Every few steps, Lydia felt the hairs raise on the back of her neck and her shoulders hunch. False alarms were everywhere as now that Lydia was expecting a ghost to come screaming out of the wall and envelop her with eternal cold, she kept imagining it. It was exhausting.
They checked the old tunnels, the decommissioned platforms, and every ventilation shaft that was large enough to walk through. After an hour, Lydia was worn thin from the tension and wasn’t sure how much longer she would be able to maintain her hold on Faisal. She let him lead her back to the land of the living.
Chapter Five
Back at The Fork, Angel had locked up and gone home. The floor was freshly mopped and the counter area sparkling clean. Lydia helped herself to a stale croissant from a bag in the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the flat. She knocked on Jason’s bedroom door, wishing that she had some good news to share.
He was sitting on the bed, Sharpie in one hand and the new A2 pad of paper in front of him. There was a doodle of a snail surrounded by spiralling greenery, but nothing else. ‘Not working?’
‘I miss the walls,’ Jason said. ‘Maybe if I stick these up it will work?’
‘Worth a try,’ Lydia said. Then, quick like ripping off a plaster: ‘I didn’t find him.’
Jason shrugged. ‘It might take a few attempts. If you keep going back, maybe you’ll power him up. Like you do with me?’
That wasn’t an entirely pleasant thought. Lydia could still feel the freezing sensation of having the ghost inside her body.
‘I was thinking that you could help with this one.’
‘Sure,’ Jason brightened. ‘How?’
‘You said it yourself, I could solve this instantly if I could just ask the guy who he is and how he died. Case over. No more Paul Fox. No more hassle. Done.’
‘I like the sound of that,’ Jason said.
‘Right?’ Lydia tried to work out how to phrase her next question, but Jason was already speaking.
‘Are you going to look into your Family mojo? See if you can find out how to power me up some more?’
Lydia suppressed a sigh. She understood why Jason was so keen on this option, but she wished he could understand how complicated and dangerous it felt to her. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t ask Uncle Charlie. I don’t trust him.’
‘What about your dad? Won’t he know?’
‘I’m not asking Dad,’ Lydia said. ‘He spent his life protecting me from this stuff. Suppressing his power might be why he’s… The way he is, now. And I make him worse. I’m not asking him.’ Lydia continued, rushing ahead before Jason could interrupt. ‘Why don’t you let me look into your life? If we can work out why you’re here, maybe it will unlock whatever is keeping you here.’
Jason’s expression closed down. Lydia knew that it probably mirrored her own. Two stubborn people refusing to budge. ‘But it might unlock me being here at all,’ Jason said. ‘What if I get all peaceful and shit and just float away to the clouds?’
‘Look,’ Lydia sank down to sit cross-legged next to Jason. ‘How about we just talk. It’s not like you’re going to be able to tell me anything that you don’t already know. And if you already know it, then you know it’s safe. I mean, if it was going to send you off to the afterlife, then it would already have done so. Makes sense?’
‘Yes, but then you’ll go and do your detective thing and find out more and that might be the thing that kills me.’
‘I won’t.’
‘You will. You won’t be able to help yourself. You have to work out the why of things all the time. That’s why you chose this job. That’s why you’re making a decent go of it.’
‘Thank you,’ Lydia said, touched. ‘What if I promise not to tell you what I find?’
‘And what would that accomplish?’
‘I don’t know,’ Lydia said. ‘But knowledge is good, right?’
‘That’s not what you say when I ask you to look into your family power voodoo.’
‘That’s different.’
‘It’s really not. Why can’t you just work out how to abracadabra me into being able to leave the building? That seems like the better option.’
‘I’ve told you, I don’t know how.’
‘And you refuse to even try.’
‘And you refuse to talk to me about your life, even when it might help.’
Jason was shimmering, the edges of his grey suit jacket bleeding in and out of the scenery. That wasn’t a good sign, but Lydia was too worked-up to apply the brakes. ‘You say you want to help, to change your situation, but you’re not willing to take a chance. It’s bloody frustrating. You’re already dead, how much worse can it get?’
