Northern Lights (5/8)

[silver_sun]

Nightingale was already in the breakfast room at the B&B when I got there and he looked better than he'd done since we'd caught the St Clair back on Friday. He even talked about the case with me, well as much as we could when we were surrounded by other people who were staying at Sea View. Mainly he wanted the low down on all I'd been doing, although he did tell me that he'd seen and subsequently ruled out the rocks held by the Shetland Amenity Trust.

We walked up to the station before eight, with Nightingale giving the rather surreal sight of half a dozen Vikings sheltering out of the drizzle inside a coffee shop a baffled look. It really did look like most of the island had packed itself into Lerwick and there was what could only really be called a carnival atmosphere about the place.

There were already uniforms out on the street making sure everything was organised and Sandy told us once we'd arrived at the station that Up Helly Aa would officially start at eight-thirty in the morning and continue until the pubs closed in the early hours of the following morning. The main processions were well organised, and the Jarls as they were called worked on their costumes for about two years before they took part in what was generally a once in a lifetime opportunity. In the afternoon there would also be the children's procession. The part that called for the most policing wouldn't be until after seven that evening when the crowds really started to gather in ernest for the procession which would involve about nine hundred burning torches and possibly some lit tar barrels.

I wondered if they had the same kind of health and safety laws here as they did in London and if they did whether they just ignored them. I couldn't see any of the borough councils in London going for something like this or for it being a free for all even where the street would be packed with as many people as they'd hold. There hadn't ever been any real trouble in it hundred plus year history Sandy told us proudly, usually it was just a few fights late on in the evening between people who'd had a bit too much to drink.

After that me, Nightingale and Sandy headed over to where Sholto's burnt out land rover had been put, having been gone over by a fire officer the previous afternoon and now was being given the full CSI treatment. The real CSI that is, not the American TV ones who have super fast machines that probably also make you coffee and empty the office bin while you're not looking. So we probably wouldn't be looking at getting any results about what kind of accelerant had been used until some time next week if we were lucky.

We read through the preliminary report, found that it pretty much told us what we already knew and then, after a little bit of persuasive talking from Nightingale, we actually got to see the land rover. It smelt like all burnt cars do, a mixture of melted rubber and plastic and scorched metal. There was something there, some trace of vestigia that let us know that we weren't entirely wrong in having our suspicion that there was some magical element in this somewhere. We couldn't get much else from it, the dousing with water and succession of techs going over it had wiped most traces out.

From there we went over to Sholto's house to meet up with the crime scene tech and the uniforms who'd been unlucky enough to end up with book packing and cataloging duty rather than policing what sounded like one hell of a party that was currently happening in Lerwick. This was the boring part of police work. The going from place to place part, looking at everything and hoping that something stood out and you could make a connection that would in turn point you in the right direction and give you the right sort of question to ask when you got there.

Nightingale spent most of the time at Sholto's house asking Sandy about places Sholto had marked out on his map. Sandy had looked baffled and a bit worried about it, although whether it was because the map with its web of pins and string was seriously weird or if it was down to Nightingale questioning everything he said at least three times each I wasn't sure. Even when wasn't talking to him he watching him intently, although he stopped when I looked, like he didn't want me to see him looking. It was weird, but I decided it was an improvement on his previous attitude, so I decided it was a good sign.

We stopped of for lunch out near Sholto's house after Sandy pointed out that Lerwick would be packed and we'd be lucky to find anywhere that wasn't either sold out or booked out. So after a quick break we headed back into Lerwick. Sandy dropped us at the hospital where Perez was waiting for the coroner to finish up with Shollto's autopsy, and then he headed back to the station to see how things were going with Up Helly Aa.

The coroner, Dr Margaret Montrose who'd flown out from Aberdeen the previous evening, was a no nonsense looking woman in her early forties. With auburn hair pulled back in a bun and glasses perched on the end of her nose, make her look a bit like a teacher I'd had back in Primary school. I had to stop myself from answering her 'Yes, Mrs Mansell' when she asked us not to touch the body.

She gave Nightingale a rather disapproving look as he started coughing, or at least until he'd managed to retrieved a handkerchief. The cough was a bit better than it had been. He was still coughing fairly frequently, but it didn't sound as painful as it had and he'd not started wheezing afterwards so, I was hopeful that he was over the worse of it now. Maybe that was why he was in a better mood.

