Mortlake Series: Books 1 to 6 Bundle

Chapter 3

 

Just over a week had passed since her first meeting with Marcus Mortlake. He had sent Tara a series of emails, asking questions and offering snippets of information. Then, he invited her to a meeting with what he termed “an old sparring partner”. Tara guessed it would be some kind of investigator—maybe a journalist or a cop. The venue was a café in North London, not far from a Tube station. She walked straight past the place, checked her phone, found that she was expected to go into an establishment called The Greasy Spoon. She paused outside the large window and saw Mortlake sitting opposite a heavy-set man. The stranger looked like a cop—dark-suited, serious, clean-shaven.

 

Inside, it was not clear if the place was supposed to be an amusingly retro take on a shabby eatery or a bold affirmation of terrible British cuisine. Tara decided to err on the side of caution and ingest nothing. She nodded to the girl behind the counter and joined the men at a small table. Mortlake introduced the stranger as Detective Inspector Rob Westall. The name rang a bell.

 

“People bursting into flames?” she said.

 

“My fame precedes me,” he said affably. “Yes, that was when I met the prof here. Haven’t been able to shake him since. We’re like Mulder and Scully, only I’ve got longer legs than Gillian Anderson.”

 

“Do you want a cuppa?” asked Mortlake, gesturing at a small, stainless steel teapot. As well as the inevitable British “cuppas”, the two men had had a full English breakfast. Two nearly empty plates were swimming in grease and egg yolk. Tara shook her head.

 

“I’m good.”

 

Westall was pleasant enough, but he clearly expected to go over the attack again. Tara bridled at this, pointing out that she had given Mortlake all the details.

 

“Yeah, I know it’s tedious and irritating,” Westall conceded. “But it’s also a very common practice. If a person makes up a story, they tend to say the same detailed stuff over and over with little variation. An honest recollection is always going to be incomplete, messy, even contradictory in some ways. Just the opposite of what you might expect, in fact. Honest people are much less consistent than practiced liars because memory is a bit treacherous. So, will you tell me what happened?”

 

Tara was mollified and did her best to recall her ordeal. Westall focused more on times and places, and she got the impression he was well up on the area where it happened. Then he focused on her escape, going over and over why the beasts had taken down Josh but somehow let her go.

 

“I don’t know!” she said several times.

 

“I have a theory about that, if it might help,” Mortlake said.

 

He produced his phone and showed her a picture of a blue flower, asked if it looked familiar. Tara took the phone, peered at the picture, then shrugged.

 

“Could be. I remember some wildflowers, they were blue… Yeah, that looks like them. Why?”

 

Mortlake looked from her to Westall. The detective sighed and leaned back in his chair.

 

“Okay, I know I won’t like this,” said Westall. “Tell me it’s a magical herb, straight from the realm of the pixies.”

 

“Not exactly,” Mortlake said. “It’s actually a very poisonous wild plant called Aconitum or monkshood. But it does have another name.”

 

He paused, obviously for dramatic effect. But he paused just a heartbeat too long.

 

“Wolfsbane,” put in Westall. “Sometimes called the Queen of Poisons, or Plant Arsenic.”

 

Seeing Tara’s expression, he laughed.

 

“History of crime—one of my little hobbies, if you can call it that. Poisoning was a popular crime in the old days, I’ve read a few books about it. Before modern medical science, aconitum was a good way for a wife to get rid of a troublesome husband—or vice versa. Brew up a few plants, slip it in his porridge. Nowadays, very few people try it—march of progress and all that.”

 

Mortlake looked deflated at having his dramatic revelation stolen from him.

 

“Wolfsbane indeed,” he said. “I forgot your fascination with the crimes of the past.”

 

He turned to Tara.

 

“Try this working hypothesis—you fell into a patch of the stuff, and that wildflower protected you. According to folklore, it’s far more toxic to lycanthropes than people. You got a rash that cleared up in a day or so, they would have suffered far worse.”

