Last client of the day, and Lee had failed to impress. He sat back in his chair. He was tired, and the honeyed May sunlight filling the kitchen seemed more important than the well-guarded shadowland within his client’s skull. “I’m sorry, Mr Eagle. I think it’s best if you just buy another pen.”
“Really? That’s all you can see?”
Lee rested one elbow on the table. What could he see? In the distance, the rocks of the Cheesewring, keeping their ancient secrets with a poise he would do well to imitate. Nearer at hand, the garden he and Gideon had cleared of wolfsbane, laburnum and other toxic beauties. Tamsyn and the Kemp kids tearing around on the lawn, Sarah keeping a stern watch from the bench. What else? On the far side of the table, a neat little man in a business suit. Eagle was too vast a name for him. Sparrow, maybe, or Chaffinch, or...
“Mr Tyack?”
“Tyack-Frayne,” Lee corrected absently. He had no doubt that Eagle was false. Even his most innocent clients felt the need to disguise themselves, as if, when they left him, they could put on their shields and their skins again, leaving his insights behind. That was fine with Lee for the most part. He didn’t want to follow them home.
Isolde, sprawled snoring across his feet, suddenly lifted one leg and let rip a resounding fart. “Oh, God,” Lee said. “I’m sorry. She’s getting old.”
“That’s... That’s quite all right.” Mr Eagle edged his chair a little way back from the table. “Are you sure you can’t help me at all?”
“You said the pen wasn’t expensive, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But I also said it had great sentimental value.”
He was really anxious. A sheen of sweat had appeared on his brow. Lee, filled with pity and just the faintest, far-off, knife-edge sting of something else, gathered his thoughts. “All right. Let me try again.”
The session seemed doomed to interruption. Sarah was keeping the kids on low volume outside, but Isolde, having resolved her digestive problems, began to writhe around on her back, emitting contented yodels. “Hush, dog,” Lee said, reaching under the table. “Hold on a moment, please, Mr Eagle. I’ll take her outside.”
Before he could close a grip on her collar, she leapt to her feet. She had few passions in her twilight years, but her other master was high on the list. A cannonball run for the kitchen door could only mean one thing: and half a second later Gideon pushed it open, absorbing her impact with a grunt. “Bloody hell. You’d think I’d been away for a week. Oh, sorry, Lee—you’ve got a client. I’ll make myself scarce.”
“No, don’t. I’ve just overrun my schedule, that’s all.” It was important that Gideon stay. He was resplendent in his summer uniform, the brim of his cap a-gleam, the Devon-and-Cornwall crest reflecting the sun. That was important, too. “Stick the kettle on, will you?”
“Okay, if you’re sure.”
“Hoi,” Mr Eagle objected, his pleasant day-job voice dissolving to something less civilised by far. “I didn’t pay good money to be eavesdropped on by a copper.”
“As a matter of fact...” Lee paused for long enough to slide the four ten-pound notes back across the table. “As a matter of fact, you haven’t paid me anything at all. I don’t charge clients I can’t help. Now, what is so damn important about this lost pen?”
“There’s no need to be rude. I’ve already explained. It was given to me by a colleague who’s... who’s no longer with us, and...”
“What—he died?”
“Well, I... Yes, that’s right.”
“Ah, those are big forces to invoke, Mr Eagle. They take your little lies, do the powers of life and death, and they shake all the dust and the crap off them. Nobody died.” He fell silent, propping his chin on his hands, watching the neat little man. Gideon, who knew his methods well enough to steer a wide berth, quietly took mugs out of a cupboard and went to the fridge for the milk, shushing Isolde as she romped around his ankles. Mr Eagle stared back across the table at Lee, who eventually broke the silence like a stick across his knee. “Oh, of course. The type of pen with a handy little USB stick inside.”
Mr Eagle blanched. “You could have guessed that. Anyone could.”
“A USB stick with pictures of kids on it, and I don’t mean your grandchildren on the beach.”
The kitchen was large. On a day like today, with the tall sash windows open to admit the gorse-fresh air, it seemed larger still—a broad expanse, the busy, beating heart of Chy Lowen, the House of Joy. Over by the counter tops, Gideon had turned around. The low vibration building in the room could just, by a far stretch of the imagination, be a lorry grinding its gears on the uphill stretch of the distant A38. Lee got to his feet, flattening his palms against the table top. “Your pen’s down the back of the red chair in your study, Robert Crow.”
“I never told you my real name!”
