by Nina Milton
“I hope you’ll be able to fill in some details about Mr. Houghton. And possibly do us a small favour.”
“Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
“I don’t know, Miss Dare, bearing in mind that the police endeavour at all times to uphold the rule of law and defend the innocent.”
“Cliff Houghton looked pretty innocent to me.”
“How well do you know him?”
“This would have been his second session. I saw him last Saturday for a ground-working consultation, and today we were planning to start work properly.”
“Uh-huh.” DS Buckley gave a minimal nod and sipped his coffee. “That would be … psychotherapy sessions?”
“Is that what Cliff told you?” I waited for the almost imperceptible nod of the head before adding, “That’s about it, yes.”
“Let me just restate that, Miss Dare. He was coming to you for psychotherapy.”
“Listen, could you cut down on the ‘Miss Dares’? I don’t recognise myself. Call me Sabbie, everyone does.”
For the first time, I spotted a whisper of a genuine smile. “Pleased to meet you, Sabbie,” said DS Buckley. He held out a hand, empty of ID, and I slid off my stool and shook it. “I’m Reynard.”
“What?”
A charming tinge of pink emerged over his cheekbones. “My friends call me Rey.”
“No, no,” I protested. “I wasn’t mocking your name! It’s just I was visited by a fox during the night, and your name is so … foxy.” I realized right then that I’d never be able to think of him as anything but Rey from that moment on.
“You were visited by a fox?”
“My hens were.”
I hadn’t, until that second, noticed we were still touching, the handshake frozen in time. But I did notice it, clearly, as Ivan, finally shaved and dressed in last night’s clothes—white jeans and a dashing shirt of crushed bilberry silk—walked into the kitchen. Foolishly, I pulled my hand away as if this Rey/ray was capable of dispensing electric shocks.
“Ivan,” I said, “this is Detective Sergeant Buckley.” My voice squeaked at the edges.
“Your eleven o’clock client?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Rey. “I’m here on official business.”
“Don’t you chaps usually turn up in pairs?” said Ivan.
“This is a straightforward, informal interview.”
“Informal official business,” I said, trying to get a secret smile to Ivan.
It didn’t work. He turned away, as if bored by the whole thing—hens, dead or alive, detectives, informal or official.
“Give me a ring!” I threw after him, but he’d already disappeared into the hallway. I heard the front door slam.
“I’m sorry,” Rey began.
“Don’t be.”
“Your partner?” he queried.
I gave him a big, sunny smile. “My lover. Ex, probably.”
TWO
After Ivan left, the detective sergeant became all professional and distant. He didn’t actually put his palms out and say “whoa!” but I could see he was mentally reassessing his approach.
“Miss Dare,” he began, “I’d be grateful if you could tell me anything you know about Mr. Houghton.”
“That should be easy. I can’t tell you anything. I’m bound by an agreement of confidentiality.”
“We’re investigating a serious matter, Miss Dare, and we’d appreciate your cooperation.”
I took a couple of swallows of Barleycup while my head reeled. “How serious is serious?”
“Very. Homicide.”
“Murder?” I yelped. “My client?”
“We’re working on several leads. The more information we have, the sooner we can drop the ones that go nowhere.”
I nodded once. I could feel the blood pumping under my temples. Was that because a murderer had been in my therapy room, or because the police were here now? “Even if I told you everything I knew, I don’t think you’d be any the wiser. My sessions don’t work like that.”
“In about half an hour,” said Rey, suddenly chatty, “Mr. Houghton will be released from an extended interview, free to go. I think he will immediately phone you to apologise for missing the appointment. He will not be told of my visit. I’m hoping he’ll ask for a new appointment.”
“Sounds as if he’ll need it.”
“As do we, Miss Dare. His next appointment may tell us whether this man is involved in the crime we’re investigating.”
It was like stepping into a sudden draught of cold air. I swallowed hard on the Barleycup in my mouth, almost choking. “You want me to pass things he tells me over to you? That’s immoral.”
“Not when lives are at risk.”
“I couldn’t do that if my own life was at risk.”
“Your life is not at risk. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I thought it was.”
It was the I in his statement that made me pause. I reconsidered Ivan’s comment about police arriving in pairs. Why was this man alone? “I want to see your ID again.”
He slid it over the coffee table. I wouldn’t know a fake police badge if it had Counterfeit! stamped over it, but I rested my hand on the plastic coat and closed my eyes, to see what drifted into my mind. I gained a sensation—a recognition of strength and self-possession. Hidden underneath was a split-second flash of utter fatigue, the sort one associates with huge amounts of unhealthy habits. But that might be me, stereotyping the guy. Maybe he was a teetotal policeman.
“You’re smart, Sabbie,” said Rey. “I’m here on a bit of a hunch. The man we’re interviewing is a puzzle, and I’m hoping you’ll be able to help solve it.”
“I told you,” I said. “I can’t divulge anything that passes between me and a client.”
“If need be, we’d get a warrant for access to your notes. Your entire system if necessary—electronic to handwritten.”
I gave a soft chuckle, which calmed me. “That wouldn’t do you any good at all. I don’t keep the sort of client notes that would tell you anything.”
