by Nina Milton
“It was a bad place,” he said. He was talking to himself, though, not to me.
I took a deep breath. “It wasn’t all bad. There was some hope.”
I looked about for the catkin I’d picked as my returning gift from the spirit world. It lay on the laminate of the floor, crushed underfoot. I bit my lip at the sight, not knowing how to continue.
Cliff pulled at the silk cord. It came away from his arm. He handed it to me. “No. There’s no hope now.”
It was the picture that had released the memory. He’d picked up the sheet of paper and seen the sketch I’d drawn. In the instant he read the name on the cottage door, a memory had flooded into him, not just as images, but as sensations, smells, tastes, pain. He’d cast up his accounts into the nearest receptacle.
“I must have blocked it out for all these years,” he said. Saliva drooled from the corner of his slack mouth and he dabbed at it with the tissues. “I’ve heard of women who do that about bad memories, but I’d never really believed it happened.”
“What—What is it … you forgot?”
Cliff was quiet for several minutes. He stared into the middle distance. I wasn’t sure if he was still summoning up memories or simply trying to put the ones he had into words. Finally he said, “I’d just turned eleven.”
Then I knew. A dreadful sensation flooded through me, a choking feeling that made me want to back off or cover Cliff’s mouth with my hand to stop him telling me, and I thought of the way he covered his mouth, as if he too, always had that feeling. To my horror, I found myself saying, “What happened, Cliff?”
“It must have been the start to the summer holidays, because Dad was having chemotherapy, I think. Anyway, he was in hospital and Mum and Rachel were going to visit, but I’d asked if I could go round Greg’s.” He managed a wonky smile. “I hated going into the hospital. Dad would be strapped to this bag of fluid, which seemed to do him harm, not good, and the pyjamas Mum had bought him specially for the treatments didn’t fit him anymore, they hung on his bones. Greg had a tent that his dad let him put up on their lawn. We used to sleep in it, some nights. Thought it was a great adventure.
“Anyway, I think Greg and I built a sort of ramp affair out of planks for our bikes that afternoon. Mine hit a rogue nail. We tried to repair it using Greg’s kit, but his dad told us it still had a slow leak. He made me promise not to ride it until I’d bought a new inner tube. He wanted to take me home, but I said I’d be fine pushing the bike. I took my time, though. I was worried I’d get well told off about the tyre. Mum got jumpy when Dad was in hospital.”
The story seemed to be going nowhere as Cliff broke off to sip some more water. I knew I mustn’t say a word or even move, even though I badly wanted to shift position. I was kneeling on the floor beside him, my knees digging into the laminate, but Cliff had grabbed my hand and was holding it as if it were the railing to a high balcony.
“It was a lovely evening. I can remember now, and that’s so odd—like this memory has landed inside my head all in one piece. Even so, I was getting fed up of pushing the bike. I was a mile or so away from home when this car drew up beside me. There was a woman and a girl inside. The woman put her head out of the window and asked if I had far to go. I wasn’t going to say no to a lift. Besides, I thought it was just a mum and her daughter.” Cliff paused.
“But it wasn’t,” I prompted.
“No,” said Cliff, emphatically shaking his head. “No. No. That’s what they wanted you to believe, see? That it was all right, to get in the car.” He barked a laugh. “The bike wouldn’t fit properly. The three of us got it in somehow and drove along with the boot half open.” He paused, as if just realizing something. “That was a masterstroke. They were so careful about the bike … we’ll get it home for you, safe and sound …”
He breathed a wet, sucking breath. He was close to tears. I hung onto his hand for dear life. “The car drove off. I felt fine. The bike was in the boot. I was in the front. The woman kept looking back at the girl, cracking jokes. The girl laughed more than me. She laughed and laughed. Remembering it now, it might have been a scared laugh, but it never occurred to me that I was in any danger until I saw we weren’t in Finchbury. I asked where we were going. The woman said she wanted to show us something.”
The glass clunked against Cliff’s teeth. He was panting.
“Can you remember faces … anything?”
“It’s hazy. The girl felt older than me.”
“Did she have long blonde hair?”
“It’s hard to see her.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Did you get out of the car, Cliff? I mean, d’you remember doing that?”
“We pulled up in a lane.”
“High hedge, mostly hazel?”
“I don’t know one tree from the next. It just felt … ” He looked directly at me for the first time. “You wrote gloomy.”
“It was gloomy. But it felt ominous.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “Hostile. Made me want to run. But I didn’t run. My bike was in the boot. I didn’t know where I was. And anyway, you don’t imagine … can’t possibly imagine …”
“That people would mean you harm?”
Cliff mopped his mouth with the tissues. His hand shook. “The woman got me out of the car. She had the top of my arm and her grip hurt. I think she must have been hanging on to the girl as well, because she didn’t knock. She yelled out. ‘Fucking hurry up in there!’ I was scared then, struggling in the woman’s grip. We were standing in front of the door. The nameplate—Brokeltuft—it’s a funny name. When I read it on your drawing …” He searched my face. “How did you get inside me like that?”
I shook my head. I could no more tell him than I could truly have swum underwater with Trendle. “What happened next? Did the door open?”
