Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) (32 page)

“I knew you were trouble,” he said.

Stan had been saying this about me from day one, but suddenly it seemed to mean something. I didn’t want to learn what. The answer was not going to be in my favour. His hand was still round my neck. The pressure was making me gag and it was clear my relationship with my former employer was in the process of terminating due to bad feelings on both sides. Finally, my phone stopped ringing. The silence was terrible.

“Let go of me.” I swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice from croaking. “Give me my pay and I’ll be out of your hair.”

He hung on, his face so close to mine I could smell the lukanka he’d had with dinner. “You’ll get exactly what you’re owed, darling.
And
be out of our hair.” His steady gaze caught and held me. There was a glitter in his dark pupils that penetrated deep, forcing me to focus on him. We were staring each other out. Like, if he looked away first, he’d release his iron-man grip and let me collect my winnings. But if I looked away
…

I did not believe he knew why he was holding me there. It was all to do with being boss, with not showing weakness. He’d caught me prying, and that was unforgivable.

I started to struggle against the grip round my neck. Stan was maybe twenty pounds heavier than me. If the guy wanted a cat fight for his money, he was welcome. I went for his eyes and he yelped. A space grew between us and I felt the pressure go off my spine. I pushed hard. He stumbled. Stan had the upper body power that might be useful if he had you pinned on the floor, but his legs and hips were lean. I took my fingers from his eyes and pushed hard against the tops of his shoulders. His grasp on me slipped as he lost his balance. I was free to make my exit. I bolted towards the door.

I felt my arm wrench with a shock of pain. A jolt spun me round in a full circle. Stan had caught and gripped my wrist. He was grinning. He was enjoying this. He liked a bit of rough with ex-employees.
It cut the cost of wages.

“Let go of me.” I tried to keep my voice strong. “Give me my pay. Stop acting like a dumb fool.”

“Nobody calls me that.” He raised the flat of his hand.

A deep boom sounded, like something had been detonated. The
slap whipped my neck back.

“You hit me!” I was more stunned than frightened. A month of having to put up with my insolence had gone into this misplaced attack.

He used his other hand on the other side of my face. With the second slap, m
y jaw shifted. Pain exploded over my head. I felt each joint of my body give way as I crumpled.

I was on my back, staring up at the ceiling. It turned from white to a darker and dimmer grey. The air I sucked in was thick and ashen. The world was ash, with sparkly dots of black around the edges. It was hard to see. It was hard to move
.
My body was inside a fog that was turning to black night.

Stan disappeared from my sight. I heard the door slam shut.

The air was so thick now, I struggled to breathe. The dimness closed over my eyes, and with it, all other thoughts.

thirty-one

Out of the thick
murk of fog, a creature with scales as green as bile undulated towards me.

Miss Dare
, it hissed.

A whimper juddered out of me. I wanted to step away from its never-ending form, but I was surrounded by floorless, airless lint.

The creature rounded on me. I saw its yellow head. Its eyes blinked once. A thin, black line shot out and disappeared in a pulsing motion. A serpent’s tongue. Anaconda.

The snake’s jaw stretched wide, its forked tongue ready. A firework of spirit poison sprayed harmlessly into the air, falling like the sparkles of a squib.

_____

I was out for only minutes, but coming back into the world of Papazov’s office made me wish I could sleep forever. My ears pulsed heat and stung with pain. I took a breath that made me cough and gasp.

I was propped beside the filing cabinet. I shifted my legs, pushing myself up. I looked down at my feet. I was bare footed. Had Stan made off with my footwear in the foolish belief that it would prevent me from fleeing Papa Bulgaria and downloading everything to the police? I was so groggy it took me several more seconds to realize that I didn’t have my coat. In the pocket of the coat were the keys to my scooter. I felt bereft without them. It came back to me that I didn’t have a phone, either.

I careered towards the office door, my only route of escape, keeping my sights on it. It was locked. I yanked the handle. I kicked the frame. I screamed at it. I felt like sliding down it and closing my eyes. I turned and used it as a leaning support. My breath seared the back of my throat.

