No Cherubs for Melanie (40 page)

“No,” he replied, but at that moment would have said anything to please her.

She looked wistfully back at the lake. “The strange thing is I really don't know if I want to find him now. Isn't that weird?”

Bryan waited patiently for the explanation he felt coming.

“He's gone,” she continued. “Finding his body is going to bring him back, and I'm going have to lose him all over again. Plus the fact that I actually think he found happiness here. I got the feeling he might have stayed if he could. Now we're going to find him and stick him in a hole in the ground in Wimbledon or…” Her sobs got in the way and she melted into Bryan as he clutched her to his chest.

“Your dad's a fighter Samantha, I haven't given up hope. If anyone could survive, it would be him.”

She sniffed snottily into his sweater. “Do you really think so?”

“I do,” he lied, thinking that his words may well have been true before Sarah had dumped Bliss in favour of George and he'd suffered a few other setbacks.

Samantha perked up at his words and looked at him seriously. “Isn't this the part in the movie where we have a frantic fuck just to convince each other that everything will turn out all right in the end?”

“You're unbelievable, Samantha Bliss,” he sniggered. “But if you think that I'm going to take my trousers off and freeze my backside out here you've got another think coming.”

Wiping the last of her tears she stared into the bright moon. “It is kind of romantic though isn't it? At least, it would be if Dad was here.”

Peter Bryan's laugh rippled through the silent woods. “I'm not sure you meant that.”

She smiled. “You're right,” and their lips met and melded into a kiss. Then she broke away. “Did you really tell Edwards you were going to the Himalayas?”

“Yeah. It just popped into my mind and was out of my mouth before I could stop it.”

“I really like you, Peter,” she said, and mashed her lips back to his, giving him something else to chew on.

“The Shaman is wearing a new headdress,” Running Moose explained as they stood on the beach waiting for the sunrise, watching the Indian priest ready himself for the ceremony. The cascade of bald eagle feathers, a male bird's entire trousseau, had been stitched together over the weekend for an upcoming tribal gathering; Samantha couldn't help wondering if it was entirely appropriate for the man to test drive a new bonnet while searching for her father.

The little band of Indians had arrived before daybreak, their noisy twin-engine powerboat failing to disturb any animals as they manoeuvred just off the dock in the gloom.

“What are they doing?” asked Samantha rhetorically as she and Bryan stood on the shore and watched a heavy birch canoe being lifted off the boat and placed in the water. When a fragile old man was helped into it, her vivid imagination and irascible sense of humour briefly overcame concern for her father. “Shall we cast him adrift, Mr. Christian?” she said under her breath with a West Country drawl. Bryan heard. “It is a bit like
Mutiny on the Bounty
, isn't it?”

Ten minutes later fiction became farce as Running Moose and two other Indians struggled to erect an army surplus pup tent on the beach. The Shaman, the old medicine man in the canoe, could not come ashore until everything was prepared, they said, and then he would have to paddle silently so as not to frighten off the spirits from the beach. That makes a lot of sense, thought Samantha, considering the dreadful noise they'd made arriving.

They were joined by the detective and the pilot as the Shaman, a sixty-year-old in a two hundred-year-old's body, stooged around in his canoe ten feet off the beach shouting tent-raising instructions.

“I was in the Scouts,” offered Bryan, following the third aborted attempt. He recognized the tent as the type designed to be pitched by a ten-year-old in a hurricane. One of the Indians, a willowy man with a truly red face and permanent gap-toothed smile, explained with great seriousness that the tent could only be erected by believers. Bryan quickly withdrew his offer, then noticed the look of dissatisfaction on Samantha's face. She had expected a teepee or something sturdy made of birch
bark and chewed hides, not a backpacker's special from Discount Deals.

With everything finally in place, Running Moose padded over to the small group of white people. “The Shaman says that the spirits are demanding an offering.”

The detective coughed cynically. “I might've guessed.”

“If they're expecting the blood of a naked virgin they're wasting their time,” mumbled Samantha, her faith in the process already diminished by the fiasco over the tent.

