I didn’t know how to respond - he wasn’t normally this candid - so I just nodded.
“All I’m trying to say is that I want you to be sure that you’re making the right decisions. I’m worried that this job is starting to affect you. Like it did your mother.”
I blew out a big sigh, then poured myself a cup of tea that I had no intention of drinking.
“I understand what you’re saying but I’m not the one making the decisions.”
The problem was that other people were going to have to live with the consequences of those decisions. People I liked. People I loved.
“Can I borrow your phone?” I said. He passed it over to me. “I just need to make a couple of calls.”
*
When it came time to check out at reception dad handed me his credit card. Said that he needed to check the oil and water levels after yesterday’s drive. There was no one at the little desk so I wandered back down to the dining room where I found the owner still serving breakfast.
She accompanied me back to reception. She’d already made out the bill and I handed her the card.She inserted by card into the machine and punched in her number before passing it over to me.
“You cut it very fine with the post.” There was something almost reproachful in her tone.
I entered my dad’s pin then looked at her.
“Post?”
“Yes. We sometimes get things through for guests who are staying for the week. Very unusual for someone staying over-night.”
I handed back the card machine.
“I’m sorry, I’m not following you.”
She waited for my receipt to spill out before tearing it off and handing it to me along with the card. Then she leaned under the desk and brought out a padded brown envelope.
It had my name written in black felt tip with the address of the hotel underneath.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you’d missed it,” then she reconsidered. “I would have forwarded it along, naturally. Despite the cost.”
I walked out through the front of the hotel and stood on the gravel path turning the parcel over in my hands. It felt quite insubstantial.
But then I opened it.
*
We were back on the road a few minutes later.
“Sorry? You want me to drive you where?”
“The Cairngorms. I’ve got the address and everything.”
He gave me a slightly puzzled look.
“We’re going to need a proper map if we’re going to be driving in the mountains.”
Then I understood. It wasn’t the extra miles he was worried about. He just wanted an excuse to buy a new map. More as a souvenir than anything else. That would be his reward. He was starting to speculate on where we might have to go to find a stockist of Ordnance Survey maps when I zoned out. I was still coming to terms with the arrival of the parcel.
There was virtually nothing inside when I had opened it. Just a dusty, old photograph with an address written on the back in ballpoint. My initial thought was that I was missing something so I inspected the envelope again. Next to the address was a love-heart design with the letter A suspended within it. The mid-spar of the A had three little marks hanging beneath it. The effect was to make them look like eyelashes. It was the sort of doodle you’d find on a teenager’s exercise book.
A?
Anathema?
I had examined the photo again. I guessed from the clothes and hairstyles of the people involved that it had been taken in the late seventies, early eighties. There were thirty seven students in three rows standing in front of an ornate wooden staircase. The bulk of them appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties. There were two masters - one on either side - who looked to be from another era entirely.
I scoured the faces of the young men – no women – and found what I was looking for. Standing in the middle of the back row was an arrogant looking Andreas Kohl. His face was half hidden by his long hair but it was definitely him.
The caption at the bottom read: Fellows of Erasmus College. There was no date.
*
My dad wanted to drive us to the nearest big town and pick up a map there. I had tried to get directions using his phone but couldn’t get a strong enough signal. I capitulated reasoning that it would be easier to humour him than argue. He was the one who was driving after all.
In the end, we didn’t have to go looking for a map. After an hour’s driving we stopped for a break at a small service station. They had a little cafeteria inside and the smell of freshly ground coffee was intoxicating. I was desperate for a drink but my dad was adamant that we keep going ‘While we’ve still got the light.’ It was eleven o’clock in the morning. While he waited for me to come out of the bathroom, he stood opposite the window of the station’s only shop. And that’s when he spotted the sticker for the Ordnance Survey maps.
I found him inside in a state of high excitement. They stocked maps covering every corner of the Highlands. My dad was in his element and ended up buying two maps, which was fine with me because then we had to buy a coffee so that he would have time to examine his purchases. He tried to explain why it was that he actually needed two maps but I was too busy with my slice of carrot cake.
He didn’t want to trust me with the map-reading but had no choice while he was driving. I was fine with the first part of the journey as we were just sticking to the A roads; it would get more difficult later. But then I started to worry about arriving at the college unannounced. Magical colleges can be very particular about who they allow through their doors but Erasmus is particularly fastidious. The fact that it still doesn’t accept witches is a case in point. Also, there was the issue of my dad. As a non-practitioner, he would be viewed with instant suspicion. Any maintenance work on the colleges tends to get carried out during the vacation periods. Even then, workers are chaperoned wherever they go. It’s as much to do with protecting their welfare as it is with preserving the colleges’ secrets.
