Beneath the Tor (28 page)

I looked for somewhere to plonk with my plate. Shell was sitting against the wall, pretending not to be alone in a crowd, eyeing Wolfsbane, who was holding court with Freaky and a group of London bankers in silk ties and Italian suits. I went over to her.

“Hi. Ricky not with you?”

“No.” She pushed her empty plate under her chair and brushed the crumbs from her lap. “Not sure where he is.”

“Ricky is pretty
full-on
. A little too sensitive for his own good?”

“Everything affects him so deeply. Crying like that went down like a balloon running out of gas with Brice. Truth is, he's hugely intelligent. Lot brighter than I'll ever be. Big brain. But, emotionally, he's a mess …” She chewed at her lower lip. “I think he's in love with Alys.”

“They hardly spoke in the time he knew her. He danced with her for a bit on the Tor, but
…
”

“I mean, he fell in love
after
—with the dead Alys. I can't help wondering if he took up with me because I knew her. That I'm his link.” She looked around the room, searching for Ricky, but also keeping an eye on Wolfs. “I think being in love with a dead woman is affecting him. The stuff he says gets weirder every day. The point of philosophy is to explain the unexplainable, isn't it?”

“Well, I guess …”

“At times I can't follow Ricky at all. He goes off on long, wandering sentences. Maybe he's flunking his essays because of that.”

“He's not doing well at uni?”

“What worries me is that it's happened before. This degree is his second attempt. And he's working hard. He shuts himself away to study.” She gave a sharp smile. “On the other hand … when we're together … he's shocking fun. Risky. Intense.”

I bit into a falafel and rose my eyebrows at her.

“He's up for anything. Wolfsbane wouldn't even do the labyrinth walk with me. Ricky's promised and I cannot wait.” She got up from her seat. “Guess I'd better find him. We're going to take off soon, preferably without explaining ourselves to Wolfsie.”

“You haven't told him yet?” I don't know why I was so surprised. It would be a difficult thing to do, and there might be element of Shell hedging her bets. Wolfsbane was a catch in a lot ways, but then, Ricky was a smooch.

Shell wandered off and I left by the rear door, where a small courtyard gave me a chance to phone Rey. I gulped the cool air in for a few moments, before dialling the number. His phone was still off. I was torturing myself. I scratched at my eyes then stopped, not wanting them to look red.

Across the paving, a figure was crouched in the shadow of some bushes, hunched almost double. Hands were busy in the soil as if they were trying to bury something. The figure looked up briefly, with a whoosh of gelled hair, and I knew who this was.

I hunkered beside him. His fingernails were rimmed with black from the digging, but he hadn't made much of a hole—the soil was baked and full of shrub roots. “What're you doing, Ricky, digging for Australia?”

He looked at me in a slanted fashion. “I truly don't understand death. I know I should, as a philosopher, but I don't … can't.”

“I think it's too early. We all need a bit of healing space, first.”

“Plato says that Socrates believed death was the liberation of the soul.”

“Are you worried about Alys's soul, Ricky? Is that what you were trying to say at the funeral?”

“I think Alys was intrinsically good, don't you? Like she wasn't ignorant of The Good. That's what came off her. She wasn't within the shadows of the cave.”

“What cave?”

“Plato's cave. It's one of his most famous metaphors.”

“I've think you told me about that.” I tried a grin. “I've forgotten.”

“Why should you remember?” He was wearing his usual vampiric clothes—they were perfectly funereal, after all—but now they were smeared with dirt and he ineffectively brushed at his
black-clad
knees. “Plato describes prisoners living in a cave and seeing only the shadows on the wall, never seeing the sun that creates them. The sun is symbolic of goodness, you see. The Good. The darkness of the cave is an analogy of lack of goodness. What Plato's trying to say is that lack of virtue is only associated with ignorance.”

“Okay …” I was pricking up my ears at Ricky's story. Caves featured in my shamanic work lately.