Jason looked at her for a moment, not speaking.
‘Sorry,’ Lydia said. ‘Bit harsh.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I’m bloody terrified, though. I don’t know how much worse it can get. I just know I don’t want to disappear. I don’t know where I go or if that would be the same or different when it happens permanently. My parents were religious and I didn’t think it rubbed off on me, but when I close my eyes I see visions of a fiery hell and I’m not anxious to visit.’
‘There’s no such thing as hell,’ Lydia said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘And besides, you wouldn’t be going there. You’re a good person.’
‘I died on my wedding day. I wasn’t old so it’s not likely to be natural causes which either means I’m an innocent victim or I invited trouble somehow. I can’t remember anything about it, which makes me worry I don’t want to remember. What if I did something terrible?’
‘Wouldn’t knowing be better, though?’
He smiled sadly. ‘Maybe for you. We can’t all be as strong willed.’
‘I’m not that strong,’ Lydia said, but he had already gone. ‘I’m scared half the time,’ she said to the dead air.
Lydia flipped open her laptop and navigated to the births, deaths and marriages registry. She felt guilty, she was going directly against Jason’s wishes, but the puzzle was too tempting. Curiosity killed the cat, but what would it do to the Crow? Crows were smarter than cats, in Lydia’s book at least.
Jason and Amy had got married and, on the same day, Jason had died. That was all she knew and she had promised that she wouldn’t pry. She looked around, now, checking that Jason hadn’t re-materialised before typing in Jason’s name. She was betraying his trust and going back on her word. There was no way to dress that up as noble. But then, Lydia thought, she had never claimed nobility.
Once upon a time, Jason Montefort and Amy Silver had met and fallen in love. They tied the knot in St Etheldreda’s Church just off Holborn Circus. Searching the newspaper archives and obituaries threw up the sad truth within a few keystrokes. Lydia sat back, as if the information were poisonous and she needed to move to a safe distance. ‘Hell Hawk,’ she muttered.
The newlyweds had gone to The Fork for their wedding breakfast and, at some point during the afternoon’s festivities, tragedy had struck. Both Jason and Amy had died that day. The news stories were light on detail. Lots of ‘police are investigating’ and ‘unknown cause’. The obituaries were short and most likely written by the families. They listed date of death and spoke of ‘beloved son’ and ‘beloved daughter’ with no reference to the circumstance or cause of death. ‘Passed away suddenly’. As if Jason and Amy had simply slipped into another room.
Amy Silver had died at The Fork. Lydia stood up. She felt sick. If that was the case, then surely Uncle Charlie would know about it. He had to have rented the place out for the wedding party. It wasn’t strange that he had done so for a Silver, the Crows and the Silvers had long been friendly, and had sided often even before the truce. But a double tragedy on Crow property. That had to have been a big deal. That had to have soured relations.
Lydia frowned as she paced, a tension headache tightening around her temples. Nineteen eighty five . Uncle Charlie would only have been in his twenties. It was more likely that Grandpa Crow had dealt with the w
edding party. Or one of his people. Grandpa Crow had the whole family empire to run, it might have been too small a deal for him to even know about. Another thought hit Lydia. This was all before she had been born. Which meant that it could just have easily have been her father who had handled the booking. He was the golden boy, after all, primed and trained to take over from Grandpa Crow when the time came. Until he had married Lydia’s mother and abdicated his position.
There was no way she was going to ask her dad about Crow Family magic and ways in which she might be able to release a ghost from his earthly prison, but she could maybe face asking him about the old days of the business. If she didn’t have any other choice. After doodling on some paper, downing a beer to help her think, and pacing the flat for forty-five minutes, trying desperately to think of another choice, she came up empty.
‘Hell Hawk’, Lydia said out loud, and went to get another beer.
