twenty-five

anthony

The Kaiser woke me on Wednesday morning with the dawn. How could he? I’d had barely four hours sleep. Immediately I was awake—bright-eyed and alert and infused with cockeyed promise.

It was crazy to be so happy and hope-filled, but I couldn’t help it. Rey’s difficulties were not one wit removed, but at least we could face them together, as a couple. I couldn’t solve his problems, but I could support him.

I shifted with care over the mattress, so that I could feast my gaze on the shorn head lying next to me. Rey was on his back, his head lodged between the pillows. We’d driven to mine in the Vauxhall and picked up a bottle of something deeply red on the way. Once that was all finished up, we went to bed.

It was the first time we’d made love in a while, and it felt wonderful … it was wonderful—renewed and thrilling.

Even so, a tiny spasm of disappointment trickled through me as I gazed at Rey’s sleeping form. As far as I understood, relationships start out with two people wound round each other’s necks. Eventually that developed into compromises and home-sharing. We had not reached that stage yet, and we wouldn’t, until we’d resolved the unfinished business of Rey moving in with me. I didn’t dare reintroduce the idea at the moment. He’d said, “give me some time to think” and since then, we’d both had other things to think about.

I was zinging from our lovemaking … his fingers on my skin, the way he, too, closed his eyes as our kisses got deeper … I knew I should count the blessings the goddess had granted me before wanting more.

Rey let out a bellowing snore. He was in that deep pattern of sleep that comes with REM and vivid dreams. If I woke him now, would he tell me the dreams he’d forget later in the morning? Would he confide his nightmares to me?

Probably he’d bark at me, roll over, and go back to sleep.

The Kaiser crowed again. I pulled back the curtains. A glimmer of light was rising in the east. A good time for a garden meditation.

It was ten before Rey staggered downstairs. His eyes were full of blear. Mine were summertime bright; my buoyant state of mind had driven me to make pancakes for breakfast and while I was flipping them in the pan I had done a lot of thinking. More and more small pieces about Marty-Mac’s death had fallen into place. I’d put the pancakes to warm and dialled Brice’s number to ask him if he’d had any further emails.

“I’ve put her on my spam list, Sabbie,” Brice had said. “I never want to hear from that woman again.”

“Please … could you check your junk mail? I need to know if she’s sent another.”

He had not asked why. A minute or two later, an email dropped into my box. When I’d read it a tightness wound round my stomach that was almost elation. I couldn’t wait to discuss my thoughts with Rey, but I didn’t want to bombard him with them, as soon as he sat down to breakfast.

I slid a two-cup cafetière over to him. I had a pot of mixed herb leaves. “Rey, why don’t you stay for a bit? Let me feed you up. You need all your strength to fight this thing.”

“Yeah? Well … if I got pancakes every morning …”

“Except, I have to go to a funeral on Friday.”

“Is this the girl on the Tor … Alys, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve been asked to officiate, with Wolfsbane.”

“What’s a pagan funeral like?”

“Wolfs has done a couple of them. He’s lent me a transcript of a ceremony he uses. It’s nothing scary, or heavy. There won’t be many surprises. Nowadays, most funerals are more a celebration of the life lived, aren’t they? Brice wants lots of music and a slideshow screening of pictures of Alys from when she was born onward, that sort of thing. We’ll be using the presence of certain deities and spirits to help Alys’s soul move on. If we decide to stay, we can help Brice scatter her ashes.”

“Stay?”

“It’s in central London. I was going to ask the Wraxalls to look after the hens, but if you’re here I’d come straight back.”

“When are you leaving?”

“Early Friday morning. It will mostly be over by early evening. I could jump on a return train.”

“You’re not worrying, are you? I will be fine, Sabbie. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“No. Nothing.” I could wait no longer. I slid the printout of the fourth email over the breakfast bar.

Rey groaned. “Is there any hope that this isn’t what I think it is?”

“No hope at all.”

Rey took his time drizzling honey over his pancakes. He read the email, and, I could see, was reading it a second time. When I dropped the other printouts beside his plate, he took his time with those too.

