A Spell of Murders Read online

  Secretly, Mike was really proud of the fact that he had his own office. He knew it was a luxury few people had these days, but he tried not to let it go to his head. He unlocked the third door on the left numbered 403 and tossed his notes on the small table by the door that he used for tutorials. He flicked his wrist and the door closed behind him and locked itself. He then snapped his fingers and the lights switched themselves on. Walking round to the other side of his desk, he half contemplated logging onto his computer and carrying on with his latest paper but decided he’d done enough for the day already. He raised his arms and his leather jacket rose off the back of his chair and fitted itself over his shoulders. He then raised his left arm and his shoulder bag rose off the floor and the strap flapped itself over his left shoulder. He put his laptop into the bag before heading out.

  He got as far as the door when the phone rang on his desk. At first, he wondered if it was Cookey wanting to know when those exam papers would be ready, but then remembered that he was still in the US. He seriously considered letting it ring but his better nature won over and he reluctantly walked back and lifted the receiver into his hand with his will before holding it to his face. “Hello, Dr Michael Walker speaking.”

  “Yes, hello, Dr Walker.” The voice was brisk, professional and female. “This is Detective Sergeant Granger from Middlesbrough CID.”

  Mike paused for a moment. Okay, this wasn’t good. “Oh, uh, hello, yes, how can I help you, officer?”

  “Do you know a young lady named Kerry Jones?”

  Mike thought for a moment then realisation dawned on him. “Uh, yeah, I believe one of my first-year undergraduates is called that. Why do you ask?”

  “Sir, could you possibly come over to Middlesbrough Police Station please?”

  Chapter 3

  “Sir?” Mike just stared. “Sir?”

  He sighed. “Yeah, it’s her.”

  Sergeant Jennifer Granger nodded to the pathologist who proceeded to pull the sheet over the corpse’s face. “Would you like a drink of water, sir?”

  “No, thank you. Is this the work of…?”

  “Please, sir, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that name around here. But yes, we believe so.”

  Mike looked at her slightly surprised. “I was going to say, ‘that freak in the papers’.”

  Sergeant Granger sighed. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just not been a good week for us.”

  Mike looked over at the sheet covering the lifeless body. “Yeah I imagine it hasn’t.”

  “Would you mind coming upstairs and giving us a statement please, sir?”

  “Of course not. Lead the way.” They headed out of the lab toward the small lift. “Actually,” Mike suddenly said, “Could I possibly get that glass of water please?”

  The young sergeant smiled. “Of course, sir. I’ll get it for you upstairs.”

  She had quite a pretty face, Mike supposed, but her features were strong as if she was expressing outwardly how tough she was on the inside. She had kind eyes, though; they were light blue and her short blonde bob framed the whole effect quite nicely. Her attire of a white polo-neck jumper and dark slacks made her look casual enough for people to be comfortable around her, but professional enough to make someone think twice about messing with her. Mike had a strong feeling that it would be in his best interests to try and keep on her good side.

  He found himself staring at the floor as they rode up in the lift. He hadn’t felt this numb in a long time. He hardly knew the girl but still, she was one of his students. He had power, he should have been able to protect her, but he couldn’t protect all the others in the papers. He hadn’t even given them a thought. Sure, he’d been shocked like everyone else had when the killings had started and he’d become that little bit more cautious, even added a couple of extra wards to his house and office, but he hadn’t thought about finding the monster himself. After all, why should he? It wasn’t his problem. He wasn’t a keeper, he was a seeker. God what was he thinking? He was neither now.

  The lift took them to the seventh floor into a large open-plan office. The floor was packed with people and Mike couldn’t help but notice that most of them looked either flustered, depressed or just plain angry. He suddenly felt a bit nervous. He’d never been very good with crowds, especially ones that looked angry and baying for blood; they always made him think back to his days of studying vampires. A chill ran down his spine and pain spiked across his back. He shook himself down and hoped that if anyone saw him, they just assumed he was thinking of Mad Jack. It was then that she ran into him.

  “Oh, I’m sorry…” he started. The tiny figure had long, curly brown hair and a sharp, pretty face. Unfortunately, it currently had an incredibly bad scowl spread across it, which spoilt things. She barely glanced up at him and carried on as if he hadn’t even been there. Story of my life, Mike thought as he watched her head into the lift.

  “Sorry about that, sir.” Mike turned round to see a young man about his own age and height standing next to Sergeant Granger. “She’s in a bit of a mood with me. Oh, sorry, where are my manners? I’m Detective Inspector David Walsh.”

  “Hello, Inspector. I’m Dr Michael Walker.” Mike shook the man’s outstretched hand and felt a sudden surge of energy spike up his arm and directly into his brain. Damn, he’d forgotten to put his guard up. One of the problems with being psychic was that physical touch caused transfer of intense emotions if you weren’t properly prepared. Mike wasn’t prepared and the inspector’s feelings were certainly intense. He didn’t get a direct look into the man’s mind, but he did feel incredibly strong negative emotions; it was intense frustration mixed with a volatile rage. An intensely potent combination and Mike found himself stumbling slightly.

