Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) (19 page)

He stopped so quickly I almost ran into him, breathless from the mini-sprint. “I haven’t thanked you yet.”

“What for?”

“Helping with our enquiries.”

“I didn’t think members of the public had a choice in the matter.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “She’s behind us in that room.”

“Oh.” I felt my shoulders tighten, as if preparing to shudder.

“It can shake people up. Even if they’re not closely related to the victim. So you must indicate if you feel unwell. There’s a bench, see, you can sit down on if you need to.”

I turned to look at the corridor wall. “Out here?”

“Yes,” said Rey. “Out here. You don’t go in.”

We’d arrived. I glanced through a plate-glass window. A gurney stood in a small room, shrouded with a green sheet.

I was terrified that Kizzy would be entirely decomposed, that she’d been dead since she wrote the letter. Or was she dying as I sat on the tumps at Brean Down, looking towards Hinkley Point?

“It’s procedure. You observe through the glass. I’ll enter the room, pull back sufficient sheeting, and wait for your signal.”

“I signal to say I recognise the body.”

“Or not. Either way, you can nod or raise your hand to indicate you’ve seen enough.”

Rey entered the little room, closing the door behind him. In the long corridor it was the only room with a window, and below the window, at waist height, someone had thoughtfully placed a rail, so that the grieving witnesses had something to clutch in their agony. I considered, in the seconds it took for Rey to reach the shrouded body and unmask it, how lucky I should consider myself. I did not love this person. My world would not be altered if I recognised her.

The sheet was pulled. I was staring through glass at a dead woman. Her eyes were closed and the lids—all of her face and neck—was thick with fluid, puffed as if stuffed with seaweed. Her mouth was stretched into a horrid grin—
rictus
was the word that sprang into my head. Her skin was as pale as fish flesh. I was reminded of funeral parlours; the way the funeral technician drained the dead of their blood and injected some chemical into their veins and arteries in replacement—formaldehyde, I fancied—but no funeral technician had been near this body yet. It as if her lifeblood had oozed from her as she’d been nibbled by marine life.

But her hair—that long, thick black drape I’d seen under the dim lighting in the lane—had been brushed. It didn’t shine any longer, but it was unmistakably Kizzy’s.

It took me a long time to realize Rey had come right over and was tapping on the other side of the glass. I had given no signal. I had forgotten everything in the world but the sight of Kizzy Brouviche. I gave a single sharp nod, and looked down at my feet. When I next looked up, the blinds had been scrolled shut and Rey was handing me a plastic cup of chilled spring water. He took me by the bend of my elbow and I sat with him on the little bench bracketed to the wall.

“You recognise her?”

I nodded. “What happened to her?”

Rey didn’t reply directly. “You are able to confirm that the name of the deceased is Kizzy Brouviche and you’ll be willing to sign a statement to that effect?” He was being so formal. Perhaps it was necessary; perhaps he thought it would help. “And that you’ll be happy to give us further details on the deceased, anything you know about her, including the last time you saw her alive?”

That jolted me. “You know when I last saw her alive. I told you. She read my palm on the night of the carnival. The same night Gary Abbott died.” I pulled Kizzy’s letter from my bag and passed it over.

He took the envelope and looked inside. “How did this come to be in your possession? Did you remove this from her apartment yesterday?”

I snorted. “She didn’t have an
apartment
. She had a mouldy, wretched room in a house full of underpaid immigrants.”

We were sitting so close on the little bench, our knees were millimetres apart, and I was sure electrons were flying across the gap like shooting stars. As if we both realized it at the same time, we shifted our bodies in opposite directions.

“I didn’t answer your question.”

“I know that. It’s my job to spot things like that.” His voice had softened. “Perverting the course of justice is a serious crime.”

“I haven’t really touched it, Rey.”

“I worked that out too. Not many people wear their biking gloves indoors.”

I shot him a glance of respect, tinged with a low-grade fear. Rey was a DI now; had been for some months. I had never bothered to wonder how he did his job, or if he did it well.

“Can you fill me in,” Rey asked, “on your relationship with both the Brouviches?”

I told him the full story, sitting there on the hospital bench. I started with Mirela, her first night at my house. I described my journey to the spirit wolf. Seeing I was in full confessional mood, I even skimmed quickly over the massage parlour incident. I told him about Mirela and Kizzy’s connection to Fergus.

