Read The Secret Dead Page 4

27

  I tugged on my clothes without drying properly, and my shirt stuck to my back. I found Stanley at the back of the house poking holes into compost pots with a pencil, a pile of seed packets next to him. He was the reason the garden at the back of the house was once pictured in Gardener’s World. If it were left to me, it’d be nothing but weeds and snails. He let me borrow his van with only minimum argument, and I was out the door ten minutes after I got the call.

  The pavement was slick and shiny, but the sleet had stopped. Stan’s white van was parked two streets up, sandwiched between a Prius and an ancient Toyota parked almost close enough to touch bumpers.

  I climbed onto the cold leather seat, and the van started on the second go. Stan didn’t do as much landscaping work as he once did, but there was still the slight scent of sweat underneath the stronger smell of compost and the oil he used on his tools. I wound down the window and let the morning air in. It smelt heavy, as if snow was coming. I peered through the windscreen at the sky. The clouds were streaked pink and yellow. It only snows a couple of times each winter, and I hate it every time.

  I reached forward and clicked on the radio to find Ben was the topic on all the talk radio stations. The single music station I tried had a flying theme. For about twenty seconds, I listened to some boy band warbling about how I make them feel like flying before I switched it off.

  In a déjà vu moment, I turned into the road Dunne had given me over the phone and found it cordoned off by the Met with a police presence holding off a crowd of rubber neckers. I parked one road up and walked.

  A single bored constable blocked the way. I showed him my Lipscombe ID card, but he just raised his eyebrows.

  ‘He’—the constable used his thumb to point out an elderly cybergeek in a Universe Mechanica shirt—’already tried that.’

  ‘He,’ I said, ‘is crazy. DS Dunne is expecting me.’

  The constable pulled a walkie-talkie from his jacket and spoke into it, and a garbled voice that might have been Dunne’s came out. Listening through static must be taught at cop school. The constable shrugged at me and lifted the tape so I could duck underneath. Light flashed as someone took a photo of me. I turned to see a woman with a professional-looking camera and journalist’s ID pinned to her lapel. I don’t photograph well. I’ve always got my eyes closed and my mouth half-open. I hoped she wouldn’t publish it anywhere anyone I knew would see. The odds were probably on my side; pretty pictures sell better than ugly ones.

  Something wet and very cold dropped onto my nose. The sleet matched my mood, and I muttered to myself as I walked down the road towards a single white forensic tent parked on someone’s driveway. The road was purely residential, with council maisonettes on one side and semi-detached fifties-built houses on the other. The house with the tent was the latter, painted a pale pink over pebble-dashing. A pair of constables eyeballed me as they made their way from door to door.

  I opened the tent flap and stepped in with care. Ben’s wings were laid out on a separate piece of white plastic sheeting and were about a metre and a half from wing to tip. They were a combination of white and dirty grey with smears of brown blood at intervals. They ended in pink, jagged cartilage, white tendon strings, and globules of pink flesh.

  Dunne stood at the other end of the tent with his arms folded. He looked up as I entered, and frowned. ‘What are the chances this isn’t him? That they’re from a pegasus or a pigeon shifter? Or someone else entirely?’

  ‘Much too big for a pigeon, and wrong colour for a pegasus,’ I said. ‘Pegs’re pure white.’

  I glanced at him. Dunne looked worried. He bent into a squat and stared at the wings as if the answer was right there, then sighed and straightened. ‘Do you think he could have survived this?’

  ‘I have no idea. Winged physiology isn’t my area of expertise. I suppose a bird could survive having its wings cut off if it was done carefully.’

  The two of us looked at the bloody, jagged edges. It hadn’t been done carefully. Someone had ripped them off or at least sawed at them with a bread knife.

  Something blue caught my eye. I pointed. ‘What’s that?’

  Dunne bent again and used a white-gloved hand to lift the thick cartilage. He flicked something around. I bent into a squat next to him to see three tiny blue beads threaded onto a leather thong wrapped around the long cartilage at the apex. Despite its distinctive decorative appearance, I couldn’t help thinking of the sort of tag used by scientists to track rare birds.

  ‘Is that his?’ Dunne asked.

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know, but I only saw Ben for two minutes at the office. I wouldn’t have noticed if he was wearing it.’ I pulled out my mobile and tapped on the camera app. ‘Do you mind?’

  He shook his head. I snapped a few photos from various angles, including a number of careful shots that showed the feathers, but left off the devastation at the ends. I took a close-up of the blue beads, checked I had what I needed, then put the phone away.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Old lady hears a noise round her bin this morning, thought it was scavenger gnomes, so she comes out with a water pistol. No kids, but the lid wasn’t closed, so she took a peek and called us.’

  ‘She didn’t see anyone? It must have taken at least a few minutes to jam them into the bin.’

  ‘She says not. No sign of any other body parts, but I’ve got constables going through everyone else’s bins. I’ve had to cancel bin collection this morning, so I’ve had six complaints from the public already. Oh, the joys of policing.’

  I hadn’t taken my eyes off the wings. I focused on the bloody edges. The blood had congealed and gone hard. I pointed it out. ‘How long does it take to do that?’

  He shrugged. ‘Not long, I guess. I’ll know more when we get them to the lab. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Berenice Nazarak. You promised you’d talk to her again.’

  ‘I will. I—’

  ‘I’ve arranged for you to visit her house. I’ve cleared it with her foster mother. She would have gone home by now, right?’

  ‘And Haddad? Have you cleared it with her?’

  He avoided the question. ‘If you want to take a look for Ben in the underworld now, that’ll have to be on the house too. I won’t get sign-off for payment,’ he said. I didn’t miss the undertone of pleading in his voice. This was Dunne’s first big case. I could see the terror in his face that he might screw it up.

  Die now and later? The idea didn’t appeal... but then Ben’s image flashed in my head, bent over his book, the shy smile. If he was still alive, he had to be badly injured. I couldn’t wait until later and look for him at the same time as Berenice. Not if my only reason was not wanting to get a little nauseous.

  ‘They’ll both be freebies. If you let me use your police car and keep an eye on my body,’ I said. I was doing a lot of them. My hand rose to my cheek. The harpy scratch was healing, but it still itched like hell.

  Dunne smiled with relief. I noticed one of the constables giving me a dirty look as I pulled at the door handle of the car. This is going to get back to Haddad, whether he likes it or not.

  I dug in my backpack for a paper sickbag, then lay on the back seat of the car with the bag on my stomach where it would be easily accessible the moment I came back.

  Dunne snapped on the radio. ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I don’t notice anything when I’m dead.

  28

  I entered the world of the dead, and the heat hit. My neck prickled, and a line of sweat ran down my back. The semi-detacheds and maisonettes flickered in, but the preference of the dead was a row of Edwardian terraces opposite a field. A small, not-real boy raced past me chasing a football. Two dead women stood chatting at the gate to the closest house, dead since the thirties or forties by their clothing, one cradling a baby. The scene was familiar: an old Second World War bomb site. The more violent the death, the more likely it is the dead hang about.

 
I looked up and saw two figures gliding high above me. Neither flapped. They both soared like they were diving through water. I usually see fliers. Something about flying appeals to the human psyche. Flying when you’re dead is like flying in a dream. Sometimes you struggle to remember how it works, but you usually manage to get off the ground if you’re persistent.

  If Ben were dead, he’d probably been killed close by. I couldn’t imagine a murderer going too far out of his way to dump the wings. Unless he didn’t want the police attention focused close to him. It was a lot of ifs.

  This was the tricky bit. Finding someone in the death world is about as easy as finding them in the living one. You’ve got to have an idea where they are first.

  ‘Hi, Viv. You came back.’

  My sister appeared in front of me, looking like any other dead person. She was dressed as the person I think she would have been if she had never died. She wore a yellow cotton sundress and flip-flops, her bright hair curled up neatly in a bun.

  ‘I warned you,’ Sigrid said.

  ‘No, you didn’t.’ I didn’t knowing what she was talking about. ‘Remind me what I’m being warned about?’

  ‘I told you.’

  It’s probably some sort of psychological defence that makes the dead so annoyingly vague, but that doesn’t stop it being really irritating. Especially since Sigrid knew she was dead. She’d always taken a strong interest in the living world, but wouldn’t ever answer my questions about how she knew what she did. She wasn’t this annoying alive.

  I tried another tack. ‘Do you know where Ben is? The boy with wings?’

  ‘Poor Ben.’ Siggie took my arm in hers. We walked together down the road, dodging the occasional ghost child at play.

  ‘Have you seen him?’

  ‘Poor old Ben,’ she said again.

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Not helpful, Sig.’

  We turned a corner, and I found myself on the high street. In the living world, the road we’d been on had led to more residential roads, but physicality was only an approximation. We were going wherever Siggie was leading.

  The heat dialled down a few notches, but I was still sweating. The high street was busy, mostly with not-real people, but enough of the real dead threaded through the throng to support them.

  I felt a sudden dampness about my toes. I looked down to see water trickling between my feet. The trickle turned to a flood, and water surged about my ankles. Around me the high street melted away into waves, and I was left treading water in the middle of a vast ocean, brilliant blue sky above. Siggie splashed past me, her tail slapping against the water as she dove deep into the green water. The water was warm, not bathwater warm, but warm enough that I felt comfortable.

  She touched my arm, and my legs merged and lengthened. There was a sting at one side of my neck and then the other as gills appeared. ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘You did. You’re the one with the power here. I just borrowed some.’

  A school of fish with human faces swum past, and I gulped salty water before I remembered that I really didn’t have to. As the gills flapped and my lungs filled with warm salt water, I had to fight the urge to cough, to spit it out. The surface was now high above me, the sun a twinkle on the water.

  ‘Come on,’ Siggie said, except she didn’t really. Her words were whale song, but I understood them perfectly, and when I answered, the death dream translated those words too.

  We undulated through cooling water, past undersea cities and through deep ocean trenches that spurted hot jets that should have broiled us, until we surfaced next to a cliff thick with ocean birds and guano.

  ‘Up, up, up.’ Siggie pulled me by the hand. We burst out of the water like dolphins at a seaside show. We went higher and higher, and sometime in the rise up from the water, my feet reappeared so that when I finally came down and landed hard on a gravelly path, the stones cut into the balls of my feet, rather than flippers.

  We were on an island. Cliffs surrounded the island, with a valley below. Siggie was nowhere to be seen. She’d led me here and disappeared.

  An arctic wind blew in from the sea and bit through my wet clothes to my skin. The path I was on led downward, through scraggly trees and rough stone crevices pebbled with sharp stones and dotted with patches of dead grass. Since my only other option was jumping back off the cliff and into the water a few hundred feet down, I kept going. Some of it was walkable, but most I climbed in one way or another. By the time I reached the bottom, my arms and legs were covered with scratches, and my fingernails were bloody.

  At the bottom of the cliff, I found a stone cottage, alone on flat scrubland. The roof, too, was stone, although covered in a thick green moss. Very little flickered or shimmered; this place hadn’t changed for a very long time. Only the scraggly vegetable patch outside flickered as plants grew, died back, and grew again.

  Movement caught my eye through the cottage window, and a young man appeared in the doorway. It was low enough he had to crouch, although he couldn’t have been much more than five feet tall.

  Stubby little wings sprouted from his back, so small they didn’t even reach the breadth of his skinny shoulders. The seagull grey-white of them matched his colourless eyes and hair. He wore a string of blue beads identical to the one on Ben’s wings. The man’s nose and cheeks were red with cold, but despite the biting wind, he wore nothing but a pair of green shorts.

  He also wasn’t real. Some dead person was projecting him, although there was no one in sight. The not-real man got to his knees and began pulling weeds from the scraggly vegetable patch.

  I had to bend almost double to get under the low lintel. Inside, the air was hot and stuffy and thick with the smell of wood smoke from a low-burning fire centred on the right-side wall. A large double bed with straw mattress occupied one corner on the left wall. A makeshift table with rough wooden chairs stood in the other. The only decoration was a large iron crucifix on the wall opposite the door.

  Cast-iron pans and pots hung over the fireplace, and plates and mugs were stacked neatly on a shelf above them. Three wooden chairs were arranged around the fireplace. None would be out of place in the sort of country furniture shop that prided itself on its arty rustic look.

  There were three occupants. One was a dead woman sitting on one of the chairs in front of the fire. She was old as sin with a face like a raisin and a head saved from being bald by a few scraggly long white hairs that lay limp over her ears. The others were a not-real Annie Laradus and a not-real Benjamin Brannick.

  The not-reals appeared younger, and I realised that sometime before she’d become wrung out, Annie had had thick honey-coloured hair and creamy skin.

  Not-real Ben was aged about six and was occupied with spearing small fish from a basket onto a metal spit one by one. His chest was bare, and his wings were tucked neatly against his back.

  The language the old woman spoke was unfamiliar, although I understood it as well as if she were speaking English. It’s a skill I wish I could take into the living world—one much more useful than being able to drop down dead.

  ‘Bennie, love. You mustn’t worry your mama like that. Home before sunset’s the rule.’

  ‘I was tucked up in the cliffs, Granny. The puffins let me snuggle with them. I was fine. And you need to be early to get the best fish. The light’s wrong if I set out too late.’

  The old woman reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair, and the scene reset itself.

  ‘Bennie, love. You mustn’t worry your mama like that. Home before sunset’s the rule.’

  Ben began threading the same fish back onto the spit. I ducked outside. A scene from a life—one that had worried Ben’s granny enough that she relived it in her death.

  The little cottage had felt very isolated. I hadn’t seen anyone else on my trek down from the cliffs, but a church bell began ringing. Stone cottages appeared in the mists. Endless streams of winged people emerged from each one, far more than would fit
in the small rooms. Some had been dead a long time judging by their dress, but I was beginning to think that might not make much of a difference here.

  Some gave me curious looks, others paid no attention. I got the impression I was watching a centuries-old ritual, one that had played out over and over again over the years. Despite the sudden crowds, no one stepped around another or stood back to let someone else pass. They’d all worked out an individual path, a dance worn neatly into the grooves of village life.

  Something else struck me about the people. Many of them were old. This might not sound strange, but it was. People in the death world take on the face they think they had, not the one they actually had.

  The elderly fall more naturally into middle age. It’s unusual for them to keep their wrinkles and age spots. Most people think of age as something that happens to them, not something that is intrinsically part of them. The elderly winged didn’t look right either—more like someone prematurely aged in a bad movie. It wasn’t natural. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I had a suspicion. These looked like people who wanted to grow old but never had. I’d read that the life expectancy for the winged was low, but this was new to me. Maybe if I’d been dying a hundred years before the NHS and modern medicine it would have been more familiar. It was interesting, but the most important thing was that Ben wasn’t among them.

  29

  Dunne’s voice said, ‘Is he dead?’

  I didn’t reply, but I did make a noise. I missed the sick bag and threw up in the footwell.

  ‘Oh, eeuw! Eeeuw! Jeez, I just had it cleaned!’

  I scooped up the bag and held it up to my mouth, but it was too late. Everything that was going to come up had already. It didn’t stop me from dry heaving with an involuntary shudder that felt as if it started in my pelvis and rolled all the way up to my ribs. My bones ached, and pain pulsated through my brain.

  The heat in the car was stifling. Dunne pressed a button next to his seat, the window next to me slid open, and freezing air hit my face. It helped. I lay back and waited for the queasiness to subside.

  When I sat up, the forensic tent was gone, as were all the other police cars. There wasn’t a single constable in sight. The pavement was covered in a thin layer of sugar-like snow. My queasiness increased at the sight of it.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said. I had no evidence. Just because I didn’t find him didn’t mean he wasn’t there, but when I thought of the winged boy, I didn’t have that feeling that he belonged with the dead. My instincts had been wrong before, but not when it came to death.

  ‘How can he not be dead?’ Dunne asked. ‘Losing his wings must have been a major trauma. Are you sure?’

  ‘Sureish.’

  ‘Sureish?’

  ‘He wasn’t where he was supposed to be,’ I said, although that wasn’t the truth of it. I wasn’t sure Ben Brannick would head to that island after he died. That didn’t feel right either, but it was as good an answer as I had.

  ‘He could be a zombie.’

  ‘Could be.’ I tested my head by moving it from side to side. ‘I better go. I’ve got to get Stanley’s van back.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘That’s it, really.’

  Dunne pressed the lock button on the doors just as I pulled the handle. ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t forget I’ve arranged for you to see Berenice’s foster parents and house this afternoon at three. I’ll pick you up at two thirty.’

  ‘Right.’

  I wondered if I should call Haddad and ask her about it, but I didn’t want to get Dunne into trouble, and I wanted to see what connection Ben had to the missing girl.

  I was aware of Dunne’s eyes following me as I crunched back to the van. The snow had stopped, but the sky still had a yellow tinge: more to come. I shuffled into the driver’s seat and pulled out my mobile while I waited for the engine to warm up.

  When I’d told Dunne I wasn’t knowledgeable on Homo Penna physiology, I was telling the truth. I’d done a couple of courses on meta-natural physiology, and the winged had been included in one of the few lectures I’d actually attended. I just didn’t remember any of it. It was a little like trying to remember the facts about sabre-toothed tigers—all you really remember is the teeth.

  I scrolled to the number on my phone attached to the name Gretel Hopewell, the professor who’d run the course. No one answered. I took a chance and decided to visit her directly.

  It took me an hour to drive from Mitcham to the UCL Anthropology Department near Euston Square, another half an hour to find parking, and another half to find my way through the maze of the building to Dr Hopewell’s office.

  She had what should have been a coveted corner office, but it was small enough that the trestle table functioning as a desk stopped the door from opening all the way. Bookshelves took up three walls. There was only one chair, and it was occupied. Dr Hopewell watched me with an amused look on her face. She’d let her grey hair grow since we’d last met. It suited her.

  I twisted into the empty space in front of her desk. ‘You still haven’t got them to move you?’

