‘Go right, go right,’ yelled Beverley behind us. ‘Across the river.’
I went right and stumbled forward as the ground fell away, managed to drop the girl before I landed on her, and came down hard on my shoulder in five centimetres of freezing water. I heard one of the girls give a shrill little scream at the cold.
A hand grabbed my collar and pulled me upright – one handed – it was Beverley. She had her other arm around the waist of a girl and once I was safely up she bounded across the river with her as if the girl weighed nothing.
I scrambled after them, my feet slipping on the pebbled bottom of the stream bed, and threw myself onto the opposite bank.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Dominic, but he wasn’t talking to me. He was crouched down in front of the two little girls and checking them for injuries. ‘Can you make a light?’ he asked me as I joined him.
There was a stamping and bellowing from the other side of the river.
‘Not a good idea,’ I said.
Both unicorns were amongst the long grass of the far riverbank, visible as horse-shaped refractions of light and shadow.
Beverley put her hand on my shoulder and stepped forward to face them across what looked, to me, like quite a narrow stretch of shallow water.
‘Yeah,’ she shouted. ‘You want them – you come get them.’
A sapling crackled and split as a horn the length of my arm smashed into it. Hooves smashed down in frustration. But I noticed neither unicorn advanced into the river.
‘Come on then,’ yelled Beverley, for whom de-escalation was something that happened to other people. ‘Get one hoof wet – I dare you.’
Then, with a final snort, they whirled and vanished.
‘Thought so,’ said Beverley. ‘And stay that side.’
Dominic was swearing at his phone which, given how much magic I’d flung around that night, wasn’t working. I pulled my Airwave set, turned it on and handed it over. He called Leominster nick while I squatted down and tried to determine whether either of the girls were injured.
‘You’d better go get him, then,’ said Dominic to someone at the other end. ‘Because we’ve found them.’
PART TWO
The Other Country
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts ‘A Shadow Passes’ (1919)
9
Post Incident Management
Rule of policing number one – when something good falls into your lap, pass it up the chain of command as quickly as possible before something else bad can happen. Me and Dominic picked up a girl each and let Beverley lead us to the main road. This involved crossing the Lugg again, or more precisely a second stream of the same river because we’d actually been standing on an island.
‘Of course we were on an island,’ said Beverley. ‘You think I’d have risked being that stroppy if we hadn’t?’
We stumbled over another barbed-wire fence in the dark, but once we were over that we found ourselves on the lane that ran past Aymestrey church to the main road. We were level with the blunt comforting rectangle of the church spire when we heard the sirens. A traffic duty BMW reached us first, followed quickly by an ambulance and an unmarked Mercedes containing Inspector Edmondson that must have torn up the Highway Code to get to us that fast.
The girls were prised out of our grip and hustled off by the paramedics. Their parents, Edmondson informed us, were already en route to Hereford where they would be reunited at the hospital.
Then we walked back the route we’d come, only this time gloriously mob handed with a couple of dozen officers, two of them armed. We showed Edmondson both river crossings and where, to the best of our recollection, we’d found the girls.
He asked me whether I suspected that there had been Falcon involvement in the kidnapping and I had to tell him that, while there was definitely some weird shit going on in the general vicinity, I didn’t have any evidence that it was related to Hannah and Nicole’s disappearance.
‘We’ll have to wait to see what they have to say for themselves,’ said Edmondson.
There was no point having officers thrashing around in the darkness, so the decision was made to start search operations, for evidence this time, at first light. And we were whisked off to Leominster nick to be statemented and debriefed. Well, me and Dominic were whisked off. Beverley said she’d much rather go back to her hotel if they didn’t mind. Strangely, they didn’t mind and even allocated the snazzy traffic BMW to take her back.
I called Nightingale once we were on our way.
‘Good work,’ he said. ‘Do you think you’ll be returning soon?’
I thought about the unicorns and Hugh the bee man and his memories of Ettersberg. I thought about coincidences and moon paths and the fact that at that moment nothing which had happened made any sense whatsoever.
‘I think there are some loose ends I want to tie up first,’ I said.
‘Jolly good,’ said Nightingale. ‘Try not to take more than a week.’
An investigation like Operation Manticore doesn’t end when you find the missing kids – but it does get a lot less fraught. Afterwards, you’re looking to discover what happened to the poor little mites and feel the collar of whatever despicable scrote turned out to have been responsible. Then you’ve got to get enough evidence to send them up the steps to court and, if you’re lucky, perhaps arrange to have them fall down a few steps on the way there. In fact, from the point of view of DCI Windrow and the MIU, finding the girls was just the start. So it wasn’t unusual that me and Dominic had to give statements immediately. What was unusual was that we had to first meet up and discuss exactly what we were going to leave out of the statement. We had that meeting out on the terrace, because then it could be explained away as a cigarette break.
‘We normally do two statements,’ Windrow, who looked horrified. ‘One with all the difficult bits left out and one that goes into our files so we have a complete record – just in case.’
‘Just in case of what?’ asked Dominic.
‘In case it becomes relevant later,’ I said.
Windrow took a drag off his cigarette and nodded.
