The Sword of Straw (27 page)

The shop was open but with the washing machine rattling into action she didn’t hear anyone come in, nor the light knock on the connecting door.

“Am I bothering you?” said a familiar voice—the voice of someone who was accustomed to bothering people, and didn’t much care.

DCI Pobjoy.

“Oh—it’s you,” Annie said, caught off guard. “Sorry…I’m just trying to—”

“What have you got on your hands?”

“Stuff,” Annie said. “Nothing really. Just…slimy…stuff.”

“It stinks.” Pobjoy switched on the tap for her. “What on earth—”

“Look,” Annie said, too strained and too weary to improvise, “I could lie to you, and you might believe me, but it’s too much effort. Or I could tell you the truth, and you wouldn’t believe me, so it would be pointless. Much better to just let the subject drop. Thanks for doing the tap. Could you turn up the cold a bit, please?”

He adjusted it accordingly. This wasn’t a professional visit—he’d made an excuse to himself to drop by, to see if she was all right, and her son was all right, a bit of community relations—but his policeman’s senses were twitching. He couldn’t help pressing the matter.

“Has it got something to do with Nathan?” Nathan didn’t necessarily cause trouble, he knew, but trouble followed him, for some reason, spreading out from him in ripples that disrupted everything in his vicinity. Besides, Pobjoy was a copper: his instinct was to blame the teenager.

“Actually,” Annie said, “it’s the spit from a giant worm-thing that tried to eat him.”

“Very funny.”

“I said you wouldn’t believe me.”

“There aren’t a lot of giant man-eating worms in Eade,” Pobjoy said, going with the joke. He’d been told he needed to work on his sense of humor.

Suddenly he remembered the bizarre incident at Crowford Comprehensive that a colleague had mentioned to him. Something about a plague of flies…

“It wasn’t from around here,” Annie said matter-of-factly. She knew she should stop now, before he decided she was a total fruitcake. She didn’t want him to think of her as some batty New Age freak. When Nathan had been kidnapped he’d been kind, in an understated way, or at least strong—someone she could rely on. Like Michael…Not a good train of thought.

“Last year,” she said, “you must have realized there were odd things happening here, things you couldn’t explain.”

“A robbery and three murders?”

“I don’t mean criminal things—not just criminal, anyway. How did a man die of drowning in the middle of a wood with no water nearby? What became of the woman masquerading as Rianna Sardou?—you never found a trace of her. Who was the dwarf involved in the robbery? Why was everyone
really
after the Grimstone Grail?”

“There are always loose ends in any investigation.” There had been too many in this one. It still nagged at him. “If you know something—”

“I know everything,” Annie said. “But there’s no point in my telling you. It’s like the giant man-eating worm. You wouldn’t believe me.” Why was she doing this?

“I never had you down as one of those black-magic may-the-Force-be-with-us types,” he said awkwardly. “Are you going to tell me it was all due to ley lines and phases of the moon?”

“I wouldn’t recognize a ley line unless it was drawn on the road,” Annie said. “Sorry. I’m stupid today. Forget it.”

She was biting her lip, wishing she hadn’t spoken, wishing he hadn’t caught her when she was vulnerable, desperate, angry—angry at no one and nothing, needing someone on whom to vent her anger.

“If you say so.”

Her hands were clean now, though the smell still clung. She made an effort to compose herself, turned to face him. “Would you like some coffee?”

But he had gone. Pobjoy lunched at the pub on a pork pie and a pint, listening to the gossip, automatically sifting it for anything of interest. There wasn’t much. A forthcoming cricket match, Eade versus Chizzledown, a rumor that Lily Bagot was engaged, although someone pointed out she had yet to divorce Dave (there followed a few reminiscences of Dave Bagot, who had left the village and wasn’t missed), a report that Riverside House had at last found a purchaser. “Well, I wouldn’t have it,” opined an elderly resident. “Not if you paid me. Place is bound to be haunted, after what happened. That Mike Addison…”

“ ’Twasn’t his fault,” said another. “It was that woman what got hold of him. Made herself look like his wife, didn’t she? And they say it was her what did the killing—he didn’t know about it till after the fact. Partial she was to drowning people, seeing as how she came from the river. Nothing good ever came up the Glyde.”

“What d’you mean, she came from the river?” Pobjoy asked, inserting himself without preamble into the conversation.