  ‘Deters the students.’ She smiled, showing teeth too white to be real. ‘What are you doing here, Vivia? Finally going to sign up for a proper degree?’

  I’d enjoyed the course, but what with Sigrid, Stanley, and the ever-present necessity of needing to make money, I didn’t have the option of doing much more. I figured I was learning enough about all the weird and wonderful working for the Lipscombe.

  ‘No, actually I wanted you to take a look at something.’ I passed over my phone. She scrolled through the photos and cringed.

  ‘Ow. I assume these belonged to the winged boy who’s been all over the papers.’

  I nodded.

  ‘And the rest of him?’

  ‘That’s the question,’ I said, taking the phone back. ‘What are the chances of him surviving something like this?’

  ‘You understand I’ve got nothing to refer to? We had to bury the only winged specimen we had—court order.’

  I made a sympathetic noise. She turned in one movement and got a book off the shelf behind her without getting out of her chair.

  ‘The wings themselves aren’t much more than cartilage and small bones. Most of the muscle is in the chest and back, and there are no major arteries involved. Even so, there’d be quite a bit of blood loss, so he’d have been left weak. The biggest danger is probably infection.’

  ‘That’s assuming he got immediate medical attention. And if he didn’t?’

  ‘Then he needs it ASAP. Like I said, infection is a real risk. He’s going to have open wounds on his back. He’ll need them cleaned properly, and a strong dose of antibiotics. If it were an operation, I would expect the surgeon to put him on an antibiotic drip for something like that.’

  In other words, if he was still alive, find him damned fast. I thanked Dr Hopewell and left her marking assignments. She was only swearing slightly, which was likely an improvement on any work she’d ever had from me.

  I walked back to the van, thoughtful. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do something like that to Ben. If they’d wanted to kill him, where was the rest of his body? I was so absorbed in my thoughts, I almost missed the newspaper.

  It was stuck between two railings, dumped by some commuter too lazy to drop it in the recycling. The cover was almost completely taken up by a blown-up photo of Berenice Nazarak’s face. It was the same picture Dunne had shown me in the ZDC.

  The headline read ‘Murdered for Daddy.’

  Oh no. I tugged it out and smoothed it flat with my hand. Somehow the tabloid media had got wind of the idea that Ben might have supplied the human flesh by pretending it was rabbit. Page two was nothing but speculation as to how Ben might have done it, and page three contained a photo collage of known child murderers.

  I balled it up and hurled it into the nearest bin in a fury.

  30

  I deal with difficult s
ituations every day. I tell people I can’t do anything to stop them losing their home or access to their children. Or I tell them that the judge has ruled against them, but this was the first time I’d had to face a mother whose child had been mutilated. I was spared delivering the news at least. That was Dunne’s department, and I certainly didn’t envy him.

  Before I could raise my hand, Annie knocked on the door from the other side.

  ‘Who’s out there?’

  ‘It’s me, Annie. It’s Vivia.’ I backed away from the peephole so she could see me.

  ‘ID.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Put your ID up to the door.’

  I’d put her previous antsyness down to worry, but now I wondered whether she was missing some pencils from her box. I held up my Lipscombe ID card a few inches from the peephole, but it was five minutes before she opened the door.

  She stood aside enough that it counted as an invitation to come in. The little room stank of fish and something else, a meaty scent I couldn’t identify. I’d caught her in the middle of a meal. There was a milky mug of tea and a plate holding a half-eaten kipper on the stained coffee table.

  ‘The police have already been if you’re here to tell me about Ben.’

  ‘I wanted to check you’re okay.’

  ‘Oh, I’m fine. I came all the way here, and I don’t know what for. I was just sitting here while my boy was chopped into bits. And now I’m just doing more sitting. I can do that at home just as good.’

  Her face went blank for a split second, then her mouth turned up at the edges in that strange smiley way some people have before they start crying.

  She sat heavily, her face in her hands. She gasped as she cried. I took the seat opposite her and took her rough hands in mine.

  ‘I don’t think he’s dead. You know I can tell. There’s still a chance.’

  She looked up at me with tear-stained eyes. ‘But you don’t know.’

  A memory of the cottage came to me. The fresh-faced Annie and the youth outside. ‘Annie, do you know if Ben had a charm? Three blue beads on a bit of leather string?’

  ‘What?’

  I described it again in detail. She looked at me as if I were crazy. ‘Where did you find that?’

  ‘With Ben’s wings.’ And in the underworld.

  ‘That was Drew’s.’

  ‘You said Drew hasn’t been in contact with any of the winged.’

  ‘He hasn’t. No one’s seen him in fifteen years. Why would Ben have Drew’s charm?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. The winged were a close community. I couldn’t think of any reason one would leave them. ‘Why hasn’t anyone seen Drew?’

  She blew her nose and stuffed the handkerchief back in her pocket. She shifted on her chair. She began to shrug out of the coat. ‘God, it’s about broiling in here.’

  She rolled her shoulders. Her wings were as big as her son’s—great grey-white things that rolled with her shoulders. She let out a little huff of air and gave me a sad smile.

  ‘Drew cut off contact because he was angry with me. You know there’s only a few of us left.’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’ve had arranged marriages for years, to maximise the blood lines, stop close family marrying. I was supposed to marry Drew, and I was happy about that. Even if he was a stubbie.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A stubbie. His wings weren’t right—just little stubs of things.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. My theory that the severed wings might have been Drew’s dropped away.

  ‘It didn’t matter to me, but it bothered him. He didn’t want to stay on the island. It can be wonderful when you’re flying, the cliffs and the sea, diving and swooping. He couldn’t do anything like that. He persuaded me to come to London with him. Told me it would be better here. He should have been Ben’s father.’

  ‘But you met Malcolm instead.’

  ‘Yes. We didn’t have anywhere to go. No money. Someone told us about the Lipscombe, and we went to them for help. They didn’t have any space in any of the shelters, so Malcolm and his wife took us in for a few days. That was the first wife, the one who died.’

  I could imagine what happened next. I shook my head. Malcolm was a bloody fool and dodgy to boot.

  Annie rubbed the corners of her eyes. ‘When I found out I was pregnant, Drew lost it. He was so unhappy. He never wanted anything to do with St Kilda, and then he wanted nothing to do with me. He just walked out. I never saw him again.’

  And he was a stubbie, I thought. That meant he could pass as human. And somewhere Ben had met him, and taken or been given his charm.

  And then Drew did what? Got his revenge fifteen years on, on a boy who was blameless? I didn’t know, but I was becoming more and more sure that whatever had ended with Malcolm in the pit had started much earlier.

  31

  I had just enough time to drop the van off at home and have lunch and a quick shower before Dunne arrived for our appointment.

  I’d called Obe, but he had no record of any contact with Drew Gillies after he walked out on Annie, and I was ruminating on whether to pass the information to Dunne or let it percolate with our contacts a while longer. I was still holding out hope that Ben was alive, and if he was, we still needed to get to him first.

  Berenice Nazarak had lived in a top-floor flat in a converted Victorian. The front door opened straight onto a living room cluttered with piles of ironing, toys, DVDs, and newspapers. Her dog was a growly, yappy little thing, and it gave me a painful nip on the ankle as I walked through the door.

  A red-eyed woman scuttled forward and snatched up the dog. ‘Ssh, Widgy, don’t be so rude.’ She turned to me. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I rubbed at my ankle. ‘It’s okay.’

  A baby sat in the middle of it all, banging wooden blocks together with a level of concentration that locked out the rest of the world. He had a pair of horns emerging from his curly brown hair, and very hairy legs: a satyr.

  The red-eyed woman was introduced as Berenice’s foster mother, Nicky. We shook hands.

  ‘I just wanted to see Berenice’s room again. We won’t be long,’ Dunne said.

  The woman nodded. She picked up the baby and held him on her hip, then led us through to the back of the flat. She opened a door at the far end of the hallway and waved us in.

  The room was as characterless as it could possibly be. The plain wood floor was uncarpeted and even unrugged. A single bed with a white duvet and single white pillow lay at the far end under the window, which was hung with plain beige blinds. A white-painted cupboard sat opposite. The only thing that wasn’t purely functional was a yellow stationary bike in the corner of the room. That was it. No pictures, no books, no knickknacks.

  ‘She stayed here?’ I asked.

  ‘I know it looks a little bare,’ the woman said, ‘but this is the way she wanted it. Berry had a lot of control issues.’

  I recalled the dead girl in Malcolm’s house. ‘And the bicycle?’

  ‘Her therapist suggested it. He thought physical exercise would help her deal with stress. We were making real progress... Let me know if you need anything. Excuse me.’

  She closed the door behind us, but it didn’t mask the sudden sound of sobbing. Dunne was still waiting for the lab report that would confirm identification of the remains in the freezer, and I was reminded that officially Berenice was not dead but still missing.

  I dragged my eyes away from the exercise bicycle. He thought physical exercise would help her deal with stress. That it had.

  I ran my finger over the edge of the bed. Military lines—there wasn’t a wrinkle. ‘Why was she in foster care?’

  ‘Usual nastiness. Mother was a troll and had drink problems. Stepfather was human. He had drink and drugs issues. She was on the care register from birth, but there was never enough evidence to take her away until she ended up in hospital with multiple injuries including a broken pelvis at age eleven. They think there was sexual ab
use too, but not enough proof to ever charge anyone.’

  And now she was dead. One life complete. Short and nasty. I didn’t want to lie on the bed. There was something disrespectful about wrinkling it when it was so carefully neat. I lay down on the floor instead. Dunne didn’t comment. He sat down next to me and pulled his laptop from his bag and switched it on. I placed the sick bag next to my head. The floor was hard under me. I licked water from the vial.

  I closed my eyes.

  I opened them again.

  And saw Ben’s face in close-up as he knelt over me. He wasn’t real. And he didn’t have wings. He didn’t even have a hump. He wore a red T-shirt and looked like any normal boy.

  ‘Hello, Ben.’

  He cocked his head.

  I didn’t get up. I’d seen Berenice out of the corner of my eye. She sat on the edge of her bed, letting not-real Ben investigate me.

  ‘Hi, Berenice.’

  She nodded.

  ‘How’re you feeling? You look a little better.’ She did. The bicycle sat in the corner of the room as it did in the living world, and the frantic air about her had disappeared.

  ‘She’s better,’ Ben said.

  ‘You’re looking well too. Mind if I get up?’

  Not-real Ben shook his head and backed away from me a little. I pulled myself up and sat on the floor cross-legged. The room hadn’t changed from the living world. It was exactly the same. Not even a flicker.

  Ben went and sat next to Berenice on the bed and took her hand. She smiled at him, and it was a genuine one. Her eyes flickered away from me for a moment.

  ‘How do you two know each other?’

  Ben said, ‘Youth group. Berry’s a whizz at table tennis. She always beats me.’

  ‘And you get on well?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he kill you?’

  Both gave me the same blank expression. I tried a different tack.

  ‘Do you remember what happened at Ben’s house?’

  ‘She came to visit,’ Ben said.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I think you need to go,’ Ben said.

  ‘Did you see Ben’s dad?’

  Berenice launched herself at me. She was a big girl, and the air left my chest in a whoomph when she knocked into me. I found myself gasping to breathe. She punched me in the face. I tried to push her away so I could crawl to the door. But she hung on and sat on me, raining punches down on my back.

  I rolled, and just as she came loose, I pulled the key from my neck and inserted it into the bedroom door. It changed and became mine, complete with stickers and poster. I turned the key. Berenice was screaming at me as I launched myself through the door and back into life.

  I used the sick bag and lay back on the floor panting.

  ‘Well?’

  I held up a finger. I imagined the nausea seeping out of my body and soaking into the wood floor.

  ‘She didn’t like the question.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Girl attacked me. She really didn’t like the question. She had a not-real version of Ben in the room.’

  ‘That means she wasn’t cross with him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Nicky gave the sick bag in my hand a curious look as she let us out. Dunne went downstairs to unlock the car.

  I shook her hand again. ‘I’m really sorry for your loss.’

  She gave me a wan smile. ‘Thanks. You know when you read in the paper how obsessed people get with closure after this sort of thing? I always thought that was a bit stupid. I mean, it isn’t going to bring them back, is it? But I was wrong. I want to know what happened to her.’ Her mouth turned down at the corners.

  I thought of all the dead in the underworld, thinking they were still alive and populating their worlds with not-real versions of their loved ones. The underworld wasn’t the final stop on the human death experience. I had no idea what came next, but I did know the dead needed to come to terms with unresolved issues in their lives before they could move on.

  ‘Closure is important,’ I said. ‘Dunne is doing his best to find out what happened.’

  She shifted the baby from one hip to the other. He tangled his fingers in her hair and began chewing the ends.

  ‘I hope so. I’ll be so sorry if it was Ben who killed her. She adored him so much.’

  Something in her tone gave me the impression she didn’t share Berenice’s opinion.

  ‘You didn’t like him?’

  ‘Oh, he was all right. Typical adolescent. He told her all sorts of stories that she just lapped up.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like his brother was a snake. And he could fly. Okay, maybe those were true. I know he was probably just trying to impress her, but she was... well, impressionable. He also claimed to know all sorts of famous people. She loved that.’

  ‘Who did he say he knew that was famous?’

  ‘He said he was friends with that cybergeek with the legs. The one who was in all the papers.’

  My stomach sank. ‘You mean Per Ogunwale?’

  She nodded, and just like that I thought I knew who had cut Ben’s wings off.

  32

  Dunne wasn’t at the car when I went down. I crossed the road and dumped the sick bag in a bin. By the time I got back, he was there, sporting a cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he tucked the remainder of the packet into his jacket pocket.

  ‘Don’t tell Phyllis.’

  That was his wife’s name. ‘Don’t need to. She’ll smell it on you.’

  Dunne produced a packet of mints from the other pocket and waggled them at me.

  ‘Sure, that’ll work.’

  The car was old enough to still have the old crank-down windows. Dunne wound the window down, the cigarette dangling from his lip.

  ‘You know I haven’t seen my kids awake since the call-out? They’re asleep when I leave, and asleep when I get home. I get a snuggle at least, because the older three all climb into bed with us during the night. Which is nice. But it does mean that the four hours sleep I did have last night were spent hanging off the edge of the bed with one set of small feet in my face and another kicking my back. And no chance of a share of the duvet.’ He tapped ash out the window, then held the cigarette between index and middle finger and rubbed his temples with his thumb. ‘This whole thing is so screwed up, it’s driving me crazy. I still haven’t identified either of the bodies in the cars. I can’t even take samples from the moving one because it’s technically alive and we need its permission. And Benjamin Brannick! The boy has virtually no friends in London. There’s hardly anywhere he could have gone, but he’s just vanished. And I don’t even know if he’s dead or living dead. If he’s a murderer or a victim. And if he is dead, where’s the rest of the body? And if he’s alive? Same bloody question.’

  With Per Ogunwale. ‘I don’t know.’ It was a lie, and in my mind I justified it by the difference it would make between Ben being captured and his turning himself in voluntarily.

  Dunne gave me an irritated look. ‘I bloody well hope not. I know you Lipscombe lot like to keep things to yourself. In the name of... what? Client confidentiality? Some sense of retribution because the police haven’t always been nice to the non-humies?’

  I flushed. ‘If you don’t want my help, don’t ask for it. Dying isn’t fun for me, you know. I want to find Ben Brannick as much as you do.’ And I did. I just wanted to find him first. I also wanted to keep him out of prison.

  Dunne must have taken my red face as anger rather than guilt because he stared at me for a moment. Then he opened the car door and stubbed the remainder of the cigarette on the pavement. ‘Sorry, Viv. Just venting and you got caught in the crossfire.’

  We drove back in silence.

  33

  Dunne dropped me outside the office a few steps from a group of protesters. Only one face on the pavement was unfamiliar, that of a woman armed with a notepad and the slightly exasperated air of someone trying to e
scape a social bore. One of the regulars gesticulated excitedly as he explained exactly what it was we were doing wrong. The others crowded round, interjecting whenever he paused for breath.

  The journalist met my eyes as I passed. I suppressed a smile as I ducked into the lobby and waved at the security guard. Habi was bent over the desk, pointing out the necessary fields on a form to a client. I smiled at her as I went through reception but didn’t stop to chat.

  The light on my phone blinked persistently. A neat stack of letters in my in-tray indicated the post had arrived. I bent under the desk and pressed the on button for my PC. I used a letter opener on the envelopes and sorted the contents as I waited for the computer to boot up.

  Once online, I searched for Per Ogunwale and was directed to his website, which had the slick professional look of someone who’d hired a PR agency to set it up—big on quotes and waffle, and short on actual information. The ‘Contact Us’ button directed me to an online query form without phone number or address.

  I backtracked and headed to Universe Mechanica, where I spent a few minutes typing search terms into the forums. The thread Obe had shown me had been started by someone calling themselves CyberOg. The attached avatar was a GIF of a Borg Captain Picard. My eyes slid down the thread. I googled acronyms and medical jargon as I went and made note of avatar names. The thread had generated a couple of babies, which I skimmed to the end. I opened up the diagrams and compared them to the photos of Ben’s wings on my phone. They looked the same, but comparing the severed wings to a diagram was pretty much useless.

  A further search for Ogunwale came up with a lot of news stories and opinion columns but no way to get in touch with him. I didn’t read any of the articles. I was familiar with the story.

  Per Ogunwale had been a promising young doctor—one of the youngest surgeons at St Thomas’s—when he made headlines for cutting off a fellow surgeon’s legs and replacing them with mechanical ones. The surgeon, a tech-head named Oriana Oxford, then did the same to Ogunwale. Both were struck off the medical roll despite their insistence that both operations had the full and informed consent of their respective patients and that only improvements had been made.

  Ogunwale and Oxford immediately appealed through the courts claiming discrimination and finally won when it was decided their view on continuous self-improvement were tantamount to a religious one and the expulsion was discrimination. I hadn’t paid much attention to the story after that, but I recalled seeing an article in one of the Sunday papers detailing his desire to build and graft workable mechanical limbs.

