by Sharon Jones
He shivered and forced a smile. ‘Something like that.’
She reached up on tiptoes and pressed her icy lips to his and for a moment he didn’t care about screwing up the interview. When she tried to step away he wound his arms around her and leaned into the kiss. Poppy wasn’t having any of it. She pushed her hand against his chest and frowned up at him.
‘What’s wrong? It went OK, didn’t it?’
Shit! He sometimes wished she were a little less observant. He shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Do you mind if we don’t talk about it?’
Her forehead wrinkled. ‘Really?’
He nodded.
‘OK…well, Dad’s got meetings and stuff, so I think we’d better stay out of the way. What do you want to do?’
After an actual slaughter in the morning and metaphorical slaughter in the afternoon, there was only one thing he wanted to do, and given how wrong that had gone last night, he’d just have to settle for the pub.
The Eagle was full to bursting with students and people taking a rest from Christmas shopping. The noise of laughter, chatter and Christmas songs was overwhelming after the strange muffled quiet of the snowy streets. Most importantly, though, it was warm. Poppy stamped her feet on the entrance mat, trying to dislodge some of the snow that clung to cheap pumps she’d bought to replace Michael’s boat-like boots. They weren’t exactly suitable attire for the weather, and her toes stung with the cold, but at least they made her feel less like a big-footed hobbit.
They made it halfway to the bar before Michael stopped and turned to her.
‘Why don’t you go and find us a table?’
In other words, if you’re expecting something other than a refreshing orange juice, you’d better not get any closer to the bartenders. Poppy rolled her eyes and pushed out an exaggerated sigh. ‘Dad says I look eighteen.’
‘Fine. You go for the drinks then.’ He raised his eyebrows in a challenge.
A slow smile inched across his face when she didn’t move.
Poppy glanced across the sea of people, then back at Michael. She tried not to return his grin, but the muscles in her face betrayed her. ‘Fine, I’ll go and find a table.’
He leaned down and kissed her. It wasn’t the usual brush of lips normally reserved for public places, but a full-on, God-was-I-breathing?-Can-I-remember-how-to-breathe? kiss. Her limbs softened and suddenly her head was filled with memories of all the places he’d touched her…and kissed her. What the hell was he doing to her? Too intense. Way too intense. She broke from his lips and gently pushed him away.
‘Michael…’
He didn’t look at her, instead his gaze was focused somewhere over her left shoulder. He grinned.
Was that clapping? OK, that was some kiss, but she didn’t think it called for applause.
Poppy spun around to see three guys clapping their hands above their heads, whistling and saying things like ‘very nice’ and ‘encore’. Blood rushed to her cheeks.
Michael laughed, put his hand on his chest and bowed.
‘Stop it!’ Poppy punched his shoulder. ‘Oh my God! You are just begging to be punished.’
‘Promises, promises.’ Michael grinned. ‘Cider?’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’ Spotting people getting up from a table in the far corner, she made a dash for it. She skirted the table of guys just as one of them shouted, ‘Moose!’ and all five of them slammed their glasses on the table and downed their pints in one.
Poppy shook her head. This Cambridge lot might be wicked smart, but it didn’t stop some of them from acting like complete tossers. She dumped the plastic bag containing Michael’s boots on the floor and flopped into a squeaky chair that wobbled as she sat down.
Poppy put her elbows on the table and rested her head in her hands. She watched Michael as he edged his way through the crowd at the bar. There had been something a little too brittle about his laugh…and too desperate in his kiss. He was trying to be cool, but she could see through him better than he thought she could. That stuff about messing up his interview wasn’t him being his usual modest self. He really did think he’d screwed up.
For the last couple of weeks he’d spent more time with his head in the books than ever before. He’d read so much in preparation for this interview that she was half-convinced he’d given up sleeping.
Michael arrived back at the table and dumped two pints of cider down. He slumped onto a stool opposite her and quickly swigged back a quarter of his pint.
‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Why do you think you screwed up?’
He stared into his drink and shook his head. ‘Made an arse of myself. Don’t really want to talk about it.’ He picked up the glass and his Adam’s apple bobbed as another quarter of a pint disappeared down his throat.
Poppy sipped at her own drink while Michael picked strips of paper from a torn beer mat. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it.
Michael glanced up. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, quickly. He smiled, but too soon his gaze slid back down to his pint and she knew he was lying.
A loud voice from the neighbouring table broke into Poppy’s thoughts.
‘Did you hear what happened at Trinity?’
‘Oh yeah, that’s what I was going to tell you,’ another voice said. ‘I was talking to one of our porters and he said that the dead guy was posed, like someone was trying to send a message to someone. Sounds really creepy, if you ask me.’
The porter was right. The body had been posed. With an hour or so to herself, walking around the packed Cambridge shops, the image of the bloodstained marble floor had invaded her mind over and over again, and there was one thing she was sure of: either the guy had dragged his arms through his own blood to leave a clue to the identity of his killer, or the murderer had cold-heartedly watched the blood drain from the guy’s body and then taken the time to create bloody wings. Both scenarios were horrifying. And both meant that the key to the murderer lay in those bloody wings.
