Demon on a Distant Shore

by Linda Welch

  With no tables available in the restaurant and a twenty-minute wait, we decided to eat in the bar. The number of people who greeted Royal by name, with a smile, did not surprise me. It always happens. He’s a likeable guy and a little natural Gelpha allure goes a long way. It works on different folks differently. As a cop for Clarion PD, everyone willingly lent Detective Royal Mortensen a hand. Jealousy, petty-rivalry, one-upmanship, all the stuff you find in a busy, often competitive workplace, Royal had no part in it. Hell, they probably would have lent him money if he asked. Men want to be his best bud and women tend to fall over themselves getting close to him.

  We took a table for two near the door.

  “Is she here?” he asked.

  I didn’t have to ask who he meant. “She’s someplace nearby, but she won’t bother us.”

  He quizzically tipped his head.

  I studied the menu. “I invited her to join the team, asked her to listen to the staff and locals and tell me what she hears.”

  I risked looking up. One corner of his mouth inched up in a half-smile. “You know what you are letting yourself in for.”

  I sighed. What Carrie and I considered interesting probably differed wildly. I dropped my gaze to the menu again. “She’ll swamp me with village gossip, but in the meantime, she’ll be so busy snooping she’ll stay out of our hair.”

  Two couples stopped by to say hello before the waitress got to us; one local, the other from Texas. I thought we had a problem with the latter. They wanted to pull up chairs and chat about the good old U. S. of A, or rather, which part of the US Royal came from, why he was in Little Barrow, how they could take him to local areas of interest, etcetera. I might as well have not been there. Happily, no chairs were free.

  “If you’re ever in Houston, look us up. Let me give you our number.” The guy smiled at his wife. “You got anything to write on, Honeybunch?”

  “Sure have, Sweetie Pie, in my fanny pack.” She unzipped her pack and looked inside.

  I heard a strange whickering noise and looked over my shoulder at two women who sat at the table next to ours. They were giggling. I looked back at Royal as the Texan handed him a small piece of paper. “You all be sure to come by and see us.”

  As they walked off, I glanced at the chuckling women. “I think they’re laughing at us.”

  “Not us.” Royal grinned. “Our Texan friends.”

  “Why?”

  “Because fanny has a different meaning in England.”

  Dare I ask? But I didn’t need to.

  “Let’s just say, it is on the other side of a woman’s body.”

  On the other … . My eyes went wide. “You mean vagina?”

  Smiling, Royal dipped his head and reprimanded me in a hushed voice. “Tiff!”

  “Why? You have a problem with vaginas,” I said louder than necessary.

  I flipped a quick peek at the women. One smiled into her hand, the other held a napkin to her mouth, but I could see a grin coming out either side.

  I should have known better than try to embarrass Royal. He grinned wolfishly, all teeth. “Do I? You are the expert in that area.”

  A smothered hoot from the next table. I guess it is possible to break through the famous British reserve.

  The women’s titters and whispers died off as we studied our menus, and Royal retaliated. “Mm, braised kidney.”

  He got the response he expected. I made a face. “Yuk! I don’t understand how you can eat animal innards?”

  Looking innocent, he lofted his eyebrows at me. “You eat hotdogs. You love hotdogs.”

  I lifted my menu higher to hide my face. “That’s different.”

  A waitress bustled to the table, a short blonde in a black micro-mini dress, a white apron sashed so tightly at her waist it almost cut her in two. I smiled happily at her, because she gave me a reason to ignore Royal’s amusement.

  Kidneys and hotdogs? No comparison.

  Royal tapped the table. “You could order from the bar menu.”

  “Where is it?”

  The girl piped up. “On the tablemat.”

  I looked down. Oh, yeah. I spotted some weird items on the menu - I recognized Welsh Rarebit, but Bubble and Squeak? - but the rest looked promising. Soup, sandwiches, salads and pasties.

  “What dressings do you have?”

  “Caesar, French, a nice raspberry vinaigrette, and Heinz salad cream.”

  I’d never heard of salad cream, so I went for the house salad with French dressing.

