CHAPTER 21

BOOK TWO

UNDER THE WITCH’S MOON

PART FOUR

CHAPTER 21

i

Nigel was always one to enjoy a sunrise. He often found himself drawn to the brilliant colours with all their converging shades and hues, and sometimes felt as if Nature’s palette were commanding him to paint her—just drop what you’re doing and paint me—draped as she was in a veil of mist. He enjoyed looking at the clouds as much as any child looking for dragons, or horses might, seeing shapes and columns in the towering billows endlessly rolling and strolling across the sky. He liked to sit, enjoying the morning with a warm cup of tea and buttery toast, habitually dunking the toast into his tea and sucking on it until it dissolved in his mouth, all the while watching the birds as they soared—The Lark Ascending, he thought—enjoying the irony of the title.

As if anyone can tell the difference between a gull and a lark at this distance; or is that all anyone thinks of now, when they see a bird soaring in the distance? Is that a gull, or a lark? It must be a lark ascending.

He smiled to himself, looked up, and could see a slip of the moon in the distance, coming up between the trees. It lay low on the horizon—as pale as dishwater—reminding him of how much he actually enjoyed this time of the day as he dipped another bite of toast into his tea. He’d be leaving for work soon enough, he thought, and knowing how Charlie would be a fount of endless questions, wondered how he might somehow delay his departure. And there were endless questions now, weren’t there? What, with the fire in Plymouth and the discovery of guns in the rubble. But it was the Irish Brotherhood’s suspected involvement in it that bothered him—(no one had seen that one coming, had they?) He wished he had the answers. All he remembered was that one moment he and Sonia were being reprimanded—a scandal commensurate with the seriousness of a criminal conspiracy, he told himself—and the next, Detective Inspector Biles was dead after a massive coronary and they were asked to resume the case because they were the only ones familiar with the details—at least, until the next Detective Inspector comes along.

We’ll just have to wait and see now then, won’t we?

There’s no point jumping to conclusions when you don’t know what’s going on in the first place, he told himself.

It had taken nine days for him to kick his opium habit, and in that nine days Artemus Spencer had gone missing; several bodies had been discovered near the burning wreck of the warehouse fire in Plymouth—one with a bullet in his head no less, along with several members of Sabini’s Hammerboys—not to mention a Russian whom Charlie said could be directly tied to Chernetsov.

All in all, quite the mystery, he thought.

And all of that in the week I’ve been laid up, he told himself.

His withdrawal had been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life, and the cramps he’d had, almost embarrassing, he remembered. There’d been an excess of gas and nausea, and along with cramps, vomiting and diarrhea. The cramps and muscle aches had been like an assault, and he imagined that if he’d been beaten with a cricket bat, it may have felt the same. He was grateful for everything Sonia had done for him. Moving him from his own flat to the one closer to her had been nothing more than sensible; he could see that now. He’d been unable to fathom why he should leave his own flat, until he’d actually shit himself.

If ever there was a low point in a man’s life…

He stood up, stretching himself to his full height, wondering if he would’ve ever recognized that his life had spiralled so far out of control, that it would’ve been impossible for him to reclaim it. He wondered if anyone ever realizes that until it’s too late. He hadn’t seen it. He had trusted his doctors, telling himself they knew more about what he needed than he did himself. Had he been wrong to trust them so implicitly? Apparently, he thought, tossing the last drops of tea out and going inside to get ready to leave.