Murder, Mystery, and Magic

by John Burke

  When he had the magazine in his hands he made a show of idly flipping through it, but before he could risk too obviously checking whether that page was in its right place in this issue there was the slam of a door and her husband stomped in.

  Joseph Darby—known to everyone, on his own insistence, as Josh—was, if anything, larger and brighter and louder than his wife, with a mottled red face and insistently matey laugh. You felt he would be more at home with plastic-wrapped magazines from the top shelf than with his wife’s sort of reading matter.

  “Hello, running the errands now, eh? Got to get the prize crossword in on time?”

  Edwin frequently did the crossword in The Guardian on his morning train, but had never bothered to check whether there was one in this magazine. He could only mumble something, but it didn’t matter: Josh was not one to expect answers to his cheerful booming.

  On the train that next Monday morning Edwin was in fact folding the newspaper to the crossword puzzle page when Josh slumped heavily into the seat beside him.

  Edwin had always avoided the man on the few occasions when they used the same train. Fortunately these were rare. As far as he knew—and this information came entirely from Marjorie, who could well be muddled in the detail—Joseph Darby was rep for a firm manufacturing leather goods of various kinds, which Edwin assumed to mean shoes and belts and briefcases like the one he was carrying right now. It meant he didn’t travel regular commuters’ hours; but today he was here, and making a point of seeking Edwin out and squashing into the seat beside him.

  “Off to open the shop, Eddie?” He opened his briefcase and took out a folded page sliced from a magazine. “This what you were looking for, old lad?” He unfolded it and held it in front of Edwin. “Fancy ripping that nightie off her, eh?”

  It was the missing page.

  Edwin forced a laugh. He wasn’t capable of trotting out chirpy, meaningless phrases. But Josh wasn’t even waiting for an answer. “Here, keep it, old lad. I’ve already got one for my collection. Amazing where they show up, though, these birds. What about this. Then…?” He dug deeper into his briefcase, tugged out a garishly covered magazine, and flipped through it to a double-page spread. “Get a load of her this time, then.”

  There were three women and two men sprawled across the centrefold. Edwin tried to look casually at them, then looked away, then was drawn back. He tried an easy laugh. It wasn’t by any means that easy.

  The beautiful woman wasn’t looking aloof and enchanting in a sheer silk nightdress. She was wearing only a couple of leather straps twisted round her breasts and in a contorted loop between her legs. At the same time she was contriving to spread those legs and offer herself to one of the men, while a dark, greasy-looking girl clambered over him from another angle.

  That face he had found so cool and beautiful and refreshing…such a change from the squalor and ordinariness of everyday life…such an ideal, untouchable yet so delicious to be yearned for….

  It couldn’t be.

  “Fancy a session like that, old son?” Josh’s voice was rasping on, right by his ear yet miles away. “Time you had a fling in the outside world. Exercise the old whatnots. Good for your health, you know.”

  Edwin looked out of the window and kept on looking out.

  Within another twenty minutes he was mercifully on his own, as usual. He went through the reliable, reassuring business of opening his shop and settling in, happy to deal with a knowledgeable customer or equally happy to set some postal enquiries in motion. He glanced along his reassuring shelves and let the faded bindings of his stock blank out the visions Josh Darby had conjured up.

  He reached for a volume of legends, a book which would bring in some profit when he found the right customer but which he would in the end be reluctant to sell. He found it soothing to take a leisurely journey through the old plates with their visions of fairies and legendary monsters. He would be happy if somebody came in to browse round those shelves; happy if he was left alone until lunchtime.

  The phone rang. Reluctantly he reached for it. “Blackett Books.”

  “This is Mr. Edwin Blackett?”

  “It is.” And he was about to rattle off his usual incantation that no, he didn’t want free entry into a new cannot-lose competition, and no, he did not have the time to answer their consumer survey, when the silky voice went on: “It has been destined that we should meet, has it not?”

