Ticket To The Sky Dance

by Cowley, Joy

  His temper was not improved by the fact that Polanski wasn’t back yet and there were reports he could not find. Hell, Polanski could type but that was about all he was good for. He was supposed to be doing a routine check of firearms’ licences and he had flaming well disappeared for the day. Wasn’t answering his car phone or his mobile. That guy was so useless, it amazed Peachman he had ever made it as a police cadet. Soft, was the word. A butterfly would have more bite with its dentures out.

  Peachman put his elbows on his desk, his head on his hands, and wondered what he was going to do about Mandy. He was in that position when his phone rang, a call put through by Villiers from the front desk.

  It was Matisse and he, too, was in a foul mood. ‘What’s all this about Leroy?’

  ‘Leroy,’ Peachman repeated, rubbing his face. ‘Leroy who, what and where?’

  ‘Leroy Noble and don’t try your nasty old bullying tactics with me, Peachman. We want to know why you have your crocodile snapping at the heels of one of my staff.’

  ‘Matisse, I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about. Can you speak clearly for a change?’

  ‘The bluff doesn’t work, Peachman. What are you trying to do? Get a little extra on the side? Play an itty bitty game of blackmail perhaps?’

  Peachman felt the blood pound in his face. ‘I’m putting the phone down,’ he said.

  ‘Not before you tell me why you have your officer looking for Leroy.’

  The name fell into place and Peachman said, ‘The chauffeur?’

  ‘Clever, clever,’ said Matisse.

  ‘No one here is interested in your chauffeur, for goodness sake,’ he snapped.

  His tone must have been convincing for the sneer left Matisse’s voice. ‘An officer of yours, some East European name, phoned Class Act House, to speak to Leroy. When he was told that Leroy was on leave, he wanted to know Leroy’s home address. Unfortunately, the receptionist gave it to him.’

  ‘Polanski!’ said Peachman.

  ‘That’s the name. Neither Leroy nor his wife are answering the phone and I am about to get in my car and race up there, to find out what is going on.’

  Peachman said, ‘Save yourself a trip, Matisse. Polanski? He’s a kid, fresh out of training school. He’s so stupid, he doesn’t even know how to spell the word stupid. I’ll talk to him.’

  ‘Why does he want to see Leroy?’

  ‘I don’t know. Could be about that call a few nights ago when the kids got out. The Donoghue twins? They called him, he called me and I called Elizabeth. I told him I went out there and the kids had gone but he may be checking something out.’

  ‘Why Leroy?’ Matisse said. ‘How could he possibly make that connection?’

  ‘Could be something the kids said to Polanski. Don’t worry. I’ll get to the bottom of it.’

  ‘You said there would be absolutely, positively no problems.’ Matisse sounded edgy.

  ‘Polanski is not a problem. He’s doing this on his own and when he comes in here I’m going to throw the book at him. I’ll kick his butt from here to kingdom come.’

  ‘Peachman, you are sure about this?’

  ‘Believe me, I know Polanski.’

  ‘If there is any difficulty, even a hint of something, you’ll let me or Elizabeth know?’

  ‘Oh sure I will.’ Peachman smiled into the phone. ‘Matisse, tell Elizabeth the—er—arrangement was satisfactory and there are new subjects available as soon as she wants them.’

  ‘I’ll tell her that, although she doesn’t like to hurry these things, especially when there has been a tiny hiccup like that break-out.’

  ‘But it worked out okay in the end, didn’t it?’ Peachman said.

  ‘Oh yes, utterly! She’s positively radiant about the results. But leave her to call you in her own time, eh, Peachman? Don’t push it. And just you make sure your stupid young man doesn’t cause Leroy any embarrassment.’

  ‘I’ll see to it, believe me.’

  The phone call had done nothing to settle his blood pressure and after lunch his head was pounding so hard that he had to drive home to get his medication. There wasn’t even one clean glass in the house. He had to rinse a dirty one for water to swallow the pills. He thought, with bitterness, of the morning call to his father-in-law’s home and the old man’s refusal to let him speak to Mandy.