“I … I can’t see what happened. The sensations are … I know it was … a bad place. Bad experience. Can’t remember.” He released my wrist. “I won’t need to, will I? Isn’t this enough?”
“It’s not over, Cliff,” I said.
“I never wanted this. This is a whole can of worms. Think I want these memories?”
“Isn’t that why you came to me?”
“I was asking for a solution. Not this … horror!”
“Something terrible happened to you when you were a boy.”
He nodded, his head shrouded by his hands.
“Something that’s broken your—what I’d call your soul—into pieces. The way I work, as a shaman, is to find these pieces and put them back together.”
“Like bits from a car engine?” asked Cliff, in a muffled voice.
“Precisely,” I said, although precisely was not the best phrase for my manner of working. “And, while we’re doing that, I think the other memories will come.”
“Oh Jesus,” cried Cliff. “God, no!” He shook his head, over and over, his eyes wide with terror.
“But you escaped,” I said, chaffing his shoulder. “You saved yourself somehow.”
“Did I?” Cliff rubbed his face with a hand, spreading the moisture. “I can’t bear to think about what happened.” He looked at me, his face appalled. “I want my memory back the way it was.”
I could only shake my head. I didn’t think that was a possibility.
“It must feel like you’ve received bad news,” I said, looking at the dark rings around Cliff’s eyes. He certainly didn’t look well enough to do a night’s work.
There were a million questions I longed to ask Cliff, but both of us were drained from the impromptu session. I felt he should go home to sleep. I rang the supermarket and told them he was poorly. “Will you be okay to drive home?” I asked, folding my phone closed.
Cliff nodded, too exhausted to reply. Personally, I felt I might sleep forever once my head was on a pillow. But something on the edge of my inner perception was jangli
ng like a toy monkey’s cymbals. I raised my head in the silence. A crash echoed from the hall. My chest exploded. I’d left the door open when I fetched the catkin. It had slammed against the wall.
“What was that?” Cliff’s gaze flicked around the room.
“Maybe it was the wind,” I whispered. But already I could hear footsteps.
SEVEN
The shadows of two figures hovered outside the room. I gave a girlie shriek. The person already inside my home was spooking me, much less unwelcome visitors.
“This is the police,” said a voice.
My fear slid away. “Get out of my house,” I screeched. “Get out!”
Reynard Buckley walked towards me. A colleague—a heavily built younger man with a slick of black hair and the hooded eyes of a crow—followed him. They were holding open their IDs in tandem before them, as if the wallets were talismans that would protect them from evil.
“Sabbie,” said Rey. “This is my colleague, DC Abbott. I’m afraid your door was open, so we came in. You’ll find a constable outside, in case anyone …”
“I’ve got a client here,” I said.
“Would that be Clifford Houghton?” said Abbot.
They had come for him. I felt my body sag.
“So where is he?”
“Where is he?” I echoed, confused. I turned on the balls of my feet. The wicker chair was an empty vessel. Cliff was gone. My mind was so scrambled I was close to believing he’d become invisible.
The two plain-clothes officers stalked my house. Abbott took the stairs and I heard hard-heeled steps above my head. Rey strutted into the kitchen. I hovered in the hall.
“You’ve let him go,” he accused. “Or have you hidden him somewhere?” He yanked at the handle of the back door, then noticed the bin full of Cliff’s vomit.
“What on earth—” he began, but Abbott came thundering down the stairs at that minute, shaking his head. “Nothing up there.”
“Sabbie!” Rey strode over, and I backed away from him. “You are going to cooperate. D’you hear? We have a child snatching and a murder to investigate.”
Finally, I found my voice. “He was here,” I said. “I’ve no idea.” Something caught my attention. A strange, low-level sound was emanating from somewhere within the therapy room.
Step by slow step, I reached the desk and lifted the muslin, so that the birds on the fabric flapped and flew. Cliff was hunched under the surface, squashed against the wall, whimpering like a dog. Water oozed from inside his tightly closed eyelids.
I felt my own eyes scald with tears. “Cliff,” I whispered. I extended a hand towards him and saw red marks on my wrist where he’d clutched at it earlier. “Cliff, it’ll be okay.” Cliff opened his eyes as if it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, and focused on me. As he whimpered, flecks of white spittle flew from his tight-closed lips.
“Got him, Gary!” yelled Rey. His trouser legs brushed against my extended arm. I looked up.
“Mr. Houghton didn’t kidnap the child.”
“You don’t know that,” said Rey.
“I do know it.”
For the first time since he’d entered my house, Rey looked me full in my face. “One of your spirits tell you that, did they?”
“And my heart.”
Rey didn’t reply. He hunkered down, his badge in front of him like a miniature shield. “Mr. Houghton, we’ve met before; DS Buckley and DC Abbott from Bridgwater police station. Can you come out of there of your own accord, please, sir?”
Cliff crawled out and rose up, swaying on his long legs, clearly unable to take in what was going on. In seconds a couple of uniformed officers had marched him through my house, reciting the rhetoric of their caution. I suppose I had to be grateful they hadn’t handcuffed him. I suppose I had to be grateful they hadn’t handcuffed me.