“Agency for Change rings a bell,” he said, “but I’ve never heard the name Quigg. Can you give me his details?”

“Sure.”
Body—small but perfectly formed. Hair—a great fuzzy mess. Height—if I lean straight across, I can touch those lips with mine. And he had the hots for me, Rey
…
had
… “I think he’s in touch with someone at Bridgwater station about the legality of what they do at Papa Bulgaria.”

“All right, Sabbie.” I could sense his despair … his disappointment. “We need another official statement. They’re getting to be a habit with you.”

He took the empty plastic beaker from my grasp and tossed it into a bin, striding away in his policeman’s shoes, heel to toe with a straight back. I stepped behind him like a child.

eighteen

Rey drove the back
way out of Musgrove Hospital, grimly silent. I stared forward, trying to keep my mind off of the sight of Kizzy’s rictus grin. As he reached the hospital exit, Rey let out a long sigh.

“How I’d love to have a nice quiet chat with every surgeon in this place.”

“But all local victims end up here for autopsy, don’t they?”

He shrugged. “This case isn’t twenty-four hours old and it’s already doing my head in.”

“What? Why?”

“We’re not used to murder victims in Bridgwater. We’ve got a law-abiding population of less than thirty-five thousand. One copper and two young female deaths in four months? So far, we don’t even know if any of them are linked.”

“I’ve already heard people saying the two girls’ deaths could be the same killer.”

“It’s a theory, yes. They were both dumped in the waters round here.” Rey changed gear and changed the subject. “My scalp’s tightening, Sabbie.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Always happens when someone isn’t telling me everything.”

“Right. Must be painful then, being a cop. Constant migraine situation.” I glanced sideways to see if I’d wound him up sufficiently then went on. “I bumped into Abbott’s girlfriend, Kate. We did have a brief chat. She told me Abbott had said a strange thing on the night of the carnival. That if he had to die, he would want to die in the saddle.”

Rey only paused for the briefest of seconds. “Coppers are always coming out with things like that. Don’t put too much store by it.”

“It felt like it had something … some sort of subtext. Can’t you feel that? You get hunches. Good hunches.”

“You were my only hunch, Sabbie.”

“A good hunch, I hope?”

He raised a single eyebrow. I love blokes who can do that. “Not too good, eh?”

“You saying I’ve got a wicked side?”

He paused, as if weighing things up. “Last time, you almost got killed.”

I laughed, trying to sound wicked, but it might not have come off. “I don’t think
that’s
going to happen again, is it? I mean what are the odds?”

“I’d say about the same as us ever getting out of this bloody traffic queue.”

“I noticed there were a lot of roadworks on the way in.”

We had been crawling towards a set of temporary traffic lights since we left the hospital grounds. They had turned red for the third time and we were still a long way back.

“Bloody mess.” I wasn’t sure if he meant Taunton roadworks or his investigations. “Oh, come
on
, for Christ’s sake!” Rey had shot forward until he was so close to the car in front they might have exchanged bodily fluids.

“What’s the hurry?”

“Need a coffee, is what. You have to be anywhere?”

“Yes. Papa Bulgaria.” I saw his teeth bare, like an amused primate. He hit a button on the console. The radio spluttered into life.

“Go ahead, India Five.”

“I’ve got a witness in the car, done a body ID. Can you phone her place of work and tell them she won’t be in for the rest of the day? Helping police, et cetera?”

“Rey,” I yelped. “Don’t do that. They’ll think I’ve got a record or something!”

His grin spread. “Trust me, a record would speed your promotion in that place.” He flicked a switch on the console and a whine started up. He edged out and roared along the wrong side of the road, lights flashing and siren screaming, nosing into first place in the queue just as the lights changed to green.

I was remembering the strange little conversation I’d had with Mirela in her room, the day she’d told me about Kizzy’s letter. I’d almost forgotten it. I started to explain this to Rey, but it sounded garbled and invented. Perhaps Mirela had invented it. I only half believed her at the time. Something about moving things. In the scooters? That was it.

“Could it be drugs?” I asked. “They seem too tin pot to be mixed up in anything worse.”

“Tin pot is how the drugs trade works. It’s dependent on little men who are as quiet and dark as shadows, especially the ones that lie in the middle of the chain of command. The commodity is shifted along the line from producer through wholesale into retail.”

