Serpent in the Heather Read online

  Precognition. This ability manifests as a quasi-real viewpoint of a potential future event. It is highly variable in accuracy. Researchers are divided about how the skill operates. One theory holds that it is a variation of hypercognition, wherein the practitioner makes a powerful logical extrapolation. The very nature of our current understanding of time and the future is brought into question with this most intriguing of meta-abilities. Manifestations spontaneous.

  Site view. Practitioners gain a perception, visual glimpse, or deduction derived from a past event in a specific location. (In contrast to trauma view, which is a viewpoint derived from a person.) The sensitivity is to emotion-laden occurrences that have happened in a place where the practitioner is present. In addition to impressions from the event, the practitioner may perceive emotions of actors present in the view. This ability is often used in law enforcement. Manifestations spontaneous.

  17

  WRENFELL, EAST YORKSHIRE

  SUNDAY, AUGUST 16. “May I come in?”

  Julian stood at Kim’s bedroom door, watching as she unpacked from her trip. He would have liked to know the results of her efforts in Wales, but he’d have to learn that secondhand, from Owen Cherwell.

  Inviting him in, Kim tipped the last of her things out of the valise. She continued her sorting and folding of clothes. He knew from experience that once Kim had a little organizing in hand, she would keep at it until it was completed.

  “How was your trip? You haven’t been to Wales before, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t. It was rather dark and windblown. The castle inmates were quite a crew.” She glanced at the little book he held in his hand.

  “Inmates?” He felt he had license to follow up that remark.

  “Yes, a doughty old baroness and her peculiar son, plus all the servants at least seventy years old.” She removed a cardigan sweater from the suitcase, refolding it before laying it in a drawer. “But I got a good story on the fad of finding mysticism in prehistorical sites. Sold it to the London Register.”

  He heard Martin on the stairs; the lad always seemed to take two stairs at a time. He walked over to Kim’s door and closed it.

  As Kim looked at him inquiringly, he sat on the edge of her bed. “Mrs. Babbage was in Martin’s room the other day. She decided to unpack for him since he was still grabbing clothes out of his suitcase. In the chest of drawers, she found this.” He looked at the book in his hands.

  Kim sat next to him. “A journal?”

  He didn’t know how to say this to her other than straight out. “It belonged to Robert.”

  “Robert?” Kim whispered.

  “His diary. From the battlefront.”

  “Oh, God. Is it really? Is it really from Robert?” She looked at the journal with a mixture of tenderness and dread.

  “Yes. I considered not reading it. His private thoughts. But I couldn’t not do so.”

  “She found it in Robert’s dresser drawer?” She looked as confused as he must have when Mrs. Babbage had brought him the notebook, saying that she hadn’t presumed to read it, of course, but had looked at it far enough to know that it was Robert’s.

  The leather of the cover was well worn, as though Robert had carried it for a time in his kit. Many of the water-stained pages were hard to read. Julian had gotten through it to the end, but had not slept that night.

  She reached out to touch the leather cover, a tender gesture, as across someone’s cheek. Her gaze went to the hall. “I thought those drawers were empty.”

  “They were.” He shook his head. “I spoke to him about it. Martin said that he found the diary on the top closet shelf, pushed so far back we must have missed it. And that he meant to tell us, but he didn’t know what it was and didn’t think it important.”

  Kim frowned. “I see.”

  He handed the diary to her.

  He wanted to say that Robert’s words had been very hard to read, but that he treasured them for all that. That they were so very fortunate to have this remembrance of him, even if right now it hurt to the core to read the words. But he and Kim were not accustomed to sharing such thoughts.

  Kim gripped the diary with both hands.

  “I’ll let you make your own decision about reading it,” he said.

  She looked up at him, and nodded.

  Kim listened to Julian descending the stairs. Since she had heard Martin run up the stairs a few minutes before, she surmised he was in his room, waiting for her. Putting the diary on her bed, she went to his room.

  He sat on the window seat like a prisoner awaiting a sentence. “I was going to tell you,” he said miserably.

  “No, I don’t think you were.” She kept her voice low and even, controlling her anger. “You were planning to use the contents of my brother’s diary to try and prove a site view Talent.”

