Read Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) for Free Online

felt as if they were dropping through my body, part by part. Don’t get affected by this , I told myself, not knowing if I meant the knowledge that Abbott was dead or that Rey wasn’t pleased to see me.
    He watched in silence as I got signed out. I took the chance to try to defend myself.
    “To be fair, Rey, most people had been drinking, not just us.”
    He didn’t reply. I made it to the door without my knees giving way, but the door had become obscenely heavy, as if locked against absconders.
    Suddenly, Rey was beside me, his hand tucked round my elbow. “Fancy a quick coffee?” he asked. “I’m gasping for a fag.”
    “Don’t want to remind you of established legislation, but you can’t smoke in cafés.”
    “No worries. Follow me.”
    He shrugged himself into a combat jacket and I tagged after him as we went down Northgate and up a side road, where a street vendor was doing a roaring trade in snacks from his van, mainly, I fancied, to on-duty cops. Rey fished in his pocket and paid for two paper cups filled with dubious brown liquid.
    There were no tables, so we perched on the flat low wall to one side of the van. Rey balanced his cup on the stonework and fished out his cigarettes. “Want one?”
    “You know I don’t smoke.” I didn’t drink coffee, either, but I kept that to myself. “I gave up ten years ago, for the good of my health.”
    “You gave up ten years ago. For Pete’s sake, how old were you when you began?”
    “Eleven,” I said, grinning. “I was a hard-knock kid. Mind you, when I went to live with Gloria, I had to hide the packs and suck mints, but that made it more fun. Do you remember Gloria?”
    “Your foster mum? Of course I do.” He shielded his cigarette and lit it with a cheap lighter.
    “Look, I’m sorry … you know … that your friend was shot.”
    “He was a good copper,” said Rey. “But not good at sharing.”
    I let that sink in. “Was Gary on duty at the carnival?”
    “He was doing the same as everyone else, I imagine. Having a good time.”
    I put my hand to my mouth. “He was with his family? How awful for them.”
    “He’d got a girl, she’s got a kid. They’ll likely be all over the telly, so no harm in telling you. Yeah, in a way, I suppose he was a family man. Not like me.”
    I was thrown into a flurry of thoughts. Was Rey hinting that hooking up was out of the question? Or that he was still free and looking? He watched me flounder around.
    “He loved his promotion. Took over my well-worn shoes with a vengeance. Worked his hunches, did Gary. But nah. He wasn’t on duty last night.”
    “He was running. Like he was chasing someone.”
    “Yeah. Well, ‘off duty’ isn’t the same as ‘not working.’ Cops are always at work.” Rey blew smoke away from me and changed his tack, as if he didn’t want to show where his deeper thoughts might be taking him. “They’re still talking about you, at the station.”
    “What? Why?”
    “You did the impossible, on the Wetlands case. You’re a mystery, and you know how cops like a mystery.”
    I snorted. “Cops don’t usually replace truth with invention. I didn’t do anything mysterious, not in the end. I stumbled into the scene of the crime was all.”
    “Even so, you deserved your reward, Sabbie. What you were eligible for, I mean. The money the Mercury put up.”
    I looked down at my brim-full coffee. The reward for finding a child killer. I hadn’t been thinking of a reward as I’d faced a murderer with cruel madness in their eyes, and it had come as a surprise when I’d received the cheque.
    “What did you do with the money in the end? Don’t tell me, let me guess.” He raised his eyes to the clouds, in mock deliberation. “A herd of milking goats?”
    “Idiot,” I said, but little sparklers were going off inside me. Rey had retained quite a lot about me. Maybe he’d been thinking about me, like I’d been thinking about him. “It was a hefty sum. I couldn’t see how I even