“You make it sound like … tomatoes.”

“Hmm, tomatoes are close in a lot of ways.”

Rey was quiet for so long I thought I’d offended him in some way—not a difficult accomplishment. My heart started to pound. Was Rey scaring me, or was it the sight of poor Kizzy’s body? Or was it the memory of Mirela, her eyes red, her voice low and trembly as she muttered what seemed like a confession …
they carry
…
not food
…

Eventually, Rey took pity on me. “Can I trust you to keep your mouth shut?”

“Yes, no problem.”

“There’s a Bulgarian cartel. They call themselves
Mutri.
”

“What’s that?”

“It’s Bulgarian or something for a mobster. Perhaps the word I should use is
mafioso.
”

I thought about that for the whole of two seconds. “The Bulgarians have a mafia? Why am I not surprised.”

“Does it ring bells?”

“Yes, of the human trafficking kind. Fergus Quigg thinks that what they’re doing is close to it.”

“Bulgaria is a member of the EU now. Their citizens can travel and work within it.”

“But Romani don’t have proper papers. Papazov charges them well over the odds for their EU passports. They’re ripped off precisely because they’re gypsies.”

“The
Mutri
are infiltrating Britain, thanks to cheap flights from Europe. Wherever we look, there are nice, cosy little family firms like Papa starting up quietly all over the place. Lift the embroidered table cloths and underneath there’s a lot more to worry about than paying workers less than the minimum wage.”

“Sex trade?” I asked, thinking of the varied opinions I’d heard so far.

“Not so much. Too messy, I fancy. Not the nice, clean profit you get from a bit of internal extortion, some cigarette smuggling, that sort of thing. And then there are drugs.” In front of us, yet another long line of traffic was seething in its own exhaust fumes. “Holy Nora!” said Rey.

“So let me get this right. No one has any proof that Papa Bulgaria is part of this … cartel … this
Mutri
thing? Or that they have anything to do with the drug trade?”

Rey shrugged. “Six months ago, a team at the station did a joint operation with the drugs squad—stop and search. We certainly covered both the Papa Bulgarias in our area. But legally and cost-wise we had to pull out.”

“You never found anything?”

“It’s a novel idea, there’s no doubt about it—riders topping up their pay packet carrying the odd kilo of crack. But it was thrown out of the pot a long time back.”

“Was that what Abbott was investigating, Rey? Would that be a link between him and Kizzy?”

“I think not. There is no investigation now, and he wouldn’t have been part of it in the first place.”

“Do you think Kizzy knew she was getting into danger? Mirela told me she’d found a way of making money.
Great riches
was the way she apparently put it.”

“Can you expand on that?”

“Not really,” I said. I was surprised at his sudden interest in my almost off-hand remark. “Would it be important?”

Rey grinned in delight. “Blue-pencilled, sorry.”

“Uh?”

“Can’t divulge the information. And believe me, if I could, you’d be the last person I’d divulge it to, you gumshoe in training, you. You’re always ready to do our job for us when we are perfectly competent at doing it ourselves.”

“Not with much success, it seems.”

“I don’t want you anywhere near this, okay? Avon and Somerset have a shit-hot drugs squad. They can work these things out for themselves. They turned Papa Bulgaria over and there wasn’t a whiff of anything.”

“But they were suspicious?”

“We follow procedure, Sabbie. A lot of intelligence is coming in from a lot of sources, some of them extremely dodgy. And the reason I told you about the
Mutri
was so that you are forewarned. Don’t even bother with notice. Get out of Papa Bulgaria. Do what you’re good at doing.”

“Actually, I’m going to take your advice, Rey about flyers—”

“Hang on a sec.”

I hadn’t realized Rey meant this literally. He put on the siren and lights and swung into such an enthusiastic U-bend I hit my head on the passenger door window. “Ow, Rey, whatcha—”

He tore back up the road, forcing vehicles onto the pavement, and turned left between some houses. “Short cut,” he said.

I rubbed my temple. “Let’s emphasise the
cut
part of that.”

“I did warn you.” He was heading into the countryside between Taunton and Bridgwater. I guess he knew these lanes like the back of his wonderful hairy hand, but I couldn’t resist pointing out the obvious. “Those lights would have changed. This way is bound to be longer.”

“Trust me, I’m a policeman.”

