Getting parked in suburbia was marginally easier than it was in Camberwell, but Lydia still had to circle the street with The Elm Tree a couple of times before snagging a spot large enough. Henry Crow spent Thursday evenings at his local, regular as clockwork. That he had proposed a meeting there on a Friday afternoon, meant only one thing; he wanted to discuss something he didn’t want Lydia’s mother to hear.
Her dad was sitting at his usual spot, his back to the wall and a pint of bitter and a folded newspaper on the small circular table. Lydia dragged a stool to the side of the table and kissed her dad’s cheek before sitting down.
‘Lydia,’ Henry said. His eyes were clear and piercing. ‘I need to get right down to it.’
‘Okay,’ Lydia said.
‘Write this down,’ he said, ‘I don’t know how long I’ve got.’
‘What do you mean?’ Lydia felt a spurt of pure terror. ‘What’s wrong?’
Henry gave her a look which sent her straight back to childhood. Henry had been a kind and funny father, quick to hug and softly-spoken, but there was a core of steel. When he had been displeased, Lydia had never felt a fear like it. She hurriedly dug her notebook and pencil from her bag.
He nodded. ‘I had a little charm, something your grandpa gave me back in the day. It helps people think. For someone who isn’t suffering cognitive degeneration it turns them into a stone-cold genius. For an hour or so, anyway.’
Lydia realised that her dad had used some magic. Something he had promised years ago to stay away from. A promise that he had kept, as far as Lydia was aware. She had her father back in his full mental capacity and that felt like a miracle, but she knew that he probably didn’t have another shot of brain juice sitting around. She couldn’t waste time getting emotional. ‘Do you remember a Silver wedding at The Fork. Amy Silver and Jason-’
Her dad interrupted. ‘Don’t derail me. Please. I’ve got lots to tell you. Got to keep it all straight.’ He tapped the side of his head for emphasis.
She nodded, and placed the nib of the pencil on a fresh sheet of paper. ‘What did you want to tell me?’
‘Alejandro was always ambitious. He was obsessed with researching the old ways, thought that we could be so much more powerful than we were. That we deserved to be back on top, as he put it.’
‘The Silvers haven’t exactly been suffering,’ Lydia couldn’t stop herself from saying.
‘It’s all a matter of degree,’ Henry said. ‘And Silvers like things shiny. Alejandro told me he couldn’t stand to have his family’s treasure in the British Museum. Burned him up inside, it did. He had a plan to get it out.’
‘He succeeded,’ Lydia said.
Henry nodded. ‘I didn’t say anything at the time. Would have sparked a riot. All the Families rushing to grab their artefacts, everyone running around worrying that the sky was falling, that Alejandro was planning some kind of takeover of London.’
‘And you probably didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that we didn’t put our coin there in the first place.’
Henry smiled. ‘Exactly.’ He leaned forward. ‘Don’t say it out loud, though. Never admit it to anybody else. Did you ever wonder why there are only four of us?’
Lydia struggled to keep up, Henry’s right hand was tapping on the table, drumming a beat and she longed to reach out and put her own hand over it, to still him.
‘Four Families with a little… something extra? Grandpa told me that we are just the only ones left. That back before there were written records, that it was common. Not everybody had something, but everybody knew somebody who did. The ones who survived are the ones who raised their next generation with the knowledge, passed on what they knew. We did it through stories. Silvers found a way to capture it in metal. Pearls, feathers knows what they did, and the Foxes did it by in-breeding.’
‘Is that true?’
Henry shrugged. ‘Who knows? That’s the story. And none of us can get too sniffy about that subject. Go back far enough and everybody was at it. Like royalty, it was the only way to keep the power close.’
Well that was a thought to haunt her nightmares.
‘But we passed it through stories. Those tales I used to tell you? Those bedtime stories? That was your inheritance,’ he smiled. ‘I hope you were listening.’
And then, as if running a race he knew he couldn’t win, he began running through them, again. ‘I know the stories, Dad,’ Lydia broke in at one point and he smacked the table. ‘Write.’
