Christopher Fowler - White Corridor

“What do you mean?” asked Longbright. “Why can’t you just tell me? Am I supposed to make an arrest?”

“There’s no arrest to be made. Look at the names, Janice. The moment you understand, take everyone out of house arrest and get the unit up to scratch in time for inspection. I have to go now.”

He closed the mobile and leaned back against a tree trunk. He would not finish the job for her whatever happened, he decided. There would come a day when he would no longer be there to sort out the unit’s problems. It was time Longbright and the rest of the staff started using his methods to think for themselves. Only then would the unit have a secure future after his death.

He turned and squinted up at the hill ahead. Tugging his scarf tighter around his ears so that he looked like an exhausted elderly rabbit, he trudged on, following the tracks onto the dazzling white slope of the mount.

John May had never welcomed meetings with North London’s mystic coven leader, but for once he was glad to see her toiling through the snowdrifts towards him. As she approached, wrapped in red shamanistic folk blankets and looking for all the world like a Russian doll come to life, Maggie Armitage waved her arms frantically towards the valley of stranded vehicles.

“I left the safety of our truck to bring you a warning, John,” she called. “Arthur’s not in the van. He told me to tell you he was going after the mother and her son, says they’ve been taken up towards the railway line. There’s a rescue train on its way. But there’s something else, another sensation I’m getting that his crisis moment is about to arrive. He is in terrible danger, Mr. May, because of something he knows, or perhaps is about to find out. I see him lying helpless in total darkness.”

“Thank you, Maggie. Here, take my arm.”

“I’m very much obliged,” puffed the white witch. “This kind of elemental turbulence is tricky to negotiate.” She was carrying a round walnut box that she now stopped to consult.

“What are you doing?” he asked, irritated.

“It’s a spirit tracer,” she explained, hitching up her blankets and peering over the top of her roll-neck. “Inside there’s a chased silver ball containing variously treated herbal extracts and seeds, some of them more than a century old, a few of which are even extinct. The item is a great rarity these days, and of enormous talismanic value. I’ve been worried about Arthur lately, so I had him keep the ball in his pocket for a month. It picks up a sort of spiritual imprint that can be used to find someone. The ball starts to shift in its casket when we come within range of its human marker, so we can use it to locate him.”

“You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you?” said May. “I can’t even get him to wear a pager, and yet he happily spends a month leaving his spiritual imprint on some kind of mystical GPS device. Even by your extreme standards, such a thing is patently absurd.” He peered over her shoulder. “Is he within range?”

“I thought you weren’t a believer, Mr. May.”

“I’m not,” said May, “but I have no better way of finding him.”

The pair trudged on around the iridescent blocks of snow and ice that had dammed the valley, looking down at the shunted cars and trucks, hoping to see signs of life. “I told him to stay put, but no, he had to go off on his own. The simplest instruction always becomes a challenge.”

“You care about him very much, don’t you?” said Maggie. “When I think of the arrests you two have made over the years, it’s amazing-‘

“We’ve certainly had our share of excitement,” May admitted.

“I was going to say it’s amazing nobody’s had you both shot.”

May narrowed his eyes at her, unable to decide if she was being honest or merely rude. “Are we near him?”

She peered into the box. “Nothing yet. He shouldn’t be out in this. When are the pair of you going to retire?”

“We’ve some unfinished business to deal with before we think about that,” May said testily.

“We’re none of us getting any younger, you know. It’s different for me. I’m at the end of the line. The next generation isn’t interested in the mystic arts. They just want to keep their heads down and make money, and you don’t need any spiritual leanings to do that. Far too interested in personal growth. But someone has to take care of all our invisible needs, don’t you think? That’s what you and Arthur do. We’re the gatekeepers to the nation’s soul. What happens when there’s no-one left to heal the secret wounds we all bear? We’ll never be able to set the world upright and end all of its inequalities, but each of us can make a small difference until they add up to something more.” She paused for breath, stretching her back. “You know, I’ve spent my life forcing myself to believe in the innate goodness of people, but it never gets any easier. This creature you’re after is spiritually tortured, and people like that are unpredictable. They can’t be healed by being thrown in jail. A process of understanding must first take place.”

May knew that the white witch was as interested in psyches as she was in souls. As she fell silent and they pushed on through the drifts, he thought back over the last few hours, knowing that she, too, sensed something was not right. He had experienced this phenomenon before, when his daughter had walked into the trap that had led to her death. Arthur wanted to believe that the world possessed unseen dimensions, but paradoxically it was May who most experienced these momentary shifts.

He was feeling it very strongly now. Maggie pointed into her spirit tracer box. The ball inside was gently rolling in an ellipse, but he could not tell whether it was really being guided by unseen forces or whether she had simply tipped it away from her.

“He’s close,” she announced, then abruptly changed direction, heading up towards the railway tracks that ran across the hill. Above them, the sky was turning an ominous shade of apocalyptic pink.

“What is that?” asked May. They watched as a muscular black shape loped through the snow searching for cover. “Are there wolves in Devon?”

“Maybe it was just a big fox,” said Maggie uncertainly. Overhead, a crackle of black wings batted against the white sky, as crows were shocked into flight from the glassy branches.

“Something’s startled them.” Maggie looked around, then narrowed her search to the hill ahead. “This way. We have to go faster. You feel it as well, don’t you?”

“I think so,” May admitted. “Arthur’s made some kind of misjudgement that’s put him at risk. And don’t ask me to explain, because I don’t know how to, okay?”

Maggie kept silent, but smiled to herself as they climbed. Seemingly psychic instincts were learned through experience, habit and the passing of time. The detectives had developed a link they could not see or understand, but it was obvious to anyone with the slightest sensitivity that it existed. There was nothing supernatural about the development of such an ability; parents and children quickly grew bonds, twins inherited them genetically. People who spent a great deal of time in each other’s company became automatically adept at guessing the actions of their counterparts, in the same way that animals were attuned to tiny vibrations of movement and changes in air pressure. She had a fleeting image of a moth in a jar, fighting to free itself, then the image vanished.

Maggie loved the idea that the detective was becoming corrupted by his latent spirituality; if someone as rational as John could succumb, it gave her hope for the rest of humankind.

“Of course, having some smidgen of psychic ability doesn’t single you out as special, you know,” she puffed. “Everyone has it to a greater or lesser extent. I can usually feel it when I meet people. That lady and her son, they knocked on our truck earlier, did you know? We offered to shelter them, but she decided to head back to her own vehicle.”