Uncle Charlie was sitting in his favourite table by the large window of The Fork. He had one arm resting along the back of the banquette of the booth and was reading a paperback. Or pretending to read, you could never tell with Charlie. He looked up when Lydia arrived at the table. ‘You’re early,’ he spoke approvingly. That wasn’t going to last. Lydia swallowed hard before launching into her prepared speech.
‘I can’t do today,’ she said. ‘Something’s come up with work.’
‘No worries,’ Charlie said, his eyes cold. ‘We can do it later. Five?’
Lydia forced a headshake.
Charlie paused, clearly weighing up his next words. ‘It’s important to me, Lyds. I wouldn’t ask otherwise.’
‘No.’ The word came out before her brain had time to finesse it. ‘Sorry,’ she said, forcing herself to look Charlie in the eyes, terrifying as that was. ‘I’d rather not.’
‘You’d rather not,’ Charlie said slowly.
‘I’m really busy, back-to-back clients and I can’t spare the time. Besides, I can afford to pay rent, now, and I would rather do that than…’ She hesitated, trying to work out the least offensive phrasing.
‘Than be at my beck and call?’ Charlie supplied. ‘Rather give me money than your help. You’d rather pay off your family than be a part of it, than be a help. You don’t want to sully yourself with Crow Family business, while you’re happy to be one when it suits you. That about right?’ Charlie’s tone was mild, but it contained more fury than most people could manage with full-on yelling.
Lydia wanted to take a step back, to put a bit more distance between her and her uncle. ‘It’s not like that,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m just really busy. It’s hard to be a solo operator. When I make enough I’ll hire some help and that will free me up a bit. It’s nothing personal.’
Charlie smiled thinly. ‘It’s always personal, Lyds, you know that.’
Wanting to prove to herself that she wasn’t playing favourites, or losing her critical edge when it came to Paul Fox, she called him. She certainly wasn’t going to admit that she sort of wanted to hear his voice. He picked up after one ring and Lydia launched straight in. ‘Aren’t you best placed to find out about Marty’s life?’
‘It’s my favourite Crow. Lovely to hear from you so soon.’
‘Do shut up,’ Lydia said, but her lips were turned up in a half-smile. Hell Hawk.
Paul was still speaking. ‘Everyone knows I’m Tristan’s son, they won’t say anything negative.’
‘Everyone knows I’m a Crow,’ Lydia argued. ‘They’re as likely to punch me in the face as talk to me at all.’
She could hear the smirk in his voice. ‘Good thing you’re quick, Little Bird.’
‘Don’t call me that,’ Lydia snapped.
‘Okay, Lyds.’
‘Or that.’ Paul had always been excellent at getting under skin. It was a talent he clearly still possessed which annoyed Lydia more than she cared to admit. She shouldn’t care what he thought or what he said. He was a Fox.
‘Anyway, not everyone knows you. The Crows aren’t as important as they once were. You might be surprised how many members of my extended family neither know nor care about the old Family stories.’
‘It’s a brand-new day?’ Lydia laid as much sarcasm into her voice as she was able, which was a lot.
Paul sounded utterly unperturbed. ‘Exactly.’
Infuriating.
Armed with an address for Marty Benson, Lydia went in search of answers. The quicker she finished this job, the faster she could get Paul Fox out of her life and her head. On the way it occurred to her that she hadn’t updated Fleet, yet. Before she could examine why she hadn’t thought to speak to him, yet, she called his mobile.
‘Marty Benson,’ Lydia said when he answered. ‘I got a name for our unknown murder victim.’
‘Great. How?’
Lydia hesitated. Fleet was not going to take this well. ‘Paul asked around for missing people in the wider family. Came up with that name.’
‘Checked description matches?’
Lydia was walking fast and she slowed down so that she wouldn’t sound out of breath. ‘Yep.’
‘And why didn’t Mr Fox come forward with this information earlier? And to the police?’
‘You know the answer to the last bit. And he only just found out about Marty. He didn’t know before. He had some closer family members go missing and then show up again, changed, which was why he hired me to check out the tunnels.’
