The Night Raven

by Sarah Painter

  * * *

  Lydia definitely needed caffeine, now. The cupboards in the little kitchen were bare so she trailed downstairs to check the cafe. Her hand was on the swing door to the kitchen when she heard a noise. From inside. She pulled her mobile out and dialled the first two nines, her finger ready on the third digit. Perhaps it was ghost-boy. Maybe he was testing out his new-found lifting powers by fixing himself a little snack.

  Then she caught what she was about to do – investigate a strange noise the day after she was attacked in the exact same building. Not smart, Lyds. She was just about to retrace her footsteps, get the hell out of the cafe and call the police from a safe location, when she heard a weird sound. Singing. Well, humming really. Just a brief snatch in a voice that was low, female, and had a good tone, even through the door.

  Lydia hesitated for a moment more. Her senses weren’t telling her to be afraid and she was damned if she was going to spend the rest of her life jumping at shadows. She squared her shoulders and pushed open the door.

  There was a person next to the stainless steel counter. A person with a white apron and a hairnet and an enormous spliff.

  The woman was tucking dreads inside a hairnet. She had a navy blue apron with white writing across the bib which read ‘Papa Joe’s Kitchen’.

  Lydia wanted to say ‘who the Hell are you?’ but there was something intimidating about the woman which made her modify it to ‘who are you?’

  ‘Charlie hired me,’ she said, her attention firmly on her hair. ‘Are you my kitchen assistant?’

  ‘I live here,’ Lydia said. ‘At the moment. I’m sorry, but there has been a mistake. I don’t need a cook. I’m not opening the cafe, just looking after the building for a few weeks.’

  The woman shrugged, stubbing out her spliff into a foil container and tucking it into her apron pocket.

  Lydia was momentarily flummoxed by the woman’s calm silence. She said: ‘I’m going to call Charlie, get this sorted out.’

  ‘You gotta do what you gotta do.’ The woman turned and bent, lifting a crate onto the metal work surface and commenced unpacking ingredients.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Lydia said, as firmly as she could manage. ‘This is not a business and I’m not employing anybody. How did you get in here, anyway? The door was locked.’

  The woman continued unpacking as if Lydia hadn’t spoken.

  Lydia went from the kitchen into the deserted cafe and dialled Charlie on her mobile.

  ‘There’s a woman in my kitchen. Would you care to explain?’

  ‘Lyds, sweetheart. I mean to call you first. Are you okay?’

  Mollified by the concern in his tone, even while she knew it was carefully calculated, Lydia tried to hold onto her righteous anger. ‘I’m not okay, no. You sent a cook. I don’t need a cook because I’m not opening the cafe. You said I didn’t have to run The Fork. You said –’

  ‘Angel isn’t a cook, she’s an artist. You wait until you taste her pastries.’

  Lydia rolled her eyes to heaven and prayed for strength. ‘I’m not going to taste her pastries because she isn’t going to be cooking any. I can’t afford to pay anybody, to start a business. That’s the only reason I’m living here. I’m broke.’

  ‘I’m paying her,’ Charlie said. ‘You don’t have to worry.’

  ‘But you said I didn’t have to run a business if I didn’t want to, you said this was just a place to stay.’

  ‘Lydia, Sweetheart. You know how it goes. I told you I needed the place to look used. What better way to do that than actually use it?’

  Lydia closed her eyes. She hated it when her mother was right.

  ‘So this place is opening?’

  ‘On Saturday,’ Charlie said. ‘Don’t worry. No publicity, no renovations, nobody will even come in.’

  Lydia opened her eyes long enough to look through the grimy windows which faced the street. He was right, nobody in their right mind would walk into a place which looked like this to eat. Unless they knew it was owned by Charlie and they thought it was a front for something more interesting.

  ‘How long do I have to open for?’

  ‘A couple of weeks. Month, tops.’

  ‘I won’t be here for a month. I meant hours. How many during the day to make it look legit?’

  ‘Whatever you like,’ his voice was warm, now, happy that Lydia was cooperating. ‘And I think it will be safer. After what happened I don’t like the thought of you all alone in the building. If you’ve got people downstairs, even just Angel, it makes the place safer.’

