Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page B

a flicker pass across her face, a wavering muscle that was under control in seconds.
    “I wondered if he was missing an iPhone, the dead officer.”
    She paused for a single heart beat before speaking. “If you could take a seat, miss.”
    “What?”
    “Please, wait over there.” She picked up the phone and spoke into it, too quietly for me to hear. I leaned against a wall. The man was with the duty officer now. I got so caught up with the story he was telling—how a dog had shot across the road in the dark last night, how he wasn’t able to stop, how there hadn’t been a name on the collar—that I didn’t see the detective until he was standing over me.
    “I should’ve guessed,” said Reynard Buckley.
    I jumped. “Guessed what?”
    “If there was every another nasty case, you’d turn out to be part of it.”
    He didn’t give me chance to respond, even to ask what the hell he meant. I simply followed him through corridors and up stairs until he stopped to open a door.
    We went in and sat opposite each other at a table. I’d given statements to the police before, long, involved sessions where the questions were lined with suspicion. But surely this would be quick, easy. After a few moments of silence I raised my shoulders in a Gallic shrug. “It’s probably nothing at all.” Rey didn’t reply. He drummed his fingers.
    “Look,” I said, “I’m—”
    “Can you wait for the interview to formally begin?” said Rey.
    I slammed my mouth tight.
    By the time a uniformed officer turned up, the recording equipment had been switched on, and the interview begun, I’d lost my nerve. I had no idea what to say.
    Abbott had taken against me the last time I’d brushed shoulders with the police. He’d had a way of closing his eyes that was more uncomfortable than an outright stare. He’d sworn at me, with intent, hoping to throw me off balance. If Abbott had been conducting this interview, the fact that I’d lost a vital piece of evidence would have been all he’d need to mock and taunt me. And from the vibes coming from Rey, he was tempted to try the same game. Anyway, it wasn’t a vital piece of evidence, was it? It had been dropped before Abbott had died, while he was pursuing … his killer? I blanched at the thought. At least they now knew why it was missing; they could call up the logs from the phone company if they were interested, couldn’t they?
    “I feel a bit of a fool,” I said. “But I only put the phone in my pocket so that I could ask the father of the little boy if he’d lost one without him seeing it.” I hoped that made me sound logical … or at least more sober than I’d actually been. “Then there was this girl from a float, all dressed up as a gypsy, pretending to tell fortunes. I have no proof that she took it, but someone did.”
    They stared back at me, reaffirming the “bit of a fool” part without having to say a word.
    “I haven’t been a lot of help,” I finished.
    “On the contrary,” said the constable, emotionally numb to any atmosphere that was pulsing red round Rey and me, “this will be very useful. Police deaths are always taken with extreme seriousness.”
    “Extreme seriousness,” echoed Rey. “Your friend, Deborah Hitchens. We’ll be having a word with her. She should have come with you.”
    “I know,” I said, looking away. “It was Debs who pushed me into having my palm read.”
    “I thought you were a shaman. Why would you want your palm read?”
    “We were only mucking about.”
    “There seems to have been a lot of mucking about.”
    “It was the carnival , Rey. People go to have fun—if you recognise that phrase.”
    “How much had you both had to drink?”
    “Oh! Well, what with the pubs open late, we were probably quite … ankled.”
    Rey passed a hand over his number-three crew cut. He hadn’t allowed it to grow by a single millimetre since our last meeting. “I’ll see you out.”
    His words were formal and toneless. My innards