The Mysteries

by Lisa Tuttle

  “Oh, Mommy,” said Peri in a high, soft voice, sounding for a moment very much younger than her actual years.

  I hung back with Hugh, carefully angling my light so the beam wouldn't glare in Laura's face, and watched as Peri crouched down and gently stroked her mother's hair, then kissed her cheek.

  I saw signs of rapid eye movement, suggesting Laura was dreaming, and her lips curved into a smile a few seconds before her eyelids fluttered and she woke. For a long moment mother and daughter gazed into each other's eyes; and then, with a little, gasping cry, Laura sat up and flung her arms around Peri, hugging her tight.

  I looked away. Reunions always choke me up. Under almost any other circumstances I'd have taken that moment as my chance to slip quietly away and leave them alone together. But we were four people in the remote Scottish countryside, in the middle of the night, with just one car among us, and besides, I still had questions.

  I cleared my throat. “Come on, you guys, unless you like being eaten by midges. Let's get inside.”

  So we walked back to the hotel, mother and daughter clinging together, hugging each other as they walked, unwilling to be separated again for even a moment. I proposed drinks, but Laura and Peri declined. It was obvious they had no use for us and only wanted to be alone together. Hugh and I exchanged a look, two superfluous males, and went back to the comfortable, book-lined bar, where we sampled an interesting range of single-malt whiskies. We didn't talk much. I wasn't going to say, “I told you so,” and I guess he didn't want to admit he'd been fooled by asking me how I'd managed to find her. Far more important to him than what had happened was what would happen next, and that wasn't something I could help him with. It wasn't even my business. Now that I'd met Peri, I was confident of her ability to cope with whatever the future had in store.

  I'd hoped to have a chance to talk to Laura privately the next day, but she still had no attention to spare for anyone but her daughter. The feeling was obviously mutual, and I guess it was pretty understandable, considering how long they'd been separated, but it was frustrating all the same.

  I saw how Hugh watched Peri as we drifted around the airport shops, killing time before our flight, and I suspected there was some of that same yearning in the looks I cast at Laura, looks she didn't seem to notice.

  Finally, when Hugh went into W.H. Smith, leaving us next door in Accessorize, watching as Peri mused over the merits of a beaded purse shaped like a butterfly against one shaped like a toadstool, I said to Laura, “Could I have a word? Privately?”

  Her eyebrows went up; then, with another glance at her daughter, she followed me out of the shop. “Of course! We need to settle up.”

  “Settle up?”

  She made a writing gesture with her right hand. “Your bill. I've got my checkbook.” She was reaching into her bag when I stopped her.

  “Oh, no, no, that's not necessary. I didn't really find her, you know. She came back of her own accord.”

  Laura frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Didn't she tell you? I mean, did she tell you what happened? Haven't you talked about it?”

  “Yes, of course. But, Ian, that's not the point. OK, maybe you just happened to be there at the right time in the right place in the end, but you figured out where that place would be. And I hired you. I hired you to do a job, and you did it. Of course I'm going to pay you!”

  “Laura, how much do you remember about last night?”

  “What do you mean?” She eyed me warily.

  “I mean about finding Peri. Do you remember finding her?”

  “No, of course not! I didn't find her—I was asleep.”

  “When did you fall asleep?”

  “Well, I don't know.” She stopped and really thought about it. Hugh approached, holding a newspaper, then veered around us and into Accessorize, heading for Peri.

  “We went out after Hugh went to bed. There was a footpath. We were going to an old cairn in the woods that you thought was connected with the Fairy Door in some way. We stopped to rest.” She paused and shrugged. “Then I guess I nodded off, because that's all I can remember until Peri woke me up.” The tender smile returned to her face. “And I don't care what you say, I'll always be grateful to you.”

  “Don't you remember the Guardians?”

  “Peri's old toys?” She reached for her bag, startled, then stopped and shook her head. “Yes—I took them with me—but they're gone. That's right. Did they fall out of my bag? What happened to them? Not that it really matters. Peri's too old for toys.”