  I dug a bit further but came up empty-handed. Wherever Ogunwale was working now, they weren’t keen on advertising the fact. I wasn’t surprised. Some of the more right-wing papers were still getting mileage from the idea of a surgeon who didn’t understand that chopping off healthy limbs was a Bad Idea.

  I tapped my fingers against my desk. Ogunwale had no immediate contact details online. I was about to pick up the phone and call Dunne when a half-remembered conversation surfaced in my mind.

  Two years previously I’d helped a witch with a council housing issue, and I had the vague recollection that she’d said she’d met the machine man as part of a documentary on tech versus magic. I picked up my address book, found her number, and dialled.

  ‘He seemed nice enough,’ she said, when I explained who I was looking for. ‘Completely bonkers of course, but nice enough.’

  The witch didn’t have a phone number for him, but she had met Ogunwale in his own home. I scribbled the address down on a sticky note. The directions were both precise and hazy, a remembered location two years old: go out of the tube station at Whitechapel, go left and walk along the road, can’t remember what it’s called, until you get to the tower block with the double blue doors underneath it, and his flat’s top middleish. It’s not the door painted pink with all the flowers, it’s the one next to the one next to that.

  After a few minutes on Streetview, I identified the block as Digmore Rise. According to the weblinks, it was either a thriving den of crack-addicted street weasels or a friendly block of immigrant families and young city workers. It all depended on whether you lived there or were an estate agent trying to sell a flat. Two years ago, Per Ogunwale had lived in this block. It didn’t look like the kind of place anyone would want to stay if they had any choice, but I had nowhere else to look.

  Darkness fell while I was on the tube, and I stepped out of Whitechapel station to exhaust fumes and the peppery stink of earth magic. The majority of Digmore Estate hadn’t escaped the spell that had destroyed much of Whitechapel. A glowing link fence split the estate into safe zones and the damaged area. Familiar yellow construction boards decorated the fence at regular intervals: ‘Warning! Thaumaturgical Damage. Entrance to authorised personnel only.’

  The remains of the smaller buildings at the edge of the estate were still visible as sand-covered rubble. The heat and magic beyond the fence made the sand shimmer.

  The spared Digmore Rise itself was the usual sixties-built concrete monstrosity, dotted with grey laundry-lined balconies and decorated with water stains and graffiti. The security door was wedged open with a brick, which was lucky because the buzzers were a tangle of wires and broken plastic.

  Inside, piles of rubbish—beer cans, orange polystyrene takeaway boxes, plastic supermarket bags, and other unrecognisable detritus—lay across the open lift door, indicating it hadn’t been used in a while. Or rather it had been used but not for its intended purpose. Someone had crapped in one corner, and the whole thing reeked of piss. I made a mental note to rinse off my trainers when I got home and put them in the washing machine.

  A stairwell led off to the right. The bulb on the landing had burnt out or been smashed, and this, along with lack of windows, meant I had only just enough light to stop me stepping in the occasional suspicious puddle. I didn’t bother checking the first nine floors; the building had at least twenty, and my contact had said it was middle to near the top.

  On floor ten, my calves aching, I pushed open the glass-fronted door to the corridor, which went off in both directions. From the structure of the building, I guessed it wrapped almost all the way around. The floor had once been carpeted, but only a little was left, rotted against the walls. Mostly it had peeled away to show the plain concrete beneath. The walls were an institutional green and daubed with graffiti. Not the arty kind, rather the sort of tags that are the human equivalent of a dog peeing on a tree.

  I made my way round uninterrupted, and while there were plenty of comments and drawings on some of the doors, most lacking in creativity but big on emphasising the same improbable genitalia, there were no flowers, so I headed to the eleventh floor, where I didn’t have much luck either.

  On the twelfth, I ran into a pack of four street weasels; just the right number to make harassing a solitary female an obligation in front of their pack mates.

  ‘Hey, sweet cheeks. How ‘bout a kiss?’

  ‘Smile, love, it might never happen.’

  All four burst out laughing in that high-pitched way the weasels do, furry chins wobbling.

  I ignored them, although my stomach had dropped the minute I’d seen them. I tried to walk past, but they blocked my way.

  ‘Don’t cha want to talk to us? We’re only being friendly,’ said the tallest. His grey fur was patchy and mangy across his pinched face. He gave me a smile that showed his teeth.

  I decided to appeal to his helpful side. ‘Could you give me some directions? I’m looking for the flat that’s got a door painted pink with flowers.’

  ‘I can show you something pink.’ More high-pitched giggling. This comment came from the smallest and skinniest, whose shaved cheeks and forehead indicated he’d tried to pass as human recently.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said, wishing I hadn’t come alone. I tried again to get past, and this time they let me, although not without an obligatory squeeze to my buttocks. Crude offers followed me up the stairwell, but f
ortunately the weasels didn’t.

  Yuck, never mind the shoes, all of me could have done with an extra-hot spin-cycle.

  I found the pink door with the flowers on the fourteenth floor. Someone had scribbled ‘Slag’ across the daisies with a black marker pen. Two doors along, the cheap council door had been replaced with a thick hardwood job, complete with three different types of lock.

  A deep bass beat sounded from the other side. I knocked loudly, and when there was no answer, banged hard with my fist. The music switched off and I heard the sound of footsteps, then there was a moment’s silence as I assumed I was surveyed through the peephole. I smiled my most charming smile, and the door opened.

  Even if pictures of Ogunwale hadn’t been splashed all over the papers, I would have recognised him immediately—most people aren’t eight feet tall or have that many wires poking out of their head. I looked down, but the famous cyberlegs were hidden under a pair of navy tracksuit bottoms.

  Ogunwale frowned at me. ‘You here just to stare?’ His voice was unexpectedly high-pitched. A man that tall should rumble. I dug into my coat pocket and produced my ID card.

  Ogunwale peered at it. ‘I was wondering when you’d turn up.’

  I thought he hadn’t seemed surprised, but it wasn’t that easy to tell. I had heard the tech-heads used Botox to stop them moving while their bodies healed around them. Damned stupid thing to do—a lot of them ended up with brain damage. Of course it might be said that you’d have to be brain damaged already to let someone drill into your head without a really good reason.

  He turned and walked into the flat. I took it as an invitation. I’m not sure what I was expecting, probably a cavernous dark space with green blinking lights and mechanical body parts strewn about like I was inside some messy Borg starship, but there were no limbs anywhere to be seen. And I did look.

  The machine man had a taste for art deco, and the whole place was spotless except for a single white china cup of black coffee next to an open textbook, notepad, pencil, and a yellow highlighter on a solid wood coffee table.

  The window and balcony were directly opposite the door I’d come in. The curtains were open, showing the contaminated city beyond. It gave off an unnatural glow and the occasional white spark.

  ‘Can I get you coffee, or tea?’ Ogunwale asked. ‘I’ve only got soya milk, I’m afraid. No dairy, I’m allergic.’

  I accepted a tea, and he told me to call him Per. The cybergiant disappeared through a door to the left, then I heard clinking sounds and the whistle of a kettle.

  The wall next to the kitchen was lined with a single enormous bookcase, double stacked with books. Most were science fiction, but there were a few medical texts thrown in. A closed netbook was wedged on the top shelf.

  I settled down on the white sofa opposite the window. Per set the tea opposite me on the coffee table and sat down in an adjacent armchair.

  ‘How do you know Ben?’ I asked.

  ‘I grew up next door to Malcolm Brannick,’ he said. I remembered the old man with the dandelion hair I’d seen peeking out the window. He’d seemed familiar, and now I realised why. The son looked like the father. ‘Terrible thing that happened to him. The whole family must be devastated.’

  ‘Has no one else been in contact with you? Adam? The police? They’ve also been looking for him.’

  He shook his head, ‘I haven’t spoken to either of them in years. Poor kid. I saw what happened to his wings.’

  ‘That hasn’t been made public.’

  He looked at me like I was maybe a little dim. ‘Maybe not officially, but they’re online.’ He rolled up a sleeve to show a slim screen embedded into his left wrist. For all my misgivings, I had to admit he’d had a good job done. The skin around the screen was scarred but clean, a rare uninfected screen graft.

  Pictures scrolled across the screen before stopping at a close-up of Ben’s wings stuffed into the bin. I wondered how the photos had ended up on the internet. Haddad would have the wobbling conniptions when she found out. I hoped Dunne wouldn’t tell her he’d let me take photos. She’d never believe it wasn’t me.

  ‘Anyway,’ Per said, ‘I would have talked him out of it.’

  I stared at him without expression. ‘You think he did it himself? Why would you think he’d do something like that?’

  ‘Because he’s asked me to do it before.’ His huge shoulders lifted in a shrug, ‘It’s hard enough being a teenager without all the shit he has to deal with. Have you seen where he lives? He wanted me to do it, but I said no. I mean, I know it’s hard for him, but wings! To cut them off would be a travesty.’

  ‘You cut your legs off.’

  ‘Only because I could replace them with better ones. We haven’t made much progress on the wings front.’

  ‘I suppose that counts as a denial that you’re the one who did it,’ I said, going for the subtle ‘are you the one wot done it’ approach.

  He shot me an annoyed look. ‘No, I didn’t. And if you have any doubt about that, you obviously know nothing about my work. I’m a surgeon, not a butcher. I wouldn’t do that much damage. And I certainly wouldn’t throw them away afterwards. Viable mechanical wings are bloody difficult. Ben let us x-ray him, and that helped enormously in giving us an idea how they work on a human, but all our prototypes aren’t even close to the organic stuff.’

  He stood up, crossed the room, and took the netbook down from the bookcase, then came and sat down next to me on the sofa. He opened the computer and tapped in a password, then took a minute to find the right folder. ‘Look.’

  I looked and saw a full-screen x-ray. If it hadn’t been for the very human-looking rib cage, I would have assumed I was looking at a bird’s wings.

  I said so. Per nodded. ‘Sure, except for this.’ He outlined a pair of white lines about midway down the ribs. ‘This is the problem we have with replicating them. People think it’d be the weight, and that’s a part of it but not all. You can’t just graft a pair of wings on. Humans don’t have the right bone structure and musculature. With arms and legs, you just need to slot the new ones in.’ He pointed to two light shadows. ‘See those? They’re unique to the bird people. They’re almost like another pair of shoulder blades. That’s what gives them control. The wings themselves are hollow, lightweight. Exactly like a bird’s.’

  This was much more detailed than Dr Hopewell’s explanation. ‘You think he’s still alive?’

  ‘Probably, if the wings in the pictures are all that was removed. He’d have suffered some blood loss, but there are no main arteries and they didn’t dig into the flesh.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I wasn’t yet convinced Per wasn’t the one who’d cut Ben’s wings off, but he was at least pretending to be helpful, which was always nice. ‘You saw Ben recently?’

  ‘Yeah, he visits me every year when he comes down to stay with his dad. He was round a few days before Christmas.’

  ‘Do you know anything about someone claiming to be his brother?’

  Per crossed his legs. Somewhere in my imagination, they clanked. ‘Claiming? Ben brought some guy called Oliver round. Ben said he was his brother. I got the idea he was the result of one of Malcolm’s old affairs. You know what Malcolm was like.’

  ‘That I do. I guess with the amount he played around, it was only a matter of time before he screwed someone infected.’

  Per looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Sorry, that wasn’t necessary.’

  ‘No, you’re right. I know what he was like.’

  I took out my phone and showed him the photo of Ben and the mystery man playing table tennis.

  ‘Yes, that’s the one. Didn’t surprise me I guess, because he looks like a Brannick.’

  I looked at the photo again. Both Ben and the mysterious Oliver were skinny, in both face and body, but otherwise I didn’t see a resemblance. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He looked like I imagine Alister would have.’

  That was the son who died in the car accident.
‘You knew him?’

  ‘Sure. I remember Alister and Leslie. Ali was a sweet child.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got contact details? An address or phone number?’ I asked. My brain was whirring. Ali. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Ali was only a step away from Ollie.

  ‘No, sorry.’

  ‘Well, thanks. Let me know if you hear anything.’ I stood up, suddenly eager to get home.

  ‘Absolutely. And let me know when you find Ben. He’s a good boy, no matter what the papers say. He wouldn’t have murdered that girl. No chance.’

  Perhaps not, I thought. Ben had an older brother. I’d known that the whole time. I’d just thought he was dead. Perhaps we’d been looking at the wrong deaths from the beginning.

  34

  I left with a promise from Per that he’d call me if he heard anything. There was no sign of the street weasels as I made my way down the urine-scented stairs. It was fully dark by the time I stepped outside, but with enough light pollution to make out a yellow tint to the cloud ceiling: snow. I shivered and pulled my coat closer.

  A car zoomed past, hip-hop blaring from the speakers. Every now and then I had the urge to leave the city. To take Siggie and run away, just the two of us. But no matter where I went, she’d still need carers and I’d still need money. At least in London I lived rent free. Even if it did snow occasionally. I made my way back to the station, expecting to feel snowflakes on my face at any moment, but the sky held itself back. With the exception of light shining underneath the living room door, the house was cold and dark when I let myself in.

  An episode of Big Brother blared from the TV as Lorraine cycled Sigrid’s legs back and forth. My sister lay on her back on the carpet and chattered about tennis balls.

  I leaned against the doorway, ‘Everything okay today?’

  ‘Fine. She’s been a bit antsy, but fine.’ Lorraine laid one leg down and gripped the other by the thigh, then she moved the leg from side to side. ‘We’re running out of nappies though.’

  ‘I’m due another pack from the clinic on Friday. Will they last till then?’

  Lorraine wrinkled her nose. ‘I don’t think so, sorry.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll just have to buy some.’

  ‘If you need help, sweetheart...’

  ‘I’m fine, Lorraine. Thanks. I’ll get them.’ I hesitated, then said, ‘I know you want to get home, but I’ve got something I need to do this evening. Would you mind staying an extra hour?’

  ‘No prob.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I wanted to finish watching this anyway.’ She nodded her head towards the TV.

  ‘I’ll make it up to you.’

  Light shone down the stairwell from the attic. I checked the fresh lock I’d put on my bedroom door. Still secure. I used the toilet, then locked the bedroom door behind me.

  I prefer to die in my own bed. It’s safe and secure, and I don’t have to worry about anyone fiddling with my body while I’m gone. I pulled off all the bedding and changed the bottom sheet for a plastic one designed for those who wet the bed. I’m not normally gone long enough for it to be a problem, but the thought of death sweat soaked into my bedding gives me the icks.

  I lay down and closed my eyes. Remnants of the last death still infected my body. An undercurrent of nausea swirled in my stomach, and I had what I thought of as a pre-headache. Dying came as a relief. I stretched and became aware of weight on my body. I felt a moment of panic before I realised the harpies covering the bed like a pile of stinky soft toys were their usual docile selves. This is why I don’t like dying in my own bed. I shifted my weight, and they toppled off, claws catching at my skin like they were a bunch of cats annoyed at being tossed off the bed.

  The door to the bathroom was closed, but the sound of water sloshing was audible. I trotted past it and the kitchen, where my not-real mother berated Stanley about some imagined infringement.

  Outside on the front step, I breathed a sigh of relief. The river swelled and lapped at my feet, and a moment later a white-sailed ship wove into sight.

  I stuck out my thumb.

  The Boatman grinned at me. ‘You called.’ His voice was deep, but soft.

  ‘Hi.’ While I was growing up dead, I fancied myself in love with Charon. The Boatman is tall, dark haired, and beautiful, and had been unnecessarily kind to a not-dead girl who didn’t know where else to go. At the time, I thought it was because he had a soft spot for me, but he’s nice to everyone. It’s part of the job description.

  He smiled at me. ‘Anywhere in particular? Or are you just coming along for the ride?’

  I smiled back and gave him directions to John Line Terrace.

  A thought occurred to me. The Boatman sees everyone. ‘Hey, you haven’t seen my mother have you?’

  ‘Not recently.’

  ‘Define recently. A week? Year? Decade?’

  ‘I don’t know. A good few years at least.’

  The little knot in my stomach—the one I’d hardly been aware was there—relaxed. Maybe the crazy old baggage was gone for good. Maybe she’d moved on to whatever came after the underworld. In my heart I knew it was too good to be true, but by my reasoning I was due a little luck.

  I stood on the deck of the boat and breathed in the hot, heavy air. The boat was now a little river cruiser putt-putting through flooded suburban streets. The dead waved at us as we went.

  We stopped frequently to pick up new passengers—an old man in a hospital gown with his bum peeking out the back, a cyclist in a crushed helmet, an obese man still breathing heavily and clutching at his arm. Charon welcomed each aboard politely and showed them a place to sit. I don’t know where he takes them. He won’t tell me. The only thing I can think of is that the newly dead have to undergo some sort of induction process, but that would just be silly. The ship slid to a stop, and I reached for the ladder Charon threw over the side.

  Five minutes later I stood on the pavement outside the car dealership. Its brick walls were solid, as was the graffiti and the broken glass under the boarded-up windows. Not a flicker.

  The warped boards bent under the weight of my kick and disintegrated into wet flecks of cardboard. I half-hopped through the window, careful to avoid jagged triangles of broken glass. Inside it was dark and smelt of damp and wet bird.

  Harpies covered every inch of floor, squashed up against each other, in some cases standing on each other’s heads, their eyes half-lidded. They watched me with lazy interest but made no move. Whatever had had them riled had passed. Above me the creatures perched on every possible inch of the exposed beams and shelves. Every now and then one lost her balance and fell into the feathered mob below with a damp squawk. Human-like tongues licked the air.

  I waded through the throng to find bird-women perched on their sisters’ shoulders outside in the car park. The flock numbered thousands. The cars against the far wall were feather-covered mounds watching me with human faces.

