The Silver Mark

by Sarah Painter

  The rain was pouring, now, and there was a rumble of thunder in the distance. Lydia cursed the fact that Yas had bought a mid-terrace. There was no easy way to get round the back of the house, with a locked door at one end of the street which likely led to the back of the terrace. There was a little gate in the railings and steps down to the basement. There were a few plant pots with earth and no visible plants, and a bright green plastic crate with empty bottles and jars, and a plain white door with obscured glass panels. It didn’t have a separate doorbell or number. It looked like Yas owned the whole place, which was impressive. Although she could be sub-letting it under the radar. Lydia knocked on the wooden frame and peered through the small window which looked onto the terraced area. It was fitted with white metal security bars and fully obscured with a thick white blind.

  After a moment of hesitation, she called Fleet. Karen had always said that a good investigator used every resource available, was never too proud to ask for help. She hadn’t openly advocated lusting after those resources, but then who knew? Perhaps Lydia simply hadn’t got to that module in the course before she’d left Aberdeen and started her own firm. ‘Can I ask a favour?’

  ‘You can always ask,’ Fleet’s voice was distracted and there were noises in the background. Beeping, voices, something mechanical which suggested construction work.

  ‘It will stop me from committing a crime.’

  A slight pause. ‘You are a stressful girlfriend, you know that.’

  ‘I’m not your girlfriend,’ Lydia had walked a little way down the street, not wanting a concerned neighbour to call in that she was loitering outside Yas’s property. It was London, so pigs would likely fly first, but the intent to commit crime had the side-effect of making a person paranoid.

  ‘And that there is a prime example of what I’m talking about,’ Fleet’s tone was hard to read. ‘Is that official?’

  ‘Yes. Officially, I’m not your girlfriend.’

  ‘And unofficially?’

  ‘I like you.’ Saying the words was like pulling teeth, and they made Lydia feel like a stupid school kid.

  ‘I like you, too, Lyds. Which is why I will prevent you from ending up in jail. What’s the problem?’

  She could hear the smile in his voice and knew she was about to wipe it away. ‘You know there was a woman trying to break into my gaff? I’ve come to visit her but she’s not answering the door.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I need to get in. I have a bad feeling.’

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘The Crow Family sort. The spidey-senses sort.’ In for a penny... Uncle Charlie could warn her all he liked, she needed help and Fleet had done nothing but show that he was on her side. Besides, she needed to prove she wasn’t Martin Blank. She gave Fleet Yas Bishop’s address.

  ‘Bayswater? I’m not far, as it happens. I’ll be there in twenty.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Lydia walked back along the road and found a cafe. She bought a takeaway cup of coffee and by the time she had walked back to Yas’s, Fleet was pulling up in his Honda Civic. She handed him the steaming cup. The rain had passed as quickly as it had come and the smell of wet brick and tarmac competed with the faint odour of drains and the ever-present exhaust fumes. Lydia filtered the lot through a whiff of Fleet’s coffee. London’s bouquet.

  Fleet knocked on the door. He rang the bell several times, then fixed Lydia with a steady look. ‘I don’t have cause to enter. And this isn’t my manor.’

  ‘I know,’ Lydia said. ‘But what if I was a concerned citizen who had seen someone in distress waving from that window?’ She pointed to the upper storey sash.

  ‘Through the curtains?’ He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I have very good eyesight.’

  ‘If I was following a tip from a concerned citizen that somebody was in immediate danger then, yes, I could, in theory, enter the house without permission.’

  ‘Great, then.’

  Fleet sized up the door and took a couple of steps back. Then he put his coffee down next to the step, pulled a set of picks and a bump key from his pocket and proceeded to make short work of the lock. ‘No deadbolt,’ he muttered. ‘Sloppy security.’

  ‘Better than having your nice painted door kicked down, though,’ Lydia said. ‘This looks expensive. Nice skills, by the way.’

  ‘YouTube,’ Fleet said. He had the door open and had announced himself loudly. ‘Ms Bishop? Are you home? Ms Bishop, don’t be alarmed. Are you all right? I’m with the police, my name is DCI Fleet and I am entering your property on suspicion of...’ He hesitated. ‘In case you need a hand with anything.’

