WHEN FREDDIE OPENED the door, he looked surprised and then horrified in short order. Ashley laughed, then winced, touching a finger to her bleeding lip.
‘It probably looks worse than it is.’
‘What happened?’
He ushered her in, a look of concern on his face that Ashley found quite delightful. The B and B room was the largest available, with a double bed, an ensuite, and its own living area with a TV and sofa. There was a mirror just beyond the door; in it, Ashley could see her split lip was still oozing a little blood.
‘Shit. Do you have a tissue?’
Freddie went to the bathroom and came back with a wad of tissue. Ashley gratefully pressed it to her sore mouth.
‘I know Mrs Templeton of old,’ she said, her voice slightly muffled. ‘So she let me in to see you. I’ve no doubt she’ll have her biggest glass to the ceiling though to listen to what we’re up to.’
‘Sit down.’ Freddie guided her to the sofa. ‘Did someone hurt you?’
Ashley recounted the events of the last couple of hours, including the information Melva had given her about the changeling. Ashley watched his face grow more animated as she told him about the person that had assaulted her in the dark, and by the time she was finished, he was frowning deeply.
‘You have to tell the police.’
‘Tell them what? That someone I couldn’t see or identify grabbed me and ran away? I don’t think I’m their favourite person at the moment anyway.’
‘That’s hardly the point.’
‘It’s not even the worst part of today.’ Ashley sighed and pulled the folded newspaper out of her bag before passing it to Freddie. ‘You may as well see it now before you see it all over the internet.’
Again, she watched his face as he read the article. When he was finished, he put the newspaper down on the sofa.
‘So?’ Ashley tried to make her tone as light as possible, but to her, the desperation in it was crystal clear. ‘Do you hate me yet?’
He looked at her for a long moment. Belatedly, she realised his curly hair was wet, and the skin around his throat looked damp. She realised she must have caught him just after having a shower – there was a faint soapy scent to the room as well.
‘Why don’t you tell me what happened in your own words?’
* * *
In the end, he brought a bottle of wine over and poured them a glass each while Ashley shifted on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and folding her legs underneath her. The cut on her lip was a steady throb, but a few sips of wine seemed to calm it.
‘David Wagner’s son, Joseph, was in his early twenties when I first started to see him. He had been at university in Manchester, doing a medical degree that I very quickly realised was more his father’s dream than his. He came to see me at a show once, and then emailed asking for private sessions. I remember it quite clearly because I was surprised – people like him, who have a grounding in science, are not usually the sort of people eager to have multiple sessions with a medium. But he was keen, impressed with what he had seen in the show. And he was desperately unhappy.’
Ashley frowned. It was strange to think about Joseph when she spent so much of her time trying not to think about him at all.
‘That’s the thing that Mr Wagner refuses to acknowledge. That Joseph was unhappy long before I ever spoke to him. He was dragging himself through the second year of a medical degree he didn’t want, and he was finding it difficult to make lasting friends – this was what I learned in my early sessions with him.’
‘You sound more like a therapist,’ said Freddie. He was sipping on his wine thoughtfully. Ashley smiled, then winced at the sharp pain in her lip.
‘That’s pretty much what we are, most of the time. It’s ninety percent psychology – looking for clues, listening to the way people speak.’ She shrugged. ‘He was a kind soul, Joseph. One of those people who takes everything to heart. He was studying to be a doctor because he thought it would make his father happy, but I think he knew he wasn’t suited for it – he had too much empathy for a profession where you have to deal out bad news.
‘In my way, I encouraged him to make the choices he wanted. I told him …’ She paused. The guilt seemed to gain weight with every word. ‘I told him that the spirit of his grandmother was making contact. He’d been close to her, had spent a lot of time at his grandparents’ house when he was small. I told him his gran was eager for him to explore his own interests, to get out into the world and spend less time trying to make other people happy. I mean, I thought I wasn’t being particularly subtle, but … Anyway. He ditched the degree, much to his father’s disappointment, and went off to be a writer. At the time, I thought, okay. He’s got a lot of empathy, he’s sensitive, maybe even a little self-obsessed – perfect for a career in writing, right? While he was doing all this, I saw him maybe once a month. He joined a writing group and met a girl called Phoebe, who he fell head over heels for.’ She smiled. ‘For almost a year or so, it seemed like he was really happy. He had his girlfriend, he had the book he was writing, and I was glad. He told me to tell his grandmother thank you – he had found his vocation. The book had come leaping out of him, he said.’ She stopped and sighed again.
‘So what happened?’