“You’re tying up your gumshoe laces,” he said. “I can detect the smell of amateur sleuth from over here.”

“You want to hear what I’ve been thinking?”

“Do I have a choice?”

I flashed him a pretty smile. “Nope.”

“Fire ahead, Miss Marlow.”

“There are patterns. I’m not sure Morgan le Fay means there to be, but I can see them.”

“Okay; good. An investigating team would start off, if they had nothing else, with that.”

“Morgan le Fay sends the emails at distinct moments. The first arrived only hours after Alys had died. The second as Brice drove to the inquest. The third one in response to Brice; he’d emailed the entire workshop group, asking us to meet at the Chalice Well.

“And this one?” Rey picked up the fourth sheet and waved it. “The funeral?”

“Maybe … just hang on in there, I’m getting to number four.” I took a breath. I wanted to do this my way. “There is one knight per email. Green Knight. Red Knight. Foolish Knight.”

“Black Knight,” Rey read aloud.

“Then there are the locations,” I went on. “The Tor first, the Abbey second, the Chalice Well in the third email. Blood runs deep through the Hollow Hill. It felt like a warning. The Chalice Well is sublime, a haven of peace—Brice wanted us all to meet in the gardens—I made them go to the Rifleman’s Arms instead. Blood had already been viciously spilt, and I didn’t want it to happen again.”

Rey concentrated on pouring himself a dark coffee which smelt so luxurious I almost wanted a cup. But he stayed silent, and I pressed on. “However, one of us did go into the Chalice Well. Anagarika.”

“Ana-what? Christ, Sabbie, your friends have some seriously strange names.”

“You should meet the guy. Apparently, Anag did see something while he was there—he ended up with a split lip because of what he saw. That does makes me wonder what might have happened, had the rest of us gone in.”

Rey lifted his cup and stared into it as if it was a black mirror that held the answers. “A team will investigate the ‘mights’, it’s true. But they’d keep them to one side. Fact is, Sabbie, you will never know whether you’d’ve been safe in the gardens. In fact, despite these patterns you’ve detected, you still haven’t proved a thing.”

He lifted the printout of the fourth email and read aloud.

“A new knight,” I said, ticking my points off on my fingers. “Black. A new location. And a new reason to alert Brice. It’s not just the funeral, Rey. It’s because finally, someone has died. Marty-Mac.”

Rey stared at me for half a minute. He wasn’t laughing, trying to shut me up or even coming back with a counter-argument. Finally, he said, “Haven’t you noticed? Each email is written as if to mollify pain. Morgan le Fay seems to think Brice will be pleased to hear from her, as if she’s reporting in, bringing the director of operations up to speed.”

Rey was right. The letters didn’t threaten; on the contrary they were saying all would be well; that Alys’s death would be avenged. That the land would be saved from destruction.

“Brice is trying to cope with the death of his wife. It’s possible that his mind has got scrambled. Losing the woman you loved might turn you crazy, lead you to invent answers, lead you to search for retribution, even if no one was to blame.” Rey pushed his final forkful of pancake into his mouth. Honey oozed from one corner of his mouth.

“Yes …” My voice sounded faded. Perhaps Brice had suffered more psychological damage than I’d seen him show, but I could not believe he had gone as far as creating an untraceable email address to send messages to himself. “If he has invented Morgan,” I asked, “why have people been attacked? Died?”

“No one has died because of these emails. Marty-Mac was already in jeopardy. He was in above his head. He could have asked for police protection, but he grabbed the chance of bail and left himself wide open. He was eliminated for having a big mouth which was about to flap wider under cross-examination. His death isn’t linked to this at all.”

“Let me just explain the pattern in this last email. A Black Knight. Marty-Mac was all in black when I saw him the day he died. And new location, the Angel Shopping Centre. Angels flank us, according to Morgan.” Something flashed at the back of my thoughts as I remembered what had happened in the Angel Shopping Centre. It was like a child’s torch, a beam of light directed through a dark window after bedtime. A signal—on, off, and on again. Not an idea, more an awareness. Rey interrupted it, and it flew away.

