It could’ve been that he just had one of those faces you often came across in this job—the red nose from too many years of too much bevvy, and the sunken cheeks and glassy-eyed stare that came with it.
His skin had been grey, stretched tight over his bones so you could practically see the ridges and lines of his skull. His hair was so thin and similar in colour to his skin that when he’d first appeared in the doorway, Hamza had thought him bald. It was only when the man had turned to leg it that the DS had spotted the actual bald spot crowning the top of his head, and where there was a bald spot, there had to be hair.
He looked like pretty much any other long-term addict who’d somehow managed to make it into old age, and yet, there was something about him. Something that niggled at Hamza as he crashed through the undergrowth and ducked the whipping branches. He knew him. He was sure of it.
He just couldn’t remember from where.
A stitch burned just below his ribcage, and he slowed to a stop, his torch scanning the forest ahead. There was no sound from up ahead now. There hadn’t been for thirty seconds or so. Either the old man was even faster than Hamza had thought, or he had stopped somewhere.
Somewhere nearby.
“Ham?” Tyler’s voice came from a few dozen yards behind and on the left.
“Here!” Hamza called, waving the torch back in Tyler’s direction to guide him.
Hamza waited until he heard Tyler approaching, then turned on the spot, letting the torchlight lick across the woods around him.
“We know you’re here,” he announced, fighting back his breathlessness to put on his best polis voice. “I’m Detective Sergeant Hamza Khaled. My colleague is Detective Constable Tyler Neish. We just want to talk, that’s all. You’re not in any trouble.”
The only response from the forest was the distant hooting of an owl, and the crashing and wheezing of DC Neish arriving on the scene.
Hamza turned with the torch, then drew back in fright as the light picked out the contours of Tyler’s face.
“Bloody hell, mate, what happened to you?” he yelped. “You look like Quasimodo fucked a Muppet.”
Tyler dabbed gingerly at the swollen lump of his top lip, then ran his fingers up over a bloated cheek and painfully misshapen eyebrow. “What one?”
Hamza studied the Detective Constable’s face in horrified wonder. “I don’t know. All of them.”
“I thell in nettleth,” Tyler explained.
“What?”
Tyler tried again. “I thell in nettleth.”
“You fell in nettles? What, when you went flying through the caravan door?”
“Yeth.”
“Did you land face first?”
“Yeth, acthually.”
Hamza winced. “Does it hurt?”
“I’ll give you three guetheth,” Tyler croaked, then his nostrils flared. It was quite a big movement, given the current size of them. “Here. Wait. Do you thmell thomething?”
Hamza sniffed the air, then nodded. “Aye,” he confirmed. “Smells a bit like…”
His face fell. He turned back in the direction they’d come from. Back in the direction of the caravan. Where there had been only darkness, there was now a suggestion of orange light, dancing somewhere beyond the forest’s edge.
“…fire!”
They doubled back, racing together, Tyler just slightly ahead despite his current high levels of physical discomfort. The smoke came to meet them as they drew closer to the caravan, thick, and pungent, and black.
Even before they reached the tree line, they knew. They could see. The flames had already mostly consumed the rickety structure. The Beacon now lived up to its name, burning so brightly in the darkness that even looking at it made the eyes ache.
The detectives both stopped just beyond the trees, when the wall of heat became too much for them to push through.
They stood there together, watching what was left of the structure fall in on itself, as fiery embers danced off into the dark night sky.
“Don’t suppose you took any of those evidence bags out with you, did you?” Hamza asked.
Tyler shook his head.
“No, thought not.”
“You?”
“Nah,” Hamza said.
They watched a while longer, the heat stinging their skin.
“What do you think the botthh ith going to thay?” Tyler lisped.
Hamza blew out his cheeks. “Dunno,” he said. “But I can’t imagine it’s going to be anything nice.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“For fuck’s sake!” Logan spat.
He scowled down into the murky depths of the liquid in the cup he’d been given. It was the shape and size of a disposable paper cup, but made from bamboo, apparently. André had seemed very pleased with himself about that.
“What is this? That’s not tea,” Logan continued.
“It’s nettle tea,” André said. “Homemade. It’s good for urinary tract infections.”
“I haven’t got a urinary tract infection, though,” Logan countered. “Although this tastes like what I’d be pissing if I did.”
“It’s preventative, oui? Also, it helps with arthritis.”
“I haven’t got that, either.”
“And a range of other things, including blood sugar levels, heart disease, diabetes…”
Logan threw the contents of the cup out through the open door of the minibus, and passed the environmentally friendly container across the aisle to where André sat on the other front-most passenger seat.
The bus was several years old, but it had been well kept. The seats had been reupholstered. At least, Logan assumed the original manufacturer hadn’t fitted them with the range of colourful tie-dyed fabrics that currently covered them.
“Thanks anyway,” the DCI said, his tongue flicking across his lips like he was trying to get rid of the taste. “But I’m more of a Tetley’s man myself.”
André smiled as he took the cup and set it on the floor at his feet. “It’s something of an acquired taste,” he said, then he surprised Logan with his next remark. “I knew you were coming.”
“Did you now?” Logan asked. “And how did you know that?”
“Ah. Now. There’s a question,” André said. He shuffled around in the chair like he was settling in for a long story. “I could tell you, but I don’t think your mind is open enough to the possibilities.”
“To what possibilities?”
“To the possibilities of the Universe. Of the human consciousness.”
“Oh. Those possibilities,” Logan said. He shook his head. “No, you’re right. Not really.”
“Do you believe in ghosts, Detective Chief Inspector?”
“No.”
André gave a single curt nod. Clearly, this was the response he’d been expecting. “What do you think happens to people when they die?”
“They cut short my day off,” Logan said.
André hadn’t been expecting that response. He frowned, like he was struggling to translate the reply in his head. “Pardon?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Logan said. “What’s the point you’re trying to make here, son?”
“I believe—we at Westerly Wellness believe—that the spirits of the dead are all around us. Some of us—the most fortunate—are selected to be their vessels. The conduits between their world and this one.”
“And let me guess, you think you’re one of them.”