by Jane Adams
* * *
In the briefing room, she added Clara Buranou’s name and address to the board and took her time to write a report on the girl and on Mark Richards. Translated into official language, there was little to tell. Most of what she thought or felt was mere speculation and therefore not the sort of thing that needed typing up. When she glanced at her watch she saw that it was five past seven. One more thing she wanted to do. Logging onto the Intranet, she ran Donovan’s name, cross-referenced to people smuggling and then to antiquities, unsure of which part of the picture she should be looking at. Half a dozen hits in all. Two in prison, one deceased. The imprisoned pair she checked for dates, but in neither case was their incarceration recent. She logged the three remaining and put in a request for files, then, unable to get any further, took herself off home.
* * *
That night she dreamed of Ethan Merrill. They were walking through a mist-covered landscape. A soft light illuminated both mist and dew-damp grass. As Rozlyn looked more closely, it seemed that the webs of a thousand spiders spread out across the landscape, their silvered filaments shining and shimmering in the diffused light, linking and spreading their delicate tracery as far in every direction as Rozlyn could see. She was reminded of the dream she’d had of Charlie’s funeral. Ethan Merrill spoke to her, his words only half heard and incomprehensible. There seemed to be a rhythm to the words, almost, but not quite, like poetry, and the language he used was sonorous and rich. And it occurred to Rozlyn, even though the words were strange, that the old man talked about the web spread wide beneath their feet and the vaster web that linked all things alive and dead and yet to be.
Rozlyn found herself straining to hear more. To understand the way of the wyrd described in the old man’s words. In her dream she wept with frustration at her lack of understanding; at the complexity of it all and at the strange and magical simplicity.
Rozlyn woke, bathed in sweat, the cold morning light just breaking through the gap in the curtained window, her body aching as though, in her sleep, she’d walked for miles.
CHAPTER 15
A car had followed Rozlyn back to Clara Buranou’s flat. When she pulled in at the side of the road, it passed her and the driver eased into an almost-too-small parking spot a hundred yards further on.
“Looks like we’ve got company?”
There were two men in the car. The passenger got out and leaned against the wing, glancing along the length of the thoroughfare before allowing his gaze finally to rest upon Rozlyn’s vehicle.
Rozlyn glanced at the female uniform seated in the passenger seat. “Quality of the car and cut of the suit, I’d say he’s one of Big Frank Parker’s minions. Frank likes his boys to be well dressed.”
The policewoman laughed, then asked. “Think it has anything to do with the Buranou woman?”
The Buranou woman, Rozlyn thought. She was used to the way her fellow officers depersonalised those they were involved with but, although she understood their reasons, she still didn’t like it. “I doubt it,” she said. “Whatever it is can wait until we’ve seen her anyway.”
She led the way into the house, aware that the man watched, but made no move, almost as though he expected Rozlyn to attend to business first.
“Bit of a dive, this, isn’t it?”
Rozlyn nodded. The odour that rose up from the carpet and peeled from the walls, bringing paint and paper with it, spoke of damp and long-term decay, and the stair carpet was so old and rotten that in places it had frayed to holes at the edge of the tread. Very safety conscious landlord, Rozlyn thought, reminded of what Jenny had said about the lack of fire escape.
“You know she won’t be here.”
Rozlyn nodded. “I know she won’t be here.”
Clara’s door stood open. Her keys hung from a nail beside it. The boxes that had contained her clothes were empty. Left behind was only the scant furnishing that came with the flat, the television and a few groceries in the kitchen cupboard.
Rozlyn listed them. Flour, sugar, instant coffee and the same brand of cheap tea bag she had seen at Mrs Chinowski’s. The tiny fridge, on the floor behind the curtain, was empty. What did Clara eat? Was she given her meals at the Larks, or had she taken the rest with her? Did she even use the fridge?
Opening it, she felt a blast of cold, so supposed Clara must have done, and a patch that looked like desiccated milk on the lower shelf indicated that she had stored something inside. She could hear her colleague moving furniture, searching for traces of the missing girl. Rozlyn straightened up, shutting the fridge door with her foot, and went to join her. There was little to examine and her colleague had already completed the task.