  One was familiar. It smiled at me and stretched out dirty wings. She flapped across the swarm towards me and landed on another’s shoulders.

  I shivered. ‘I don’t like this version, Siggie. It’s creepy.’

  My sister chirruped at me. Her blond hair was matted and tipped with mud. ‘They won’t let you get close, Vivsy. And there aren’t any doors to run through this time.’

  I looked back at the cars, or at least at the feathered shape of them. Every single harpy eye focused on me. I backtracked to the street and to Malcolm’s house, where I found the obese woman still in the kitchen. I stood in the doorway and watched her as she made a sandwich, a half-drunk glass of water at her side.

  The snake was gone, but there was someone else with her: a not-real teenaged boy with blond hair and an overbite that showed two large rabbit-like teeth. I took the spare seat. Neither the woman nor the not-real boy paid me any attention. The fat woman prepared another sandwich. She liberally slathered butter on two big thick slices of white bread, followe
d by a squirt of mayonnaise, lettuce, cheddar, tomato, ham, and cucumber. She didn’t bother cutting it in half. Instead she ate methodically, not wasting any time, starting at one end and going up and down the sandwich until it was done. She interspersed every second bite with a long slug of water.

  When she finished, she stood and went back to the countertop and helped herself to a bowl of soup from a simmering pot on the stove. Then she filled her water glass from a jug in the fridge and sat down to eat again.

  I’d dismissed her as an old death. And she was. But people do in death what they couldn’t do in life, and what this woman wanted was to drink gallons of water and eat like her life depended on it.

  I started gently. ‘Hello, I’m Vivia.’

  She ignored me and swallowed the soup straight from the bowl. A full roast dinner appeared on the table.

  ‘Can I ask you some questions?’

  The fat woman speared a roasted potato, raised it to her mouth, and chewed slowly. There was no sign of recognition. No blink or acknowledgement. I might have been the ghost.

  ‘I need to talk to you.’ I pulled her plate away.

  That got her attention. She glared at me and pulled it back, but the moment she had her food, I was forgotten again.

  I pulled it back again. If there’d been a handbook of how to talk to dead people, stealing food from the ravenous would probably not be on the approved list, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get her attention.

  She pulled it back with a hiss. This wasn’t getting us anywhere. I pulled the plate again and held it out of reach.

  She screamed with fury and lunged at me. I got a glimpse of her face elongating, the nose diminishing, fangs extending.

  I scrambled backwards, and in my haste my chair tipped over and I banged my head against the edge of the table. Dead snake breath huffed in my face as her fangs scraped my nose.

  I scuttled backwards on all fours and hit the kitchen wall. The giant snake watched me then, content I wasn’t going to bother her again, lost interest in favour of a line of snuffling white mice on the table. The enormous serpent slithered onto the table and opened her jaw. The mice were surprisingly obliging. The teenaged boy had morphed too. He was now a small ribbon-shaped serpent with bright emerald scales. He had already helped himself to mice, if the fat lump halfway down his scales was any judge.

  I don’t know much about snakes. I’d recognise a cobra because they have a hood, and I could probably identify a rattlesnake if I could see the tail end. The giant snake didn’t have a hood or a rattle, but she was big. Her head was a longish diamond shape, and her skin was a yellowish khaki covered with brown patches. It was difficult to estimate her length due to the coils, but I thought she was at least ten foot from tail to jaw, and thick bodied. I stared at her until I was sure I’d remember. Maybe a python, I thought. Didn’t they get big enough to eat goats or small children? There were neither on the table, but she was making short work of the mice, and as she swallowed the last, a grey not-real rabbit hopped its way through the back door, leapt onto a chair and then the table, all the while unconcerned about the giant snake in the room.

  I couldn’t watch. She could eat not-rabbits to her heart’s content, but I’m squeamish, and the mice were enough to give me the heebies. I turned my face away. There was a single short squeak, and that was enough to have me reaching for the key around my neck.

  35

  Once I’d recovered and stripped the bed, I reached for my phone and dialled Obe.

  ‘Hi, Viv? You got any news?’

  ‘Maybe. Actually, I’ve got a bit of an odd question really. Leslie and her son were also snake shifters, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Do you know what type of snakes they were?’

  There was a short pause while Obe considered the question. ‘Leslie was a ball python. Alister was something unusual, a vine snake I think.’

  ‘Thanks. How big was Leslie as a snake?’

  ‘About four foot. Why?’

  ‘It’s just something that’s come up. I’ll let you know if it means anything.’

  I put both types into Google one after the other and confirmed it. The two snakes I’d seen in the underworld were a ball python and a vine snake. I knew Leslie was dead. That wasn’t a secret, but she was supposed to have died in a car accident a long way from home. The dead often head home if they die away from it, but only if they have a good reason. I couldn’t think of any reason they would go home just to eat themselves into obesity.

  The image of the suitcase in the boot of the car came to mind, along with the neat criss-cross scars on the lid as if fangs had bitten it, trying to get out. If you were to lock a snake shifter in a suitcase and leave it there, it would die of thirst and hunger, and then revert to the human form and fill the case in a way it could never do alive.

  And Alister? Dead children always stay close to their dead mothers. The vine snake and boy had been projections. And now there just happened to be a boy, who matched what Alister might have looked like at eighteen, who had turned up claiming to be Ben’s brother.

  I slid my finger up my phone to unlock it. It was past eleven p.m. Dunne was likely home with someone’s foot in his face. The moving corpse was still a mystery, but if I was right, Leslie Brannick was the body in the suitcase. She’d been dead for fifteen years, and that wasn’t going to change. I lifted my finger from the phone. Dunne might also be pissed I hadn’t passed on the information about Per Ogunwale. I took the cowardly route and sent him an email detailing my theory about Leslie and my visit to Per.

  I looked up at a tap at the door and saw Lorraine leaning against the doorframe. ‘I’ve put Sigrid to bed, but I didn’t have time to bathe her. You okay if I do it tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Thanks, I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, love. I’m just lucky to have you next door. It’s a real peace of mind knowing my Barry’s being looked after.’

  I smiled and nodded. ‘Looked after’ wasn’t quite right. Barry was busy spending his afterlife watching endless EastEnders reruns and eating a lot of pizza, which I understood wasn’t so different from what he’d done in life. Apart from the massive coronary at the end, of course.

  After she let herself out, I wandered into the kitchen and replenished Vinegar’s food and water. I located a tin of tomato soup after a moment’s rummaging and poured it into a bowl. I buttered a hunk of bread while the soup heated up in the microwave.

  I leaned against the counter and rubbed my eyes. Leslie Brannick was dead, but probably not in the way everyone thought. Her son was likely still alive, but where had he been for the last fifteen years? And who on earth was the other body? The one that was still moving, even if it shouldn’t have been.

  I ate in front of the TV, interrupted only by the cat bopping his head against my hand as I ate. The news about Ben’s wings had broken. At the sight of the globby flesh, I changed channels and half-watched a rerun of a sitcom with a too-loud laugh track.

  I fell asleep halfway through and surfaced around three a.m. with tomato soup on my legs, a heavy cat on my lap, and the TV blaring. I pushed off Vinegar, who gave me a dirty look, changed my pyjama bottoms, switched the TV off, and went to bed.

  I woke to bright white light streaking through the cracks in the blinds where it made bars on the opposite wall. Sometime while I’d been sleeping it had started to snow again, and the room was filled with that bright light particular to snow days. The window was wide open, letting in the cold. I had a vague recollection of opening it sometime in the night, feeling suffocated by dreams filled with snakes and hunger.

  Usually when I think it’s going to snow, I hang towels over the window before I go to bed to block the light, but I’d been half asleep and hadn’t thought about towels or anything else. I lay very still on my side, stomach churning and only partly due to a post-death hangover. We’ve all got our little hang ups. Snow on the windowsill is mine.
>
  It was snowing the morning I killed my sister.

  36

  When I was twelve, I murdered my sister. I knelt on her chest and held her head under soapy water until she stopped thrashing and the little bubbles around her nose and mouth were still. It was her idea and I had only the best intentions, but we all know what they say about those.

  Bringing people back from the underworld is a doddle. Bringing them back without profound psychological and spiritual damage? A little trickier.

  It could be done. My mother did it with Stanley. He returned without the tumour that killed him. And I’d had some practice. Vinegar was hit by a car when I was eleven. I brought the cat back without any problems. He also came back without arthritis. It seemed a simple enough process.

  Turned out bringing back a cat was a lot easier than bringing back a human.

  Sigrid was suffering from what Stanley called sarcoma of the long bones—bone cancer for those lucky enough not to know—and on her second round of chemo. The survival rate for bone cancer is pretty good these days, but it was already quite clear that she wasn’t going to make it.

  My sister thought very carefully about how she wanted to die. Poison would take too long and might be agonising, strangling would be too hard for my twelve-year-old hands, we didn’t have a car so monoxide poisoning was out, stabbing would be both painful and messy, and she heard you pooed yourself if you were hanged.

  Neither of us doubted that drowning would be nasty, but we agreed it would be quicker and more effective than other methods and with less cleaning up afterwards.

  I poured a bath then helped her in. The chemo had left her weak. Her ribs were ridges under my arms, but her weight was still too much and I let go too soon. The tub squeaked as she slipped under the water. Water slopped over the edge of the bath and all over the wooden floorboards. She came up dripping and shook her head like a wet dog. So much for not making a mess.

  ‘You’ll need to hold me down, Vivvie, no matter how much I struggle.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s a reflex. I read it in the encyclopaedia.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘It’s important to get it right.’

  The corners of her mouth turned down, and for a second I thought she was going to cry, but then her lips tightened. We’d had this discussion. She was going to die anyway. She might as well die quickly and live again, than die slowly and in pain.

  ‘Are you ready?’ I asked. I wasn’t sure if I was.

  ‘Yes,’ Sigrid said, but she didn’t move. Then she took one big breath, blew it out, and slipped under the water. She looked up at me, her eyes open. Small air bubbles slipped from her nose and mouth and popped on the surface of the water.

  I slipped off my nightgown and stepped into the bath. I sat on her chest and put my hands on her shoulders.

  I don’t think it was me she struggled against. I think it was the pain of drowning. She kept her mouth closed for the first minute, then it opened and she gulped water. Her eyes bulged and her body shuddered under mine. It only took a few minutes, but it felt so very long before she stopped moving.

  I got out of the bath and wrapped myself in my towel. Sigrid lay still, her face an inch under the water. I waited another five minutes, then took her slippery wrist in my hand and checked for her pulse. I was never good at finding my own, so I took my time to be sure.

  She was dead. I lay down on the wet floor in the bathroom and went after her.

  In the underworld, she was still drowning, a not-me sitting on her chest holding her down. I shoved the not-me out of the way and pulled my dead sister into a sitting position.

  She threw up water over her stomach and spluttered and coughed.

  ‘No, no, Viv. We have to try again.’

  I hugged her tight.

  ‘You’re already dead, Siggie. Hold on. I’ll take you back.’

  I woke to find my mother standing over me, her face tight with fury. Stanley stood in the doorway behind her.

  She yanked me upwards by my wrist. Pain streaked through it. I heard something snap. ‘Stupid child. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.’ She turned back to Stanley. ‘Kill that.’

  Kill what? It was a moment before I realised she was talking about Sigrid.

  She pulled me along towards my bedroom. My toes scraped along the floor.

  ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid girl.’

  She flung me to the wood floor. I fell on my shoulder, and it jolted against the bone in my neck. She left me there then and pulled the door closed behind her. I heard the click of the key in the lock.

  I dried myself on a T-shirt and got dressed gingerly. My shoulder hurt, and when I touched it, my fingers felt something lumpy at the collar bone. I left my feet bare. My toes were scraped raw, and I couldn’t face putting socks on. I stood at the door and listened to the sound of her swearing and of Stanley’s soft placatory tones.

  I waited. It wasn’t the first time I’d been confined to my room for some infraction, and I didn’t expect it to be the last. This was a pretty big one, so I wasn’t surprised when the door was still locked the next morning. And the next.

  I was there two days without food or water before I realised she didn’t intend to let me out and I tried to escape by climbing out the window.

  It was winter, and the window was slippery with frost. My bedroom was on the second floor, and the space to the ground below looked higher than I’d ever imagined. The window was next to the drainpipe. I think I had some idea of shimmying down neat as a fireman. Instead I fell onto the concrete slabs outside the kitchen door and shattered my calves, the bones splintered and shiny against the red of my flesh.

  I woke in my own bed to see Stanley binding my legs against a plastic broom handle on one side and the remains of the mop on the other.

  He pulled it tight. I screamed.

  ‘It’ll be okay,’ he murmured. ‘I saw worse than this in the trenches. It’ll heal up nicely. You keep still.’ He didn’t meet my eyes.

  In the afternoon, he came into my room bearing his toolbox and a tray with a glass of water and a bowl of cold pea soup. I drank the water, but the soup made my stomach turn.

  ‘Uncle Stanley, please. Please let me go to the doctor.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘What if I get an infection?’

  Stanley disappeared around the door and reappeared with a pile of two-by-four wooden beams. He boarded up the window. Once he finished with the window, he cut a hole in the bottom of my bedroom door and installed a cat flap.

  Finally he said, ‘I’ve been told not to talk to you.’

  And that was that.

  My mother was dead for six months before Malcolm and the team at the Lipscombe knocked the door down. Then I was seventeen, and I’d been locked in my bedroom for five years.

  37

  In my early twenties, I spent a year and a half with an Australian boyfriend touring his home country in an old Toyota. We spent a little time in the cities, but mostly we went camping. It was an eye-opener for someone born and bred on concrete.

  We’d be out in the middle of nowhere, miles from anything or anywhere, and the moment we switched off the lamps at night, there would be no artificial light. Nothing except the stars and the moon, the Australian moon somehow a hundred times bigger than the London one, and stars so numerous and so beautiful I spent many nights just leaning back in my camp chair staring up at them.

  Sometimes, on the days when the sky was clear, I went into the back garden and gazed at the stars. It was never the same. Light pollution rendered them dimmer, less interesting. That was when I wondered what I was doing there. The answer was always Sigrid. I could take her away with me. Not Australia—too many drop bears—but someplace where there were country lanes instead of piss-smelling pavements, where the stars looked the way they were supposed to.

  And more importantly, somewhere it didn’t snow.

  I twisted the cord, and the blinds shut with a snap. I’d been given f
ood. Stanley had pushed it through the cat flap on a daily basis and emptied the piss pot I’d given him in return. And if I hadn’t had food? If I’d just stayed in there and starved? Perhaps I’d also be a severely obese dead woman, eating as if my life had depended on it.

  If Leslie Brannick had starved to death in a suitcase, someone had covered it up. Someone had lied about her death, lied that she was in the States, falsified paperwork, explained missing bodies. The idea was nonsensical, but I was certain that was what had happened.

  It explained the obese woman, it explained the too-small suitcase with the parallel grooves, and it explained Ben’s mystery older brother. Little Alister Brannick was key. He had been somewhere for fifteen years, and he must have turned up again for a reason.

  I showered, then took an age to find something appropriate to wear, as almost all my clothes were squashed into an overflowing laundry basket. I finally settled for a lightweight flowered blouse, stripy skirt, and a thick pair of patterned stockings I’d bought on a whim. I surveyed myself in the mirror. If I were lucky, everyone would think I looked either arty or just a little bit eccentric. I dragged the basket to the machine and dumped half of the contents inside.

  The woman I needed to speak to wouldn’t be in the office for at least another two hours, so I made a mug of instant coffee and poured a bowl of cornflakes, which I ate dry. I skimmed the news on my phone while I ate and checked Twitter and Facebook. I saw a documentary that said people who multitask while eating were more likely to eat more, and be fatter than people who didn’t. I intended to worry about it the moment I struggled to roll out the door in the morning.

  Lorraine arrived at seven-thirty, and I helped her change Sigrid and get her into the bath. I left the house and headed towards the station around eight.

  Rain bucketed down as I stepped onto the train and thundered on the roof of the carriage. It stopped just as I exited at Streatham Hill, and for the first time in weeks I caught a glimpse of blue sky among the clouds. Winter sunlight filtered onto my upturned face, too weak to be warm but welcome nonetheless. And then it was gone, covered by scudding grey clouds.

  Streatham is stuffed with ghosts—the result of having a larger than average number of burials due to the natural springs that were reputed to heal but usually didn’t. Spirits swarmed the pavements.

  An influx of young professionals looking for cheap housing to the area meant that every time I visited, there seemed to be more independent coffee shops with spaces for buggies and wipe-clean tables, but the part I was going to was definitely pre-gentrification. Graffiti increased as I headed east, and after five minutes’ walk I found myself at St Anguiculus Children’s Home, or at least before the concrete wall surrounding it. The wall was unpainted and topped with barbed wire. Only a small plastic plaque screwed to the wall next to a solid wooden gate told me I was in the right place.

  I pressed the buzzer and said my name, and the gate clicked open. The building wasn’t much more than a solid rectangular block, but it was painted all round with murals of smiling happy children and brightly coloured snakes. An enormous rockery, slick with rain, sat adjacent a standard issue children’s playground with swings, seesaw, and climbing frame.

  Rows of pots with scraggly winter pansies led up the steps to the main door. It opened just before I got to it, and a short, middle-aged woman with blond permed hair and overlarge glasses appeared. I received a kiss on each cheek, accompanied by the scent of talcum powder. Margery held me by the shoulders and took a good look at me.

  ‘Vivia. Lovely to see you. Gosh, it’s wet, isn’t it? I got your message. Sounds mysterious. Did you bring your Lipscombe ID?’

  I rummaged in my backpack then handed it to her.

  ‘Sorry, we’ve been getting more threats recently. I’m on holiday from next week, so just need to make sure your photo is on the approved list and the cover doesn’t call the police on you.’

  I followed her into the building, through the reception area, into a small corridor, and then into an office leading off to the right.

