‘Take it.’ The Small Man was holding out a piece of paper. ‘Take it.’
‘What… what is it?’
‘Something to help you get rid of Oak Mary. She’s dangerous; I know you know it.’
That got Tom’s attention, and he looked more closely at the piece of paper being offered. Just something torn from an ordinary notebook, its leading edge perforated. But trust was not so easily won. ‘I’m supposed to just believe that you’ve actually got our interests at heart, after you attacked us? After you shot at her?’
‘I think you’ll find it wasn’t I who pulled the trigger. I actually stopped him from putting a bullet in the brain of your pretty little wife. I even let your ginger friend go; ask him if you like. But look, I understand your indecision, so I’m going to do something I almost never do: I’m going to explain.
‘Your wife Rachel, for reasons I will confess to not having the foggiest clue about, has somehow acquired a talent for reaching through the barrier that separates the world of the living from that of, for want of a better word, the dead. This is problematic. Each time it causes an imbalance and a reaction to the interference, and this reaction is proportional, obviously. With little things like fiddling around with inanimate objects…’ He waved his hand with a dismissive pfft! ‘However, should one become ambitious or stupid enough to liberate an entire human soul from the umbra, well, the reaction takes a somewhat more dynamic form.’ He gestured to himself and sketched a little bow.
‘So, what— you’re Death?’
The Small Man sighed. ‘No, I am not Death. I am one of Oak Mary’s potential deaths. I am a narrative, if you like. An urban myth looking for someone to believe in him.’
‘So you’re three possible deaths trying to claim her soul?’
‘You catch on quick. Except there’s only two of us now, thanks to your wife helpfully removing some of the competition.’
‘But why?’
‘Because Rachel subscribes to the philosophy that what makes us immortal is the stories that people tell about us when we’re gone, and because she pulled Mary through from the umbra, it’s her rules that apply. Damn atheists,’ he spat. ‘If she was Christian we could have settled this much more simply in a demonic cloud of fire and brimstone.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Look,’ said the Small Man. ‘Who I am and what I am isn’t really the point. But understand that my brother and I will never stop until we claim Mary and take her back where she belongs, because it is our function to do so. Your wife cannot protect her forever. Can you imagine living like this for the rest of your life? Because I assure you, that life will not be very long.’
‘For someone who claims to want to help, you seem to like threats a lot,’ said Tom.
‘Suit yourself,’ shrugged the Small Man, and moved to tuck the paper away.
‘Wait a minute. What are you offering?’
The Small Man grinned as Tom took the paper and unfolded it, revealing a series of numbers and letters.
‘These are packet references for the archives in Worcester library: the original police case files for the Oak Mary investigation,’ the Small Man explained. ‘She needs to know who she really was so that she can drop this absurd persona and I can take her off your hands and back where she belongs. You say I threaten. I say I offer the truth, the restoration of the natural order, and a return to normality for you and your wife. The decision is up to you.’
Tom didn’t notice where or how the Small Man departed. He stood thinking about the chaos of last night. If the bullet that had hit the doorframe of the caravan had been ten centimetres to the right, he’d be mourning Rachel. In the end it wasn’t any kind of a choice.
26
ELINE
RACHEL CATNAPPED FOR A FEW HOURS AND WOKE UP to find Tom crashed out on the bed beside her, fully clothed. The bedside clock told her it was mid-morning. Feeling groggy and light-headed, she pulled on some clothes and went in search of tea. As she padded downstairs she caught a waft of coffee and heard the sound of the kitchen radio burbling and the telltale chink of a china mug. Good, Mary was up, and she’d put the kettle on, bless her.
‘Morning, Madame Mysteriosa,’ she yawned. ‘What’s for—’
Rachel froze in the doorway.
There was a strange woman in her kitchen.
She was sitting on one of the breakfast stools with her back to Rachel, the newspaper spread out in front of her, and Smoky parading himself back and forth across the paper, purring like a small furry motorcycle. She was dressed in one of Rachel’s old blouses and a pair of dark trousers. Her dark hair was wet and hung long and straight down her back.
