Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery)

Copyright Information

Unraveled Visions
© 2014
Nina Milton

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First e-book edition © 2014

E-book ISBN:
978-0-7387-4005-8

Book design by Donna Burch-Brown

Cover design by Ellen Lawson

Cover photograph by David Mendolia

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dedication

For my chicks, Becki and Joe

acknowledgments

I would like to thank Lisa Moylett for her tireless energy and brilliant
understanding of what makes a good book great.

prologue

The retrieval was unceremonious
and without d
ignity. The woman’s body was winched from Dunball Wharf at 5:13 p.m., dripping with sluice slime. The hip bones shone white against the sun, and there were fis
h swimming in her belly.

It had been the hottest day that summer. The mountainous heaps of sand at the Dunball Wharf Aggregate Works had dried out so completely that a choking dust rose from them. The waters below had heated until their reek oozed into the nostrils. No one wanted to move fast and sounds were muffled, as if the late-afternoon sun had thickened the air.

The two detectives had arrived as the body was trundling on a gurney over to a white tent, where the pathologist waited like an adjudicator at some macabre contest. The woman was found stripped of any clothing and the technician had thrown a green sheet over her poor mutilated and rotting body for that short journey. But the gurney jerked as its wheels stuck to the walkway, which was so burning hot it was melting the policemen’s thick soles, and the woman’s head slid to the edge, her heavy locks falling free, as if she’d just unpinned them. Despite the river weed and silt, her hair was still glorious; as black as a nighttime lake, not tampered by bleach or dye.

Detective Sergeant Gary Abbott had stepped forward, his hand outstretched, and touched the woman’s hair, crying out like a distressed relative. “Take care with her, for God’s sake!”

I know this, because Detective Inspector Reynard Buckley told me so, months later, in hisses and whispers directed at the black winter sky, his big, knuckled hands hiding most of his face. It hadn’t been the drip of sloughing skin that distressed him. It had been his sergeant’s reaction.

On the way to the wharf, Gary Abbott had been his usual cocky self. He’d put on the flashers and put down his foot, taking every obstruction as a personal challenge. “Body got trapped in the Dunball Clyce,” he’d joked. “Ve-ery nasty, that Dunball Clyce … whatever the fuck it is.” Of course Abbott knew it was the sluice at the Dunball Wharf, where the King’s Sedgemoor Drain fed into the River Parrett; every Bridgwaterian did. It was just the sort of quip Abbott would make, trying to distance himself from any emotion on the job, which is why Rey had been puzzled by his reaction at the site.

And then, apparently, on first examination at the scene, the pathologist had stated that because the body had undergone prolonged scavenger predation, bacterial action, and abrasion, it was impossible to estimate the date or time of death or even say if she had been dead before entering the water, which was the one thing the detectives really wanted to know. But she had said—and this was why I was able to recall every word Rey whispered—that fresh-water specimens sometimes displayed abdominal protrusions; sections of gut that had burst through the skin, speeding aquatic decomposition. It reminded me of how unwanted spirit energy can intrude into a person’s ethereal body, demonstrating its existence as strange, projecting emanations, which a skilled shaman can sometimes observe.

Rey hadn’t quizzed Abbott until the body had left the site.

“What was all that about?”

“Nothing.”

“C’mon, Gary. Were you IDing her?”

“Really, no. She just reminded me … was all.”

Abbott moved away. They had been planning to interview the boy who’d found her, a seventeen year-old lad who worked on the dredgers. He’d spotted bits of white tissue in among the silt sucked from the river bed. At first, apparently, he had thought it was a large, dead fish, but then an entire piece of intestine arrived and he had fallen to his knees on the deck and vomited. Abbott had strode off to get his story, but Rey told me that he’d never believed Abbott had meant “nothing.” He had meant, “wait until I’ve checked it out.”

Rey Buckley understood that line of thinking. Sometimes he’d let a hunch brew for a while in the same way. I understood too; you have to stay patient, but alert, until something drops down into the fermentation. Then, suddenly, it all makes perfect sense. If Abbott needed time to brew his thoughts, that was fine.