  ‘Wait here,’ Fleet said, turning back to Lydia.

  Ignoring this, Lydia followed him inside. Within seconds, she could feel the same creeping nausea as she had felt in Alejandro’s office.

  ‘You okay?’ Fleet was looking back over his shoulder. ‘Go outside, you look peaky.’

  Fleet had a hand over his own mouth and he pulled a clean white handkerchief from his jacket pocket and held it over his mouth and nose. Lydia was stunned for a moment, thinking that he could also sense the grey metallic edge in the air. The tang of silver. But then she realised that there was another scent, a far more organic odour. Rot.

  The staircase faced the front door and a corridor led deeper into the house, with doors off. Fleet opened the nearest. He looked back and shook his head ‘Looks like a renovation project.’

  The front room was empty apart from a lumpy shape covered in a white dust sheet. The floor was stripped oak, original floorboards with dark knots in the wood. The walls were painted white and bare wires hung from the ornate ceiling rose. At the end of the corridor was the kitchen. It was a sixties monstrosity with peeling blue paint on the walls and cabinets and scratched orange lino on the floor. Through the window, Lydia could see an overgrown garden. The smell in the kitchen was clean, though. Bleach overlaying the mustiness of the old cupboards and flooring. ‘I’m going upstairs,’ Fleet said, he filled the kitchen doorway, hands stuffed in his pockets. ‘Wait here. Don’t touch anything.’

  Lydia nodded so that Fleet would move. Once he did, she waited a beat and then followed him.

  The stairs were bare and splattered with paint but, more pressingly, the smell was getting worse. The house had an echoey, empty feel, but Lydia knew that somebody was waiting for them on the second floor. The door to the right on the landing was ajar. The smell was thicker, here, it caught in the back of Lydia’s throat. Fleet pushed the door with his elbow and poked his head inside. ‘Ms Bishop? It’s the police. Can you hear me?’ He was speaking loudly and moving quickly, now. Lydia followed him into what was obviously Yas’s bedroom. She took in the wide-striped gold and cream wallpaper, the padded velvet headboard and French-style furniture. Her eye refusing to settle on the figure lying on the floor between the bed and the spindly legs of the dressing table. Fleet was by the woman’s side, he wasn’t speaking to her anymore and was, instead, holding his head just above her face, the expression on his face serious as he concentrated. ‘She’s long gone,’ Lydia said, her gaze skittering over the body. Its unnatural stillness. The waxen look to the skin. The open eyes with one eyelid at half-mast. Frozen.

  ‘I know,’ Fleet said. ‘Gotta check, though. Procedure.’ He straightened up to a crouching position and looked carefully around at the body and the room. Lydia kept quiet. She tried to do the same, to focus her mind on the details of the scene. She had wanted a change from adultery, Lydia reminded herself. This was different. The blood which had soaked into the front of Yas Bishop’s silky blouse and turned dark brown was different. The burgundy pool beneath Yas Bishop’s turned cheek was different. The way it had a tactile surface, like the skin on a custard. That was different, too. That half-open eye. If she were alive, it would be mid-wink. In death, it was obscene. Yas Bishop didn’t look surprised or frightened. Truth was, she didn’t look anything human at all. That was the thing with a dead body. They were no longer a person, just a fascimile of o
ne.

  Lydia swallowed and took out her notebook. Details, Lydia. Notice the details. She jotted down her impressions. Used her phone to take multiple pictures of the scene. She felt like she was playing at being a detective. Enacting the procedure gleaned from a thousand television shows and books, backed up by the dry instructions of her meagre investigative training. The training hadn’t covered a crime like this, let alone being on scene. The instructions had stopped abruptly with the advice to touch nothing and to call the professionals.

  ‘Clean cut,’ Fleet said, his voice startling her. ‘From behind, maybe. Definitely a sharp blade and it looks like one slice. Takes a lot to do that first time. So, maybe not their first rodeo.’