They looked at him, then at their drinks. They knew who he was.

He bought a round.

“She was a river gypsy,” said the second man, “so I heard. But the Glyde’s had a bad reputation for centuries. There’d be pirates and raiders sailing up from Grimstone a matter of three or four hundred years ago. And then there were the smugglers, in Georgian times. They’d have fights between rival gangs, or kill anyone they thought had betrayed them, and plenty of bodies would come floating on the tide. There used to be a rhyme about it—I’ve seen it in a book somewhere.

Death from the deep sea

floats up the Glyde.

“There was a lot more work for a copper around here, in the old days. Of course, they didn’t have coppers then—just the customs officers, Excise men they were called, and they weren’t too popular. Much like now, when they won’t even let you bring back a few bottles from Cally without making a fuss.”

“But the woman,” Pobjoy interceded, “what do they say about her?”

“She went back to the river from which she came, that’s the story. There’s some as say she was a loralilly, not a real woman at all, but that’s fairy tales: we don’t believe in that stuff no more. Still, she wasn’t seen in these parts again, that’s true enough. And you lot never caught up with her, did you?”

Pobjoy didn’t answer—partly because he didn’t want to discuss the shortcomings of the police, but mostly because he was wondering what a loralilly was.

Later, when the regulars had trickled away, he had a chat with the landlord.

“There’s always been a bit of witchcraft in Eade,” he said. “I don’t mean all that trendy Wicca business, dancing on a hilltop in the nuddy and getting in touch with nature: you’ve got to go to Brighton for that. No, I mean the old stuff, the bad stuff. It was the Carlows, mostly. They burned one of ’em, back in the sixteenth century. No point in putting her on the ducking stool: the Carlows always floated. Their power came from the river, or so folk said.”

“Effie Carlow drowned,” Pobjoy reminded him. “Her power can’t have been up to much.”

“I can’t answer that one,” the landlord admitted. “Maybe the river had done with her—but you know how it is with these tales: people will twist anything to fit the plot. I don’t believe in all that rubbish myself, but there were some said Effie was a witch. She certainly had an evil eye, though I don’t know there was any magic in it! Funny thing, I’ve heard talk about her great-granddaughter, just lately.”

“Hazel Bagot?” Pobjoy said sharply. He remembered her very well.

“That’s the one. Quiet kid, untidy looking. Got picked on at school or something—you know how kids are—and there was a bit of an incident. Shelley Carver’s girl found her desk full of flies—no one knew where they came from. Pretty girl, Ellen, like her mum, but a bit tarty. Still, they all look that way now. Anyway, seems Ellen got spooked, thought it was something to do with Hazel. Witchcraft in the family and all that. Good thing, too: they might treat her with a bit more respect from now on. Shelley was in here the other night, heard her talking about it. Said something else, too. Ellen used to like going down by the river—probably wanted to sit quiet, get away from her mum. Now she won’t go near it. Don’t suppose there’s any connection…still, it’s a funny thing.”

I should have paid more attention to the river,
Pobjoy thought.
Effie drowned in the Glyde, the German drowned in the wood, Addison and his wife lived at Riverside House. A river runs through it…
(He’d heard the phrase somewhere, though he couldn’t recall where.) He didn’t believe in all this folklore stuff, naturally, but sometimes new crimes had old histories. Technically, the murderer was caught, the case closed. But not for him…

“Been a new boat there, last few days,” the landlord was saying. “Big motor launch, so I’m told. Some see it, some don’t. You don’t get many like that on the Glyde.”

“Could it be the river gypsies?” Pobjoy asked.

“Wouldn’t know about that. They say it’s pretty fancy, oceangoing craft, not exactly a gypsy barge. But there’s a woman on board.”

“Did anyone recognize her?”

“Couldn’t say. But she’s the only one they’ve seen. No crew. Only the woman.”

When Pobjoy left the pub, the afternoon was hot and stuffy. He headed for the river path,
just to look,
he told himself. Just to check. He was off duty, gnawing the ends of old plots; he seemed to have no life outside his work. He’d dated a paramedic recently, met at the site of a road accident, but it hadn’t lasted long. And something always drew him back to Eade. He liked Annie—he really liked her—though she’d acted rather strange that morning. (What
was
that green stuff? River scum?) And he had unfinished business here.