“I know, and I’m sorry it took me so long to get up to speed.” Lee jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “I find his presence inspiring.”
Crow lurched upright. He threw a glance at Gideon, and the fear distorting his face notched up to incredulous terror. “I haven’t done anything. I swear!”
“I know. It’s just the pictures so far. Go home and find the pen. Put the USB in an envelope and post it to Bodmin Police HQ. If you don’t—I’ll know. And, more importantly for you, he will. We’ll both fucking know.”
“Jesus Christ!” Crow retreated to the door, and clawed it blindly open. “I’ll do everything you said, I promise. For God’s sake, leave me alone!”
He fled down the hall as if all the devils in hell were at his heels. The outer door banged. Lee strode across the kitchen to intercept his husband. Gideon in pursuit was a force to be reckoned with. Grabbing him round the waist, Lee let himself be towed for a yard or so, then dug in his heels and brought him to a stop by main force. Jesus, what broad shoulders—what brown eyes, now indefinably altered by a trace of glowing red-gold. All the better to knock down doors with, all the better to stare into villainous souls... “Hush, love,” Lee whispered, reaching up to put both hands round the back of his skull, to hold him with restraining tenderness and press a kiss to one temple. A kiss to the other, a desperate benediction. “It’s all right. Hush.”
The growling vibration stopped. The lights went out, leaving only a troubled dark gaze seeking Lee’s. “Is it? He’s got child porn on his disk. I should bust his arse from here to next Thursday.”
“If you could prove it.” Lee took a caressing hold of his shoulders, soothing him like an animal. “He’s a carrion-eater, not a bird of prey. He really hasn’t done anything more than download pictures. Listen to me. You bust him, he goes to jail. It’s overcrowded, poorly staffed. The other inmates know what he’s in for, and they do what they do to that kind of man. By the time he comes out, he’s so screwed up and bitter that he doesn’t care anymore. He just goes on the lookout for the first vulnerable kid he can find, to take out all that humiliation on them.”
“And... what’s the alternative? If I let him go, I mean?”
“He goes forth, wipes his disk and sins no more. Because he believes me when I say I’m watching over him, and he has most certainly had the fear of God almighty put into him by you.”
“What did I do? I was just making a cuppa.” Tensions eased in the muscles under Lee’s hands. The fraught air in the room became still, and there was Gideon—no more and no less, a copper at the end of a long shift, a smudge of summer dust on his brow. “You know all this for sure, do you—what’ll happen with that little bastard now?”
“As surely as I know his name and where he’ll find his pen.” The voices from the garden pitched up into wild laughter. Through the window, Lee watched his daughter plough into a flowerbed in pursuit of a ball, and re-emerge seconds later, blazing like a firebird with untrammelled joy. “If I had one shadow of a doubt about that, I’d tell you.”
“I’ll make sure social services put a watch on him. I’ll find a reason, or make one. But... okay. Good enough for me.”
Lee looked up at him. The honour of being believed—trusted, even when so much hung on so fine a thread as this—warmed him to the core. Gideon had offered him that from the very beginning. They’d become a port in the storm to each other, shelter from the wildness within. Lee would stay stalwart for Gid until his last breath.
Isolde pushed herself between them, breaking the moment. “You were a big help,” Gideon told her. “Aren’t you canine types meant to have a sixth sense for bad men?”
“She’s barely using her other five these days. She did unleash her secret weapon on him.”
“Oof. Too much collateral damage.”
“No kidding.” Cautiously Lee let him go. “Well, we’d all best get into our greenwood gear, or we’ll be late for Beltane.”
“My greenwood gear’s my uniform, for the first part of the night anyway.”
“You are joking.”
“Sadly, no. Sergeant Ryde can’t get there till nine o’clock, so I’ve got to keep an eye on the proceedings until then.” He stretched, muffled a yawn against the back of his hand. “Well, it is a village event, and I am the village bobby. Lawrence says I can take tomorrow off to make up for it, if I want. Probably I should wait for a day when Tamsyn’s not in nursery, though.”
Their eyes met. They both conscientiously arranged their spare time so as to spend as much as they could with their daughter. “Or,” Lee said, experimentally, rubbing a casual knee against Gid’s, “maybe for once you shouldn’t. We could go on a picnic—and not the kind that ends with the three of us fishing for minnows.”
Gideon released a breath. “I am so hot for you right now.”
“Save it. You’re not on duty all night. I believe we’re as much entitled to a greenwood dash as any other couple.”