by Kim M Watt
“I’m quite interested in the technique,” the man said. “I’m a bit of an artisan myself.”
Mortimer and Beaufort exchanged uneasy glances. The man’s hungry scent had deepened. Dragons can catch the whiff of emotions the way dogs can physical smells, and this one was ugly.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that,” Alice said, not moving. “He’s a very private individual.”
Mortimer rather wished he was somewhere more private right now.
The man put his hands on the counter, leaning forward again as if he wanted to grab Alice and drag her out. “I can keep a secret,” he said, and his eyes went to the dragons. Mortimer stared back at him in horror, not sure if the man could actually see him, or if he was just looking in their direction by chance.
For a moment no one moved, then Alice stepped deliberately in front of the dragons and leaned over the counter until her forehead almost touched the man’s. He pulled back in surprise, and she said, “If one shares a secret, it’s no longer much of a secret, is it?”
They glared at each other, and Mortimer couldn’t have said who was going to look away first, or what the man might do. Then Miriam appeared, hurrying down the rows of stalls, a bright apparition in the night.
“Oh, hello,” she said. “Are you after Gert’s cordial? Only it all sold out.”
The man glared at her. “No, of course I’m not after cordial.”
She frowned. “Well, there’s no need to be rude about it.”
“He was just leaving,” Alice said. “Weren’t you?”
“I—”
“Yeah, we’re leaving,” a new voice said, and Mortimer risked shifting a little so that he could see the marketplace better. A big man in a new jacket of the sort that’s designed to look old was coming across the cobbles, swinging a paper bag from his fingertips. “Come on, Bill. Don’t hassle the nice ladies.”
Bill grumbled something about them not being very nice, and Alice gave him a disapproving look. “I was just asking about the baubles,” he said aloud.
“It’s late. I’m sure the ladies want to go home.” The new man grabbed Bill’s arm. “Let’s go.”
Bill glared at Alice and gave a little feint like he was going to grab her. Mortimer felt a growl forming at the back of his throat, and Miriam squeaked, but Alice just raised an eyebrow and smiled. There was a moment of still, frost-speckled silence, then Bill walked away, muttering under his breath. His friend – or maybe brother, Mortimer thought. They did look quite similar, and wasn’t there a whiff of that same hungry scent? – touched a finger to his flat cap in mock salute, and followed him.
“Is – is everything okay?” Miriam asked.
“I’m sure it will be,” Alice said, and Mortimer looked at Beaufort, raising his eyebrow ridges.
The bigger dragon shrugged, but his voice was a rumble at the back of his throat when he said, “Well, then. Shall we go?”
“I think we should finish the wine and give them a head start,” Alice said. “He was a little agitated.”
And observant, Mortimer thought. He seemed terribly observant.
It didn’t take long to finish the wine, but by the time they had, the rest of the stalls were empty, some of them even broken down and taken away already. Lights still shone in the pub windows, but the marketplace was silent and still and full of the scents of Christmas. The two women and the dragons walked together across the cobbles and toward the quiet streets beyond, the dragons taking on the colours of the night. If anyone had been watching, they’d have looked like shadows in the corner of the eye, something not quite seen. Dragons aren’t invisible, but they are faint, which is quite effective when no one expects to see dragons. They were perfectly clear to Alice and Miriam, however, contented green smoke drifting from their nostrils. There had been no more sign of the men, and the extra glass of mulled wine had gone a long way to making Mortimer feel better about things.
They walked in quiet companionship, Miriam carrying the last boxes of homemade mince pies, the scent of brandy and icing sugar drifting about them in the night. The women’s breath made dragons of their own in the chill air.
They came to Alice’s house first, and Beaufort insisted on waiting until she was inside, the light rolling out of the hallway and lighting the neat path between the dormant flowerbeds.
“Satisfied?” she said.
“He was a very unpleasant man,” Beaufort said. “Can’t be too careful with these things.”
“He was just drunk. And the day I can’t handle a drunk man is the day I resign as W.I. chair.” She gave them a little finger-wave and shut the door firmly, leaving them alone in the night.
“I knew he wasn’t a customer,” Miriam said, looking around nervously.