  The girl hung over Royal with her mouth open, virtually drooling on him. I cleared my throat loudly. “I’ll have the dressing on the side, please.”

  She begrudgingly gave me her full attention. “The side of what?”

  I lost my smile. “The plate.”

  Off she went.

  I relaxed back in my chair. Warm from the press of bodies and loud with chatter, the inn hummed tonight. It was summer in Little Barrow, but with the sky darkening and the mellow lights in the bar casting their glow, the aura of a cozy winter evening permeated the place.

  We sat quietly until our food arrived. I couldn’t help grinning at mine. A gigantic fresh salad heaped the plate and instead of filling a tiny container, a thin pool of dressing seeped from the rim into the greens. “That wasn’t quite what I meant,” I murmured under my breath.

  Royal snorted.

  I unfolded my napkin, laid it over my knees and sighed. I hoped Carrie would not interrupt our meal with information she considered invaluable. I gave her the perfect excuse to barge in whenever she wanted. “I have a feeling we should relish these moments of relative peace and quiet.”

  “You mean your new friend?”

  “She’s not my friend.”

  “I think you like her.”

  I briskly and unnecessarily shook out the napkin and resettled it on my knees. “Like her? She drives me insane!”

  “If I am not mistaken, you were window-shopping.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “I have never seen you window-shop before,” he persisted, straight-faced. “Is that not something girlfriends do together?”

  He didn’t fool me. I studied his expression till he couldn’t fake serious any longer and the impulse to laugh at my expense became too much for him. He let out a chuff.

  I tried to paste a mean look on my face, but my lips twitched. “You think I like a woman who jabbers nonstop?”

  “You tell me.”

  But I did kind of like her. “She’s… .” I pursed my lips. “She has more personality than some living people I know.”

  Taking our time getting to Johnny, we ambled in the evening dusk. I felt comfortably full and a little sleepy. Royal whistled a low melody. The clouds had cleared from the sky, an oval moon shone bright and high in the west, illuminating the quaint village cottages and their gardens.

  A notion popped into my head. “I wonder if we should be doing this.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Telling Johnny we have evidence which could convict Darnel Fowler, when we don’t know it will.”

  “Your call, Tiff.”

  I squeezed my lips together in frustration. If only we were home in Clarion. I would know what to do there. I knew people who would at least check up on what I told them. But if we went to the British police, what could we say? I couldn’t think of any way than to tell them the truth and I doubted they would seriously consider anything a self-proclaimed ghost-speaker said.

  But if I didn’t help Johnny, I couldn’t help the little Elemental; though I had a gut feeling there was more to the creature’s distress than the death of one boy. I had to think of a way to get the police involved in Johnny’s death, because we should be on our way to Oban.

  “One more day,” I told Royal, “then we head out.” We would drive to Oban and look for the Nortons, or any sign they had been there. If we didn’t find them, we would work our way back to Little Barrow and do some good old-fashioned detective work on the way, lookin
g for clues.

  We turned into the lane. Johnny sat on his scooter looking down at the church.

  A motor came to life farther down the lane beyond the church. Headlights blazed like twin suns. We moved to the grass bank as the vehicle came toward us. It seemed to be going much too fast for a narrow country lane, but as I’ve observed, British motorist don’t seem to know the meaning of drive with caution. Royal and I stood tight to the bank as we waited for it to pass.

  It was almost on us when I heard a scream like the cry of an eagle and saw the little Elemental crouched on the other side of the lane. Its cry went through my head as a brief, excruciating pain which literally forced my head around. My sight blurred, cleared, and focused on the vehicle speeding toward us. I grabbed Royal’s sleeve. “Royal - ”

  I hung inside Royal’s arms on the far side of the lane, watching the car hit the bank exactly where we stood a second ago. The right front wheel went up the bank, jogged down on the road again. It swerved, corrected, and sped on.

  Royal released me as the car took a sharp left and disappeared around the corner and to the main road. “I’m going after it.”

