The Pearl King

by Sarah Painter

  ‘As far as you know,’ Paul said. ‘Don’t know how forthcoming your uncle is with you.’

  ‘Very,’ Lydia said. She felt her coin in her hand and she gripped it tightly. ‘Especially now. I’m his right-hand.’

  ‘And do you know what the left hand is doing?’

  ‘Of course,’ Lydia said.

  Paul waved a hand. ‘But I’ve been looking into the Russian and have found out something interesting. He picks up payments in cash from an office off Chancery Lane. It’s registered to-’

  ‘JRB,’ Lydia interrupted. ‘Feathers.’

  Back in Camberwell and on foot, Lydia was trying to walk off the nervous energy which was fizzing through her. Seeing Paul was always a little disturbing. He reminded her of her past lust and their ill-advised relationship. She was in no state to deal with it, not with the aching emptiness Fleet had left in her middle. Her phone was in her hand and her fingertip hovering over his number, before she was conscious of the movement. She forced herself to switch the device off and put it back in her pocket.

  As Lydia approached Well Street, a black cloud of smoke appeared above the roofline and there was a smell of burned plastic. Turning the corner, she sped up automatically, ready to step into the road to avoid the Pearl-owned grocers, when something made her stop moving altogether. The space which had held the sickly-pastel frontage of Jayne’s Floral Delights was no longer there. Or, more accurately, the space was there, but it now held a burned-out shell, illuminated by the flashing lights from a police car and fire engine. The emergency services looked like they were packing up.

  Lydia turned and moved down the nearest side street. Her phone was in her hand and she called Charlie. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Not on the phone,’ Charlie said and cut the connection.

  Lydia headed for Grove Lane and Charlie’s house. The front garden was filled with birds, mainly corvids, and Lydia greeted them as she marched up to the front door. She banged on the wood with the side of her fist, trying to release some of the adrenaline. She had to play this right. Be calm. Not antagonise Charlie. Get answers.

  Her uncle opened the door, eyebrows raised. ‘You’re in a hurry.’

  Lydia pushed past him and into the house. ‘What did you do?’

  Charlie’s brow furrowed in an excellent impression of gentle confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The florist. Jayne Davies’ place. It’s been torched.’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Very unfortunate. Such a shame they weren’t up to date on their business insurance payments.’

  ‘You did this.’

  ‘We did this,’ Charlie said, all pretence at gentility gone. ‘You can’t run Camberwell without being firm. Otherwise we couldn’t keep control. If I let one business screw with me, what’s to stop everybody else doing the same? You have to toughen up, Lyds. This is the real world.’

  Lydia didn’t answer him for a moment. She allowed herself a beat to modulate her breath and to let the first flurry of possible replies run through her mind.

  ‘I know it seems harsh,’ Charlie said, his voice a little softer. ‘But I made sure there wasn’t anybody in the building. They are closed this week for Christmas.’

  Lydia felt her insides liquify. It hadn’t even occurred to her that somebody might have been hurt. It was a place of business, but that didn’t guarantee nobody had been inside when the fire was started. She forced herself to nod. ‘Okay. Good.’

  ‘Late night start, checked the place out thoroughly in case of surprises. It could have been so much worse.’

  ‘Good,’ Lydia said. ‘Smart.’ She didn’t even really know what she was saying, just that every particle in her body wanted to be out of the house and away from the man standing in the hallway. He looked like the uncle Charlie she had known her whole life, but he wasn’t the same man. That man was someone who ran a family with a dodgy past, someone who commanded respect and kept the worst of the drug gangs out of Camberwell, but someone who was part of the modern world. The man stood in front of her at this moment was something else. He wasn’t acknowledging the past or honouring their traditions, he had one foot planted firmly in the ‘bad old days’. No, more than that. The bad old days were the bad current days.

  ‘I’m glad you popped round, as it happens. Here,’ Charlie said, reaching behind Lydia to a small console table just inside the front door. ‘Your payment.’

