“I know that name,” says Rowan, quietly. “Elrik.”
“She wouldn’t stop,” sniffs Catherine. “Wanted me to be a part of it with her and kept telling me everything she was learning.”
“And that was?”
She takes a breath. “In Shamanic mythology he’s a god of death. A monster. The face and teeth of a pig with a human frame. A deity of evil, darkness, lord of the lower world and judge of the dead.”
Rowan glances at Serendipity. “I remember,” he says, softly. “Mum’s lessons.”
Serendipity chews her lip. A cold breeze lifts her hair. “He’s what other shaman are fearful of,” says Serendipity. “He piggy-backs the journeys of others. He seeks out souls. Imprisons them forever in a place that’s neither life or death…,”
Rowan feels a memory lift off like ash from the fire in his skull. Back before he went wrong. Went bad. Back when he was small. That night, parked up in the woods; the sound of bullet-hard apples bouncing off the roof of the school-bus; an angora shawl around his shoulders and his feet near enough to the stove to pass for warm. He’d been snuggled down with Serendipity and Mum, listening to one of the older men talk about the bad thing that had happened at a camp they knew. Telling them about the man with the mismatched eyes who had tried to buy mandrake and ayahuasca from a dealer they shared. The dealer had told him she didn’t dabble with that stuff and told him not to ask again. He’d taken a nail to her. Driven a four inch spike into the bone of her breastplate, slamming it home with his palm. The man had escaped when the screams roused the families from the other shelters on the site where they had made camp. Sipped out of a smashed window, leaving a flap of skin hanging on shredded glass. His victim named him as Elrik. Told Mum to be careful. To look out for strangers and to believe her gut when it suggested a person shouldn’t be trusted…
“It’s Hungarian,” says Rowan, surprising himself. “The god of death. A very powerful figure in Shamanism.”
Serendipity looks sideways at him. “You remember?”
He shrugs. “I’m good at playing ignorant. People enjoy explaining things they’re an expert in – educating the uneducated. I’m happy to play that role.”
“When in truth …,”
He smiles, weakly. “We grew up with this, Dippy. If it wasn’t howling at the moon or making potions for the Wiccan gods we were dabbling in Pagan rituals and reading each other’s tealeaves. Mum’s mates always told me I had a touch of the old ways about me too. Had me convinced that the things I used to see were manifests – gifts from another form of consciousness. They said I could be a healer. Then when reality got its hands on me I discovered there was another way to view it. I was ill. I couldn’t see auras, couldn’t read souls. I needed medication and care.”
“And now? What do you believe?”
Rowan looks up at the sky. “I don’t know. People who believe too deeply in things tend to become zealots. Extremists.”
“Is she in trouble, do you think?” asks Catherine, quietly. “I’m not allowed on Facebook but people say she’s having a good time on her travels. She’s okay, isn’t she? And Freya – she’s okay too? It shouldn’t be like this. It was better before. Better before this all came back.”
Rowan closes his eyes and wishes he knew what kind of person he wanted to be. He smiles at Catherine, and feels grateful that he knows how to lie.
“Yes,” he says. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
She swallows the deceit like wine.
35
It’s a little after 3pm and Rowan’s back in the doorway of the Byre. The impenetrable cloud serves as a lid of sorts - a grimy grey-black plug hammered atop the green of the valley.
In his ear, Sumaira is in full-blown Detective Inspector mode, sounding cross, disappointed, exasperated and lightly too busy to have to deal with her needy dining companion’s problems right now
“I bet you think you were being chivalrous,” grumbles Sumaira, with a sigh that could knock over a pot-plant. “Headbutting a wanker is only good for the soul temporarily, Rowan. After that, it’s just another headache.”
“They were asking for it,” mumbles Rowan, rubbing his head with the back of his hand. “I mean, that’s not a confession, Detective Inspector. I’m not saying this happened …,”
“I’m looking at the bloody footage as we speak!” she snaps. He hears the creak of a door on a hinge and the sudden blast of fresh air. “There were three uniforms stood around the screen watching it when I walked through CID! All laughing like bloody drains. It’s pure good fortune that you chose to nut somebody that everybody else would gladly throw bricks at. The barman didn’t even want to hand over the footage, but Shipley was making a fuss. At least, I think that’s what he was doing – he was just making noises like a cow in distress.”
Rowan presses his lips together. “I appreciate this call,” he says, sincerely. “I would never have used your name. Not for this or anything else. If there are consequences, I’ll face them.”
“Stop it with the noble knight crap,” snaps Sumaira. “You nutted him because he pissed you off and I can respect that a lot more than I can respect the idea you felt some girl, whose life you know nothing about, needed protecting. Do you know how insulting that is?”
“I don’t know what I thought,” begins Rowan, then stops. He has to face the truth some time. The presence of the girl had simply given him a veil of decency with which to clothe an act of violence.
“I take it your meeting with Eve didn’t go well,” grumbles Sumaira, though some of the temper seems to be bleaching out of her voice. “I’ve ducked three calls from her this afternoon but the messages were pretty bloody clear. Some pain-in-the-arse writer knocking on her dor, stirring up trouble, making accusations. She’s threatening to come in and make a formal statement, which at least means I’ll get a chance to ask her to translate some of the notes left in the file. It’s all frigging hieroglyphs and Cuneiform to me.”
Rowan kicks at a stone, sending it skidding away across the slick grass. He looks up to follow its path and sees movement in the trees; a flash of dirty blonde against the dark tapestry of mist and trees and gathering dark.
“How are the hands anyway?” asks Sumaira, who seems to have decided the lecture is over. “And the rest of you, for that matter? I hope you don’t think I was rude slipping away the other night but it’s all a bit complicated at my end.”
“You should see a doctor about that,” says Rowan, automatically, craning his neck to see who is making their way to the gate.
“You sound very glum,” says Sumaira. “Is it not going well? What exactly is the story you’re writing, Rowan? I’m intrigued.”
Rowan scowls. “It’s all connected,” he says, wincing at his own vagueness. “A school with a hippy caretaker who goes missing and is never seen again. Three teenage pupils who meet a busker who smokes Bible pages as roll-ups. The school closing down and the head teacher getting to keep this great bloody house a few hundred yards away from the main building. A copper hanged in a pig-mask; Violet starting to remember; to question, to try and get back into the headspace she used to inhabit when she was young. And then there’s the ayahuasca. That’s potent, powerful stuff and it takes a master to make it. Maybe the sort of master who spent time in South America on a spiritual journey. I don’t know, but there are too many things to add up to nothing, don’t you think? I mean seriously, what do you think? I’m really asking.”