The Mysteries (35 page)

32. Jenny

Laura was not waiting for us at the hotel, and the room she had taken for herself and Peri was empty.

I stared at the two beds, one of which appeared to have been slept in, and wondered what had become of Peri's simulacrum. Vanished, of course, as illusions do. But if we'd only imagined her, if she'd been some sort of shared hallucination, then what had disturbed the bed?

“Mom's not here,” Peri said.

I looked at Hugh, who wore the same dazed, uncomprehending expression he'd had since picking us up at the roadside. He hadn't asked any questions; in fact, he'd hardly said a word, but from the way he looked at Peri I could tell that he recognized her, and also that he felt utterly bewildered. All his former assurance had deserted him. He still loved her, that was obvious. But her feelings remained a mystery to him, and he was afraid of making the wrong move.

“Well, where
is
she?”

They both looked at me accusingly. Of course, I had been the last person to see Laura. I remembered too well how she'd vanished in the mist with the horse and the child even as I recalled the old stories of fairy morality. For a few seconds, I panicked. What if Mider had let Peri go in exchange for her mother? Bewitched by the fairy child, Laura might have gone anywhere.

“Maybe she got lost coming back—she could be wandering around out there in the dark—we'd better go look for her.” I tried to sound calm, but they picked up on my anxiety at once, and we made a mad scramble to get outside and across the road, searching in the dark for the path Laura and I had taken hours earlier. Hugh and I had our torches, but there wasn't a spare for Peri.

“Keep close together,” I warned. “We must
not
get separated, got that? Peri, I want you to hold Hugh's hand.”

I was trying to think ahead, trying to remain rational and make plans, but luckily it wasn't necessary, as our quest took no more than a couple of minutes.

We found Laura almost immediately. She was fast asleep on the ground at the edge of the woods, lying curled up at the base of the sign that marked the start of the circular walk. She'd used her soft leather shoulder bag as a pillow, and I could see at a glance that it was emptier than when we'd set out, and guessed that the Guardians, having brought her this far, had not resumed their toy forms but vanished back into their own world where, perhaps, there was another golden-haired, magical child it was their duty to protect.

“Oh, Mommy,” said Peri in a high, soft voice, sounding for a moment very much younger than her actual years.

I hung back with Hugh, carefully angling my light so the beam wouldn't glare in Laura's face, and watched as Peri crouched down and gently stroked her mother's hair, then kissed her cheek.

I saw signs of rapid eye movement, suggesting Laura was dreaming, and her lips curved into a smile a few seconds before her eyelids fluttered and she woke. For a long moment mother and daughter gazed into each other's eyes; and then, with a little, gasping cry, Laura sat up and flung her arms around Peri, hugging her tight.

I looked away. Reunions always choke me up. Under almost any other circumstances I'd have taken that moment as my chance to slip quietly away and leave them alone together. But we were four people in the remote Scottish countryside, in the middle of the night, with just one car among us, and besides, I still had questions.

I cleared my throat. “Come on, you guys, unless you
like
being eaten by midges. Let's get inside.”

So we walked back to the hotel, mother and daughter clinging together, hugging each other as they walked, unwilling to be separated again for even a moment. I proposed drinks, but Laura and Peri declined. It was obvious they had no use for us and only wanted to be alone together. Hugh and I exchanged a look, two superfluous males, and went back to the comfortable, book-lined bar, where we sampled an interesting range of single-malt whiskies. We didn't talk much. I wasn't going to say, “I told you so,” and I guess he didn't want to admit he'd been fooled by asking me how I'd managed to find her. Far more important to him than what had happened was what would happen next, and that wasn't something I could help him with. It wasn't even my business. Now that I'd met Peri, I was confident of her ability to cope with whatever the future had in store.

I'd hoped to have a chance to talk to Laura privately the next day, but she still had no attention to spare for anyone but her daughter. The feeling was obviously mutual, and I guess it was pretty understandable, considering how long they'd been separated, but it was frustrating all the same.

I saw how Hugh watched Peri as we drifted around the airport shops, killing time before our flight, and I suspected there was some of that same yearning in the looks I cast at Laura, looks she didn't seem to notice.

Finally, when Hugh went into W.H. Smith, leaving us next door in Accessorize, watching as Peri mused over the merits of a beaded purse shaped like a butterfly against one shaped like a toadstool, I said to Laura, “Could I have a word? Privately?”

Her eyebrows went up; then, with another glance at her daughter, she followed me out of the shop. “Of course! We need to settle up.”

“Settle up?”

She made a writing gesture with her right hand. “Your bill. I've got my checkbook.” She was reaching into her bag when I stopped her.

“Oh, no, no, that's not necessary. I didn't really find her, you know. She came back of her own accord.”

Laura frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Didn't she tell you? I mean, did she tell you what happened? Haven't you talked about it?”

“Yes, of course. But, Ian, that's not the point. OK, maybe you just happened to be there at the right time in the right place in the end, but you figured out where that place would be. And I hired you. I hired you to do a job, and you did it. Of course I'm going to pay you!”

“Laura, how much do you remember about last night?”

“What do you mean?” She eyed me warily.

“I mean about finding Peri. Do you remember finding her?”

“No, of course not! I didn't find her—I was asleep.”

“When did you fall asleep?”

“Well, I don't know.” She stopped and really thought about it. Hugh approached, holding a newspaper, then veered around us and into Accessorize, heading for Peri.

