Siren Song (Harrison Jones and Amy Bell Mystery Book 1)

by Rebecca McKinney

  The question was, did she know? He suspected she did, and that was why she had sought him out.

  ‘Okay. Come on.’

  She followed him downstairs and along the road, hurrying to keep up with his long stride. ‘Where we going?’

  ‘I parked a bit away, just in case your man turned up again.’

  ‘My man? You saw him?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw him. Who is he?’

  ‘Ricky. He isn’t my man anymore. Do you always walk so fast? We’re not all six-foot-five.’

  ‘Six-two.’ He cut his stride. ‘Sorry. So, Ricky’s your ex ...’

  ‘Ex-fiancé. I had to take out a restraining order against him last year.’

  ‘Not a guy to take no for an answer, I gather.’

  ‘I’d rather not talk about him right now. Where are we going?’

  ‘I thought we could go back to mine. You look like you could do with a good breakfast, and we can talk there. No-one will bother us.’

  ‘You live alone?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘No wife or kids or ...’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Right ... sorry. I didn’t mean to ...’

  He pressed the button on his key and stopped outside the car. ‘It’s fine. Hop in. If you’d rather go somewhere more public, just tell me.’

  ‘No, yours is fine. Like you say, I'm not helpless.’ She slid into the passenger seat and buckled herself in. When he got in beside her and shut the door, she said, ‘You were right. I did call you. I wanted you to come. I don’t know why you instead of someone else. I don’t have very many people in Edinburgh that I trust, and I ...’ She stared out at the street and shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘How did you do it?’

  ‘He followed me home from a club last night. Ricky. And he stood out there for ages, banging the door and bawling my name. I was so scared and upset that I just curled up in a little ball in my bedroom and thought very hard. And somehow, a few hours later, you turned up. How would you explain that, Indiana?’

  ‘Just call me Harri, please.’

  ‘You’re not answering my question.’

  ‘How would I explain the fact that you called me from across town, without the benefit of modern technology? I don’t know, Amy. I think it’s possible that you’re a little bit like me.’

  She glanced at him as he turned left onto Easter Road and headed uphill. ‘Damn it. I knew you were going to say that.’

  TEN

  Elizabeth Merriweather stepped into Brown’s of George Street and unwrapped herself with as much authority as she could muster, draping her black wool coat over her arm and announcing herself to the hostess. She was shown to a booth, where she sat and waited for Quentin. He had asked for this meeting, and she knew he would be late. That was always his way: to set the terms and control the interaction from start to finish. The City had taught him well.

  The restaurant was full of noisy groups: friends, couples with young children, generations of extended families. She wondered what people thought when they saw her sitting on her own. Maybe they didn’t think anything. Most likely nobody even noticed her at all. If they did, they would pity her in the worst way. Young women dining on their own were mysterious and attractive. Older women were just sad.

  Elizabeth fended off the over-eager waiter and glanced at her watch. She would give Quentin ten more minutes. She tapped her red-lacquered nails on the table and waited.

  He arrived, flushed and windblown, just as she was putting her coat on to leave. The sight of him filled her with dread. Her body had learned to submit to him, even when her head wanted to run.

  ‘So sorry, phone call came in just as I was getting in the car. Had to deal with it.’ He pecked her cheek without intimacy and she flinched away from the damp touch of his lips. ‘I appreciate you coming into town. I’ve got a hell of a lot on this weekend.’

  At close proximity, Quentin was sweaty and bloated. He was ill or drinking too much, or both. His mortality was showing, and this gave her confidence. ‘Whereas I have nothing better to do than drive all the way up from North Berwick, only to be kept waiting for twenty minutes.’

  ‘It couldn’t be helped. Don’t be spiteful, Lizzie, it doesn’t make this horrid business any easier.’

  She hated how small he made her feel. ‘What did you want to discuss, Quentin?’

  The waiter chose that moment to pounce. Quentin ordered himself smoked salmon on toast with scrambled egg. Elizabeth asked for a Bloody Mary.