  “Don't you remember the little girl? The little girl you thought was Peri?”

  She stared at me. “I dreamed she was a little girl again—she was lost, then I found her. But you're not talking about my dream?”

  Over her shoulder, I saw into the shop. Hugh was paying for something at the cash register, while Peri smiled up at him, love shining in her eyes.

  I looked down at Laura and smiled at her. “It doesn't matter. You're right. What matters is that she's back.”

  Finally, she completed that much-arrested reach into her bag. “Tell me how much I owe you.”

  I managed to stop myself from insisting that she owed me nothing, remembering just in time that I was far too broke for such largesse. “I don't know yet. I need to add up the hours and figure out the VAT. I'll invoice you. I've got your address.”

  “Don't forget, I'm going back to America next week.”

  “Oh, right. Well, how about if I call you tomorrow?”

  “And then, maybe, we could get together for a drink or something, I mean, if you're not too busy?” She looked away as she spoke.

  My pulse quickened at her sudden shyness. “That would be great,” I said warmly. “I'd really like to see you again.”

  She smiled back, meeting my eyes, and I knew then that the intimacy I'd felt between us during that long night on the hillside had been no illusion.

  “Call me,” she said.

  We got into London just in time for rush hour and parted in a crowded underground station.

  “I'll call you tomorrow,” I called after Laura as she was swept away with Peri and Hugh—who were now, I noticed, holding hands.

  After the wilds of Scotland, Turnpike Lane looked even seedier than usual, and the body odors of massed humanity surging through the lavatorial-smelling tunnels made me feel slightly sick. Even at street level the air was no fresher, choked with traffic fumes, human exhalations, the aromas of overused cooking fat, rotting garbage, and dog shit.

  Arriving home, I discovered someone had filled my council-supplied wheelie bin to overflowing with their rubbish, while several beer cans, a plastic milk bottle, one styrofoam hamburger carton, and the papers from what must have been six or seven fish suppers littered the little paved area at the front. Oh, the joys.

  Inside, I gathered up the scattered papers that had come through the letter box during my brief absence: no real mail, but lots of advertisements for local businesses, cards for taxi firms, specials at the nearby pizzeria, startling news about a revolutionary new hearing aid, and urgent requests from three different estate agents. Two offered free valuations; the third, more enterprising, had added a handwritten note to advise me how much he reckoned he could get for my property, should I wish to sell.

  The figure was enough to make my eyes bug. Of course, it wouldn't go far if I wanted to keep living in London, but as getaway money it was more than decent. I put that note on my desk; everything else went onto the recycle pile on the couch.

  The light on the answerphone blinked: one message. I pressed PLAY and listened to my mother's voice, wishing me a happy birthday in advance. She said she might call again on Wednesday, but she assumed I'd be out celebrating with my friends . . . For the first time, I could hear age cracking my mother's clear voice, and I felt an almost painful rush of love for her. Her last visit to London, and the last time I had seen her, had been nearly two years ago. I really should see her again, before it was too late. My eyes we
nt back to the note from the estate agent.

  I made a pot of coffee before booting up the computer. There were forty new messages in my in-box, but only one got my attention right away, and that was from Baz, the journalist I'd asked about Linzi Slater's death.

  Not a murder investigation, he wrote, but I'm sure the cops would love to find out the name of her pusher. They found gear (syringe, etc.) and drug residue at the scene, plus a bottle of pills, which makes it look like a deliberate OD.

  I shut my eyes, as if not seeing the words could somehow change them, and began to swear, monotonously and unimaginatively. With murder, there is someone to blame, someone to hate, and something to do: You hunt down the killer and bring him to justice, one way or another. There's no such comfort in a suicide; there can never be any justice. Nothing is left for the survivors but guilt and pain and a lot of questions.

  Why did she do it? Why was life so unbearable for her? Was there anything anyone could have done that would have made a difference? Could she have been saved?

  I would never know. Linzi Slater had been lost before I ever heard her name.

