Mike Shevdon: Strangeness and Charm

Acutely aware of the pain as bone grated on bone, he made himself roll over and push up to his knees, and then to his feet using his good arm to help him. Once he was up, he cradled his broken arm against his chest, and staggered away from the smoke and the glow from the shop windows.

He glanced back once, thinking of Roland back there. He had to get help. There was a demon loose and the shopping centre was turning into hell.

Garvin looked up from the slim brown folder he was reading as I entered the room.

"This is nice," I told him. "I didn't know you had an office."

There was a large picture of a pastoral scene in a thick gold frame on the wall. The woodwork of the desk was dark and polished and the curtains were tied back with gold sashes to let in daylight.

Garvin leaned forward and closed the folder on the desk in front of him, setting it on a pile of similar folders. He gestured at the striped seat of a regency chair set in front of the desk. "I don't. This is Mullbrook's office. He lets me use it."

I sat down slowly, wondering what circumstance would mean that Garvin needed an office. "Tate said you wanted to see me?"

"We need to talk. There are things to be done — things I need you to do."

"What kind of things?"

"You've been spending a lot of time with Alex. When you're not with Alex you're with Blackbird."

"Alex needs a lot of attention right now, and Blackbird gets tired easily."

"Blackbird is strong enough to lift the back end of a car. She's fey, Niall."

"Half-fey," I corrected him, "and that doesn't mean she can't get tired. It was a long labour. She still hasn't got her strength back"

"She seems to be managing well enough. She's got the stewards to help her. It's not like she's been abandoned, is it?"

I looked at the pastoral scene on the wall. The watercolours ran into one another, making it look like it had been painted in the rain.

"Alex is improving, so Fionh tells me." Garvin sat back, clasping his fingers together.

"There have been fewer incidents," I agreed.

"Fionh says she's exhibiting some clear signs of control, but she says you're babying the girl."

"She said that?"

"Not in so many words, but that was her meaning."

"What did she say, exactly?"

"Niall, you can't carry on babysitting her. She won't take responsibility for herself if you're there making excuses for her every time she screws up."

"I'm not making excuses. She was tortured — abused. She needs time to adjust."

"It's about time she was responsible for her actions. She can't learn if you keep stepping in for her."

"She's fourteen, Garvin. I'm her father. I'm supposed to step in for her."

"In fey terms she's an adult. She's come into her power, responsible for her own actions, or she would be if you let her."

"She wants to see her mother."

"We've discussed that, Niall. It's not a good idea."

"You said she was responsible for herself. She's an adult, you said. She can take her own decisions. Well, the adult has decided she wants to see her mother."

"It's better that Katherine believes that Alex is dead. It'll be easier."

"For whom? For Katherine? I find that hard to believe. I can't imagine a worse situation than losing your child. The loss of her daughter will be the first thing that comes into her head when she wakes up, and the last thing in her mind before she sleeps — if she sleeps. I know, I've been there."

I consciously softened my tone, forcing down the anger that bubbled up inside me when I talked about what happened to my daughter. "Discovering that she's been lied to will be hard. Knowing what's been done to Alex will be harder. But none of it as hard as living with the loss of your only child. It doesn't compare."

Garvin met my stare for a few moments and then looked down at the desk. He sighed, then took the folder from the top of the pile and began laying out press cuttings in front of me.

Shopping Centre Bomb Terror — Flash Flood Swamps Village — Is this the Beast of Balham?

They were tabloid headlines, and the stories below them were no less sensational. The last was accompanied by a blurry photo, probably taken with a mobile phone. Without any scale to reference the image against, it was impossible to tell how big the animal was.

"Looks like silly season," I said.

"Thankfully the shopping centre was closed, though one security guard died and another was injured in the explosion." He picked up a sheet from the folder. "The fire officer's report on the shopping centre is inconclusive. They can find no trace of an explosive or an accelerant, but the fire spread from shop to shop despite fire barriers and a suppression system. It happened in the late evening, so there were only security staff on site. The surviving guard said the security system was on the blink and the screens went dead, but just before the fire he saw someone on the concourse. Two of the guards went down to investigate."

"Arson?"

"Terrorism — possibly eco-warriors or anti-capitalists — at least that's the official version. They think the dead guard might have been involved. The alarms didn't go off and the devices appeared to be timed — a professional job. The guard who died had military training — demolition. The destruction was total, everything burned."

"Sounds bad."

"Could have been worse. It could have been full of shoppers." He picked up another sheet. "Village of Sawlby in Derbyshire washed away three days ago. It's a Pennine village, pretty little place — or it was. Sixteen dead at the last count. Stream came up into a raging torrent." He picked up the cutting, "A wall of water seven feet high swept through the sleepy hamlet." He replaced it on the desk.

"As usual it's the vulnerable that suffer — the old and infirm, or the very young. They're digging bodies out of the mud, trying to clear up the mess. Sound familiar?"

"Alex was here. Fionh's been with her most of the time."

"Alex isn't the only one, though, is she?" Garvin picked up another sheet. "Reports of very large cat-like creature stalking the streets of Balham. Several people have seen it, usually at night, and there are an increasing number of missing pets. It seems to have developed a taste for rabbit."

"Could be an urban fox?"

"One that can open a hutch with a combination padlock on it? The police have been called in, suspecting vandals. They found a trail of paw prints — big ones."

"So there is a cat?"

"The paw-prints vanish in the middle of a park. They just run out."

"What do you mean, run out?"

"The ground was soft, it had rained earlier in the day. They had a specialist with them — she reckoned it was panther of some sort. She tracked the creature into the park, hoping to trace it back to its lair. They had a marksman with a tranquilliser gun on standby. She followed the tracks to a kiddies playground. The tracks go into the sandpit, but they don't come out."

"There were other tracks?"

"Oh, plenty. Kids and parents had been there all day. The only cat tracks were going in, though, not out."

I had a sudden memory of encountering a large black cat in the passages below Porton Down. It had stared at me with knowing eyes while chewing on something that might once have been human.

Garvin laid his hand on the pile of plain brown files next him. "Secretary Carler was good enough to let us have the files from Porton Down. It's difficult for them to tell whether these people are dead or at large. There were some identifiable items, but they could have been dropped or discarded. There were no bodies found, of course, other than the staff."

I winced slightly. Some of the bodies that had been found were people who had died because of me. Raffmir had been particularly ruthless with the medical staff, and my own hands were hardly clean. I had the sudden flashback of a man in military uniform crawling backwards away from me after he'd tried to blow my head off with a shotgun. The fear in his eyes as my hands closed around his throat would never leave me.