Third Solstice CALIBRE with cover (3 page)

“Thanks,” Lee interrupted, calmly as if she’d been offering him a recipe. “I tell you what—it’s getting a bit late. Can I give you a lift?”

“Throwing me out, are you? All right. The constable can take me, though. Your little car will play havoc with my hips.”

Gideon allowed himself a low whistle of admiration. “Lee’s right. You
are
a nice lady—sorry, Lee, the baby monitor was on—but you about take the biscuit for cheek. Tamsie, let go of Mrs Ragwen’s hair so I can escort her home.”

“No, Gid. Let me do it.” Lee moved to block his path to the door. He laid a hand to Gideon’s chest, an odd anxiety darkening his eyes. “Don’t ask just yet. I’ll be five minutes—I’ll tell you everything when I get back.”

Chapter Three

An engine roared in the street outside. The note of it was familiar. Gideon pushed back the living-room curtain in time to see Lee take the corner like a Brands Hatch pro and bring the Escort to a screeching halt by the kerb. Catching his urgency, Gideon ran for the front door, but before he could get there, Lee had darted inside and slammed it behind him. “Oh, Gid. I did something stupid.”

They stood facing one another in the hallway. “Did you invite her back for Christmas sherries?”

“No. In London. I saw Siobhan Reeves.”

The name was familiar. Gideon cast back to a long-ago conversation in Lee’s harbourside flat, when Lee had first begun to tell him the price of his gift. “The hypnotist lady? The one who used to help you—”

“Build walls in my head, yes. I didn’t plan to see her. When I’d been in the city for a few days, I realised how... eroded I was, how open. I couldn’t shut anything out. I couldn’t stop thinking about Dev, and Elowen, and coming into our street that day and seeing our house blown to shreds, and...”

“Did she help?”

“I thought so at the time, but...” He shivered, as if the walls of his home were inadequate too, the door behind him open to the wind. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”

“Only because I’d have gone with you. You know that.”

“Yeah, I do, and that’s the whole point.” Their landlord had installed two rather grand lanterns on either side of tiny hallway. Lee looked like some heraldic night-creature caught between them, their light incandescing in the silver of his hair and eyes. “If you’d been there, I’d have remembered why I can’t have the walls anymore.”

“Because of... Because of me?”

“You didn’t feel me come home, did you?”

“No. And once you were there, it was like I couldn’t
see
you properly.” Gideon’s voice had wavered. He swallowed hard, then ruined it by adding, pathetically, “I still can’t.”

“I know. They’re easier to put up than take down—the walls, I mean. Please help.”

Gideon held out his arms. Lee shot into them, his last stride a pure leap for safety. His momentum carried both of them through the bedroom door, and Gideon seized the advantage and half-lifted him over to the bed, going down like a controlled ton of bricks on top. “You want me to take these walls down?”

“Yes. I can’t bear it.”

“But if you need them—”

“You’re my wall. You’re my higher ground.” Lee seized him powerfully, sending the bedside light flying. The bulb broke and the room plunged into darkness. They froze, waiting tensely, but no frightened cry arose from the next room. “Is she asleep?”

“Sound. I left the monitor in the other room. Do you want me to—”

“Afterwards.”

“I’m sorry I listened to you and the old lady. I didn’t mean to.”

“God knows what you heard. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Afterwards.”

***

The phone woke Gideon at eight in the morning. He’d have ignored it, in the first fragile dawn of his shared holiday with his husband, but Lee had set the
Hawaii Five-0
theme as the ringtone for calls from the station. Silently cursing him, Gideon rolled over and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“Morning, Sergeant. I’m sorry—I know you’re on leave, but...”

He fell back against the pillows, listening with as much grace as he could muster. Lee appeared in the doorway, jouncing Tamsyn in his arms. Gideon put a hand over his eyes. “Yes, ma’am,” he said eventually. “No, it’s all right. I understand. Yes, a very merry Christmas to you too.”

He hung up. Lee brought the baby over and deposited her in the wreckage of the bedsheets, where she began to crawl around, crowing happily. “Oh, Gid,” he said, resignation already shadowing his tone. “All of it?”

“No. No, I got off pretty lightly—just tonight, in Penzance.”

“What, for the Montol?”