“I rather think Alice is right about him,” Beaufort said. “I’m quite sure he’s nothing to worry about.”
Mortimer thought of the man looking straight at him in the shadows of the stall, his blue eyes sharp in the night, and shivered. The mulled wine seemed to be wearing off.
Beaufort and Mortimer left Miriam in the friendly chaos of her kitchen, minus the mince pies, which she insisted they take with them. Not that either dragon had argued particularly hard against it. They ambled together down the path that crossed the stream behind her house and snaked up through the woods beyond to a small rise, walking shoulder to shoulder, pupils wide in the night. Away from the lights of the stream-girt village, the stars hung low and heavy above the trees, and as they breasted the little hill the fields beyond the woods unwound below them, multi-coloured green and cross-stitched with stone walls.
“Beautiful, isn’t it, lad?” Beaufort asked, pausing at the top and sitting down with his tail hooked around his feet.
Mortimer looked at him curiously. The High Lord had been around to see St George murder his predecessor (it was hardly a fair fight, considering High Lord Catherine, although large by the standards of today’s Cloverly dragons, had been half the size of the daring knight’s horse and was snoozing on her back in her favourite bramble-berry patch at the time), and he’d not been a young dragon then. He’d kept the clan safe and hidden as the humans spread and the old Folk faded, had seen kings and queens rise and fall, had watched the steady march of trains and cars and planes and cities, and still those golden eyes, glazed like old pottery, saw wonder in the world. Mortimer couldn’t even begin to comprehend how he managed it. Sometimes just the thought of getting Beaufort through another winter market unnoticed was enough to start him stress-shedding, let alone imagining all those centuries protecting a whole clan. He didn’t know how the old dragon had the energy. And not only that, but being so terribly enthusiastic about everything. He sighed, and Beaufort gave him an amused look.
“Are you alright there, lad?”
“I think so.” He scratched his chin. “Do you think that man – that Bill – actually saw us?”
“I doubt it.” Beaufort tipped his head up to the stars.
“He looked like he saw us.”
“He was just looking to make trouble. Some people are like that. In all species. I don’t think we should worry about it.”
“But he was quite unpleasant to Alice,” Mortimer pointed out. “And didn’t you smell him?”
Beaufort looked back at the slow roll of land below them. “It’s no good jumping to conclusions, lad. You do worry yourself unnecessarily.”
Mortimer sighed. He supposed he did, at times. But often he was right to worry, particularly when it came to the High Lord. “I thought you might have scared him off, though. So Alice wouldn’t worry.”
“Not everyone needs saving, you know. Plenty of people are very good at saving themselves.”
“But you must be a bit worried about him. You made Alice check the house before we left.” Mortimer couldn’t shake the feeling that something about the whole encounter had been wrong. Off. As if it wasn’t an accident that Alice had been in the stall alone (or apparently so) when Bill showed up.
Beaufort�
��s lips hitched up to show yellow teeth. “There’s a difference between being able to save yourself and feeling safe.” He unfolded his wings, shaking them out with a snap. “But I’m not worried about him. He was just a man who’d had a bit too much beer. Things are good, Mortimer. Our friends are safe. Our clan is coming out of hiding again. Your trinkets are selling so well, and everyone’s smiling. People love them. You give them something to take home that makes their hearts sing.”
Mortimer nodded, then asked the question that had been rattling around in his head since the first day Beaufort had trotted up to the W.I. and managed to get himself invited in for tea. “Can this last, though, Beaufort? Us and the humans?”
“Why shouldn’t it?”
“It didn’t before. People blamed us for things. We spent centuries in hiding. Most of the clans are hiding still.”
“We’re not exactly on the national news.”
Sometimes it feels like it’s not for lack of trying, Mortimer thought, but just said, “What about the Watch, then? What if they find out we’re trading with humans? Or if something goes wrong?”
“There’s no point worrying about that until it happens. Coexistence can work, Mortimer. It’s good for everyone.”
“We can see that. But not everyone does. Not even all the Cloverlies.”