  “No, I—”

  She interrupted him. “Martin, you lied to your parents and the headmaster about the clubs. You lied to your fellow members of the Adder club about having a Talent. And now to me.” She saw his misery, but she could not soften this for him. He had terribly abused her trust. “Even knowing how we still grieve for Robert, you were going to withhold this diary from us for your own aggrandizement.”

  “My what?”

  “For the sake of making yourself important. That was an awful thing to do.”

  “I was going to give it to you.”

  “But that wouldn’t work, would it? Once you had leaked to me the facts from this diary, you could never let me read the same things in its pages. Isn’t that right?”

  His voice went so soft, she could hardly hear it. “I didn’t think where it would go. That if I started with the diary, I could never give it to you.”

  “But why, Martin? Why do this?” She waited.

  “Because I was afraid you’d send me home. When school starts.”

  “So, you risked stealing from us?”

  “Yes, because I knew my da would make me come home, and I don’t know about the barn and horses and I’m not strong, not even as strong as old Babbage, and I thought I’d have to go home. Unless . . .” He hesitated.

  “Unless you told me my brother’s private’s thoughts.”

  He swallowed but kept silent.

  “Oh, Martin.” She shook her head at the mess of it all. “What shall we do?”

  He looked up at her fiercely. “You should call the police. I did steal the diary, and I’m not worth it, not worth your trust. Obviously.”

  She looked down at him as he sat on the window seat. She wanted to shake him and also comfort him. “Is home so awful?”

  He wiped his nose with the back of his hand and nodded.

  “What’s awful about it?”

  “My da. He hates me because of my Talent and how I always screw up everything. And that I don’t like the chemist’s shop, and my mum goes along with whatever he says.” He cut a wounded glance at her. “But I do see things. Lots of other times, I have.”

  Looking at him, Kim saw a boy who desperately wanted people’s regard and had taken up lying to get it. He felt a failure at home, even with the wretched gambit to claim special powers. Which undoubtedly had just made matters worse. But she couldn’t send him away. He had done a terrible thing, but he deserved a second chance.

  “All right,” she said. “For starters, we won’t talk about Robert ever again. I’m going to let you stay until school starts as long as there are no more lies. Not even one. Are there any lies you want to tell me about now?”

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t think you always screw up. I think you’re fifteen and are willing to try things and sometimes fail. And from what Mr. Babbage says, you don’t fail very often. So. We’re going to start over.” She gave him a small smile, one that she thought she meant. At least now, since he’d made up his Talent, she would worry a little less about his being a murder target. Except the killer couldn’t know who was real and who was fake.

  Neither could she, it was clear.r />
  “One more thing,” she said. “I want you to wash that ink drawing off your wrist.” The Crossbow dossier had described the Adder club mark. It was too dangerous to advertise a Talent, even if it wasn’t true.

  “Oh, Mr. Tavistock already told me to.”

  “He did?”

  “But it won’t come off. I really scrubbed it.” He pulled back his plaid shirtsleeve. The little snake emblem on his pale skin looked like a blue vein running the wrong way.

  It was odd that Julian had asked him to wash the symbol off. Normally, household matters went utterly by him.

  “He said the school wasn’t going to like it.”

  “I think that’s right. Or your parents.”

  It seemed so out of character for Julian to have mentioned this to Martin. But he was right about the school objecting, though he couldn’t know the larger reason why getting rid of the mark was a good idea.

  Martin shook his head. “I don’t think I can get rid of it.”

  “Of course you can. Keep at it, and eventually it will fade.” He seemed completely crestfallen now. Well, that made two of them.

  She went to her room and locked the door.

  Her anger having passed through her like a sudden squall, she felt hollow, as though the emotion had burned away smaller things. It left her a bit weak, unless that was just dread that she would be filled back up again by things she did not want to feel.

  Finally, she picked up the journal and sat on her bed. She slowly opened it and began to read.

  Friday, 11th September, 1914. They say there’ll be an all-out attack on Sunday. Some of the boys are up for it, because anything is better than the mud, the trenches, the waiting.