There were ones she knew well, half-remembered tales or ones which had a few more violent details than she recalled, details he must have left out when she was a little girl, and stories she didn’t recognise at all. There was the Night Raven, of course, and the time the Fox flattered the Crow into dropping her piece of cheese, and more prosaic ones like the story of how Great-Grandpa Crow had outwitted council objections and secured funding for the Camberwell College of Arts in the eighteen-nineties, and ensured its doors would be open to talented people of all classes. Then there were the other stories of Grandpa and Great-Grandpa and Great-Great Grandpa that were less wholesome. Protection. Extortion. Racketeering.
‘I thought I’d have plenty of time,’ Henry said as his voice grew thin with speaking so intensely and quickly. ‘Once you’d decided to join the Family, I thought there would be time.’
‘You were sure I would?’ Lydia’s pride was pricked. She hated the thought that she had been so predictable.
‘It’s in your blood, but more than that, it’s in your head.’ He looked sad, almost ashamed. ‘I made sure of that.’
Lydia didn’t realise that she had produced her coin until she felt the edges digging into her palm. She was gripping it tightly and she forced her hand to relax.
Her dad changed mood abruptly and began laughing with a hoarse, wheezing sound. ‘Sorry, sorry. Just having you on.’ His accent had gone full south London. ‘I wasn’t sure of anything. I just wanted you to have the choice. Didn’t feel right not to pass it on to you.’ The laughing stopped. ‘It’s all I’ve got. It’s my legacy.’
Once she had navigated the appalling traffic and made it back to Camberwell, Lydia rang Fleet, as promised. She had good intentions of having a proper, grown-up conversation to patch over the recent awkwardness in their relationship, but her mouth seemed to have other ideas.
She had tried to ask her dad, again, about Amy Silver, but the charm or mojo or whatever it had been had worn off abruptly. One moment, Henry Crow had been clear-eyed and laughing and the next he had been painfully confused, thrown back into tangled confusion.
‘Can you look Amy Silver up on your database?’ Lydia knew it wasn’t a romantic or conciliatory opener and she mentally kicked herself. Self-sabotage; one of her strongest abilities. ‘She died in the eighties..’
To his credit, Fleet took the conversation in his stride. ‘Who is Amy Silver?’
‘Someone who died at The Fork,’ Lydia said. ‘In the eighties. I’ve researched the newspapers but the stories were light on detail. I can’t find a follow up with a cause of death’
‘Right,’ Fleet said slowly ‘What has she got to do with Marty? Or is this another case?’
‘No case,’ Lydia said,
‘What aren’t you telling me?’ Fleet asked.
‘She died at The Fork. I’m just interested.’
‘In the history of the building?’ Fleet said, scepticism laid on thick. ‘I could do with a reason to be poking around the files. Everything is recorded these days, you know, I’ll have to justify the search.’
‘Isn’t there a way to bypass the system?’
‘No,’ Fleet said, clearly exasperated. ‘That’s the whole point.’
‘It’s stupidly restrictive,’ Lydia said. ‘Why don’t they just trust you?’
‘It’s about the public trusting us,’ Fleet said. ‘And making watertight cases with a clear trail for every single investigative action taken. Means fewer cases lost at court on technicalities.’ He paused. �
�At least, that’s the theory.’
‘I know all that,’ Lydia said, ‘but I think it’s ridiculous.’ She was still annoyed and unable to let go of it. It seemed like a safe thing to be cross about, something manageable in a world which was increasingly complicated and confusing and full of insurmountable issues.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Fleet said.
‘Thank you,’ Lydia said.
‘Did you want to come round to mine tonight?’
‘How about my place?’ Lydia said automatically.
‘Not tonight,’ Fleet said. ‘You’re welcome here, but I’m going to have an early one. I want to be at home.’
‘Right.’ Lydia knew it was a perfectly reasonable request and completely unfair to keep making Fleet come to her place. She had to make concessions, compromises, all of those good and sensible and mature things. ‘I’m knackered, too,’ she said. ‘See you tomorrow?’