“Anything?”
“A magazine, couple of newspapers and a till receipt for milk and chicken breast.” She showed Rozlyn her finds. The receipt was from the local Co-op, the magazine a back issue of Cosmopolitan. The newspapers, dated from just the day before were a copy of the Sun and a broadsheet, which, when Rozlyn unfolded it, turned out to be the Guardian. Rozlyn smiled wryly. Shades of Charlie Higgins, she thought, remembering the man’s insistence that you had to read both types of paper to fully cover the news.
Was it a habit of Clara’s, adopted from Charlie? In which case, did she know him far better than she’d been letting on? Or was that reading too much into such a random find?
“OK,” she said. “Call it in and notify the landlord. Oh, and get Health and Safety and the buildings inspector in on the act.”
“Why?”
“Third floor and no fire escape. I’ll make a bet he’s not declaring income from this excuse for a slum, to say nothing of the state of the rest of the building. It’s rotten through, “
“Oh. Right,” her colleague said. She neither looked nor sounded convinced that this was her responsibility. “Shouldn’t we be out searching for her?” She quailed under Rozlyn’s gaze but then shrugged her shoulders as though to feign indifference. “Don’t suppose she’ll get far anyway.” She sounded satisfied with that conclusion.
“Hard to say.” Rozlyn went to the door, reflecting that in terms of distance, Clara had come right the way across Europe and that had to mean something though in all other respects, she wondered if that distance could be measured in terms of miles northward or a precipitous southward slide.
She paused at the head of the stairs, looking down into the dim, dusty emptiness. After a dozen steps down, the staircase dog-legged at a small landing and turned away, invisible from where she stood. It was an oddly vertiginous feeling, looking down into an empty pit of stairs and landing and then bleak wall, as though Clara’s world had been separated and dissociated from the rest of the house and, by extension, the remainder of humanity.
Did Charlie come and visit her here? How did they meet? She should have pressed Clara about that yesterday.
Why hadn’t she? Why had she left time for Clara to pack her stuff and run without Rozlyn learning anything more about Charlie, or how she had come to be here or her association — and there must, surely, be an association — with the mysterious Thomas Thompson?
Had Charlie met her on one of his cleaning jobs? Had he, despite his warnings to Mouse, gone to one of the houses when there were people there? People like Clara Buranou? Rozlyn reached out for the handrail and then, almost unconsciously, to rest her other hand against the wall.
What, she asked herself, constituted the set or subset of people like Clara Buranou and why would their kind entice the likes of Charlie Higgins to become involved?
With a sudden flash of pained insight she knew what Charlie Higgins had seen in Clara Buranou and in Mrs Chinowski and probably also in the old man he’d visited in the Larks. He’d recognised them. Recognised that something in them that was also at the heart of his own self and, though Rozlyn instantly tried to force the analogy away, saw the same thing reflected in Rozlyn. The shocked realisation dawned that Charlie’s continued association with her had been because Charlie had understood Rozlyn’s need. Her l
oneliness, her sense of being somehow dispossessed. That was what kept Charlie Higgins coming back to her. Kept feeding her the scraps and shreds of information for the small bills with which Rozlyn had rewarded him.
She’d told herself that Charlie Higgins needed the money. That, Rozlyn knew now, was little more than a convenient fiction. Charlie worked three jobs plus his cleaning for Mr T. Charlie didn’t need Rozlyn’s handouts. It went much deeper than that and the knowledge that Charlie Higgins had pitied her, had sought to make her, Rozlyn Priest, one of his dependants, shocked Rozlyn to the very core.
How dare the likes of Charlie Higgins pity her?
“Ma’am?”
“What?”
“We going or what?”
She’d been standing at the head of the stairs, buried so deep in her shocked response that she’d all but forgotten about the uniformed officer. Rozlyn scowled and then continued down the stairs, her hand still touching the sticky dampness of the shedding paper, needing something at least seemingly solid against her palm as though that would help to regain her equilibrium. Once outside, she sent her colleague back to the car to report Clara’s disappearance and summon the authorities to inspect the building.
