by Nicholas Lim
“Where did Lizzie live?”
“Here.”
“Where?”
“On the beach. She had a spot under the pier.”
Garrett put her shoes back on and stood up.
“Can you show me?”
Jimmy polished his eyebrows. Garrett stood next to him on a sloping floor of pebbles beneath the Palace Pier. Shafts of sunlight divided the shadows. There was rubbish everywhere – discarded tin cans, cigarette packets, plastic food cartons, yellowed strands of toilet paper, driftwood. At the bottom of the beach the sea heaved. Jimmy watched as Garrett studied the ground.
“Looks like they’re all out for the day.”
“Lizzie had the top spot, with Chris.”
“Chris? Her boyfriend?”
“Sort of.”
Above their heads the wooden planks of the walkway rumbled with the footsteps of passing walkers.
“Do you know him?”
“Everyone knows Chrissy.”
“I'd like to talk to him.”
“Hotdog Harry told me he left this morning, for Glastonbury. Jade must have gone with him.”
Garrett turned away. She picked a path over the stones, working upward. Reaching the top of the dune under the walkway she paused for breath. Here and there she could see black circles marking fireplaces. Pebbles rattled behind her.
“You said his name was Chris. Chris who?”
“Chris. Christmas. That’s what we have to call him now. Used to be called Tarin. He’s gone to the festival. Think he’s after some natural healing. He and Jade’ve been ill. Bad sweats.”
A pattern shivered, like the shift of kaleidoscope mirrors, as it formed in Garrett's mind. “Christmas?”
“Yeah. Tough guy. A bit crazy.”
Garrett turned and walked off towards the open beach, pulling out her phone.
“Hey! Hey!”
Garrett continued her sliding walk across the pebbles, chased by Jimmy's cry.
“You won’t find him now. Not in Glastonbury.”
***
“You didn't mean Christmas time did you?”
Garrett stood at the door of a garage in the Zoo Crew compound. She had skipped gears and left three millimetres of tyre on the road up from the coast. Her calls ahead had got only an answering machine.
Cherry knelt on the concrete floor in front of a disassembled motorbike. Beside her Garrett could see a plastic lighter, three Tuberculin syringes, cotton buds and white tablets on a folded slip of paper. At Garrett’s words Cherry looked up. She blinked sweat out of her eyes, “Hello doc.”
“You said when Spyder was at the beach he was on good form.”
Cherry packed up her things into a small hip pouch, zipped it and stood up. “So?”
“Then you said Better than Christmas.”
“Yeah?”
Fly wandered into the back of the garage.
Cherry closed her eyes on Garrett, as if on an argument she had finished with. “No. Spy’s mate. Christmas. Used to be called Tarin.”
Fly came to stand beside Cherry. “What's this?”
Garrett took out her notebook. “Christmas is a person.”
Fly nodded. “The tattooist?”
“Yes. Our missing persons ‘Lizzie’ also knew this Christmas; she was his previous girlfriend.” Garrett raised her notebook. “And the last person to die, Fiona Grant, also knew him; she met a traveller called Chris at Sundance. I've spoken to one of her colleagues and she confirmed Chris was short for Christmas.” Cherry stared at Garrett’s raised notebook. “The common link isn’t a beach. It’s a person. All the people who died knew Christmas. He's the real connection. I need to know about Christmas and Spyder.”
Fly frowned down at the young girl. “Cherry, you must talk to the doc.”
“Christmas–” Cherry began then stopped. She looked horrified. “He gave Spy a tattoo.”
“The Asari tattoo?”
Cherry nodded.
“Christmas is a member of Asari, isn’t he?” Garrett demanded.
“Yes.”
Garrett had a sudden image of Jason sitting in a cell, cross-legged on concrete, sweating, alone. He hasn’t called. Is he okay? She let her fingernails dig into the flesh of her palms. The pain balanced the fear, calmed her a little. Malaria isn’t contagious.
“Her son is in Asari,” Cherry said quietly.
“When did Christmas give Spyder the tattoo?”
“About a week ago. I remember Christmas was ill. He was still working but he had a fever.”
“I need to speak to him,” Garrett said.
“Isn't he at the beach?” Cherry asked.