“It has to start somewhere. Why not with us?” Beaufort gave him an enormous grin, then took two lumbering strides forward and leaped, wings catching at the air and pulling him aloft, suddenly graceful against the night sky. Mortimer watched him go, torn between the High Lord’s unshakable confidence and his own heartfelt conviction that this was too simple, too perfect. That anything this good couldn’t last. Then he shook his wings out and followed the old dragon into the sky, the boxes of mince pies clutched firmly to his chest and leaking warm sweet spices across the darkness.
2
DI Adams
Detective Inspector Adams was glaring at the station coffeepot when Detective Constable James Hamilton appeared in the staffroom door, tall enough to fill it but nowhere near wide enough. She turned her glare from the hapless pot to him.
“Why does no one – no one – fill this thing up when it’s empty? Or at least switch it off? Smells like a car yard fire in here.”
“Well. Yes.” He looked more amused than worried, and she scowled at him.
“‘Oh, just go get a coffee across the road,’ everyone says. I do. I always do, but one day I would like to be able to buy a flat, and if I get all my coffee across the road, that will never happen.”
“That is a problem,” he said agreeably. “I like a nice cup of tea, myself.”
DI Adams snorted, and flicked the kettle on. “It’s not the same. But, fine. Tea it is. Want one?”
“I won’t say no. Two sugars, please.”
She doled sugar into the mugs, then leaned against the counter as they waited for the kettle to boil, rubbing her fingertips through the base of her tightly bound hair. She’d tried straightening it, but nothing took, and short hair was almost as much trouble to maintain, what with having to go for haircuts all the time. So she wrestled it into a bun every morning and put up with the headaches. She’d take it down to a number one again, but that seemed to make people nervous. Plus it was cold up here. She was sure London had never been this cold. And there had always been coffee in the station. Of course, there had also been things under the bridges that she was now reasonably sure she hadn’t imagined. There didn’t seem to be any up here. Bridges, that was. She wasn’t so sure about the rest.
“What’s going on, then, James?” she asked the detective constable.
“Right, yes. I was coming to tell you, actually. You know you said to keep an eye out for anything happening around that village with the funny name? The one where the vicar was murdered last spring? Tool Handle, or something?”
“Toot Hansell?” DI Adams asked, her back stiffening so quickly it was almost a spasm. She winced.
“Yeah, that’s the one.” James looked expectantly at the kettle as it clicked off.
“What about Toot Hansell?”
“It’s nothing huge. Just their postman’s disappeared.” He took half a step forward, and DI Adams stared at him, kettle forgotten.
“Disappeared how?”
“Gone. Poof. Done a runner, I guess.” He stretched a hand out toward the kettle, but the DI was in the way, so he dropped it again with a sigh.
“But gone how, James?” she demanded impatiently, trying to keep the unease out of her voice. The postman. That couldn’t have anything to do with the bloody Women’s Institute, could it? Well, not the W.I. exactly. More their rather unusual associates. “Details, please.”
“I don’t have the full details. It’s Skipton’s case at the moment, unless the postman turns up dead or kidnapped. I just know the van’s been found, but not him or the presents.” He looked longingly at the empty mugs. DI Adams ignored him.
“So maybe he just did a runner?” Not an everyday story, but still pretty routine. That was okay. She’d once thought that routine was boring, but that was before Toot Hansell. Before London, for that matter.
“Maybe, but it seems he’d been on the same round for about twenty years, and never missed a day. Pretty old-school.”
The inspector wondered vaguely when turning up for work daily had become old-school, and said, “Anything else?”
“One other thing, which is a little weird. The van was all scorched, like someone had tried to firebomb it, and there were some weird scratch marks on the top. No theories on that yet. Might be that it’s unrelated – DI Adams? Inspector?”
But she was already out the staffroom door and heading for her desk to grab her jacket and her keys. Scratches and firebombing and Toot Hansell. She didn’t like the sound of that. She didn’t like the sound of that at all.
DI Adams hurried into the Skipton police station and leaned over the front desk. The constable behind it stared at her in alarm. “DI Adams? What are— I mean, how can I help you?”