‘After his good year, he had a bad one. He discovered that Phoebe was sleeping with someone else – specifically, one of the very few friends he’d managed to cling to through university. Joseph had been convinced she was his soulmate, the love of his life, and he took it really badly. He finished the book, but his writing group tore it to shreds, and it got rejected by every literary agent under the sun. He got sad. Really sad. Started sleeping all day. He was fired from the part-time job he had. He pleaded with Phoebe to come to her senses, pleaded with her so much, in fact, that she reported him to the police. One night, he turned up at her parents’ house, no shoes on, and said he wouldn’t leave until she saw him, so they called the police on him. He was arrested after he tried to force his way into the house.’
‘Ah, jeez,’ said Freddie.
Ashley shrugged one shoulder. ‘He made things worse for himself. Anyway. He came back to me in pieces. He wanted to know what his grandmother thought he should do next.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘His life was falling apart, and he expected the spirits to save him. I … perhaps I lost my patience slightly. I told him that his grandmother said he needed to get some proper help. Go to therapy. Take a break from the career and relationship miseries and focus on himself for a while.’
‘What did he say to that?’
‘He was shocked. He said that his grandmother would barely know what therapy was, and asked why she would tell him that.’ Ashley laughed again, shaking her head. ‘I believe I told him that in the spirit world, we learn all sorts of things we would never have known in life. You know, the usual tripe.’
Freddie looked at her over the rim of his glass.
‘He pushed it further. Poor Joseph. He started to rant at me, saying that I’d been feeding him nonsense the whole time, that I’d destroyed his medical career on a whim. That the ruin of his life was my fault.’ Ashley touched a finger to the split in her lip. Talking about Joseph Wagner felt very much like probing an old festering wound. ‘So I told him that, on the contrary, everything he’d done was his own decision, and his refusal to be responsible was all part of the problem. He left in a fury, and I didn’t hear from him again, but of course I heard the details later. Joseph went home, drank a load of vodka, then took a load of pills. He could have lived through that, as it turned out, but he had an undiagnosed heart condition and …’ She lifted one hand and then dropped it again. ‘His father ended up breaking into his flat when he hadn’t heard from him in a fortnight. He found the body.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Yeah. So.’ Ashley raised her glass and drained the last inch of red wine. ‘David Wagner, somewhat understandably, hates me and blames me for Joseph’s death. I’ve met with him myself a couple of times, trying to, I don’t know, apologise or make peace – or at least get him to understand that Joseph’s problems were more complicated than taking advice from a dodgy psychic. But it has never worked.’ She nodded to the newspaper where it was neatly folded on the coffee table. ‘As you can probably tell.’ She let out a shaky sigh. She had hoped that telling someone about Joseph would make her feel better, but mainly it seemed to summon all the old feelings back, as vividly as ever: guilt, frustration, sorrow.
‘Is that how you would describe yourself then? A dodgy psychic?’
‘Aren’t all psychics inherently dodgy?’ She knew she shouldn’t be talking so openly about this stuff – it was only her livelihood, after all – but the wine was easing the tension from her shoulders, and it felt good to be honest for once. After all, she didn’t get many opportunities. ‘Snake oil salesmen. Con artists. Thieves. Vultures. Parasites.’ She raised a finger at him. ‘Not how I describe myself, mind you. But I have been called every one of those things.’
‘Ashley, you found Robbie Metcalfe. And I have no earthly way to explain how you did that.’ There were a few footsteps in the hall outside the door, and Ashley wondered if Mrs Templeton had decided to come and flush her out. But they kept on moving down the hall instead. ‘I think you spend a lot of time discrediting yourself before others can do it.’
‘Now who’s the therapist?’ She reached over and topped up her wine glass. ‘It’s true there are some things that are unexplainable.’ She thought of the Heedful Ones, back in her life for reasons she couldn’t fathom. ‘I can tell you that for sure.’ She shifted on the sofa so she was looking at him directly. ‘But now that I’ve spilled all that dirty laundry, I need to know what you think about it.’ She pressed her lips together. In the car on the way over, she had known she would have to talk to Freddie about David Wagner, but she hadn’t expected this: a terrible fear that he would respect her less. Dislike her, even.
‘It sounds to me as though Joseph’s problems would have been there regardless of how much he talked to you,’ said Freddie. He pushed a hand back through his damp hair, sending his curls into corkscrews. ‘I imagine,’ he said carefully, ‘that your line of work attracts vulnerable people.’