  Well that sounded good, Lydia had to admit. She sighed. ‘What if I open for two hours a day, just mid-afternoon to miss the breakfast, lunch and after-work crowds? You can put whatever you like on the books.’

  ‘Now you’ve got the idea,’ Charlie said approvingly. ‘Minimum hours. You can flip the sign whenever you like.’

  ‘I appreciate your concern, but what else is this about? You don’t really need to open the place, nobody official is going to bother you –’ Lydia began, then she stopped, realising she didn’t want to know. ‘Never mind.’

  ‘We can talk more in person. I’ll be round soon.’

  In the kitchen, Angel had rolled up her sleeves and was kneading dough.

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m not opening today.’ I’m not opening at all, she added silently. She wouldn’t be here long enough for any of this nonsense and, once she was gone, Charlie could do what he liked.

  ‘This is for the freezer,’ Angel said without looking up. ‘I need a stock ready.’

  Lydia thought about telling her that she didn’t need any stock ready as they wouldn’t be selling any food anytime soon, but she decided life was too short and went back upstairs to put on some war paint. She knew she looked like shit and didn’t want to present Charlie with the pale, wan visage she had seen in the mirror that morning. She might be currently persona-non-gratis at her place of employment, she might have been attacked by an armed man the day before, but Lydia Crow was nobody’s victim and she had no intention of looking like one. Especially not in front of the head of the Crow Family.

  * * *

  Uncle Charlie sat in the seat opposite, his hands on the Formica table, palms down. His shirt sleeves were rolled up exposing hairy forearms, the skin inked with old green and black tattoos. Lydia knew that the twisting vines continued up his arms and over his chest and stomach and that the Family emblem, the silhouette of a crow in flight, was repeated several times. When she had been little she had sat on his legs and traced the lines of ink. ‘How many crows can you find?’ Uncle Charlie had said and then bounced his legs up and down so that Lydia’s vision had blurred and the ink had seemed to shift.

  Angel brought a pot of coffee and poured it, her expression blank.

  Charlie didn’t speak, even after she had returned to the kitchen and Lydia decided to wait him out. She busied herself with the milk and then, on a whim, added a sachet of brown sugar to her drink. It was pleasant to stir the liquid and she counted the rotations rather than look at her silent uncle.

  ‘I can’t read you,’ Charlie said finally.

  ‘I’m an open book,’ Lydia replied, forcing herself to look into Charlie’s face.

  He leaned back in his seat, clearly sizing her up. ‘Little Lydia, all grown up.’

  ‘You said you needed a favour. I’m assuming you’re talking something in addition to this little set-up?’ Lydia waved a hand to indicate The Fork. ‘Are you going to send in a manager for that, or will it just be me and Angel.’ Lydia mentally kicked herself. ‘Angel on her own, I mean. I’m not managing anything.’

  ‘I need an investigator.’ Charlie said, his face and voice serious.

  Was he making fun of her? There had to be hundreds in the city. Every single one of them more qualified.

  ‘I can’t use any of my regular crowd,’ Charlie said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘This has to be very private.’

  ‘That’s in the
job description. Any decent investigator is going to be completely discreet.’ Quite apart from the fact that nobody in their right mind would screw over the Crows.

  ‘I need someone I trust,’ he said.

  Lydia leaned back in her seat and resisted the urge to reply. He wasn’t telling her anything that suggested he needed her, the lame duck of the Crow Family. He wanted her back in London and he still wasn’t telling her why.

  ‘I will pay your standard rate, of course.’

  Lydia named her hourly rate. ‘Plus expenses.’

  He nodded. ‘There’s a bonus if you complete the job, too. I look after my people and I reward results.’

  ‘And I stay here rent-free, hassle-free,’ she put a little emphasis on the words, ‘as arranged.’

  He hesitated for a micro second and then nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Lydia said. ‘So, what’s the case?’ Lydia didn’t really believe there was one. Charlie was up to something else and she was just curious enough to play along until she found out what.

  ‘Madeleine is missing.’

  ‘My cousin, Maddie?’ Lydia frowned. Family was sacred. Charlie wouldn’t lie about that. ‘For how long?’