There had been a phone on the desk the first time I’d come here, to be interviewed by Papazov. But I’d searched the entire office minutes ago, when I’d still been a working member of the staff here. I stared at the surface of the desk, as if hopeful it might rematerialise. It was only then that I saw the other thing that was in the room with me.

The bundle was by the desk, small, dark. Like a sleeping hound. I remembered seeing Mirela curled into my porch, waiting for me to come home and solve the mystery of her sister’s disappearance. My body stiffened as I took in the inert heap, hair spilling over the floor like treacle. I tried to breathe, forcing the blur and grey thickness from my head. After my descent into Anaconda’s world, I was capable of believing that Stan could produce the girl by magic.

I was on my knees seconds later.

“Mirela,” I whispered. I had no idea how she’d got here, or why. I was still groggy round the edges, so much so that it was only just beginning to occur to me that she was lying on the floorboards because she could not get up. I rolled her gently onto her back so that I could see what was happening. I heard her sigh and felt a wash of relief. Her breath smelt like those pear drops no one sucks once they’ve passed the age of puberty.

I stroked her small hand. “Mirela?”

“Mmm?”

“It’s Sabbie, Mirela.” I didn’t think it mattered what I said, so long as she could hear my voice. “Where have you been? Everyone was searching for you. We were all so worried.”

I got up and re-angled the desk light so that it shone on her face. She was alabaster pale. Her face had thinned. She seemed even more breakable than before.

“Mirela, wake up.”

I didn’t want to hurt her, but I took her shoulders and tried to shake her awake. She moaned. I felt like moaning with her. I was locked in a room with a half-comatose girl and downstairs was a manic Bulgarian who could slap like a door in a gale. The pain from Stan’s double slaps still rang in my head. A wave of nausea took over my body, making me double up. I stood, breathing though my nose until it passed. Then I put my hands under Mirela’s arms and slid her along the floor until she was propped up against the wall. She looked like a rag doll.

For the first time, I saw Mirela as I should have always seen her. She was a child. I’d always thought her to be child
like
, I’d always been concerned that she was little more than a child. But her makeup and frothy bras had hidden the difficult truth: Mirela
was
a child, a girl in her early teens, not old enough to know what she was doing when she signed up to Stanislaus’s regime.

There was no water in the room, but I pulled the top off the decanter and sniffed. Brandy? Probably some evil Bulgarian substitute. I poured a little into the glass that formed its lid and wafted it under Mirela’s nose. Her eyelashes fluttered.

“Mirela? Take a sip of this. It might fortify you.” I poured a tiny drop onto her tongue. She half-swallowed, half-coughed. “Mirela! Please tell me you’re all right!”

“I don’t find my sister.” The words blubbered out. Her eyes opened for a second and they seemed even larger in her head than usual, the whites scratched with red and the pupils big, black lakes.

“Oh, Mirela
…
”

I would have to tell her. Why was it always me? But not yet. E
xplaining that Kizzy had died
might shock her.
Explaining
how
she’d died—a surgeon had removed her organs, leaving her little more than bones and skin—might kill her.

“Have you been hiding, my dear? Or did someone hide you?”

“I wait for Kizzy,” she said, and her head drooped.

The dullness that two slaps can leave you with was preventing me from thinking fast enough. Stan must have brought Mirela to this room. He’d thrown her in and locked the door on us both, and he’d managed to accomplish this trick in just the few moments I’d been out cold. So Mirela had been in the building all the time. I glanced over at the window. No—Mirela must have come in the beastly vehicle that I had seen somewhere before. An urgency gripped me. I had to get us both out of this place.

I put the glass down and went back the window. I lifted the blind, trying to be discreet.

The car was still there, but its nose was now pointing out of the yard gate, the engine ticking over and its big back door lifted like a shark’s jaw. In the shadows within the yard, two men worked together. They were shifting one of the scooters. I heard them grunt as they lifted it into the open back, laying it on its side.

