Deeper Shadows of Faerie by Martin Owton

Author:Martin Owton [Owton, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fantasy
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2022-08-23T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I saw rather less of Sharon for a while. Partly because the new chemistry Prof had brought back from the States was working giving me the chance to push ahead with my synthesis, and I spent my weekends out at Langley. She was also just around less; maybe due to the ongoing IPCC investigation, but she was also seeing more of Mike Scott. When she was around, I felt a coolness between us which I put down to me going against her advice with Peter Murphy, and I began thinking about moving back in with Greg and Chloe. That was until the missing schoolgirl.

My first awareness of her was a Monday afternoon news headline on The Echo website with picture of a fourteen-year-old girl who had not returned home on Sunday evening. Police were concerned for her safety as it was out of character for her to go missing. The picture caught my attention because she looked quite pretty, but I didn’t recognise her surname and she wasn’t from the Waterside, so I didn’t think anything more of it. By the evening three different people on my feed had shared Facebook posts with more pictures appealing for help in finding her.

By the end of Tuesday, she was still missing. Her tearful mother and aunts were on the local TV news appealing for her to come home; her father made no appearance. It did not look good, and I thought the next thing I would hear was that the police had found a body.

Sharon called me at the lab on Wednesday afternoon.

“Have you got time for a trip to the mortuary?”

I didn’t want to ask if it was the missing girl, but I had a bad feeling that it was.

“Yes, sure.”

“I’ll pick you up in twenty minutes.”

She picked me up in the blue Fiesta.

“Is it the missing girl?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. She looked tight-lipped and pale. I could easily have been convinced she had been crying.

“Shit.” I’d been hoping it was another Albanian.

She didn’t reply and I didn’t feel like saying more so we travelled in silence. I wasn’t looking forward to this and tried to separate myself from the emotion. The family and police needed the information. It was important that I supply it.

Sharon parked up in the staff car park and I followed her as she stalked off to the mortuary. Sanjay was on duty; when wasn’t he? Did he live there? He knew what we’d come for and not to make small talk.

“I don’t want to see the face,” I said to him as he unwrapped the body. “Just a foot is enough.”

“Okay.” He moved his attention to the other end of the body and exposed her legs below the knee. I walked over to the body fiercely reminding myself of the reasons for doing it. I took hold of her cold right foot and dived in.

I had to go deep. She’d been dead since Sunday afternoon, but I found what I needed then pulled back.

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