‘I don’t follow,’ Fleet said.
Lydia gave him a full recap of the conversation with Paul. After a second of hesitation, she included the bit about Paul suspecting Maddie’s involvement.
‘Your cousin?’
‘The very same. And there’s something else.’ Lydia wasn’t exactly sure how to tell Fleet that her cousin had branded Paul Fox by simply placing a hand on his skin, but she knew she couldn’t keep on hiding everything from him, trying to keep everything safely in compartments. He had proven that he trusted her and could be trusted. He had dealt with the existence of a magical statue and barely even blinked.
‘That’s interesting,’ Fleet said, his voice even. ‘Is that a common ability in your family?’
‘Not as far as I’m aware,’ Lydia said. She suddenly wanted the comfort of her coin, but resisted the urge to produce it. ‘But Maddie is really strong. She showed more ability than anybody has for years and years. My uncle was very excited by the possibilities.’
‘I bet,’ Fleet said. ‘So you went to talk to Paul, again? In person?’
‘He asked to meet. He had information. You know how it goes.’
‘I do,’ Fleet said. And Lydia couldn’t tell what he was thinking. She wished she could see his face.
‘It’s good news, though, right? It will help the case?’
‘If it’s true, it might.’
Lydia bit down the urge to get angry. He didn’t trust Paul and that was fair enough. She reminded herself, that was bloody sensible.
The address turned out to be a dud. The person who opened the door to the unprepossessing tenth floor flat said that Marty Benson had moved out six months earlier and no, they didn’t have a forwarding address. After Lydia had produced her Family coin and pushed a little harder, the weasel-faced man revealed that Marty had been chronically short of funds and, his best guess, was that he was sleeping at his place of work. ‘Which is?’ Lydia said, not bothering to conceal her impatience.
‘Not official work, like,’ the man said, eyes darting nervously from Lydia’s gold coin to her face.
‘Dealing,’ Lydia said, trying to move the conversation along.
‘Bar work! Collecting glasses and that. At the theatre.’
‘The theatre?’
‘Cable Street,’ the man swallowed visibly. ‘Don’t tell them I sent you there.’
‘Tell who?’
‘The Foxes,’ the man whispered, clearly terrified. ‘Please.’
‘Interesting,’ Lydia said, pocketing her coin. ‘Tell me everything you know about Marty and the Fox Family.’
Having ascertained that weasel-face knew nothing else of interest and that he had recently wet himself if the smell emanating from his person was any gauge, Lydia left.
Lydia was on foot, not in the mood to descend into the stale air of the underground, when her phone rang.
‘I’ve got news,’ Fleet said. ‘Toxicology report has come back on Marty.’
‘And?’
‘Decent amount of Ramipril and bisoprolol in his blood.’
‘And what are those?’ Lydia stepped off the pavement and into the shelter of a doorway, sticking a finger in one ear to better hear Fleet’s voice.
‘ACE inhibitors and beta blockers. Heart medications, basically.’
Marty had been early thirties. Didn’t seem like a likely candidate for heart problems. ‘Enough to kill him?’
‘No. Enough to suggest that he was taking a regular prescribed dose.
Consistent with treatment for congestive heart failure, according to our guy. Running his name came up blank on the health service but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t getting it some other way.’
‘Foxes look after their own,’ Lydia said. ‘They don’t like to be part of the main social order, so they see their own doctors and all that. He was young for heart failure, though. That’s bad luck.’
‘How do they prescribe without it coming up on the system?’
Lydia didn’t answer. Black market medications, underground surgeries, favours pulled in from hospital employees; Foxes had their own way of handling things. ‘Did it kill him?’
‘His heart condition? That’s what they’re putting on the certificate. A pre-existing condition resulting in heart failure. Of course, the coroner isn’t writing down the most important piece of the story.’
Lydia was still thinking about Marty’s weak heart. She was suddenly uncomfortably aware of her own, thumping away in her chest. ‘What’s that?’
‘I had an informal chat and the coroner said that he most likely received a massive shock which triggered the heart attack. His condition wasn’t likely to kill him for many years, particularly as it was being managed with medication.’