‘Sure,’ Fleet said. ‘Sleep tight.’
Hell Hawk. Lydia finished the open bottle of whisky and went to bed in a foul mood. She knew it was her own fault and that made it worse.
Chapter Fifteen
After a poor night of sleep and the required caffeine shot to get her moving, Lydia went looking for Jason. She realised she hadn’t seen him since the séance and, with a stab of guilt, that she ought to have checked on him before. Her father’s stories had left her with the lingering impression that the Crows had not always been the sharing and caring type, and she was determined not to follow blindly in their footsteps. Not without good cause, at any rate.
After checking his bedroom and the kitchen, Lydia went out onto the roof terrace. Jason was next to the railing, staring out, his head tilted to look down the alley which ran behind their building, toward the main road.
‘Hey,’ Lydia said gently, not wanting to startle the ghost. Which was funny, if she thought about it.
He turned slowly and Lydia saw, with a twinge in her own heart, that his eyes were sad. He folded his arms, tucking his hands into the large turned-up cuffs of his voluminous suit jacket.
‘Any luck?’ Lydia knew that Jason spent hours trying to lean out over the railing that ran along the edge of the roof terrace. Either that, or attempting to step outside the back door which led from the kitchen to the alley where the wheelie bins were stored.
He shook his head and Lydia pulled a sympathetic face in response.
‘Any luck your end?’
‘I’ve asked Fleet to look into Amy’s death,’ Lydia said. A pause. ‘I’m really sorry about that.’
‘What? Her death or the séance?’
‘Both.’
He nodded. ‘I just feel stuck. I know I’ve been saying that for ages, but now I really feel it. I knew she was gone, before, but now I know she’s somewhere else. She’s continuing on, in some form and in some way, but not with me. It’s worse.’
‘You want to be with her.’
He nodded. ‘So much.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lydia said, again, wishing it wasn’t so inadequate a sentence. She stepped forward and put her arms around Jason, ignoring the freezing cold and slight buzz of electricity that seemed to jump along her skin when she touched him, and hugged him as tightly as she could.
‘I’ve got bad news,’ Fleet said, calling her later. ‘There’s a reason the journos didn’t report many details on Amy Silver. It’s a cold case.’
‘Unsolved?’
‘Amy Silver died on her wedding day. She had just married a Jason Montefort and the happy couple, plus selected family and friends were celebrating at The Fork.
Lydia bit down on the urge to say ‘I know, what else?’ as Fleet continued: ‘Amy Silver was aged twenty-three and her new husband was twenty-four, neither had any health problems, no enemies that the investigation turned up, and no connections with organised crime or, for that matter, crime of any kind. Which makes their selection of The Fork as a wedding venue extremely peculiar.’
‘Hey!’ Lydia said. ‘That’s my family you’re maligning.’ With good reason, but still. ‘Cause of death?’
‘Unknown,’ Fleet said. ‘No marks on the bodies. No signs of struggle. Nothing in the toxicology report or the post-mortem.’
‘Nothing?’
Fleet shook his head. ‘It makes no sense. Young healthy couples don’t just drop dead for no reason. There must have been a mistake.’
‘With the investigation?’
‘It’s possible,’ Fleet said. ‘This was before the integrated database system was brought in. The investigation records aren’t as thorough as they would be now. And it’s possible that something got lost interdepartmentally. Or even through poor communication with another borough.’
‘Can I see the post-mortem reports?’
Fleet sighed. ‘May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.’
When he arrived later he tapped in an access code and then passed across his laptop. The documents had all been hard copy originally and had been scanned in. It was odd to read handwritten notes and Lydia had the weird sensation that it had all happened a very long time ago. The past was another country. Weirder still, she was reading about the corpse of the person she shared a flat with. The accompanying photographs made her draw her breath in. Jason was laid out on the examination table, his face a mask. It was both familiar and different. No matter how many dead people Lydia saw, the initial shock was the same. The emptiness of the physical body without its soul intact, the essential wrongness of it. She looked around, making sure Jason hadn’t appeared. He definitely shouldn’t see this.