‘Hullo, Rachel!’ the woman replied, and turned around with a smile. ‘Did that little zizz clear your head? There’s tea in the pot.’
It was Annabel, and yet at the same time it wasn’t. Her voice no longer had the broad, round vowels of a Black Country Romani accent. It was clearer, crisper, and with a slight but unmistakably French lilt. Her face was the same shape, but the expression it wore was completely different – where Annabel had been quick and open, this young woman regarded her with cool appraisal and a slight arch of amusement to one eyebrow. Rachel was tempted to believe that Annabel was playing a practical joke on her, were it not for the very obvious lines of old scars on her forehead and cheeks which hadn’t been there last night, and the fact that her eyes were bright blue again.
‘You’ve changed,’ Rachel said, trying not to appear too rattled.
The other woman looked at what she was wearing. ‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she replied, then looked up with an odd, small smile. ‘I don’t think that is what you mean though, no?’
‘Not really.’ Rachel moved carefully around the end of the breakfast bar and switched the kettle on. The woman had found her old cafetière and a packet of ground coffee and was drinking from a breakfast bowl with both hands. ‘Oi, scumbag,’ Rachel said to Smoky. ‘Off there.’ She shooed him to the floor, where he moved to sit directly underneath the woman’s stool and gave Rachel a filthy look.
‘So,’ Rachel said. ‘Which one are you?’
The woman’s smile broadened. ‘Oh you catch on quick, I like this. I am Eline Lambert. Very pleased to make your acquaintance.’ She gave a little dip of her head.
‘So what happened to Mary, then?’
‘Mary is nobody. Mary is…’ Eline paused. ‘Do you enjoy the cinema?’
‘Sometimes, except when it’s all remakes and superheroes. Why?’
‘I love it. I read all the magazines. Do you know what a stand-in is?’
‘Vaguely. I’m still not sure what that has got to do with anything.’
‘If it takes a long time to set up a particular shot, the actors do not wish to be standing around with hot lights pointed at them, so the director will use a stand-in – this is just any nearby person to stand or walk around or read through the lines. Then when it is all set up, he calls the stars back in and shoots the scene. Well, Mary is my stand-in.’
‘And you’re the star.’
Eline grinned and spread her arms. ‘Ta-daa!’
‘So how can you just not be Annabel any more? What about all the things you remembered and knew? Was that all just lies? Or make-believe?’
‘Being Annabel was like one of those dreams which seems so real that you cannot tell whether or not you have woken up. I have woken up. I know who I am now.’
‘But I dreamed about being Annabel too! I dreamed about being you. Why should one be any more believable than the other?’
Eline laughed lightly, but there was a note of mockery in it, which Rachel didn’t like. ‘A gypsy witch trapped in a hollow tree by a wood demon to contain her undying curse? That is no better than a fairy tale.’
‘So is coming back from the dead,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘Anyway, that’s a bit rich coming from someone who claims to be a Nazi double-agent female super-spy.’
Eline’s face darkened instantly, and her eyes narr
owed. ‘I was never a Nazi,’ she growled. ‘The Abwehr were military, not that it makes any difference. They are all murdering bastards.’ She gripped the bowl so tightly that coffee slopped over the rim and onto the newspaper.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…’
‘There are things you do not joke about. Ever.’
Into the frosty silence stumbled Tom, yawning.
‘Morning, Anna,’ he said, going straight to the fridge and opening it without looking at her. He frowned into the fridge. ‘Now what am I getting here – breakfast or lunch? I feel like I’ve got jet lag.’
‘Tom,’ said Rachel. ‘This isn’t Annabel. This is Eline.’
He turned around and Rachel saw her own surprise mirrored on his face as he noticed Eline’s scars and eyes. A different personality looking out from the same face. Eline blew him a kiss. His shoulders slumped in defeat. ‘Eline. Of course it is.’