Trouble was, Abbott never did let on. Not in his lifetime.

one
guy fawkes night

Bridgwater Carnival. Mardi Gras
late into the black winter night. Take your lover, or the kids. I’m off lovers, for the moment, and you tend to need one of those if you want kids. So I took my long-term friend Debs.

I guess if Debs and I met now, for instance at this carnival, we might never become friends. But I met her when we both lived in a children’s home called the Willows. We helped each other through that weird and wicked time, and we are each other’s only good memory of being a kid in local authority care. Sometimes what friends shared back then is more important than what they share right now.

We don’t meet up often, and when we do, we don’t sit about moaning about our bad start in life. We go out and get wasted.

Debs was trying to see over the heads of the pavement crowd. Her heels gave her a promising start, but there were just too many people crushed against the barriers. “We won’t see a thing back here. We stayed too long in the Duke.”

“Ye-ah. Because it’s freezing out here.”

Debs hailed me with her Heineken. “Drink the bugger up, Sabbie! Better than thermal knickers!” Frankly, she looked pinched with cold to me. She’d had a bit of enhancement in the bosom area and, well, it cost, so gotta show it off, right? I put my arm round her. “Don’t worry about getting to the front. All the good stuff is up in the sky.”

Debs is a nail technician. Tonight her nails were black with silver stars. Her hair was bright blond and her lippy was pink, whereas my leanings are more dusky maiden. I wear my skirts long and my nails short. Like Debs, I have my own little business—quite similar in a lot of ways. Debs makes people’s hands beautiful; I try to restore their inner parts to health.

I am a therapeutic shaman, a job I love to my soul. I walk with spirits and elementals to find a person’s past troubles and future purpose, help them make sense of the world. But even a shaman is allowed a night off, and here we were, at getting on for midnight, slightly wobbly because white wine and lager are a bad mix.

The carnival had finished an hour ago and most families had taken their little ones home as the last carnival float evaporated into the distance. Only the die-hards stayed for the giant squibs, getting more bombed out as the clock ticked on, hoods up against the early-November wind scuttling along Bridgwater High Street, sitting with their backs against the barriers that ran along the pavement’s edge or in the glow of shop doorways, waiting for the squibbers. In Bridgwater, in sleepy Somerset, we don’t have fancy fireworks on carnival night. No rockets or fountains or waterfalls in six different colours. Just squibs; fast, gigantic, noisy, and smelly.

“They’re here.” I pointed a gloved finger. “The squibbers.”

Debs pushed against shoulders to get a glimpse. Her face fell. The squibbers were mostly older men in hard hats and yellow jackets. If Debs had been thinking of chatting them up after they’d finished with the fireworks, she was rapidly changing her mind.

“It’s a great honour,” I yelled into Debs’s ear. “Holding one of those giant squibs.”

“Looks like a bleeding dodgy one to me.”

“You have to be born in Bridgwater or be on the carnival committee or something. You know Abby, from my birthday? Her mum held one last year.”

Debs shook her head, unable to remember my party, let alone any of the party-goers, apart from the bloke who’d spent the evening with his tongue down her throat. Doubt if she remembered him, either. “You might do it, then?”

“No …” She hadn’t been listening. “I wasn’t even brought up round here, was I? To be fair, Debs, we weren’t what you might call ‘brought up’ at all.”

The squibbers were forming a line in the middle of the road, their faces set like a platoon about to depart. The crowd surged forward, thronging in, tight as a tube ride. From between the heads in front, I could see the fireworks mounted on their wooden holders, coshes the squibbers would raise firmly in both fists.

A line of fire was being set. It ran down the centre of the road like a fuse on its way to a pile of dynamite, burning bright in the darkness, the start of an ancient ritual.

“All I’m saying is they’re dead proud of squibbing in Bridgwater.”