  ‘Not suicide?’ Lydia said, her voice feeling as if it was coming from very far away.

  Fleet straightened up. ‘Doubt it. There are easier ways to go.’

  ‘Unless she was disturbed. In her mind.’

  Fleet had his phone out. ‘I’m calling it in, so you might want to make yourself scarce.’

  Lydia was surprised out of her numbness. ‘Don’t you need me to be the concerned citizen?’

  ‘Nah,’ Fleet said. ‘I’ll sort something. Say I was passing. Or that I got an anonymous call.’

  Lydia opened her mouth to say something smart about him bending the rules and then closed it again. Fleet was doing her a favour, protecting her from getting involved with the law. Her phone was still gripped in one hand and she snapped a final few pictures of the body and the room. Now that she was released, free to leave, she felt rooted there. As if this horror was a web and she was caught.

  ‘Get going,’ Fleet said. ‘Seriously. This clearly didn’t just happen, but you said you called her before? That links you to her. You’ll be high on the list of suspects if you’re the one to find her.’

  ‘Right,’ Lydia forced her feet to move. She moved away, feeling strangely unwilling to turn her back on the body.

  ‘And don’t touch anything on your way out. Leave the front door open.’

  Lydia retreated a few steps and then stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ Fleet looked genuinely worried. Lydia could see that he was at an active crime scene and his brain was processing that, plus he was about to lie, to put his job on the line to protect her from the possible wrath of her dodgy family, and he still had enough mental capacity left to focus. On her.

  ‘Nothing,’ Lydia said. ‘I was just thinking, I can stay. I’ll explain why I was here. What I do. You can name me as an informant or whatever you need to do to cover yourself.’

  ‘You don’t need to do that,’ Fleet said. ‘Honestly, I’ll be fine.’

  ‘I’ll tell them I called you because I heard noises and was concerned for her welfare.’

  ‘What about your family? You don’t really want to be on our database, do you?’

  ‘I’m a private investigator. That means I will deal with the law. And I’m legit.’

  Fleet shook his head.

  ‘I am,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m not my uncle.’

  ‘I know,’ he said softly.

  Then it happened. Lydia’s concentration had been distracted by talking to Fleet, she had stopped processing the sight of the poor, dead woman, lying on her high-end carpet, and the background thought, the part of her that had been interpreting her sense impressions, was now front and centre. Screaming in her mind. Silver tang. Metal on her tongue. Not sharp like a beak, all hardened keratin and organic warmth, but sharp and clean and cold.

  ‘I said ‘all right’ then.’ Fleet was staring. ‘Did you hear me? Lydia?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Lydia was turning, now, fleeing. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.’ She stumbled down the stairs, running from the leftover energy which was everywhere, making Lydia’s nerves jangle painfully. The unmistakable calling card of a Silver.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Lydia walked the streets blindly, processing the scene and trying, unsuccessfully, not to replay the image of Yas Bishop covered in blood. Her memory of the scene was jumbled; the copper stench of the blood was overlaid with the bright tang of Silver. Lydia couldn’t shake the sense of horror which came with it. The rain turned heavier and Lydia welcomed the cool water; it felt cleansing. Lydia imagined it rinsing away the metallic sheen she had picked up at Yas’s house.

  Later, after the rain had done its worst and then cleared up as quickly as it had appeared, Lydia finally felt calm enough to head home. Her feet were aching and the pavements were steaming lightly as Lydia walked from the station towards The Fork. She had cleared away the shock and the tragedy of Yas Bishop’s death to reveal the puzzle underneath, and found herself almost disappointed that she hadn’t received a phone call from the police, calling her in. She knew it was better to be kept out of it and she was grateful to Fleet for doing so, but she wanted to be in the thick of it. To have as many details as possible.

  Now that her brain was firing again, she realised something else; she still had other work to do. Yas Bishop’s death or not, Dr Lee was still an active case. And a paying client. Checking her watch for the third time in a row, just to confirm that Fleet would definitely not have finished his working day and that it was too early to have heard anything about Yas, Lydia decided to distract herself with her actual job.