  Margery carefully copied both sides of my ID on a multi-function copier, gave it back to me, then waved me over to one of the two desks in the room.

  A teddy bear holding a shiny cardboard heart sat on top of her monitor, and a full row of toy animals sat on the shelf behind. Most were teddies, but there were also two mice, a rabbit, and what might have been a wombat. All were either pink, red, white, or some combination of the three.

  Photos of children covered the wall, about half in human form.

  I sat down in the office chair opposite her desk. ‘I’m looking for a boy, he’d be about eighteen now. The family thought he was dead, but it turns out he might not be.’

  Margery leant under her desk and switched on her computer. ‘What is he?’

  ‘Vine snake.’

  She stopped fiddling with her computer and stared at me. ‘You’re looking for Alister Brannick.’ And then, ‘Oh my God, I never thought... Are you sure?’

  ‘I think so. How do you know I’m asking about Alister?’

  ‘Vine snakes are incredibly rare. I only know one dead one, and I know the family. The Comforts. Shirley Comfort used to volunteer here before she died.’

  ‘Shirley? I don’t know her.’

  ‘She was Samson, Leslie, and Jillie’s mother. How can Alister be alive? The whole thing was so senseless. He died in a car wreck in the United States, in one of the middle states, one of the big ones, I forget which one.’

  ‘That’s what I thought, but now I’m not so sure.’ I gave her a breakdown of everything that had happened. ‘Do you know anything about a vine snake calling himself Oliver?’

  She stood up, crossed over to the windowed side of the office, and dropped to a crouch to pull open the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet.

  ‘Vine snakes are common in Southeast Asia but not here. Most London snakes are either cobras or pythons because those are the snakes most common in our society’s collective psyche. In the US, you can add rattlesnakes to the mix. So when another vine snake turned up here, I did think of Alister, but I’d never actually met him. It never occurred to me they could be the same child. Animal shifters come in trends, like children’s names. You don’t know any babies named Beatrice and then suddenly there are five in a year.’

  She found the file she was looking for and came back to the desk, handing it to me.

  I opened it and recoiled at the glossy photo on the first page. ‘Bloody hell, warn me next time.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She didn’t sound it.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The surgeon thought he was stamped on. Either that or beaten with something heavy. There was so much damage, it was difficult to tell for sure. If he’d been an ordinary snake or ordinary human, he wouldn’t have survived it.’

  ‘But he did?’

  ‘With reconstructive surgery and a lot of shifting back and forth. Each time, the tissue damage healed just enough. He’s still not a hundred per cent, but he can walk and talk, and that’s a lot more than he came in with.’

  ‘What did the police say?’

  ‘Not a lot. I’m sure they’ve got a file somewhere, but it happened while he was in snake form, so as far as they were concerned, it was all just a terrible misunderstanding. They weren’t all that interested.’

  I turned to the next page in the file and skimmed the report.

  ‘You didn’t try tracing his family?’

  ‘Sure, but we didn’t really expect to find anyone. Most snake babies are abandoned at birth. You know that.’

  I made a note on my phone of the date he’d been brought in. They’d called him Oliver Gale. Oliver because he called himself what they thought was Ollie, and Gale because of a tradition of naming the children after famous literary orphans.

  ‘Who brought him in?’

  ‘Street cleaners. They found him in a gutter in Wimbledon.’

  I turned another page and found another two photos. One was of
a beautiful snake, its scales a patchwork of green, white, and black. It looked like the same snake I’d seen in the underworld, but I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between one and another.

  The other photo showed a little boy in a wheelchair, his face oddly lumpy.

  ‘Do you have a current photo?’

  ‘Um, I suppose I must do. I’ll have a look.’ She began clicking through folders on her desktop. She clicked a few buttons, and the printer next to her began to whirr. ‘I don’t have photo paper.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  The printer finished, and the picture slid out and slipped onto the floor. I ducked under the desk and picked it up.

  It was the young man from Andy’s photo.

  ‘Did you ever mention Alister Brannick to him?’

  ‘Well, I told him there had been another vine snake in London about his age, but he knows that doesn’t mean they were family.’

  ‘When did you tell him?’

  ‘Last time I saw him. It was just before Christmas. He came in with a card and some sweets for the children.’

  ‘Do you know where I can find him?’

  ‘I’m not sure where he’s staying at the moment, but I can give you his phone number.’

  I programmed it into my phone. ‘If you’ve got a current photo, I assume he wasn’t adopted.’

  ‘He grew up here. He arrived just before the ban on adoption came in, and by the time it was lifted, he was too old for an easy placement.’

  ‘Ban? I didn’t know about that.’

  ‘It was never official. You know how it goes. No one wants the snakes and the spiders, so we only ever got the really desperate mums and dads. They’re happy with a nice soft baby, then one morning they see scales in the crib and overreact. We had too many adopters telling us the kid just shifted and disappeared. Except they’d never turn up in the parks or the sewers like the other strays. It was happening more often than you might think, and you’d be surprised how much the police don’t care.’

  ‘That must have been hard.’

  ‘It was. Now we make the prospective adopters spend time here with the children in snake form for at least a month to be sure they won’t freak out. It’s working, but we’re still short of adopters.’ She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe it. You know, I was at Alister’s funeral. I remember it so clearly. It was at the Sacred Heart in Wimbledon. It was a lovely service, but I’ll never forget the sight of that tiny white coffin. I can’t believe our Oliver might have been him all this time.’

  ‘Was it an open casket?’

  ‘God, no.’

  My mind was whirring along, and I had a theory percolating nicely. Alister-Oliver had gone back to the place he had been found. Somehow he’d hooked up with Ben, who would have told him he was supposed to be dead. And then what? And then Malcolm just happened to zombify at the same time? I knew there had to be a connection. I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I thanked Margery for her help, and she saw me out.

  I stood on the pavement outside the home and dialled Oliver Gale’s number. It went to voicemail. I left a message.

  I needed to speak to Dunne. I’d wanted to find Ben first, but this was no longer just about one missing boy.

  38

  New Scotland Yard is a tall and shiny new building near Westminster. The Metanatural Crimes Unit is not nearly so shiny. Due to the additional (and expensive) requirement for powerful anti-magic alarm systems and demon-proofed walls, the MCU is not only functionally attached to the Yard but literally attached too, taking the form of an ugly brick building tacked onto the back of the newer, brighter one.

  The middle-aged woman behind the reception desk wore a pink suit and a blonde beehive as big as her head. I gave her my name and told her I was there to see Dunne. She nodded and the beehive wobbled.

  Despite the fancy tech, the rest of the lobby was worn and grubby. Scuff marks dirtied the institutional green walls. Pamphlets spilled out of a metal rack on a side table next to a row of grey plastic chairs. I took the seat on the end. I’d had occasion to visit the MCU before, and every time but one I’d been there to provide an official report on the victims of one zombie or another. Now just sitting in the building was enough to make me queasy—not unlike sitting in a doctor’s waiting room knowing your pap smear is just minutes away.

  A constable I didn’t recognise arrived within minutes. ‘Ms Brisk? DS Dunne’s not here at the mo, but he wanted you to come up.’

  She used her ID badge to open the security door at the end of the corridor then stood back to let someone else through. That someone was Neil Brannick. He frowned when he saw me then pushed past.

  The constable pointed down a long, carpeted corridor. ‘DC Little’s waiting for you in the Incident Room at the end.’

  I walked to the end, but none of the rooms leading off contained Little. I turned back, but the constable was gone. I wandered the corridors for twenty minutes before I found him, all the while expecting someone to ask me my business and turf me out. But I needn’t have worried. The police appeared more interested in doing their work than bothering with a random stranger passing by.

  Finally I found a door with a white label on which someone had hand-printed ‘Brannick’ in blue ballpoint. I opened it to find a multiple-use conference room in which a row of desks had been shoved towards the wall. Boxes and papers covered the desks. The opposite wall had a number of whiteboards with stuck-on posters and scribbles.

  Little, in cat form, stood on a single desk in the middle of the row, sniffing at the contents of a red shoe box. His tail gave a little up-flip when he saw me. I recognised the gesture. It’s the same one Vinegar gives me when I’m home late and his dinner is delayed.

  ‘Hey.’

  Cat-Little sneezed and blinked at me. He seemed to be waiting for something.

  ‘Oh.’ I turned my back. There was a clicking noise.

  After some rustling, I heard, ‘Okay.’

  I turned around. He was barefoot but wearing trousers and in the midst of buttoning the second button on his shirt.

  ‘Dunne’s out, but he forwarded me your email.’

  ‘What did he think?’

  ‘He swore a lot, but he’s requested DNA testing to see if the body’s related to the Comforts. So he seems to think it could be a viable theory.’

  I stood up. ‘How soon will you know?

  ‘Few weeks.’ And at my expression, he said, ‘DNA tests take time. And now the forensic unit’s been sold off, they take even longer.’ He snorted. ‘Take longer and cost more. We’ve asked for it to be marked High Priority. So it’ll be a few weeks. If we’re lucky.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I indicated the shoebox.

  ‘Leslie and Alister Brannick’s death certificates. The accident report. All looks legit, but it doesn’t smell right. I was getting a closer whiff.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I have no idea why. It smells like paper and ink and a little bit of people, which you’d expect if someone had handled it. Are you sure it’s her?’

  I nodded. I crossed over to the desk and reached out for the paper. ‘May I?’

  ‘Put some gloves on.’

  I grabbed some from the box in the corner of the room and picked up the first paper in the pile. It was the little sheet people hand out at funerals. There was a black and white photo of Leslie and Alister Brannick on the front. It looked as if it was taken on holiday. Leslie had sunglasses on top of her head and wore a strappy white top. Alister, aged around three, gave the camera a shy smile. He had a gap between his front teeth, and the overbite that would become more prominent was already noticeable. I opened the sheet. There was no information inside other than three hymns: ‘O Great Redeemer,’ ‘Amazing Grace,’ ‘Jerusalem.’

  I put it back and looked at the next piece of paper. It was Alister’s death certificate. The cause of death was ‘Multiple Traumatic Injuries.’ It looked genuine to me, but what did I know?

  ‘Where did you get th
ese?’ I asked.

  ‘They were in the house. Jillie let us have them. Saved getting a new warrant.’

  I looked up. ‘How did she react?’

  ‘Difficult to say. She was pretty zoned out. I think she was on some sort of anti-depressant. I’m not sure she understood what was going on.’

  ‘Is that legal? If she doesn’t understand what she’s giving you?’

  ‘Whose side are you on? She said to take what we like.’

  He had a point. I started to doubt myself. Maybe I was wrong. It could have been someone else in the suitcase, but it was entirely too much of a coincidence for them not to be connected.

  The death certificate felt real under my fingers, but it couldn’t be. Someone had faked it. I couldn’t see how. It would have been hard enough if they were supposed to have died in the United Kingdom, but to do it in the United States? Whose bodies had been repatriated? It made no sense. I put the certificate back in the box.

  ‘I saw Neil Brannick on the way in,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, he’s on the list of known soul craft practitioners.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Self-reported. Apparently the man has a natural affinity for it. But Elior Services make their guys take random soul craft tests. Man’s passed them three times a year for the last twenty years.’

  I thought of Adam’s reaction to finding out Ben had claimed to have had an older brother. ‘What about Neil’s son?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘That sort of affinity runs in families. Have you tested him?’

  Little stared at me. ‘No, we haven’t. I’ll put him on the list. Top of the list.’

  ‘Put who at the top of the list?’ Dunne said. I looked up to see him leaning against the doorframe. Wrinkles marred his natty suit, and the dark rings under his eyes had deepened.

  Little explained, and Dunne’s eyes narrowed. ‘Get him in here now.’ He turned to me. ‘Up for an autopsy?’

  39

  I knew Ruth Hedger by reputation, if not personally. She was a Canadian academic, specialising in soulcraft, and was in London for a conference. I’d been following both her professional and personal blogs for some time, hoping to cadge some information I could use to help Sigrid.

  Unfortunately, I hadn’t learned anything from her professional posts that I hadn’t already picked up from her published academic papers, and her personal blog mostly detailed her journey undergoing sex reassignment, which was interesting, but not helpful.

  I’d been intending to approach her online with a ‘hypothetical’ Sigrid scenario, but hadn’t quite worked out how to do so without making it obvious that the scenario wasn’t hypothetical at all.

  A sliver of hope had appeared when Dunne smugly explained to me how he’d managed to persuade the specialist to take a look at the still-moving corpse they’d found in the second car.

  In person, the professor was a head taller than me, with overlarge glasses that emphasised her grey eyes, and sleek shoulder-length hair the colour of milky tea.

  Ruth’s eyes narrowed as she concentrated on the body in front of her. It lay on a plastic-covered table in Autopsy Room 2, leathery wrists and ankles strapped to the table—a legal precaution if not a necessary one.

  There were only three of us in the autopsy room, if you excluded the poor soul strapped to the table, but it was still overcrowded. The building hadn’t been purpose-built to contain autopsies, and the room was an old janitor’s closet with taps and drains plumbed in from the lavatory next door. The janitor’s shelves remained, although pale green tiles had been placed on the walls around them up to the ceiling. Bottles and boxes labelled with chemicals and too many syllables double-packed the shelves.

  Ruth reached out a hand and scraped a bit of skin from the corpse’s neck, then lifted it to her mouth. The scent of camphor filled the air as she swallowed. Beside me, I felt Dunne stiffen. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye. He looked a little green. For a man whose speciality was supposed to be people who ate other people, he could be remarkably squeamish.

  ‘Still alive but not a lot left,’ she said. ‘Maybe one or two percent.’ She bent down and sniffed at the body.

  Dunne shifted his weight. ‘Is it dangerous?’

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that. Not any more than any other human anyway. What do you know about soul craft?’

  ‘Not a lot,’ Dunne said.

  ‘Just the basics,’ I said.

  ‘Well, there are a lot of applications. And all are nasty. The good news is that this was an enormous spell. There aren’t a lot of people who can do something like this.’

  ‘Why does the body look dead if it’s not?’ Dunne asked.

  ‘That’s standard for this type of soul magic. The first thing your practitioner did was use part of the soul’s power to cast a paralysis spell, so the victim couldn’t move.’

  ‘But it is moving,’ Dunne said. As if it heard him, the body on the table writhed against the cuffs.

  Ruth put her hand on it, and it calmed. ‘There’s not a lot of soul left. The spell is winding down, becoming unstable. Then he or she cast another one so that the body would stay alive without sustenance over the years. It’s eating its own tissue. That’s why it looks dead. Finally, the practitioner used what was left of the soul to power a third spell.’

  ‘What was that?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea.’

  A thought struck me. ‘Can you undo the spell? Suck the soul back from wherever it’s gone, put the flow into reverse?’

  Ruth turned her back to me and turned on the tap in the basin. She soaped and washed her hands before she answered. ‘Technically, yes, but I won’t. I have no idea what the purpose of the weaving was. It may have been something small, but I doubt it. This type of thing is usually done to alter reality or a perception of reality. You’ve heard of the butterfly effect? Reversing it probably won’t do much, but it could change life as we know it. I can break it off, but I won’t reverse it.’

  I thought of all the trouble someone would have to go to to fake two deaths. A reality-altering spell, one so big it required soul magic to work, might do the trick. ‘I think I know what it was. And it’s not going to end the world.’

  ‘So you think. I don’t care if you’ve got evidence signed by God himself. I don’t reverse soul weavings. The risk is too great.’

  ‘What about the weaving itself? Can you track it to the source?’ I asked.

  ‘You mean the practitioner? Maybe. All weavings leave a signature, so, yes, I can identify that but I can’t track it back. If you bring me a suspect and put him in front of me and get him to perform a weaving, then sure.’ She grimaced. ‘Not very helpful, I know.’

  I thought of Neil Brannick. Soul tests, like drug tests, are easily faked by someone with enough motivation. ‘What if I took you somewhere a suspect had done a recent weaving?’

  Ruth thought about it, then she nodded. ‘That might work. If it was a big one.’

  Dunne stared at the thing on the table. ‘Is it still aware?’

  ‘It depends what you mean by aware. Most of his soul has been eaten away. Soul is identity. The id. There’s something left there that sees us, but how much of what we’d term traditional brain function there is would be a matter of conjecture. He or she would have been completely aware at the beginning and then lost that bit by bit over the years.’

  I gave an involuntary shudder. Someone had been locked in that car boot, alive and aware and completely immobile for years, powerless as their soul and body were nibbled away. The morning’s cornflakes shifted uneasily in my stomach, and my vision blurred. I managed to blurt out, ‘Excuse me,’ before I pushed past Ruth and stumbled out into the corridor.

  I leaned against the wall and breathed deeply. Murmured voices, Dunne’s and Ruth’s, sounded from the door behind me, but I blocked them out. The fluorescent lighting overhead was too bright. I shut my eyes against the glare. Locked in a car boot for years—it made my own incarceratio
n seem like an easy ride.

  I took slow breaths and waited for the nausea to subside. A few minutes passed before I straightened and opened the door to the autopsy room.

  Ruth gave me an appraising look that made me think they’d been talking about me. ‘Feeling better?’ she asked.

  I nodded. I kept my gaze averted from the thing on the table. Better to think of it as a thing than a person.

  ‘Ruth was telling me she should be able to un-decompose it,’ Dunne said.

  ‘No, no. That’s not it at all. I can fill in the gaps. Make the body look alive again—a bit like the dentist topping up your teeth with enamel. It’s not real, but it makes a cosmetic difference and stops the decay. If you know what the body looks like, you may be able to get an ID.’

  Dunne and I waited outside while Ruth performed the procedure. I was interested, but the reek of camphor was too much for my fragile stomach, and I think Dunne was just worried she was going to eat more of the body.

  It took three cups of coffee, two trips to void my bladder, and a magazine before Ruth popped her head out. ‘All finished.’ She looked pleased with herself, a craftsman satisfied with a job well done.