“He left this morning. For Glastonbury festival. I talked to Brighton police. They know him. He violated his last parole.” Garrett shook her head in frustration. “I was put in touch with a sergeant in Somerset CID but he warned me that if they made a public announcement a traveller like Christmas would just disappear. They are organising a search but they've four hundred officers in a crowd of two hundred thousand.”
“The cops won’t find him,” Fly said.
“But I must. Somehow he is connected to this disease. I think he is the index case for this outbreak. I need to find him. Fast!”
Cherry looked at Fly. “No one knows Glasto better than you do. You can walk it blind. Zoo Crew helped build the site. If he's there, you can find him.”
Garrett faced Fly. “Is that true?”
“I can tell you, he’ll be at Café Sanctuaire, maybe in the Asari circle or the Tipi field,” Fly shrugged then added, “If he’s dealing, a few other places. For sleep, he’ll stay with whoever offers.”
Fly watched Garrett steadily. “You've not told us everything.”
Garrett opened her mouth to protest then stopped. She struggled to rid herself of the image of Jason alone.
“Is there some danger to my crew?” His eyes had the steady regard of a hunting animal.
The question caught Garrett by surprise. A clock ticked somewhere in her mind. She had to find the index case. She suspected Cherry was right: for that she needed Fly. Her reasons overrode his fears.
“No.”
Her reply was simple and straight. But as she stood her ground and faced Fly her shoulders dropped.
“I don't know. I’ve seen what this disease can do. It’s terrible.” The image of a cellular mine, a spiky ball of protoplasm, superimposed on her vision. Her voice strengthened. “And we don’t understand what’s going on. The lab investigation is incomplete.” She stopped, drew a deeper breath and met Fly’s eyes.
“Is there a danger to you if you go? Maybe.”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I must find this man Christmas. He is involved with transmission, deliberately or unconsciously, I don't know how. I need to talk to him. Run tests. We must understand what’s happening.”
Something in Fly’s face hardened. He turned on his heel and left the garage. Cherry stood up. She hugged her empty waist with both hands then ran after him. “Fly!”
Garrett gazed at the open door.
Damn it.
She was angry with herself. She had made a mistake. And there was something else. She held herself still until she understood. Spyder and Christmas: there were two connections with Asari now.
Inside her car the steering wheel was at cooking heat. She took out her phone. She scrolled down to Jason’s number. She stared at the call button and breathed in a lungful of stale heated air. They had an agreement. But she had reason to believe he might be in danger, he might need to be warned!
She lowered the handset. Was she over-worrying? Maybe. But if she was, he could dismiss her worries. She would apologise. That would be that. What harm could come of a phone call? She thought of the tattoo she had seen on Spyder's shoulder, and the scorched ring of stones under the Palace pier, and the opened skull vault. Two connections. She had no choice. She pressed the call button.
Dialling... dialling... dialling...
“You have reached
the voicemail of... Skyler. Please leave a message after the tone.”
“Jas… Skyler, it's me. Would you call me when you get this message? Something's come up I need to talk to you about. It's Mum. Sunday. Evening. About seven o'clock.”
Garrett broke the connection. She tried to control her breathing. What would he do when he got the message? What if he didn't?
Outside, the revving of motors could be heard, a growing buzzing, like the waking of bees. Glastonbury. She tore a page searching her notebook for the number of the Somerset police.
A shadow fell across Garrett's lowered head. She looked up. Fly stood outlined against the sun. Behind him, two bikers and a white Land Rover drove out of the compound gates. Garrett wound down her window and was surprised by cool wind.
“Wake up Christine!” Fly leaned down into the window. “If we're going to find Christmas before the festival ends, we'd better be off.” Behind him, a man clambered up onto the tilting Land Rover roof rack. “Getting on site Sunday night at Glasto won’t be quick.”
Fly grinned at her and threw back his head. His roar, a rallying, parade-ground shout, echoed off the compound wall.
“All aboard the Skylaaaaaaaark!!!”
Chapter 21
“Goswami, this doctor has been seen at Café Sanctuaire. She’s been asking after Christmas. Hello? Hello?”