  ‘Five days,’ Charlie said. ‘I’ve followed every lead I can think of, checked with her friends and the people she works with. I’ve looked in all her usual locations, interviewed her ex-boyfriend.’

  That wouldn’t have been fun for the ex, Lydia thought. ‘Is he still breathing?’

  Charlie nodded, his expression perfectly neutral. ‘He had nothing to do with it.’

  The certainty of his words said it all. Charlie Crow knew how to conduct an interview.

  ‘What about a current boyfriend? Anyone on the scene?’

  ‘That’s what I want you to find out.’

  Lydia sat back, unconvinced. Charlie was all-powerful, head of the infamous Crow Family. Every single person he spoke to in connection with this would have spilled every last secret they had, every illicit thought they had ever had, every grudge they had held. He really didn’t need her. She opened her mouth to say as much, but Charlie spoke first.

  ‘I can’t be on this,’ Charlie said, lifting his massive shoulders. ‘Not anymore. I’m like a hawk amongst the sparrows. It draws attention and this can’t get out.’

  The truth of that statement hit her even as she was saying ‘I know’. It would look weak. A problem in the Family, the merest suggestion that someone had got to a Crow, that sort of thing had repercussions. None of the families had any real power, not like the good old days. The Crows had the most, though, and that mattered.

  ‘Tristan Fox has been sniffing around. Either he senses something is wrong and he wants to press an advantage while I’m weak or he has something to do with it and he’s gloating.’

  Now Lydia was properly shocked. ‘He wouldn’t. He would never dare.’

  ‘Things have changed,’ Charlie said gently. ‘You’ve been away a long time.’

  ‘Five years,’ Lydia said. And the truce had held for seventy-five before that. The thought that it might crack was unimaginable. Horrifying.

  Charlie must have seen something in her face as his grim expression softened and, at once, he looked like the uncle she remembered. His hands had stayed completely still but now he moved, reaching across to cover her hand with one of his. It was massive, dwarfing hers. ‘Nothing is going to happen. We won’t let it. Tristan, me, David and Alejandro. None of us want that so it won’t happen.’

  Lydia swallowed hard, then nodded. ‘I’ll find Madeleine,’ she managed. ‘I’m sure she’s just taken a few days away. Her mum’s a bit...’ She stopped speaking, remembering abruptly that Madeleine’s mum, Daisy, was Charlie’s aunt.

  ‘She is.’ He smiled properly for the first time. ‘That’s another reason I want back-up.’

  Chapter Four

  Lydia's mum married into the Crow Family with her eyes wide open. When she met Lydia’s dad, he was twenty-five and a big deal. Not as powerful as his big brother, Charlie, but a man to watch nonetheless. Mum was twenty-two and doing a PhD in biochemistry. She knew about the forces in the world, the building blocks of life and the tiny little pieces of matter which made up every single thing in the universe. She was an outsider, having grown up in Maidstone. She had heard rumours about the four Families, but had dismissed them as urban legend. She knew that only children believed in magic and that her beloved science explained everything in the physical world. And then she met Henry Crow in a bar and watched while he pulled coins from thin air, thinking that he was very good at sleight of hand.

  Lydia had loved to hear the story of how they met, the idea of her suburban parents drinking cocktails in a bar and being smitten with each other across a crowded room, as quaint and alien as an old film. When she pictured the scene, it was practically in black-and-white.

  ‘And then he sent flowers to the lab, even though I hadn’t told him where I worked. And waited outside for hours because he didn’t know what time I would be finished.’

  ‘Which was cute, not creepy,’ Lydia would add, smiling to show she was joking and truly wasn’t raining on her mother’s good memory.

  ‘And I just knew.’ She always finished with this. This and a dreamy, faraway expression that was hard to decipher. It was happy, certainly, but mixed with other ingredients that a teenage Lydia hadn’t recognised.