“You don’t keep proper notes? What sort of psychotherapist d’you call yourself?” The man glowered. I could see he didn’t like me dodging his questions, so I threw in my chips.
“My business is more spiritually based. I read tarot, offer Reiki healing, that sort of thing. Cliff was consulting me as a shaman.” I gestured to my belt of tools, which he’d been careful not stare at. “I speak with spirits, Rey. And, yes, I write down what I bring back. But only the client will understand it. I promise you that.”
Rey passed a hand from the front of his scalp to the back. His hair flattened and sprang up again, like new-mown grass. “Why … why do people do it?”
“Because some problems run deep. These might come out as bad eczema, or insomnia, perhaps. But underlying that, there is something harming the person from the inside. I try to get useful answers by working with the person’s spirit world.”
Rey took a while to answer, which I considered a good thing. As a bloke, a copper, and someone who wore their hair as if they were about to pull on flying goggles, I hadn’t put “listening to women” anywhere on his priorities list.
“Okay,” he said, finally. “So this guy came to you with a serious problem. A paying customer. And now he’s under suspicion for murder. You see, there’s a possible cause and effect between these two things. Like he’s crying out to be helped. Or caught.” He picked up his mug, swilled the slops around, and put it down again. “He must want to be caught, because we found him scrabbling around in the middle of the night on top of the shallow grave we opened six weeks ago.”
“Not … ” I felt the house become still and hushed around me. “Not where you found that little boy.”
“Yes,” said Rey. “Josh Sutton.”
“I can’t believe it. Cliff did
n’t come across as a …” I couldn’t say the word.
“Doesn’t your business help you see through people?” said Rey. “I mean, into them?”
“Yeah, sometimes. Weirdly, it’s more likely to be some sort of artefact that works for me—we call it psychometry.” I didn’t think I’d bother to tell him what I’d felt when I’d touched his badge. “And when I work with a client, I get to know their spirit world. But I’m not at that stage with Cliff Houghton yet.”
I thought about the first journey I’d taken for Cliff, using the personal object he’d brought for me. I’d felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding I hadn’t been able to explain … I hadn’t tried to, at the time. When I work as a shaman, I close my eyes and let myself down into a different place. It’s like sinking into a full tub of warm water. I’m hoping to tap into the deep truths of the spirit world. Sometimes I can feel what a client is feeling, even though they don’t know they’re feeling it. But without that connection … without the spirit world to guide me, I’m not much better than the next guy at gauging personality. What had I thought of Cliff, the one time I’d met him? Quiet. Perhaps a little too quiet, which did make him feel a little … odd.
I couldn’t bear to think that I’d entered the spirit world of a child killer.
My mobile crowed. I jumped out of my thoughts, and the detective gawped at the phone. I didn’t think Rey Buckley had a surprisable bone in his body, but there he was, mouth drooping open, as my phoned went cock-a-doodle-doo! over and over.
My foster brother, Dennon, gave me the cockerel ringtone as a birthday present after I got the hens. I’ve had as many embarrassing moments with it as I’ve had laughs, and I’m pretty sure that was what my dear brother had hoped. Den is only eight months older than me, and when I first went to live with his family at age thirteen, we got up to shed-loads of mischief together. Later, it had turned into nicked carloads of mischief. Joke ring-tones are his settled-down side, although he had his fair share of community orders before he managed it.
I could see who was calling, since I’d entered his number into my contacts. I started with a gentle “Hi” and let Cliff do the talking, which didn’t last long.
“Wind-chime door bells and cockerel phones?” said Rey, as I folded my mobile closed. “You kinda like your sound effects, don’t you?”
But I was no longer in the mood to barter comments. “That was Cliff, to say he’s sorry he’s late. He didn’t mention why.”
“He won’t want to tell you.”
“He’s going to take what’s left of his appointment.” I suddenly felt as if the temperature had dropped around me. I was trembling like a small puppy. “I cannot believe he’d hurt a child.”
Rey didn’t make any reply. He was standing as if ready to depart. I noticed that his hands had folded together and that the fingers were lacing and re-lacing.
I threw him a sharp glance. “You don’t believe it either, do you?”
“I go by facts, Sabbie,” he said. “Facts, proof, evidence. I don’t trust hunches.”
“Yes you do,” I said softly. “Or you wouldn’t be here.”
THREE
“It was awful,” said Cliff. I’d given him a glass of water and he was holding on to it as if it was a healing elixir. The pads of his fingertips were crushed around it, until the surface of the water trembled and slopped onto his cords jeans.
“Perhaps it will help to describe what happened to you.”
Cliff downed the rest of the water and spent time examining the tumbler, turning it round and round and gazing into it as if it were a crystal ball. His hands were bony at the knuckles, the fingers long and pale.
“Look,” I began. “I’ve been honest with you. I’ve told you a detective came here, and what he wanted from me. I think that’s called putting your neck on the line.”