  ‘Aren’t you eating, Lizzie?’

  ‘I’ve lost my appetite,’ she said curtly. ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

  He laughed heartily. ‘You never have. So, it’s time we made this official. I’ve spoken to my lawyer about getting divorce proceedings underway.’

  Elizabeth didn’t know what to say. They had been separated for more than two years but he had steadfastly refused to discuss divorce. There were always other women so it had suited him perfectly well to move out, but he hadn’t wanted to let her go either.

  ‘Have you found some other poor fool who wants to marry you, Quentin? Is that it?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t. Let’s just say I’ve seen the error of my ways and realised it’s time to cut you free. You’re quite right, it’s time to close the door on this chapter.’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, although without the relief she needed. There had to be some motive. ‘Well thank goodness you’ve seen sense.’

  ‘I’d like to get the house on the market.’

  And there it was.

  Elizabeth drew in a breath and raised her chin defiantly. ‘The house can’t be sold, Quentin. It belonged to my parents.’

  ‘And now it belongs to me.’

  ‘It belongs to both of us. It’s been in my family for a century. It’s Lucy’s home.’

  ‘Lucy’s not coming back to it, you know that.’

  She leaned towards him. ‘I don’t know that, and I’m not leaving it.’

  ‘You’ll have to, I’m afraid. I need to free up the capital.’

  ‘Free up the capital? My God, Quentin, have you lost any shred of decency you might once have had?’ She fought to keep her volume under control. ‘You don’t need the money.’

  He slumped back in the wooden booth and Elizabeth caught a flash of worry on his face. The little twitch in his cheek gave away his anxiety. ‘This Brexit fiasco has royally buggered things.’

  ‘Your financial difficulties are not my problem.’

  ‘They are if you want to be kept in the luxury you’re used to.’

  ‘I will happily embrace poverty to be free of you.’

  ‘That crumbling old pile of stones will get cold very quickly.’

  She leaned closer to him again, hissing through gritted teeth, ‘Don’t you dare try to threaten me. As far as I’m concerned, you abnegated your duty to Lucy and me, and so have no further claim over us or our property. I will instruct my solicitor accordingly. In fact, you should count yourself lucky I don’t press charges against you.’

  ‘Press charges?’ He snorted. ‘For what?’

  ‘For what?’ She raised a single eyebrow. ‘You know very well what for.’

  Quentin gripped her wrist and breathed fumes in her face. ‘You know damn well your little accusations will never stick. Do you really want a long, expensive fight, Elizabeth?’

  ‘No, but I’m prepared to give you one. While I’m here, Quentin, I might as well tell you, I’ve hired someone to help me track down Lucy.’

  ‘You’ve hired someone? Who?’

  ‘A private investigator.’

  He laughed again. ‘Oh, good Lord, Lizzie. Some hopeless waster who couldn’t cut it as a cop?’

  ‘Not at all. He’s rather special, so I’m led to believe. I’m quite confident that he’ll find her.’

  ‘Unlikely. But if he does, what then? That girl never wants to set eyes on you again. We both heard her say it. You really think she’s going to come home willingly?’
/>   Elizabeth smiled coldly. ‘We’ll see about that. And when she does, she may just be ready to tell her story. Perhaps we both will. What do you think about that?’

  ‘What story would that be?’ Quentin asked, as if he had already forgotten what they’d just spoken about. He smiled mildly at her, his puffy face smug and unconcerned. He was a master at baiting others into action and shrugging off all responsibility.

  Elizabeth paused, astonished. What story? Memories ripped through her, but Quentin made her question them. She hated him for it. ‘The things you made her do.’

  Quentin examined his clean, pink fingertips. ‘Nobody ever made that girl do anything in her life. You raised a spoiled, wilful brat. If the fact that she turned into a filthy little slut bothers you, Lizzy, maybe you should take a hard look at yourself sometime.’