“One day, a man escapes from the cave and sees the world, the sun. Once you've seen the sun, you could never return to evil. That's part of my dissertation. Was a part, anyway.” His eyes had no shine in them.

“You're … worried about your dissertation? Your degree?”

“I've had some setbacks.” He scooped up a loose handful of soil and let it run through his fingers as if from a salt cellar.

“I remember being a student. It's all setbacks. You probably need to talk to your professor.”

I heard him sob, once, in the back of his throat. “It's more than that. It's … I'm in a spot of bother.” He slumped down further onto the earth. His eyes weren't focusing. His face was drawn. His drooping body reminded me of a piece of beefsteak that had been bludgeoned flat. “Socrates wasn't afraid to die. He took the hemlock gladly.”

“I think I know that story. He was found guilty of corrupting the minds of the young, wasn't he?” I saw him look at me and added, “Wrongly, of course. Then condemned to death.”

“He was willing to die. Yet Cebes asks, if philosophers are so willing to die, why is it wrong for them to kill themselves?”

“And did that question get answered?”

“Yes. Socrates's initial answer is that the gods are our guardians, and that they will be angry if one of their possessions kills itself without permission.”

“I don't believe that I'm a possession of a god or goddess,” I said. “Yet, it's a lovely idea that they are guardians. I feel that, when I walk between worlds.”

“Was he right?” He put his hands across his face, leaving streaks of soil on his cheeks. “If there is some lovely place to go, why stay here, where things are awful all the time?”

“Honestly, everyone goes through these stages in life.” I didn't want to confess that Shell had told me about his essay marks. “How has the shamanic journeying been going? You might find your answers there.”

He nodded, silent, as if he was reliving some of his journeys. “My sea eagle comes to me. He says we have a task ahead of us.”

“You have years ahead of you.” I encircled Ricky's hunched shoulders with my arms and rocked him for a moment. “What d'you say we go in?”

He shrank into himself again, hiding his face with his long, soiled fingers.

“Shell's worrying about you. She's in there now, Ricky, wondering where you are. Please come and talk to her.”

“Everyone who loves me, leaves me.” His voice was muffled against his palms.

“Babette didn't mean to leave you.”

I regretted saying this the instant the words left my mouth, for he leaned forward so that his face was only centimetres from mine. “Did you locate her, Sabbie? Did you get any ideas at all?”

I couldn't look at him. I desperately wanted to shift away, but my back was lodged against a rhododendron and its branches were already poking into my spine.

“I'm so sorry, Ricky. I don't know for sure, but I think she's gone. I keep seeing her in the forest—your forest. I think she's always been there. I think her bones still are … in some lovely glade, buried deep.”

He gave a deep, almost animal, sob. He swung up from the bushes and turned on one heel of his shiny boots. He hurried towards the cemetery grounds and disappeared into the long shadows of the trees. I watched him go, feeling guilty that I'd raised the central reason for his sadness.

And in a rush, I wanted Rey so much it was a force, pushing against me, pushing me over. He'd been through something foul today. I should have been waiting outside; waiting to hug him and lead him away. Now he didn't want to speak to anyone. He'd probably bought a bottle of whisky on the way home. I ached to put my arms around him.

I went inside and wound my way to the far end of the room, where Brice was talking to Shell. “I have to go. I'm sorry not to stay longer, Brice.”

“I do understand.” He gave a single, controlled nod. “I'll call you a cab.”

“I've just seen Ricky. He's in a bit of a state. He's gone into the cemetery woodlands for a walk on his own. I think today was the last straw.”

“I'd best go and find him,” said Shell. “We have plans.”

I moved round the room hugging my goodbyes, Brice hovering beside me, eventually escorting me towards the door.

“Well done,” I said. “This must be the hardest day of your life.”

“It's not over yet. We have to come back and bury the ashes in the Memorial Garden.”

“Yes. I'm sorry I'm not staying.”

“You've been great, getting here. And bringing some of the others.” He managed a thin, grim, smile.

“Has there been any more emails?”

“There won't be any more.”

