Slow Poison Read online

  Slow Poison

  Helen Slavin

  About the Author

  Helen Slavin was born in Heywood in Lancashire in 1966. She was raised by eccentric parents on a diet of Laurel and Hardy, William Shakespeare and the Blackpool Illuminations. Educated at her local comp her favourite subjects at school were English and Going Home.

  After The University of Warwick she worked in many jobs including, plant and access hire, a local government Education department typing pool, and a vasectomy clinic. A job as a television scriptwriter gave her the opportunity to spend all day drinking tea, living in a made-up fantasy world and getting paid for it (sometimes).

  Helen has been a professional writer for fifteen years. Her first novel The Extra Large Medium was chosen as the winner in the Long Barn Books competition run by Susan Hill.

  A paragliding Welsh husband and two children distract her and give her ample opportunity to spend all day drinking tea, nagging about homework and washing pants for England. In the wee small hours she still keeps a bijou flat in that fantasy world of writing. When not working with animals and striving for world peace, Helen enjoys the music of Elbow and baking bread. Her favourite colour is purple and if she had to be stranded on a desert island with someone it would be Ray Mears (alright, George Clooney is very good looking but can he make fire with a stick? No. See?)

  She now lives, with her family, in Trowbridge, Wiltshire where, when she’s not writing, she’s asleep. Or in Tesco.

  * * *

  If you’d like to hear more from Helen, visit her website, www.helenslavin.com

  Also By Helen Slavin

  The Extra Large Medium

  The Stopping Place

  Cross My Heart

  From a Distance

  Little Lies

  After the Andertons

  To the Lake

  Will You Know Me?

  The Witch Ways Series

  Crooked Daylight

  Slow Poison

  The Witch Ways Whispers

  The Ice King

  Breaking Bones

  Whyte Harte

  Slow Poison

  Helen Slavin

  First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Agora Books

  Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS

  Copyright © Helen Slavin, 2018

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  1

  The Visitor

  Cob Cottage shuddered in the wind, the rain lashing on the windows like tears as the Way sisters stared at the rounded object on the floor at Charlie’s feet. It was a head. Definitely, without any doubt, this was a man’s head. The wind howled mournfully as Emz looked down at the rather waxen closed eye corpse face, the flesh hanging a bit flaccid just there, where the cheek met the mat, the hair streaked across the forehead where it was brown with blood, but, if she looked for a longer moment she saw the ghost image of his real face, offering her a glimpse of how he had looked when alive. This lost face looked up at her, tired and sad and weary. She knelt beside him, reached to push the hair out of his face, where a strand straggled across his eye and into his slightly open mouth.

  Emz touching the head seemed to break a spell that had drifted over them. The waif-like woman, who had carried this burden, darted forward to retrieve her fallen treasure, her small thin fingers pulling the rags around it.

  “What are you doing?” she snapped, holding the head tight to her body. Emz held up her hands in a small surrendering gesture.

  “Tidying his hair,” she said in a quiet voice. This answer wiped the cross expression from the woman’s weather bedraggled face and her shoulders dropped slightly before she reached again for her bravado and drew herself up. She was distracted for a moment, stashing the tattered package into her ragged coat. The material, Anna noted, was thin and black and worn and it was torn in places so that she looked as if she had been clawed by wild animals. Anna looked up into her face. Pale. Tired. Strained.

  She was breathing hard, her lips pinched as she regarded the three of them.

  “This is Cob Cottage?” the woman asked, her eyes darting quick glances at the furniture, the windows. “In Havoc Wood? I’m at the right place?”

  Anna’s muscle memory kicked her a little.

  “Come far?” she asked. The woman backed off a step as if stung, and, Charlie noted, clenched her fist at her side as if in readiness for a fight.

  “Where’s Hettie Way?” The woman’s voice was strong, but Anna could hear the undercurrent of uncertainty, recognised it from her own voice in the last year. Anna’s head filled with a smoky image of the boat carrying their grandmother’s coffin, burning its way across the lake. She found she couldn’t speak for a moment. “You aren’t her.” The woman asked again, angrier this time, “Where is she?”

  “She died.” It was Charlie who spoke, brief and to the horrible point. At this the woman looked quite as distraught as the Ways. Her early bravado drained out of her with the rainwater that was puddled on the mat beneath her feet. She had looked skinny before but now she looked ethereal, a pearly grey tone glossed over her skin. Anna was about to say something more welcoming, but their weary guest was crumpling like a paper bag, the head once more rolling from her grasp. Anna stepped forward with a sharp cry, her fingers clutching at the falling woman’s sleeve as Charlie lurched to the rescue, arms outstretched.

  “Help,” Charlie yelped. As Charlie and Emz lifted the slight figure, Anna pulled over the long one-armed sofa. Cushions propped their visitor up as Anna, who by now was shaking, moved to the kitchen to put the kettle on and start to grill a cheese sandwich. There was safety of sorts, in food, for Anna at least.