Michael must have been listening to the girls too. He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘How was your dad?’
Poppy shrugged. ‘He’s…weird. I mean, he’s fine, but he’s acting strange.’
‘In what way?’
‘Like he’s hiding something.’
Michael screwed up his face. ‘I know he’s being an arse, but you can’t think he had anything to do with…’
‘I’m not saying that. I saw him arguing with one of those guys we ran into when we got to the college last night. It seemed a bit odd.’
‘Really?’ Michael’s expression shifted to one of curiosity. Poppy had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. He was thinking about that bloody girl in the red dress again. She knew he’d fancy her – she was just his type. Tall…blonde…gorgeous. ‘What were they arguing about?’
Poppy took over picking at the beer mat where Michael had left off. ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t hear. I was too busy hiding around the corner.’
Michael snorted. ‘You were hiding around the corner?’
‘I got the impression it was about the murder.’
Michael chewed his bottom lip as if deciding whether to tell her something. ‘It could have been. The girl from last night…’
Ha! She knew it! He was still obsessing about her.
‘…She’s on the floor we’re staying on,’ Michael continued. ‘And the guy who was killed was her boyfriend.’
‘How do you know all that?’ Poppy’s brain whirred like a computer processing data. The girl in the red dress was the dead guy’s girlfriend? That same girl who’d run bare arms through the snow, carving out the wings of a snow angel…just like her dead boyfriend had done with his own blood. That couldn’t be a coincidence. She blinked when she realised Michael was still talking.
‘…And when I went to get clothes for you I ran into them. I think they might know who did it.’
‘What?’
‘I overheard them arguing and it sounded like Ria thought that Danny had been killed because of something that they�
�d done. Or not done. Something to do with a party.’
‘A party?’
‘That’s what it sounded like. Something to do with whether they should invite someone to a party. They called it something weird.’ Michael squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead. ‘Nahh, I can’t remember.’
‘Why would you kill someone for not inviting you to a party? That’s crazy. There must be more to it than that.’ And what was with the wings? The angel thing was bugging her – it had to mean something. ‘What do you know about angels?’
‘They have wings.’ Michael’s mouth dropped open as soon as he realised what he’d said. ‘The policewoman asked you if you knew what the wings were about.’
She nodded. ‘The girl in the red dress – who you so obviously fancy – d’you remember what she did?’
‘I don’t fan…oh, shit.’ His eyes widened as he made the links.
‘They were dressed like they’d come from a party.’ Just like her dad. Had they been at the same party? She remembered the weird invitation on the mantelpiece in Dad’s study – the date matched.
Poppy felt in her pocket for her phone and opened the web browser. It was predictably slow.
Michael pulled out his phone too. ‘What are we searching for?’
She shrugged. ‘Angels, I guess.’
‘I don’t think that’ll get us very far. That’ll bring up millions of websites.’
True. ‘OK. How about if you look up angel and Trinity College? I’ll have a look at angels on Wikipedia.’
When the page eventually loaded, she scanned the article on angels and gathered that they were messengers of God and occasionally they acted out God’s vengeance. There was a list of individual angels, at the top of which was the Archangel Michael. She glanced up grinning. ‘Hey, did you know your name means “kindness of God”?’
‘Vaguely,’ he murmured, not even looking up. ‘Did you see this?’ He handed over his phone.
Poppy stared at the screen. It showed a painting of a terrifying angel, dressed in what looked like the uniform of a Roman soldier with golden breastplate and red skirts. In his right hand he held a long spear, drawn back, ready to strike a red-faced man who was staring up at him with a mixture of anger and fear. Then she noticed that the body of the red-faced man coiled into that of a serpent. He was the devil.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
Michael took the phone from her and after a few swipes of his finger, handed the phone back.
Poppy looked down at the screen and the air stuck in her throat. Familiar black and white marble floor tiles zigzagged between the boxed oak seating towards an altar, above which hung the painting. She blinked, and for a second saw the body stretched out on the chapel floor, his bloody wings, his eyes fixed on the angel towering over him, arm drawn back ready to drive the spear through his chest. It would have been the last thing the guy had seen.
For a second she saw eyes, staring down at her, so full of hate and anger…
She blinked and they were gone. Nausea hit her so suddenly she gasped. The phone slipped from her fingers and clunked onto the table just as the lead singer of Slade screeched out of the pub’s speakers: ‘It’s Christmas!’
‘Are you OK? Poppy?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘You didn’t see the painting, did you?’ Michael asked, grabbing her hand.
She shook her head. With his free hand, he took back his phone and shoved it in his pocket.
‘Poppy—’
‘—I need another drink,’ she said, tugging her hand out of his and shoving her own phone back in her pocket. Michael didn’t move. He just watched her for a moment. She pulled out her best I’m completely normal smile. ‘What?’
‘Cider?’
‘Yeah.’ She managed to keep the smile in place until he was halfway to the bar, then she slumped back in her seat and rubbed the ache in her forehead. What the hell was happening with her head? Maybe it was shock…teamed with an overactive imagination. It didn’t mean anything.