“How … how d'you mean?”

“I have a new email address. And I'm keeping a careful note of who knows it.”

twenty-seven

pippa

I slept most of
the way back home, wrung out by my early start and the doings of this day, which even on reflection felt distorted—disturbed—as if I'd dropped into a parallel universe.

I'd only ever been to one other funeral, my foster dad Philip's brother, Uncle Ted. I'd been fifteen at the time, and we'd all gone over to Jamaica. Caribbean funerals are spectacular affairs, and Port Antonio turned out to be idyllic, so I couldn't possible use that memory as a yardstick. But even so, Alys's funeral had been seeped in inconsolable gloom. Morgan le Fay had stalked the crematorium, never far from Brice's side, silent, invisible, deadly.

As I changed trains at Taunton, I was suddenly achingly hungry. I grabbed something from the station buffet and ran for the Bridgwater connection.

As I ate my egg sandwich, I kept seeing Ricky, hiding in the bushes, talking about ending it all. He'd had a raw deal; when his sister had died, he'd flunked his first degree and had to start again, and now, with Alys's death leaning heavy on his mind, the same thing was happening again. I remembered kids on my degree who gave up uni life abruptly. Their mental health suffered as they tried to keep up with deadlines and getting wasted at the same time. Ricky felt loss so deeply. Watching him scrape at the earth below the bushes, his fingernails black with soil, it had felt as if he was literally trying to dig up some answers to the questions he studied: What is death? What is goodness? Can it exist without there being a God? Big questions, impossible to answer. No wonder he got depressed.

Alys wasn't within the shadows of the cave …

The opposite of light—Plato's cave. When Ricky described it, I'd found myself picturing Laura Munroe's otherworld. Her cave had been filled with the flicker of shadows. Something stirred in my gut. I pulled my phone out and Googled
Plato's Cave
. I was confused by the choice of sites that came up. I chose one at random and read the contents, muttering beneath my breath “
… let me show in a figure how far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened: —Behold! human beings living in an underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them …”
I looked up from the tiny screen to take a deep breath. The image disturbed me. What a horrible thing to do to any sentient being. I had to remind myself this was an allegory, it was there to make you think about things already in the world, such as the way some people get trapped into a mode of being without even knowing about it. Plato used the cave as a symbol for lack of virtue, but there were other darknesses of the mind. What would it be like, believing the shadows on the wall were your entire reality?

And, if this prisoner was
… compelled to look straight at the light, will he not have a pain in his eyes which will make him turn away to take refuge in the objects of vision which he can see …

Laura's otherworld place—a cave filled with shadows. Even her guardian presented itself through the flicker of shadows on the wall. It occurred to me that if your world had always been in shadow, your reaction, when you finally set eyes on sunshine, would be one of sheer panic.

Surely that didn't mean that Laura wasn't good, or even that her lost
soul-part
wasn't good.

Ricky had said that Plato blamed lack of virtue on ignorance; if you only see the shadows, how are you to know about the sun? I didn't see Laura as ignorant; apart from her crippling panic attacks, she was a savvy girl with a sharp intelligence and, for her age, a real knowledge of the wider world. I was left with the puzzle of her otherworld—a shadowy cave and a hallowed guardian. The image was with me all the way home, defining and clarifying itself with each clunk and click of the wheels over the rails.

The train finally pulled into Bridgwater. It was twenty to ten at night; I'd been travelling since dawn. I emerged onto the platform with a far better understanding of what Laura was, and why she had been sent into terrible panics for seemingly no reason. I would take my resolutions to the otherworld as soon as I could. More urgent was Rey; his phone was still off. A worm of dread was growing in my stomach. It might be so simple—he'd dropped it in the Parrett or lost the charger. No, he could still have got in touch with me. Found some landline or phone box. Even when you talk to no one else, you talk to your partner, don't you?

The worm raised its head and hissed at me.
Girlfriend. Not partner. You're no more than his squeeze.