  ‘I don’t want payment,’ Lydia said. She wanted to get out before she threw up. Karen might have insisted that they couldn’t think about the consequences when they did their job, but Lydia didn’t agree. Besides, she had known something bad would happen. She had known and she had told Charlie about Jayne Davies’ business anyway. The guilt was a hammer to her stomach and it took her breath away.

  ‘Take it,’ Charlie pressed a set of car keys into her hand and then closed her fingers over them, using both of his hands. He held them like that for a moment, looking her dead in the eye with his shark’s gaze. ‘You’re with us, now, Lyds. And you need a motor.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Charlie waited, watching as Lydia walked down the path to the main road. Lydia pressed the key fob and a gunmetal grey Audi which was parked directly outside the house responded. Lydia glanced back and Charlie raised a hand before retreating behind his door. The satisfied expression on his face made her stomach hurt. The car wasn’t a flashy or brand-new model, but it was in excellent condition and far beyond anything she could have afforded to buy with her insurance pay out. Inside it had been expertly valeted and there was a branded air freshener hanging from the rear-view mirror. She drove it back to The Fork, finding her usual parking space a street away. Lydia tried not to admire how perfect the vehicle was for her needs and how quiet the engine, how deft the handling and definite the brakes. Any trace of enjoyment in the car felt like a betrayal of her independence and her moral code. Charlie had burned down a business like it was just another day at the office.

  She had barely set foot inside her flat when her phone rang. She stared at the screen, frozen. She had been expecting an unknown number, which would be Paul calling from his new phone. Maybe to tell her again that she didn’t know what her own flesh and blood was up to. Which, unfortunately, had just been proven to be perfectly accurate. But instead it was DCI Fleet and it took every ounce of her willpower not to slide the green icon to the side to hear his voice. He had respected her request to stay out of her life up until now and she wondered if there was an emergency. Something really important. As she wrestled with her emotions, the seconds ticked away until the phone stopped ringing. It had gone to voicemail and she waited to see if he would leave a message.

  He didn’t.

  The disappointment was a punch to her stomach. Lydia tried to get back to work, but her concentration was shattered. She kept looking at her phone as if willing it to ring again, even as she was aware that she still wouldn’t allow herself to answer. She couldn’t speak to him, couldn’t trust herself to stay strong and separate.

  After ten minutes of torture, she picked up her jacket from the sofa and left the flat. She would go for a brisk walk, do some food shopping for dinner and maybe some comfort food for right now. Outside the air was like a slap in the face. London never usually got that cold, especially in comparison to Aberdeen, but this winter was the exception. Or Lydia was less robust than usual. She zipped up her jacket and stuffed her hands into her pockets.

  Lydia turned left outside The Fork but had only taken a couple of steps when a familiar car pulled up alongside the kerb. Fleet got out, his hand resting on the roof. ‘Can we talk?’

  Lydia couldn’t answer for a second. The sight of Fleet, tall and beautiful and wearing one of his delicious suits with the familiar grey wool coat over the top was too much to take in all at once. He was both known and unknown, this man. She knew every inch of his naked skin, had whispered and laughed with him in the dark, had spent hours staring into his eyes, and now those same eyes were roving aroun
d the scene, skittering from her feet to her shoulders to her face and then bouncing away, as if burned. Lydia thought she had prepared herself for the pain of seeing Fleet as a separate person, no longer her better half, but she had not.

  ‘Just for a few minutes?’ He said. ‘In the car, if you like, it’s freezing today.’

  ‘Okay,’ Lydia managed. She opened the passenger side door and got into the car, moving on autopilot. She could do this. The moment Fleet closed his door, she realised her error. They were too close and in an enclosed space. She could smell the Fleet bouquet and she was lost, hurtling backward in time to his bed, to her bed, to her sofa, desk, kitchen worktop and every floor in the flat.

  ‘What do you need?’ She was proud of that. It was business-like. Calm and contained. Efficient.