  ‘Don’t you dare…’ she whispered, with such a fury burning in her that she felt like she might explode. Her hands wanted to go for his eyes. She clenched them under the table. This was not the place for a scene. ‘Whatever I had to lose is gone, Quentin. I’m not afraid of you anymore. You have a choice. I will divorce you quietly on the condition that you leave me with the house. If you don’t ...’ She lifted her fingers from the table, indicating that the ball was now in his court.

  Quentin had his poker face back on and there would be no further discussion with him.

  She slid out from the booth and slipped her coat on just as the waiter arrived with their drinks. ‘I’m so sorry, I can’t stay,’ she said sweetly. Walking away from Quentin was a skill she should have learned a long time ago. ‘Just put the drink on my ex-husband’s bill, if you don’t mind.’

  ELEVEN

  Harrison lived in one of the leafier streets of the Grange, on the ground floor of a subdivided Victorian house. Amy followed him along a tiled hallway to a large kitchen that opened out into the enclosed garden. It was one of those middle-class places that always made you feel like you were stepping back in time: a fireplace, an oak table strewn with books and papers, a deep Belfast sink. There was a pleasant smell of wood smoke mixed with fresh coffee.

  ‘Apologies, tidiness isn’t my strong suit.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s nice,’ she said, trying to quell the nerves in her belly. Coming to his office had been safe enough, but stepping into his kitchen felt intrusive. She looked around at the ordinary details of his home life: laptop, dirty coffee cups beside the sink and laundry drying on the rack. The thing he’d said in the car was hanging between them, but she wasn’t ready to go back to it. He’d tapped so quickly into something nobody else had ever accepted.

  He took off his coat and draped it over a chair, gathered some of the loose papers into a stack and slipped them into a folder labelled Lucy Merriweather. Noticing that she hadn’t taken off her coat, he asked, ‘Is it cold in here?’

  It was, but she said, ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘I’ll get this going.’ He squatted in front of the fireplace. She watched him scrape last night’s ash into a pile, add some old newspaper and kindling on top of it and light it with a single match. He added a couple of birch logs and waited for the flames to lick them before standing up again. ‘Breakfast? On cold winter mornings like this, my dad used to make pancakes with blueberries and maple syrup.’

  ‘You want to make me pancakes?’ She held her hands towards the fire.

  ‘I want to make myself pancakes, and since you’re here I’ll make you some. Unless you’d rather have something else.’

  ‘Pancakes sound good.’ She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had made her breakfast, and the loneliness of her life bounced back on her hard. Four kids in a three-bedroom terraced house and she still grew up alone. How did that work?

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  ‘Have a seat, Amy.’

  She sat at the table and watched him put the coffee on and get the pancake makings underway. He knew his way around a kitchen, even if he didn’t seem to be good at making small talk. That made a change. All her life, she’d been surrounded by men who would dominate conversation from a chair without lifting a finger.

  ‘Does your dad still make you pancakes?’

  He scooped flour into the mixing cup and avoided eye contact. ‘My dad left when I was ten, so no.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘It’s alright.’ The tone was far too casual to be believable.

  Another silence stretched out. A succession of questions followed but she held onto them.

  He glanced up from his mixing, and although he didn’t open his mouth, she heard him say, Whatever you want to know, just ask.

  She lurched to her feet. ‘What the fuck is going on? I can hear your voice in my head.’

  ‘Can you?’ Sounding more curious than surprised, he poured two cups of strong, black coffee and slid a small jug of milk over to her. ‘Is that normal for you?’

  ‘No!’ Her hand shook as she poured milk into her cup, and she could feel the rush of adrenaline in her thighs. She took a sip and tried to calm herself. ‘Nothing about this is normal.’

  ‘When did it start for you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know what it is!’

  ‘Describe it to me.’

  ‘I’d call them premonitions, I guess. Sometimes I know things have happened or are going to happen. Sometimes I know somebody’s going to call me right before they do. Sometimes I get a feeling and I know something bad is going to happen. Sometimes I have a dream. At work, I see the outcome of an emergency before it happens. Sometimes I try to warn people that something bad is going to happen to them, but they never listen to me.’