“PC McLeod, isn’t it?” She tried for a reassuring smile, but judging by the look on the young man’s face she didn’t do a very good job of it. It wasn’t like she’d even been that sharp with him last time she was here. Not that she remembered, anyway. “Good to see you again. Who’s in charge of the missing postman case?”
“Um. DI Collins?”
“Any chance I can talk to him?” The famous Skipton DI, off on holiday in Corfu when the vicar had been murdered. He was probably going to be all put out because she’d solved his crime while he was away eating calamari and getting sunburnt.
“I – I suppose so. He just came in.” PC McLeod punched something into the phone, then gave DI Adams an anxious smile. “You can wait over there if you want.”
The inspector looked at the row of plastic chairs and grimaced. She didn’t want to sit down. She shouldn’t even be here. She should be minding her own business. Or going straight to Toot Hansell. To the root of the problem, as it were. If it was a problem. She paced in an irritated circle in front of the desk, waiting. And hoped he wasn’t so put out that he’d leave her here until tea time.
“DI Adams?”
She jumped up, shoving her phone back in her pocket. It hadn’t been that long – long enough to make a point, short enough not to be rude. “DI Collins.”
He gave her a surprisingly genuine smile, a big man with big hands, looking like he spent a lot of time out in the weather. “How can I help?”
“Well. Just wondering about that missing postman.”
“What about him?”
“Any ideas?”
He shrugged. “Still considering the possibility he just did a runner, although it doesn’t seem likely at this point. Techs are going over the van, looking for trace.”
“What about the, uh, fire damage?”
He was still smiling, but his eyes were sharp. “Leeds, you say. What’s your interest?”
“Possible connection to a cold case.” Which
was tenuous. Okay, which was a lie, if she was going to be entirely honest with herself. But DI Collins nodded as if the answer satisfied him.
“Not sure yet. Maybe they tried to torch the van to make sure there was no evidence left, but it didn’t take. That’s the working theory for now.”
“Accelerants?”
“Like I say, the techs are looking at it now.”
The inspector found a card in her jacket pocket and handed it to him. “Can you let me know what they find? It’s sort of a personal interest thing. The case isn’t active.”
DI Collins took the card and examined it as if it held the answer to his deepest questions. “So I take it you don’t want it going through the office.”
“You know what it’s like. They’ll say it’s taking me away from my active cases.” She gave him a smile that felt fairly unconvincing.
“Is it?”
“No.” Not yet, anyway.
He pocketed the card and clasped his hands in front of him like the world’s biggest schoolboy, waiting to be excused. “You want to give me any clues on this? Because it’s a beggar of a case. We’ve nothing at the moment, not even a tyre print.”
“I don’t even know if it’s related or not. If it is, then of course.” All the bits that aren’t to do with dragons, anyway.
“Hmm.” He examined her thoughtfully. “I guess that’ll have to do, then.”
“Thanks.” She shook hands with him awkwardly then retreated, far too aware that he was watching her go with that same patient gaze. Dammit, it had to be someone who actually knew what he was doing, didn’t it? Couldn’t be some old country boy just going through the motions. Although, if her last experience had been anything to go by, he wouldn’t feel like he knew what he was doing for long once he got involved with Toot Hansell.
She hurried back outside, jingling her car keys impatiently.
The road to Toot Hansell felt familiar, even if she hadn’t driven it since the early days of summer, when the fields had been brilliant green and wildflowers had bloomed along the dry-stone walls that flanked the lanes. Now the greens were mixed with bare earth and frozen mud, and the low light was cold and clear, outlining the fells with a bleak and savage clarity that made her turn the car’s heating up. The sky was high and pale and thin, and she felt as if she were driving across the far reaches of a world that didn’t much care if she survived it or not. It was indifferent. Say what you want about cities, but they’re never indifferent. Angry, yes. Usually, in fact. But this was something else. She had the sudden, irrational fear that she’d get a flat and find out she had no spare, and freeze to death out here before anyone came along. Then an ancient green Land Rover creaked past her in the opposite direction, the driver with a woolly pink hat pulled down over his ears, and DI Adams took a deep breath. She wasn’t in some Siberian wasteland. Honestly, it was less than an hour from Skipton. It wasn’t the end of the world. It just felt like it.