Silver Ravens

by Jane Fletcher

  “You and me. Well…our relationship hadn’t been going anywhere for a while. We’d got into a rut, hadn’t we?”

  We had?

  Jess’s monologue continued. “You need to grow, and I was holding you back.”

  You had an affair and kicked me out purely for my benefit?

  “We must be true to our real selves.”

  That’s why you dyed your hair pink.

  “And Zoe needed somewhere to live.”

  But I didn’t?

  “Her flatmates were always getting at her. She can be…” Jess swallowed

  She can be a lazy pain in the arse, and you’re wondering whether you really want her as a permanent household fixture? Lori was in no mood to offer sympathy. “I’ll be off then.”

  Jess looked startled, then confused, and then came the familiar pout, as if she still had the right to claim Lori’s attention.

  “Take care.” Lori opened the car door.

  “Wait. Before you go, I was going to ask about the TV.”

  “What about the TV?”

  “And the fridge. You paid for half. What do you want to do about them?”

  Who got custody of the TV set was not at the forefront of Lori’s mind. The house was Jess’s, although she had paid half the mortgage while living there. What percentage of the contents did she have a claim to? “What do you suggest?”

  “I’ll pay you for your share. How much do you want?”

  “I’ll leave it to you. You’re the accountant. Send a cheque to me at my parents’ when you’ve worked it out.” Whatever her faults, Jess could be trusted to play fair with money.

  “Will do. Bye. Safe travels.” Jess retreated up the driveway. “I hope you find someone nice. You need to meet new people. Spread your wings.”

  Jess vanished into the house before a suitable reply came to mind. Had she always been so unbearably insensitive? Adam would, no doubt, answer with a very firm yes.

  Lori rammed the car into gear and pulled away from the curb. Without warning, the street blurred. A teardrop ran down her nose. Damn. She was not upset. She was angry. Spread your wings. What did Jess think she was? A bloody caged budgie? Lori dashed a hand across her eyes, but the tears continued.

  Two streets away, she pulled to the side of the road and parked. This was stupid. She could not see where she was going. Crashing the car really would put the finishing touch on the month from hell. Lori fumbled through her pockets for a tissue, without success. The shop at the petrol station sold them. It also had a coffee machine of dubious quality and a row of wobbly high stools. Lori got out of the car and locked it.

  “Hi, luv. What do you want?” The woman at the counter greeted her.

  “Coffee, please.”

  “Black? White? Cappuccino?”

  “White. No sugar. And a pack of tissues.”

  “There’s a lot of these colds about.” The cashier smiled sympathetically and pressed a few buttons on the drinks machine, which started making hissing sounds. “Be with you in a minute, luv.”

  Lori nodded and looked down. Her eyes were threatening to fill again. Two shelves of magazines lined the underside of the counter. Despite her wobbling vision, the name Zettabyte stood out.

  Lori pulled the last copy from the rack. “I’ll have this as well.”

  “That’s the old April edition, luv. The new one will here on Monday. It always arrives a few days early.”

  “That’s okay. I haven’t read this one yet.”

  The cashier put a polystyrene cup filled with steaming brown liquid on the counter. Theoretically, it might be coffee. “That’ll be eight thirty-four, luv.”

  Something else to go on the credit card. Lori took the coffee, tissues, and magazine to the rickety stools in the window.

  A row of women sat under dryers in the salon opposite. Cars passed up and down the road. A mother dragged a crying child along, avoiding two young lads coming in the opposite direction, jostling in a game of who could push the other into the gutter. It was Saturday afternoon in north London, and her life was going nowhere.

  Hastily, Lori blew her nose and flipped Zettabyte open on the puzzle page. She was not going to give in to self-pity. The styles of puzzles were not identical to the previous month, although the multiple choice and crossword remained. She dug a pen from her pocket.

  Chapter Three

  The sound of the TV was an undulating mumble from downstairs, punctuated by screams and dramatic bursts of violins. That night was Adam’s turn to pick the TV channel, and he had a liking for old black-and-white horror movies—another trait Lori and he shared. She was tempted to go down and join them. Nathan had been much more sociable since learning she was moving out. However, she wanted to tweak her CV for a new job application.