‘You don’t seem surprised,’ said Eline.
‘Nothing surprises me about this freak show any more.’
‘Brunch,’ she said. ‘The meal you’re looking for is brunch.’
‘The meal I’m looking for is beer,’ he grunted, and started opening cupboards.
The business of putting a meal together was conducted in silence; a decompression airlock in the conversation. Knives, forks, spoons; bread, jam, tea – the unspoken rituals of these things were a common language which diffused the tension, and by the time the dishwasher was being filled they were almost comfortable in each other’s presence.
After Tom and Rachel had showered and dressed, the three of them reconvened on the back patio where Eline sat on the low wall bordering the lawn and picked restlessly at the grass.
‘So,’ said Tom, ‘we need to know more about what we’re facing. There’s too much conflicting information out there. I did a bit of digging, and I found out that the original police records for the Oak Mary murder are archived at the main library in Worcester. I think we should check them out. Maybe we can find something we can use.’
Rachel looked at him in surprise. ‘You did a bit of digging?’
‘Yes. Why? You’re not the guardian of all things Maryish, you know.’
‘Okay, no need to bite. I was just surprised, that’s all.’
‘It’s a good idea,’ said Eline. ‘But I doubt whether we’ll find anything that can help us against Van Alst – not that it actually is Van Alst, I mean. It’s just something using his shape to come after me, just like the other one used the lesh’s shape to go after Annabel.’
‘Something came after Smoky too,’ said Rachel, ‘but it didn’t take the shape of a person – it was more like a badger-weasel-fox thing. Do you have any idea what they really are underneath?’
‘Agents of death?’ Eline shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘So let me get this straight,’ said Tom. ‘The badger-weasel was Smoky’s death. The lesh thing was Annabel’s death and then Rachel killed it, and now you’re Eline because you picked up that tall bastard’s gun and it – what – shook you loose? Woke you up? And he’s your death.’
‘Van Alst, yes.’
‘So who was the other guy – the smaller one who looked like a geography teacher?’
‘I don’t know.’ She waved her cigarette airily. ‘An accomplice, I should imagine.’
Rachel shook her head. ‘No, not from the things he said. He knew too much about what was going on. He was more interested in me than Annabel, because of what I can do.’ Her skin crawled at the thought.
Tom pursued the point. ‘So if he’s another one of them, whose death is he? Which version of Oak Mary is he after?’
‘Forget about him, he doesn’t matter,’ said Eline casually, but there was a higher, waspish tone to her voice that told Rachel she was becoming uneasy at where Tom’s questions were going. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure that it matters much. Compared to what you can do with your magic hand, there’s nothing in the library that can help us. Still, I’d like to go. The police might have gained access to declassified MI6 information over the years; I might be able to find out what happened to the real Van Alst and Bill Heath.’ She produced a mirthless smile. ‘If by any chance either of them is still alive, I aim to fix that.’
‘Chances are both of them are long dead by now,’ said Rachel. ‘I think your vengeance window is pretty much closed.’
‘Then it’s a good job I know someone who can open it again, isn’t it?’ Eline replied. ‘You can bring them back for me.’
‘I’m not bringing anybody or anything else back, period!’ Rachel was becoming more than a little alarmed at how cold-blooded this new version of Mary was. ‘I’m especially not bringing someone back just so that you can kill them all over again!’
Eline’s eyes glittered, and she tore out little bunches of grass. ‘It’s not revenge. It’s justice. When you’ve been murdered and denied the peace of a decent Christian burial and forced to scream away the decades, then you and I can have a conversation about vengeance.’
‘Okay, let’s bring this back down,’ said Tom, intervening. ‘We’re agreed that, whatever our motivations, we need more information, and the archives seem to be a good place to start, yes?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Eline.
Rachel nodded.
‘Fine then. Let’s just try not to get caught up in any firefights this time.’