“The angel connection is tenuous. Marty-Mac was killed in his own back garden.”

“But the Red Knight was attacked at Glastonbury Abbey. Gerald Evens was a volunteer all kitted out in a knight’s costume to show tourists round the abbey grounds. He nearly died in that attack.”

Rey wheezed out a breath, as if throwing in the towel. “Okay, Sabbie. I do recall you mentioning this guy’s name. But at the most you only have two knights. There are four all together.”

Rey thought he’d stumped me, but I hadn’t told him yet about Yew’s story. “Anthony Bale was attacked with a stone as he walked back to his hostel. He was returning from his night on the Tor. This was solstice morning, at around the time Brice received his first email. And I honestly can’t see how Brice would ever have known about that incident—”

“Slow down here. Who is Anthony Bale?”

“Anthony Bale was so distressed at Alys’s death, he had one of those giggly reactions. People do sometimes laugh at death, don’t they, an automatic response. He caught an early bus from Glastonbury to Yeovil, where he was attacked. Not badly. Got up, walked on.”

“You know this person?”

“No, but Yew does.”

“Who? You?”

“Yew. His chosen name is a tree, Rey. A sacred tree of the dark winter. Grown in churchyards because of its association with death.”

Rey raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I can’t keep up. Really, it’s beyond my simple capabilities. One moment we’re discussing grievous bodily harm, the next we’re on to death trees.”

I grinned. This sounded more like the old Rey. “Yew is the tree of great age, death, and reincarnation, because it regenerates itself each year of growth. Oak is the tree of the druid, solid and host to many. Ash is the tree of the world. Odin initiated himself into wisdom on it, although he did lose an eye to the crows as he hung there …” I trailed off. “Sorry.”

“So, what is the tree of the lover?”

“Oh! The honeysuckle.”

“That’s hardly a tree.”

“It’s a woody shrub, but it lives to embrace another. If you bring the blossoms into your bedroom, the scent gives you erotic dreams.”

“Then you are honeysuckle, Sabbie.”

Rey caught me completely be surprise. He took my hand and buried soft lips into my fingers, my wrist, my palm.

My pulse raced, yet I didn’t seem to need breathe. Each kiss suspended me in delight, holding me between this plane and a higher one. The kisses went on forever, as if time was suspended while Rey held me to his lips.

We’re on our way …

The last words of a brief dream. My eyelids scratched as I forced them open. I was in the passenger seat of my own car. I checked the dashboard clock. Yeovil was a longer drive than I anticipated; I’d been asleep for the best part of an hour.

“You okay?” Rey was easing the Vauxhall round a street corner, searching for the hostel.

I shifted in my seat and sipped from my water bottle. We’re on our way. It had been the fleeting though that Rey had earlier driven away, the something that had sat unnoticed on the edge of my mind—a hidden thing, crucial, dropped into place like a card trick in my car dream.

I thought back through all the subject matter we’d covered since I’d turned up at Rey’s yesterday: Yew’s story about Anthony, Pippa’s stab in the back, Brice’s relationship to his emails, Marty-Mac’s death and its connection to the other attacks, Juke’s appearance in the Angel café—

Juke. It was Juke’s voice in my head. His words in my dream. We’re on our way. My chin snapped up. In my mind’s eye, I rewound that moment—Juke squaring up to Marty-Mac in the Angel café. He’d looked round, searching for someone. I’d thought he was worried Marty-Mac would return.

Hadn’t Juke been alone, when he’d arrived? If someone had been there with him, they’d chosen not to show themselves. They’d watched from the wings.

A chill moved over my back. It was the chill of daytime sleep, but it felt like the hand of death on my shoulder.

“I’ve been using my driving time to think,” said Rey. “And I have a question. Why would Morgan le Fay attack anyone?”

“Because she believes she’s a powerful magician and likes to prove it? Because it’s a thrill?” I paused for a beat, Juke’s words in my ears. We’re on our way. “I’m wondering if there are two of them, working together. She’s started to talk about this companion-at-arms.”