  She balanced the laptop on her knees and scrolled to the proficiency section. The skill set specified in the advert was not a perfect match for her. Glossing over the gaps required a degree of creativity and took longer than expected. Eventually, she was happy she had not stretched the truth beyond her comfort level. She added a brief cover note and clicked send, then checked her inbox.

  The usual amount of spam had got past the filter and was quickly deleted. Mum and Dad had not replied, which must mean they had no internet access—something that never seemed to bother them. A few ex-Ganymede Games employees had sent updates. So far, five had found new jobs and one had decided to pack his bags and spend the year travelling. This was Danny Harris, who used to sit at the desk beside her. He was currently in Moldova. Mum and Dad would approve.

  She selected a suitable emoji, then scrolled through the other emails. Pete Frasier suggested that after working on Rank and File they could all enrol in the armed forces. Developing the war simulation game had ruined the company. More resources had been poured in than could ever be recouped. Lori replied with a link to the French Foreign Legion recruitment page and closed her laptop.

  The TV was silent. Had Adam and Nathan gone to bed so early? Her watch still gave a while until ten o’clock, so it was not hard to guess what they were doing. She pulled out Zettabyte magazine. This month’s puzzles centred more on codebreaking than pure arithmetic. Luckily, she had gone through a phase in her teens of playing around with ciphers—Playfair and the rest. Her knowledge was in need of brushing up, but that’s what the internet was for.

  She completed one number puzzle and thought about starting another, but instead switched to the crossword. The first clue read: 1 across & 5 across: Looks like an afternoon for three kings (7, 7).

  Looks like an afternoon? P.M.? Prime Minister? After completing the previous crossword, Lori had a feel for the way the puzzle setter’s mind worked. She opened the laptop and typed in a search. Three minutes later, after several rephrasings, she had the answer. Stanley Baldwin, the only Prime Minister to serve under three different kings—George V, Edward VIII, and George VI.

  Smiling, Lori filled in the bygone politician’s name and moved to the next question.

  * * *

  Lori sat at the kitchen table. Adam and Nathan had gone to the Sunday afternoon cinema, so she was alone in the house. She had passed on the offer to go with them. Supposedly, the film was a comedy, but the reviews were decidedly lukewarm. She suspected Adam’s only reason for going was to ogle the leading man. Apparently, there were a couple of completely gratuitous nude scenes.

  She took a sip of tea and returned to the puzzles. All the mathematical and geometry ones were finished, and she had a strong hunch about how the links to the crossword would drop out. The mechanism was not the same as before, but the diagonal lines on a large number grid were looking suspiciously non-random. She would know for certain once the multiple-choice section was complete.

  A short while later, she had four more lines of instructions. The hunch about the diagonals had been correct.

  1: GO TO

  2: THE CHURCHYARD

  4: PLUS STANLEY

  5: AT MIDDAY

  7: WALK THREE

&n
bsp; 9: ROUND THE

  11: ENTER THE

  12: HALFWAY HOUSE

  This was no coincidence. Somebody was hiding a set of directions in the puzzle pages of a magazine. Surely it was too elaborate to be an inside joke by the staff at Zettabyte. So what was going on?

  Might a TV producer be looking for program contestants? The few clips Lori had seen of reality TV shows were enough to put her off. Was it likely anyone would use complex maths puzzles to select people willing to engage in naked mud fights on live TV? But maybe not all such shows were quite so inane. She could ask Nathan. He would know.

  Of course, what she wanted was a job in computing. GCHQ would suit her down to the ground. It was in an attractive part of the country and the work should be interesting. However, she was not getting her hopes up over something so blatantly in the realm of “too good to be true.”

  There was another possibility. ENTER THE HALFWAY HOUSE. Could it be a secret message from an underworld gang? Drug cartels had the money to bribe Zettabyte over the puzzle pages. Except, solving the puzzles was hard enough when sober. Spaced out on cocaine? Lori shook her head. A mobile phone would be a quicker, easier, and far more reliable way for smugglers to make contact with each other.