  The man lying on the table was young enough to still be called a boy. He lay awkwardly on the table, one shoulder higher than the other. His ribs showed on a skinny chest spattered with chest hair and a little acne. The pale hair reaching to his shoulders was the colour and texture of spider silk. Unfocused eyes rolled towards me, the irises so light a grey they appeared almost white. Drool dripped down the side of his mouth and pooled on the steel table.

  I’d seen him before, but not in the world of the living. It was the man from outside the stone cottage. ‘Turn him over.’

  Dunne put on a pair of gloves and rolled the skinny body onto its stomach. It had a pair of stubby wings no bigger than a dove’s.

  ‘His name is Drew Gillies.’ I frowned. ‘The charm you found on Ben’s wings belonged to him.’

  ‘Who is Drew Gillies?’

  I described Annie’s flight to London and the boy who’d run away with her. The young man who everyone thought had gone on to live a human life and had cut off all ties from the winged out of choice. But instead had spent the last fifteen years locked in the boot of a rusty car.

  Dunne’s face flushed with sudden anger. ‘You didn’t think to mention this to me?’

  ‘I haven’t had the chance.’

  ‘Don’t move.’ He disappeared through the autopsy room door and was back a minute later with Zee Haddad.

  She glanced at the man on the table, then over at Ruth. ‘Excuse us.’ She took my arm and guided me to an empty interview room with a large two-way mirror. She led me to a chair, took the one opposite, and leaned her elbows on the table.

  ‘This has to stop.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘You playing private detective. I appreciate your help on the zombie front, and with the soul magic, but you are not a police officer. I get that the non-human don’t always trust the police, but you don’t get to withhold evidence and expect us to be nice about it.’

  ‘I’m not withholding evidence. I just told you, didn’t I? And I had no idea that was Drew Gillies until I saw him.’

  ‘You knew the charm belonged to him. You didn’t think that was worth mentioning? You’ve gone out looking for Alister Brannick. This is a murder investigation. We are capable of working it out on our own. Do you have any idea how hard it is for the Crown Prosecutor to make a solid case when some amateur has been meddling? Defence solicitors love this sort of thing. I don’t want to find the piece of shit who’s behind this only to have him walk free because you fiddled with some vital bit of evidence and didn’t even bother to tell us.’

  ‘Oh for pity’s sake! I haven’t fiddled with anything.’

  ‘Haven’t you? How would I know? As of now, you are officially helping the police with their enquiries. I’m sending someone in to take a statement. And God help you if you leave anything off. And once that’s done, I want you to go home and stop playing at amateur detective. And from now on if Dunne asks you for anything, I want it to come through me first.’

  You’re not the boss of me. Something about being told off brings out my inner teenager, but annoying the police without a really good reason is never a good idea, so I just said, ‘Fine.’

  Later I was a little sorry I hadn’t argued. They kept me there for over six hours.

  40

  It’s illegal to withhold food and water from a detainee, so I’d had weak tea and a couple of ginger biscuits I suspected were from Little’s own stash, but they’d done little more than coat the lining of my stomach. So when I was finally released I huddled with a knot of smokers under an awning outside New Scotland Yard and used an app to find a place to eat so I didn’t have to wander aimlessly in the rain.

  I picked up a free Evening Standard from a vendor and tucked it under my arm as I trotted through the drizzle. I located the Italian restaurant I wanted and took a corner seat. I ordered pizza and a glass of red wine, both way out of my budget, but I was in enough of a funk not to care.

  I’d wanted to have a private word with Ruth Hedger, but she had left by the time I’d been let out.

  For the first time in years, I wished I could speak to my mother. I needed someone I could ask about this stuff. Maybe a few years being dead would have done her good. She wasn’t always all bad. Sometimes she could be reasonable. Nice even. She would come into my room before I went to bed and tell me stories of her life. Stories about the Romans and the Greeks. Of the fall of Alexandria and of caves and mammoths. I learnt more about history from my mother than I ever learnt in school. It was easy to forget then that she came from another era when putting disabled or unwanted babies out in the cold to die of exposure was just plain common sense. I still don’t know why she’d allowed Sigrid to live after all.

  What I had done to Sigrid had broken some sort of taboo. And Sigrid wasn’t supposed to survive it. Kill that. She hadn’t even been able to say her name, but Stanley hadn’t done it. She’d let her daughter live, but she hadn’t fixed her. If a hag with thousands of years of experience couldn’t help Sigrid, the obvious conclusion was that no one could, but I wasn’t ready to give up hope just yet. It wasn’t that people couldn’t come back from the dead. It was just that I had no idea how to do it right.

  My mother had brought Stanley back from the dead. Twice. Sure, he’d come back as an asshole, but that was a pre-existing condition. He’d also come back with an unnatural predisposition towards gardening and flower arranging. Which was odd but not wrong. It was possible to do it right. I just had no idea how. I’d brought the cat back successfully, but since the little time he didn’t spend sleeping was spent eating, it was difficult to know if his soul was stuck in the wrong way.

  The only other people who might know were the other hags. There was another one in London and a houseful of them in the underworld, but I hadn’t spoken to them in decades. Women who let my mother keep me locked in a room for years were not what I would consider friends.

  It occurred to me, not for the first time, that my sister might be better off properly dead. The life she had was non-existent. All that was left behind was a shell. I was fairly sure you couldn’t murder someone who was already dead, but I was even more sure that murdering someone twice must be twice as bad.

  The waiter poured the wine, and I murmured my thanks. He was a stringbean of a thing with an expression that said he felt sorry for me for dining alone. The wine wasn’t the best, which is what happens when you order the cheapest on the menu, but it was drinkable.

  I got out my phone, but the place didn’t have free Wi-Fi and the 3G was maddeningly slow, so I put it away again and leafed through the paper.

  Ben had been relegated to page three. More than forty-eight hours had passed since his flight, which meant if he wasn’t out ravaging London, he probably wasn’t going to start. The Standard, unlike some of the tabloids, didn’t ma
ke a habit of printing bloody photos, so the picture was the same one of Ben taking flight, rather than of his severed wings. The accompanying article, however, described the mutilation in detail. I hoped Annie hadn’t seen it.

  Current speculation blamed the Human Preservation Front for the attack, and I thought the writer veered dangerously close to libel considering there was no evidence they were involved. Or as far as I knew there wasn’t.

  I pondered it over my pizza. The Human Preservation Front had long roots. They’d started as a vigilante group in the twenties and had grown since then, absorbing local right-wing groups until they were big enough to propose launching as a political party.

  They wouldn’t have any problems hurting a child—whether a weresnake or a winged boy—to make their point. They certainly would see locking a snake shifter in a suitcase as a victory. Except they were never quiet about their strike-backs, as they termed them. And I couldn’t see any of them doing despised soul magic to cover it up.

  Whatever had happened to Leslie, Alister, and Drew had the feel of something personal. And any policeman would tell you that meant family. Haddad had told me not to interfere, and I wasn’t going to. But any reasonable person would allow me to check on my colleague’s grieving widow and see if she needed anything. If we had a discussion about her sister or brother-in-law while we were there, well, that would just be part of the grieving process.

  I rolled up the last slice of pizza and munched down on it. I wasn’t planning on doing any dying for a while. If I was lucky it would stick to my bones.

  I’d been expressly forbidden from contacting Annie. Haddad wanted to talk to her about Drew ‘without you putting words in her head.’ I was happy enough not to have to give the woman more bad news, but I sympathised with her.

  At least Sigrid was safe with me. I couldn’t imagine how I’d feel if she was missing, injured. Not knowing if she were living or dead. Ben was out there somewhere. I wondered if he was sleeping. If he could sleep, or if the pain was keeping him awake.

  I paid the bill and took the tube home, thinking about family all the way. Even when a smelly homeless man sang his way down the length of the carriage and swore at me when he saw my warts, my thoughts were still with the Brannicks.

  I unlocked the front door on the third try, my fingers numb from the night air, and stopped in Sigrid’s room on the way up the stairs. I pulled the duvet up over her shoulders. Light streaming from the top of the stairs told me I wasn’t the only one not in bed. Stanley was sleeping in the attic with my mother’s body again. It was easy to forget sometimes how strange my family was. I thought about going upstairs, persuading him to go to bed, but thought better of it.

  I set my alarm before I got into bed, making sure the curtains were shut tight against snow light, but there was just enough from the outside street lights that I could see the tiny cracks in the corners of the room, each familiar from hundreds of nights spent lying there with nothing else to do but study them.

  I lay in the dark and thought again about swapping rooms with Sigrid, and for the thousandth time, I decided against it. It might have been my prison, but I felt safe there. I was never going to leave the city, go off into the country and find a place where the night sky was brilliant. I had a sudden image of myself still there, still sleeping in the same room in a thousand years. Sigrid’s body would be long dead. Maybe Mum would still be in the attic, with an immortal Stanley still at her side. A future with flying cars and teleports, and my life would stay the same. The thought wasn’t as scary as it should have been.

  41

  Jillie’s brother owned a spa called Carapace in Guildford that catered to the non-human, specialising in snakes: sloughing, fang-cleaning, specially bred white mice, and so forth. I didn’t have much use for the fang-cleaning services, but Samson was one of the Lipscombe donors. With refuges closing down due to the economic crisis, it wasn’t always easy for us to find a place for the clients that needed them. Carapace took the overspill for the scaley, fanged type of shifters until we found a more permanent place for them. I’d never visited the premises, although I’d directed more than one client to them.

  Sigrid’s council-provided carer hadn’t turned up, so the two of us took the train out at just past eight the next morning. The guard helped me with Sigrid’s wheelchair when we alighted and opened the turnstiles for us without checking our tickets, which I tucked into the back of my jeans.

  I had my umbrella with me, and as I stepped out of the station the heavens opened and sheets of rain poured out from the clouds as if someone had switched on a cold shower. My sister didn’t notice the downpour. She was having a conversation about fish and whether it was ethical to eat cod. Sigrid was arguing on the side of the cod. Her arms waved at her invisible companion as she got more and more worked up.

  I’d had plenty of practice holding an umbrella over two people with one hand and pushing a wheelchair with the other, but still wasn’t any good at it.

  Finally, I gave up, tucked the loop of the umbrella handle over one of the wheelchair handles, and ducked into a bus shelter to wait out the deluge.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I scrolled up on the screen and found a message from Margery: Can’t find another number for Oli, but heard he’s working at Flag and Dragon in Camden. Gd luck.

  The rain let up after ten minutes, and we kept going. Carapace was located in a detached house in an otherwise residential road, set off slightly from the road and hidden behind a neatly trimmed Leylandii hedge higher than my head. The view from the cast-iron gate showed a double-fronted Edwardian, freshly painted a neat white with pale beige trim.

  A blue and yellow police Vauxhall Astra was parked on the road outside. I pulled Sigrid’s chair back and ducked behind the hedge as Dunne and Little crunched over the gravel to their car. Their voices were muted, but I could hear Dunne’s frustrated tone, if not his words. The car reversed out and passed me, and whatever the discussion in the car, I was glad I wasn’t part of it.

  When they were gone, I rang the bell at the gate, and either Carapace were expecting someone or just weren’t expecting trouble because it clicked open straight away. Tiny pale stones covered the ground, with larger ones designating a footpath up to the front door, which was framed by the winter skeletons of rose bushes, as neatly trimmed as the rest of the hedge.

  It took me a minute to hump Sigrid’s wheelchair up the two steps. She was quiet now, her eyes twitching back and forth like she was watching a tennis match. A stream of snot ran from her nostril into her mouth. I pulled a tissue out of a little packet and wiped her nose.

  I pulled the chair backwards through the doorway and into a carpeted reception area with two double sofas next to the window. A pile of out-of-date vanity magazines was stacked neatly on a side table along with a vase of realistic-looking fake lilies. An expensive oak counter, glossy with polish, sat on the opposite side of the room, fronted by an equally glossy male receptionist with a phone cradled under his chin while he tap-tapped at the keyboard in front of him. He was young, no older than twenty, with shimmery black hair and a matching black satin shirt.

  He murmured something into the receiver, hung up, and looked up at me. ‘Can I help you?’

  I revised his age upwards. His eyes were the same glossy black as his hair, with no whites to be seen—banshee. He could be anywhere between twenty and twenty thousand, or older.

  ‘I’m here to see Samson Comfort.’

  The banshee frowned. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘Just tell him Vivia Brisk is here.’

  ‘Just a moment.’ He disappeared through a dark wood door behind the desk.

  I was just wondering whether to sit down when he appeared again, so quickly that if I didn’t know how speedy banshees could be I’d have thought he hadn’t had time to do anything except go out the door and come back in again.

  He reached into a drawer behind the counter and pulled out a little plastic key card, which he ran through a reader
on the desk then handed to me. ‘Go through the door to the left, follow the corridor to the end. Mr Comfort’s office is on the right.’

  He came out from behind the counter and held the door open for me as I pushed Sigrid through. The banshee sniffed again, and for the first time he smiled. Then he ducked down and took a long sniff of Sigrid’s hair. ‘She smells like summer. That’s nice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said for lack of anything better to say.

  Closed doors dotted the corridor. The place smelt like every other beauty parlour I’ve been in: hot air and shampoo with an undercurrent of bleach. Water from the chair’s wheels made damp grooves on the carpet. I followed the banshee’s directions until we came to a solid wood door with a little brass plate attached: S. Comfort. Director.

  I knocked and went in without waiting for an invitation.

  Samson came towards me and kissed me softly on the cheek. I stood still and resisted the urge to wipe it off with my hand. He smelt of expensive aftershave, but it didn’t hide his natural scent, which was sharp and dry. Unlike Jillie, her brother made no attempt to pass as human. His eyes followed my every movement, no matter how small, like a snake looking at a really big mouse. I didn’t know if it was because he wasn’t able to hide it or if he just couldn’t be bothered, but no one would mistake him for pure human. Every vibe he gave off screamed that something scalely was slithering inside.

  He raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. ‘So what can I do for you? I told Jillie you wanted to speak to her, but she’s in a bad way.’

  He didn’t take his eyes away from my face. Most people make occasional eye contact when talking to you, but mostly their eyes wander. The non-stop stare made me want to wriggle.

  ‘I know. I’ve just been thinking about her. I thought she might appreciate a friendly face.’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  Samson stood and led us through French doors at the back of his office into a garden. It was much bigger than I would have guessed from the outside—on grounds better suited to a manor house than the Edwardian in front. The garden was neat and traditional: manicured grass, tidy borders selected for colour through the year, bright red dogwood mixed among the roses. A couple of wooden benches hemmed a rectangular koi pond.

  I followed Samson through a gate in another high hedge, onto a stone path, and into a small but dense wood.

  The trees were tightly packed together, and here and there the ground was disturbed as if animals had been digging at it. Samson sped up, and I caught him looking at me worriedly.

  Sigrid’s wheelchair bumped over sticks and stones, but the ground was fairly even and it didn’t catch. I glimpsed a brick cottage to the left, but Samson strode past it towards another dividing hedge. Beyond that was more wood but thick with brush and weeds.

  The path wound though bushes, rocks, and logs, seemingly dumped at random, until we arrived at a small storybook cottage with a red tile roof. A red door framed with hanging baskets bursting with winter pansies stood between two cross-paned windows.

  Samson unlocked the door with a key from a bunch hanging at his waist. ‘I rent this place out to snakes, mice, rats—most of the little shifters—as a holiday let. Not at the same time of course.’ He laughed and looked at me, clearly expecting a response.

  ‘What about the other cottage, the one through the wood?’ I asked.

  ‘I get mostly wolves and bears taking that one. Does a bear shit in the woods? Here they do.’ He laughed again.

  I smiled politely.

  He opened the red door without knocking.

  ‘Jill? Vivia is here to see you.’

  The front door opened straight onto a small living room with a red sofa at one end and what I thought was probably the original fireplace, complete with a roaring fire. A thick, fluffy rug sat in front of the grate, and pouffes, beanbags, and cushions of various sizes ringed it. It wasn’t one size fits all for the Carapace customers.

  There was a door to my left, and next to it, against the wall, was a set of wooden stairs without a bannister.

  Creaking sounded from above. A moment after, Jillie appeared at the top of the stairs. She looked awful. She wore no makeup, and her hair was matted and unbrushed. She wore a raggedy bathrobe and held a cigarette in one hand. A small brown snake was woven around the other. It stared at me and sniffed the air.

  ‘Hi, Jillie. How are you feeling?’

  She shrugged.

  Samson gave me a half apologetic smile and said, ‘I’ll go put the kettle on.’ He disappeared through the door to the left.

  Jillie stared at me, and it took her another moment before she moved. She took the stairs slowly, like each one was an effort. Then she crossed the room without looking at me and sat down in front of the fire. The little brown snake unwound itself from her hand and slithered onto the rug, where it basked in the warmth of the fire, its pale yellow belly exposed.

  I pushed Sigrid’s wheelchair across the rug, careful not to catch a small tail under the rims.

  I sat myself next to Jillie on the sofa and was immediately aware she hadn’t bathed in a while, or brushed her teeth.

  ‘How’re you coping?’ I said. ‘If there’s anything I can do, please let me know.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘You’re entitled to ten free therapy sessions. It might help to have someone to talk it over with.’

  She shrugged again.

  Samson came in from the kitchen, holding three earthenware mugs together. They wobbled slightly as he put them on a side table. He handed one to Jillie first.

  ‘Finnie, you want some hot chocolate?’

  The little snake on the rug shook its head. Samson passed me a mug. I held it in both hands. The clay was nicely warm under my palms.

  ‘What did the police want?’ I asked casually.

  Samson glanced at his sister. ‘Oddly, they wanted to ask about Leslie. The human one wanted to know about her funeral. I’m not sure why. It was at Sacred Heart in Wimbledon. It was a lovely service, but I’ll never forget the sight of that tiny white coffin.’