I tried concentrating on the words we'd exchanged
… we are good, aren't we Rey? … Christ, yes. We're solid …

Rey's flat was a less than a mile from the train station, but I was too impatient to merely walk. I got into a jogging rhythm, breathing and pounding as my bag flew out and bumped into my hip with alternate steps. By the time I reached his address, I was devoid of breath. I took the stairs, still puffing, and pressed Rey's bell. I heard it ring through the bedsit, echoing round the few corners the accommodation provided. I rang it again. I lifted the letter flap and called. “It's me, Rey. Answer the door. It's me!”

I turned my back to the wood. It was ten at night. Was he down the pub with his phone dead in his pocket? I didn't believe it. I remembered how I'd asked him to stay at mine …
for a bit.
He had my spare key. That's where he was, probably sound asleep in my bed.

I went into town and took a taxi home. By the time I got there, my hope had faded and I was almost too shattered to worry any more about Rey. The house was locked and in darkness. My bed was empty.

I fell into it and slept like the dead.

By morning, I was thinking clearly. I knew what I had to do. I had to report Rey missing, and I shouldn't delay. He could be anywhere. He could be lying in a lane, like Marty-Mac, his head bashed in with a brick.

Taken with a single sweep of the sword.

A
keening sound came into my throat. I threw on some clothes, fed the hens, and cycled into town.

Even so, as I stood in the little lobby outside the locked doors of Bridgwater Police Station, I had to fight the desire to walk away. This place always made me feel uncertain and conspicuous. The door release buzzed and I heaved my weight against its heaviness.

The male officer on duty behind the bulletproof glass gave a grimace of acknowledgment.

“I need to speak to Detective Inspector Rey Buckley. Is he here?”

“I'm sorry, he's not available.” He didn't have to check the roster.

“I think he's missing, actually. I can't get hold of him.”

“And you are?”

I opened my mouth and shut it again.
His girlfriend, his squeeze.
“Can I have a few moments with his deputy, then?”

“I'm sorry?” He looked at me for the first time.“Who do you mean?”

“Pippa Chaisey.” I brushed my hair away from my face. My fingers were ice cold. “Please tell DS Chaisey that it's Sabbie Dare.”

The officer spoke on an internal line. I didn't hear his words. My breath whistled fast along dry nostrils. A woman in civvies arrived on my side of the desk. “If you could follow me, please, Miss Dare?”

She walked me through the corridors. We went up one level. We walked some more. I was weak with the thought of seeing Pippa—or rather, her seeing me, raw and
red-eyed
. I was unable to concentrate on where the woman was taking me. I hoped she'd show me the way back when the time came. The woman stopped outside a door and knocked. Pippa was sitting behind a desk she had not, in my view, yet earned, her laptop open upon it and several files piled near her elbow. I was sure Rey hadn't had his own office when he was a sergeant.

“Sabbie,” she said. She sounded wary, as if she didn't know what would be thrown at her.

I stepped into the office and the civilian closed the door on us. I heard her stilettos clip along the corridor.

“Do sit down.”

I eyed the chair. I didn't want to sit. I wanted to launch myself over the surface of the desk, skid the laptop out of the way, and slap Pippa hard on one cheek.

“Sit down, Sabbie.”

I sat. I was trying to control my breathing, so that my voice would come out loud and confident. “Rey isn't answering his phone.”

She smiled, but in my buzzing head it felt like a sneer, like she'd curled her lip at me. “I'm sorry, Sabbie.”

“What?”

“Rey is in custody. He's been charged and not yet bailed. I expect he will get bail, but we're still questioning him at this moment in time.”

“He's not guilty.”

“You know, then, what he's charged with?”

“Let me guess. The murder of Martin Macaskill? He's not bloody guilty.”

“Please restrain your language. It never helps your case.”

“I don't have a ‘case,' Pippa.” I stopped to get oxygen into my lungs. She must have heard me pant, sitting on the other side of her
hard-on
desk. “You don't have a case, either. Do you know that?” It occurred to me that yes, they probably did know they didn't have a case against DI Buckley. Not a watertight,
evidence-based
case, anyway. There was more going on here than that. “You'll never get a conviction. So what's this about?”