  The missing lines were intriguing, but trying to guess them was a waste of time. The May edition of Zettabyte would be on sale tomorrow. Then what? Would she carry out the instructions—whatever they turned out to be? That was the big question. The list of things that might go wrong started with being made a fool of on national TV and went downhill from there. Regardless, her curiosity was fired up, and she had to know what the full set of directions said.

  The street door opened. Adam and Nathan were back. Lori slipped her notes inside the cover of the magazine and called out. “Hi. How was it?”

  “Fun.”

  “Stupid.” Adam shared her low tolerance for weak plot lines.

  “You were laughing all the time.”

  “At it. Not with it.” They entered the kitchen. Adam grabbed the kettle. “Who wants tea?”

  “Not for me.” Nathan pulled a lager from the fridge.

  “I’ll have one, thanks.” Lori held out her empty mug. “Was the film as bad as the reviews?”

  “Better.”

  Adam groaned dramatically. “Worse. It passed the time. But only if you turned your brain off first.”

  She would give the film a miss.

  “How was your afternoon?” Nathan took a seat opposite. He was becoming noticeably friendlier the closer her departure came. Lori had a vision of him sobbing and hanging around her neck when it was finally time to go. No. Scrub that image—there was no need to get carried away.

  “It was productive.” She adjusted the edge of Zettabyte so it aligned with the table. “I might even be on to a job.”

  “Really? That’s fantastic.” Adam patted her shoulder. “What is it? Where? Do you have an interview?”

  She should have kept quiet. “It’s all very tentative. I don’t want to say too much in case it falls through.”

  “Who’s it with?”

  Lori shrugged.

  “It’s in computing, right?”

  This was getting silly. “I can’t say anything, yet.”

  Nathan frowned at her. “You’re making it sound very mysterious. Are you applying to the secret service, or something?”

  “Just call me Q.” Lori could tell her laugh sounded forced. The kettle boiled. She used the temporary distraction to switch subject. “So what was the best bit of the film?”

  Adam poured water into the mugs. “Apart from the end credits?”

  “Oh, come on. It wasn’t that bad.”

  She leaned back in her chair. In all honesty, there was precious little chance of the puzzles leading to a job. No matter. First thing tomorrow morning, she would be at the newsagent.

  * * *

  Lori did not wait to get back to Adam’s house before starting on the crossword clues. She had Zettabyte open on the puzzle page as soon as she left the shop. One answer jumped out. 7 down: Against the clock, the restored red dish wins. (11). This had to be a traditional anagram, and she did not need to unscramble “red dish wins.” How many eleven-letter words containing a w could be thought of as meaning “against the clock”? Widdershins, the old-fashioned word for anticlockwise.

  By the time she was home, several more ideas had struck her. She threw the magazine on the kitchen table beside her laptop and put the kettle on. Adam and Nathan were both at work, so she had the house to herself and the whole day free. The job search could wait till tomorrow.

  Time rolled by. Some of the knowledge required was definitely on the obscure side of general. She would never have found the archaeological site of Tel Dor without the internet. The mathematics went from modular arithmetic to probability theory. But finally, it was done, just as the wall clock showed a quarter to four. Adam would not be home for another two hours.

  With her fingers wrapped around the umpteenth cup of tea, Lori studied the completed puzzles. Somewhere in the double spread had to be clues to the remaining lines. Yet, an hour later, she was still scowling at the pages. The links were more deeply buried than before, if they were there at all. Was that it? Someone’s idea of a joke? Were the Zettabyte staff giggling as they imagined the upset customers? Alternately, March and April might be the second and third sets of instructions. The missing clues could be in the February edition. How hard would it be to track it down?

  WIDDERSHINS.

  Her eyes caught on the word, sparking a sudden flash of inspiration. She could work backwards from the four missing lines: 3, 6, 8, and 10. Find these numbers, and maybe it would reveal how the links were embedded.

