someone who had been pushed to the limit, while his eyes suggested he'd been dragged out of bed to catch them. Veitch wound down the driver's window as he approached.
'You're going to have to accompany me back into town, sir.' His eyes were piercing, but Veitch didn't flinch from the stare.
'No can do, mate. We've got business down south.'
'I don't want to have to ask you again, lad. Since the martial law was brought in, I've been run ragged. They don't think it's the rural areas that need the help, so we have to fend for ourselves. So don't push me around because I'll push back harder if it makes my life easier.'
As Veitch bristled, Church hastily leaned across him. 'What's the problem, officer? We were driving okay-'
'You know what the problem is.' There was a snap of irritation in his voice. 'A certain matter of blood on the carpet.'
'Oh, that. A bit of horseplay that got out of control. If the manager wants us to pay for cleaning-'
'Get out of the van. Now.' The policeman's body grew rigid with tension.
Shavi tugged at Church's jacket from the back. 'He thinks we killed Ruth,' he whispered, too low for the policeman to hear. There was something in his voice that suggested he wasn't simply reading the policeman's mannerisms.
Everything seemed to hang for a second. Church saw Veitch's eyes narrow, his forearm muscles tense, and an instant later he had snapped on the ignition and popped the clutch. The van roared away, leaving the policeman yelling furiously behind them. Veitch drove wildly until the police car was out of sight, then he slammed on the brakes and reversed up a rough foresters' track which wound through ranks of pine. When the trees obscured the road he killed the engine.
'Big macho idiot,' Laura said coldly from the back. 'Now we'll be on everyone's most wanted list. We won't be able to travel anywhere.'
Veitch glared at her. 'You haven't got any right to talk. We wouldn't be here if not for-'
'Leave it out,' Church ordered.
Veitch grew sullen. 'The moment he got a look at my record we wouldn't stand a chance of getting out of the area for days,' he continued. 'We can't afford to waste that time.'
'You did the right thing, Ryan.' Church put his head back and closed his eyes wearily. 'If things are as bad as they seem… if things are going to get as bad as we expect… the cops will have too much on their plate to worry about us. It might make things a little more difficult, but if they're not putting a dragnet out, I reckon we'll be okay.'
'You better be right,' Laura said gloomily.
Church recalled Shavi's apparent knowledge of the policeman's thoughts and turned to him. 'You can read minds now?'
Shavi shrugged. 'It was empathic.'
'But you can get into heads, you've shown us that.' Shavi wouldn't meet Church's gaze.
'What are you getting at?' Laura asked.
'I think Shavi should try peeling back the layers of your memory so we can find out what you really did see last night.'
Even Laura's sunglasses couldn't mask her concern. 'Not in my head.'
'What have you got to hide?' Veitch asked coldly.
Laura's face froze.
'Ruth and I went through something similar when all this mess started.' Church tried to be as reassuring as he could, for Shavi's sake as much as Laura's. 'It wasn't so bad. And it really helped us to get all those trapped thoughts out in the open.'
Laura moved her head slightly and Church guessed that behind her sunglasses she was looking at Veitch, weighing up his words and her options; his barely veiled accusations made it impossible for her to back out.
'Okay, Mister Shaman. You get to venture where no man has been before.' Her voice was emotionless.
Church clapped a hand on Shavi's shoulder. 'It'll be okay.'
Shavi smiled at him tightly.
They locked up the van and ventured into the pines until they found a spot where the sun broke through the canopy of vegetation, casting a circle of light. Laura and Shavi sat cross-legged in the centre, facing each other, while Church, Veitch and Tom leaned on tree trunks and watched quietly. Shavi had already eaten some of Tom's hash to attune his mood. He spent a few moments whispering gently to Laura; after a while her eyes were half- lidded, her movements lazy.
The atmosphere changed perceptibly the moment Shavi leaned forward to take Laura's hands; the birdsong died as if a switch had been thrown, even the breeze seemed to drop. There was a stillness like glass over everything.
When Shavi spoke, the world held its breath. 'We are going back to last night, Laura. To the hotel, after the dance. You and Ruth had gone to bed early.'
'I wasn't in the mood. I'd had enough of Miss Prissy. And too many people were looking at my scars.'
'You both went into your rooms. And went to sleep?'
'I lay down on the top of the bed. I was tired, the booze was knocking me out.' Her voice was soporific. 'I don't know how long I was asleep. Couldn't have been long. I heard a noise-'
'What was it?'
'I can't remember.'
'Try.'
She thought for a moment. 'It was Ruth. She cried out.'
'What did you do then? Tell me, step by step.'
'I got up. I felt like someone had beaten me around the head with a baseball bat. I walked to the door… Actually, it was more of a stagger. I thought, `I'm glad Church isn't here to see this. I'd never live it down.' There was another noise. Sounded like a lamp going over. I thought I could hear voices through the wall. I stepped out on to the landing…' Her breath caught suddenly in her throat.
'What was it?'
Tears sprang to her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. 'I…' She shook her head, screwed her eyes up as if that would prevent the images forming.
Shavi's reassuring voice grew so low the others could barely hear it. 'Concentrate, Laura. Focus on the interloper.'
'It was…' A shiver ran through her. 'No, no. I see a large wolf. It reaches right up to the ceiling. Bigger. Passing through. It's growing to fill the whole hotel. It has sickly yellow eyes and it turns them on me. And it smiles… it smiles like a man.'
She started to hyperventilate. Shavi let go of her hands and put his arms around her shoulders, gently pulling her towards him until she was resting against his chest, where her breathing gradually subsided.
'A giant wolf? She's making it up,' Veitch hissed.
They moved into the circle of light and squatted down, waiting for Laura to recover. She wouldn't meet any of their eyes. 'That's what you get delving around in the depths of my mind. I told you I'd done too many drugs.'
'What do you think? A shapeshifter?' Shavi seemed to have gained renewed confidence from the success of the exercise; the faint, enigmatic smile Church remembered from the first time they met had returned to his face.
'I don't think so.' Tom's expression was troubled. 'The wolf could be representational of whatever she saw. She might be converting her memory into symbols to help her deal with it.'
Church remembered his own experience of regression therapy to try to unlock the memories of the terrible sight beneath Albert Bridge, images so horrible his mind had locked them away. Although what eventually surfaced had proved to be the truth, the therapist had talked about false screen memories designed to protect the mind's integrity from something too awful to bear.
'This is doing my head in,' Veitch said. 'It's like you can't believe anything you see or remember or think!'
'That's how it always was,' Tom replied curtly.