‘Fright?’
‘Probably. It could also have been intense physical exertion, but neither the scene nor the position of the body are concurrent with that hypothesis.’
Lydia tried to remember the body. His expression. ‘He didn’t look frightened.’
‘Body relaxes after death, he would have lost muscle tone and that would have altered his expression.’
‘Lovely.’
‘Scared to death, though,’ Lydia said. ‘That doesn’t sound like a real thing.’
‘People are easier to kill than you might imagine,’ Fleet said.
‘You really shouldn’t say things like that,’ Lydia said. ‘You’ll end up on a government list.’
Luke was the youngest of the seven Fox brothers. He hadn’t long turned eighteen and Lydia could understand why Paul was worried about him. There was something delicate about him, something Lydia couldn’t quite put her finger on. Perhaps it was just his youth. Or the fact that he seemed to have a more skittish Fox energy than the rest of his Family. He was attractive, with the animal magnetism common to the Foxes, but Lydia was getting images of darkness and fear, along with the usual taint of earth, fur, tooth and blood.
‘Thank you for speaking to me,’ Lydia said, taking the seat opposite Luke in the anonymous branch of Costa on Whitechapel High Street. She had been surprised when he had agreed so readily to the meeting and had assumed that Paul had told him to cooperate.
‘Haven’t yet,’ Luke said. He smirked as if mightily pleased with himself.
‘Paul said that you disappeared for four days. Where did you go?’
Luke looked away. ‘I’ve told him.’
‘You said ‘underground’. That’s not very descriptive. Do you mean the tube?’
He shook his head. ‘No trains.’
Lydia decided to try a different tack. ‘Why don’t you like talking about it? Did something bad happen?’
‘Nah, not really. It was boring.’
‘No phone signal?’
Luke became animated for the first time. ‘Don’t use mobiles. They’re a conspiracy. Government mind control.’
Lydia nodded as if this was perfectly reasonable. ‘How long have you felt this way?’
Luke slumped back, the energy draining away. ‘Dunno. Years. My whole life.’
‘So, it’s not a new conviction? I wondered if you saw something in the tunnel-’
‘Who said I was in a tunnel?’
‘Have you had experience of government harassment? Surveillance?’
Luke perked up. ‘Nah, too smart for them. Keep moving, keep off the grid, keep away from their systems of control.’
This was familiar territory for a Fox but, somehow, hearing it come from Luke made it sound standard-crackpot. When Paul had mentioned the Foxes’ penchant for living outside the system, it had seemed almost reasonable. ‘We can look after our own,’ Paul had said. ‘Why would we need to be a drain on the social systems which are there to protect the helpless?’
Lydia wanted to put Luke at his ease, so she tried a neutral topic. ‘Are you working? Studying?’
He gave her a pitying look. ‘Are we done here?’
‘How have you been feeling recently? In yourself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Happy, sad, anxious, chilled, excited, energetic, depressed, aimless,’ Lydia counted off the words on her fingers.
‘Why do you want to know? Are you a therapist?’
‘Definitely not,’ Lydia said. ‘But Paul’s worried about you. He asked me to check on you.’
‘Paul’s not worried,’ Luke said, but there was uncertainty in his voice. ‘I’m good. I’m chilled. I’m-’ Luke broke off, staring to the left of Lydia for a few seconds as if hoping inspiration would appear there. ‘Dunno,’ he eventually finished. ‘I’m normal. I’m the same as everyone else. I’m fine.’
‘People often use that word,’ Lydia said. ‘But they don’t really mean it. And it covers a lot of ground.’
When he focused on her, his face was anguished. Just for a split second. In that moment, Luke looked about five years younger, heartbreakingly young and vulnerable. And in the next second he was no longer a frightened kid, but a young adult Fox with all the accompanying swagger. He stood up. ‘Time for you to go,’ he said. And then, like the good little apprentice he was, he waved his hands. ‘Fly away, now. Shoo.’
That evening, Fleet came round after work and they managed an enjoyable evening. Mainly by not talking about either of their jobs. Later, in bed with Fleet, feeling pleasantly satisfied and a little bit sleepy, Lydia found herself setting fire, once again, to domestic harmony.