  Lori took one look at the pages and laughed as everything fell into place. Each missing number appeared exactly four times on either side of the double spread. Using a ruler and soft pencil, she joined the threes to make two crosses, took the numbers where the lines intersected, then linked them via the multiple choice to the crossword.

  Within minutes she was looking at:

  1: GO TO

  2: THE CHURCHYARD

  3: IN DOR

  4: PLUS STANLEY

  5: AT MIDDAY

  6: ON BELTANE

  7: WALK THREE

  8: TIMES WIDDERSHINS

  9: ROUND THE

  10: STONE AND

  11: ENTER THE

  12: HALFWAY HOUSE

  IN DOR PLUS STANLEY was the confusing part. A churchyard indoors? Plus Stanley—did it mean Greater Stanley? Was there such a place?

  Lori went back to her laptop and tried variations on the search, until hitting on Dorstanley, a tiny village in north Dorset she had never heard of before.

  The only webpage devoted purely to the village was an amateurish effort from the parish council. Nothing worth the effort of updating the server had happened since a cake competition the previous July. But a parish council meant the village had a church, and so presumably a churchyard. Yet it must hold dozens of gravestones, maybe hundreds. How to know which was the right one?

  The second link was a list of Neolithic monuments in the British Isles. The entry for Dorstanley read:

  A twelve-foot-high menhir, known locally as Hobs Geat, stands in the churchyard of St. Benedict’s parish church in Dorstanley, Dorset. Dated circa 2800 BC. Visiting possible at all reasonable times. Free parking by the War Memorial.

  That must be the stone in question. Rather than take the motorway to Dartmouth, she could cut across country on the A303 and go via Yeovil. It would be slower, but more scenic, and the route passed with five miles of Dorstanley. She could stop off for lunch, since the instructions said midday. However, they also specified the old Celtic festival of Beltane, which was now called something else. Halloween? Lori typed in, Beltane, date.

  So no, not Halloween but May Day—Wednesday. The puzzle setters were not giving her much time, but it was no problem. There was all of Tuesday to gather her things and inform everyone who n
eeded to know about the change in address. She could leave after the morning rush hour had died down on Wednesday and be at Dorstanley easily by midday.

  Lori took a deep breath. Somewhere along the way, she had made a decision. The old adage, It’s the things you don’t do you regret the most. She did not want to spend the rest of her life wondering.

  It might turn out to be someone’s idea of a joke, but she was going to do it.

  * * *

  Dorstanley was more of an ornamental hamlet than a village, thirty or so houses, huddled around the junction of two minor roads. The triangle of grass at the intersection was dominated by a couple of medium sized trees. A weathered bench in their shade had been used by birds for target practice. At one side of the green, the road was just wide enough to park a car without causing an obstruction. No one else was currently there, but Lori made sure to leave room, should another driver want to stop. She turned off the engine and got out.

  The village was quaint, in the chocolate box fashion typical of Dorset. Most of the houses still had straw thatched roofs. Flower baskets hung from the black, antique lampposts. In one corner of the grass, the War Memorial took the form of a Celtic cross. Its polygon plinth held two dozen names, mostly from the First World War, with a few tacked on from the Second.

  Nobody was in sight. Dorstanley was clearly the sort of place where not much happened. There was no pub and no shop. Lunch would have to wait until Yeovil. Hardly surprising the cake competition was still on the parish webpage. It must have been the highlight of the decade. The locals were probably still arguing about the result.

  The weather was on the cold side for early May. Low hanging cloud turned the sky dull grey and carried the threat of rain. With the benefit of hindsight, the thin polycotton shirt and trousers were too lightweight for wandering around outdoors. Her interview suit with its wool jacket would have been warmer, but she could not take the situation seriously enough to wear it. Equally, faded jeans and T-shirt were out if she wanted to make a good impression. With one eye on the clouds, Lori pulled her raincoat from the back seat and slipped it on, then glanced at her watch—only eight minutes until midday. She was later than anticipated due to roadwork outside Andover.