by Kim M Watt
“Right,” Collins said, as DI Adams pinched the bridge of her nose and wondered what normal W.I.s got up to of an evening. “At any point did you consider calling us?”
“I did, but then I got distracted. I’m sorry. I did mean to.” She waved at the house. “But we think Alice is in there. And there was fighting!”
“Fighting?” DI Adams asked.
“Yes, the window broke and everything.” Miriam shook the cricket bat impatiently. “Go on! We’ve got this.”
DI Adams raised her eyebrows and looked at Collins, who shrugged. “They do seem to kind of be on top of things.”
DI Adams watched a man struggle to get what looked very much like a not-at-all-legal taser out of his belt, at which point Mortimer shrieked and hit him so hard with his tail the man face-planted into a large clump of nettles, the weapon flying into the long grass.
“I told you!” Mortimer shouted, to no one in particular. “I told you tasers were a problem!”
DI Adams wondered where Beaufort was, but between the sleek purple dragon and Mortimer, things did seem to be under a rough sort of control. “Alright,” she said. “So long as no one gets eaten.”
“We’re not planning on it,” Miriam said.
DI Adams thought that seemed less than reassuring, but she headed for the gate at a jog, trying not to trip on panicked dogs or excited dragons. Collins followed her, Dandy loping along with them at a more manageable size.
“Be careful!” Miriam shouted.
They were at the gate before a man scrambled to his feet. He’d been hiding among some fallen stone, and as he lunged for DI Adams, Dandy stepped forward with a growl. DI Adams grabbed the dandy, pushing him back.
“Ervin?”
“DI Adams. I have, um, questions.” He waved at the field as a dog ran yelping through the gate, chased by Gilbert, who was shouting, “I’m a pacifist, really, but you were trying to eat my friends!”
DI Adams nodded. “I imagine you do. I have a colleague called Thompson who’ll come talk to you in just a moment. Stay put.”
They left the journalist videoing the melee and ran across the yard, pushing through the gate to the house without checking for ambush. If anyone was in there with a gun, they’d had plenty of time to take shots at them as they crossed the yard. DI Adams knocked hard and called out, “Police! Open up!” as Collins ran around to the back door.
No one replied, and after a moment she tried the handle. It was open, and she let herself in, pausing on the threshold as she peered into a cool, dark hallway. She flicked the lights on, and called out again, “Police! Anyone here?”
“In the kitchen, Detective Inspector,” came back to her, and she frowned.
“Alice?”
“Come in, dear.”
The living room was empty and silent to one side as she slipped down the hall, Dandy panting behind her and shouts drifting in from outside. The dining room was a still life of table and chairs and sideboard drawn in shadows, and stairs wound up into darkness at the end of the hall. Light washed out of one door, and DI Adams followed it, finding Alice and Lily sitting at a scarred wooden table with a quart bottle of cheap whisky between them and chipped mugs in their hands. DI Collins was just letting himself in the back door, looking uneasy.
“Hello, inspectors,” Alice said. “This is Lily Dean.”
“Hello,” Lily said. Both women looked a little pink, as if they’d just been working very hard at something.
“Hello,” DI Adams said. “Is everything alright here, Alice?”
“Quite,” Alice said. “Lily has had the misfortune to be married to a very unpleasant man, who was up to many awful things, but that’s alright now.”
“It is?” DI Adams asked. “You vanished from your house, your phone disappeared somewhere in the village square, and now you’re having happy hour in a farmhouse while the W.I. does battle with some very unsavoury sorts out there.”
Alice nodded. “I do apologise for worrying anyone. But I have it on good authority that the situation outside is in hand.”
DI Collins nodded at Alice’s wrists. “You look like you’ve been wearing your bracelets too tight.”
Alice took a sip from her mug. “I’m quite fine. We were just waiting for the commotion to die down.”
“Where’s this unpleasant man now, then?” Collins asked.
“Gone, I’m afraid,” Lily said.
“Gone where?”
