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“I…I can’t go near her.”
“Well, if it’s any consolation, I was scared of her, too, when I was a kid, and then I met her again at the funeral and she wasn’t that bad. Not really. She’s just an old lady.” In his mind she lit the black candles once more and sprinkled the herbs into the bowl. “Maybe a bit spooky. But you’ll be okay when you see her.”
“She made me go away,” said Spider. “I didn’t want to go. But I broke this ball in her garden. Big glass thing, like a giant Christmas tree ornament.”
“I did that, too. She was pissed.”
“I know.” The voice from the dark was small and worried and confused. “It was the same time. That was when it all started.”
“Well. Look. It’s not the end
of the world. You take me to Florida, I can go and get the feather back from Mrs. Dunwiddy. I’m not scared. You can stay away.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t go to where she is.”
“So, what are you trying to say? She’s taken out some kind of magical restraining order?”
“More or less. Yes.” Then Spider said, “I miss Rosie. I’m sorry about. You know.”
Fat Charlie thought about Rosie. He found it peculiarly hard to remember her face. He thought about not having Rosie’s mother as his mother-in-law; about the two silhouettes on the curtains in his bedroom window. He said, “Don’t feel bad about it. Well, you can feel bad about it if you want, because you behaved like a complete bastard. But maybe it was all for the best.” There was a twinge in the general region of Fat Charlie’s heart, but he knew that he was speaking the truth. It’s easier to say true things in the dark.
Spider said, “You know what doesn’t make sense here?”
“Everything?”
“No. Only one thing. I don’t understand why the Bird Woman got involved. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Dad pissed her off—”
“Dad pissed everybody off. She’s wrong, though. And if she wanted to kill us, why doesn’t she just try to do it?”
“I gave her our bloodline.”
“So you said. No, something else is going on, and I don’t get it.” Silence. Then Spider said, “Hold my hand.”
“Do I need to close my eyes?”
“May as well.”
“Where are we going? The moon?”
“I’m going to take you somewhere safe,” said Spider.
“Oh good,” said Fat Charlie. “I like safe. Where?”
But then, without even opening his eyes, Fat Charlie knew. The smell was a dead giveaway: unwashed bodies and unflushed toilets, disinfectant, old blankets and apathy.
“I bet I would have been just as safe in a luxury hotel room,” he said aloud, but there was nobody there to hear him. He sat down on the shelflike bed of cell six and wrapped the thin blanket around his shoulders. He might have been there forever.
Half an hour later, someone came and led him to the interrogation room.
“HULLO,” SAID DAISY, WITH A SMILE. “WOULD YOU LIKE A cup of tea?”
“You might as well not bother,” said Fat Charlie. “I’ve seen the telly. I know how it goes. This is that whole good-cop bad-cop thing, isn’t it? You’ll give me a cup of tea and some Jaffa cakes, then some big hard-bitten bastard with a hair-trigger temper comes in and shouts at me and pours the tea away and starts eating my Jaffa cakes and then you stop him from physically attacking me, and make him give me my tea and Jaffa cakes back, and in my gratitude I tell you everything you want to know.”
“We could skip all that,” said Daisy, “and you could just tell us what we want to know. Anyway, we don’t have any Jaffa cakes.”
“I told you everything I know,” said Fat Charlie. “Everything. Grahame Coats gave me a check for two grand and told me to take two weeks off. He said he was pleased I’d brought some irregularities to his attention. Then he asked for my password and waved me good-bye. End of story.”