  “Are you okay, sir?” the inspector asked as he grabbed Mike’s shoulder.

  Mike tried to pull himself together and ignore the sharp pain in his back. “Uh, I’m fine, thanks. Sorry. Uh, just thinking of Kerry, you know?”

  The inspector gave him a suspicious look before continuing, “If you’ll just follow me, please.”

  They entered a small room located at the back of the office. It contained a small rectangular table and four chairs. Inspector Walsh gestured Mike to take a seat and sat himself in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the table before placing a pad of paper in front of himself. Almost immediately, Sergeant Granger followed them in and placed a plastic cup filled with water in front of Mike before sitting down next to her superior.

  Mike thanked her and took a quick swig of the water before looking back over at the two officers. “I’m afraid I’ve never done one of these before. Uh, what do you need me to do?”

  “Oh, nothing much, sir,” the inspector replied. “We’ll ask you a series of questions and make notes, then we’ll write it out as a statement, give it to you to read and then you can sign it.”

  “Uh, as long as you’re happy with it, of course, sir,” Sergeant Granger finished.

  Mike couldn’t help notice the inspector give her the eye and that she then flinched slightly. He was no expert on things like body language, but he didn’t need his psychic power to tell him what that meant and he tried to suppress a smile.

  He spent the next hour telling the two police officers what little he knew about Kerry. He explained to them that he barely knew her at all. She was one of his personal tutor group, which meant that he met her and two other first-year undergraduate students once a week to discuss their progress. He also told the two officers how he wasn’t giving any first-year lectures that year and that she wasn’t in any of his subject tutorial groups, which he met with every week to go through example exercises. Other than that, he didn’t have much to tell them, except that he thought Kerry seemed to be a good kid who got quite good grades in her chosen subject.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, what do you lecture, sir?”

  The inspector’s question caught Mike off guard slightly. He wondered later if that was deliberate. “Oh, mainly ma
ths, quantum physics and electronics.”

  “Interesting combination,” the sergeant remarked. “What’s your research interest, if you don’t mind me asking, sir?”

  Mike squirmed slightly. “Oh, I’m looking into new mathematical models of string theory.”

  “Hmm, sounds very complicated.”

  Mike had heard the inspector’s attitude before; it was the one employed by people who pretended to be interested in science when in reality they couldn’t give a toss about it. He always dealt with it in the same way – he ignored it.

  Eventually, the inspector decided they had enough information and told Sergeant Granger to write up Mike’s statement. While she did that, the inspector leaned back in his chair and stared at Mike intently, almost as if he was searching for something in Mike’s face. It made Mike feel somewhat uncomfortable. “Is there something else you’d like to know, Inspector?”

  Walsh leaned forward before responding, “I’m just curious, sir. Do you always dress this way?”

  Mike smiled. “I’m strictly a tee shirt and jeans man, Inspector. And yes, some of my colleagues do say I look much more like a student than a member of staff but I choose to ignore them.”

  “I can appreciate that, sir, however, no offence, but don’t you think that the leather jacket and trainers are a bit much?”

  Mike was about to ask how a young police inspector was able to afford what looked to him like an Italian designer suit when the sergeant asked him to review his statement. Thanks to his marking experience, it didn’t take him long to confirm that what she’d written was what he’d said, so he signed and dated the form. The inspector accepted it with what Mike was starting to feel was an increasingly suspicious look. It was making him feel more and more uncomfortable. The longer he was in Walsh’s presence, the more Mike wanted to be out of it and he’d hoped that as soon as the statement was done, he could leave, but the inspector and Sergeant Granger remained firmly seated and silent.

  Mike shuffled uncomfortably until finally he decided to break the ice. “Um, is there anything else, Inspector, or can I leave now?”

  “That depends, sir.”

  Mike’s eyes narrowed. “On what?”

  “On whether there’s anything else you want to tell us?”

  Mike took a deep breath; he was really starting to hate this guy. “No, I’ve told you everything.” He pushed the plain plastic chair away from the table with a horrible screeching sound and stood up. “Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to get home.”

  It was then that Sergeant Granger finally spoke. “Um, we may need to be in touch with you again, sir.”

  Mike produced one of his business cards from his jacket pocket and tossed it onto the table. “All of my contact details are on here. I haven’t got any business trips or holidays planned.”

  “Keep it that way, sir,” Walsh said almost slyly.

  Mike said nothing more but made sure he gave the inspector a dirty look as he left.

  Mike stomped out of the lift in frustration. His exposure to the police had been primarily through books and television shows but he was starting to wonder if some of the stereotypes about them might just be true after all. They’d certainly tried the good cop, bad cop routine on him. Or at least he hoped that they were just trying it on. The thought of anyone, even an idiot like that inspector, thinking that he could possibly have something to do with Kerry’s death made his blood boil. He tried to keep his temper under control but he still felt a slight sharp pain in his back, so he stood by the lift for a moment to catch his breath and get his emotions under control.