My worry was that even if they did agree to entertain me as a guest they’d insist on a few days’ grace while they checked into my background and that would delay things quite considerably. I really wanted to speak to someone who’d been at the college during Kohl’s time there but for that to happen I’d need to ring ahead first. I needed to call someone with the influence necessary to clear the way for my arrival. I obviously couldn’t ask Kinsella. Helena Lawson would have been my first choice but, as she was out of the picture, I thought about Valeria. As an ex-student, she’d be perfect. If only I could remember her number.
She answered on the first ring.
“Hi, Valeria. It’s me.”
“Bronte! Thank God. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you all morning.”
“Sorry,” now I felt bad. “I lost my phone a couple of days back. I should have told you.”
“Okay, calm down. I’m thinking that you haven’t heard?”
I pulled a face. “Heard what?”
“The Dark Team. That tip-off they had: it went bad. They went to an old millhouse in York. It was supposedly being converted into offices. Only it wasn’t. It was a cover. Kinsella put the place under surveillance. When a couple of lorries turned up that alerted his suspicions. Pulled up to the back door so that they could unload without being seen. When they analysed the video footage it appeared that one of the drivers was armed.”
“I see.”
“Kinsella and his lot arrived just after midnight and set up a forward operating base in a nearby church hall. They were preparing to sit and wait it out. But they didn’t have to wait long. Around 4am a woman was seen running from the place. They picked her up but they couldn’t get much out of her; she only spoke Albanian and they didn’t have access to a translator. Definitely one of your girls though. Katya something.”
The name meant nothing to me.
Valeria continued, “The clock was ticking. It was only a matter of time before someone did a head-count and realised she was mis
sing. Kinsella sent his team in thirty minutes later.”
She was trying to make the best of it but the hurt in her voice was obvious.
“How many dead?”
“I thought you didn’t know.”
“How many.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “We’re not sure. Not long after they went in there was this huge explosion. Practically levelled the building.”
I took a deep, trembling breath. “Was Marcus part of the team?”
“We can’t say for definite. But yes, we think he was.”
“Did anyone make it out?”
“No word on that so far.”
The silence between us deepened.
I said, “Did you get anything more out of the girl - Katya?”
“That’s the only good part. Although she was blind-folded, she swears she was the only one traveling in the back of that truck. Looks like they’d used her as bait.”
Which meant that the Novices might still be alive somewhere.
“And Kinsella?”
His judgement might have been off in the past couple of weeks but I doubted that, as the leader of the team, he wouldn’t have deviated from Standard Operating Procedure. He’d have overseen everything from a fall-back position.
“That’s the thing. He was co-ordinating the operation along with two techies from a surveillance van. We found the tech guys with their throats cut. No sign of Kinsella. Like he just got up and walked away.”
This was the unlikeliest part of the story so far. Kinsella wouldn’t have simply stood by and allowed his men to be slaughtered, he was far too powerful for that.
“Was there no sign of a struggle?”
“I’ve not seen it for myself - I’m driving there now - but I trust the people on the ground. Nothing to suggest that he didn’t go voluntarily.”
This didn’t make any sense. Only it did. There was a very obvious scenario developing here. What if Kinsella had been in on this from the start? What if he had allied himself with Kohl with the clear intention of betraying us? Taking out the Dark Team would be an obvious way to weaken The Bear Garden’s defences. It would leave us wide open to attack.
“What do you think?” Valeria asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
“It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“I can’t see how it could be worse.”
There was a pause during which time I knew exactly what Valeria was doing: thinking the unthinkable.
She said, “In some way it might have been better if he had…”
“No, don’t,” I admonished. “We don’t know nearly enough to start jumping to conclusions.”
“You’re right.”
After she’d hung up, I realised that I hadn’t asked her about Erasmus, but then part of me hadn’t wanted to. At first I couldn’t think why and then I remembered the picture.
Thirty seven students.
Two masters.
No women.
I decided to call another number. It was a bit of a long shot and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull it off but I had nothing else to do and it wasn’t as if I was paying the phone bill.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
An hour and a half later I was sitting opposite my dad in a small waiting room. I hadn’t said much about the phone call but he’d have to have been an idiot not to have picked up on the change in my mood. But – to give him his due - he hadn’t asked me about it so I hadn’t had to lie to him about it.
“Is this normal?” he threw out his hands. “All this. Is this how they treat people?”
I had to agree that it must have felt strange but it was partly my fault. I had complicated things by insisting on bringing him into the college with me. It would have been easier to leave him in the car but after what had just happened I wasn’t willing to take any chances. The staff were unsure how to react to our arrival so had chosen to isolate us. Then they’d locked us in.
I’d had my contact ring ahead so they’d been expecting us but I was still feeling paranoid. One of the reasons Kohl was in the country was to track me down and, admittedly, I hadn’t taken the threat seriously. Now I did.