“Well, we were very lucky just to escape,” Lily said, her eyes wide. “I’m afraid we didn’t see where he went, exactly.”
“So he ran?” DI Adams asked.
“Well, we couldn’t exactly have held him,” Alice said. “I mean, it was just us.” She and Lily smiled at each other, the same tidy little smile, then smiled at the inspectors.
It was most unnerving.
26
Mortimer
The sun was high and hot, one of those summer days where it seems winter might never come, when Dales villages bask under a heat haze and the grey of the high fells is blurred and muted with the fuzz of flowering heather. Birds sang in a way that suggested they were only doing it because it was expected, and it was really far too hot for such things. Sheep clustered under trees and cats slept in shady spots, and Toot Hansell’s waterways were full of people paddling hot feet and children in swimsuits pretending it was the Amazon. Even the bees seemed sleepy, and as Mortimer watched Dandy roll over to offer his belly to the sun, he was almost tempted to do the same. It looked awfully comfortable, and possibly quite cooling.
But it also looked very undignified, and probably only suited for younger dragons, so he slurped homemade elderflower cordial and sparkling water from the jar Miriam had given him, snout turning lilac at the sound. “Sorry,” he said, although no one was paying attention. He looked sideways at Dandy. The thing looked like it was grinning at him.
DI Adams leaned back in her chair, arms folded across her chest and legs crossed at the ankles. She’d actually taken her suit jacket off and rolled her sleeves up, and it made her almost unfamiliar. “Seeing much of Lily, Alice?”
Alice nodded, taking her own sip of elderflower. “Not a lot, but I did speak to her the other day. She has a lot to do now her husband’s gone.”
“Turned out he had some pretty dodgy dealings.”
“So I gather.” Alice offered DI Collins a plate of round biscuits with little, heart-shaped holes in their middles where red jam shone through. “Jammy Dodger, Colin?”
“Ooh, please.” He took two, setting the spare one on the side of his plate, where Mortimer eyed it hopefully.
“We’d have been able to put him away for a long time if we’d got hold of him,” DI Adams said. “Got some justice for all those people he ripped off.”
“All those very rich people who tried to buy a bit of the national park and turn it into their very own gated estate?” Alice asked.
“And all the people who weren’t very rich, but thought he was building them good quality condos in Turkey and Spain.”
Alice offered the plate to the inspector. “I’m sure a sort of poetic justice will catch up with him. One can’t get away with such things forever.”
DI Adams started to shake her head, then sighed and took a biscuit. “I don’t really deal in poetic justice.”
“Very underrated, poetic justice,” Beaufort said. “It’s always much more fitting.”
“Hit and miss, though,” Collins said. “It would’ve been nice to be sure he got what was coming to him.”
“Oh, I’m sure he will,” Alice said.
Mortimer flopped onto his belly, letting the soft grass cool him, and considered poetic justice. Would it be poetic justice to be pushed out of the farmhouse, having been beaten half-unconscious by two furious ladies of a certain age, only to be faced with a relatively large, very displeased dragon? To have that dragon twine his talons into the back of your clothes as you very rapidly gained terrified awareness that this was real, and to be snatched into
the air and borne away by said dragon? Or was it something else? Mortimer wasn’t quite sure what exactly had happened at the farmhouse, as he’d been instructed to make sure none of the unpleasant men or dogs were eaten, or any of the buildings burned down, and Beaufort had been oddly reticent about things. But he knew the unpleasant husband had been dealt with, whatever that meant. He imagined it had involved a terrifying ride from a certain angry dragon to a very remote tarn and the loss of footwear, and probably a mark left that instructed pixies, gnomes, and other mischief-makers to have at it. He wasn’t sure if it was poetic, but it did seem fitting, and Alice looked happy enough, smiling at Miriam as she padded barefoot down the garden to place a plate of egg salad sandwiches on the table.
“How perfect, Miriam!”
“It’s too hot to cook,” Miriam announced, sitting down and swirling her skirt around her legs to cool them.
