The Copper Heart

by Sarah Painter

  ‘Lydia?’

  ‘Yep. I’m here. Just processing.’

  ‘It’s being marked as natural causes. No criminal investigation necessary.’

  Hell Hawk. That wasn’t good.

  Fleet sounded relieved. ‘It’s not murder, that means there’s nobody to blame.’

  Lydia heard the subtext. Natural causes means Maria can’t blame you. Shame he was wrong. ‘Has Maria been informed?’

  ‘Officers are on their way to her now. They thought it would be better in person. Top brass want it handled with the utmost sensitivity. He was an MP, after all. And the rest.’

  Yes, the rest. Alejandro Silver, until recently, had run the most successful law firm in the city. Plus, there were still people in London who believed the old stories about the magical Families and had a little dose of extra respect for the head of the Silvers. ‘It doesn’t make sense, though,’ Lydia said. ‘He was very fit.’

  ‘Hidden killer, apparently. Unlucky bastard.’ Fleet paused. ‘At least it was quick.’

  ‘I thought he died in the ambulance?’

  ‘Fairly quick,’ Fleet amended. ‘Doc said that he wouldn’t have known, wouldn’t have been conscious.’

  ‘She’s not going to believe it was bad luck. And she’s definitely not going to be satisfied with no investigation.’ Lydia felt a spurt of empathy for Maria. She would feel the same in the circumstances. Brain aneurysm or not, a lack of police investigation would feel like a smack in the face. Disrespect to her father and her whole family.

  A pause. Then Fleet’s voice, trying to be reassuring. ‘You don’t know that.’

  Something was bothering Lydia, but she wasn’t sure how to identify it from all the things that were troublesome. ‘You watched the autopsy, right?’

  ‘Some of it,’ Fleet said. ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably nothing.’

  ‘Am I seeing you later?’

  ‘I hope so,’ Lydia said. ‘Will you let me know if you hear anything else?’

  ‘Of course. Will you stay away from Maria Silver?’

  Lydia couldn’t promise that, so she didn’t answer. ‘Have a good day. See you later.’

  * * *

  Aiden had told Lydia that she had to make herself available to the community and her solution had been to set a kind of open house in The Fork on a Tuesday. She had thought that by providing set hours, she could contain the business-side of being the new Charlie, and keep the rest of her time free. Of course, investigation work didn’t sit well with a regular schedule of any kind and it was, invariably, awkward timing. Sadly, today was the day and she had missed the last two, so she had a quick shower and dragged herself downstairs. She poked her head into Jason’s bedroom on her way to say ‘hello and goodbye’.

  He looked up from the large pad of paper he had propped on his knees. ‘Going to dispense your wisdom? People lining up to kiss your ring?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Godfather, you know. Marlon Brando.’

  ‘Never seen it,’ Lydia said. She was about to say ‘before my time’ but didn’t. She was trying to be a better person and that included not reminding Jason that he was a ghost living out of his natural timeline, having died in the mid-eighties.

  ‘It’s a classic. We should have a film night.’

  * * *

  Downstairs in the cafe, Angel was behind the counter. She nodded at Lydia and turned to pour her a coffee without being asked.

  There were a few punters at tables, tucking into fried breakfasts, but Lydia spotted a man sitting on his own, nursing a mug of tea and looking worried. She took her favourite seat at the back of the room and waited. Once Angel had delivered her coffee, the man got up and walked nervously to her table.

  ‘Ms Crow?’

  ‘Lydia,’ Lydia said. ‘Have a seat.’ She indicated the chair opposite and the man sat down. He was in his fifties with a grey beard and a mostly bald head. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I have a problem,’ he began and Lydia dug her fingernails into her palm to stop herself from snapping ‘obviously’. People didn’t come to her with good news. People didn’t line up to share a joke or be friendly. When all was well, she might as well have been invisible. In a flash, she felt a moment of sympathy for Charlie. This was what he had been dealing with his whole life. Decades of it.

  Lydia flipped her notebook open. ‘Name?’

  ‘Mark Kendal. Sorry. Why are you writing that down?’