I could make out the forms of both of them, even in the darkness. One was Stan. His tight jeans and pumped shoulders stood out clearly against the red glow of the rear lights. The other man was taller and seemed to have taken charge, but it was impossible to make out his features. Even so, a perception crawled in me. I’d seen this man before.

I saw Stan throw things into the boot. The items landed haphazardly on top the scooter.
My scooter,
I realized.
My coat. My trainers.
He tossed another item, something small that landed hard.
My mobile.

The door to the big boot was slammed shut. Stan hopped into the driver’s seat, signalling and turning onto the narrow road with care.

The taller man was left in the pitch dark of the yard. I have a good memory for faces and a reasonable recall of cars, but nothing jogged into place. It was likely that this guy was on the very periphery of my contacts. Someone I’d bumped into. Someone who’d come into the shop as I was leaving, a mate of Stan or his father, perhaps.

He walked into the scooter shelter. It was dark in there, for the shop lights had been doused. That made me wonder about Rey, if he was looking for me after the aborted phone calls. Would he have sent a patrol car round to my house? Would they think to come here? If they had, it would be clear everything was locked up and in darkness. Most probably, he’d assumed I’d got pissy with him and was refusing to return his call.

Streetlight crept in through the open gates. I could follow the glow of the man’s pale trousers as he moved about. He went up to the big bike that I’d first seen during my interview with Stan. A Yamaha, I remembered, fast and heavy and lavished with chrome. I peered through the blind, thinking that he was planning to leave too. But he opened the panniers on either side of the bike and pulled out the containers inside. Holding them by their chunky handles, he carried them into the kitchen.

My mouth formed a word. “
Mutri
.” Mirela had thought they were moving drugs on the scooters. That idea was ludicrous, but she had been so close. The powerful bike, always parked in the shelter, was what the
Mutri
were using. No wonder Stan had been so tetchy about my interest in it.

Mirela let out a sort of grumbling sigh.
I swung round.
She had slumped over and crumpled onto the floor.
Her pale face had continued to whiten; even her lips were white. I pulled off my jumper and put it under her head where she lay. I didn’t have a first-aid bone in my body—I had no idea how to deal with this. Should I let her sleep or try to wake her?
For the first time, I realized Mirela might be dying.

I went to the door, tried the handle again. It was a futile thing to do, I knew it was locked, but I was the only responsible … the only
conscious
adult in the room, and it was up to me to get us out. I backed off and charged the door, thumping all the power of my shoulder into it. The pain that drove up my arm was unbelievable. I had to cover my mouth to stop myself crying out. My weight had done nothing. The door hadn’t budged.

I went back to the window. Now there was no one in the yard, I dared pull up the blind. It was a single floor drop onto the kitchen roof. I tried to move the sash of the window. It was stuck by years of paint and damp weather. It was stuck, and so were we.

It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder why there was no one in the yard until I heard the key turn in the lock behind me. I spun round to face the man in the doorway.

He s
tood with the purpose of someone about their business. Someone in control.
He was neatly dressed in chinos and an open-necked shirt. He was smooth shaven.

At the sight of him came the recognition of my fears. I could hear my breath take off, fly off. I knew any moment I would not be able to control my breathing at all. My mind moved towards the shutdown that comes with absolute terror.

I had pieced things together badly. I thought Stan
was a loose cannon with a central core of careless malevolence. I knew he could slap a woman down and lock her up. But it turned out Stan was a tiny cog, the no-one guy who ran around for the top cats. I should have guessed from the start. If you deal in prosperous illegal activities, you have to be like ice. Rey had said it—
b
arbaric, cold-blooded, implacable.

The man smiled and the wrinkles at the sides of his eyes creased up. His voice was full of compassion. “Good evening, Miss Dare. I hope Stan hasn’t treated you badly?”

I’d been right about one thing. I had known the man who had been in the yard, even from only looking down at the top of his head in the darkness. I had met him on my first delivery for Papa. I had met him again in the changing room below. I did know him, and I did know his Toyota Land Cruiser.

It was Dr. Grace.