by James Oswald
‘You killed her. Sheila Begbie. I led you to her, and then you killed her.’
‘The vessel was dead a long time ago. We merely removed the spirit that was using it, sent it back where it belonged.’
McLean wasn’t sure he felt any better about things, but Madame Jasmina squeezed his hand once more. ‘Your luck will change soon,’ she said, then released him.
‘Billy. Is he going to be OK?’ Rahel approached as if she had been waiting for permission. She was dressed more elegantly than he’d seen her before, no doubt through Madame Rose’s influence. It made her look about fourteen, which he guessed was probably her true age. To have seen so much, endured so much in such a short life.
‘I don’t know. He survived the attack, and they pumped him full of the same antidote they used on me, so the chances are good.’ Except that Billy had suffered far worse injuries, far more of whatever toxin Begbie had used on them both. If it was a toxin. If it had been Begbie. He tried to shake away the train of thoughts, and the wound on his neck flared in pain. Why had he come here? He was so tired he could barely stand, wearing clothes that stank of blood and worse. He should have gone straight home, talked to Rose later.
‘Thank you. For looking out for us both.’ Rahel leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek, then turned away as if embarrassed by her daring. Or disgusted by his smell.
‘Rahel and Nala will be coming with us.’ Madame Jasmina spoke her words as an inarguable statement of fact. The detective in him wanted to point out that at the very least Rahel’s testimony would be needed in the coming enquiry, but he kept that to himself. Someone else would be conducting that, and someone else could try to track her down.
‘Will you be going soon? I couldn’t help but notice the circus is already gone.’
Madame Jasmina smiled. ‘The circus was never there, Anthony McLean. You know that. In your heart.’
He nodded once. It was exactly the sort of enigmatic nonsense he’d grown used to hearing from Madame Rose, but at the same time it was true. He made to leave, then something else occurred to him.
‘Why now?’ he asked. ‘You said you’d dealt with all this twenty-five years ago. Why did it all blow up again?’
‘You see to the heart of things. This is why you are a good detective.’ The old fortune teller raised a slim eyebrow, her bright eyes focused on him as she paused for a moment, no doubt working out how best to be oblique. ‘We did what we could all those years ago, but the creature was well protected. As to why now, the simple answer is that he grew too old to control her any more, the man Winterthorne. It was he who started all this when he went searching for djinn in the desert. No one ever believed he would find one, let alone bind it to his will. It cost him dear. His wife, his best friends, almost his own life. But he found what he was looking for. The one you call Sheila Begbie, the afrit wearing her form, he freed her and she served him. That was his third wish, after it had healed him and taken the form of his dead wife. But you know as well as I do that wishes come at a price. I think you will be finding out what that price was in the days and weeks to come.’
McLean said nothing. There was nothing he could say. It made perfect sense, and it made no sense at all. He took one last look at the odd collection of people, all watching him like sitters for some bizarre family portrait. All save Nala, who acted out her childish games on a motley collection of toy dolls and teddy bears. She seemed happy enough, despite the traumas her short life had dealt. She was safe, and she was alive. That much would have to do.
Madame Jasmina’s words still echoed in his memory as McLean let himself into the kitchen much later. Mrs McCutcheon’s cat greeted him the same way she always did, by yawning, leaning over and cleaning her arse with her tongue. He ignored her, picked up the kettle, filled it from the tap and put it on the Aga to boil. It was only when he’d gone to the cupboard for the teabags, found a teapot and a mug and taken it all back to the table that he noticed the sheet of writing paper held down by the pepper grinder. Emma’s neat handwriting looped across the page, tilted slightly from left to right. He sat down at the table and started to read.
Dearest Tony,
I’m sorry to do this with a letter, but I don’t know when if ever you’re going to come home. I can’t carry on being the third one in this relationship. Your dedication to your work would be commendable if it weren’t so selfish. You let it consume you so utterly there is no time left for anyone or anything else.