  I started, but Samson was staring into the fire and didn’t notice, and Jillie was beyond noticing anything. I already knew how Leslie was supposed to have died, but I had to ask.

  Samson grimaced. ‘They died in a car wreck. They were in the United States, in one of the middle states, one of the big ones, I forget which one. They were doing some sort of road trip across the country, which I should add I thought at the time was a bloody bizarre thing to take on with a four-year-old. They stopped at a train crossing, and some drunk ploughed into them from the back and shunted the whole car onto the tracks. They were hit by the train. Both died instantly.’

  I stared at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m sorry your family has had so much tragedy.’

  ‘Yes, too much.’ Jillie’s words were slurred. Yesh, too mush.

  Everyone speaks differently. They put in little ums and ahs, add ‘to be honest’ or ‘anyway.’ They make their speech their own. Two different people—Margery and Samson—had described the funeral, and at least part of the deaths, in exactly the same way. Exactly the same words. Exactly the same intonation. Any lingering doubt I’d had about the purpose of the soul weaving dissipated.

  ‘Did their bodies come back to the UK?’ I said.

  ‘No, they were cremated there,’ Samson said. ‘I think Malcolm said expatriation would be too expensive. They didn’t have travel insurance.’

  ‘Did Malcolm arrange everything then?’

  Jillie roused herself enough to give me a sharp look. ‘Yes. What’s wrong with that? She was still legally married to him at the time.’

  ‘Just asking.’

  Jillie burst into tears. The little snake on the rug slithered over to her, and as it reached her feet, it squeezed out of existence like the picture when someone turned off an old television set.

  Blip.

  Finn, completely naked, hugged her knees. She pa
tted his head.

  Jillie stood and picked up her son. ‘I’m going to lie down for a bit.’ She didn’t look at me as she left.

  42

  Samson glanced over at me. ‘She’s taking this hard.’

  ‘She’s entitled to therapy. It could help.’

  Samson shook his head. His glossy, flat hair moved with it. ‘She won’t. Not even for Finn. Oh.’ He stood up and went over to a small table near the door where he picked up a flyer, which he passed to me. ‘We’re holding a memorial service tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I got the email. I’ll be there.’

  In my opinion, it was a little early. Malcolm wasn’t far off being able to read his own eulogy, but I understood. It wasn’t for the rest of us. This was for Jillie.

  I stretched across and put my empty tea mug on the side table across from where Jillie had been sitting. ‘Can I ask what happened with her and Leslie?’

  He sighed. ‘That wasn’t exactly the Comfort sisters’ most shining moment. Leslie and Malcolm were at school together. They were an item since she was fifteen. I’m oldest, then Leslie. Jillie was the baby. Jillie had a crush on him from the moment she met him, but we all knew he was Leslie’s.’

  ‘What did they see in him?’ I was genuinely curious.

  ‘I have no bloody idea. He was a good looking bloke when he was younger, but not that good looking. All the girls at school had a thing for him. Maybe because he was always such a flatterer. Anyway, Leslie got pregnant and they got married. I don’t know if he was sleeping with Jillie while he was still with Leslie. I suspect he was.’

  ‘What made Leslie go to the States?’

  ‘She’d always wanted to travel. I woke up one morning and she was gone. I got a couple of emails from her and then she was dead.’

  ‘You didn’t speak to her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know if Malcolm or Jillie did?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  So no one spoke to her between the time she supposedly left for the States and when she turned up in a suitcase. Except she hadn’t done any travelling at all.

  ‘Do you still have her emails?’ I asked.

  ‘It was the last communication I had from her. I printed them out.’

  ‘Can I have a copy?’

  ‘Why?’

  I debated giving the real reason. If he wasn’t the murderer, he deserved to know his nephew was still alive. If he was, then it was going to come out sooner or later. He would have guessed the police had their suspicions when they started asking about Leslie.

  I told him about my trips to the underworld and the one to St Anguiculus.

  He was silent throughout, then his face hardened. ‘That policeman—Dunne I think it was—told me they found a body hidden behind Malcolm’s house. An old one. The police must think that’s Leslie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s a good thing Malcolm’s dead then, because if he wasn’t, I’d kill him.’ He smiled then, and the predator shone through. It was everything I could do to keep from flinching. ‘But it’s even better. I can’t think of anything worse than rotting alive. I hope he lasts a long, long time.’

  ‘You sure it was him?’

  Samson looked at me a long time before he answered. ‘Who else would it be?’

  43

  Arctic wind made short work of the black clouds scudding across the sky as we left Carapace. By the time we reached the train station, I was shuddering uncontrollably with cold, and grateful for the overheated carriage despite the default aroma of BO and perfume.

  A couple of teenage girls scowled when they saw us, but gave up their pull-down seats without asking. I smiled my thanks, wheeled Sigrid into the empty space, and set the brake on the chair. I’d tucked her hands into the pockets of her jacket for the journey, and the cold radiated out through her woollen gloves as I settled them onto her thighs. How much did she feel? She never gave me any indication that she noticed anything from the living world. I rubbed her hands in mine to warm them anyway.

  It took longer than it should have to get to Camden, mostly due to the need to find a step- free route, and it was close to midday by the time I finally wheeled Sigrid off the double decker and onto Camden High Street. I’d spent some of the commute on hold to the council to try and find out what had happened to Sigrid’s carer, but I’d been disconnected twice, passed through countless people, and was still no closer to an answer.

  Margery had told me that the young man she knew as Oliver had a bar job at the Flag and Dragon, an ancient pub situated one road up from Camden Lock. The Flag and Dragon had started life as a pub in the seventeenth century, then was ‘cleansed’ during the purges in the eighteenth, and turned into a church that became one of the leading lights for conversion to Christianity until the late twentieth, when declining church populations forced its sale, again to the pub trade. It had had a variety of owners since then, and fortunately—for the punters—most of them had been forced to sell because they’d spent too much money on conservation projects. Even in Camden, no one could sell enough beer to make the maintenance of an ancient place like it worthwhile. Rumour had it the current owner made his money in commodities trading and had a while to go before the Flag and Dragon sapped the lot.

  There was no hope of a table. I’d been passed a half dozen New Year’s Eve fliers on the trek up from the bus stop, and early revellers filled the booths and stone cubbyholes where long ago thauromancers once conducted dodgy deals.

  I manoeuvred Sigrid to an open space near the bar where I could keep an eye on her. The female bartender wore pink dreads and enough face jewellery to set off airport metal detectors. I worked my way to the front and tried to catch her eye.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘I’m looking for Oliver Gale.’

  The bartender shrugged. ‘Doesn’t work here anymore. He quit Sunday.’ The same day Ben flew away with Malcolm.

  ‘Do you have any contact details for him?’

  ‘Hang on.’ She ducked under the bar and returned with a pen and pad of paper. She scribbled wavy lines over someone’s lunch order at the top of the page and penned a line of digits below. It was the same one Margery had given me. ‘That’s his mobile, but good luck with it. I’ve been trying to get hold of him all week. He’s not answering.’

  ‘You don’t have a home address?’

  ‘Nope, sorry.’ She turned to another customer.

  ‘Can I speak to the manager? Is he about?’ I asked, thinking Oliver must have filled in an application form or provided a CV to get the job.

  ‘That’s me too. Sorry.’

  ‘Right. Thanks.’

  Just as I turned to leave, I felt someone’s eyes on me. I turned to see Adam Brannick turning away with the sneaky expression of someone pretending they hadn’t seen someone else.

  ‘Hey, Adam!’

  He turned with a smile that seemed genuine. ‘Hi. Nice to see you. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Just following up a tip,’ I said.

  A lanky girl with green-tinted skin and a pound or so of costume jewellery sauntered up to him and hung an arm over his shoulder. Her slanted eyes indicated the green skin came from a dryad heritage, rather than from one of the water fae. She gave me a good look up and down. ‘Hi.’

  Adam smiled again. Again, it appeared genuine, but I wasn’t sure. ‘This is Vivia. She worked with my uncle. Vivia, this is my girlfriend, Nicole.’

  Nicole visibly relaxed. ‘Adam told me about you. We were just about to have lunch.’ She indicated a table in the corner, reserved with a couple of coats and a bag of shopping. ‘Want to join us?’

  ‘That would be lovely.’

  She tinkled as she walked back to the table. I grabbed Sigrid and wheeled her closer. Adam pulled a chair out and stuck it onto another table so I could slot the wheelchair in. I introduced Sigrid then grabbed the menu slotted into a wire holder on the table. I scanned it, then braved the crush at the bar again to order a burger for
myself and easily mashable pasta for Sigrid. I was given an order number on a stick in an old wine bottle to place on the edge of our table.

  Adam looked up as I sat down. ‘You’ve got an in with the police. Do they know who did that to Ben yet?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think they’ve got much to go on, and until a body turns up...’ I shrugged. I glanced at him, considering. The skin under his eyes was tinged with purple, and I thought I caught a whiff of old whiskey. The charm bracelet on his wrist shook as he raised his beer glass. ‘Are you okay?’

  He gave a hollow laugh. ‘As well as can be expected. I keep thinking about Malcolm in the pit. Do you think he knows what’s happening to him?’ Nicole squeezed his arm and gave him a sympathetic look.

  ‘I don’t think so. Not anymore.’

  ‘I just keep remembering...’ He felt silent. ‘We had some policewoman turn up this morning. She called herself a Family Liaison Officer or something. She’s supposed to be there to keep us appraised, but she won’t tell us anything. Except they want me to go for a soul craft test. Which is just ridiculous. I haven’t done magic in years.’ He wagged the bracelet at me, and I finally recognised its significance. Each little charm had a number on it—years magic free. ‘I don’t know what it has to do with anything. All the information I’m getting is from the papers. And they’re full of shit. Ben didn’t kill anyone. He’s not like that. And now if he’s dead, he won’t even have the chance to defend himself.’

  The food arrived, and I used mashing up Sigrid’s food as an excuse to think about what I was going to say next. She opened her mouth and swallowed without chewing, obedient as a baby bird.

  Nicole watched without the usual embarrassment people often have around her. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  ‘Brain damage.’ The usual excuse.

  ‘She doesn’t smell like it.’ Non-humans and their creepy sense of smell, always getting in the way of a good lie.

  Sigrid suddenly reached out towards Nicole, knocking her arm, then pulled her own arm back in. I recognised the gesture as ‘getting a book’. Dead Sigrid did a lot of reading, something I was grateful for. Reader Sigrid was easy to manage. I could have had Marathon Runner Sigrid or Aerobics Sigrid, but I couldn’t see the girl I had known turning into an athlete. Someone who bumped into people because she was walking and reading at the same time? Yes. Sigrid placed something in her lap, opened an invisible page and stared at it

  At the touch Nicole shrunk back against Adam and whispered in his ear loud enough for me to hear her. ‘She’s wrong. She’s not right.’

  Adam frowned at me. Children of dryads have a reputation for seeing the unseeable.

  ‘Not her. Her.’ Nicole nodded towards Sigrid, who turned another page.

  Adam turned to me, his face red. It was usually children who made comments about Sigrid; it was the adults who should have known better who irritated me. Nicole wasn’t human, but she wasn’t a child either.

  Sigrid’s eyes followed the non-existent print, her hand resting on the top, ready to turn to the next page. She blinked a few times, then mumbled something unintelligible.

  ‘She’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘Her soul’s stuck in backwards.’ The green-skinned woman looked me in the eye. ‘You should kill her. She’s not supposed to be like that.’

  ‘Nic!’ Adam’s face was horrified. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a cultural thing. The tree people have to thin their seedlings or none of them live. She doesn’t always understand how humans do things.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘She’s right, if not about the killing. Sigrid’s a bit different.’

  Sigrid reached out again, putting the invisible book back on the shelf and taking another.

  Nicole flinched. ‘It mustn’t touch me.’

  ‘She won’t,’ I said and moved Sigrid’s wheelchair a little closer to me so she was out of arm’s reach.

  Nicole rolled her eyes and stood up. She crossed the room and began talking to another green-skinned woman who looked Sigrid and me up and down and copied her sister-dryad’s eye roll.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ Adam said.

  To save Adam further embarrassment, I changed the subject. ‘Did you know Ben was still in touch with Per Ogunwale?’

  Adam had the exact same reaction I’d had on hearing the name. ‘Do you think he—’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. He seemed upset at the whole thing. He also said you used to be friends.’

  Adam stiffened. ‘He did. What else did he tell you?’

  I was aware of a sudden tension in the room. ‘Not a lot. That was it really.’

  Adam drained the last of his beer. ‘Haven’t seen him in years. We used to hang out when my mum was still alive. Not so much after that. She died when I was fifteen. Heart attack. Worst thing that ever happened to me. Per wasn’t exactly supportive.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that,’ I said, but something was tickling my memory.

  ‘Don’t be. Mum’s long dead, and the friendship was no great loss. The man’s insane. Runs in the family, I believe. Excuse me.’

  He got up and went over to his girlfriend. I ate my burger in silence, thinking about his words. Sigrid sat next to me quietly, absorbed in her book. By the time I was finished eating, they had disappeared.

  A couple of drunk students leaned against the stone pillar to my left, clearly waiting for me to leave so they could snag the table. One of them huffed loudly when I got my mobile out and made no signs of moving.

  I dialled the office.

  ‘Obe, what happened to Neil Brannick’s wife?’

  ‘She’s dead. Passed away years ago.’ That’s my squirrelly little boss. Never gives me the answer he knows I want.

  ‘I just had lunch with Adam, and he told me his mother died of a heart attack. Except a few days ago it was cancer. You knew her. What was it?’

  Silence from the other end of the phone.

  ‘Well?’ I said.

  ‘It’s not for me to say. They don’t like to talk about it.’

  ‘I could just call Neil up and ask him instead.’

  ‘Don’t do that. Don’t drag it all up again. He doesn’t deserve it. What happened to Rosa almost killed him.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘She died in a house fire. Neil tried to get her out. Even got quite badly burned. But she died anyway. It was a horrible, horrible thing. Now let it go. It’s none of your business, and it has nothing to do with Ben.

  I remembered Neil’s claw-like hand. He’d been so aggressive it had slipped my mind. ‘But it does have something to do with Malcolm?’

  ‘I’m not dragging his name through the mud. It’s bad enough everyone thinks he’s a murderer.’

  ‘How did the fire start?’

  ‘Good grief, Vivia. Let it go.’ Obe’s voice was getting a little high-pitched.

  One of the drunk students accidentally on purpose bumped the table, and I caught my glass just in time. I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at them.

  ‘Okay.’ With Malcolm gone, and me not being in the office, Obe was taking the brunt of the day-to-day work at the Lipscombe. Maybe I wasn’t responsible for him the same way I was for Sigrid or Stanley, but he was my friend, and I didn’t want him getting the hump with me. I apologised, and he calmed down a little.

  I hung up then snagged the Wi-Fi code from the man who cleared our plates and set my laptop out on the table. I logged into the Lipscombe systems successfully and pulled up contact details for Patricia Stull, which I transferred to my phone.

  Just as I was about to dial, someone turned the music up, prompting a wave of cheering. I grabbed my stuff and Sigrid. I heard an irritated ‘Finally!’ as I left the table.

  Outside in the drizzle, I dialled Patricia Stull. ‘Ms Stull? It’s Vivia Brisk. I have a big favour to ask you.’

  There was only one reason I could think of for lying about someone dying in a house fire. She’d been a victim of the great British traditio
n of burning your zombie neighbours in their own home.

  44

  I was late for the service at the Sacred Heart the next morning—the same church where Leslie and Alister had supposedly had their funerals. In one of those compromises between organised religion and common sense, it was held in the hall, instead of the church itself, priests not being permitted to hold funerals for anyone who is still moving. A bespectacled man in a dog collar stood on the stage in front of neat lines of fold-out chairs. I was unfamiliar with the Bible passage he was reading. He looked up briefly as I came in, then returned to the passage.

  I slipped into a seat at the back and watched the mourners. Around fifty of them sat dotted in little groups according to their relationship with the should-be-deceased.

  The front line of chairs held Jillie, Samson, and Finn on the left, and Neil and Adam on the right. Each family sat as close to the far end as possible, leaving the maximum number of chairs between them.

  Obe and Habi sat behind them, along with another six Lipscombe employees in a clump, both ex and current.

  Per Ogunwale and the old man I’d glimpsed through the window the night Malcolm flew away sat at the back, perched at the end of the row. A metal-framed walker stood beside Ogunwale Senior’s chair. Dunne and Little were in the same row but on the other side. I didn’t recognise anyone else.

  I turned my attention to the service. The priest was waffling on about lost sheep, so I watched the bereaved instead. It might not sound like I have much time for religion, but I do. Going to church with Stanley on a Sunday was one of the few opportunities I had as a child, other than school, to get away from the oppressive presence of my mother. Now just sitting in a church is enough to drain any tension from my body.

  Neil’s face grew redder as the sermon went on, but I didn’t think it was the sermon that was bothering him. His eyes kept turning to the Comforts to his left, and after a moment I saw Adam whisper something in his ear and pat him on the shoulder. The boil went down to a simmer, but I thought it was still even odds whether he would explode before the end of the service. I remembered what Adam had said about his work problems. I’d caught a hint of his temper in the swamp, but it was on display now. The man was a heart attack in the making.

  I began to pay attention as the priest started talking about Malcolm, but it was clear he’d never met the deceased and had been given a quick rundown of his life: school, sports, job, family. He returned quickly to the main point of his sermon: a chance to sell the Big Man to all the non-churchgoers in the room, the ones who were recognisable by the way they started shifting in their seats and checking their watches.

  I didn’t know how much longer he would have gone on, but he’d gotten in a good ten minutes’ worth of lecturing before Finn got bored and began to pull at his mother’s sleeve.

  She ignored him, so he pulled harder. She picked him up and cuddled him, and he was temporarily mollified, but three-year-olds are not programmed to sit still for any amount of time. Jillie shushed him and stroked his hair while the priest paid no attention, presumably used to fussing children in the congregation. Finn started smacking her on the hip. She ignored him.