 

“That makes sense, I guess,” she said, handing the phone back to Mortlake. “But I’ll bet the Inspector here doesn’t believe in werewolves running amok in England.”

 

“Better to say I don’t want to believe in them,” Westall corrected her. “Apart from anything else, how can you charge somebody with a crime committed while they were transformed into a different species? The Crown Prosecutor wouldn’t touch that and he’d be quite justified. It’s my job to catch criminals, so I’d rather believe we’re dealing with hunting animals of some kind, and that makes their owners guilty of any number of serious offenses.”

 

“You think Tara saw some kind of exotic hunting animal?” Mortlake demanded.

 

Chapter 5

 

They did not wait for the ambulance but instead bundled their patient into the family SUV, Tim protesting all the time that he didn’t need it, that “Sonia fixed it up.” Sonia and Tara agreed that the nail had not severed a blood vessel and the damage was superficial. But all of the women and Carl insisted on Tim going to the hospital.

 

“None of us is a doctor,” Tara added. “Seriously, you need to get to the ER or whatever it’s called in England!”

 

There was a brief kerfuffle over who would go with Tim. Sonia took charge and decided that she would drive her husband into Berwick and that Anita should come too. Tara guessed that Ellie might be calmer without her aunt around. Ellie was red-faced and crying quietly. But Anita had gone into a virtual meltdown when Carl had rushed down the stairs, calling for the first aid kit.

 

“Your daddy will be fine,” Tara said firmly, hugging the little girl as they waved the Garland’s SUV goodbye. “You know he’s big and strong, and doctors will patch him up, and he’ll be home for bedtime.”

 

It suddenly occurred to Tara that she had no idea when bedtime was, but she pushed the thought aside. Ellie wouldn’t be able to sleep. Carl, pale-faced and clearly in mild shock, was at a loose end. Tara suggested tea for them, and juice for Ellie, and then they could all make something nice to eat.

 

“With ice cream for dessert,” she added, leading the girl back inside. “That much is clear. But first, refreshments.”

 

Ellie sniffled a little and was clingy but agreed with the plan. With a little coaxing, she was soon back at the kitchen table, drawing Daddy in the hospital being healed by doctors and nurses. There was a surprising amount of blood, but Tara was careful not to comment on this. Instead, she beckoned Carl outside the kitchen door, where they could keep an eye on Ellie but were beyond the range of small ears.

 

“You’re sure the nail gun rose off the floor?” she whispered. “It couldn’t have been an accident? He didn’t kick it, say?”

 

Carl shook his head emphatically.

 

“I just snapped out of this—I dunno, this weird daydream, in time to see the thing rise up. It was almost funny, like a conjuring trick or a crappy special effect, you know? Then it fired…”

 

He shuddered, and Tara patted his shoulder.

 

“Tim’ll be fine. But we need to do something about all this. It’s getting worse. Nothing this bad has happened before, right?”

 

Carl shook his head.

 

“Okay,” Tara went on, “I’ve already called this expert I know, a professor at Cambridge. He’s really brilliant—if anyone can figure this out, he can. I thought we’d be fine on our own, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am. I’ll call him again and ask him to come up. Meantime, you keep an eye on Ellie, okay? And I’ll have some of that builder’s tea, milk, no sugar.”

 

After she had brought Mortlake up to speed on what happened to Carl, Tara asked if he had any advice.

 

“My advice is: seek professional help,” he replied. “Would you like me to come up after all?”

 

“Yeah.” She sighed. “I was kinda hoping you might offer again. As I told you before, the family will probably say they can’t leave unless it gets a lot worse. And there’s a little girl in the case. We need to bring up the heavy artillery.”

 

Mortlake chuckled at that. He explained that he would fly to Newcastle the following day then rent a car and drive up. Tara felt intense relief, and for the first time, realized how tense she had become. But something else was bothering her.

 

“You sound kind of tired, Prof,” she said. “You been sleeping okay?”

 

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just a little insomnia, it happens to us old folks.”