  So, I tried to put it behind me and got on with the things I could do. I answered e-mails, paid bills, and drafted an itemized invoice to the attention of Laura Lensky. I did it again and again, revising downward to reflect how little I'd had to do with Peri's return, then, remembering Laura's taunt about how self-deprecating and un-American I'd become, revising the final figure back up to more accurately reflect my professionalism, my commitment, my years of experience and research . . . yeah, right. I had that letdown feeling I often got at the end of a case, the low that comes after a high, the sense of an ending that brings, as payback for any satisfaction I dared feel, the certainty that it would be the last; that nothing good or interesting would ever happen to me again.

  Fighting the blues, I made myself go out to eat, and wished, while I picked at the tasteless food, that I was with Laura. The prospect of seeing her soon did not cheer me. I might wish for a relationship, but how could anything get started when she was just about to leave the country? And, anyway, she was out of my league, older, richer, more successful.

  Later still I slumped in front of the TV and channel-surfed mindlessly, bored and restless, reluctant to go to my solitary bed, but finally too depressed and tired to do anything else.

  I didn't expect to sleep, or not for a long time, but as soon as I lay down, hypnogogic images began to play on the screen of my eyelids, giving me the sense that I was already dreaming.

  I saw faces, the faces of women and the lost girls; the missing, the mysteries. Peri, Linzi, Jenny, Fred . . .

  I was sitting beside Fred. I knew I was dreaming. We were on my bed together, and she looked younger than I'd ever seen her, a teenager like Linzi Slater.

  “It's easy,” she said. “It's really easy. Lie down and close your eyes.”

  I did as she said.

  “Now tell me what you see.”

  I was looking across a grassy field at a low hill. On top of the hill was a grove of trees. The sun was going down behind the hill, turning the trees to black shadows against the peachy gold of the sky.

  I opened my eyes. Fred's face was very close. She frowned and reached her hand out toward my eyes. I shut them quickly. There, waiting for me, was the grove of trees on the hilltop.

  “Don't look at me,” said Fred's voice. “It's not allowed. Concentrate. You have to forget about everyone. Just concentrate on the place you see behind your eyes. The place where you want to be. You just have to want it enough to give up everything.”

  I was aware of the threatening implications behind her words, but they didn't frighten me. What was there to give up? My debts? A failing business? A string of shallow, temporary relationships? Who would even miss me if I disappeared? Even my mother was used to me not being around.

  I didn't try to look at Fred again. I knew she wasn't really there, anyway. I went on looking at the low hill with its mysterious, solitary grove of trees. It was a fragment of landscape I had never seen before, yet I was coming to know it intimately. It seemed to take a very long time for the sun to set, but finally it began to grow dark, and I knew the moment was near, the moment when I'd have my answer.

  Then, out of the darkness, a bird sang.

  My heart gave a painful lurch and began to pound harder. What kind of bird sang at night? Was it nearly morning? Already? But I hadn't been anywhere, I still didn't know anything. It wasn't fair.

  The bird gave another long, warbling call, and this time I recognized the sound as the telephone.

  Groping along the bedside table until I found the cordless phone, I thumbed it on and fumbled it to my ear. My mouth was so dry my lips were sealed together.

  “Hello? Ian?”

  It was Laura. I managed to croak a single syllable.

  “Ian? Are you OK? You sound terrible!”

  “Just.” I sniffed. “Just woke up.”

  “I woke you! I'm so sorry! For some reason I thought you got up early.”

  “S'OK.” I peered at the clock—9:23. “Overslept.”

  “Well . . . should I call back later?”

  “No, no.” Keeping the phone clamped to my ear, I edged out of bed and into the bathroom for a glass of water.

  I heard her take a deep breath. “I'm sorry to bother you. It's just—you did say you were going to call.”

  A haggard, grey, heavily stubbled face stared back in surprise at me from the mirror. She couldn't wait a few more hours? She seemed astonishingly eager to hear from something that looked like that. I gave myself a wink over the water glass. You dog, you.

  “I was going to call,” I said. I forbore to point out that it wasn't even 10 A.M. and repeated, “I overslept. Sorry.”