There was a thick white mist lying in strands across the meadows, obliterating the river. It wasn’t thick enough to be dangerous—he could see several yards ahead—but it made everything pale and ghostly. Under such conditions, he thought, you could understand how the stories started, tales of phantoms and loralillies (he must find out what they were) that would appear from the river and disappear apparently by magic. A tree brushed past him, twig fingers clutching at his arm; a more fanciful person might have turned it into something else.

Annie, for instance—she was the fanciful type. Not silly-fanciful, despite her conversation that morning, but perhaps…an overactive imagination. She would know what a loralilly was…

The white silence of the fog had become a faint murmur, like the thrum of insect wings, or the shushing of the river. There was a moment when he almost thought it was a song, the sound of someone humming…then he realized it must be an engine, its vibration soft as a purr in the throat of a sleepy cat. It drew nearer, and he saw the prow of a launch, dim in the mist, a white motor launch with no visible crew, only a single figure standing in the bows. A woman. He stopped to stare, and she reached out to him, her long arms pale as foam on the sea.

“I know you,” she said, and though her voice was very quiet it woke strange echoes in his head. “You’ve been looking for me. You’ve been looking for me for a long time. But you’re not the one…you’re not the one I’m waiting for.”

The launch moved on, vanishing into a veil of mist. Afterward, he thought she was fair-haired, but he wasn’t sure. She might have been dark, dark as Rianna Sardou, with eyes as black as the ocean depths. He was a detective, a trained observer, yet he couldn’t describe her, he couldn’t pin her down. She had come and gone like a phantom, like a loralilly…

At the bookshop, Annie had just made tea.

She looked surprised to see him again—surprised and pleased. He was pleased she was pleased, but he didn’t know how to show it. He accepted a cup with added sugar and propped one buttock on the edge of her desk.

“What’s a loralilly?” he asked.

“A loralilly?” Annie frowned, puzzled. “Oh—you mean a lorelei: is that it? A kind of siren, a water spirit…”

“Maybe.”

“In legends they sit on rocky islands, serenading passing sailors. The sailors are so enchanted by their song they come too close to the rocks, and their ships are broken, and they drown. Not exactly good citizens, loreleis. Were you planning to arrest one?”

This was the Annie he liked, sensible, down-to-earth, despite her imagination. He was glad she wasn’t talking about giant worms anymore. Of course, she must have been joking—she was joking now, in a gentle, teasing sort of way. A sense of humor was a good thing: he must develop one sometime.

“Somebody mentioned them in the pub,” he said. “How come everyone knows about these things except me?”

“It depends what books you read when you were a child,” Annie said. “Most of us get through Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, the Chronicles of Narnia…Tolkien, Alan Garner, Roger Lancelyn Green. What did you read?”

“Sherlock Holmes.”

“Good stuff,” Annie said. “I read those, too. But if you’re going to go chasing loreleis, you’ve got some catching up to do. Let me know if you want background reading.”

“Thanks, but I don’t have the time.” He had odd evenings in front of the telly, but he wasn’t going to start reading fantasy. God knew where that would lead.

He thought of telling her about the motor launch, and the mysterious woman, but the incident had unsettled him in ways he didn’t want to discuss, and he let it go. He almost thought he’d imagined it, only imagination wasn’t his thing. He believed in evidence, and instinct—instinct honed by experience—not the wild speculations of an erratic fancy. Forensic science could tell you almost everything these days…except the secrets of the human heart, the strange pathways of the mind.

When he had finished his tea he left almost as abruptly as before, afraid to find himself talking too much about loralillies, and man-eating worms, as if such things really existed.

N
ATHAN WAS
waiting at the bus stop when Hazel came home from school. For a second her face lit up—then something in her expression fogged, as if she was deliberately withdrawing from him.

“You’re mad at me,” he said, “because I haven’t been around lately. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “You had other things to do.”

“I shouldn’t have done. You’re my best friend. I didn’t mean to take you for granted.”

“Of course we take each other for granted,” she said. “People do.”

At her house they retreated to the bedroom, though Nathan thought Hazel seemed oddly reluctant to admit him. She had run out of Coke and didn’t seem to have any new music she was eager to play for him. He said: “What happened to your mirror?” and she shrugged again, but her gaze slid sideways, avoiding his.