“The attack on Macaskill was brutal; it needed strength.” Brice slowed the car; the hostel was ahead of us. “Three scenarios. One, Brice is sending emails to himself, and the link to the attacks is chance. Two, someone is looking out for attacks, maybe on social media, and then sending Brice prank emails to wind him up—someone who wants to see him off work for a long time, maybe to grab some contract or another. Three, Morgan le Fay is attacking people in the belief that this will atone for Alys’s death and that Brice would be pleased to hear about it.”

“I don’t want it to be number three, Rey. I know you think I meet trouble halfway, but number three involves everyone who was at Stonedown for the Spirit Flyers’ Workshop.”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t already considered that it might be one of them.”

I was fond of then all, underneath—Wolfs and Shell, all the workshoppers, even Stefan and Esme. “Yes,” I admitted. “I’ve considered it.”

“Who was there? Was Juke there? The Juke I met in the pub?”

I turned my water bottle round in my hands and listened to the gentle slosh. “Yes.”

“The Juke who accosted Marty-Mac at the Angel Café?”

“Ye-es.” My voice broke. “Okay, Juke is sometimes a little too earnest for his own good, but …” I raised my hands in submission. For once, my spirit-based instincts were falling foul of what I could see with my own eyes.

I’d phoned Juke straight after my foul interview with Pippa, to warn him Macaskill was dead. Had he sounded surprised? Had he sounded guilty? In the shopping centre, we’d parted company on the grounds we were both too shattered to work shamanically. To commit this crime, he would have had to follow Marty out onto the street. Clock where he was headed. Maybe work out where he lived. None of that sounded anything like Justin Webber to me.

There was a girl at the reception desk, a key-worker I supposed, sifting through some paperwork. She looked up as we pushed through the main door.

“We’d like to speak to Anthony Bale,” said Rey, “if that’s possible.”

“We texted Yew Merrick earlier, asking if we would could,” I added.

The girl looked us over.“Anthony? Er … yeah. You can talk to him in the communal area, if that’s okay.” She smiled. “One of the Residents’ Rules.”

“That’s fine.”

“Who shall I say?”

“Sabbie Dare and Rey Buckley,” said Rey. I expected him to get out his police ID. When he didn’t, I realized it had been taken it away from him.

She got up from her desk and disappeared. Rey instantly leaned over her desk and eased the computer screen towards us until it was legible.

“Rey!” I hissed.

He flashed a wicked grin. “Nothing of importance anyway.”

While Rey was snooping, I took in the hostel surrounds. The magnolia walls were covered in posters and a few cheap prints in frames. The woodwork was painted white. It had been a while since a redecoration; the paint was chipped and scuffed, but the place was tidy. Clean, warm. Welcoming, to a point. There was a smell, though. Nothing like the perpetual ammonia scent of homes for the elderly, but not particularly pleasant either. It was tempting to think the place smelt of misfortune and hardship, but it was probably the dampness that lingers around things that have been kept outside for too long. A musty, sporal scent.

“Rey!” I hissed. Yew was pushing his way through some far doors. He spotted us and waved, walking at a fast pace, his plait bouncing between his shoulder blades. Rey moved away from the desk and put out his hand, introduced himself.

“I hope Anthony is okay about seeing us.”

“I think this will actually help him,” said Yew. “He’s fallen into a depression since it happened. Talking about it might put things in perspective.”

Rey shrugged. “He was hardly touched.”

“When you’re homeless, you lose friends in the outside world, but you gain enemies. We cope with a lot of hate attacks; there are people out there who think everyone down on their luck is a beggar or a wastrel.”

Rey nodded. “I guess that’s depressing enough.”

“Exactly. We even see grudge aggression. Anthony could have been attacked by someone else from the hostel.”

“That’s a horrid thought,” I said. Nevertheless, if that’s what had happened, we could eliminate Anthony from the Morgan trail of victims. I wasn’t sure if I wanted that or not.

“Yep,” Yew was saying, “hostels are like boarding schools. Full of rules, hierarchies, and bullies.”

“Sounds like you know the system!”

“I was a Westminster boy. Boarded from the age of nine.”