“Yep. DI Lawrence says half their squad’s gone down with some kind of flu, and they’re expecting trouble, kids coming in from outside to mess things up.” He retrieved his daughter from the edge of the bed. “I’ll have to go. I’m sorry, sweetheart. She promised to leave us alone for anything short of a nuclear war after that.”

“Is it a uniform job?”

“No. Plainclothes and casual, so I won’t be getting too many bricks lobbed at me. She just wants a presence on the streets in case.”

“Why don’t we come with you, then?” Lee sat down cross-legged on the bed. “It’s time she saw her first Montol. We can be part of your cover—the boyfriend and the cute baby.”

“Adorable. But did you not hear the part about the lobbed bricks?”

“We’ll be fine.”

Gideon gave it thought. He could see his lovely man in glorious detail and colour today, and
we’ll be fine
wasn’t a vague reassurance, not coming from Lee like that. It meant that he probably knew. Gideon loved the revived midwinter festival that roared through the Penzance streets at solstice, but a revival was all it was, not like the bone-ancient Kelyndar Golowan. “I dunno,” he said, stifling a yawn. “Things tend to get a little freaky for us around December twenty-first, in case you haven’t noticed. I was thinking more TV and pizza than frolics on the promenade.”

“I’m not sure me and madam can eat a whole stuffed-crust on our own. But I take your point about the date.” Shadows chased across Lee’s morning brightness, and he reached across and retrieved the baby in his turn, settling her in his lap. “Part of what you heard Granny Ragwen say last night, right? Part of what we need to talk about.”

Afterwards
. After a long night of loving so sweet that Gideon scarcely cared about what had gone before. On mornings like this, he wanted to take all their lives’ mysteries, roll them up and punt them into the fire he could see glimmering through the open living-room door. Lee must have got up early. The baby was dressed and clean, and to judge by the fragments stuck to Lee’s jumper, had enjoyed a hearty breakfast. Lee’s walls were down, the only trace of them a glimmer of dust-motes in the air. “I guess so,” he said reluctantly. “What did she mean about the solstice gates, do you reckon?”

“The ones that swing wide for your brood?”

“Those ones, yeah.”

“Well, leaving aside the possibility that she
is
the all-knowing witch of Dark—she’s a nosy old girl, and she probably heard that your dad died a year ago today. And the Island case was in all the papers the year before.”

“She couldn’t have known about Fisher, though—the time of his death.” Gideon pulled a face and hitched up the duvet. “Maybe we
should
all just take cover for the day. I could catch flu just as well as a Penzance copper.”

Lee smiled. “Not you, Sergeant.”

“Why not?”

“In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never left a colleague in the lurch. You’ll be at Montol tonight. Anyway, you ought to be safe, technically speaking—solstice doesn’t fall until tomorrow, 4:48 AM.”

Gideon surveyed him in amusement. “Checked, did you?”

“Seemed worthwhile.”

“Come here, both of you. If I’ve got to spend the first proper night of my leave out there plodding, I want some serious family time now.”

“Is this where we all end up under the duvet like a Christmas ad for one of the more forward-thinking stores?”

“Yeah. So not Trago, obviously.” Gideon put out an arm, shivering in pleasure as Lee and the baby scrambled into place. He should have remembered the disadvantages of having that perceptive head pressed to his shoulder: after a minute’s contented silence, Lee murmured, “Wow. We
do
worry about the same things.”

“Comes with the marriage certificate, I think. What’s uppermost?”

“Poltergeist Annie here, for both of us.” Lee ruffled the little girl’s hair. She had curled up between them and was serenading herself with a tuneless version of the porridge song. “The last time I saw Siobhan was long before I met you, you know. What if Tamsyn doesn’t happen to find someone in her life who can protect her, make her decide she doesn’t need walls?”

“She’ll have us,” Gideon said staunchly. “For as long as she needs us, and probably long after.”

“You’re good as gold, you are. I’m not sure I want her having to make those choices, though—what to conceal about herself, what to risk revealing.”

“Everybody has to do that. Look, she scared the bejesus out of me too. But she was on hyperdrive, remember, getting you back after a whole week away. It’s like everything else with kids—if
we
don’t make a big deal of it...”

“She might not?”

“Worth a try, isn’t it? She might never do it again. And, you know, it’s normal to have things like Elowen and the explosion rattling around in your head. We had the baby to look after, so we didn’t have the chance to react to it all at the time.”