  * * *

  The block of flats that Mrs Lee had visited looked more dismal than the last time Lydia had seen it, when it had been bathed in perfect sunshine. The sky was dirty white, now, the sun layered behind cloud and the promise of rain in the air. A classic English summer’s day.

  Lydia checked her phone as she walked, as if looking at directions. At the main door, she pressed the bell marked ‘Nails’ and waited. After a few seconds the intercom crackled.

  Lydia stepped up and spoke into it. ‘I’d like an appointment. I haven’t…’ She had been going to explain that she hadn’t booked, but the intercom went dead and the door buzzed. ‘Nails’ was the bottom buzzer in a stack of four, so Lydia assumed the flat was on the ground floor. She knocked on the first door and it opened quickly. The tiny woman in front of her was wearing a neat tunic in soft sage green and matching trousers. Her black hair was tied back in a sleek pony tail and she had expertly-applied eyeliner. Lydia hadn’t been expecting someone who looked so professional and healthy. She looked like the employee of a high-end salon. Not that Lydia had much experience in that area.

  ‘You want nails?’

  ‘Uh,’ Lydia really didn’t want nails.

  ‘Acupuncture?’

  Well, that was worse. ‘Um, I’m not…’

  ‘Must be energy healing, then,’ she said brightly, beckoning Lydia inside. ‘Come on through. It’s twenty-five for the first session, special rate, and then I will advise you on the course needed. Usually a six-week treatment, but it depends on how your chakras respond to the healing. Your first session includes a full health and wellbeing assessment and is non-refundable. Do you have any allergies?’

  Lydia had been following the woman and trying to take in her surroundings and she didn’t realise, for a moment, that she had been asked a question. ‘No. No allergies.’

  They had walked down a short hallway and Lydia had glimpsed a kitchen with a small boy standing on a chair to pour milk into a bowl of cereal. A television was playing somewhere in the flat. The flow of words continued as the woman ushered Lydia into a small room which had a massage table set up in the middle and a narrow white desk covered in bottles of jewel-coloured nail polish. The wallpaper was wine and cream and there was a matching wine-coloured blind at the small window. The bed was draped in matching dark red towels, giving it an unfortunate, sacrificial vibe.

  ‘Great,’ the woman picked up a clipboard with a piece of paper attached and a pen and handed them to Lydia. ‘Fill out this health questionnaire.’

  Lydia did as she was told, signing the name Lydia Brown at the bottom. The form had a pleasingly professional look, although the clause which stated, ‘the therapist, Kirsty Thomas, bears no responsibilit
y for conditions, symptoms, or effects arising from the treatment received’, was a little worrying.

  While she did this, Kirsty moved around the room, pulling the blind down and switching on a large salt lamp which gave off a warm pink glow. Gentle, tinkling music began to play and Kirsty squeezed hand sanitiser gel into her hands and began rubbing them together as if preparing to pummel something.

  ‘Take off your shoes and any clothes which will be uncomfortable and lie down.’

  Lydia took her time untying her Doctor Martens, trying to engage the woman in general conversation. ‘Have you been a therapist for long?’

  ‘It’s important to drink plenty of water after the treatment, and not to do anything strenuous. You must rest.’

  ‘Right,’ Lydia said. ‘I’ll cancel my marathon.’

  Kirsty stopped moving and eye-balled Lydia. ‘Have you had energy treatment before?’

  ‘First time,’ Lydia said. ‘Can you tell?’

  She seemed to relax again. ‘And what is your main area of concern? Do you have pain? Discomfort? Feelings of sluggishness or exhaustion? How is your digestion?’

  Lydia pushed down the impulse to retort ‘mind your own’ and said, instead, ‘I’ve just been like, really tired.’

  Kirsty nodded. ‘I’m going to start with a body scan. Remain still.’

  Lydia wondered how she could casually ask about her other clients. Kirsty was moving her hands in flowing movements, inches above Lydia’s torso, an expression of intense concentration on her face. It was weird and Lydia wasn’t sure she would be able to keep a straight face so she closed her eyes. ‘I can really feel that,’ Lydia said, making her voice full of wonder.