She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t noticed the painting. Of course the police would have seen it. And Dad. But why would someone re-enact a painting like that? And why reverse the symbolism so that the angel had ended up dead on the floor? Surely the killer didn’t think he was the devil?
A pint of cider appeared in front of her. She took hold of it and smiled up at Michael. ‘Thanks.’
He plonked his own pint onto the table and slouched down on the stool. ‘Change of subject?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘I think that would be good.’
‘Excellent,’ Michael twisted his glass, creating smudged wet circle patterns on the dark varnish of the table. ‘Because I have one in mind.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘I have some questions about the contents of your backpack.’ He looked up at her and grinned.
‘What?’ It took a second for Poppy’s brain to switch tracks. Her heart thudded in her chest.
Michael straightened up and pointed a finger at her. ‘Ah ha!’ He grinned. ‘So you know what I’m talking about. Where the hell did you get them?’
Poppy’s cheeks burned so hot there was a possibility she’d melt all the snow in Cambridgeshire. There were several things in her bag she wasn’t keen for him to see. Which one of them was he talking about? ‘I’m not telling you.’
Michael bit his lip, in a pathetic attempt to hide the big stupid grin on his face. ‘Did you go into a shop and buy them? Because I’d really like to have seen that.’
Bugger! He’d found the condoms. Her cheeks flared hotter. ‘No, I didn’t!’
He arched an eyebrow. ‘If you don’t tell me, my imagination will run wild.’
She sighed. It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER NINE
‘Poppy!’
Just as she was about to step into the road a hand hooked around Poppy’s elbow and yanked her to a stop. She staggered back into Michael’s arms as a blur of light and metal whizzed by. ‘Oops. Sorry!’ she called to the cursing cyclist who just about managed to stay upright after having to swerve around her. ‘What kind of nutter cycles in snow?’
Michael’s arm slid around her and he grinned. ‘We should get you a sign: dangerous when drunk.’
What? ‘I’m not drunk. This isn’t drunk.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘This is…tipsy.’
Michael stepped in front of her. He raised an eyebrow and nodded slowly. It was the expression he gave her when he was trying to appease her while making it quite clear that he thought she was off her rocker.
She opened her mouth, ready to give a verbal beating, when something caught her eye. Two lines of choristers were weaving their way down the street towards the entrance to King’s College, dispersing tourists and students in their midst. With their ruffled white collars, red cassocks and black cloaks, the kids looked like a regiment of angels trooping through the snow. Either that or the cast of Harry Potter.
‘They’re so cute! Look how little that one is,’ she said, watching a little blond-haired kid with a solemn expression. ‘I just want to hang him on a Christmas tree.’
Michael smiled and shook his head at her. ‘I think that might get you into trouble.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Must be time for evensong. We could go if you like?’
‘Hmm. Go to church…go to church…’ she mused.
Sitting through a church service wasn’t something she would normally be interested in, but she was a little curious. She wanted to know what Dad saw in the damp stone buildings, dreary hymns and long lists of thou shalt nots.
On the other hand, if they went back to their rooms they could have another bash at breaking a commandment or two. Her stomach tensed and her heart fluttered at the thought.
‘Poppy? Hello, Earth to Poppy?’
‘Hmm?’ She realised that she was gripping Michael’s arm like she was holding onto the hull of the Titanic.
He brushed the hair back from her face. ‘What was all
that about?’
‘Nothing. I was just thinking.’
‘About what?’
‘About…fracking.’ Fracking?! That’s all she could come up with. She really must be drunk.
‘Fracking? As in, drilling for shale gas?’ His eyes narrowed ever so slightly and she felt his muscles tense beneath her fingers. ‘I see.’
‘It’s an important issue.’
His gaze caught hers. His expression was deadly serious. ‘I agree.’
‘I mean, no one knows what effect it’ll have on the environment. They could just go and frack away and although it might be good in the short term, it could have disastrous consequences. I mean what if something went wrong? We’d have to live with that. For a long…time.’
Michael nodded slowly. ‘That’s what you’re worried about? Consequences?’
‘Well, yeah.’
He took a deep breath and hugged her closer. ‘I get that. You think maybe we should wait, until more…precautions have been put in place?’
‘Yeah. I don’t know. I really want to—’
‘—If you say frack I am going to lose it,’ he said, grinning.
She snorted out a laugh and focused on untangling his scarf. ‘I admit, the metaphor’s been stretched about as far as it’ll go.’
‘I’d say so.’ He lowered his lips to hers, kissed her gently ‘So…do you think we should use real words now?’
She glanced up at him from under her eyelashes, wishing her cheeks weren’t about to go supernova. ‘You mean the S. E. X. word?’
He smiled. ‘I think we’re past spelling it out.’
‘Michael?’
Michael’s arms fell away from her and he took a quick step back like he’d been caught stealing alcohol from his dad’s drinks cabinet. ‘Professor Madigan, hello.’
Standing next to them was a woman drowned by a woollen hat, cloak-like black coat and a scarf the same colours as the one Dad had lent Poppy.
‘Umm – this is Poppy, my girlfriend.’
The woman’s gaze shifted to Poppy. Her eyes widened for a second before a bright smile lit up her face. ‘You’re Jim’s daughter.’