  Emz picked up the severed head and tried to wrap it up in the rags it had been transported in. They were not up to the task, too raggedy and tattered to be of any use at all. Unwilling to throw them away Emz put them to one side and reached for a clean tea towel. That still didn’t feel right. To top it all as she put the head down on the table it began to roll slightly once more, as if, scary thought, don’t think the scary thought Emz, it might still be alive. Emz took her fine wool scarf from the chair by the window and wrapped the head in that before placing it in the crook of the visitor’s arm between her and the sofa. Safe.

  There was a sudden silence, broken only by the kettle sounds. The Ways looked at each other. Charlie made a face at Anna who shrugged and then they both looked at Emz as if she might have an explanation.

  “What are you looking at me for?” Emz asked. Her sisters hesitated for a second.

  “It saves having to look at the head,” Charlie reasoned.

  “What would Grandma do?” Anna’s face was creased into a frown as she turned back through the arch as the kettle boiled up. There was the sound of teapot and teabags and chinking of mugs so that life seemed still to be real and happening.

  “I don’t think Grandma Hettie knew everyone who arrived here,” Charlie decided.

  “No. Well, obvs. And this is being the Gamekeepers isn’t it? Marshalling and patrolling…” Emz cast an anxious glance at the prone figure of their visitor, “and… stuff.” Charlie gave a doubtful snort.

  “Nothing is easy in Havoc Wood,” Anna said as she stepped back through the arch with a tray laden with the leftover scones from yesterday, the freshly melted ch
eese sandwich and the tea things. The scent of the cheese sandwich seemed to revive their guest in the same manner as a defibrillator. She sat upright, threatened, and at once Emz stepped forward.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the scarfed parcel. “He’s here. It’s alright.” The woman grabbed for him, struggled with her burden, the roundness of the head sitting uneasily within the too small confines of her jacket, her knuckles whitening with the effort of holding it to her.

  “Would you like something to eat? A drink?” Anna smiled. The woman eyed the food as she took in a deep breath.

  “When did Hettie Way pass?” the woman asked. “When was word sent?”

  The Way sisters sought each other’s gaze before Anna took in a deep breath.

  “In July.” The brief announcement was all she could manage. The woman began to count back on her fingers and at the conclusion of that she fell deeper into thoughts.

  “She was gone before I set off,” the woman mused. “Who are you?” she glared at them, the glare sparking against Charlie.

  “We’re her granddaughters,” she declared, folding her arms like a barricade. “We’re the Gamekeepers.”

  The visitor took in this information along with a further deeper breath and Anna asked, in a soft cat’s whisker of a voice, “Would you like some tea?” There was a silence, as if she had offered poison; no one moved. With a decisive clearing of her throat, Charlie reached forward and picked up the knife. This action seemed to rattle the visitor and she rose up a little in her seat, defensive, but, rather than stab anyone, Charlie cut the melting, unctuous cheese sandwich into four quarters and took the first one.

  “Be careful, it’s hot,” Anna warned. Charlie gave her an impatient look and blew gently on the hot bread and cheese before popping it into her mouth. Anna and Emz quickly understood and reached for their pieces. The scent of the toastie was deeply savoury, Anna having sprinkled just a pinch of paprika, a hint of cayenne and a smudge of mustard into the buttery, cheesy filling.

  The woman flexed her shoulders back to stretch them and reached for her morsel. She nibbled at the edge. Her blonde hair was drying in the warm fug of Cob Cottage and it was beginning to make her look like a dandelion clock, wispy, flyaway. As she nibbled a little more, a little more, Charlie buttered a scone, Emz reached for a triangle of toast and Anna poured a cup of tea.

  “So,” Anna said as the three sisters unconsciously took up their triangulated positions around the visitor, “come far?”

  The visitor took a sip of tea and nodded.

  “Far enough.”

  The exchange of these few words settled something between them. The visitor was not forthcoming with any further information. Charlie was growing impatient with politeness and diplomacy.

  “What’s your name?” Charlie asked. The visitor took a moment’s pause and so Charlie met her half way. “I’m Charlie. Charlotte if you’re being formal,” she said. Their visitor narrowed her eyes for a second and decided to trust them, a little.

  “Ailith.” Her voice was soft and low.

  “Want to tell us where you started out? How your journey began?” Charlie prompted, her arms unfolded now but leaning forward, elbows on her knees, interrogative.

  “Started out a long way away from here.” The visitor’s breathing was easier, her face less strained. “Back… home.” The thought pained her, they all saw it, even Charlie backing off a little in sympathy with this.

  “Who’s your… who is the…?” Emz nodded to the bulge in Ailith’s coat. Their visitor moved her hand once more, protective. The sisters could see where exhaustion and worry were making her drift. Charlie reached for a buttered piece of scone, shuffled it onto a plate for the woman.

  “Here,” she said. “Eat.”

  Without asking Emz moved the pot of jam forward.

  “Hettie Way made the jam, if that helps,” she smiled. “Last autumn. From the blackberries at the edge of the wood.” The rain began to drum against the thatch, against the round oak window. Anna felt afraid, as if the door might blow open any moment and Ailith would be lost to them, whisked out into the wind.

