And then he vanished.
The next lot were Americans, who arrived mob-handed and silent. They seemed thin and attenuated, even when close to the beacon. They didn’t speak but the leader, possibly the captain, nodded gloomily when I gave him his instructions and led his companions down the hill towards Glossop.
That was a mood – as Abigail might say.
There were many more – Australians, Canadians, British. More Americans. A white guy in flares and a polo shirt who wanted to ask too many questions. They came in groups, in pairs and on their own.
Something passed me as nothing more than a chill in the air.
I lit a paraffin-fuelled hurricane lamp, guaranteed magic-proof, against the darkness. But amazingly, as night drew on, the sky cleared and a sliver of a moon chased the vanished sun down towards a smudge of light that might have been Merseyside.
I waited, sitting on the stile, for another half an hour but no more ghosts appeared. I was about to pack it in when I spotted a figure briefly silhouetted on the horizon. Unlike the ghosts, this one didn’t glow with pseudo-phosphorus but stayed a shifting patch of shadow until she stepped into the circle of lamplight.
It was a small white woman with blonde hair cut short and a pop-idol-beautiful face. She was dressed as I remembered her from when we were probationers – high-viz jacket over a Metvest, Airwave clipped to her shoulder, tactical belt full of CS spray, speedcuffs and an extendable baton. Blue uniform trousers and DM lace-ups. All she was missing was the uniform cap with its badge and checkerboard band.
‘Hi, Peter,’ said Lesley May.
I lunged to grab her, using the stile as a brace to push off with my right foot. We’ve had magical fights, me and Lesley, and I couldn’t say who was better. Especially now when she’s been off learning fuck-knows-what from Christ-knows-who. But I was physically bigger, stronger and, in any case, she wouldn’t be expecting a grapple.
It was good tactics and it might even have worked if I hadn’t jumped right through her body and landed flat on my face.
I rolled over to find Lesley staring down at me. My hurricane lamp was still sitting on the wall behind her and her face was in shadow.
‘Good trick, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Picked it up in America.’
‘I’m assuming you’re not dead,’ I said, rolled over and got to my feet.
‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Still alive.’
I passed my hand through her torso and she stood still and let me. There was no resistance but there was a faint vestigium, like the smell of salt and a gentle surf breaking on a beach.
And children singing in what I recognised as German.
‘Is this astral projection?’ I asked.
‘Not quite,’ she said. ‘I’m sort of piggybacking on this ghost.’
I lunged suddenly at her eyes with my left hand – she flinched.
‘And, yes, I can see and hear you,’ she said.
‘This could revolutionise telecommunications, though,’ I said. ‘What’s the range?’
‘Nice try, but I’m not anywhere near you,’ she said.
But you are, I thought. Close enough to know I was attracting ghosts and then waylay one poor soul on his way off the moors. If I fire up my phone, can I persuade Derbyshire Police to put a helicopter overhead, bring in search teams? Probably not.
‘Peter,’ said Lesley with a note of exasperation so familiar to me that it made me smile. ‘Focus. Even if you had the army on standby you couldn’t get a cordon around me in time to catch me. This spell isn’t going to last that long and I have stuff I need to tell you.’
‘Where have you been?’ I asked.
‘Mostly in the States,’ she said. ‘They’re mad over there, by the way, and it’s wide open. I feel sorry for Kimberley, I really do, if she’s all they’ve got. But that’s not important. I was hired to nick something but I think there might have been some unintended consequences.’ She pulled a face. ‘Which were totally not my fault.’
‘Did you steal something from the archive?’ I asked.
‘Yes, but—’
‘Where is it?’
‘Close by,’ she said. ‘You’ll be there tomorrow – and are you in for a surprise! I know I was.’
‘What did you steal?’
‘A lamp,’ she said. ‘A magic lamp. A collector in the States wanted it.’
‘Did it have a genie in it?’ I asked. ‘Did it grant you wishes? Did it sing?’
‘Christ, and I was starting to miss you, Peter,’ she said. ‘But, yeah, there was something trapped inside and I don’t think it grants wishes. Unless you’re feeling suicidal, that is.’
‘The Angel of Death?’ I asked – thinking of the way she had just vanished into thin air like a genie might.
‘So you’ve met her, then?’
‘And she was in a lamp?’
‘It was a very fancy lamp, definitely enchanted, definitely old, definitely not to be fucked with.’
‘And yet you obviously fucked with it.’
‘Not on purpose,’ said Lesley, looking defensive. ‘The archive was a little bit more defended than I was led to believe. There was a bit of a scuffle. But because it was me, not you, the place was still standing at the end.’
You know that really shouldn’t have annoyed me as much as it did. But even as I knew I was being manipulated, I was getting angry. And I couldn’t afford angry – not when I was dealing with Lesley. Not even when she was a ghost projection or whatever.
‘I think the lamp got damaged in the fight,’ said Lesley. ‘And I was halfway back to my bike when there was a magical discharge and everything goes white and then black.’
I sat back down on the stile and fished in my coat pockets for the emergency Mars bar I was sure I’d left in there.
‘Real or magical explosion?’ I asked.
‘Magical, I think,’ said Lesley, and she came over to lean against the stone wall as if we were just two friends having a chat. ‘The lamp was intact but it had lost its sparkle – something had escaped.’
‘Our angel?’ I asked, coming up empty on the Mars bar front.
‘Yeah,’ said Lesley. ‘Maybe, but I didn’t see her and I was too busy running away to hang about and make inquiries. I did wonder who’d killed Carmichael, but it wasn’t until the guy in the Silver Vaults that I put two and two together.’
I didn’t see an obvious connection, which meant Lesley knew more than I did.
But if she’d only been after the lamp, why had she been visiting the dead Preston Carmichael in the first place?
‘Are you after the rings as well?’ I asked.
‘Is that the time?’ said Lesley, and she stood away from the wall. ‘This guy’s got a plane to catch.’
There was no transition – one moment it was Lesley and the next it was a German airman. He was dressed in a Luftwaffe flight suit, complete with leather helmet and quilted yellow life jacket. He seemed ridiculously young – maybe twenty – and his eyes were large and scared.
I looked around to see if the rest of his crew were with him, but there was nothing.
‘Wo ist die Einsatzleitung?’ he said. ‘Ich muss doch Meldung machen, aber ich fürchte, ich komme zu spät.’ I pointed down the hill.
‘Geh den hügel runter,’ I said in my best Google Translate German. ‘Folge den Leuchtfeuern.’ Follow the beacons.
‘Danke,’ he said, and slipped past me to half-walk, half-glide, down the hill.
I pulled out my notebook and by the yellow light of the hurricane lamp wrote up my encounter with Lesley. The only possible connection between the archive and David Moore and Preston Carmichael was the rings. And the only connection between the two men was Preston Carmichael’s prayer group. And fellow member Jocasta Hamilton had a ring, too. Were there more rings? Did any other member of the prayer group have rings? Were they in turn in danger from the Angel of Death? And was Lesley using us to locate them so she could steal their rings?