“Your parents must have been loaded!” I screwed up my face. “Sorry, that wasn’t meant to come out like that.”

“No offence taken. I was on a scholarship. A chorister.”

I giggled. Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to imagine Yew in a red cassock with a white frill, the choir boy who always brought their pet mouse to Vespers.

“You were surely destined for Oxford.”

“Cambridge. I was halfway through my degree when I walked out of my college. Joined some alternative kids I’d met at a festival.”

“Is that when you became an eco-warrior, Yew?” I asked, for Rey’s benefit.

“It was a magic time, I admit. We thought we’d change the world. We were building walkways and sleeping platforms in the trees, to stop the authorities hewing them down. We led the cops a merry dance. I’m still protesting, in a quieter way. Mostly I write letters—post them or email them—pressing for a cleaner world, one hundred percent renewable. If that doesn’t happen soon, I truly believe we’ll be choking in the streets. The world will slowly turn become uninhabitable.”

“It’s the Arthurian legend, isn’t?” Morgan le Fay’s message never left my mind. “The wasteland of the wounded king?”

“Yeah. I guess it’s always been with us, fear of drought or famine or flood or pestilence, man-made or not.”

“Did you ever finish your degree?” Rey asked.

“Nah. All that felt way too privileged … something I didn’t want a part of. I never went back and I never cut my hair again.”

The key-worker was returning, accompanied by a man of perhaps forty, forty-five. Or younger, I thought, but badly aged. I walked towards them.

“Hi. I’m Yew’s friend, Sabbie.”

“Yeah.”

“Good to see you looking so well.”

He didn’t reply. He stood with one hand pressed against the corridor wall, blocking the way of the girl who’d stopped behind him. “Go on, Anthony,” I heard her say softly. “Take them into the lounge area, eh?”

Anthony walked directly through the doors without looking back, and it occurred to me that things can get so bad, once your confidence has taken a knocking, that you simply do whatever
people ask of you. I followed, Rey at my heels.

The furniture was arranged around the room so that people could talk in small groups; chairs and two-seaters with wipeable covers. I eased myself down, ready for the chill against my thighs. Rey perched on the arm of my chair. Anthony settled opposite us, on the edge of a sofa.

“This is Rey,” I said. “He’s my boyfriend. I’m afraid I told him about you. How someone threw a stone at you. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh, right,” said Anthony.

“Thing is, Anthony, I heard about the way you were attacked like that, and it worried me—”

“Why?”

“Sorry?”

“Why would you be worried about me? You don’t know me.”

“Well, yes, that’s true, but …”

“Yew said you were a shaman. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“It’s my friend. Brice.”

“Oh, yeah. Yew did say.”

“Brice is Alys’s husband.”

He nodded, taking this in. “On the Tor. The poor, poor man.”

He’d hit the nail without knowing it; Brice and Alys had been a golden couple, enjoying the fruits of their golden life. The loss of his wife had brought Brice into a sort of poverty.

“Brice keeps getting frightening emails. Someone who calls themselves Morgan Le Fay.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone called that. Not outside the telly, anyhow.”

“I wasn’t thinking that you know them personally. Just maybe a rumour—a whisper?”

“I can’t help you, I don’t think.”

Rey leant forward slightly, easing himself into the conversation. “Sometimes, going through what happened on an important day like that one can shed light on things.”

Anthony scratched his stubble. “’Course, but …”

“But?”

“It wasn’t me things happened to.” Without knowing he’d done so, Anthony stretched his hand across the empty seat beside him until his finger and thumb gripped the edge of an orange scatter cushion. He drew it to him, right onto his lap. His hands moved over the soft, warm surface, seeking comfort.

“Have a think,” said Rey. “Start at the beginning and run through, slowly. Even the most insignificant thing … it could be essential.”

“Do you think I haven’t done that? This copper got it all down. A woman. PC Wynche.”

“Have the police got back to you about their investigations?” asked Rey.

“What investigations? They only came here because Yew insisted. I could see her thinking … it were only a stone someone threw.”

“Someone tried to hurt you for no reason.”

