Simon Beckett - Whispers of the Dead

‘Pretty much, yes.’ Her chin came up. She looked over towards the ambulance where Paul was standing. ‘You should take him home. This isn’t doing anyone any good.’

‘He shouldn’t have had to find out about it from the TV.’

She nodded, accepting the implied rebuke. ‘Dan was going to call him as soon as he had time. But we’ll let Dr Avery know straight away if there’s any more news.’

I noticed she said if, not when. The longer this went on the less chance there was of finding Sam.

Not unless York wanted us to.

I went back to Paul as Jacobsen joined Gardner at the crime scene truck. He cut a forlorn figure by the ambulance, staring at it as though it might help him divine the whereabouts of his wife.

‘We should go now,’ I told him gently.

All the fight he’d shown earlier seemed to have burned out of him. He looked at the ambulance for a second or two longer, then turned his back on it and walked with me to the car.

The young deputy gave Paul a hard stare as we passed him on the track, but it was wasted. Paul didn’t seem aware of anything as we left the picnic area behind. We’d gone several miles before he spoke.

‘I’ve lost her, haven’t I?’

I searched for something to say. ‘You don’t know that.’

‘Yes I do. So do you. So did everyone back there.’ The words were spilling out of him now like water from an overfull cup. ‘I keep trying to remember what I said to her last. But I can’t. I’ve been going over and over it in my mind, and there’s nothing there. I know it shouldn’t bother me, but it does. I just can’t believe the last time I saw her was so ordinary. How can I not have known?’

Because you never do. But I didn’t say that.

He lapsed into silence. I stared numbly at the road ahead. Dear Christ, don’t let this happen. But it already had, and the silent woods offered no relief. Insects bobbed through the broken columns of sunlight, insignificant specks beside giant oak and pines that had stood here since long before I was born. A slender waterfall tumbled through a cleft in the hillside, foaming white over dark rocks. We passed fallen trunks covered in moss, others being slowly choked by vines while they still stood. For all its beauty, everything that lived out here was in a constant fight to survive.

Not everything succeeded.

I’m not sure when I became aware of my unease. It seemed to come from nowhere, announcing itself first as a prickling on my forearms. I looked down and saw the hairs on them were standing up; a similar tickling told me those on the back of my neck had started to rise as well.

As if only waiting for that, the disquiet bloomed into a clamouring sense of urgency. I gripped the steering wheel. What? What’s wrong? I didn’t know. Beside me Paul still sat in haunted silence. The road ahead was clear and empty, dappled with sunlight and shadows from the trees. I checked the rearview mirror. There was nothing to see. Behind us the woods unrolled with indifferent monotony. But the feeling persisted. I glanced in the mirror again, and jumped as something hit the windscreen in front of me with a dull slap.

A large insect was mashed against the glass in a tangle of legs and wings. I stared at it, feeling the urgency begin to coalesce. Without thinking what I was doing, I stamped hard on the brake.

Paul braced himself against the dashboard as he was flung against his seatbelt. He stared at me in bewilderment as the car screeched to a halt.

‘Jesus, David!’ He looked round, trying to see why we’d stopped. ‘What’s wrong?’

I didn’t answer. I sat gripping the steering wheel, my heart bumping against my ribs. I was still staring at the windscreen. The dragonfly was big, almost as long as my finger. It was badly mangled, but I could still make out the tiger-striped thoracic markings. Its eyes were unmistakable, just as Josh Talbot had said.

The electric blue of Epiaeschna heros.

A swamp darner.

PAUL WAS LOOKINGat me as though Id gone mad as I put the car into reverse.

‘What is it? What have you seen?’

‘I’m not sure.’

I twisted round in my seat to look through the rear window, scanning the woods on my side as I backed up the road. Talbot had said swamp darners liked wet, wooded habitats. And amongst all the insects, there had been a blue sparkle in the trees I’d been too distracted to notice. Not consciously, at least. Just look at those eyes! Incredible, aren’t they? On a sunny day you can spot them a mile away.

He’d been right.

I pulled over on to the bank beside the road. Leaving the engine running, I got out and went to stand on the edge of the woods. A green, outdoor silence enveloped me. Sunlight shafted down between the tree trunks and branches, picking out mats of wildflowers growing through the grass.

I saw nothing.

‘David, for God’s sake will you tell me what’s going on?’

Paul was standing by the open passenger door. The sour taste of anticlimax was in my mouth. ‘That’s a swamp darner on the windscreen. The same as the nymph we found in Harper’s casket. I thought…’

I tailed off, embarrassed. I thought I might have seen more of them. It seemed far-fetched now.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and turned to go back to the car.

And saw a glint of blue among the green.

‘There.’ I pointed, my heart thudding. ‘By the fallen pine.’

The dragonfly zigzagged through patches of dappled sunlight, blue eyes shining like neon. As though they’d chosen that moment to appear, now I picked out others amongst the trees.

‘I see them.’ Paul was staring into the woods, blinking as though just waking up. ‘You think it’s important?’

There was a tentative, almost pleading note to his voice, and I hated myself for raising his hopes. Swamp darners or not, York wouldn’t have left Noah Harper’s body so close to a road. And even if he had, I couldn’t see how it would help Sam. Yet we knew York had headed out this way in the ambulance, and now here were the dragonflies as well. That couldn’t just be coincidence.

Could it?

‘Talbot said they like standing water, didn’t he?’ Paul said, with an excitement born of desperation. ‘There must be some round here somewhere, a lake or pond. Do you have a map in the car?’

‘Not of the mountains.’

He ran his hands through his hair. ‘There’s got to be something! Perhaps a slow moving creek or stream…’

I was beginning to wish I’d not said anything. The mountains covered over half a million acres of wilderness. The dragonflies could be migrating, for all I knew; might already be miles from wherever they’d hatched.

Still…

I looked round. A little further down the road I could see what looked like a turning on to a track.

‘Why don’t we take a look down there?’ I said.

Paul nodded, eager to seize even the slimmest hope. I felt another stab of guilt, knowing we were probably just clutching at straws. As he got back into the car I picked the dead dragonfly from the windscreen. When I turned on the wipers the water jets sluiced the remains from the glass, and it was as though it had never been there.

The turning was little more than a dirt track running off through the trees. It didn’t even merit a layer of gravel, and I had to slow to a crawl along the rutted, muddy surface. Branches and shrubs scratched at the windows. They grew thicker with every yard, until eventually I was forced to stop. The way ahead was completely blocked, maples and birches fighting for space with straggly laurel bushes. Wherever the track might have once led, we weren’t going any further.

Paul banged the dashboard with frustration. ‘Goddammit!’