  ‘This is what you are doing to me,’ he said, waving at the dirty dishes. ‘This is how you are crucifying me, you old scumbag.’

  When he got back to the office, he discovered that Polanski was still not in.

  Villiers shrank back in her chair. ‘I’ve heard from him, sir. He’ll be back soon, sir.’

  But it was after three when Polanski finally knocked on Peachman’s door. ‘Good afternoon, sir. I want—’

  Peachman stood up. ‘Polanski! Get in here this minute!’

  Polanski stammered, ‘Sir, I think you should—’

  ‘You,’ roared Peachman, ‘are about as useful as tits on a bull, and by the time I’m finished with you, you’re going to be out of the police force and begging!’ Then Peachman saw the man standing in the doorway, behind Polanski. All the air went out of him in one unworded breath and he had to fill his lungs again to say, ‘Sir! What are you doing here?’

  ‘Good afternoon, Peachman,’ said Chief Superintendent Peterson Broad. ‘Do you mind if I come in? I think we need to have a little chat.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It was a while before they could send thoughts to each other. Jancie had taken up her favourite position, hovering in front of the small window which was filled with the ever-changing surface of Mars. Her own light was now very faint. Shog heard her mind moving at speed over many words, most of them as soft as the fluttering wings of a moth. Dr Frey had not lied. Jancie was getting weaker.

  The fluttering sound stopped and she thought clearly, ‘I’ve been saying my prayers with Gran, Shog. Getting ready.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah. I’ve known it a while. You have, too. Not much we can hide from each other these days. Worse than identical twins.’ Something like laughter shimmered in her thoughts. ‘You know when they say that people die peacefully in their sleep? Now we get to know whether it really is peaceful or not.’

  ‘I want us to go together,’ he said.

  ‘How are you going to manage that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Jancie, are you afraid?’

  ‘No. Not afraid. It’s being neither in one place nor the other that’s the problem. I reckon once my body lets go, I’ll fly off. Zap! Like a rubber band.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘To God, I guess. I don’t really know what God is but I got a feeling about it and it’s a good feeling. You know, right and natural. Like it’s another part of growing.’

  Her thoughts disturbed him. ‘Don’t be in too much of a hurry, Jancie. Give me a chance to catch up.’

  ‘You know what I’m really sorry about?’ she said. ‘Trevor and Fern. I was mean and rattie. They were nice to us, Shog. I don’t know what got into me. Maybe it was missing Gran.’ She drifted for a while and came back. ‘Oh shoot, Shog! Think of Gran’s face when she sees we’ve beaten her to heaven!’

  ‘You think heaven is a real place?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yeah. Don’t you?’

  ‘I think so. But I’ve always wondered—’

  ‘Heaven is love,’ a voice said.

  The movement of Shog’s thoughts was stilled. This was not Dr Frey speaking into his mind. He knew the words. They came out of something he had always known and they were carried on a voice that was almost as familiar to him as his sister’s. He felt the same shock of recognition run through Jancie and then, together, they saw the blaze of white light outside the small round window.

  ‘Banjo!’ he thought. Then reason told him don’t be crazy, of course it isn’t Banjo. Banjo is in Alaska looking at polar bears.

  The light splashed through the window and invaded the room, not a hu
man shape but a star that danced and shone, filling every crevice, every shadow, with a pure light, and from that light came Banjo’s voice. ‘Heaven is love, man,’ it said, ‘and love is heaven.’

  ‘Are you Banjo?’ Jancie asked.

  The star vibrated with laughter. ‘Yeah, Jancie! It’s me! I crossed over!’

  ‘You mean you are dead?’ Shog thought.

  ‘Dead?’ All parts of the room shimmered and shook in the light. ‘Man, this is life. I mean, really! What I used to call life was just being a little chicken in an egg. This is the hatching, man!’

  ‘How did you get here?’ Shog wanted to know. ‘Did she project you?’