Sholto didn't look any better from having been cut open and poked about, and the smell in the morgue was far from pleasant. It didn't seem to bother Nightingale, although Perez did suggest that if there was an office that they could use to go over her findings it would be preferred. Montrose said there wasn't, and that now she'd finished she like to be able to get her flight back to Aberdeen that evening.

Nightingale used the opportunity to move over to Sholto's body and check for anything that might suggest that there was something magical in how he had met his horrible end. After a minute or two he moved away. "If you look," Nightingale said quietly as Montrose started to give her findings to Perez. "Don't look too closely or for too long."

Like I wasn't going to look. The land rover had been unpleasant, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. After what I'd seen Henry Pyke do to people and bit that I'd seen in the strip club of Dr Moreau it was going to take a lot to freak me out.

It was amazing really how easy it had become to check for vestigia, I thought as I stood next to the remains of Sholto. Straight away I could feel after image of heat, it was sort of shimmery like the distortion you got over metal roofs on really hot days. Fear lingered too, that was a jagged kind of feeling and something that I didn't want to linger on. Then there was the smell of burnt meat too. I closed my eyes, really wishing that I'd not had a bacon sandwich little more than an hour ago. I was determined that I wasn't going to disgrace myself by acting like it was first dead body I'd been around, so I tried to focus a bit more on the weirdly salty and damp part of the vestigia that seemed to be hiding beneath the rest.

Not just damp, I realised as I tried to get a better sense of it, but wet. Then it hit me. Cold sea water rushing over me, the force of it driving me under, taking me down to the ocean depths where I'd drown. I tried to open my eyes again, but they wouldn't move. Okay, time to panic I decide, only I found I couldn't move either or speak.

Somebody grabbed my arm and pulled me from the room and made me sit down on a chair in the corridor. I felt some other energy there, Nightingale, I was sure. Then just as suddenly as it sense off water had it me it was gone and I could breath again. Opening my eyes I saw a rather worried looking Perez and very annoyed looking Nightingale.

At least I thought it was annoyance, until he spoke, "I told you not to get too close," Nightingale said, sounding far more scared than angry.

I think I would have preferred him to just be annoyed at me, scared as it meant I'd actually been in danger. It also meant I'd get a thorough talking to later about it, because with Nightingale concern always seemed to equaling a tonne more study and practice for me. He seemed to think that learning stuff would solve everything. Okay it'd help, but just occasionally would it have killed him to actually ask me if I was okay, rather than treating me like a naughty kid? "I didn't think it would be so bad," I said, hating that my voice wasn't steady yet.

"Do you think I give you advice for fun?" Nightingale said. "Now wait here while I talk to Dr Montrose, and try not to get into any more trouble."

I wanted to snap something back at him, preferably something witty and memorable that would make me feel better about it, but I couldn't think of anything, so I decided that I'd be better off waiting until we didn't have an audience. "Alright, sir."

Perez had watched the whole exchange with a deepening frown. When Nightingale had gone he turned to me and said, "Wait there." Then he walked off as well and I was left alone. I couldn't work out whether I was glad of it or not.

I'd still not worked it worked it out when a minute or so later Perez returned and sat down next to me. "You'll be alright, lad," he said handing me a cardboard cup of awful vending machine coffee. "It wasn't a pretty sight in there. I can't imagine you see many bodies working chasing up stolen antiques and the like."

I shook my head, knowing it was a lie. I'd seen far too many bodies in the last couple of years, more than I'd ever thought I would and I didn't think I was ever going to get to the point where it didn't bother me at least a little bit. I still felt cold and now I felt pretty stupid as well. Nightingale had tried to warn me and I'd not listened to him. What if it had been some kind of magic trap? I could have shorted out the power in the hospital. People could have died. But if it had been a trap why hadn't he told me not to look at all? why risk me doing it at all? Had he not realised exactly what it would do?

"I know it's not my place, but is he always like that?" Perez stopped and looked at where Nightingale was still talking to Montrose. "There's being in charge of junior officers and giving them a push when they need it and then there's bullying them. And one of those isn't allowed."

"It's not like that," I said, hating how it sounded. Nightingale wasn't like that and I wasn't the sort of person to stand for it. I could see that Perez didn't believe me, but there was no point making an issue of it. Repeatedly telling somebody something wasn't a thing was the fastest way to convince them that it really was.