Ashley nodded and looked down at her hands. There was an unsettling sinking feeling behind her breastbone, there and gone. Regardless of how kind or understanding Freddie was, the truth about her line of work would always be there, like a rotten apple at the bottom of the barrel. She thought about telling him ‘It’s the only thing I know how to do,’ or ‘My family rely on me,’ but in the end, she didn’t. She said, ‘Without vulnerable people, I guess I’d have no job at all. But I think all of us are vulnerable, to some degree.’
‘Speaking of inexplicable things.’ Freddie shifted on the sofa, stretching out one arm along the back. If Ashley let her head fall back, she could lean it against his hand. She held herself very still. ‘I’m fascinated by this changeling business. When we saw Mrs Nowak’s photograph, I had assumed that the killer had left the objects as a kind of taunt or mockery of the parents. But is it possible it’s actually an attempt to … say sorry? To replace what’s been taken somehow? That suggests a very different sort of killer. Someone who is reluctant, or feels some level of remorse or shame, maybe. Which, in turn, suggests it’s possible that the killer knows the victims.’
‘Really? But they’re all so …’ Ashley shrugged. ‘Unconnected. And far apart too.’
For some time, Freddie didn’t answer. He was resting his wine-glass on his knee, and Ashley found herself admiring his hands, with their long, mobile fingers and big, broad thumbs. He had hands that belonged on a Michelangelo statue. Now you’re being ridiculous, she thought to herself, but she felt overly aware of the double bed on the far side of the room.
‘I’m just spitballing,’ he said eventually. ‘I know you don’t want to go to the police about what happened outside your friend’s house. But do you think we should tell them about the changeling aspect?’
Ashley frowned. She couldn’t see the pragmatic DCI Turner thinking much about folklore and old wives’ tales.
‘They’ve known about the stick dollies for years at this point. Surely they’ve figured it out? All they’d need to do is have a poke about on Google.’
‘Hopefully, you’re right about that,’ said Freddie, ‘but I might just drop them a line about it anyway. If nothing else, being seen as helpful will get us in their good books.’
‘Have you found that in your previous cases it helps to have the police on your side?’ She realised she didn’t particularly want to keep in touch with DCI Turner, or even DC Platt, who had put them on the path to speaking to Mrs Nowak in the first place. She thought about how they’d brought up her father’s past, all those slippery little insinuations. ‘I mean, it was my intention to help them. And I did. And then they hauled me in for questioning.’
‘I suppose they weren’t expecting you to lead them straight to a body,’ said Freddie, his tone dry. ‘But yes, I’ve found it varies from case to case. If there’s a strong suggestion that members of law enforcement have been lax, in my experience, the last thing they seem to want is a member of the public asking questions. And sometimes they just think I’m overstepping the mark.’ He brightened up slightly. ‘At least in the UK I’ve less chance of getting shot for asking questions.’
‘Ha.’
A small silence pooled between them then. It occurred to Ashley, too late, that she probably shouldn’t have had a second glass of wine if she was driving back. Perhaps she could get a cup of coffee from Mrs Templeton before she left.
‘I wish you’d report what happened to the police,’ Freddie said again, his tone back to being serious. ‘I feel awful about it. I told you that I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you, and I’ve already failed in that promise.’
Ashley laughed and shook her head. She half felt like she should be insulted by this patronising statement, but something about his wholesome insistence was oddly charming.
‘Give over. Listen. When are we going to see Dean Underwood?’
He raised his eyebrows, surprised. ‘You’re quite sure you want to?’
‘I am. And now that I’ve decided that I’m doing it, I’m anxious to get it over with.’
‘Great. The next visiting day, as I understand it, is the day after tomorrow. How do you feel about that?’
Ashley agreed, and soon after that, began to excuse herself. Freddie seemed disappointed, which she tried not to read too much into, and when he walked her to the door, they both paused.
‘Hey. Thank you.’
‘What for?’ Ashley pulled her bag up onto her shoulder. ‘Disrupting your evening?’
He grinned. ‘For agreeing to work on this with me. It’s already been far more interesting with your presence.’
‘You’re very welcome, I’m sure.’ She went up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek, lingering a little longer this time. When she pulled away, his green eyes had darkened somewhat, and he was looking at her in a way that made her stomach turn over.
‘Do you want to stay?’ he said, his voice low.
Ashley opened her mouth, not quite sure what she was going to say, when there came a loud knocking on the door, inches away from their faces. They both jumped.
‘Are you all right in there?’ came Mrs Templeton’s voice, disapproval dripping from every vowel. ‘It’s getting rather late!’
For a few seconds, the pair clung to each other in helpless, silent laughter until Ashley brought her voice under control.
‘I was just leaving, Mrs T!’