  A horrific noise momentarily deafened me. The sky caught fire, a blaze of red and yellow bright as day. The trees stood out like a mesh of twisted black bones. Colors sprayed in a warped fountain. Something screamed through the air just above our heads, so close I felt the displaced air.

  Royal pushed me down to my knees and crouched over me. It sounded like the world came apart. He shoved me down harder, body sheathed to mine till I thought my bones would break.

  When he finally let me stand up, the noise had eased to a roar, the light banked down to a writhing red glowing through the trees which lined the road to Salisbury. One end deep in the trunk of a massive beech tree, a jagged piece of metal vibrated inches from the side of my head.

  A wrenching moment of disorientation, and we stood on the landing outside our room. Royal kept me on my feet with one arm around my shoulders while he opened the door. He towed me inside and quietly closed the door behind us.

  He stared in my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  Was I okay? I thought so. “Just startled. No, shocked. It was an explosion, wasn’t it? Why are we here? I’m fine,” I gabbled.

  Raised voices from below, feet clattering on the stairs and banging doors told us people were heading out to see what had happened. He guided me to the armchair. “The Land Rover blew up. We cannot be there when the villagers come running. We will wait a few minutes then join them.”

  “Land Rover?”

  “The car.” He eyed me, concern tenting his eyebrows together. “Are you sure you are all right?”

  “I’m still trying to get my head around it. The Land Rover - he tried to run us down, and then it blew up?”

  He crouched in front of me and wrapped his hands around mine. “It swerved at us at the last moment. If not for the creature… .” He bowed his head to lift our joined hands to his forehead.

  I gently pulled one hand free and put my palm on his sleek head. “We’re fine.”

  His head came up, my hand slipped to his neck. “I think everyone else has gone.” He climbed to his feet. “Feel up to it?”

  “You bet.” I slid off the chair. “Let’s go.”

  We hurried from the room, charged down the stairs and along the passage to the small foyer. Every lamp shone and the door stood open to the night air. We stepped outside and spotted Sally Short halfway across the square.

  Royal called out, “Sally! What’s going on?”

  She slowed and looked back over her shoulder, but didn’t stop.

  Smart man. If asked, Sally would say we were in The Hart and Garter when the Land Rover exploded.

  We ran to catch Sally. She didn’t slow her pace when we caught up to her, hustling so fast she almost tripped as we came abreast. Royal grabbed her elbow to steady her.

  “I do not rightly know, Sir. But something is burning, down there, see, at the crossroads.”

  We passed The Ugly Duck, trotted along the narrow, cottage-flanked alley and down the road to the crossroads. In the absence of street lamps, a multitude of black, bobbing heads were outlined by the glare from the burning Land Rover. Most of the villagers, if not all, had to be there.

  We had to stop at the crossroads and stand at the back of the crowd, who kept a wary distance from the accident scene. All I could see were slowly dying flames. Royal put his arm around my waist so his hand rested on my hip and pulled me tight to his side.

  A local policeman peddled up on his bike five minutes later. The poor man had his hands full trying to keep everyone back as they threw questions at him. Two police SUVs and a fire engine arrived from Pewsey. The police efficiently herded us farther away. The fire engine blocked the road to Salisbury as it doused the Land Rover with foam. An unmarked car roared down the hill from Devizes and two men got out.

  “The big man is Sergeant Willis, from Devizes. They cordoned off the roads.” Royal frowned, concentrating on conversations only he could hear.

  We headed back to the inn when the police constables told everyone to leave the scene. We would not learn anything more, not until the Land Rover had cooled enough for a forensics team to look it over.

  Royal looked over his shoulder. “I will come back when their team arrives and see what I can pick up.”

  I nodded. “We’ve got time. Maybe we can get some sleep.”

  We stayed up late in the bar with the other guests and some villagers. You can guess the topic of conversation. The villagers used their cells - they call them mobile phones - and the public telephone to make sure loved ones were where they were supposed to be, not in the twisted wreck down the road. Alcohol flowed, and Greg and Sally Short distributed free snacks to “keep your peckers up.” I did not ask Royal what they meant, but I’m sure he wanted to tell me. We didn’t turn in till gone two in the morning, when Royal guided a rather tipsy Tiff upstairs. I was out seconds after my head touched the pillow.