  It seemed that every thought from Shog seized the light with laughter. ‘No, man, I told you, I crossed over. I’m free! I belong in the reality.’

  ‘What reality?’ asked Shog.

  ‘You can’t know it till you experience it, Shog. Like the chicken in the egg sees only the egg, then it’s out and seeing everything. The everything is love, man. That’s the reality. That’s why we’re born.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Shog.

  ‘Like heaven is not a place man, it’s a way of seeing and a way of being. Like it’s the big wake-up to love, you know? You get to understand everything you didn’t understand before and that’s cool. The minute I crossed over, I knew. I had chosen to live on earth just this little while. Now I’m back home.’

  Shog still did not understand. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘It’s not your turn yet,’ said the light in Banjo’s voice. ‘You need to go back.’

  ‘We can’t,’ came the whispering thought from Jancie. ‘It’s not possible.’

  The white light spun around Jancie, enclosing her own pale flame, and said, ‘Not possible for Dr Frey. Or anyone on that side. But we can do it.’

  ‘No,’ said Jancie. ‘I’m fading away, Banjo.’

  The light was whirling round her, holding her in the middle of the room. ‘Hey, you got longer, Jancie, and you and Shog got things to do. Important things, man. I can’t get you both back but someone is going to help me.’

  As Banjo’s voice spoke, another light burst through the window and flew like a ball of glittering white fire around the room, to settle near them. ‘Hi, how you doing?’ said a voice.

  The shock caused a vibration through Shog and it was a while before he could collect himself to think. ‘McCready!’

  ‘Yeah! How about that! He recognised me!’ The second light shimmered near the first. ‘You ready to go back? We got to do this right away on account of Jancie. Okay?’

  ‘It’s too far!’ came Jancie’s faint thought.

  McCready’s voice laughed back, ‘Why, shit a brick, ain’t far at all. No more than a thought away. Right, Banjo?’

  ‘A big thought,’ said Banjo. ‘But we can do it. You ready, Jancie?’

  Before Shog could see what was happening to his sister, the white light of McCready blazed in front of him cancelling out everything else in the room. ‘This is it, friend!’ came McCready’s voice and, in the next instant, Shog was falling backwards down a black tunnel.

  The journey was unpleasant, a descent into pain, but it was short, and before he knew it, he found himself lying at the bottom of a dark well, the light of McCready blazing above him like a burning star.

  ‘Told you wasn’t far to go,’ said McCready and then the light began to move away. ‘Wait!’ Shog called. ‘Wait—’ He realised with surprise that the word was not an echo in a thought but an actual sound struggling out of his throat. He was heavy, unable to move for a weight on his chest. There was aching in his arms and legs. He groaned.

  ‘This one’s coming round!’ someone said.

  The light of McCready at the top of the well had faded. Now all Shog saw was the movement of yellow coats and blurred faces above him. He felt a solid surface under his back.

  ‘This one’s going to make it.’

  ‘What about his sister?’

  ‘No, worse luck. She’s dead.’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Two squad cars drove up to Dr Elizabeth Frey’s house. Officer Polanski and Chief Superintendent Broad were in one, three men from Homicide were in the other.

  Polanski saw a curtain flutter at the window and guessed that she knew why they had come. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t be going anywhere. The back of the house was landscaped with shell paths and driftwood. The front hung out over the edge of a steep cliff.

  Broad knocked and she opened the door, obviously prepared for them.

  It was Polanski who got the surprise. ‘Dr Robinson!’ he said.

  ‘My name is Dr Elizabeth Jeanne Frey,’ she said, holding the door against herself to prevent their entry.

  ‘May we come in, Dr Frey?’ Broad asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Frey. I am Chief Superintendent Broad and I have a warrant to search this house. We need to come inside.’

  She turned and walked away, through the kitchen and into the lounge. They followed and Polanski gazed in admiration at the wide front windows which displayed the perpetual movement of the sea. ‘You have a beautiful view here,’ he said.