  Kim closed the book. I cannot do this, she thought. It was already like ripping a plaster off a wound. But she opened the diary again.

  Wednesday, 16th September, 1914. Back of the lines I’m drilling raw recruits in target practice, and wouldn’t be surprised to catch a stray bullet from one of them. Now they say the offensive will come on Tuesday a week. They’ll start with a bombardment at dawn, but all that will do is wake the Germans up. We wait.

  Saturday, 3rd October, 1914. We lost Peter today. A sniper shot as he left the command bunker. Still raining. The world is mud.

  That innocent line, The world is mud. It prefigured what was to come, and her heart crimped, confronting it yet again. The horror of Robert’s last minutes still had power over her.

  She opened the diary and continued to read.

  WHITECHAPEL HIGH STREET, LONDON

  Lloyd Nichols looked up from his desk as his boss came by. “Working on a Sunday, then, are we?” Slater said, who was obviously working himself.

  Nichols scratched his chin, wondering how sarcastic to be. Plenty, he decided. “Fascinatin’ topic, unemployment. It cries out for a snappy title. Do you fancy SOCIALISTS SCREAM FOR BALDWIN’S HEAD or MEN ON DOLE HAPPY AS PIGS IN MUCK?”

  “How about NICHOLS AVOIDS THE AXE?” Slater said, shrugging into his suit jacket and heading for the door. “Just write it up, old thing, and leave the headline to me.”

  Point taken, you blighter. When he heard the downstairs door slam shut, he reached for the bottom drawer, bringing out a bottle of Gordon’s gin. He looked at the work in front of him: one typewritten page. A complete cockup.

  That Tavistock girl, now. Stuck up, and plain as a yard of water. I plan to be in touch with Maxwell Slater. A regular countess, she was, talking like that to him, who’d been in the business for twenty-five years, and her just a Yank havin’ a rich father in Uxley with a hand in the whisky trade. And her getting sacked from the Inquirer for stickin’ her nose into things blokes’d rather not read, like torturin’ dogs for science.

  He drank a toothful, and then another, staring at Slater’s door. The boss was jerking him around, assigning him a feature one day, spiking it another. What was the man up to? He’d have a little look in the boss’s office. Maybe he was slipping Tavistock Lloyd’s own copy. If that was it, he’d put a stop to it, right enough.

  Slater’s door was unlocked. Checking to be sure the newsroom was still empty, Lloyd went for the big stack of files on the table, finding one labeled ANCIENT LIGHT a few inches down. Nothing in it but notes from Lloyd’s original assignment and some old tear sheets from the society pages of the Times involving the Cosletts.

  Leaving that aside, he found a dozen of Slater’s lined pads, filled with his notes and doodles. Like the man couldn’t be on the phone or in a meeting without jotting down dates, circling words, making designs.

  After a few minutes of scanning the notes, he found a page with the name Tavistock and two big underlines. The same page, a date: 17 Aug. And circled, R. Galbraith. He heard the outer door shut and dropped the tablet, skirting around Slater’s desk, trying to get to the door. Too late.

  Slater was coming right for him. And he had the bottle of Gordon’s.

  The editor’s bulk filled the doorway. “What’re you doing in my office?”

  The blighter must have forgotten something. Lloyd was in a jam but decided to brave it out. “I’m having a look around, is all. Thought maybe I’d see my feature story in here. The one you asked me to write but that all of a sudden ain’t wanted.”

  Slater’s eyebrows raised up. “Did you lose it? The story we killed? I figured maybe you’d get it framed or something.”

  There’d be a row, no way of avoiding it. Nichols squeezed by into the newsroom. He turned, facing off with his boss, his anger overcoming his fear. “You shaggin’ her? Is that it? That why she got my interview with Coslett?”

  Slater’s face closed down.

  “You gettin’ your knob shined by that twit from Yorkshire?”

  Slater’s lip curled so far, it showed his canines. “Pack your stuff, Nichols. I want you the hell out of my newsroom.”

  “You’re sacking me?” Lloyd licked his lips, thinking how to get things shoved back into their place. “So, that’s it, then?” he asked, knowing it was. He was so pissed, he couldn’t think straight.