“What do they want?” asked Bryan, anxious to try anything within reason, for Samantha's sake.

The spirits felt that one hundred dollars, American preferably, was appropriate. But DS Phillips scoffed, “This is ridiculous. It's fraud. I've told you where he is, why are we wasting time with this bunch of con-men?”

Running Moose, sensing the wind's direction, quickly dropped the spirit's asking price to fifty dollars and Bryan dug into his pocket.

“Don't bother,” whispered Samantha. “This is nothing but a pantomime. I still can't believe we actually came here, but I am sure Dad wouldn't want us to do this. Let's just go to the crash site and find him.”

“I'll give you twenty,” said Bryan. “Take it or leave it.” Running Moose took it.

With the spirits apparently appeased, the Shaman paddled ashore, carefully adjusted his new headdress, and without disembarking the canoe took up a chant. Two Indians, costumed in Levi jeans and Chicago Bulls sweatshirts, seated themselves cross-legged on either side of the tent flap and began beating tomtoms with no particular rhythm, while Running Moose, with a great sense of occasion, held Bliss's front door key high above his head to await the first rays of sunlight.

“The Shaman is calling the sun,” explained Running Moose over his shoulder, as the drumbeats and the Shaman's chant coalesced into a continuous undulating wail, then faded into an eerie stillness as an aura of anticipation surrounded them, as if the spirits were really there, holding there breath, waiting to be released by the sunrise.

“This is just silly,” whispered the detective sergeant and, although Samantha may have privately agreed, she was gradually mesmerized by the old brass key, which started glowing in the morning light as if drawing power from the sun. The key slowly turned gold and dissolved into the solar rays. No wonder the Druids flock to Stonehenge for the solstice every year, she thought, as the Shaman slipped unnoticed from the canoe and was bundled, bound hand and foot, into the tent, together with the key and the money.

The drummers started again, their beats now hypnotically in tune with the beat of a heart, and the Shaman's high pitched wailing struck the nerves and chilled the spines of everyone on the beach. Then the tent trembled — just a flutter of movement, but it sent a ripple through the canvas from one end to the other. Though almost imperceptible, no one disputed that the movement had occurred.

“Does that mean Dad's still alive?” Samantha breathed, hastily shelving her scepticism.

“He will always be alive,” said Running Moose. “What you call life, in a warrior's body, is only one step in life. When your body dies your spirit stays alive. Maybe he is a caribou or a cougar now.”

“He
is
dead then,” she cried. “I knew it.”

“Wait until the spirits have spoken,” insisted the Indian as the ripples of vibration grew in intensity.

DS Phillips had seen enough. “This is crap!” he
exploded, but couldn't tear himself aware from the increasingly violent motions of the tent.

But something seemed to be wrong. The Shaman's chant had become a terrifying wail. The drummers lost their rhythm and looked at each other in alarm — this wasn't part of the act. The tent wasn't just shaking, it was writhing like a flag being wrenched from its pole in a gale.

The drummers stopped, but the beat continued as the canvas slapped and banged as if caught in a tornado. The Shaman's wail became a scream. He shot out of the tent and made a dash for the water, but crashed headlong as his hobbled feet sent him tumbling into the sand. Clearly terrified, the drummers dragged the old man to his feet, whipped off the bindings, and helped him into the canoe.

“I'm sorry, Miss,” said Running Moose without explanation, though Samantha knew what he meant.

“This is crap,” shouted the sergeant again.

“You saw it shaking,” insisted Running Moose.

“Come off it, he was kicking the pole. Let's see him do it again.”

But the Shaman was already pulling rapidly away from the beach, still yelling and screeching, and the drummers were hastily ripping the tent pegs out of the soft sand.

“He says we should leave quickly,” said Running Moose heading toward the small dock and the powerboat.

“But where is my father?” Samantha called after him.

“He doesn't know. He says that Windigo is here on the island. We must leave. There is much evil here. He is calling for O-Ma-Ma-Ma, the great Earth Mother to help us.”