“You ain’t here for that, though. Not really.”

“No,” I said. “We’re here because of Brice. Who lost his Alys then started getting these poison pen emails. We’re here because he’s grieving and sick of it.”

“I s’pose he is, but what can I do?”

I had a sudden thought. I dipped into my bag and brought out my phone, scrolling through until I had the emails. I read the first one out.

“That is sick.” I could tell Anthony was holding his breath, as he visualized that day. I held mine, in sympathy. After half a minute or more, he breathed out, a long snort of air down his nose. “I weren’t bloody gloating. I didn’t mean to laugh.”

“Of course not. We’ve all had that happen to us.”

“She was so young. Delicate. It got me bad.” He made a fist and thudded it against his breastbone. “So I went. Left.”

“I guess a lot of people walked off the Tor at that point,” said Rey.

“Quite a few. People were shook up.”

“What were you wearing?” I asked.

“Me cords. Me shirt. And me jacket, but I was carrying that.”

“What colours were they?”

“Sorta … khaki.”

“Greenish khaki?”

“I suppose.”

“So,” said Rey. “You came down the hill and went into Glastonbury town.”

“To catch the six-thirty bus to Yeovil, yeah.”

“Was it empty?”

“No, it was a working day. It was quarter full.”

“Did anyone get on with you?”

Anthony shook his head. “Can’t remember.”

“Can you remember who got off at Yeovil?”

“It’s the end of the road. Everyone on the bus got off.”

“What time was that?” I asked.

“Bus gets in about quarter past seven, thereabouts.”

“Do you happen to know what time the buses back to Glastonbury leave Yeovil?”

“They go every hour. Why?”

I had been thinking of where each of the workshoppers were after Alys had been airlifted from the Tor. Wolfs and I had started walking back to Stonedown Farm. Shell had been with Brice, and the rest—all the boys—Yew and Freaky, Juke and Ricky, and Anag—had gone into town for breakfast. Anthony’s assailant could have gone to Yeovil and been in back at Stonedown Farm by around ten o’clock. None of the workshoppers had arrived before that time, but all of them were back by lunchtime.

Rey leaned forward, his hands on his knees. “Was there anything out of place, while you were on the bus?”

“He were on it too? Is that what you’re saying? Him that threw the stone at me?”

“Sabbie,” said Rey. “Do you have a picture of Juke on your phone?”

His words were like a slap; like opening the back door to an icy wind. I didn’t move for several moments. Rey was using his detecting techniques; a process of elimination. I was using my usual instincts, which, until I’d woken from the dream in the car, had been positive; the generous feel of Juke’s aura; his place in the world. I’d had to persuade Juke to come on the workshop and the celebration on the Tor. He’d started out not quite sure, although later, he’d embraced it. I didn’t want my client and fellow member of the Temple of Elphame to be carted off for gross bodily harm … for murder.

But I had to show solidarity with Rey or Anthony would close up like a scallop.

It took me an age to scroll through the images, mostly because I’m rubbish at deleting, even a bit of floor with half a shoe at the corner. I found the photos of our night on the Tor, but held onto the phone, unable to pass it over. The best shot was a selfie; all the workshoppers were in it, squashed close together. Wolfs, Shell and Alys next to me, Brice with Freaky, Yew and Ricky behind. Anag, waving like mad, was captured at one corner. Juke’s image was right at the front, half obliterating my face, his quizzical smile sharp in the camera’s lens—the natural focal point of the shot.

I didn’t move, desperate to delete the photo. Rey gently lifted the phone from me and sat beside Anthony while he took the picture in.

“Oh God.” He peered closer for several seconds, and as he did, he groaned, as if in pain, as if someone was grinding a stone into the back of his head.

“You see him?”

“I see them all.”

“The one with the blond beard?”

“They were a nice crowd.”

“Does anything stand out?” I asked, joining them, staring down at the selfie.

“Her. She never stopped dancing, like they never stopped drumming.”

I had a sensation of internal pain. Alys’s face, full of anticipation and joy, lit up the picture. She’d loved the night on the Tor, perhaps more than almost any of our party, and she glowed.