  “Who is this speaking? And how did you obtain my number?”

  “You know who it is. I’m sure you do. You’ve seen me, wondered about me. And now the time has come for us to meet.”

  He put the phone down. Whatever this new scam was, he had no intention of falling for it. Then he fretted over it. That voice…it went so well with the unforgettable photograph of the woman in blue. He tried to wrench his mind away on to business. For once he was offhanded with a customer, one of those time-wasting customers who had read about the two volumes of the Border Papers increasing in value and his uncle happening to have left him two of them in their original binding and what would they be worth? The sort of thing Edwin might on a good day enjoy assessing and bargaining over. But now he was eager to get the man off the premises so that he could pick up the phone again and dial 1471.

  “You had a call at eleven forty-two a.m. today. The caller withheld their number.”

  Of course. The con men always did.

  A con woman…?

  * * * *

  Next morning he was mercifully on his own in his usual compartment. On his own, that is, except for the usual complement of young men with their flickering iPads, or Kindles, or whatever the damned things were called. The abomination of it all, the destruction. Everything served up in snippets. None of the joys of searching the rewards of the noble, reliable past. Edwin opened the latest catalogue he had received from a dealer in Antwerp, but found it hard to concentrate. He wrenched his head around to stare fretfully out of the window. The train was slowing for the tight bend that would take it across the river and into the town. He knew every inch of the scene spread out there—the huddle of warehouses, the brief open space of a school playground, and then the huge billboard facing the railway line and clamouring for attention from passengers who were so familiar with it that it probably had no impact whatsoever. For the last couple of weeks it had advertised a BA plane soaring up against a vast blue sky. Today the background was still blue, but in the foreground were the head and bare shoulders of a woman—the woman.

  The leaflet slid from Edwin’s fingers to the floor. He groped to pick it up while still keeping his gaze fixed on the inexplicable vision. There was no wording, no name of the advertiser—just that face, those shoulders, seeming to grow larger and larger as if to embrace the train; yet at the same time dissolving into a remote haze.

  And there was music. Not the jangle from those cheap little nuisances across the aisle, but haunting, alluring voices reaching without any need of mass-made transmitter into Edwin’s mind. Into his mind and his alone—he was sure of that.

  Then they had crossed the river, and the terminus and his usual day lay ahead of him.

  He half expected another phone call. Expected it…longed for it…dreaded it?

  On the homeward journey he struggled to find a seat on the opposite side from his usual place, so that he could lean back a bit and have another look at that billboard. But the hallucination had disappeared.

  Because of course it must have been a hallucination. Absurd. He had to dismiss it. No future in that kind of daydreaming.

  * * * *

  Another morning, and Josh again appearing and this time pushing his way into a seat facing Edwin. “Doing a booming trade in historic erotica this week, old son?”

  “Not my speciality, I’m afraid,” Edwin managed.

  “Pity. Dirty books are better for you than dusty books any day.”

  “I’ve never handled that sort of thing.”

  “Speaking of handling things….”

  Josh l
aid his latest gadget on the table between them, turning it to face Edwin. “Amazing what you can pick up on your travels these days. Special wavelength, of course. Reserved for connoisseurs, you might say.”

  Edwin wasn’t at all sure he wanted to look. But Josh was prodding it aggressively towards the edge of the table, and his neighbour was snatching glances at it. Reluctantly Edwin pushed it closer to the window, at an angle.

  There she was. Just her face this time, smiling wistfully beside one border of a narrow block of type. At an angle on the other side of the column, a darker woman was leaning forward as if to leap through the frame: her mouth open, the lower lip slack, silent, yet obviously having just said something brash and suggestive.

  Josh leaned forward to press a button, like someone showing a child how to manipulate a new toy.

  Words sprang up in bold type.

  “Book now for the voyage of your dreams. Escape to the reality of your deepest fantasies on the MV Ligeia. The dream cruise for wide-awake men.”