  Chapter Ten

  I woke alone in the bed to bright morning light intruding through filmy drapes. I passed my palm over the warm spot where Royal had lain, pulled his pillow to me and hugged it.

  Having a Gelpha partner comes in handy. Royal can move so fast he is a blur, whipping past unwitting pedestrians, right to a convenient hiding place. Royal was hiding somewhere near the crossroads, observing, listening to what the police team said.

  Creaking floorboards, the chink of china, and Royal came in the room balancing a tray. Seeing me awake, he smiled.

  I yawned and stretched my arms above my head. “Mm, coffee in bed.”

  “What do you want first, breakfast or information?” He carefully eased down on the edge of the mattress.

  “Breakfast.”

  The mattress barely wobbled. When it settled, he placed the tray between us. As well as two large mugs of coffee, a tiny jug of milk, sachets of sugar, two teaspoons and two forks, an enormous omelet oozing cheese from the edges almost covered a dinner plate.

  I sipped from a mug as Royal ripped open sachets and dumped sugar in his coffee. Royal has a sweet-tooth.

  I forked up omelet, but poised to eat it, a worm of suspicion coiled through my gut. “Royal, did you lay the charm on a bit thick with Sally?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It strikes me the dining hours are inflexible, but we’ve missed breakfast twice and Sally’s fed us.”

  “And you thought… .” He crumpled all the tiny sachets together and eyed me with narrowed brows. “Tiff, I was standing in the bar minding my own business when Sally came up behind me. ‘You and your lovely lady missed breakfast again,’ she said. ‘Come on back to the kitchen in ten minutes.’ So I did, and she had this waiting. I did not do anything to her. And she told me to leave by the back door to the passage, so no one would see me, I think.”

  “And the time before, the coffee and croissants?”

  His forehead puckered as he remembered. “Hm. Almo
st the same thing. I asked her if the shop sold anything we could eat in the way of breakfast and she told me to wait a minute, she had a few croissants left.”

  “Guilty conscience,” I decided. “She knows Greg lied to us. Hell, she’s probably in on whatever’s happening here in Little Barrow.”

  “You have the most suspicious nature of anyone I know.”

  “Do not. I just don’t take things at face value, is all.”

  “Fill your mouth with omelet while I tell you what I heard.”

  I obeyed. Oh my god! It practically melted on my tongue. And no nasty animal innards in there, just tangy, aged cheddar. I worked at it from one side of the plate, Royal from the other.

  He spoke between bites. “The Land Rover is registered to William Clarke. Not much is left of the driver. They will try to match dental records.”

  I sipped and made an appreciative noise. Good coffee.

  “Clarke lives - or lived - in Churchfont, a village to the north of Devizes. He has a record and did time for a dozen petty crimes, and is a suspect in a string of violent armed burglaries. He is known as a hard man.” He stirred his coffee enthusiastically. “Willis thinks Clarke would do anything for the right price.”

  “Like running down two tourists?”

  Holding the fork up, he paused meditatively. “Who would want us dead?”

  Before my thoughts could start churning over that question, he gave me the highlight. “They found what could be a detonator and traces of an explosive substance.”

  I choked on my coffee. “A bomb? In the Land Rover?”

  Royal tasted his coffee, added yet another sachet of sugar and stirred as he spoke, all the sugar grinding away in the bottom of the mug. “They are headquartering in Pewsey. We should go there.”

  “We’re going to break into a police station?”

  He took a sip, then shook his head. “They will be there twenty-four-seven. No, we will think of a reason to go inside and I will see what I can pick up.”

  Sunshine is amazing, not only because it is necessary to the survival of Mother Earth, but for the way it makes you feel. I’m no stranger to endless gloomy days and cloud-filled, starless nights. At those times I feel off-kilter, as if I carry a weight on my shoulders. So perhaps the dismal climate had heightened my sense of displacement and unease since stepping on English soil. Sitting on the bed in a pool of sunlight, I felt alive again.