‘Are you okay?’
Lydia glanced up and found Fleet looking at her with deep concern. ‘Fine,’ she said quickly.
‘You don’t look fine. What is it?’
I’m looking at my friend’s dead body . ‘Nothing. What can we do to work the case?’
Fleet shook his head. ‘I’m not sure, it was a long time ago. I can’t imagine we’ll turn up anything new.’
‘Cold cases do get solved though. Sometimes.’
‘This isn’t even a murder, though. It’s two tragic, unexplained deaths. Suspicious, but with no cause of death, no motive, no suspects.’ Fleet spread his hands. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t see where to start.’
As he spoke, Lydia looked back at the image of Jason on the screen. She pushed her emotions to the side and focused on detail. On fact. There had to be something. The screen went blank and for a second Lydia assumed Fleet’s laptop had suddenly run out of charge. Then the screen came back to life but instead of the image of Jason, there was a black screen with a text box in the middle which said ‘error, file not found.’
Lydia looked up. ‘That doesn’t seem like good news.’
‘Just a bug,’ Fleet said, but he didn’t sound sure. ‘I’ll pop into the office, see what IT say.’
‘You’ll go, now?’
‘It’s obviously important or you wouldn’t have asked.’ Fleet put his laptop back in its sleeve and kissed Lydia goodbye.
Once he had gone, Lydia went and had a hot shower, then spent some time tidying and cleaning the flat. It wasn’t normal behaviour and she didn’t feel like examining the reasons why, she just went with it. The place was disgusting, anyway.
A couple of hours later, Fleet returned. The sky had darkened and Lydia’s stomach was rumbling. ‘Takeaway?’ She asked the moment Fleet had taken off his coat.
‘It’s a cold case,’ Fleet said, ‘but that’s not the issue.’ His skin had gone the grey-ish colour it did when he was extremely worried.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lydia’s hunger fled.
‘I had a call from a well-spoken man from the NCA.’
‘National Crime Agency? Bloody hell.’
Fleet nodded. ‘And he explained that the case had been handled by them, and then had been taken over by the intelligence service. And that any further questions I may have regarding it should be directed to their office.’
‘Well that’s good,’ Lydia said. ‘Did he giv
e you a contact name?’
‘No. And I got the distinct impression that I wouldn’t be having any further questions.’ Fleet ran a hand over his face. ‘He made it very clear that my curiosity had been entirely satiated. Should I wish to continue with a policing career.’
‘Hell Hawk,’ Lydia said quietly.
‘I’ve come up against security before, but never like this. Usually it’s a redacted file and you have some warning. I’ve never had a file disappear while looking at it.’
‘Did you get an inkling as to why it had gone to the NCA?’
‘Organised crime, most likely. Especially given The Fork link.’
‘When he said intelligence service…’ She paused. ‘Did he mean MI5?’
Fleet nodded. ‘I don’t wish to state the obvious, but the chances of us getting access to the complete case files are zero. Less than zero, actually.’
‘Thank you for trying.’
‘After the phone call, the entire file disappeared, not just that report. Even searching their names showed an error message saying the link was temporarily unavailable. That’s quick work. It must have been flagged as an immediate priority, which is alarming for something so long ago. What possible relevance can it have?’
‘And there was nothing about Amy? Nothing you saw before this?’
‘Redacted,’ Fleet said. ‘The phone call interrupted me and then it was all gone.’
Lydia looked around nervously. She had the sudden feeling that they were being watched and half-expected a government spook in a long coat to be eye-balling them as they spoke.
‘Don’t worry,’ Fleet was saying. ‘I convinced him I was just an idiot copper. Not hard to do. The intelligence services don’t have the highest regard for our mental capabilities. They refer to us as the brawn. Or cannon fodder. And a few other names I won’t repeat in polite society.’
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