She didn’t consciously decide to talk about the case, but without agreement from her brain began telling him about her failure to get Luke to open up. They were lying on their sides, faces close and speaking quietly so there was no way she could miss the tension which suddenly appeared. The set of his mouth.
‘What?’
‘You shouldn’t have spoken to a Fox on your own.’
‘Paul asked me to investigate.’
‘And you’re just doing whatever Paul asks, now, are you?’
Lydia turned onto her side, away from Fleet. She was too tired to argue. And still felt a dragging sadness from meeting Luke which was back after a brief respite. She knew what Paul had meant. There was something broken about him. And it was another thing she didn’t know how to fix. Her dad’s mind was dissolving and her presence made it worse, Jason was stuck in the building and she couldn’t work out how to free him, and she had no idea how Marty had died or even if it was murder. And she was sharing a bed with a copper. A copper who didn’t trust her instincts when it came to the Families which was adding insult to injury.
‘Lydia,’ Fleet said quietly. ‘I’m just worried. Please let me help.’
Lydia turned back to Fleet and touched his face. The orange glow of a streetlight was struggling through the curtains and she could see enough to see anguish and uncertainty. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know that.’
He smiled. ‘Take me with you next time. I can be your bodyguard. Pretend I’ve got an earpiece and mutter things like ‘the eagle has landed’ into my collar.’
‘You’re an idiot.’ Lydia smiled despite herself. ‘But you can come with me next time, if you want.’
Peace restored, Lydia curled up to sleep. There was still a nagging sense of foreboding but she pushed it down. It was just this case. Once she had worked out the mystery of Marty’s death, everything would settle down.
Chapter Fourteen
Lydia’s phone had been buzzing for the past three hours and she had successfully avoided it, while pretending to herself that she was just too busy writing up some case notes and updating her accounts. In
any previous relationship, Lydia would have assumed this was a sign the dalliance was as good as over. It would have been a fatal sign that she was willing to procrastinate with financial records, her least favourite part of running her own business, but this felt different. She wasn’t avoiding Fleet’s messages and calls because she was bored of him, or no longer liked him in that special after-hours, between-the-sheets, kind of a way. It was quite the opposite. She was scared of how normal and comfortable their relationship had become. How steady. And how frightened she was at the small rift that had opened up between them.
She could see his point of view and knew that he was only worried about her, but the sting of his mistrust was sharp. It felt like a criticism and that was unbearable. Not to mention the fear that he might decide dating her was a step too far from his world, after all. Her stomach clenched and she felt her chest go tight, her breath stopped with the mere possibility of Fleet no longer being hers. Her phone buzzed again, the phone moving on the flat surface of the desk like a frustrated beetle.
She picked it up and tapped out a quick message, apologising for not answering. She didn’t actually lie and say that she was doing surveillance or something which required silence, but strongly indicated it. And promised she would call later.
Her second phone, a basic pay as you go model whose selling points were its chunky indestructibility and cleanliness - no stored numbers, no personal information - rang. The tones available were limited and already quaintly retro in style. So the pace of the modern world span; faster and faster. Lydia checked the number and answered. ‘Hey, Mum. You okay?’
‘I need to see you.’
It wasn’t her mum. Henry Crow’s voice was the one she knew from childhood. Warm, but fast and definite. Not a voice to argue with.
Lydia drove to Beckenham in her ancient blue Volvo. It was making some interesting noises when she braked or changed gear, suggesting that its tank-like indestructibility might be coming to an end. It was boxy and the dark blue paint had a dusty sheen, even when freshly washed, and the inside smelled of late-night stakeouts and the fake-pine air freshener that the previous owner had favoured, but Lydia would be sad to see it go when the time came. The Volvo represented freedom. She had bought it and driven to Scotland. A decision which had led to her training as a P.I with her old boss in Aberdeen and, for the very first time in her life, a sense of purpose. The feeling that she was doing something she ought to be doing and was good at. Or, at least, had the potential to be good at.
The Fox's Curse Page 10