  ‘And the bad things happen?’

  ‘Yes.’ She closed her eyes and fought the sudden urge to cry. ‘So, you don’t think I’m talking crazy superstitious bollocks, like everyone else?’

  He shook his head and his eyes were so full of empathy that she wanted to crawl into his arms and curl onto his lap like a child.

  ‘Am I psychic? Is that what you’re telling me?’

  ‘Yes. It’s called precognition.’

  ‘You do believe me, don’t you?’

  ‘I do, but you can understand why a lot of people might not. Most folk are afraid of things that threaten their realities. In our culture, we’ve mostly dismissed any possibility of the spirit as something separable from the body.’

  ‘In English please, Professor.’

  He smiled. ‘When I was maybe twelve or thirteen, I read a book about shamanism. It was all about different shamanic practices across the world. Shamans are people who can travel out of their bodies, if you want to put it that way. They can travel into the future or the past, or into spirit worlds ... alternate universes, maybe. They can heal people. They can speak to the dead. They hear things from afar, they see things from afar. It was an eye-opener. It explained a lot about how I was.’

  ‘And you’ve always been this way?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how did it happen for you?’

  He looked out the window and seemed to be considering what to tell her. ‘When I was a wee boy, my dad taught me to sail in this little wooden boat he’d made. When I was eight, I had a daft notion to take it out myself. A wind came up and needless to say, I got into trouble. The boat capsized and I was in the water for about three hours. It was April and the water was bloody cold.’

  ‘God. You’re lucky you didn’t die.’

  ‘Very. I was hypothermic and hallucinating by the time a local fisherman pulled me out. After that, I couldn’t switch the hallucinations off. That was the start of ... everything.’

  That little pause at the end made her wonder if there was more to the story than he was telling her. She had the feeling that none of her questions had simple answers.

  ‘You must have studied this at uni. Can’t you explain how this works?’

  ‘That depends what kind of explanation you’re looking for,’ he said, putting down the mixing bowl and picking up his c
offee. ‘Most cultures across the world accept that there is some form of energy or life force that moves through all of us and connects us.’

  ‘In a galaxy far far away, they call it The Force.’

  ‘Aye, that’s it, though I couldn’t raise a spaceship out of a swamp if I tried.’ He laughed, and she was grateful for his momentary lapse into a less schooled accent. ‘These ideas underpin martial arts, yoga, reiki, and most indigenous healing practices. Even here, not so long ago, we had that connection with each other and with nature. We drew wisdom and truth from things we could feel but not touch. We understood that we were only small parts of something much, much bigger.’

  ‘Right ...’ she said slowly, waiting for this new idea to sink in. It was like an embryonic flame, which burned brightly when he was speaking but began to die away when he stopped. ‘Doesn’t that defy the laws of physics or something?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Maybe it’s all to do with quantum entanglement, or …’

  ‘Sorry, quantum what?’

  He took two red apples out of the fruit bowl and held one in each hand, spread apart. ‘It’s the idea that sub-atomic particles that seem to be unrelated, that might even be millions of miles apart, are linked and can act on each other in some way.’ He turned the apples simultaneously. ‘How do we explain that?’

  Amy shook her head. ‘I have no idea. Where does God figure in all this?’

  ‘God is just another way of trying to explain the connection. Are you a believer in God?’

  ‘No. Are you?’

  ‘I’m spiritual in my own way, but not in a Christian sense. Maybe there’s something supernatural out there, or maybe there’s no such thing as supernatural, only the nature we don’t yet understand.’

  She butted in. ‘Sorry for asking so many questions, but why you? Or me? How can I see into the future when other people can’t?’

  ‘You ask much better questions than any of my students.’ He shrugged. ‘In my case, I believe coming close to death opened my mind to something that most people don’t tune into. In your case, you tell me. Maybe time isn’t as linear as we like to think it is. Maybe there is some little part of you that can step off the straight line and move in different directions.’