“Maybe I’ve been freaking out quietly about it ever since. I’m sorry, love. I sometimes can’t tell the difference between my shadow-side stuff and the things everybody has to cope with.” He lifted his face to meet and return Gideon’s kiss, ordinary as day. Then all his sunshine changed to silver, the transition smooth and unstoppable. “Your brother’s outside,” he said flatly. “He’s just sitting out there in his car. He’s really upset.”

“Shit.” Gideon winced at himself. There went another pound into the swear jar. Tamsyn wouldn’t have to worry about her student debt at this rate. “Seriously?”

“I’m afraid so. Do you want me to go to him?”

“No, no.” Reluctantly disentangling, Gideon recalled the last time he’d seen his brother really upset.
Things like Elowen rattling round in your head...
It might be normal, but he reckoned he and his husband were suffering from a good domestic case of PTSD after the events of last August. “I’ll sort him out. Probably he’s stuck for ideas for a sermon.”

“What, so he’s come to visit the gays?”

“We’re a great inspiration.” Gideon avoided Lee’s swipe, grabbing a jumper from beside the bed. “I know he’s much better now, but we’re still his best example of the high road to hell.”

“Just go and bring him in. I’ll put the kettle on.”

Until he saw Ezekiel’s hearse-like Volvo parked by the kerb, Gideon hoped that for once Lee had been wrong. A callout for the end of the day was one thing, but he really didn’t want to spend the rest of it enmeshed in a family crisis. Trusting that his pyjama bottoms were decent for the street, he pushed his feet into a pair of boots and stamped out to the car. Cautiously he tapped on the window. “Morning. You all right?”

Zeke jumped as if he’d been shot. He stared at his brother through the glass. He was as near to a mess as Gideon had ever seen him—hair rumpled, suit creased, a distinct trace of beard darkening his jaw. He wound down the window. “How did you know I was here?”

“Oh, you know. Same way we know most things around here.”

“Lee?”

“No. The window.”

“Your curtains are shut.”

Gideon sighed. He refrained from observing to Zeke that the Goth-priest look rather suited him, and indicated the open front door. “You look awful. Do you want to come in?”

The kitchen wasn’t big enough for Lee to retreat out of earshot once he’d welcomed Zeke and offered a cup of tea, though Gideon could sense him trying. He wondered at the necessity. He couldn’t think of anything Zeke might have to say that Lee shouldn’t hear.

Yes, he could. Ma Frayne had been the only person to show Elowen any consistent kindness, but she didn’t have a mobile or email. Zeke had both, and out of the two Frayne brothers would be by far the easiest to approach. Involuntarily he glanced at the locked kitchen cupboard where he and Lee kept disinfectants, medicines and copies of vital legal documents, Tamsyn’s watertight adoption papers amongst them. Distractedly he sat down at the table with his brother. Lee was settling Tamsyn into her high chair, fastening a bib around her neck for the next round of her morning feeds. “What’s up, Zeke? Bit early for a social call, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and I’m aware that Lee just got home last night. I just... I need to talk to you. Though I scarcely know how to begin.”

Gideon rested his elbows on the table. He laced his fingers together, tightened his grip until it hurt. “Tell you what,” he said softly. “Begin by telling me this is nothing to do with Elowen.”

Zeke went white. Then, weirdly, he blushed to the hairline. “Lee hears too much,” he rasped. “This is my own private matter, and I’m not yet ready to—”

“Wait.
Your
private matter?” Gideon leaned toward him, lowering his voice with an effort that almost choked him. “This is his house. He’s practically gone out into the garden so that he doesn’t have to hear you. What’s going on? What does she want now?”

“Who?”

Gideon’s head spun. One of his ears began to sing with the change in blood pressure. “For God’s sake. Elowen!”

“Elowen? I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her in months.”

“Then—why did you say this was about her?”

“I didn’t!” Zeke swallowed audibly and turned a deeper shade of crimson. “You said it was about Eleanor, and I—”

“Your Eleanor? No.”

“Yes, you did.”

Gideon drew a deep breath. He had unsuspected reservoirs of fear and hate within him for Elowen Tyack, and he was about to unleash the flood on his brother. It wasn’t right or fair, but his nerves were stripped to buzzing copper wire. “Ezekiel—”