“Yes, an extremely impatient policeman.”

“Not at all. I can wait motionless for hours to catch my prey.”

“Really? Like an alligator?”

“I suspect you think I’ll take that as an insult, but you’d be mistaken.”

“Like the idea of big jaws, huh?”

We passed fields and woodlands, trees flashing by like the flicker rate in a computer game

“When I last knew you, you were concentrating on your therapies and nothing else. Nothing to sully the waters. Now you’re stretching yourself in directions I wouldn’t’ve thought you’d want to touch. Barmaid? Fast food delivery? It’s not you, Sabbie.”

“When you knew me last, I didn’t have a mortgage.”

“Maybe it was the worst thing you could’ve done.”

He sounded like he was trying to be my big brother. “Well, thanks for the support.”

“Mortgages are a risk. And a drain.”

“Just because you don’t have one.”

“Says who?”

“You aren’t helping, Rey.” I heard my voice break. I swallowed hard, pressing myself into the car seat. He had raised all the doubts I had at night, when I couldn’t sleep, the ones I called “my dreads.” Questions like, had I done the right thing buying 43 Harold Street? I’d been perfectly happy living in a house I paid rent for. It was this awful obsession the British have. Caroline and Nora and the Howells and even my foster dad who wasn’t even born here, all wanted me to own my own home. I’d listened to their elderly wisdom. Deep down I knew the idea of house ownership had pulled at me like a strong tide. For all my life I have never belonged anywhere. My real mother tore me from bug-infested room to bug-infested room. The foster families sent me back. At the children’s home, the staff regularly changed. Even living with Gloria had that “holiday” feeling … like I’d wake up one morning and be back at the Willows.

I was aiming for security, but if I failed to put loads-a-money into the bank’s sticky paws every month, they would take everything away from me. I’d swapped a gentle rhythm with a scrap of soil and a simple place to live with the terror of losing everything I’d ever had. I put my cool hand over the stinging place where I’d bumped my head. It seemed to be the last straw. The stupid, stupid tears came in a hot rush. I cupped my hands over my eyes to stop the sign of them.

“Sabbie?”

Rey had pulled up on the grass verge by the side of the road and was looking at me, all concerned.

“I’m okay …” I took the hanky he handed me. Did he keep a supply of them for weepy interviewees? I dabbed at my eyes and mascara smeared the white cotton. I only put on the mascara because coming to Musgrove with Rey had felt like a little “date.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I said the wrong things.”

“No, you said the right things, Rey.”

“Life.” He grinned. “Bugger, eh?”

“I’ve got your hanky all dirty.”

“S’okay,” he said, and kissed my cheek.

The silence crackled. I could feel the cool kiss impression. Rey placed the pulp of his thumb over it. I was trying not to breath like a traction engine. My eyes were so wide the dust in the car settled on their surfaces. I was falling towards him, like falling a great height, into a new world. My lids closed over the dust and we were kissing, hard, then soft, long, deep, lung-emptying kisses, brushing and sucking and bruising each other—lips, cheeks, necks, hair. Rey buried his face into my breasts, which were covered by layers of clothes but I could feel them respond through all those layers to the compression of his kiss.

Then we stopped. He pulled back. He didn’t speak. He was staring through the windscreen. I was taking him in, all the things I’d yenned for since he stood in my porch that first time: the no-need-to-comb haircut, the steady, inscrutable mouth. And still he didn’t speak or look at me. I knew why that was—a kiss is like a spark on a box of fireworks—it can happen to anyone, anywhere, given tindery conditions. But once you speak the words—whichever way they go—the thing is set, given weight, etched on your mind. Not that I was ever going to forget this kiss—whether it was just the first or definitely the last.

“We both did that, Rey.”

“Yes, of course. But it was my fault.”

He went to turn the key in the ignition, but I rested my hand over his. “No blame. It’s what we both wanted …
want
… deep down, you know it is.”

His lips firmed into a straight line that made it look like he was in sudden pain. “That’s the difference between us. I don’t do
deep down
, I do arresting felons. You stroke people until they’re better and I shove them against car bonnets and slam cuffs on them.”

“I don’t see a problem—”

“Well I do. It’s why I said go off and find yourself someone …
nice
… and you did—you found this Quigg chappy.”

“Rey, I don’t want Fergus.”

“You’re a match on paper. A better match.”