  “That's all right. It's just . . . things have been put ahead. I thought I'd be leaving on Sunday, but it turns out they want me at a meeting in New York on Friday afternoon. I don't suppose you're free for dinner tonight?”

  “Free as a bird. What do you fancy?”

  “Do you know a good Chinese place?”

  “Lee Ho Fook.” She didn't know it; rather than spend more time figuring out the directions, I suggested we meet in a pub near Leicester Square at six o'clock. I would happily have gone on talking to her, having her voice so intimately close in my ear, but I was bursting to go to the toilet, and that was an intimacy I did not wish to share.

  During my shower I felt shaky, and diagnosed low blood sugar, so I dressed quickly and went out for breakfast, scooping up a surprisingly substantial pile of mail on my way out.

  I ordered the “full English” in my favorite café, and, before looking at my mail, glanced through the newspapers I'd paused long enough to buy on the way. Of the broadsheets, only the Telegraph carried the Linzi Slater story. It seemed that she had ingested an unknown number of sleeping tablets and paracetamol, washed down with an alcopop, before injecting the heroin. I was about to read the brief story through again when I was distracted by something odd. The date on the newspaper was Thursday, June 22.

  I checked the other papers. They had the same date.

  “Here you are, my friend, full English,” said the café owner cheerfully, setting down a white china plate brimming with fried eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, and mushrooms.

  “What is today?” I asked him.

  “Today's date? Is the twenty-second. Thursday.”

  I had gone to bed Monday night, slept what felt like a normal eight or nine hours, and awoken on Thursday morning. I'd slept through my birthday. More than two full days had passed.

  No wonder I was starving. I ordered more bread and more coffee, and began to work my way through the food before me, trying not to wonder what would have happened if Laura hadn't phoned. Or, if I'd left the ringer switched off, and the answerphone on so I wouldn't be disturbed. Would I ever have woken up?

  I shuddered as I recalled Fred's calm voice telling me to forget everything.

  The smoked, salty tang
of the bacon dipped in unctuous egg yolk, the smell of strong coffee, plaintive foreign music and voices, and spatters of hot fat frying in the background, the way the sunlight glittered on the ashtray on the next table—all these things were life, and, no matter how prosaic or lonely it could be, I knew I wouldn't willingly sacrifice a single half hour of it for whatever peace there might be beneath that hill.

  Two days I'd spent staring at that skeletal grove of trees, watching the light bleed out of the sky; two days and two nights and another great handful of hours . . . No wonder it was etched on my brain like a part of me.

  It wasn't Doon Hill that I'd dreamed about, nor was it the rocky, treeless slope in Knapdale where I'd met Mider; as far as I could recall, familiar as it seemed, that particular low hill, topped with about a dozen deciduous trees of some kind, was not a place I knew or had ever visited in my waking life. But it was real, real enough to make my chest tighten as I thought of my narrow escape.

  I didn't want to die. That seems so obvious that it should not need saying—doesn't everyone feel that way?—yet every day people kill themselves, often for incomprehensible reasons. Many more are driven to flirt with death. I thought of Sylvia Plath's self-mythologizing, and of all the young people drawn by that fantasy. Had Linzi Slater wanted death, or only an escape from her own narrow life? Had she imagined there was something better waiting for her on the other side?

  I could understand the urge to disappear. Even when I was younger, even though I'd told him I didn't, I had understood why my father had gone. He'd run away because it was easier and more exciting than staying. Men often took that way out, had done so for centuries. They ran away to sea, or just over the hill to the next village. Women, traditionally, were the ones who stayed put and tried to work things out. But times had changed. Maybe Jenny had left me for the same reasons my father had left my mother.

  I finished my breakfast and only then remembered I still hadn't looked at my mail.

  Despite its promising bulk, most of it, as usual, was junk. The only personal letter was a thick, square one from my mother. It felt suspiciously like a card, and I winced at the prospect of a second birthday card, another birthday check, and wondered if my mother was getting forgetful in her senior years.