  Then: blip.

  Where Finn had been was a tiny brown cobra, swaying, hood flat, his clothes a bundle on the floor. It reared forward, but before it could bury its fangs in Jillie’s thigh, she grabbed it with both hands. She brought it up to her face. The long tail lashed back and forth.

  ‘No! No biting. Naughty!’ she hissed.

  The priest, finally, stopped in the middle of a sentence. He didn’t look happy. I knew the Church’s stance on shifters, and it wasn’t a positive one.

  Jillie kissed the tiny snake on the top of its head.

  Blip.

  Finn popped back. Jillie waved at the priest to continue. She picked up Finn’s clothes, turned the shirt inside out, and pulled it over the boy’s head. The priest coughed and turned back to his notes, running his finger over the page to find his place.

  ‘Oh, hell. Am I really expected to sit here with that thing?’ Neil pointed his finger at the little boy, who buried his face in his mother’s side.

  The priest took off his spectacles and said, ‘Mr Brannick—’ But whatever else he was going to say was lost.

  ‘How do you think Malcolm died? Why no one’s talking about it? That poisonous thing bit him! Hear that, everyone? My brother was murdered by his own son. But I’m not allowed to say anything because it’s supposed to be a child. Child, ha!’

  Samson stood up. ‘Back off, Brannick.’

  But before Neil could reply, Adam said quickly, ‘Dad, now’s not the time. The boy’s just lost his father.’

  ‘Says her. She’s a snake. They’re not like us. Don’t keep to the same rules. God only knows who really spawned that thing.’

  Samson stalked across the empty chairs. ‘You accuse my sister of being unfaithful? Seriously? After everything Jillie put up with from your asshole of a brother? He was damn lucky she put up with him. Malcolm was Finn’s father, and don’t you dare imply otherwise. Just because Rosa couldn’t keep her pants on, don’t think everyone else has the same difficulty.’

  ‘What the fuck do you think you’re saying about my wife?’ Neil went purple.

  Samson pointed his finger at Neil, close enough that I couldn’t be sure he hadn’t poked his nose. ‘Well, maybe if she hadn’t been such a slag, this whole thing wouldn’t have happened.’ Adam stood up and pushed his way between them. ‘This is really not the time. Uncle Mal wouldn’t have wanted this.’ He looked Samson in the eye. ‘Please.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dunne put on the voice recorder function on his phone, too late.

  Neil held both his hands up. Samson glared at the two of them and went back to his seat. Jillie began to cry quietly.

  The priest wrapped everything up pretty quickly after that. We finished with a prayer for Malcolm’s soul and ‘Amazing Grace’ on the organ, then people trundled past Jillie, whispering their sympathies before heading to the tea and biscuit table.

  45

  A subdued air hung over the gathering, substantial even for a memorial service. I’d never seen this side of reanimation before. Funerals are already awkward in normal circumstances. There’s not much you can do but commiserate, and shows of great feeling tend to leave both the commiserated and the commiserator uncomfortable.

  But this was worse. I could see the worry on the faces of the mourners that they were going to say the wrong thing or that one of the family would say something they had no pat answer for. Not staying dead: the latest social faux pas.

  On the edges of the room, away from the core group of family, lowered voices and quick glances to make sure no family member was approaching indicated the main topic of conversation.

  There was plenty of time to join the sympathy queue, so I headed off to the tea table, where I poured a cup of bad coffee and helped myself to a couple of lemon creams.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Samson’s sleek head ducking out a side door. I followed him out into the weak winter sunshine. I found him leaning against a wall with his eyes closed, taking one deep breath after the other.

  ‘Hey.’

  His eyes flashed open, startled, but when he saw it was me, he relaxed slightly. His lips curved. ‘Enjoy the show?’

  ‘It was interesting. Is it true?’

  ‘About Finn biting Malcolm?’ I’d meant about Neil’s wife, but I nodded anyway. ‘Yes. It happened Christmas Day. I saw the police were here. What are they going to do?’

  I leaned against the wall next to him and offered him a lemon cream. He shook his head. ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘They’ll need to write it up, maybe refer Finn to social services. Not to have him removed or anything,’ I added quickly when I saw his expression. ‘Just for therapy, make sure he isn’t a danger. That sort of thing.’

  The tight cords in his neck relaxed. ‘Okay.’

  ‘It happens surprisingly often
in mixed households. Finn’ll be fine.’ I took a deep breath. ‘The rest of you? Not so much. I assume if you know how Malcolm died that you knew that he was dead. That’s a pretty serious offence.’

  ‘I wasn’t there. Jillie only told me about it,’ Samson said. He stood completely still against the wall and lifted his face to the weak sun. ‘The only surprise is that Finn didn’t wait until he was older to bite the man. Shows he’s a Comfort not a Brannick. Every time I see any of them I have to hold back on giving them a little nip.’

  He laughed softly, and his predator eyes met mine. I couldn’t help noticing how long and sharp his canine teeth were. His smile widened, and I realised he knew how hard I found it not to flinch. I couldn’t hold the stare. I looked away.

  ‘I’m surprised it killed him. Didn’t anyone call an ambulance?’

  His shoulders rolled back in shrug. ‘Didn’t know about it until it was too late. Malcolm was drunk—too many Baileys, Jillie said. He’d gone for a lie down. She heard him telling Finn off, but didn’t think anything of it. Adam went upstairs to the loo a half hour later and found him dead.’

  ‘That quick? I thought an adult would have at least a few hours to get medical attention.’

  ‘Jillie thinks it triggered a heart attack. I think anyone too stupid to let his wife know he’d been bitten by a cobra was lucky to have made it to adulthood.’ A cloud crossed the sun, and the world darkened. ‘About twenty minutes after that, Malcolm came downstairs. And then, I’m told, there was a lot of arguing.’

  ‘What did Ben do?’

  ‘Oh, apparently he just watched, which sounds about right to me. He never got involved. Even when someone—by which I mean Neil—tried to pick a fight with him. Even then he just nodded and watched. You’ve never met anyone so inside his own head.’

  I ate the last bite of my lemon cream. ‘Did no one call the ZDC?’

  ‘Jillie wouldn’t let them. Malcolm said he’d rather burn than go into the pit.’ He grunted. ‘Son of a bitch thought he could escape what was coming to him.’

  A thought occurred to me. ‘Why was Neil there anyway? I thought the two of them didn’t get along. I suppose now I know why.’

  ‘You mean Malcolm and Rosa? The two of them have been dancing round that little piece of betrayal for years. Neil never had any proof.’ He snickered. ‘But he does now.’

  ‘So she zombified?’

  ‘Oh yeah...’

  We were interrupted by a slender blonde woman who stuck her head out the door. ‘Sam? Jillie wants you.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Samson disappeared back into the hall.

  Neil’s wife had zombified, and then years later so did his brother. I guessed we no longer needed to wonder how Malcolm had become infected or how he’d died.

  He killed me. Not murdered. Killed. It had all just been a stupid accident, and if I had kept my mouth shut, Malcolm would be at peace instead of shuffling, ravenous, through stinking darkness.

  46

  Obe had already left by the time I went back in, his social skills having a short shelf life. So had Adam and Neil, and Per and his father. Jillie was stuck tight within a small knot of lithe women, all of whom had the same predatory stare, which I didn’t have the courage to approach. Samson was nowhere to be seen.

  You can usually find the police near the free food, and I didn’t even look to see if they were there before heading to the tea table to find Dunne and Little. Dunne wore a grey suit at least one size too small—likely his designated weddings and funerals getup. Twice I saw his hand stray towards his crotch to pull at it, before he remembered himself and tucked it back in his pocket. He was in the midst of piling a small paper plate with sandwiches, which he then ate in awkward little bites.

  ‘Hi.’

  Dunne nodded. His eyes didn’t meet mine.

  ‘You didn’t tell me Rosa Brannick was a zombie,’ I said.

  ‘I thought you knew.’ Dunne looked up. ‘Yet another thing you forgot to mention. You do know that’s the way it works? You give us information. We don’t give it to you.’

  Little sniggered, then sneezed.

  ‘Bless you,’ I said.

  Dunne swallowed a last bite of sandwich. ‘Excuse us.’ He took Little by the cuff. I watched them leave.

  Only a trickle of people remained, and while Obe had left, the remnants of the Lipscombe crowd was still there, standing next to the podium. Habi laughed suddenly, then clapped her hand over her mouth, remembering where she was. I wandered over to them.

  Habi put her hand on my shoulder. ‘Hey, Viv. We were just going to the pub, have a drink to remember the old perv. You coming?’

  I had been planning on going into the office to make a few phone calls and have a dig through the stuff I’d asked Patricia to send me. But I could put it off for half an hour.

  I gave Lorraine a quick call and was reassured that Sigrid was fine. I looked around for Jillie, but she was deep in conversation with the blonde woman who had summoned Samson, so I followed Habi out.

  Outside, the sky was urine-coloured and so heavy it looked like it was touching the tops of the houses—ready to snow again. The last lot hadn’t settled, but I thought it likely we’d wake up to a white city in the morning. Another good reason to get to the office tonight and get some work done. The slightest bit of snow wreaks havoc with the trains, and I might end up stuck in the house. This is why the Canadians laugh at us.

  I walked at the back with Donna Warren, who was a hedge witch and in charge of accounts, and Irene Taylor from the Edinburgh office, who did fundraising and was relentlessly cheerful. I guess if you have to spend your day phoning people and asking them for money, you need a sunny disposition. We complained about the weather in typical British fashion, but there wasn’t any real annoyance in it. Londoners moan about the snow because it stops all the public transport, but really we appreciate the day off work and the chance to go sledding in the park, or at least watch others go sledding. It’s the one time of the year the city stops being grey and starts being beautiful.

  We reached the pub just as the snow started coming down in clumps, and the five of us ducked into the pub laughing and shaking our feet. We found a table at the back, and Irene got the first round.

  Donna squeezed in next to me. ‘You know I caught him with charm enhancer once.’

  Habi grimaced. ‘Oh, that is really skeevy.’

  Donna shrugged. ‘Didn’t do him the slightest bit of good. He had the magical ability of a wet rag, but it didn’t stop him having a good old argument with me about it. He was all, “It’s just an enhancer, not a glamour.” Claimed it wasn’t enhancing anything that wasn’t already there, and it couldn’t count as undue influence. Bleurgh.’

  Irene came back with our drinks. I drank mine slowly, half-listening to the conversation. Magical ability might run in families, but it wasn’t guaranteed. If Donna was right about Malcolm having no magical inclination, that cleared him of Leslie’s death. Or at least of Drew’s.

  I turned my attention back to the group. They’d got on to the time Malcolm came back from his bachelor party and insisted on showing everyone where he’d been tattooed.

  ‘Brazen old goat,’ Donna said. ‘I hope there are plenty of female zombies in there with him.’

  We all fell silent, and then Habi said, ‘God, I hope not. Poor lady zombies. He was bad enough alive.’

  Donna got the next round, and then of course I was obliged to stay for the next one because it would just be rude to let everyone else buy you drinks without stumping up a round yourself.

  In the end I didn’t make it to the office, but I did make it home before nine, even if I wasn’t in a state to do anything other than peel off my clothes and fall into bed.

  47

  I lay in bed and stared at the wall, all the wrong memories returning in the bright light of the snowfall. It was only after I’d been let out that I found out Sigrid was alive after all. I’d spent much of my time being dead, and after spending so muc
h time with Sigrid’s spirit, it was a shock to find her body was still in this world, not knowing it was supposed to be dead.

  It had been Malcolm who’d saved me. He’d been a caseworker then, called in by a Lorraine worried about the elderly neighbour who didn’t appear to be ageing and lived in a putrid house with his disabled granddaughter. His face was the first I saw when I woke from the dead to sudden freedom. Malcolm, whom I had sent to the pit. I hadn’t saved him in return.

  I pulled the duvet over my head against the too-bright sunlight streaming through cracks in the blinds. Sigrid’s voice carried through the wall, holding a conversation with someone. It was only when she said my name that I realised it was supposed to be me.

  My head hurt too much to go back to sleep—entirely my fault—and my bladder was arguing that it was time to get up. I swung my legs out of the bed and onto the cold floor. I shrugged into a dressing gown, added a pair of fluffy socks, and made my way out of the bedroom, wincing a little along the way.

  And found I had been magically transported into another dimension as I slept. At least that was the first explanation that leapt to mind. The house was clean. Completely clean. From top to bottom. The pile of Stanley’s shoes that had sat alongside the door for as long as I could remember was gone, and the oak floors were clean and shiny. Lavender-scented polish had replaced the smell of old socks. I poked my head into the living room. The sofa looked like it had been vacuumed, and fuzzy blue throw pillows I’d never seen before were dotted at regular intervals hiding the stains. The TV was actually completely visible, now that the piles of books on the coffee table were neatly stacked back on the bookshelf. I got on my hands and knees and looked under the sofa. It was spotless. Not a sock, dust bunny, or old biscuit to be seen.

  Same thing in the kitchen. It wasn’t just tidy, it was spotless. The sink sparkled, and even the crusty limescale was gone from the tap. Light streamed through clean windowpanes.

  It made me a little nervous. I scooted down the clean hallway and opened the door to Sigrid’s room. It was clean too. She was in bed asleep, half under the duvet which—I sniffed— had been freshly laundered. Siggie had been freshly laundered too. Her hair was still slightly damp and smelled like shampoo.

  I headed up the stairs to the attic. It still smelled like damp and rot—no amount of scrubbing was going to get rid of that—but it was clean. My mother’s mouldy Snow White coffin had been polished and cleaned too. I wished it hadn’t. At least before you couldn’t see in all that clearly. Stanley sat next to it, staring into it intently. Unusually, he had nothing to entertain him. No laptop, no magazine, no book.

  ‘What’s going on? Why is everything so clean?’

  Stanley grinned at me, showing a mouthful of square false teeth. ‘Just getting the place ready for when your mum comes back.’

  ‘What are you talking about? She’s been gone for years.’

  ‘Uh-uh. She woke up.’

  My stomach did a double flip, and I was halfway to the door when common sense caught up with me. ‘What are you talking about? She’s still in there, still dead.’

  ‘Maybe. But she moved. She came back for just a moment.’

  I crossed the room, and for the first time in years I looked directly at my mother’s corpse. It hadn’t kept well. She was shrunken and rotten.

  ‘Are you sure? Did you see it?’

  ‘Not exactly. But look, look at her hands.’

  I did. ‘What?’

  ‘They were both on her chest. Now one’s at her side.’

  I looked. I got down on my knees and looked closely. When my mother died, she was wearing a red dress, now faded to a shade of pink with black patches where the mould showed through. Stanley was right. She had moved, but I didn’t think it was for the reason he thought it was.

  ‘I think it just fell,’ I said. ‘Look at her side. The material from her dress has rotted through completely. I think we’re looking at gravity here.’

  ‘No. She moved.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, not wanting to argue. ‘You want a cup of tea? Or something to eat?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ His eyes didn’t move from the coffin. ‘I’m going to wait here until she wakes up.’

  I left my mother’s faithful hound and went back downstairs. It was glorious. There’s something about a nice clean house that is wonderfully relaxing.

  I pressed a couple of headache tablets out of their blisters and washed them down with water straight from the tap. I made coffee, poured a generous helping into an oversized mug, and took it back to bed with me. Little ice crystals had formed on the inside of the window, and my breath was visible in the cold air. I took off my dressing gown only long enough to put on a jumper, then replaced the gown and climbed back into bed. I held the mug in both hands and sipped at it while I waited for the laptop to boot up.

  Most of the Lipscombe’s records were paper based. Part of this was due to history—the Trust had been going for a long time. Another part was due to the expense of archiving all of it and splashing out on new and shiny computer systems, but mostly it was down to good old-fashioned paranoia.

  The Trust had been party to a lot of secrets over the years, and we couldn’t afford to keep them all locked away behind a firewall that some hacker would consider nothing more than a fat challenge, or a thin one considering the state of our finances.

  It meant that most of the good stuff was packed away in boxes. It used to be in boxes in the ballroom of the old building, but those were now mouldering in the basement in Croydon.

  No one would give me a straight answer about Rosa Brannick. So I intended to find out for myself.

  About eight years ago, before I’d been an employee, Patricia Stull had turned up on the Lipscombe doorstep looking for links in zombification rates. Obe had recommended I read her doctoral thesis after I’d joined the Lipscombe. While thorough, she hadn’t turned up anything new. But she had managed to cadge (expurgated) versions of the police files and had combined these with our reports. We still had the boxes in our archives, but I had no idea where to start looking. She’d emailed me a massive Excel spreadsheet, with zombies identified by number. I double-clicked.

  The information was anonymised to avoid bias, so I couldn’t Control F ‘Rosa’ or ‘Brannick.’ But I could get a much better idea of where to look.

  If she had zombified after dying from cancer, or a heart attack or fire or whatever the hell had killed her, she’d be on the spreadsheet somewhere, and that meant somewhere in the Lipscombe depths there was a police report on her death.

  Adam was in his late twenties or early thirties, and he’d said his mother had died when he was fifteen. Which may have been the same year Annie got pregnant and Leslie and her son were supposed to have died in a car accident. I counted back, then filtered by date and by sex. Seventy women had zombified in the Greater London area in that time.

  I filtered again by ages and discarded anyone under the age of thirty and over the age of sixty-two. That got rid of two-thirds.

  Adam was pale and pasty enough that his mother had to have been white. I filtered again, this time according to race. And now I was down to twelve women. I looked at the columns again, looking for something else to narrow it down by but couldn’t see anything that might inadvertently exclude Rosa Brannick.

  I took a screenshot of the filtered group and emailed it to myself, then reluctantly switched off my laptop, got out of my snug bed, and dressed for snow.