 

After the call ended, she went into the kitchen to find Carl discussing plesiosaurs with Ellie while two mugs stood steaming on the counter. Sipping her tea, she thought back to her first encounter with the paranormal in England. It had been utterly unexpected, a direct onslaught by lycanthropes that could have killed her. She thought of her then-boyfriend Josh, how he had died in pain and terror while she fled. She had had no choice—flee or die. But it still felt wrong, cowardly. This time, there was no living monster, and she would not flinch in the face of whatever evil lurked in Haslam House.

 

Chapter 6

 

The Alhambra Theater in the south coast town of Bognor Regis had seen better days. Everything about the foyer spoke of faded grandeur. From the worn carpets to the leprous features of what had been gilded cherubs, the décor was shabby and depressing. But the people milling around, waiting for the doors to open, were full of excitement. Most of tonight’s crowd were women and the majority were ladies of a certain age. Mortlake had never seen so many blue rinses in a confined space, and this made him slightly jumpy. It was a little like being surrounded by Maggie Thatcher clones.

 

“Busy tonight,” he remarked to the girl in the ticket office as he pushed his five-pound note across to her.

 

“Yes, it’s marvelous,” she replied brightly. “You’re lucky to get a seat, we just had a couple of cancellations. Last time we were fully booked, it was the Panto season. And we had Mickey Rooney in Cinderella!”

 

Mortlake grinned and couldn’t help himself. He tried to be witty.

 

“How did he fit into those tight frocks?” he asked.

 

He could almost see the weak joke sail over her head and hit the wall of her booth.

 

“Sorry,” he said, “must have been magical. Just like tonight.”

 

Mortlake took his ticket, glanced at it, and saw he was not far from the front—row D. That was lucky. He stood away from the counter to let people who’d booked by phone collect their tickets. He was not that interested in the paying customers. He was scanning the crowd for someone else. Probably two or even three people, in fact. It wasn’t easy because he was wearing a pair of thick-framed spectacles with plain glass. It was an attempt at a disguise along with the oversized leather jacket he’d borrowed from a younger colleague. It took him a while to spot the person he knew must be there, but when he did, it was obvious.

 

A youngish woman in glasses was mingling with the crowd, chatting with individuals and small groups as she worked her way through the foyer. She wore an earpiece, which a casual observer might have assumed was a hearing aid. Mortlake was almost certain it was not. He sidled over until he could hear what was being said. One of the blue rinse brigades was talking about her father in the past tense. Another woman, clearly a friend, reassured her.

 

“I hear she’s very good,” said the friend. “My sister-in-law saw her in Margate and she was spot-on about their budgie.”

 

Mortlake stifled a titter. Then he felt angry, knowing how trivially easy it was to fool people who wanted to hear reassuring things. He took out the flyer that advertised tonight’s show. It was quite lavishly printed, in full color, showing just how successful the performer was. The photo on the flyer showed a well-preserved woman in her early fifties, with dyed blonde hair in a neat bob. Beneath her, in bold letters, was her name and her claim.

 

Sally Strode, psychical medium, will reach your loved ones!

 

The ticket prices were in much smaller print. Finally, the doors were opened and the eager audience filed into the theater. Mortlake took his seat as the sound system began to play a Hammond organ rendition of Auld Lang Syne. For a moment, Mortlake wondered if this was an attempt at mockery by a member of the theater staff. But then he reasoned that getting in touch with old acquaintances was the point of the exercise for the people around him. Certainly, nobody near him seemed to find the music incongruous.

 

When most of the seats were filled, the sound system crackled and the music stopped. The house lights dimmed slightly but not all the way. Then, following another crackle, a very hearty male voice bled out over the speakers.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, seekers of the truth, please put your hands together for Sally Strode!”

 

The ripple of applause was uncertain at first, but as soon as the medium appeared on stage, it became a storm of clapping. Mortlake had encountered presold audiences before, but this one was very enthusiastic. Sally Strode herself was a rather dumpy woman, wearing a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck. Her ensemble was somewhere between lay preacher and doctor’s receptionist, formal but not too forbidding.