* * *
As they set off for Worcester, Eline asked Tom to take a small detour into the Jewellery Quarter. It wasn’t on their way – in fact it was in exactly the opposite direction to the way they needed to go and into one of the busiest parts of the city – but it was, she said, important. There was something she had to pick up.
‘Pick up?’ Tom asked. ‘Where are you going to be able to pick anything up after seventy years?’
‘A graveyard,’ she said, as if it were no more surprising than a trip to the supermarket.
‘You’re taking the piss now, right?’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
Warstone Lane Cemetery had been called Brookfields when she’d known it, and it was right in the heart of the city’s famous jewellery-making district, surrounded by goldsmiths, diamond sellers, watchmakers, family businesses generations old and cooperative start-ups that would fold in a month. Rachel and Tom’s wedding rings had been made in the next street. Heritage-themed pubs and cafés catered to shoppers and tourists who gazed through windows at trays of glittering treasures. ‘This place has improved,’ Eline said, as they crossed Vyse Street. ‘There were munitions factories the last time I was here.’
They turned into the cemetery, which was overcrowded with headstones and in a sorry state, as it hadn’t taken any new burials for thirty years and only a handful of the dead had living relatives left to mourn them or tend their graves. The headstones were blackened with pollution and eroded with time, the gravel sprouted with weeds, and the blunt stumps where statues had broken away looked disturbingly to Rachel like amputated limbs. There were large tombs and looming family monuments with many spires and crosses, but oddly no angels. Nor were there any people, despite how busy the surrounding streets were.
At the heart of the cemetery were three tiers of catacombs in a wide three-quarter circle like an amphitheatre; their doorways had been bricked up long ago to deter junkies and prostitutes, and untended curtains of ivy hung over the balustrades of each tier.
‘These were air raid shelters,’ Eline commented as they passed. ‘People who had been bombed out of their homes used to live here. Can you imagine having your children sleeping in a place like this?’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Right next door to the dead, wondering how soon you’ll join them?’
She strode off, leaving Tom and Rachel to hurry behind.
‘So,’ said Tom, catching Rachel’s arm. ‘Do you buy it?’
‘Buy what?’
He gestured at the woman slipping between the headstones. ‘Eline. Do you think that’s who she really is? After all, there’s n
o reason to suppose that she is any more likely than Annabel. She wasn’t too keen on talking about the other chap, the small guy. Maybe she should be someone else.’
‘The third possibility for Oak Mary’s identity is that she was a prostitute,’ said Rachel. ‘I’m not surprised she doesn’t want to be that. I suppose we’re going to have to hope that we can find something in the archives to clear it up.’
Further downhill, towards the far edge of the cemetery, Eline found what she was looking for, and heaved a huge sigh of relief. ‘I thought it wasn’t going to be here!’ she called back to them. ‘Come and see!’
It looked no different to many of the other graves: not especially ostentatious, with lopsided kerbing around a patch of overgrown gravel and a large memorial stone in the shape of an open bible. There had been a cross at the head end, but at some point it had fallen, or been vandalised, and so as with many others the sextons had laid the broken decoration on top of the grave, which was the simplest and cheapest solution.
‘Can you give me a hand, please?’ Eline asked Tom. ‘I need to move this out of the way.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need what is underneath.’
‘Oh no!’ said Rachel. ‘We are not desecrating any graves.’
‘This was never a grave,’ said Eline. ‘SOE were inhuman, but not monsters.’
The cross was solid granite and difficult to shift, but between the three of them they managed to tip it over and onto the grass. Eline turned her attention to the bible-shaped memorial stone, then stopped and laughed. ‘Look!’ she said, pointing at the words engraved on the open pages.
In Loving Memory of
Mary Olivia Deveraux
Devoted Wife and Mother
1837–1902
‘Of course it would be Mary, wouldn’t it?’ Still chuckling, Eline bent to the stone bible, hooked her fingers around the top edge and pulled at it.
The Hollow Tree Page 21