“I still have mixed feelings about eggs,” Gilbert said. “Do the chickens want their eggs to be eaten?”
“Do you want a clip around the ear?” Amelia asked, and Thompson snorted. He was sprawled on his side under some marigolds, his eyes half-closed in the sun.
“I like her.”
“So what will your friend Lily do now?” Beaufort asked, helping himself to a sandwich.
“She wasn’t involved with that Derrick’s scam at all. She was in the council just to help smooth things over for the actual project.”
“She must have known about it,” DI Adams muttered. “I can’t believe we couldn’t connect her at all.”
“Maybe she did know, at some level. But sometimes we look the other way when it comes to those we love,” Alice said. “Anyway, she’s taken on the company and is going to redirect everything into sustainable housing.”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” Miriam said. “What a wonderful idea!”
DI Adams looked like she was rather less impressed, and took a sandwich. “I’ll be keeping an eye out for the unpleasant husband.”
“Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about him,” Alice said.
Collins waved a sandwich and said, “Very tasty, Auntie Miriam.”
“Thank you, dear.” Miriam passed a sandwich to Mortimer, who took it with a happy sigh. This was more like it. Running around fields dodging journalists and chasing men and dogs might be more dragonish, but he wasn’t at all sure it was his sort of thing at all.
“And what of our journalist?” Beaufort asked, his thoughts evidently running along similar lines. “Was he … sorted out?”
“That sounds so sinister,” Miriam said with a shudder.
“It’d be more sinister if he hadn’t been sorted out,” Thompson said. “I got hold of him once the dragons left, then got that Jasmine to clear up his phone. She’d be quite nice if she didn’t have that horrible dog, you know.”
There was a general mutter of agreement regarding the dog, who had bitten Amelia in the excitement. Amelia was still pointing out how restrained she had been not to bite it back.
“So there’s no evidence on it at all?” Alice asked. “Don’t they back up automatically or something?”
“Jasmine said she got it all,” Miriam said. “She’s very good with that sort of thing.”
“And he won’t remember anything?” DI Collins asked. “Like you gave him amnesia?”
“More like I hypnotised him,” the cat said, inspecting one paw lazily. There was a pot of caviar overturned next to him. He’d taken one sniff and batted it away, declaring it disgusting. “He remembers it all, just minus dragons.”
“That’s handy.”
“Yeah, well. I can’t keep cleaning his memory every few months. The brain can only take so much.”
“This isn’t going to keep happening every few months,” DI Adams said. “Is it?”
“We don’t do it deliberately,” Beaufort said.
DI Collins pointed at Gilbert, who grinned nervously. “Why were there a load of dragons with piercings running around shouting down with the humans when we came out of the house?”
“Why’re you looking at me?”
“Because you’re a freak,” Amelia said. “Also, that was your fault.”
“No, I mean, I don’t agree with that view.”
“It was your fault, lad,” Beaufort said. “What I can’t figure is how you got to the mount so quickly without flying. You weren’t missing for that long before everyone arrived.”
“Isobel was already at the lay-by,” Gilbert admitted. “She was keeping an eye on the farms in case they started knocking down trees or tearing up the land, and I told her we might need some backup.”
“And got Lord Walter,” Mortimer said. “And Rockford!”
“She just got a bit overexcited.”
“Well, I suppose it could have been handy to have dragons in the case of werewolves,” Collins said.
“Good point,” DI Adams said, and nodded at Thompson. “Where were your werewolves?”
The cat shrugged. “Hey, it was a reasonable assumption. Blocking charm on the house, slaughtered livestock – it sounded like werewolves.”
“And instead it was …?” Beaufort asked. He had a dandelion stuck in his teeth, and Mortimer examined his sandwich. No, the High Lord must have eaten it separately.
Thompson huffed. “Brownies.”
“Brownies,” Collins said. “Like, chocolate cake?”
“Oh my gods. Seriously. No.”
“A brownie is a house spirit,” Alice said.