Kirtananda bent his head and pressed a mobile hard against his ear. Zakiya stood next to him, retying his orange robe; with his shaven scalp he looked like a bloody Krishna. Above his head, Kirtananda could see the tops of marquee tents, music stages, circus big tops and the swinging propeller of a seventy-foot high silver wind turbine.
“Hello?”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know. Our people are asking. They have the information.” In one hand, Kirtananda held a crumpled printout.
“You will find her, before she finds Christmas.”
“Yes Gurusri-ji.” An arrhythmia of interfering drum beats vibrated in Kirtananda’s chest from surrounding sound stages. He watched the slow downward sweep of the propeller blade. “What shall we do when we find her?”
“Kill her.”
The fields glowed blue, orange, white, green in a thousand prismatic points. At night, peering down through the glass footwell of a police helicopter, the nine-hundred-acre site of the Glastonbury festival appeared to Garrett like some luminescent alien cell, complex, prokaryotic.
“You’ve got your Green Fields – Healing Field, Craft Field, Avalon, Green Futures. That brown line through the middle is Muddy Lane – best avoided. Off to the right is the Area of Lost Vagueness. Ditto.”
Her tour guide was Chief Inspector Hembry – a stocky Somerset man with a grey moustache, damp hands and dry speech. His rolling rural lilt was a constant Protestant complaint in Garrett’s ear.
“And top of hill – there – you've got your King’s Meadow. Has a Neolithic stone circle that’s about fifteen year old.”
They had arrived at Glastonbury in the early evening after three hours in traffic. The first policeman hadn’t heard of no search for no one. Eventually Hembry had explained that instructions had been delayed. He had offered she join one of their reconnaissance flights.
Five minutes back on the ground, Garrett realized Cherry had been right. Fly’s group knew the festival better than any police squad, from the inside, as crew not guards. She searched with Fly, learning the site as she shuffled in his footsteps. He concentrated on the tented maze of cooperatives, communes and collectives that made up the higher fields – the ‘Green Fields’ scorned by Hembry – where he said Christmas was most likely to be found.
Garrett left voice messages for the Porton team. It was now five am and the eastern edge of the horizon was beginning to lighten. Competing light shows lit the sky. Garrett and Fly stood shoulder to shoulder, faced opposite ways, at a crossroads near the main music stages.
Maybe he left,” Cherry said. She squatted on the ground beside them.
Fly turned to speak to Garrett. His words were drowned out by punk blasts from bagpipes played by a passing tartan busker with matching kilt and Mohican. Fly shouted again through his hands.
“We should check Café Sanctuaire again.”
Garrett heard the strung note in his voice.
“Look, why don’t you take a break? I’ll go.”
Fly puffed out his cheeks then raised eyebrows in agreement.
Cherry nodded at Garrett and they stepped together onto a crowded metal walkway heading uphill. Garrett pulled out her mobile and shook the device repeatedly, as if readying a thermometer. Despite the encouragement it showed five dead signal bars. Coverage had been intermittent all night and out for the last two hours.
There was a snarl-up around the cash machines approaching the Unfair Ground. They turned off into the Healing Field but their progress through the busy market was still slow. Customers crowded the stalls of amulets, homeopathic remedies, dream catchers, faith healers and potions. They stopped frequently to ask for news.
“Hello Bryony, any luck?”
“Hi Cherry! You still looking for Chris? Sorry love.”
Garrett found herself staring down at a table covered in necklaces. A knotted rope strung with pretty purple gems caught her eye.
“Genuine quartz.” The stall owner smiled. She was a walking advert for her own stock, encrusted with necklaces, rings and bracelets like an old wreck in a coral reef. “They're healing stones. Want to know how they work?”
Garrett backed away. “No thank you.”
“Won’t hurt you love.”
Garrett found herself trapped between trestle tables.
“It’s not complicated. You don’t have to be a doctor or anything. And it’s worked like a charm on my arthritis. Just boil the nine crystals for nine minutes, then drink the water for nine days.”