  Lydia looked at him for a beat before replying. ‘I always write case notes.’

  ‘But, won’t that be… I dunno. Evidence? Charlie never wrote anything.’

  Mark Kendal had gone from nervous to terrified. Lydia closed the notebook. ‘Tell me what’s on your mind, Mark.’

  ‘I run a phone place on Southampton Way, by the barbers.’

  Lydia didn’t know it, but she nodded as if she did.

  ‘I heard that the nail place over the road is going to start selling phone cases.’ Outrage overtook the fear in Mark’s voice. ‘I sell phone cases. That’s half my business.’

  ‘Right,’ Lydia said. ‘That’s a shame.’

  He spread his hands. ‘This is my livelihood. I can’t take a pay cut right now. My eldest is at university and it’s crippling me. Can you stop them? Have a word?’

  Lydia paused. Could she? Should she? Wasn’t a free market good for the consumer? Competition giving choice and all that. Stopping price fixing. But did Charlie control who sold what in Camberwell? Was this part of the service? Lydia wished he had left a handbook. Or that she had bothered to learn the business before having him taken away. She could ask Aiden, but didn’t want to go to him for everything. It looked weak. Besides, she was the new Charlie. Which meant she could do things her way. Which, in this case, meant stalling. She kept her voice even and told him she would ‘look into it.’

  The gratitude was embarrassing. Mark Kendal grasped her hand and seemed ready to kiss the back, before Lydia pulled away. Maybe she should watch The Godfather sooner rather than later. Maybe it would give her some pointers.

  * * *

  After Mark had departed, Lydia motioned to Angel for a fresh coffee. There was a woman in a headscarf clutching her handbag and looking like she was working up the courage to approach and Lydia needed another shot of caffeine first.

  Lydia had talked to her dad about The Fork. She was keeping away from him, but they had spoken a few times on the phone and she hadn’t wasted the opportunity with small talk. Henry had told her that when he had been working in the business the cafe had been neutral ground. Somewhere people could come to sort out their differences without resorting to violence. Once Charlie had taken over as head of the Family, he had adopted it, making it no longer available for folk to sort out their issues amongst themselves, but instead a place where he took troublemakers and gave them a choice. ‘You’re at a fork in the road, my friend,’ he would tell them. And then he would lay out their choices. ‘He wouldn’t force anybody to do anything,’ Henry had explained, but they always ended up doing the thing that Charlie wanted. ‘Well, almost always.’ His voice had gone very quiet.

  The woman in the headscarf approached. She looked vaguely familiar, but Lydia couldn’t place her. She was wearing expensive-looking yoga-pants and a drapey batwing-sleeved top in dark grey. Her face was unlined and she had perfectly threaded eyebrows and expertly applied make-up. At once, her name dropped into Lydia’s mind. They had met during one of Charlie’s meet-and-greets around the community, when he had been intent on showing Lydia what a big man around town he was. Sorry, when he had been training Lydia in the Crow Family business. ‘Chunni,’ she said. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Chunni dipped her chin, a blush rising to her cheeks.

  More details were swimming up to the surface of Lydia’s mind. Chunni ran a Pilates studio. It was an exclusive little establishment in a renovated mews property near the library, kitted out with those weird Pilates machines, the ones that look like me
dieval torture racks. Chunni had said that she only took three clients at a time and Lydia had wondered how much she charged the punters to make the finances work.

  ‘I’m not sure I’m in the right place,’ Chunni began. She glanced toward the door which led to both the customer toilets and the stairs to Lydia’s flat. ‘Are you still doing that work?’

  ‘I’m still an investigator,’ Lydia said. ‘I’m not taking many clients at the moment, but I prioritise locals.’ There was a vulnerable vibe coming off Chunni which Lydia definitely hadn’t got the last time they had met. It was making her skin prickle with foreboding. Something was very wrong. ‘Do you want to go upstairs? Talk more privately?’ Over Chunni’s shoulder, Lydia could see that another couple of people were waiting to speak to her. Ducking out early was not going to be a popular decision. ‘One moment,’ she said and rang Aiden. ‘I need you at the cafe.’