Rozlyn was aware that her colleague watched as she stood and waited for the man in the suit to cross the road and saunter along the pavement towards her. The constable was miffed at being kept out of the loop; Rozlyn could see it in the sour look on her face.
“You’ve got a message for me?” Rozlyn prompted the big man, a handspan taller than Rozlyn, but also outhouse broad.
“Big Frank wants to see you, Inspector Priest. Eight o’clock, tonight. In the Queen’s. Says he’s buying.”
Rozlyn raised an eyebrow. “Tell him, in that case, I’ll be sure not to be late.”
The man nodded approval. “Big Frank likes people to be punctual.”
“I’ll not be late, unless it’s unavoidable. Criminals don’t keep regular hours, in my experience.”
The big man said nothing. He raised his chin, staring, for several seconds, beneath half-closed lids at the top floor of the house and then fixing his gaze back upon Rozlyn. “Someone done a runner, have they?”
“What makes you think that?”
He shrugged and turned away. “Eight o’clock, remember.”
“How could I forget?”
Walking back to the car, Rozlyn could feel the constable’s eyes on her, see the woman’s mouth still fixed in its stiff, disapproving line — which, Rozlyn figured, was quite a feat, considering she was talking on her mobile at the same time. Rozlyn wondered if the lack of movement clipped her words or sharpened them, or made her more difficult to understand, the stiff upper lip extending to her entire jaw.
“What was all that about?” the constable asked as Rozlyn returned to the car.
“Just a message.” Had it been Jenny, or Constable Patel she’d have explained, Rozlyn realised. She wasn’t certain what made it different with this woman. Perhaps her lack of interest in the person of Clara Buranou. The implied lack of compassion.
She turned the key in the ignition, wondering at her own despairing mood and aware that it extended, probably unfairly, to the rest of the human race.
CHAPTER 16
He had fallen asleep reading from the Heliand; the God Spell given to him by his father and one of Treven’s most treasured possessions. Before battle, when — however brave the man, however tried and tested the warrior — strange thoughts and doubts would creep unbidden into the mind, Treven would read the words of the Good Thegn Thomas and draw strength from the knowledge that to serve your Lord was the only option of an honourable man.
Thomas gimalda — uuas im githugan mann,
Diulic drohtines thegan -: ‘ne sculun uui . . .
Thomas, one of the Twelve and a man worthy of his Lord’s praise then spoke.
We should not argue with our Lord’s will, he said. Rather we should endure with him, our Lord and ruler. For this is a Thegn’s free choice, that we stand fast beside him and there die with him. For we all must die.
We will follow him wherever he goes and not count ourselves worthy of life, except that we, his people, live and die beside our leader. Upon this act will lie the judgement of God and of those who will come after us.
Treven had followed and Treven had endured and it seemed strange to him now that this should be his reward. A lifetime’s worth of troubled sleep and evil dreams.
Once again, he dreamed of Wotan and now the dark-skinned woman walked beside him. The stranger had loosed her hair. It curled and waved and writhed about her face and shoulders like a dark and living halo. She moved as though in a dream of her own, staring in wonder and stepping cautiously as one who wakes and finds themselves sleepwalking and standing on unfamiliar, dangerous ground.
In his dream Treven had found himself on the rise, between the banks and trees where the hanged man had dropped flesh on that first day he had come to Theadingford. He gagged on the stench of rotting meat, more noisome in his dream than it had been in reality. It was as though the corpses of all those slain in battle, the battles of years and the bodies of his lost friends and fallen enemies had been stacked high in this one place and the stench of them thickened the air so that he could hardly draw breath.
Even in his dream, Treven was choking, his lungs filled up with the stink of blood and shit and sweat that had filled his nostrils so often in battle. Even as he struggled for air he felt strong hands grasping at his ankles and, looking down, the faces of fallen warriors stared up at him, mouths open, silently screaming, their last breath rising up to block his lungs and their hands, so many hands, clasping at his ankles and threatening to drag him down.