The key, wrapped in the money, fell at Samantha's feet as the drummers tore down the tent and rushed after Running Moose. She bent to pick it up but the heat from the bundle almost burnt her fingers and she dropped it quickly onto the sand.

“Look at this Peter,” she said with a mixture of confusion and distrust in her own senses. The notes had welded themselves together like papier mâché; he had to let them cool for a few seconds before he could separate them. As he did so, he felt the hackles rise on his neck and the blood pulse in his temples. The old brass key had shattered into a dozen pieces.

“It's a trick,” said Phillips with a shaky voice. “Like that Yuri Keller or something.”

“Don't stay here. It's dangerous,” shouted Running Moose as the powerboat's engines roared into life, and the boat leapt backwards under the panicked hand of one of the men. “Shit,” he shouted and slammed the engines into forward, but the stern line was still attached to the dock. Within seconds the powerful boat was dragging a huge chunk of it out into the lake.

While everyone's attention focused on the mangled dock, wondering how they would now board the float plane, Bryan pocketed the remains of the key. He had a friend at the forensic lab who he was sure would be interested in taking a look.

“Someone's leaked,” spat the divisional commander, flinging a copy of
The Daily Mirror
at Superintendent Edwards.

Edwards paled. “Gordonstone: It Was Murder,” shouted the headline.

“Read it,” commanded the Commander.

“Controversial restaurateur Martin Gordonstone, (51 yrs), whose untimely death last month was attributed to his boisterous lifestyle, may have been murdered …” he read, zipping through the details. “…Sources also link a recent explosion at the lead detective's home to this rapidly deepening mystery.”

“Sources! What sources?” the commander demanded.

Edwards immediately put his money on Samantha.

“Bring her in, let's talk to her. She's got a bloody nerve. I suppose this is her way of putting pressure on us to settle. Bring her in Michael, let's have a word with her.”

“Ah…” Edwards started uneasily and was grateful for the commander's interruption.

“Oh. By the way, what's this about Peter Bryan being on leave?”

“I told you yesterday, Sir,” Edwards said with a rush of confidence, but then had an apprehensive feeling he was walking into a trap.

The commander spun on him with a puzzled frown. “No, you didn't.”

“In the messroom, Sir. At the lunch counter.”

“As far as I recall, all we spoke about was the new allocation of cars.”

Edwards felt the rising breeze of an ill wind. “I definitely told you, Sir.”

“Well, you'll have a copy of his written application, won't you?”

Edwards waffled: an emergency, family problems, no time to submit, but he prudently avoided repeating the Everest story. Even the ‘big lie' had its limitations.

“But you did authorize his leave?”

Snap! The trap shut. What to do? Admit he'd been conned — that Bryan's mother had let the cat out of the bag, that he had authorized leave on such a blatant falsehood — or admit that he had willingly approved the leave despite Bryan being in the midst of a murder enquiry that required delicate handling.

He opted to save his skin with an outright lie. “I didn't actually authorize anything. As far as I'm concerned, DCI Bryan is AWOL and I've no idea where he is.”

Peter Bryan, Samantha, and the Canadians were nearing the crash site where Margaret had been killed. Disturbed by the episode with the Shaman and the shaking tent, they had wasted no time getting away from the island,
and fifty minutes later dropped out of the clear blue sky over a group of men huddled around a fire on a beach. The little knot of searchers and their dogs hardly took any notice as their plane slid onto the glassy lake and nudged in among a small flotilla of launches and planes.

“What's happening?” called Phillips out of the cockpit window, making a megaphone with his hands. “Why aren't you searching?”

“We found them,” shouted one man, breaking away from the warmth of the fire and wading a little way out. “Both dead. Exposure.”

Although Samantha had known what to expect she still gave a little cry. “Dead,” she breathed. The plateau of despair on which she'd been balanced collapsed and she found herself falling again.

“Where are they?” shouted the detective sergeant.

“The chopper's taken them to Goose Bay.”

The pilot grabbed his maps. “It's only twenty miles or so,” he said with a glance, then added insensitively, “We might as well go, we need fuel anyways.”