Who was to say that it wasn’t Kohl himself who’d sent me the photograph? In some ways that made more sense. If so, I could be walking into a trap. But the protection offered by a college as old and well-fortified as Erasmus was substantial. No, I felt sure that we’d both be safe as long as we stayed inside the walls. The college had been built between two sheer cliff faces, the work had been so precise that the man-made blocks fitted seamlessly with the mossy stone. It was pretty much impregnable, the only way of storming the front wall would be to scale one of the cliffs on either side, leaving yourself hopelessly exposed.
Because that’s what Erasmus was: a well-preserved fortress which has repulsed the attentions of countless English and Scottish monarchs. I know that because I read it on their website. It’s also the reason why the college had never expanded in the same way that places like Newton had. It was physically constrained by its setting. Indeed, many of the student’s rooms had once been cells. They might have their own en-suites nowadays, rather than a bucket, but there was no changing the fact.
Former students revelled in the soberness of its setting, suspended as it was halfway up a mountain. It was as isolated a location as one could hope to find, frequently cut off by snow in the winter though for many of its students that was part of the attraction. You had to be very serious about your craft if you intended to apply to Erasmus.
You also had to be a man.
I looked around the anonymous little room, at the charming photographs of the surrounding countryside. To think that Kohl had come here! In the light of recent events that had to have a very special significance. At that precise moment, we both turned our heads as we heard the key being turned in the lock. The door opened and a severe looking woman in a pair of vintage hornrims glowered down at us.
“I’m here to take you to see Dr Falcone.”
We followed her out into a courtyard. A fine drizzle had started to descend and the stone was slippery underfoot.
The place contained an odd mixture of old and new buildings. The original buildings were built from hardy granite which was as bleak as it was hard-wearing. These looked to be cold and implacable places while the new ones were cheerful red brick affairs replete with double glazing.
“You’re very isolated out here,” I said by way of making conversation.
“That’s our main selling point. Apart from the village, we’re a good ten miles from the nearest town so there are very few distractions.”
I couldn’t see how that was a good thing. I’d spent most of my first year socialising though, admittedly, I had very nearly failed the Curses and Poisons aspect of my course. We’d passed two pubs in the village a mile and a half back. With no public transport, students had a long walk in front of them if they fancied a pint. Plus, this was an all-male college. What were the students supposed to do when they started yearning for female company?
We came to a small side alley and the woman indicated for my dad to go first. “Of course, having no neighbours also means that we are unencumbered when it comes to our practical sessions.”
This was, after all, where Erasmus got its reputation for innovation from. The masters didn’t hold back on challenging practicals and field-tests. They were constantly coming up with new practices which were quickly seized on by the other larger educational establishments. But that reputation came at a cost. Which was one of the things I wanted to discuss with Dr Falcone.
We passed a group of bronze figures displayed on the central lawn. What looked like two wizards conjuring a spell over a large lizard-like creature. Although I’d never actually seen one, its extravagantly frilled collar made it fairly unmistakeable.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That statue over there. Am I right in thinking that’s a basilisk?”
She didn’t alter her pace or even attempt to look
at me. “You’re right about it being a basilisk but you’re wrong about it being a statue.”
I gave my dad an alarmed look but he appeared unconcerned. I stopped to look at it more closely. Was this some well-worn joke foisted upon the unwary newcomer? I didn’t know what to think but I had to scurry along to catch up when I saw them disappearing inside the building.
By the time I managed to catch up with my dad our guide had left us. We stood outside one of the main lecture halls. There were a number of students standing around in their lab coats looking bored, though they all perked up when they saw me.
There was the sound of movement and voices from inside the lecture hall. The next minute the corridor was thronging with students. I stood behind my dad as they started to file out. It was a relief when they’d all gone to finally get inside the hall.
Dr Falcone was well over six feet tall but his posture was poor, as if he were trying to make himself look shorter. He wore a dogs-tooth waist coat over his painfully thin frame, the sleeves of his shirt billowing around his arms. His wire-rimmed glasses sat on the end of a strong Roman nose which might have given him a certain bearing if his chin hadn’t been so weak. His hair was long and pure white, pulled back into a lank ponytail. He favoured me with a nervous smile whilst keeping his hands resolutely clasped behind his back. It’s a common enough precaution amongst practitioners but one that my dad didn’t particularly appreciate. He appeared genuinely pleased to meet us.
My attention was diverted to the wall behind the lectern which had a smattering of knives sticking out of it.
“Is that what I think it is, Dr Falcone?”
“Oh that!” he waved a dismissive hand. “Franz’ Law. Attraction and Distraction. You’re familiar with it of course?”
“‘The laws of attraction are weaker than the laws of distraction.’
“You’d have thought they’d have learnt this down the pub when they were trying to chat up the locals. But no.”
Bitter Moon: Urban Witch Series - Book 2 Page 27