I have tried my best to be there for you, and I know you’ve tried to be there for me. But every time it looks like things are getting better, the job takes over again. A psychologist might say you have commitment issues, and I suspect they would be right.
I don’t know where I will go. Perhaps up to Aberdeen first. My mother doesn’t have long, and there’ll be things to sort out when she finally goes. I might travel again, see some more of the world. I had hoped we might see it together, but I’ve given up hope of you ever changing.
Goodbye, Tony. And sorry.
Em
The rattling of the kettle on the hotplate dragged his attention away from Emma’s words. McLean made himself tea, then sat there and drank it while he read her letter over and over again. At some point Mrs McCutcheon’s cat leapt onto the table beside him, nudging his hand with her face until he absentmindedly began to scratch her behind the ears. Her deep purr was reassuring, but it couldn’t chase away the emptiness forming in the pit of his stomach, the feeling of being alone in this vast, hollow old house.
Time passed in the slow, steady ticking of the clock over the door, the gentle gurgle of the cooker and the echoing silence beyond. Everything Emma had written was true. There was no real malice in her words, only sorrow.
After a while, the page became difficult to read, the words blurring one into another as the tears welled in his eyes. He put the letter back down on the table, buried his head in his hands, and wept.
63
The click of the door opening woke him from dreams of fire and heat. Of a creature gnawing at his neck that he somehow just couldn’t dislodge, however much he flailed and swiped at it. McLean started up straight, knocking over his mug of tea. There was only a dribble left in the bottom, adding the smallest of stains to a table already marked by a hundred years of similar incidents. He looked up, bleary-eyed, to see Emma standing in the doorway. Her hair was a mess, and she’d been crying.
‘Em?’ He stood, unsure whether to go to her, wrap her in a hug and never let go.
‘I went to see Rose before I left for Aberdeen. Rahel and Nala were there. Madame Jasmina too. You know, from the circus?’
He nodded. The lump that had appeared in his throat made it hard to speak.
‘They told me what happened. Why you didn’t come home last night, didn’t call. I waited up, fell asleep on the sofa. When I woke up this morning and you still weren’t home I was so angry at you.’
‘Em, I . . .’
‘Jasmina explained it all. About the djinn, the wish and how she took it away again. But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t just decide to stop being cold, same as I wasn’t really upset at you in the first place. We lost our child. I didn’t know how to deal with that. It took time for me to understand you didn’t know how to deal with it either.’
‘Everything you said though. It’s all true. I’m sorry, Em. I never meant . . .’
Emma glanced at the table, saw the letter. She walked across and picked it up, scrumpled it into a ball and threw it in the general direction of the bin. ‘It is true, yes. But the truth has many faces, as someone wise told me recently. And besides, I knew all that about you when we first met. Still climbed into your bed, didn’t I?’
McLean took two steps towards her, then swept her up into a desperate hug. It didn’t last long, Emma’s initial enthusiasm rapidly fading. She pushed him away after far too little time. ‘Eww. You smell, Tony McLe
an. When was the last time you had a bath? And what’s that all over your jacket? What’s that on your neck?’
‘Too long, clearly. Blood, and a bandage.’ McLean dabbed at his neck with his fingers; the wound was tender, but surprisingly free of pain.
‘Oh, I almost forgot.’ Emma sniffed, wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, and then shoved it in her coat pocket, pulling something out and passing it to him. ‘Madame Jasmina asked me to give you this. She said it was a memento.’
McLean took the object, knowing what it would be before he’d even felt it in his palm. The tiny model of a brass lamp was heavier than he remembered, and more tarnished. Perhaps he’d polish it up some time, but now wasn’t the moment. He closed his fist around it, looked past Emma, taking in the battered old kitchen cupboards, the deep sink under a window turned black by the night outside, the gurgling Aga and the old iron kettle sitting on its warming plate.
‘How about a cup of tea?’
If you loved COLD AS THE GRAVE why not try NO TIME TO CRY, the first book in James Oswald’s new Constance Fairchild series?
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