  “What d’you say?” Josh pressed another button for details to unroll down the cramped screen. “Coming with me?”

  The following paragraphs detailed costs and timetables for cruises—‘for a select few connoisseurs’—on the ‘romantic Loch Yearn, the haunt of dream partners and the reality of fulfilment.’ Edwin had only occasionally glanced at dating agency ads in his newspaper and would then hastily look for something else to read, but this one did seem to him like a very advanced, more suggestive specimen than most.

  He forced a grin and pushed the thing back across the table.

  Only when they were jostling their way through the morning crowds on the platform did Josh say insistently: “I did ask you if you were game to come along.”

  “Me? What nonsense.”

  “To meet that woman—not worth it? Fight a duel over her, the two of us, maybe? Great experience. ‘Reality of your deepest fantasies’—doesn’t that grab you?”

  “We couldn’t…I mean, I couldn’t….”

  “This loch. I’ve checked on it. Damn great reservoir—flooded a whole valley to make it. What used to be one piddling little village got swallowed up in the bottom of it. Used to be called Kirkcraig. But if that ad’s anything to go by, what’s left is well stocked with juicy females. And of course some very refined ones. To suit every taste. Come on, old son. I’ll be there to hold your hand—unless you want to let it roam, which’d be OK with me.”

  They came out into the open and Edwin muttered some platitude before hurrying across the street towards the safety of his little shop.

  For once Josh was on the evening train as well, persisting.

  “Got to have a story that should satisfy the womenfolk, right? Look, I have to make some calls up there over the Border. Maybe interest these folk as well in some whips and specialised leather goods.” If they had been sitting side by side, Edwin had an uneasy feeling that Josh would have been nudging him. “Look, there’s this place Wigtown not that far away, calls itself The Book Town. You must have been there.”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Well then, there we are. You come along with me as a guide. You know the territory. Help one another out. If either of us needs help, eh?”

  “I don’t think I could—”

  “You can choose how far to indulge. How close to get, and then…well, it’d be up to you. No hassle.”

  “I do know that part of the world, but I honestly can’t imagine what they mean by that—”

  “Do you good to get away for a bit. Put your foot down, tell the old woman you need a breath of fresh air after sitting in there choking in the dust from those books of yours.”

  In fact Marjorie couldn’t bring herself to object. She looked as if she didn’t believe a word of what he was saying, yet it was so unlike him that she was too puzzled to know where to thrust her usual immediate put-down.

  “Well, if you two are going to get up to no good….” She stared, at a loss. “I suppose it’ll be something to talk about later.” She was almost daring him to shock her, but at the same time scoffing at the mere idea of it.

  * * * *

  The landing stage was no more than a small floating pontoon at the end of a lane which had once led down to the village before the waters flooded in over its houses, chapel and pub. A narrow gangplank led on to the deck of the cabin cruiser, which looked hardly big enough to accommodate more than a dozen people. Yet when Edwin and Josh boarded, there seemed to be far more than that in the lounge bar, and others leaning on the rail outside waiting to watch the crew cast off and set out on to the tranquil waters of the man-made loch.

  “Well,” boomed Josh, “where’s the talent? Where’s these daydreams we’ve paid for?”

  Edwin looked around the main cabin. Between the wide windows were murals of rocky riverbanks, and one tapestry of a seascape with wave-splattered rocks. Shapes that from one angle might be meant to convey subtleties of the light, from others became the bodies of women clinging to the rocks and reaching out, yearning, calling. On the largest expanse, in the bulkhead towards the bows, the scene was clearly that of the Sirens singing their desperate demands to the tormented Odysseus tethered to the mast of his ship.

  There was music. Not pop jangles piped from speakers in the corners, but music suffusing the whole atmosphere, music whose provocative beauty he had fleetingly heard just that once before, in the train. At the same time he remembered a quotation from one of the many books he had leafed through not for their literary content but their possible antique market value: ‘What song the sirens sang….’