“You're upset,” said Pippa, with startling accuracy. Her next statement hit the bullseye too. “Rey hasn't been keeping you in the loop, has he? I expect you feel you've been sidelined.”

“Rey Buckley didn't kill
Marty-Mac
.”

“Let us be the judge of that.”

“Did Rey tell you about PC Wynche?”

She paused. She moved the laptop, the better to eyeball me. “Sorry?”

“Thought not. PC Wynche is the officer looking into a case of random attack on a man in Yeovil. Anthony Bale was assaulted on the morning of June the
twenty-first
. Has he mentioned Gerald Evens?”

“Sabbie, does this bear any relevance?”

“Of course. I'm not here to have a girlie gossip. Gerald Evens had his head pounded in on—yeah—the
twenty-fourth
of June, during a bright, sunny day at Glastonbury Abbey. It was a bad attack … I guess it could be attempted murder. I believe I've established links between both those attacks and the murder of Martin Macaskill.” I had to stop speaking because I'd run out of oxygen availability. I sat and puffed for several seconds, daring her with my eyes to interrupt my flow. “Certain things stand out and I want to present them to you now, so you can make an informed decision over who committed this crime. Three men have been attacked since the summer solstice. The modus operandi are similar; the injuries becoming more serious as the attacks go on. With Macaskill, the perpetrator finished what they'd started.”

“I'm sorry?” The impeccable cogs in her
cop-perfect
brain had stalled, and I ploughed on while I had the glimmer of an advantage.

“I need to report my concerns. My suspicions. That, I believe is the prerogative of the
public-spirited
citizen.”

“Yes, Sabbie, but you aren't one of said citizens, are you? You are a woman trying to get her man out of the cells.”

“Not at all, Pippa. I'm trying to report something.”

“You've lost me. You lost me some time ago.” Pippa got out of her chair and it skid away on its five casters. “There's nothing here for us. Nothing.”

“You haven't heard me out.”

“This is a waste of your time, I'm afraid.” She remained standing. She was preparing to cut me down and send me packing. I didn't get up. She'd been the one to implore me to sit, after all.

“I want to tell you about the anonymous emails my friend has been getting. They're from someone calling themselves Morgan le Fay—” My voice broke. I was not going to cry in front of this woman. I was not. “It's hard to get it all summed up—to get the measure of it all. I don't know everything, 'course not, or how it all fits to make sense. I just know … Rey isn't guilty—” I had an image of Rey, sitting on his cell bunk, staring at the wall. “If you'd just let me explain the thinking behind my suspicions. I need to lay everything out … how a person can't perceive reality if all they see are shadows on a cave wall …”

“Okay. That'll do. You can stick the lid back on your garbage.” She came round the desk and stood by me; over me, almost. “Rey has told me about you. Okay, he's fond of you, but he knows you're flaky. You deal in dreams and … suchlike. My investigations deal with data. Testimonials. Documentation. Results.”

“You don't have a result,” I said. “You have a whitewash.”

I dashed a hand into my shoulder bag. Brice's four emails were printed onto separate sheets and sealed inside an envelope, ready to hand over. I rested it on the desk. “Examine all that comes to you. That was what I was told to do.
When you eliminate that which you no longer need, one possibility will remain
.”

“Sabbie …”

“Yeah. Go ahead, remind me. I sound flaky. I can get the answers, Pippa. I've done so in the past.” I had to keep ahead of her. Find some rationale that would fit with her view of the world. “Surely if a member of the public believes they have witnessed, or understood, something suspicious, you need to take their statement?”

I watched her process my words. I felt her despair. She was not going to get me out of the station that easily. “Well. It depends on a number of variants—”

“I want to make a statement.”

She exploded into a laugh. “Come on, Sabbie, you have nothing to state.”

“If I can't make a statement, I will make a complaint.”