  Without glancing at him, she said, ‘Yes,’ and picked up a remote control. Music filled the room, a modern piece full of harsh discordant notes.

  Broad nodded at the three men who nodded back and then disappeared through the hall door. He said, ‘Dr Frey, I apologise for the intrusion but we believe that you have here information which will assist us in our investigation concerning some missing children.’

  She sat on the couch, her bare feet tucked under her. She was wearing a fawn sweater and pants and orange nail varnish but no makeup. Her eyes were clear and steady, almost aggressive. ‘I am an astro-biophysicist, a medical doctor and a writer of scientific articles. Nothing more than my research material is kept in this house.’

  Broad sat down in an opposite chair and cautioned her. Then he said, ‘May I ask you a few questions?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Dr Frey, I understand you have an association with Class Act Modelling School and Fashion House.’

  She did not comment.

  ‘How long have you been working with Class Act House?’

  She turned her head away and looked out to sea.

  ‘I’ll put it this way,’ said Broad, ‘How long has Class Act been accommodating your experiments?’

  Still she did not answer. Nor did she move.

  Broad waited. ‘Dr Frey?’ he prompted.

  She turned back to him and smiled. ‘I said you could ask questions. I did not say I would answer them.’

  But Broad went on asking, nonetheless, questions about Lieutenant Warren J. Peachman, about homeless children, about astral projection research, questions about the discovery in a garden shed at Class Act House, of a human body vaporiser disguised as a compost and soil steriliser.

  She said nothing but sat, relaxed on the couch, as though they were not there. She did not even flinch when one of the detectives brought out a business diary, saying, ‘Sir, I think you might want to see this.’ She was, thought Polanski, the most controlled person he had ever seen. There was something about her deliberate manner that fascinated him and chilled him to the bone.

  Broad thumbed through the diary, whistling between his teeth.

  Another detective came through. ‘There are boxes and boxes of stuff here, sir. Do you want all of it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Broad, ‘everything!’

  Dr Elizabeth Frey switched off the music and again they were aware of the noise of the sea outside. She stood up and said to Broad, ‘Thank you, Chief Superintendent, for your visit but I must now bid you farewell.’

  Broad closed the diary. ‘I’m afraid not, Dr Frey. You will be coming with us.’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

  There were five men in the room, but her movement was so sudden that none of them were able t
o as much as turn in her direction. In two seconds she was across the room and, as Polanski watched, open-mouthed, she flung herself through the window. It was like a tyre running over an ice puddle. The glass crunched and shattered outwards, flinging shards that seemed to melt into the light, rising, dazzling, then falling away with the outstretched arms, the mane of black hair, the fawn trousers and bare feet.

  She was gone and they were standing motionless in the wind that blew off the sea.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Jancie saw, beneath her, the Class Act house and grounds set like models in a miniature railway, except that there were no trains, only police cars and ambulances parked in the driveways, and people running with stretchers. Jancie looked at the frantic movement, the flashing lights, and felt tired.

  ‘I can’t do it, Banjo.’

  His light swirled around her. ‘Please, Jancie. You can.’

  ‘No, Banjo. No.’

  ‘Jancie! Shog is already there.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m tired. I can’t go any further.’

  The light insisted on taking her closer and she saw strangers in the laboratory room, tending kids on stretchers. ‘Look there!’ said Banjo’s voice and she caught a glimpse of a small white face before it was covered with a blanket.

  ‘That’s you,’ she said without surprise.

  Then she saw herself on the next stretcher, her brown skin faded to a greyish yellow, a shadow of dark red fuzz on her scalp, her eyes closed, her mouth hanging open. A white-coated paramedic was trying to jump-start her heart and, somewhere behind her thoughts, she could detect the slight sensation of the electric shock. At the same time she realised that the rhythm of her breathing was no longer a background to her thinking.

  ‘I’m crossing over,’ she said, dreamily. ‘I’m hatching out of my egg, Banjo.’