  Then came deeper notes: a more urgent bass throb from the engines, settling into a lulling rhythm as the boat slid away from the shore. Sunshine raked blindingly from the water like stabbing searchlights. Edwin turned away towards the starboard side, half closing his eyes and shielding them with his hand. When he opened them, it was as if one of the paintings on the wall§ had come to life.

  A girl was there, smiling at him. She had long flaxen hair, and was wearing a scarlet silk chiffon dress, which rustled with every faint movement of her body within. Her pale lips were slightly parted, with the faintest glimmer of teeth behind them, slightly pouting, waiting to open…so that the teeth could bite?

  “Welcome aboard.” Her voice was husky and suggestive. “Now we’re afloat, everyday restrictions no longer apply. You are free to make your own choice, in your own time.” Her fingers rested lightly on his arm, turning him towards the entrance to a companionway stair. At the lower end was what looked like a swimming pool. Only it was too impossibly large for this small craft carrying it. Impossible. A cunningly projected illusion? A film of naked women diving, swimming under water, surfacing, laughing and tempting a man—some man, any man—to come in and join them.

  And there, suddenly, was Josh Darby. A fat porpoise, spluttering and sploshing about, making a grab for a girl missing her but getting his hands on another, a dark woman with streaming dank black hair. They wallowed and wrestled in the water, and her mouth closed greedily over his, swallowing his lips, gulping him in. Edwin could somehow feel the pulse of it, and like Josh found himself fighting for breath.

  “No.” It was all he could find to say.

  “Take your time.” The fingers squeezed his arm. “I’m sure we have someone you’ll find to your taste.”

  “I think there’s been some mistake.”

  “No, this is quite usual.” The voice was still a husky, tempting purr. “Over the centuries we have had to adapt, but there will always be men like you to keep us alive. You are here, as you always have been, to rejuvenate us. Take your time. But since you have answered our call, you must make your choice.” And then, throatily: “Or be chosen.”

  He turned away, just as he had turned away from Josh’s pictures in the train, and looked out of the window. They were approaching an island. He had seen no sign of this from the shore.

  Again there was music. A young man was leaning against a long polished stanchion,
playing a guitar. To Edwin he looked a typical modem youngster, slipshod in tatty shirt, torn denims and sandals. But the music he was playing wasn’t the pop clangour that might have been expected. Instead it had all the wistful echoes of an old folk song.

  Edwin grasped the chance to shake off the suggestiveness of what he had just been exposed to. “Good morning.” It sounded too absurdly polite, everyday. But that was what he needed. Wrench everything back to normal. “Edwin Blackett.” He held his hand out. “Lovely morning, isn’t it?”

  The strings left a brief, quivering echo. “Jamie Dunbar.”

  “And what brings you here today?” It was the closest Edwin could get to asking why a healthy young man should need to be among middle-aged men paying a fare to be taken to…well, taken where? He was still wondering what he had let himself in for.

  “She sent for me.”

  Not, surely, the same temptress? Too mature for him, not his type.

  “My girlfriend.” Jamie Dunbar swung the guitar back over his shoulder. “I haven’t seen her since…since she disappeared. But she’s been in touch.” His voice was as plaintive as the chords of his music. “We thought we’d lost her altogether. But she’s here somewhere…waiting for me.”

  “Lost her?”

  They were side by side, looking out across the waters. Except that Jamie was looking down below the surface rather than towards the hazy island.

  “Down there. She came from the village they drowned to make the reservoir. That’s how it got that weird name: Loch Yearn. Folk always talking about going back where they belonged. And we thought she must have done something silly. Got lost somehow.” He took a deep breath. “Drowned.”

  “But now you think….”

  “It’s crazy. I was just reading this email I was getting from a…well, another girl I was just getting to know.” He smiled sheepishly. “And…well, this one from my old girlfriend comes in, sort of blotting the new one out and saying she has to meet me. I’ve got to come on this trip to meet her.”