The next day, Lydia avoided Jason. She felt guilty for giving in to the lure of Google. She felt like she had spied on Jason, even though he was the one who could walk through walls. And she had no idea whether he knew about Amy. He wouldn’t talk about his own death and had never mentioned Amy dying on the same day, but that was no guarantee he didn’t know. Did she have a moral obligation to tell him? It would reveal that she had been googling his history without permission.
The past was too difficult, so Lydia concentrated on the present instead. She wrote up a client report for a job she had finished the previous week and sent it along with an invoice. When Jason appeared in the kitchen, she pretended to be buried under a pile of urgent accounts work, a strategy which backfired when Jason offered to help her with it. ‘I have decent finger control, now,’ he said, waggling them in her direction as proof. ‘And I have a head for figures.’ Which was, of course, putting it mildly.
‘If I had another laptop,’ Lydia said, putting him off so that she didn’t have to reveal that she had been lying about the accounts.
Jason nodded and made her a cup of tea, instead, which made her feel even worse.
Lydia couldn’t wait for the end of the day to speak to Fleet and he agreed to meet at their bridge, texting back that he ‘needed the fresh air’. With any luck, his department would have made progress on the identity of the dead guy and she wouldn’t be tempted to investigate Jason’s death any further. Something told her that was a story that might be best left unread.
Lydia knew that the managerial side of Fleet’s job had taken over too much of his day-to-day work and that he often had back-to-back meetings which sapped his will to live. It wasn’t the policework he had dreamed of when he started as a wide-eyed recruit, but he seemed happy enough to slog onward. As he put it, ‘you’ve got to be inside the system to make it better’. His idealism was yet another thing she found irresistible. She was so accustomed to a world-weary cynicism both from her Family and her own thoughts, that Fleet’s attitude was exotic.
Crossing the park, she saw him standing on the bridge to nowhere in his work suit, gazing down at his phone with a slight frown. He looked up when she approached and his smile made her stomach do a flip-flop. Lydia had always assumed that a proper long-term relationship would settle into a comfortable, maybe even slightly boring, rhythm. She was delighted that, several months in, it hadn’t happened with Fleet. ‘Any news?’
‘Still no identification. He’s not popping up from DNA or dental records, and we’ve run searches based on his tattoo and the scar on his abdomen.’
‘Tattoo?’
‘Neck tat on the top of his spine.’ Fleet swiped his phone and passed it to Lydia. There was a close-up image of the back of the dead man’s head and shoulders. The word ‘cursed’ was written in bold script lettering, a thick swash of black extending from the last ‘d’ to underline the word.
‘That’s dark.’
‘And the scar on his stomach isn’t from an appendectomy.’
‘Stab wound? ‘Lydia guessed.
Fleet nodded. He fell silent as a pedestrian approached and they both waited until he had passed the end of the bridge. ‘Hard to be certain, but the pathologist says it’s not recent. At least five years old, but can’t get any more accurate than that.’
‘So, what do we do next?’
‘Hope that somebody comes forward and identifies him. Given time, a missing person report usually gets filed or a bit of new evidence crops up in another ongoing case which leads to an identification.’
‘But not always, right?’
Fleet nodded. ‘Some people tread lightly and leave no trace. There are more unidentified bodies in the system than you might imagine.’
‘Lovely,’ Lydia said, pulling a face. ‘What about cause of death?’
‘We’re still waiting on toxicology. But there’s no sign of trauma.’
Lydia closed her eyes. ‘Please don’t tell me that’s a mystery, too.’
‘Sorry,’ Fleet said. ‘Best guess is asphyxiation. There are small haemorrhages and, I’m quoting from the coroner’s report ‘some visceral congestion via dilation of a portion of the venous blood vessels’.’
‘Strangled?’
‘No sign of it. No ligature marks, no bruising, no signs of struggle.’
‘That makes no sense,’ Lydia said. ‘What am I missing?’
‘I have no idea. The investigating officer is stumped. And we can’t exactly tell her that she is dealing with a member of the Fox family. Not without sounding unhinged.’