Six hundred years back, a local man had been at the thick of the Gunpowder Plot to blow the Houses of Parliament—and the king—sky high. Bridgwaterians hadn’t like that one bit. Hidden behind the glitter of fairy lights, the boom of music, and the party in the streets was a celebration of a seventeenth-century execution; hanging, drawing, and quartering. Earlier on, the first float in the carnival procession had been a tableau of Guy Fawkes, a broken man on his knees in front of his interrogators, resplendent in their doublets, big boots, and natty lace collars. There was glee on their faces; they might not have brought their stretching rack and knee-crushers onto the float, but it wouldn’t be long before they’d be applying them.

At a shout, the double line of squibbers dipped their coshes into the running fire and, as quick as they could, lifted them high above their heads, ready for the first explosions.

Something bashed against my shoulder. A bloke, pushing through the High Street crowds. I could only see his back, but I knew him at once. I knew him from his gait, his build, the sheen of his waxed-down hair. It was Gary Abbott from Bridgwater Police Station, after some felon. He was sprinting now, not even stopping when he knocked against a child. He was running away from the action, the only person indifferent to the squibs. He swerved off the High Street into a narrow space between shops, the lane that led to St. Mary’s Church.

Detective Sergeant Abbott … not exactly a Facebook friend. I don’t forget people who are hateful to me, and Abbott was full of acid hate. I could still taste it at the back of my throat.

“Debs?” She didn’t hear me. Cracks of noise, each squib fizzing skyward and exploding into a million stars that rained down on us in a storm of light. The squibs roared and pounded and blazed and the crowds screamed and yelled. Debs was yelling too, her beer can raised in salute.

Abbott had left the child sprawling. The sight sobered me. I went over, crouching to help the little boy to his feet. He was determined not to cry, spinning off to cling to the trouser leg of his dad, buried careless into the crowd.

A shadow gleamed on the pavement. An Apple iPhone. Not the child’s, I knew that. I weighed it in my hand. People don’t leave a name on their mobile; there was nothing to identify it. I slid it into my coat packet and went over to where the boy clutched at his father’s trouser leg. I tapped the man on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, have you lost …”

Crack! Whoosh! Fizz!
My words were lost in noise and light. The world was spinning. Irritation pinched the man’s face. I’d interrupted him in the process of filming the squibs … on his phone.

“Sorry—nothing.” I winked at the little boy and turned, bumping straight into Debs.

“Sabbie! You’re missing it all!”

“A man I know. Abbott. Gary Abbott.”

“Oh, it has to be a
man.
”

“No, a copper … running …”

The black wing of Abbott’s open coat had flapped like a bat. If an iPhone had swung from his pocket, he wouldn’t have noticed. He was too busy knocking down kids on his way to police glory.

I can never help snooping after people, even though it gets me into trouble every bloody time. I sprinted after Abbott. Okay—I wasn’t up to sprinting. It might have been more … stumbling. Seeing Abbott hadn’t sobered me as much as I’d hoped.

I reached the bottom of St. Mary’s Lane. It was narrow and shadowed. The church loomed at the top, spot-lit in amber and white, the illuminated masonry glowing like a phantom. There was no sign of Abbott in his batwing coat.

St. Mary’s had been open earlier for carnival goers, offering coffee and cakes, but now its massive doors would be bolted, the square empty, apart from the odd drunk or the odd pair of lovers. I could hardly believe that Abbott had a sweetheart, or that he’d meet her in that deserted place if he did. No, he was after someone, a pickpocket or pusher he’d seen in the crowd.

Fizz!
The sky sparkled. Stars tumbled. My eyes were half-blinded.
Crack! Bang!
People shimmied around me as if everyone was dancing. I caught my ankle on a chained-up cycle at the bottom of the lane and pitched forward.

“Hey, Sabbie!” Debs clutched at my arm. “You okay?”

“Gerroff,” I squealed back. “I’m not pissed yet!”

The world was suddenly filled with silence and my voice sounded loud within it. The squibbing was over, just minutes after it had begun. The town sank into midnight shadows. The crowd’s roars sank to mutterings. The air smelt of gunpowder.