‘So, what the hell do we say you were doing up there in the middle of the night?’ he asked.
‘Witness trawl,’ I said and nodded at Dominic. ‘After Dom’s success finding Russell Banks we decided it was worth running a quick outreach operation to find any witnesses amongst people who visit the area by night.’
‘Such as?’ asked Windrow.
‘Doggers,’ said Dominic. ‘Birdwatchers.’
‘Amateur astronomers,’ I said.
‘Fox watchers,’ said Dominic.
‘Druids,’ I said.
‘UFO spotters.’
‘Satanists,’ I said.
DCI Windrow gave me a look.
‘Just joking,’ I said quickly. ‘Sir.’
‘It’s flimsy,’ said Windrow.
‘We found Hannah and Nicole,’ said Dominic. ‘Nobody’s going to be interested in why we were up there.’
Windrow put his cigarette out in the flower pot that had become the unofficial senior officer’s fag disposal unit and sighed – he obviously would have liked to light up another one.
‘If that’s the way it’s done,’ he said, ‘that’s what we’ll do.’
I looked over the parapet – the civilian car park was almost completely empty except for one satellite van and a ten-year-old Ford Mondeo that belonged to one of the reporters from the Herefordshire News. The pack had migrated en masse to the hospital. I asked Windrow if there’d been any news.
‘They’re both sleeping now,’ said Windrow. ‘And their parents are with them.’
They weren’t suffering from exposure, and while they were wearing the same clothes they went missing in, both the girls and their clothes were relatively clean. They had definitely been held somewhere with amenities and had been fed and watered. There were no outward s
igns of physical or sexual abuse but Nicole, so far, had presented as withdrawn and uncommunicative. Hannah, on the other hand, had talked pretty much continuously from the moment she was reunited with her mother until she fell asleep in her arms three hours later.
‘What did she say?’ I asked.
‘Hold up, Peter,’ said Windrow. ‘I’m not prejudicing either of you before you’ve given a statement. And, besides, I haven’t seen the transcripts myself yet.’
Then we went inside and got ourselves statemented which, this being a serious investigation, meant that it was first light by the time we’d finished. Victor was waiting for us downstairs – well, waiting for Dominic. But he was nice enough to give me a lift back to Rushpool as well.
I had a mad urge to stop off at the hotel and see if Beverley was awake. But between the hiking, the magic, and the strenuous unicorn avoidance tactics I was so knackered that bed seemed more attractive. And I can tell you that doesn’t happen very often.
That morning the press went totally bonkers, but fortunately I managed to sleep through most of it.
I woke to birdsong, something with a call like a very high-pitched pneumatic drill. I wondered if Beverley would know what the name was. I patted the other side of the bed on the off chance Beverley might have mysteriously materialised there while I was asleep, but no such luck.
I checked my watch. It was mid-afternoon. I hadn’t actually slept that long, but I felt fully rested . . . just not inclined to get up.
Objectively speaking, my whole operation the night before had been a mess from start to finish. I’d gone out to attract unspecified supernatural entities with no real idea what the hell I was going to do if I succeeded. Worse, I’d put Dominic and Beverley at risk through a basic lack of common sense. Nightingale was going to be quietly critical when I explained the thinking behind my actions. If we hadn’t found Hannah and Nicole it would have looked even worse – we’d been lucky.
Or had we?
Had it really been a coincidence that two, count them two, invisible unicorns had chased us straight to their location?
My dad would have told me to take the breaks as you get them and not worry about where they come from. But my mum never saw a gift horse that she wouldn’t take down to the vet to have its mouth X-rayed – if only so she could establish its resale value.
I decided that I was going to go with my mum on this one.
Eventually I got up, showered and dressed in the one pair of jeans Molly thought worth packing, and a green cotton shirt with a button-down collar that both my parents would have approved of. Having learnt never to trust the countryside, I bypassed my good shoes and stuck my PSU boots back on.
When I stepped outside I found Beverley waiting for me on the lawn.
She was sitting in a folding canvas chair by a rickety outdoor table with a chipped pink Formica top. She was wearing an orange and red gypsy skirt with matching halter top and enough beady jewellery to keep a Camden Market stall in merchandise for a year. A floppy wide-brimmed straw hat had been jammed on top of her dreads, a pair of round smoked-glass sunglasses were perched on her nose and she was reading a battered paperback book with a distinctive cover of black and white diagonal stripes.
‘What’re you reading?’ I asked.
She waved the book at me, and as she lifted her hand a cascade of enamelled blue and silver bracelets slipped down her forearm.
‘Val McDermid,’ she said. She kicked a blue and white plastic beer cooler that was sitting in the shade under the table. ‘I brought you something to drink.’
I sat down in the second folding chair by the table and watched the curve of her bare back as she bent down to fish a couple of bottles out the cooler. They were squat little things made of thick brown glass and sealed with stoppers. There was no label, but when I opened mine I caught a sharp whiff of fermented apple.
‘Cider?’ I asked.
‘Scrumpy,’ said Beverley.
‘What’s the difference?’
Beverley thought about it for a moment or two.
‘It’s not made in a factory,’ she said.