  * * *

  Having asked Angel to tell people that Aiden Crow was on his way and would be taking notes on Lydia’s behalf, she took Chunni upstairs. It was a feeling of escape, which really didn’t bode well for her prospects as the new Charlie. She was going to have to come up with a new system, a new way of handling the business, as pure avoidance wasn’t going to work long term. There was enough residual respect and fear to keep things on the rails for a while, but that would run out. People’s memories were irritatingly short.

  Lydia made plenty of noise unlocking the front door and inviting Chunni into the flat, just in case Jason had moved from his bedroom and needed time to get out of the living room with his laptop. Chunni wouldn’t be able to see him, of course, but a floating computer might raise an eyebrow.

  The coast was clear and Lydia settled Chunni in the client’s chair and took her place opposite. She took a pen from the mug on her desk and prepared to take notes. ‘Fire away.’

  Chunni was holding her handbag on her lap, she put it onto the desk and there was something about the gesture, the way the bag was angled which caught Lydia’s attention. The movement hadn’t seemed entirely natural.

  ‘I’m being sued.’ Chunni said. ‘At least, I think I am. They haven’t sent formal letters or anything, nothing from a lawyer. They say they’re going to, though, and I’m worried.’

  ‘Sued for what?’

  ‘This man. Sean Ryan. He says he damaged his shoulder because the machine wasn’t calibrated properly. He says he’s in constant pain and can’t do his work, so he’s suing for loss of earnings and stress caused.’

  It didn’t seem like something that needed privacy, but perhaps Chunni was worried about word getting out that she injured her clients. To be fair, that would be bad for business. ‘Has he approached you in person?’

  ‘On the phone,’ Chunni said. ‘And an email.’

  ‘May I see?’

  ‘I will forward it to you,’ Chunni said, suddenly guarded. ‘I didn’t bring my phone.’

  Unlikely, Lydia thought. Which was curious. The ‘off’ feeling was growing. She would have been tempted to chalk it up to run-of-the-mill paranoia, but given recent events, Lydia thought she should pay attention. ‘This sounds like something a lawyer would deal with for you.’

  ‘But I didn’t injure him. I thought you could prove that for me. Make him stop this. Follow him and record him or…’ Chunni trailed off.

  ‘You want me to scare him off?’

  Chunni shrugged. ‘If he sees I’m not an easy target...’

  There was logic to that. And it was the sort of thing she would usually take. There was just this nagging sense of ‘wrong’. And the tricky matter of payment. ‘Are you asking me to do this in exchange for a favour, or are you commissioning me as an investigator. If it’s the latter, here are my rates. I need a part-payment to get started.’ She scribbled down some figures and pushed it across the desk.

  ‘Payment is fine,’ Chunni said. ‘I don’t know what kind of favour I could offer.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lydia said, expecting Chunni to take the piece of paper and leave. Instead, she stared at Lydia for a few moments longer, as if waiting for something else.

  ‘Is it true that Mr Crow isn’t coming back?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lydia said, hoping she was right.

  * * *

  After Chunni had gone, Lydia went to find Jason. He was lying on his bed with his arms crossed behind his head, eyes closed. ‘I think my new client just recorded our first meeting.’

  ‘That’s weird,’ he opened his eyes, blinking a couple of times like he was waking up.

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘Just resting,’ Jason said. ‘And thinking.’

  ‘Anything I can help with?’

  Jason shot her an amused look. ‘I was mulling over the twin prime conjecture.’

  The creepy twin girls from The Shining jumped into Lydia’s head but then she remembered who she was speaking to. ‘Maths?’

  ‘Maths.’ Jason confirmed. ‘Are you sure? About the recording?’

  ‘No,’ Lydia shook her head. ‘Just a hunch.’

  * * *

  Lydia knew she still needed to pay a visit to Maria. Having failed to accost her outside the court, she might have to take the more dangerous step of visiting her office or home. It would be the respectful thing to do, as the head of the Crow Family and in deference to their long alliance. There was the small chance that Maria would try to kill her, of course, but hopefully that bad feeling had been put to rest. Or, at least, Maria’s practical side would prevail. Lydia was the head of the Crows, now. And Maria was the head of the Silvers. They both had to act like it.