“It looks bad, I know.” Cliff risked a glance at my face. “I couldn’t even give a reasonable explanation to the police.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t have one. I don’t know why I went there. It was stupid. A stupid thing to do. I just … I needed to …” He gazed towards the window. The blinds were covered by a length of muslin I fell in love with at a sale. It’s a rich cream in colour and printed at intervals with the outline of birds in flight. I like the soaring feeling they give and the way the light filters in. It also hides the view of the street, busy with traffic and nosy parkers.
“It was a need. I had to see. The case of little Josh had got into my head. The thought of where he was in that desolate, boggy place.” He looked up. “My dad used to take me to the wetlands. There’s fish in some of the bigger waterways. We’d always take back an armful of bulrushes for Mum. I was going to pick a bunch, but the dog got me first.” His mouth twisted to one side, showing his teeth, which lay apart from each other, like gravestones in a crowded cemetery. “They set a dog on me.”
“You feel the police violated you?”
“Do I look like the sort of person who would …” He squeezed his lips together with one hand, squashing them between his fingers and screwing them round as if he needed to stop words falling from them. It made my stomach churn. “Do I?”
“No,” I admitted. But that didn’t really explain why he’d waded through the Somerset marshes in the middle of the night.
“Perhaps we should get on with our session.” My voice cracked. “Last time, I asked you to bring something you thought was significant to your problem for me to use.”
“Yeah, a silver sovereign. Present from my dad. Like I said last time, I think my difficulties … stem from when he died.”
“It must have been dreadful for you.”
“It’s dreadful even now.” Cliff looked up from his examination of the tumbler and shook himself, as if he was desperate to change the mood. “It seemed bizarre, you asking for an object. Like giving something to a tracker dog to sniff. Now it seems ironic.” Gingerly, he raised his left arm. “I don’t think they treated my bites seriously at the station.”
“You should get a tetanus. Shamanic consultations don’t offer immunity from infection.” I took the empty glass from him. Its entire surface was smeared with the sweat from his fingers. I turned to the desk behind me and laid the glass on its surface. I’d made the desk myself—two cheap bedside cabinets with MDF laid across them. I’d draped the remainder of the winged muslin over this, my only nod to coordinated décor. I needed somewhere to keep things out of sight, so that they didn’t disturb the tranquillity of the room. From a drawer I took my notes and the small, flat package that Cliff had handed me last Saturday. It had been the first time I’d set eyes on a sovereign. I tried to hand it back, but he was looking at the floor and playing with his mouth again, so I put it next to the empty glass.
“I took a spirit journey using your sovereign to guide me, as I said I would. I didn’t bring much back that first time, but I’m confident things will improve over the next few sessions.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Usually on a first journey, I’m wandering around looking for a ‘lead in’ to a client’s spirit world. But with you, Cliff, I immediately found myself in a small room.” I gave a cough and looked down at the printed page of my notes. For no logical reason, my stomach was churning. “I suppose this room was about seven or eight foot square. There wasn’t any furniture to speak of, but I sensed I was on an upstairs floor even though I couldn’t see out. The window was small and covered in a brown curtain that had been nailed onto the frame. Naturally, the light was poor, but I could see that the room was a bit grubby …” I glanced up at him. “Actually, Cliff, the place was filthy, festooned with cobwebs. There was a pile of untouched food lying on the floorboards, a heap of stale sandwiches, curling at the edges.”
I knew I was going to shudder as I read the next words, and shifted on my seat to disguise it. Cliff was watching me intently, whil
e his fingers twisted at his ponytail, playing with it as a girl does. Some of the earth-coloured strands weren’t long enough to be caught up, and they fell greasily over his face. I looked back down at my page.
“There was only one other thing in the room—a Hessian sack with knots tied around its rim to keep it open, like you see in cartoons. Something glinted in the sack, but in the dim light I couldn’t work out what it was. I can recall not wanting to look more closely, but I walked the few paces over to where it stood and dipped a hand in. I think I had been expecting money, or jewels or treasure of some sort, but a softness caressed my fingers.”
I paused. I knew I was stalling. I could not bring myself to go on, and I wasn’t sure if that was because it had frightened me, or because it might frighten Cliff.
“What?” Cliff croaked. “What was in the sack?”
“Hair,” I said. “Clippings of human hair, all colours from black to blond, some curled, some straight.” I gave a light-hearted smile. “Could have been swept up from a barber’s floor.”
“Barber?” said Cliff. “Sorry, means nothing. I don’t use them.”
“Whyever not?” I felt as if I hadn’t breathed properly in hours.
“I chop at it myself. Avoid the queues, save time.”
Cliff didn’t look like a man who had to choose between a haircut and catching his flight to Zurich, but I didn’t comment.
“That it?” said Cliff. “Is that all?”
I nodded, and my neck creaked. I make it a policy not to tell clients anything that feels bad without being able to give a glimmer of hope or at least some explanation. I had no intention of telling Cliff that, as I had handled the hair clippings, I had been convinced that there had been someone standing behind me who hadn’t previously been part of this journey. Typically that denotes some sort of spiritual presence, a guardian of mine or of the client’s. But a terror had filled me as I stood in that repulsive room. It had crushed my heart into my lungs and hardened my muscles like quick-dry cement. I could not turn round or even move.