“Is there anyone there that you later saw at the bus stop in Glastonbury or on the ride home, Anthony?” Rey repeated. “Take a closer look.”

“It’s confusing. It’s confusing, yeah? Because I did see all of these people; they were all with Alys.”

“Are you sure?” It was a croak. I swallowed and tried again. “Not the one with the little beard?”

“I can’t. I can’t look no more.”

“Try to have a think after we’ve gone. It might take a while to register.”

“Yeah, okay.”

I didn’t think I’d hear from Anthony again. Why would he revisit that morning of death and pain? He’d watched Alys die. He’d been attacked for no reason. All he wanted to do was forget.

“I’ll drive,” said Rey, on the way back in the car. I slid into the passenger seat and sat silent as he made a whining reverse move, turned the car, and set off.

“I’ve been trying to work out the timing, Rey. When Anthony Bale was attacked in Yeovil, Juke was in Glastonbury with all of us. And when Gerald Evens was attacked, Juke should have been at work in Bridgwater. The only time he’s in the frame is at the Angel Shopping Centre and that’s only because I called him and he came to help.”

Rey gave a laugh; short, unfunny. “You don’t have to work out timings, Sabbie. Our search is over. We’ll probably never know who threw a stone at Anthony, but it definitely was not whoever attacked Gerald Evens. And that attack isn’t linked to Marty-Mac—he got himself into a dangerous mess and one of his associates took him out.”

“I never did think Juke was anything to do with this.” My voice came out all sulky.

“Then we’re on the same wavelength—first time ever! So, to put this to rest, I’m going for a combination of number one and number two scenario.”

“What?”

“Brice is sending these emails to himself; he’s spotted these incidents on social media, and it’s giving him perverse satisfaction roping his friends further into his grieving patterns.”

I loosened my shoulders, hearing the ligaments crunch. The miles swept under our tyres.

Suddenly, Rey said, “I’m going to take you out tonight.”

“What?”

“We never do that. Should get a table on a Wednesday.”

“Ooo,” I said. “Why not? It’d be nice.”

“I need to get relaxed. Enjoy a break. I’ve done nothing but think of Macaskill for days. Where would you like to eat?”

I shrugged. It had been too long since I’d been to a restaurant.

“In fact, let’s take a day off, shall we? A day out of our lives. You got clients booked tomorrow?”

This was so unlike Rey I could hardly think. “Not … no I haven’t.”

“Right. It promises fine. Let’s motor down to North Devon. Exmoor. Find a nice gastro-inn and hole up for the night. Ever been to Lynton?”

“No.”

“We’ll pack a bag and escape for one night.”

“It’s the high season. There might not be any rooms.”

“There’s always a room if you’re prepared to pay.”

“What’s brought this on?”

“You don’t like being whirled off your feet?”

“Well, yes, as it happens, but—”

“I’ve got a meeting at nine on Friday morning.”

“Is that to do with …”

“Yeah. They call them meetings, but they’re interrogations. My Police Federation rep will be there, but so far I’ve emerged feeling like I’ve been through a car crusher.”

“They have nothing on you, Rey!”

“Except an extreme dislike of any copper who doesn’t play by the rules.”

I shook my head. “Someone killed Marty-Mac, but instead of looking for them, they’re focusing on you.” He stared through the windscreen at the quiet road ahead, both hands sensibly on the steering wheel.

“We are good, aren’t we Rey?”

“Christ, yes. We’re solid.”

“From now on, then, promise you’ll tell me things?”

“I know I can be … unforthcoming. Lesley used to make the same complaint.”

“I’m not Lesley,” I said, keeping my voice light. “I’m not complaining at all.”

All at once, he indicated into the side of the road and pulled on the handbrake. He wrapped his arms around me, squeezing so tight my breath left my lungs. His chin rested on my shoulder. I couldn’t see his face properly, only that his eyes were tightly closed and his mouth was a firm, set line, like someone in the middle of making a resolution. “Let’s do it, Sabbie. For twenty-four hours, let’s just forget all our worries.”