“Yes. I’m glad someone around here pays attention to the world of the Folk rather than just their stomachs.”
“Less than a year ago, I thought Folk was just a music style,” Collins said. “Bear with me.”
The cat sniffed. “Well, brownies put blocking spells on their houses to stop other Folk encroaching on their territory. They hate pixies – I mean, everyone does, really – and they don’t want to share with gnomes.”
“So what about the slaughtered livestock?” Miriam asked. “They couldn’t have just set the dogs on them, could they?”
DI Adams nodded. “Looks like it’s exactly what happened. We were able to recover emails and contacts from Derrick Dean’s phone. He basically hired in a pretty unpleasant security firm. They poisoned the water, set the dogs on the sheep, and stole the rest of the livestock. Put gas through the house to knock the family out so no one heard a thing. We’ve no idea what happened to the sheep – sold, I suppose. We’re still running the firm down. The men are completely uncooperative – say we drugged them and caused hallucinations, and keep threatening to sue us. Not that they’d get anywhere, and lawyers aren’t exactly lining up to represent them.”
Mortimer watched Miriam’s face, seeing the twitch down in the corners of her mouth. It was always so much easier when it wasn’t your kind. It was awful to be confronted with what your own people were capable of, to know that they were no different from you and yet chose to do such awful things. He sat up and put a paw on her knee, and she smiled at him.
“And all the machines and so on?” Beaufort asked.
“Ah, now that was interesting,” Collins said. “What you thought were drums of diesel were actually hazardous waste. So while he was taking all this money from investors for the land he was supposedly preparing for them, he was also collecting waste from dodgy companies. They were paying him a ridiculous amount of money to dispose of it. I imagine he was just going to bury the lot behind the farm.”
“In that trench,” DI Adams added.
“Trench?” Alice said mildly.
“There was a trench. Just one. Not terribly big. Very fresh.”
“How odd.”
DI Adams gave an exasperated sigh. “What happened to the husband?”
“I really have no idea.”
“I don’t—”
“We’re not digging trenches up,” DI Collins said. There was silence for a moment, while DI Adams muttered something under her breath about untrustworthy older women and Alice cut a Jammy Dodger in
two, smiling to herself slightly. Mortimer wondered if things hadn’t happened quite the way he imagined, and found he didn’t really want to know the answer.
“What about the other ones?” Amelia asked. “The art ones?” Everyone looked at her, and she snorted impatiently. “You know, the ones in the fields.”
“Oh, they were very curious,” Beaufort said.
“Ah,” DI Adams said. “I know. They were for photos.”
“Photos?” the dragons asked together.
“Yes. They take pretty photos and put them in a brochure so the actually building process looks very tidy and romantic.”
“Well, that’s just dishonest,” Mortimer said.
“Humans.” Amelia shook her head and took another sandwich.
“Of course, they couldn’t have actually done much digging, as someone had sabotaged most of the machines.” Collins looked pointedly at Miriam, and she flushed, jamming her sun hat down over her ears more firmly.
“We didn’t touch them! We didn’t have time!”
“You were all carrying garden shears and hoes and things, sneaking about the place, and you expect me to believe no one touched the machines.” He shook his head. “My mum was there! I know what she and her sidekicks are like.”
“They didn’t touch them,” Miriam insisted. “We were all attacked by the dogs before we got there!”
“Well, we’ll just go with that story, then,” Collins said. “I have no desire to arrest anyone for vandalism to illegal machinery, anyway.”
Mortimer looked at Gilbert. He was examining a flower with great interest, an anxious grey flush creeping up his neck. Amelia had sat up and was staring at him fixedly, half a sandwich still in one paw. “You brat,” she said, loudly enough that everyone looked at her.
“What?” Gilbert said in a small voice, still not looking away from the flowers.
“You didn’t just wait for Isobel to bring the others! You did it!”
“Oh dear,” Beaufort said, and had a gulp of elderflower. “Really?”
“Someone had to do something! What if they had been coming for the woods? What if–—”