  “That’s it, you arsehole. Get the hell out of here.” He slammed the Gordon’s into Lloyd’s hands. “And take your bottle with you before you’re chucking your guts out in my newsroom. Bloody wanker.”

  Before he knew it, Lloyd was staggering down the stairs, carrying a box with his belongings. The whole thing was a total balls-up. The only fix for it would be going on the piss with his bottle of Gordon’s. He knew the morning would bring worse.

  He’d be unemployed.

  WRENFELL, EAST YORKSHIRE

  Past 11:00 PM, Julian had his pipe out on the back stoop. The warm night air surged with the sound of crickets, somehow always invisible in their multitudes. Shadow had come out with him, watching the yard, the property. Julian looked up toward Kim’s window. The light was still on.

  Shadow came to attention and dashed off through the kitchen garden and out toward the paddock. Whatever he had seen, it wasn’t visible to human eyes in this darkness before moonrise.

  In the Babbage cottage a stone’s throw away, a wan light glowed from the kitchen window. It was a peaceful scene, marred only by Julian’s thoughts of the youth murderer. It had been ten days since the last death; the interval between the other murders: seven and five days. They all expected the killer to strike again.

  “Shadow!” he called, not shouting it but loud enough. “Shadow!” Perhaps he’d gotten wind of a fox.

  He finished his pipe. It was too late to call Olivia. Just as well. Their telephone conversations had been stilted lately. Once or twice he imagined she’d been with someone—that friend of the family of whom he was unreasonably jealous without even knowing the man’s name.

  E forbade personal involvement among his agents. It was a security risk on several levels, and he believed that romantic entanglements spoiled office peace and protocols. The fact that he was allowing this one to go forward was an indulgence. Olivia was not an agent. But as E’s secretary she was more integral to op
erations than any agent, keeper of all secrets great and small.

  He felt she was slipping away from him; and why wouldn’t she, when they had no future? Perhaps he should retire. The notion came to him lately, always aslant, testing for the reception it would receive. But the thought of having nothing productive to do, of giving up what had become his calling . . . No, he could not do it. Until he thought of Olivia, and then the needling thought came, of them sharing his Albemarle flat and then weekends at Wrenfell. Times he wanted that. Times he didn’t. Good God.

  “Shadow!” And the dog came racing from wherever he had been.

  Climbing the stairs to bed, he saw light in Kim’s room. Her door was partway open.

  As Shadow nudged past him into her room, he saw Kim sitting propped up in bed with the journal, her dinner untouched on the tray on the footstool. “How many times have you read it?” he asked.

  She managed a smile. “A few.” The border collie got thorough rubs from her before assuming his position curled up by her nightstand.

  “Does it help or make it worse?”

  She looked up at him with a soft but haunted look. “Both, I think. He was so young.” She set aside the journal on the counterpane. “They were all so young.”

  “Yes.” He thought he knew how she felt but didn’t dare say so. She had always believed that Robert’s death hadn’t registered with him as it had with her and her mother. She was wrong, but he felt he oughtn’t have to say that he loved his son. When she’d come back to England and found him apparently enamored of the Nazi cause, it confirmed her view that he had no loyalty to Robert. As though hating Germany was proof that one loved those they had slaughtered. It was a wearying subject, one they avoided.

  Robert had died on November 11, 1914. Two weeks later Julian and his wife learned of his death. Then, as the loss took hold of them in its stark permanence, they learned how he had died. The army had originally said it was during a cavalry charge on the salient near the village of Ypres. But Robert had not been mowed down by enemy fire. As the charge went forward, the saturated ground over which his unit surged collapsed into an enormous crater, trapping Robert and two of his comrades on their horses. As the infantry poured over the nearby ground, the sides gave way in a thunderous slurry of mud. It had taken only a few seconds to engulf and bury the soldiers and their mounts. Robert’s men—he was in command that day after his captain had been killed—tried to dig the doomed men out, but under the German barrage it was hopeless. Robert had drowned under tons of mud, along with Baron, his favorite black.