‘So, no quality control then?’
‘Are you going to talk about it or drink it?’
I took a swig – it was tart, alcoholic and tasted of apples. About what I look for in a cider, really.
‘Like it?’
‘Let’s talk about last night,’ I said.
‘Which bit?’ Beverley folded over the corner of her page and put the book down on the table.
‘The “Oh my god I shouldn’t be here, we’re in violation of treaty, Captain” etcetera,’ I said.
‘Violation of treaty?’ asked Beverley demonstrating why, when you’re asking questions, it pays to be literal. ‘What treaty is that?’
‘You know what I’m talking about,’ I said, and took another swig of the scrumpy.
‘Okay,’ said Beverley. ‘If you really want to know.’ She leaned over the table towards me and beckoned me to do the same and we didn’t stop until I could feel her breath against my cheek, could smell the clean warmth of her skin and see the verdigris discolouring the frame of her sunglasses.
‘You see us now?’ she murmured. ‘Close enough to whisper, close enough for me to smell the magic clinging to your skin, close enough that – if you had the bottle – you could kiss me?’
So I kissed her – just a brush pass, by way of polite inquiry.
‘Let’s see if we can keep this all metaphorical just for the moment,’ said Beverley, which is the story of my life, really. ‘The fact that we’re close together means that we’re undergoing an immediate and involuntary set of interactions – right?’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Immediate and involuntary.’
‘Now imagine you’ve got your face this close to a total stranger,’ she said. ‘What happens next?’
‘I pull back,’ I said.
‘What if you can’t? What if they literally won’t get out of your face?’ she asked.
‘Then I’d have to take steps, wouldn’t I?’
‘Exactly,’ said Beverley and kissed me.
I kissed her back – an immediate and voluntary action. It didn’t last quite as long as I would have liked because Beverley pulled back to stare at me over the rim of her sunglasses, her lips twitching into a smile.
‘But if you were stuck on the tube you might have to put up with being that close to a total stranger, right?’ she said. ‘Because all these things are contingent, aren’t they?’
Her dark brown irises, I noticed, were tinged with amber and gold around the pupils.
‘So it’s like personal space?’ I asked.
‘Only more sort of geographical,’ said Beverley.
Because on any other night she might have skipped merrily along the trail with no cares at all. Running into that kind of hostility had been a bit of a shock since Beverley, according to Beverley, generally gets to go where she likes.
I pointed out that I’d had to rescue her from the goddess of the River Teme and her daughters because she’d unwittingly trespassed on their territory, but Beverley waved that away with another cascade of bracelets.
‘That was a minor misunderstanding,’ she said. ‘And anyway, we came to a mutually beneficial arrangement.’
‘Which was?’
She leaned back in her chair and reached out to tap my bottle with her fingernail. ‘Drink your scrumpy,’ she said. ‘We’re going to a party.
I did as I was told and drained the bottle. Then I followed Beverley over the fence and along the boundary of the old orchard towards the parish hall. Ahead, I heard what sounded like a big pub crowd. Wood smoke rose lazily in the warm air and I realised I was going to get a close up look at what happens when the good people of Rushpool push the boat out.
Or at least how the Marstowe family half of it did.
As it was explained to me, later, by Dominic’s mum, it hadn’t been planned exactly. The Marstowe family being as widespread and persistent as fungus
it had already turned out to volunteer for the search teams. When they got news that Hannah and Nicole had been found, the volunteers had congregated at the village hall to wait for further developments. Naturally, given the good news, a celebratory drink was in order.
By midday, wives, parents, husbands and partners had started driving up from homes in Leominster, Hereford, Ludlow and Kidderminster. Depriving the county, Dominic estimated, of about a third of its taxi drivers and about half its hairdressers. Many of them brought food, and the trestle tables were taken out of the community hall and into the field at the back so that everyone could share. Since there were a lot of people, including a mass of children, it seemed sensible to have a bit of a whip-round and do a couple of runs to the supermarket. At some point someone decided it would be a good idea to build a bonfire – and if you’re going to do that you might as well have a barbecue.
Dominic’s dad, being Andy Marstowe’s second cousin, qualified as one of the family and so was obliged to persuade one of the available PCSOs to keep the media out.
There were a couple of hundred people in the field by the time we climbed over the makeshift stile. I looked over the crowd, the trestle tables covered in bowls and trays and tinfoil, the ranks of bottles, the kids running around the legs of the grown-ups and, oh yes, the granny corner – Dominic’s mum plus half a dozen cronies ensconced on a couple of garden loveseats that had been transported in from who knew where.
‘This is strangely familiar,’ I said, because you could have dropped my mum smack in the middle and she would have felt right at home – although the blandness of the food would have been a bit of a shock.
‘Isn’t it just?’ said Beverley. ‘All it’s missing is a decent sound system.’
‘There he is,’ shouted a woman, ‘there’s my fucking hero.’
Joanne, pale-blonde hair spiky with sweat and dressed in a loose denim sundress, bore down on me and threw her arms around my neck. The open bottle of cider she’d been carrying thumped into my back and I had to throw my arms around her to stop her from falling over.