‘Welcome to my life,’ Lydia said.
Lydia took the photograph of the dead Fox’s tattoo to every tattoo studio in Whitechapel, figuring that a Fox wouldn’t go anywhere else to have work like that done. Of course, there was always the possibility that he had gone off-territory, wanting to keep the tattoo secret from his nearest and dearest, but Lydia was hoping to get lucky.
There were more studios than Lydia expected and it took a while. She had sore feet and was lighter by fifty quid in bribe money and had exactly nothing to show for it. Except for the new knowledge that tattooists were a secretive and paranoid bunch. Most of the people she spoke to assumed she was a spy for a rival parlour and the ones who spoke about the photo at all were full of criticisms of the work, as if they were touting for business and wanted to demonstrate to Lydia that she would be better off getting work with them. ‘I’m never getting inked,’ she found herself saying to the last guy, when her fatigue and frustration got the better of her.
Luckily he didn’t take offence. ‘It’s a big commitment.’
‘Are you sure you don’t recognise this style? I’m just trying to identify the artist.’
The guy squinted at the picture. ‘It’s pretty standard work. Nothing exciting. You could try the one on Wentworth street.’ Lydia had already drawn a blank at that studio, but she thanked him and left. Outside, Lydia turned right and was going to head to the nearest tube station when a voice stopped her.
The tattooist stood in his doorway, head tilted. ‘You’re really not from another ink shop, are you?’
‘No,’ Lydia said. ‘Or the police.’
He hesitated. ‘I remember the guy. Nervous type.’
‘You inked him?’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘Last year. But I remembered it because it’s unusual. Not many people want ‘cursed’ written on themselves. ‘I love my mum’ and the name of their pet, mostly. I assumed it was from a book or a film or something. Fan art.’
‘Why didn’t you want to admit it was your work?’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘Guy was jumpy. Paid in cash and gave a fake name. I mean, it happens all the time, no law against it, but then… You come asking questions. Made me think there might be something wrong. That I might be in trouble for some reason, some regulation…’ He trailed off. ‘It’s not a regulation thing, is it?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ Lydia said. It had been too much to hope that he would have paid in contactless, something traceable, but Lydia still felt the stab of disappointment. ‘What n
ame did he give?’
‘John Smith.’
Lydia had been planning to ask why the tattooist thought it was a fake name, but she didn’t bother, now. She wrote it down, anyway. ‘Did he know what he wanted or did he look through your books before choosing?’
‘He knew,’ the tattooist said. ‘Wasn’t interested in artwork or a discussion. It was weird because it was his first time and virgins are usually more chatty.’
‘Anything else you remember at all? Anything he said?’
‘You’re really not from another parlour, are you?’ The reality of the situation seemed to be finally dawning on him.
‘Nope,’ Lydia said and dug out a business card. ‘Please let me know if you think of anything else. Any detail which might help us to identify the man.’
‘I’m guessing something bad has happened to the guy?’
‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ Lydia confirmed.
‘The tattoo healed up nicely, though,’ he said, seeming to speak without thinking. ‘No blow out.’
Chapter Six
Lydia met her mother across the river and not far from Covent Garden, where she had been doing some shopping. She had booked a table in a low-key tapas joint. It had warm wood, gentle lighting and smelled of garlic, wine, and savoury deliciousness. ‘This is nice,’ Susan said, looking around with evident satisfaction. ‘And it’s mandatory that I have a glass of red, isn’t it?’
‘They throw you out if you don’t, Lydia said, and signalled to the waitress. ‘A bottle of the Rioja, please.’
‘A bottle? At lunchtime? I’ll fall over,’ her mother said delightedly. ‘Have you been here before? With Emma?’
‘Once,’ Lydia said ‘And I thought it would be better to get away from The Fork,’ Lydia said. ‘I know it’s not your favourite place.’
‘Not yours at the moment, either, by all accounts.’
‘You’ve spoken to Charlie?’
The Fox's Curse Page 4