“That was cool,” said Debs. “Pyrotechnics. Loud. Hey,” she added, and her finger pointed along the lane. “Who is that?”

A figure had emerged from the dark recesses of the lane. A woman advanced towards us. Her dress—no, her
gown
—brushed the ground and
was layered with frills as red as her lips. She had been watching us; her eyes were on us and she held out her hands, the fingers moving as if she were playing an invisible harp.

“Bet she was on a float,” I said in a low voice to Debs.

The long procession of lorries had rolled their glittering tableaux through the town for almost an hour earlier that night. I had a vague memory of a spinning gypsy scene on one float; swirling frilled dresses, guitars, a glowing fire in a forest clearing, dancing to something that sounded Greek.

“I am Kizzy,” said the gypsy figure. Her voice was as cracked and croaked as one of my hens. Over her head she’d draped a fringed shawl, pinned with a brooch of tiny glass jewels. Her face was sallow in the dim light, her eyes black with kohl. She’d come so close to where we stood that I could smell her market perfume and the beer on her breath. “For little silver I see future.”

My mind was mussed-up with men in black, bangs and explosions, hanging and drawing. I couldn’t work out what she meant, but Debs knew straight away.

“You do fortunes.” Debs was already rifling through her bag. “Can you do me?”

I butted in. “Debs. I’ve just told you your fortune.”

We’d had a girlie day, waiting for the carnival to begin. I’d read the Tarot for Debs and she’d done my nails in fair exchange. Underneath my woolly gloves I sported a French manicure that would last no longer than the next workout in my vegetable plot.

“Yeah,” said Debs. “But this one’s called Gypsy Kizzy. C’mon, Sabbie, it’ll be fun.”

“You should never have two tellings on one day. You must wait to see what the first fortune brings.” I looked again at the woman. “You’re not a proper fortuneteller if you don’t know that … are you Kizzy?”

“I seven daughter of gypsy mother. She seven daughter. I haf second sight.” The skin on her face was plump and soft. Her eyes were clear. She was trying to keep the ancient gypsy act up, but her voice was rising, losing its grizzled tones as she forgot to play her part. She was younger than me—no more than a teenager—all dressed up for the carnival. She’d transformed herself into someone who might have lived in a gypsy caravan and thought she’d have some fun with the punters, full with drink and full of the loud night and the costume and the spinning dance she’d done on the gypsy float.

“See, I do that for a living too.” I wanted to explain to Kizzy how it was my job to walk in the spirit world, to gain advice at a deeper level and bring it back to the material plane for my clients. But my brain was hurtling towards shut-down and I couldn’t find the words. Not in the right order, at least. The bottle of white wine I’d had in the pub felt acidic in my stomach; it made me long to sit down somewhere feathery and warm. I fumbled with the zip on the bag slung over my shoulder and dug my fingers in. “I’m a profesh … I tell fortunes. So we’ll pass on the divi—the divination, thank you.”

I thrust a rectangle of card at her.

Kizzy managed to read my card while not taking the pierce of her gaze from my eyes. Perhaps she didn’t read the card at all. “You haf second sight? You see future? You seven daughter of seven daughter!”

“Uh, nope, I don’t think so.”

“You might be,” said Debs. “You don’t know anything about your mum or dad, do you?” She waved a couple of tenners at the girl. “Go on, Kizzy. Do my friend. Then we’ll be even.”

I glowered at Debs. “If I wanted my fortune told, I’d do it myself.”

But Gypsy Kizzy had already snatched Debs’s money, folding the notes around my business card. With a single finger and thumb, she stashed the little pack between her breasts. I’d never seen anyone outside a black-and-white movie do that before, and I was so busy gawping I hardly noticed when she caught up my right hand, rolling back my glove and running a finger over my skin. This is an old trick. Stroking the palm relaxes the client.

She took her time, peering at my lines under the dim light from the High Street. “You belong to different place than this.” She did not look up. “You came from over much water.”

I groaned in my head. I was about to meet a tall man, travel widely, and have three children.