He could not pull free.
Again and again he strove and struggled, heaving himself this way and that until at last, he drew his sword and cut downwards, slicing through the faces of the dead, slashing at the sinew through wrists and the iron fingers of his fallen comrades. In his dream he could name each one. In his dream he breathed the last agonies of their death. In his dream he fought them, terrified that he would die in his sleep and be trapped forever in their death throes.
Somehow he fought free. He struggled to the rising land where he had seen that carved wooden cross with its ambiguous figure. The Christ or the Lord Wotan? Treven could no longer tell, but the black woman stood there, staring up in wonder at the hanging figure and as her hand reached out to touch, Treven felt as though the woman reached into his very heart and soul and tore them from him. The pain in his gut ripped through his consciousness and for a time he could hear only his own screams as the fire in his bowels threatened to rip him apart.
Then, as the pain subsided, he heard a hammer striking wood. He was lying on the ground now, at the foot of the cross, gazing up at that scarred, carved face with its wise and missing eye.
Painfully, Treven turned his head towards the rhythm of the hammer blows, seeing, as he did, the bird with its spread wings pegged fast to the ground. Its cries of pain pierced him, as the hammer fell, metal on wood, as a man — Treven could not make out his features– drove the wooden spikes deep into the earth. The crow pecked and tore at the hand that held it down and, as the man stepped away, Treven saw his shadow, hammer still gripped in its fist, raise the blooded knuckles to his lips and lick them clean.
Treven woke with a stone in his stomach, cold as ice that chilled him through and did not thaw even when he broke his fast with meat and warm bread. Gratefully, but none the less impatient, he drank the herb concoction that Osric had brewed for him these past five mornings. Since that day he had first dreamed of the white-haired, one-eyed man the sickness in his stomach had begun to disturb almost his every meal. Osric’s potion worked, but it was hard pressed. Treven, unused to sickness of any kind, bore the whole thing grudgingly and allowed his temper to fray at both ends. His servants kept their distance from his outbursts and even Hugh made himself scarce, though Treven knew that his moods were simply an additional
excuse for his Shire Reeve to absent himself.
Knowing that Hugh sought the company of Cate Scrivener did nothing to soothe him. Treven had grown tired of the arguments between them. Treven’s urging that Hugh should leave the girl alone and his empty threats to send Hugh away should he not comply. Empty, because Hugh had been appointed at the king’s command and not Treven’s own and, though Hugh never pressed the point, that knowledge lay heavy between them. For the first time, their friendship was strained. Friendship forged in battle was struggling for life in times of peace as Treven slowly realised just how little they now shared in common.
Trying hard to be hopeful, Treven acknowledged that in the past month, something at least had been achieved. The hall had been re-roofed and the walls shored up sound enough to last out the winter. The earth floor had been cleared and re-packed and strewn with hay and sweet herbs and a trestle table and benches crafted of green wood by the local carpenter, there being no seasoned timber available sufficient to the task. He’d cut the planks and laid then alternately face up and face down to minimise the warp and braced the underside with four straight bands, pegged solidly to the top. It would still twist a little as it dried, he reckoned, but there was little could be done to help that. The carpenter and his son had braced the walls, again with green timber, which would tighten about the pegs as it dried and strengthen the whole and reinforced them with new wattle hurdles, daubed well with river clay and dung mixed in with crushed reed and straw. The hall now windproof and, lit with tallow and rush lights, was a pleasing enough dwelling to spend the winter — though Hugh, used to better lodging in time of peace, had not yet ceased to complain.
The carpenter had made also two box beds, with close slats that lifted the sleeper clear of the floor. Bracken, dried and spread with a coarse blanket, gave some degree of comfort and Treven was not displeased with the arrangement. For a man who had spent more years than he cared to count sleeping where he fell, this was close to luxury, which was not to say he did not have plans for an increase of comfort given a little time.