  “They killed him.” Ailith’s voice had sunk to a whisper, as if she was talking to herself. “That’s where it started. Where they killed him.”

  Ailith reached up, her hand making measured swipes at her tears. The Way sisters did not move, only their eyes reaching for each other, realising that it was nearly one o’clock and it looked like it was going to be a long night ahead of them.

  2

  Roll out the Pumpkins

  Charlie Way sipped at her morning coffee and let her thoughts roll around like dice. She was standing by the sink letting her gaze brush past the garden, which needed a tidy, and on into the trees. Her phone pipped out a couple of times. She glanced down at the several texts from Aron, half reading them before deleting them. She didn’t want to think about him and here he was trying to sneak his way into her head. That was the trouble with a text. It was like telepathy, or a whisper. Thoughts of Aron made her edgier still and she drank deeply from her coffee mug, inhaling and wanting the aromas to fog up her head, hide her thoughts.

  Her coffee, she noticed, always tasted better at Cob Cottage and she thought it must be the spring water that affected it. This thought mingled with her cogitations regarding the wedding brew she was perfecting and her experiments with a stronger, distilled Blackberry Ferment. She thought she would borrow the Drawbridge van and bring up some of the gallon kegs from work and fill them with spring water to further her experiments.

  She was, very effectively, trying not to think about Ailith and the head of the unknown warrior chieftain that she had carried to Havoc Wood. She was avoiding, with some skill, going over the story of a battle, betrayal and a beheading that they had coaxed from Ailith, a task that had taken until the early hours. If, by accident, Charlie’s brain strayed towards those thoughts they did not sit well.

  The porch doors opened, and Anna came in from the chill morning.

  “Hey,” she smiled, and Charlie nodded at the coffee pot and reached for a mug for her sister. Anna had been up very early; Charlie had heard her pottering about in the kitchen and then talking to Emz before she left for a shift at Prickles and, no doubt, some bit of her slightly lax sixth form schedule.

  “You off shortly?” Anna asked. Charlie stared at her.

  “What?” Charlie asked as Anna reached up to tie her hair. Charlie stared harder. “That’s all you’re going to say?”

  Anna fiddled with her hair some more and did not let her gaze fall from her sister’s.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she replied, finally abandoning both ponytail and any pretence at normality.

  “Okay, that I can work with. I mean, Ailith has a severed head with her. I didn’t dream that did I?” Charlie looked edgy, holding onto her mug like a ceramic life raft, and Anna lifted her own coffee mug, drank deeply to join her. She shook her head.

  “No. I saw it. Emz saw it. It is real. It’s really a head.”

  They considered that fact for a moment.

  “This isn’t like Seren is it?” Charlie said. Anna shook her head.

  “Seren walked into Havoc Wood, this woman has walked out of it,” Anna said. Charlie took in a deep bright breath and her face lightened. With a quick grin she chinked her sister’s mug.

  “That’s it. That’s exactly it.” Charlie looked relieved. The feeling did not last long. “What do we do next?” She chewed her lip and waited for her sister to take a fortifying glug of coffee. Anna looked pale today.

  “I suggest you go to work as normal,” Anna began. Charlie interrupted.

  “Normal? Erm… Normal for Havoc Wood you mean?” she gave a slightly manic laugh. It had been a long night. Anna nodded, calm and quiet.

  “Yes. I can manage here until lunchtime, but then I’m due at work.” Anna’s eyes widened as they both hedged around the same thought.

  “And then we have to leave her alone here,” Charlie st
ated the small bald fact. They exchanged a glance.

  “Yes. I think we do,” Anna said. “She doesn’t appear to be a threat.”

  “You think she’s more a Visitor than say… a Poacher or Trespasser?” The sisters stared not at each other this time but out through the kitchen window. Their grandmother’s ghost pinched out the unruly shoots on the sweet peas.

  “Was there ever a time when a Poacher or a Trespasser came into the house?” Anna asked. The two sipped more coffee and remembered. Anna recalled standing at Thinthrough one afternoon as their grandmother saw off two skinny lads and their deadly trap. “I’ll trap you…” she had warned, and they were gone through the trees.

  “Do you remember the man on the bridge?” she looked at Anna, waited for the memory to surface.

  The man at the bridge over the Rade, the bright silver fish in his net.

  “I caught it to eat it,” was his excuse to Grandma Hettie.

  “On the Hook Bridge. The fish.” Anna laughed.

  “She made him eat it. Remember?” Charlie grinned. Anna remembered, vividly.

  “Raw,” Anna nodded. “Right there.” A memory of guts and scales. Charlie tugged them back into the present by refilling their mugs; the coffee splashed onto the table top as Anna considered.

  “She was allowed to stay. That must mean something.” Anna sifted her own thoughts and questions and Charlie had a moment of inspiration.

  “We can leave her here. Cob Cottage will look after itself and her.”

  “Will it?” Anna waited for the logic. Charlie nodded, certain.

  “When Aron came over the place pretty much picked on him. Trapped his fingers, jammed the doors.”