Once Cliff was in the back of the police car, Rey walked back up the path towards me. He took his time, while I hung on to the door for support.
“I have to interview you,” he said, “while the situation is still fresh in your mind.”
I barked a laugh. “Trust me, tonight is never going to leave my mind.”
“We can do it here or at the station.” His eyes were focusing everywhere but on me. I was wondering where the chap I’d sat with at the boot sale, chatting about music, had gone.
“He isn’t guilty of murder, Rey,” I said, but my voice was so low I doubt he caught the words. Perhaps they were just for me.
“He ran away. He might have assumed we’d want to eliminate him from our enquiries. He should have stayed put. This was the first place we came after his own flat, and bingo, his car’s outside.”
“Then he didn’t run far, did he?” I lurched away from him. There was a buzzing in my head. I got as far as the kitchen and hung on to the edge of the worktop to prevent myself keeling over.
Without warning, Rey was beside me. “Go and sit down,” he said. “I’ll make you a drink.” He pulled a mint teabag out of the box and dangled it in front of me. “This okay?”
“Thanks.”
“Sure you don’t want me to slug in some cooking brandy?”
“Don’t tempt me,” I said, wondering in one part of my mind why Rey would imagine I could afford brandy in my cooking. I flopped down on the sofa. My heart had steadied a little, but my legs felt like well-washed ribbons.
“It’s quite bijou in here, isn’t it,” said Rey. He started on the drink, with an appealing male hamfistedness.
“You mean cramped.”
“No, not at all. It’s very clever. You’ve knocked down a wall, haven’t you?”
“That was before my time. It was a kitchen-cum when I arrived. But once I knew I’d use the room at the front for my therapies, I had to find somewhere to relax. The breakfast bar doubles as a computer desk. Then all I did was lay a bit of carpet and pick up a second-hand sofa.” I shut my mouth quickly, realizing I was rambling on.
“Yeah, neat.” Rey brought over my tea, the bag still bobbing on the surface of the water. He set it on the coffee table and next to it he placed a little hand-held recorder. “We might need this later,” he said, but he didn’t switch it on. As if for something to do, he rifled through the pile of magazines on the shelf above our heads. “What is Sacred Hoop?”
“Shamans’ magazine.”
“Blimey, can’t imagine there’s such a thing.”
“There seems to be a lot you can’t imagine, Rey.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Cliff. Why is he your number one suspect? Because he was drawn to a poor child’s grave? He could have a perfectly innocent reason.”
Rey let himself down onto the arm of the sofa, as if it were a demarcation zone. “You know it’s not as simple as that.”
He was wearing the same crumpled suit as last week, but the tie was yanked loose and the shirt collar was smudged with yesterday’s neck dirt. I began to appreciate that—heck, I don’t know—that Rey was a real person, with problems and pressures. And no one to look after him.
“What I need are your notes on this client.”
I looked up sharply. “I’ve already said—”
“It’s humiliating, you know.”
“What?”
“Having a search warrant served on you.”
“Rey, there is nothing in those notes. Nothing comprehensible, anyway.”
“Right.” Rey flashed a smile. “I won’t be able to comprehend this, then.” He pulled a notebook from his jacket pocket.
“That’s Cliff’s,” I cried. “Where did you find it?”
“The same place Cliff was hiding.” Rey lifted his arm higher, teasing me. “This is admissible evidence. You’re not having it back.”
“You are insufferable.” I grabbed his sleeve, trying to free the book. Suddenly, we were way
too close. I pulled back. Rey’s grin spread over his face. He was enjoying my discomfort. I slid away and crossed my legs at the ankles. Not that he could see them, under my black dress. “This isn’t a joke.”
“No.” Rey flicked through the book. “So why don’t you just tell me. Because if you think Cliff Houghton is not involved with the disappearance of Aidan Rodderick, you’ll only be of help to him.”
He had a point. “You’re infuriating, you know that?”
“Infuriating and insufferable? I didn’t know I was so many long words.”
I tried not to smile. “You don’t realize what Cliff has been through.”
“I’d realize if you told me.” He placed the notebook on the coffee table, a truce. “What’s in here?”
“All the symbols I’ve brought back from my journeys. The first one was a sack full of hair clippings, all different colours. It meant nothing to Cliff. But tonight, we had a breakthrough.” I flipped open the notebook to reveal my drawing. “Breakdown, you might say. He looked at this picture and was violently sick.”
“Must be an art expert.”
I leaned over and gave him a little push. “This is not the time to be flippant.” But Rey knew exactly what he was doing. The banter was making me feel more normal, and the buzzing in my head was slowly receding.
“True. I saw the puke. Besides, he stank of it. But he could’ve been drinking.”
“That’s your poor policeman’s brain. It wasn’t drink. It was horror.” A tremor passed through me. “His compulsion with Josh Sutton’s grave. It’s more to do with past events than anything Cliff might have done recently. Cliff was snatched by the Wetland Murderer.”
“What?”
“Couldn’t you have guessed? With your ability for hunches?”
“Sabbie, none of the victims survived.”