Garrett escaped between a gap in the tables. She searched the crowds for Cherry, chased by the calls of the medieval medicine seller. Garrett thought of the pathogen she pursued. That mindless killer would not respect hopes pinned on boiled crystals. As she pushed through the long queues around the Healing Field stalls, the popularity of the place puzzled and saddened her. Perhaps centuries ago such magical theories were the best possible, the first sciences, a crude beginning; or perhaps, without a modern understanding, it made sense to turn to the subjective, to the Romantic dream, and hope the world would shape itself to will and wish. But now, today, why choose what had become daydreaming? Why turn away from the only objectivity that could be achieved, interrogating together what was real? Fear hollowed her stomach. Was Jason sitting on the floor of some cell, sweating in silence, out of reach of hospitals, protected only by a string of stones, determined faith would cure? Where was he? Was he alright?
Garrett found Cherry perched on a bale of straw, a thick black slice of cake in her hand. Sitting with her was a woman with purple hair holding a clipboard.
“Antonia is the Healing Field site manager. She’s going to do some asking for us.”
Garrett nodded. “I’m going on ahead to the Café.”
Café Sanctuaire was just beyond the Craft Field. Garrett weaved her way between camps of bakers, potters, weavers and blacksmiths. No-one she asked had seen the tattooist. It was the last night of the festival. Fires were dying down; many stall-holders were packing up, eager to get off-site early. Garrett’s sense of urgency increased – if she didn’t find Christmas before he left, she sensed she would lose his trail.
The sky above the ridge on the eastern horizon was beginning to lighten. Garrett cut through a tangle of tents to avoid a crowd gathered around two men fighting on stilts. She was confronted by tall sculpture, a giant fly made of discarded wellington boots and bottles. Garrett walked straight under it, ducking between jointed plastic legs to reach a walkway.
She paused to get her bearings. Beside the metalled track stood a large tented stall. White dhotis and collarless shirts hung for sale on a rail. A sign advertised
‘Khadi’ above a picture of Gandhi at his charkha. With Ghandi’s picture came an old smell, of warm monsoon rain, and the memory of long weeks trapped indoors. Garrett remembered Gandhi’s refusal of penicillin to his dying wife, his insistence on Ganges water and faith. She felt the return of a terrible anxiousness touched by anger.
A woman sat at a spinning wheel in front of the tent. Her feet worked paddles as her hands paid out twine in movements of measured synchrony. She paused to beckon Garrett over. Garrett recognised her as one of Cherry’s friends.
“Namaaste.” The woman clasped hands in front of her chest in the Añjali Mudrā. “Did you see Christmas?”
“No–” Garrett stepped closer, “–you’ve seen him?”
“About an hour ago. I tried to speak to him but he was in a hurry.”
“Where was he going?”
The woman gestured uphill. Garrett called out thanks over her shoulder.
He had been seen! Garrett spent an hour asking at every tent in a wide radius around the weaver’s stall but there were no other sightings. Frustrated and tired, she headed over to Café Sanctuaire.
A line of pennants in front of a tall ex-Army marquee advertised Veggie Vibes and Third Eye Meditation. When they had arrived, Cherry had explained that Café Sanctuaire shared the pitch with Asari. But no-one from the Valley had turned up all festival. Cherry had wrinkled her nose. “It’s odd, even for them. There’s been no word. No call, no email, nothing. The Caff’re worried they’ll have to pay for the whole pitch.”
There were half-a-dozen people inside the tent. No-one had seen the tattooist.
A band was practising together on a makeshift stage at the end of the tent. Garrett sat down on a damp carpet near the central fire, reluctant to leave a place linked to Christmas.
Songs started and stopped. The musicians were a strange mix – Flamenco guitarist, Irish drummer, didjeridu player, and two Welsh harmony singers. Garrett’s sharp cataloguing ear caught at fragments of sevillanas, reels, baijans and glees. Smudged colours shaded the smoky air, agitated by a home-made light show. As her eyes adjusted, a young man materialised out of the carpet on the other side of the fire. He sat cross-legged, cowled by a red, green and yellow shawl. Only his face showed, eyes closed. Beside him a large cardboard sign was propped against a backpack like a hitchhiker’s ad. A quote was visible below the top edge. “You see many stars in the sky at night, but not when the sun rises. Can you therefore say that there are no stars in the heaven during the day? O man, because you cannot find God in the days of your ignorance, say not that there is no God.” Sri Ramakrishna.