  Fleet still couldn’t meet her eye. He looked out of the windscreen as he spoke. ‘A case that might be your kind of thing.’ Then he described the man who had telephoned Lydia from the Maudsley hospital a few weeks earlier.

  For a moment Lydia regrouped. She had been expecting Fleet to ask her about the arson attack on the florist, that he must have somehow subliminally divined that a Crow was involved. ‘He’s an in-patient in the psychiatric unit, right? He requested my services and I told him ‘no’.’

  ‘He said. He keeps phoning the station, though, and there’s nothing we can do. I thought you might reconsider.’

  ‘To stop him bothering you?’

  Fleet flashed a sheepish smile. ‘Partly. But mainly I think it’s your kind of thing. It sounds a bit-’

  ‘Odd?’ Lydia supplied. ‘Weird? Unreal?’ She stopped herself before she said ‘magic’. She wasn’t with Fleet. Which meant she had to make sure those walls went back up. She remembered the feeling of being in the police cell. How had he not come to see her, there? Not reassured her? He said he had been trying to help her and, logically, she believed him and understood the difficult situation he had been in. Illogically, though, her body was tensed for flight and there was a bitter taste in her mouth.

  ‘You know what I mean. I can’t help him, but maybe you can.’ Fleet shrugged. ‘I feel sorry for the guy. He sounds really distressed. And we’re really stretched at the moment.’

  Lydia narrowed her eyes. She felt manipulated. And she had enough of that from Charlie. ‘Isn’t it below your pay grade? Why do you know about a random phone call to the station?’

  ‘He told the sergeant that he had tried to engage your services so it got passed to me. Now I’m trying to pass it back.’ He gave a small, regretful smile. ‘Thought I would try, anyway. I’m slammed at the moment.’

  Lydia ignored the fact that Fleet still had anything related to her passed straight to him. She thought, instead, about asking him about his current cases, but she stopped herself. She wasn’t his girlfriend, his support, his confidante. ‘I’m too busy. I told him that.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Fleet said. ‘Sorry to have bothered you.’

  Lydia reached for the door handle, ready to leave. What had been so weird that Fleet would contact her, though? She ran over the story from when Ash had telephoned. It hadn’t struck her as out of the ordinary in a magical sense. She turned back. ‘What was weird? I get that the man is unwell, but he’s being looked after by mental health professionals. If he has been wrongfully sectioned, then that’s a civil matter surely? Something for a solicitor.’

  Fleet looked at her, then, a deep crease across his brow. ‘Ash believes that he has lost his true identity due to amnesia, and he wants help tracking down the details of his life. He wants help to track down his parents so that they can clear up the mix-up and bring him home.’

  ‘He said his name wasn’t his real name,’ Lydia said. ‘When he called me, he said that the people around him were imposters and that they had given him a false name or something. It definitely sounds like a mental health issue, so he’s in the right place getting help from trained professionals. I don’t see how me getting involved is going to help him. It might make him worse, confirm his delusions.’

  Fleet nodded. ‘Makes sense. Sorry. I got taken in. He sounded quite reasonable.’

  Lydia was battling her senses. Not just her normal animal ones, the ones which were twisting her guts in a mix of anguish and desire, but her Crow sense. The one which told her when a person was packing power. She had caught an unusual gleam from Fleet in the past, but had become used to it with repeated exposure. It had been just part of him, the general ‘Fleet’ feeling. Now, having had no contact for almost a month, it was more distinct. It wasn’t recognisable as Crow, Fox, Pearl or Silver. It was closer, if anything, to the flavour she got from Mr Smith. Which was disturbing.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Fleet was saying.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Lydia said. ‘My welfare is not your concern.’

  ‘You’re in touch with Paul Fox. After everything. You can’t trust him.’

  ‘And how would you know that? Am I under police surveillance, officer?’

  Fleet winced. ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘If you are watching me in your own time, that’s called stalking. So, which is it? Professional or personal invasion of privacy?’

