t ask how—that he likes dining at a particular swish restaurant on a particular day of the week.”
Mortlake began to thank his old friend, but Westall shushed him.
“You know I can’t divulge details of a member of parliament’s whereabouts! But if I happened to tell you that under no circumstances should you go anywhere near the Grenadier in Kensington between the hours of seven and ten on Wednesday evening, I assume you would not misuse that information.”
“Indeed not,” said Mortlake, smiling. “I will be very careful to be nowhere near that area of London during those hours. Perish the thought I might spoil the noble lord’s dinner.”
“I’d like to spoil that bugger’s al fresco dining for good,” Westall said dourly and rang off.
Chapter 11
“I’ve been trying to rationalize it,” said Tara. “But it’s not going well.”
She was lolling on the bed in Anita’s room, breathing in a heady mix of incense, patchouli, and herbal tea. Anita, sitting next to her, had laid out more of her jewelry, and Tara had gone through it looking for likely protective items.
“You mean the silver thing?” Anita asked, frowning at a necklace with a broken clasp. “Or the paranormal in general? Didn’t Mortlake exorcise a ghost once? And there was something about spontaneous combustion. Quite a lot of weirdness for one man. And that’s just the stuff that got online, or into the papers in the dark ages before the web. He’s that old!”
“Yeah, it’s the whole thing—ghosts, monsters, ESP, and Monty’s postcognition,” Tara replied. “I’ve kind of got a theory that might fit with contemporary physics if we go for some really wild notions about parallel universes and quantum effects.”
Anita sat back on her haunches.
“Okay,” she said. “As a mere historian, tell me how werewolves can be reconciled with modern scientific thought. I could do with a giggle.”
Tara made to punch her friend on the ar
m, but Anita dodged. Then Tara lay back, dangling Anita’s bracelets in her fingers, and talked through what might be going on. She explained that physical transformation of people into animals was clearly impossible—unless some temporary and local suspension of known natural laws occurred.
“Somebody or something comes along and repeals the laws of physics for a while?” Anita said, dubiously. “That sounds like magic—or a miracle.”
Tara took a breath and plunged into the realms of theory.
“It might be possible because we know nature’s laws do break down in the presence of one phenomenon—a space-time singularity. Such singularities are known to form in our universe, most famously when stars more massive than our sun collapse during a supernova event.”
“You mean a black hole?” Anita put in. “Are there a lot of those in rural England, then? Because it’s just the sort of thing you’d expect the BBC to be all over. ‘Here, in rural Wyebridge, we find a massive collapsed star sucking in everything for millions of miles around’.”
Tara sighed.
“Okay, smartass, I’m not talking about a black hole. I mean a singularity in the sense of an infinitely dense concentration of energy, but without the event horizon that gives a black hole all its famously destructive properties. And I know I’ll regret telling you this, but there’s been a lot of respectable work done on them, and they’re known as naked singularities.”
“Yes!” Anita punched the air. “I love an idea that sounds a bit rude—makes it so much easier to remember! Why can’t all science be like that?”
Tara took another breath and marshaled her thoughts as best she could.
“Okay, by definition these naked singularities are weird. Time and space and matter would be all—messed up near them. It’s possible that some were formed in the Big Bang and have been just drifting around ever since. And they could be tiny, having very little actual mass. Remember, it’s density that’s crucial, not actual mass.”
Wolfsbane: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Mortlake Series Book 1) Page 13