  What Lydia really wanted to do was see her dad. Knowing that Alejandro was lying in cold storage in the mortuary, had shaken her more than she could understand and she wanted the comfort of her living, breathing father.

  However, Lydia was rationing her contact with her dad. Mr Smith had healed him, brought back his mind from the brink of destruction. But that deterioration might not have been run-of-the-mill Alzheimer’s. Her presence had always made him worse, and she and Jason had developed a theory. That her power worked like a battery, charging-up those nearby. Anybody with an ounce of magical energy, found themselves more powerful near to Lydia. Which was why Jason had become corporeal in her presence and why her father, who had spent Lydia’s life suppressing and denying his Crow magic in an attempt to give her a normal life, had almost been broken by the effort. Lydia had written to him, outlining her theory. She had hoped that he would say that he would no longer try to suppress his nature. She was an adult, now. And part of the Family. He had written back, explaining that he couldn’t do that to Lydia’s mother. He had made a choice to live a normal life for her sake, and he wasn’t going to go back on that promise. And that now that Lydia had stepped up to Charlie, there was no going back for her.

  As instructed, Lydia had burned his letter, but she could still remember the last lines, word-for-word.

  I’m an old man and not just in years. My time is spent and I have not spent it flying. You are the head of the Family, now. There can only be one. I would be a distraction, an encouragement to dissent, a confusion. With a murder there can only be one winner. Burn this.

  * * *

  Lydia didn’t know if her father believed she had killed his brother, or whether he was referring to the collective noun for a group of crows. Either way, the message was clear: ‘You’ve made your bed, now lie in it. Alone.’

  At once, the walls seemed too close and Lydia had to get out of the flat. She headed out into the cool evening, striding quickly in an effort to mute her tangled feelings. She arrived at Burgess Park without consciously deciding on a destination and proceeded to walk aimlessly along the tarmac paths. She had thought that with Charlie gone she would feel a sense of freedom. Instead, she felt more trapped than ever. Wings beating against bars. Claws scrabbling on a metal floor. Caged.

  Her dark thoughts were interrupted by the realisation that she was being followed.

  Chapter Seven

  A split
-second later, Lydia felt the pull of Pearl magic. When she turned she wasn’t entirely surprised to see the girl from the Pearl King’s court standing by a sycamore tree, watching. She decided to take the initiative. ‘Hello, again. What’s your name?’

  The girl still had dirty blonde hair and torn jeans, and several necklaces slung around her birdlike neck, including the one Lydia had given her on their last meeting. She picked up the lightest sense of Pearl from the girl. Just a dusting. A sheen. But the girl didn’t say anything, simply kept on staring with those unnervingly light eyes. After a minute or so, Lydia turned away and continued her walk.

  The girl stayed on the grass next to the path, maintaining her distance from Lydia but clearly keeping pace. They were approaching the lime kiln. It was another relic from when the area had been a hive of industry, fed by the Grand Surrey Canal. Boats had brought lime from other parts of the country, ready to be fired into quicklime before being taken to the London factories. Now it was an odd, flat-topped octagonal structure marooned in a sea of municipal parkland. Lydia stopped, as if studying the kiln. She spoke without looking at the girl. ‘I thought you lot had cleared out.’

  Still nothing.

  ‘It would be better if you had,’ Lydia glanced at her. ‘I’m not a fan of the kidnapping.’

  The girl smiled. She was missing a front tooth and a couple more were askew. When she spoke, her voice made the hairs on Lydia’s neck stand up. ‘You’re in so much trouble.’

  Lydia tilted her head. ‘Is that right?’

  The girl smiled wider, but didn’t speak again.

  After another minute of staring, Lydia had had enough. She stepped up to the girl and grasped her arm. Her hand wrapped easily around her narrow biceps and the girl turned shocked blue eyes upward. ‘I think you should come with me,’ Lydia said. ‘Let’s find you somewhere safe and warm to sleep tonight. Make sure you get a decent meal.’