The Secret Dead (London Bones Book 1) (21 page)

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 make 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 patted 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.