  Susan Sykes had only one condition before she joined in holy matrimony; that if they had children, they would be brought up away from the Family and, as far as possible, away from magic. Henry Crow whole-heartedly agreed – Lydia’s parents really were ridiculously well-suited and, when Susan was nearing her due date, they moved lock-stock out of Camberwell and Henry handed in his resignation to Grandpa Crow. Once Lydia was old enough, her dad explained that it hadn’t been that easy and, if he had been the eldest son, it would have been impossible. Luckily, that role was inhabited by Charlie. Charlie didn’t understand Henry’s desire but he was a good big brother and he respected Henry’s decision and he smoothed the path with Grandpa.

  Standing on the pavement outside her parents’ 1930s bay-fronted semi-detached on the quiet leafy street she had been desperate to escape, Lydia felt the familiar mix of love and guilt and panic. She didn’t know why, but her childhood home made her skin itch, like it was a too-tight dress. Taking a job in Scotland had been about more than just finding her professional calling, it had also been about minimising contact with the two people who were, at this moment, pulling back the net curtain at the living room window and waving enthusiastically. And there was the volume knob on her guilt, twisted up to ten.

  Her mother was already opening the front door. ‘Darling!’ Then, a small frown. ‘You’re too thin, are you eating?’

  ‘All the time,’ Lydia said, kissing her mum’s soft cheek and hugging her tightly.

  ‘Look who’s here,’ Susan was turning, her voice raised and unnaturally bright. It must be a bad day. Lydia braced herself, but her father stepped forward and hugged her, too.

  ‘Lyds,’ he said. ‘My beautiful girl.’

  Lydia blinked back sudden tears. ‘Hi Dad, how are you doing?’

  ‘We won the rugby,’ he said, turning away and heading back towards the living room.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Lydia said, scanning his figure for weight loss and his movements for shakiness.

  ‘Tea?’ Her mum still sounded as if she’d been sucking helium and her cheeks were flushed.

  ‘Sure,’ Lydia changed course and led the way to the kitchen.

  ‘Charlie phoned,’ her mother said, the moment her feet crossed from the hall into the tiny square kitchen.

  ‘Oh?’ Lydia concentrated on filling the kettle, pulling cups from the little wooden mug tree and getting the milk out of the fridge. The longer she could put off looking at her mother, the longer she would have to formulate some kind of reassuring response.

  ‘He says Madeleine has gone missing and that you are looking for her.’

&
nbsp; ‘Mmm.’ Lydia made a non-committal noise to hide her surprise. What was Charlie doing running to her parents, spreading the news? She held up the sugar jar. ‘Still two for Dad? Or have the anti-sugar police knocked down the door, yet?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘It’s just a job,’ Lydia said, keeping her eyes on the tea. ‘You know I’m an investigator. Charlie wants my professional opinion.’ She squeezed the teabag on the side of the mug and then put it into the pot her mother kept for the purpose.

  ‘I told you there would be strings. You know how we feel about...’ Her mother took a breath, tried again. ‘It’s not safe.’

  ‘I’ll be careful.’ A stack of rinsed eggshells sat in a cardboard container, waiting to go out to the compost heap along with the used teabags and the sight of this familiar domestic detail, clutched her heart. Was her dad even tending his beloved compost heap anymore? ‘How is Dad doing?’ She asked, finally looking at her mum.

  ‘Good days and bad days.’ She picked up a cloth and began wiping up non-existent spills from the gleaming worktop. ‘It’s been better since –’ She stopped abruptly and hung the cloth over the tap.

  ‘Since I’ve been away.’ Lydia finished her mother’s sentence. Swallowing the bitter pill.

  ‘Just coincidence, darling.’ She reached out and patted Lydia’s arm.

  In the living room, Henry Crow was watching the snooker with the sound turned off. He accepted his mug of tea and then frowned at Lydia, as if trying to place her.

  No, no, no. ‘Enjoying the snooker, Dad?’ It was just an excuse to use his name, to remind him of their relationship. Every time he forgot her it was like a blow.

  ‘Yeah. It’s all right.’ He blew on his tea, the steam fogging up his glasses. ‘How was the frozen north?’

  Relief flooded through Lydia’s body. ‘Yeah. It’s all right.’ She smiled. ‘Bit chilly.’

  Her dad took his glasses off and squinted at her. His blue eyes were as bright as ever and his face still handsome. ‘I don’t like that job.’