“We went out after Hugh went to bed. There was a footpath. We were going to an old cairn in the woods that you thought was connected with the Fairy Door in some way. We stopped to rest.” She paused and shrugged. “Then I guess I nodded off, because that's all I can remember until Peri woke me up.” The tender smile returned to her face. “And I don't care what you say, I'll always be grateful to you.”

“Don't you remember the Guardians?”

“Peri's old toys?” She reached for her bag, startled, then stopped and shook her head. “Yes—I took them with me—but they're gone. That's right. Did they fall out of my bag? What happened to them? Not that it really matters. Peri's too old for toys.”

“Don't you remember the little girl? The little girl you thought was Peri?”

She stared at me. “I dreamed she was a little girl again—she was lost, then I found her. But you're not talking about my dream?”

Over her shoulder, I saw into the shop. Hugh was paying for something at the cash register, while Peri smiled up at him, love shining in her eyes.

I looked down at Laura and smiled at her. “It doesn't matter. You're right. What matters is that she's back.”

Finally, she completed that much-arrested reach into her bag. “Tell me how much I owe you.”

I managed to stop myself from insisting that she owed me nothing, remembering just in time that I was far too broke for such largesse. “I don't know yet. I need to add up the hours and figure out the VAT. I'll invoice you. I've got your address.”

“Don't forget, I'm going back to America next week.”

“Oh, right. Well, how about if I call you tomorrow?”

“And then, maybe, we could get together for a drink or something, I mean, if you're not too busy?” She looked away as she spoke.

My pulse quickened at her sudden shyness. “That would be great,” I said warmly. “I'd really like to see you again.”

She smiled back, meeting my eyes, and I knew then that the intimacy I'd felt between us during that long night on the hillside had been no illusion.

“Call me,” she said.

We got into London just in time for rush hour and parted in a crowded underground station.

“I'll call you tomorrow,” I called after Laura as she was swept away with Peri and Hugh—who were now, I noticed, holding hands.

After the wilds of Scotland, Turnpike Lane looked even seedier than usual, and the body odors of massed humanity surging through the lavatorial-smelling tunnels made me feel slightly sick. Even at street level the air was no fresher, choked with traffic fumes, human exhalations, the aromas of overused cooking fat, rotting garbage, and dog shit.

Arriving home, I discovered someone had filled my council-supplied wheelie bin to overflowing with their rubbish, while several beer cans, a plastic milk bottle, one styrofoam hamburger carton, and the papers from what must have been six or seven fish suppers littered the little paved area at the front. Oh, the joys.

Inside, I gathered up the scattered papers that had come through the letter box during my brief absence: no real mail, but lots of advertisements for local businesses, cards for taxi firms, specials at the nearby pizzeria, startling news about a revolutionary new hearing aid, and urgent requests from three different estate agents. Two offered free valuations; the third, more enterprising, had added a handwritten note to advise me how much he reckoned he could get for my property, should I wish to sell.

The figure was enough to make my eyes bug. Of course, it wouldn't go far if I wanted to keep living in London, but as getaway money it was more than decent. I put that note on my desk; everything else went onto the recycle pile on the couch.

The light on the answerphone blinked: one message. I pressed
PLAY
and listened to my mother's voice, wishing me a happy birthday in advance. She said she might call again on Wednesday, but she assumed I'd be out celebrating with my friends . . . For the first time, I could hear age cracking my mother's clear voice, and I felt an almost painful rush of love for her. Her last visit to London, and the last time I had seen her, had been nearly two years ago. I really should see her again, before it was too late. My eyes went back to the note from the estate agent.

I made a pot of coffee before booting up the computer. There were forty new messages in my in-box, but only one got my attention right away, and that was from Baz, the journalist I'd asked about Linzi Slater's death.

Not a murder investigation,
he wrote,
but I'm sure the cops would love to find out the name of her pusher. They found gear (syringe, etc.) and drug residue at the scene, plus a bottle of pills, which makes it look like a deliberate OD.

I shut my eyes, as if not seeing the words could somehow change them, and began to swear, monotonously and unimaginatively. With murder, there is someone to blame, someone to hate, and something to do: You hunt down the killer and bring him to justice, one way or another. There's no such comfort in a suicide; there can never be any justice. Nothing is left for the survivors but guilt and pain and a lot of questions.

Why did she do it? Why was life so unbearable for her? Was there anything anyone could have done that would have made a difference? Could she have been saved?

I would never know. Linzi Slater had been lost before I ever heard her name.

So, I tried to put it behind me and got on with the things I could do. I answered e-mails, paid bills, and drafted an itemized invoice to the attention of Laura Lensky. I did it again and again, revising downward to reflect how little I'd had to do with Peri's return, then, remembering Laura's taunt about how self-deprecating and un-American I'd become, revising the final figure back up to more accurately reflect my professionalism, my commitment, my years of experience and research . . . yeah, right. I had that letdown feeling I often got at the end of a case, the low that comes after a high, the sense of an ending that brings, as payback for any satisfaction I dared feel, the certainty that it would be the last; that nothing good or interesting would ever happen to me again.

Fighting the blues, I made myself go out to eat, and wished, while I picked at the tasteless food, that I was with Laura. The prospect of seeing her soon did not cheer me. I might wish for a relationship, but how could anything get started when she was just about to leave the country? And, anyway, she was out of my league, older, richer, more successful.

Later still I slumped in front of the TV and channel-surfed mindlessly, bored and restless, reluctant to go to my solitary bed, but finally too depressed and tired to do anything else.

I didn't expect to sleep, or not for a long time, but as soon as I lay down, hypnogogic images began to play on the screen of my eyelids, giving me the sense that I was already dreaming.