  It was just as he was heading toward the door that he saw the couple standing by the desk. The man looked to be in his mid to late fifties and about five foot nine. He had a heavy face in every sense of the word. His features were strong but his eyes showed all the signs of fatigue brought about by being woken from slumber prematurely or suffering from an incredible amount of stress. His face looked familiar to Mike, but he couldn’t quite place it until the woman next to him stood up from signing the visitors’ book. Her long, curly black hair fell away from her face, showing that she too was approaching 50 from the wrong direction, but she was still attractive, even now with her clearly tear-reddened eyes. It wasn’t difficult for Mike to realise who she was; the resemblance to her daughter was uncanny.

  He walked up to them as they approached the lift. “Uh, Mr and Mrs Jones?” The woman just looked at him with eyes that looked hollow and empty but the man nodded. “Sorry, uh, my name is Dr Michael Walker.” A confused look followed by a small amount of realisation came over the couple’s eyes and they both looked at him more closely. “I, um, that is… I just wanted to say… I’m just so sorry.” Kerry’s father nodded stiffly but her mother burst into tears.

  Mike stood to one side and let them pass, instantly regretting opening his big mouth. It was then that he noticed Sergeant Granger coming out of the lift to meet them. Not wanting to be anywhere near her or the other copper, he turned around and dashed out of the building. He realised that he’d just been the one who’d killed the last bit of hope those poor parents had that their beloved daughter was okay and that this had all been some sort of sick joke or a terrible mistake. His stomach started to feel like it was tying itself into a knot as he stepped through the doors into the outside world.

  The darkness of the late night had descended while he’d been in the station. A three-quarter moon shone clearly and the few stars bright enough to overcome the town’s light pollution pierced the black sky like tiny pinpricks of hope in the seemingly endless void of space.

  Mike was somewhat surprised to find two uniformed policemen were now guarding the glass double doors of the station like sentinels. They were tall, stocky and imposing, and both gave Mike a sombre nod as he left. It was only as he reached the bottom of the half a dozen steps that led back down to street level that he realised what they were there for. Almost immediately after taking the last step, a small group of people of various sizes, shapes and gender, who had been loitering disconnectedly around the base of the steps, suddenly all dashed toward him and congregated around him. Some started brandishing business cards, others held dictaphones or snapped his picture with cameras or their mobile phones and some even used old-fashion notebooks and pens, ready to scribble his every word as they bombarded him with a sudden assault of questions.

  “Excuse me, sir, are you Dr Michael Walker?”

  How on Earth did they get his name?

  “Is it true that the latest victim was one of your students, sir?”

  ‘Was’. Yeah, she most definitely ‘was’. ‘Was’ now being the operative word. Bloody vultures, did they even care about that?

  He pushed his way through the throng of reporters trying hard not to make eye contact with any of them. They expertly left him just enough room to squeeze through but still remained close enough to keep bombarding him with questions.

  “Have you seen her body?”

  “Can you say what he did to her?”

  “Do you have any comment to make?”

  After he was through the last of them, Mike turned round and ever so slightly flexed his fingers before saying, “I have no comment to make, now please leave me alone!” And they did, though most of them didn’t know why they did. Satisfied that the spell had worked, Mike turned around and continued on to his car.

  The university’s car park was located on Southfield Road, only five minutes’ walk away from the police station, so Mike was soon entering the private multistorey and none too soon, as far as he was concerned. He wanted to get as far away from that damn police station and its inhabitants as soon as possible.

  He almost felt physically ill from the guilt of what he’d said to Kerry’s poor parents. It was just so wrong. She was a good student and she had so much to live for and even if she wasn’t, her family didn’t deserve all this suffering, it was so wrong.

  His small silver Ford Focus was the last vehicle remaining in the
car park when he finally got to it. He reached the car door with his key ready and was just about to press the radio button to unlock it when he stopped, swore under his breath, turned around and went back the way he came.

  Chapter 4

  Mike headed out of the car park and left the university grounds. He walked up to the next street and then turned the corner and headed toward the old row of terraced buildings that were tucked away in the next street behind the offices of the Evening Gazette. To the casual observer the building looked like nothing more than any of the many others in the old town. It was a large, whitewashed structure and like most in Middlesbrough, it was no taller than three stories. A small and barely noticeable gold plaque next to the door bore the inscription ‘Order Of The Cunning Ones’ in black stencilled letters. Of course, most people who looked at it couldn’t see that.

  He stood outside for a moment and wondered what the hell he was doing there. He wasn’t going to be warmly welcomed, that was for sure, and what exactly did he expect to find? Answers? The reason he’d left in the first place was to look for those! Then again, he was looking for a different truth now.

  He reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and pulled on a slim silver chain that proceeded to slither out of his coat like a thin shiny worm, bringing with it a small silver disc about two centimetres in diameter. He held up the talisman and watched it spin round, alternating between its two symbols; a sword enclosed within a ring made up of 12 points on one side and a six-point star on the other. He’d often wondered why he kept carrying the damn thing around with him. It wasn’t like he needed reminding of his past or that he worried about losing the stupid thing, but now he was actually glad that he had it with him, or at least he thought he was.