  Fleet’s face went blank. ‘Just be careful,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  Lydia opened the door and got out of the car as quickly as she could. It had been a mistake to get into it in the first place. Standing on the pavement, sucking in lungfuls of Fleet-free air, she knew that she couldn’t make that mistake again. She wasn’t strong enough.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Despite the fact that it was the week between Christmas and New Year, traditionally a time for lounging about in PJs or taking it extremely easy while pretending to work and eating the leftover chocolate, Lydia knew that Mr Smith would still expect her to keep their standing appointment. On the plus side, Lydia had something she wanted to ask him.

  Lydia knew that she shouldn’t confirm Mr Smith’s suspicions about her own power, but she also knew that she had to show willing in some way, soften him up. Since going home she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her dad and what would come next. Her mum would look after him at home as long as possible but, at some point, it would end with Henry Crow in a care home or hospice. Sitting in a chair or bed, staring into the distance and seeing nothing. It was the kind of thing you knew might happen to your parents one day. One day far in the future. But now, all Lydia could see was his face and the horrible blankness where his eyes used to be.

  She pushed the pastry box away, the association with these enforced meetings spoiling her enjoyment forever more, and took a long sip of her coffee. She itched to add a nip from her hip flask, but resisted the urge. She needed a clear head. ‘I’ve been thinking about you.’

  Mr Smith licked sugar from his fingers and then wiped his hands on a paper napkin. ‘That’s nice.’

  Lydia took a deep breath. ‘You have an unusual signature.’

  Mr Smith looked interested for the first time. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘How did you heal me?’

  His expression closed down immediately. ‘We’re not here to talk about me.’

  ‘I wondered if it was something you could do again. On somebody else. And whether it would work on a brain condition.’

  Mr Smith tilted his head, appraising. ‘Who are we talking about?

  This was a big disclosure. Henry Crow was officially out, but he was still the rightful head of the Crow Family and weakness of any kind was not something the Crows advertised. Still. If there was a chance Mr Smith could fix her dad, it was a risk she had to take. ‘My father,’ she said, her throat closing up as she spoke. ‘He’s got Alzheimer’s or something similar.’ She didn’t add that it might be a magical disease, brought on by suppressing his own power. Firstly, that was just a guess on her part and secondly, the habit to disclose the bare minimum in any given situation ran deep.

  ‘I don’t wish to caus
e offence,’ Mr Smith said, ‘but the Crow Family are not considered to be generally a good thing. You must be aware that the NCA have been investigating them for years for organised crime. Making Henry Crow stronger isn’t high up our list of priorities.’

  Lydia didn’t betray her surprise. Her understanding was that the Crows had been borderline legit for years, and that Charlie’s recent foray into arson had been an aberration. She had assumed that the National Crime Agency would have lost interest decades ago. Either Mr Smith was lying or she was seriously naïve when it came to her family’s activities. She had a horrible feeling it was the latter. Pushing that aside, she leaned forward, planting her elbows on the table. ‘I’m Crow Family,’ Lydia said. ‘You healed me.’

  ‘You’re different.’

  Lydia looked Mr Smith square in the eye. ‘I’m also difficult to motivate.’

  After a moment, he nodded. ‘It might be possible. And I suppose I could leave it out of my report. I can’t promise it will work, though.’

  ‘Noted.’

  ‘And I would need a gesture of goodwill. And payment up front.’

  ‘I am happy to demonstrate my motivation, and I can do a part-payment first, but full payment only after my father is cured.’

  ‘Not cured. After I’ve attempted a full cure.’

  ‘No. Part payment for the attempt. Full for the cure.’

  ‘But I might not be able to do it, why should I even try if I won’t get the full payment?’

  Lydia thought for a moment. She had to be sure that he was going to give it his full effort. She had seen the drained look on his face after he had healed her of a few bruises and a broken rib. He was playing her for all he could, doing his job, but it was possible there was more to it. If she had learned one thing from her father and Uncle Charlie’s attempts at training it was that magic was tricksy. It never gave without taking away. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Full payment for full effort, regardless of results. But how will I know you are giving your full effort?’