Thankfully he didn't say any more about it and Nightingale soon reappeared, and handed a folder containing the autopsy report to Perez. We didn't actually find out anything that useful in the end apart from the fact that it had been murder. Sholto had been a guy in his early seventies, in reasonable health although he was on medication for high cholesterol. He'd been alive at the time he'd been set on fire, but Montrose suspected that he might have been drugged as there wasn't any sign of him trying to get out of the vehicle. She'd have to send away for a tox screen to find out if and what it had been and that would take a few days.

Nightingale had said nothing to either me or Perez on the short drive back to the station or when we got out of the car, and to say I was pretty pissed off by now would have been an understatement. I'd not come across vestigia that had been like that before, that had pulled me right in. It had been frightening and that it had scared Nightingale at the time left in little doubt that if I'd remained by the body that I might very well have been joining it on my own stainless steel table ready to be sliced open and prodded.

I wanted to talk to Nightingale about it, to understand what had happened and how to avoid it in future and I was actually relieved when he didn't follow Perez into the station. That relief lasted about two seconds as the first thing that he said to me was, "What were you thinking, Peter? I told you not to look too closely Sholto."

"That I wanted to know what had happened. That I needed to look for clues. That...oh I don't know... that I'm a police officer who should be trusted to do his job." I pretty much regretted it the second I'd said it as being angry and sarcastic at Nightingale rarely resulted in me winning the argument. Okay, nothing really ever resulted in me winning the argument, but this was guaranteed to make me lose faster. "If you don't trust me to do my job, just say so."

"What a ridiculous thing to say, of course I trust you."

It sounded like a verbal version of a pat on the head and after how things had been recently I found that I wasn't willing to let it slide, make a joke of it or make any more excuses for him. "Yeah, well you've got an odd way of showing it," I said. If he wanted an argument he was going to get one. "You want me to learn, well I'm trying, but you've got to let me make my own mistakes sometimes. How else am I going to learn?"

"Mistakes can kill you. You can't learn anything if you're dead," Nightingale said. Looking weary he sat down on the wall next to me. "You cannot expect me to stand by and let something like that happen to you. I would never forgive myself. You might not believe it, Peter, but do worry about you. You're too reckless sometimes, over confident. I worry that I've not taught you enough, that if..."

Whatever he was working up to telling me was lost as Sandy hurried over to us, and Nightingale clammed up.

"Are you okay?" Sandy asked me. "I heard you had a bit turn at the hospital. Are you going to be alright to work Up Helly Aa?"

"Constable Grant is quite well, thank you for your concern," Nightingale said before I had a chance to say anything. "Is there going to be a briefing about tonight?"

"Yes. Yes, sir," Sandy said, rapidly retreating back to professional blandness, although he gave me a pitying look that I took to mean he didn't think much of Nightingale as my DCI. "I came to find you to see if you wanted to attend."

"Very good," Nightingale said, getting off the wall. "I suggest you show us were it is."

I was torn between being annoyed with Nightingale for being so pissy towards Sandy and really worried about what he'd been trying to tell me before we'd been interrupted. So I decided not to say anything and followed them inside.

Nightingale decided that we would be present throughout the evening, but free to move amongst the crowds to see if we could spot Trolhoulland. Perez didn't seem convinced by it, but didn't argue the point. He just made sure we knew that he was still in charge of Sandy and that for tonight he'd be following the main procession, making sure people didn't get to close to the fires.

It was dry and barely above freezing when we left the station for the five minute walk down to the Esplanade where the Up Helly Aa celebrations would be concentrated. Nightingale's one concession to the fact that it was bloody freezing was a hat. I'd never really seen him in a hat before, which kind of confused me now I thought about it. He'd grown up in a time where people never left the house without one, and I wondered if he'd been seen as daring or something for not having one back then or whether he'd given up on them decades later than anybody else. The hat, which I suspected he must have bought yesterday while he'd been doing whatever it was he'd been doing, looked kind of like what a ship or submarine captain might have worn about seventy years ago.

Had he bought it because he liked it? or had all the others been knitted things with bobbles, tassels or earflaps and this was the least awful option. I doubted he'd tell me either way. I had to admit it did suit him, and with his dark overcoat hiding his suit it made him look like

There is something about fire on a cold night. Something that has probably stuck in people's mind ever since the first caveman decided that the hot, bright stuff was worth having around.

We saw Sandy a few times as we mingled with the crowd trying to see Trolhoulland or anybody else doing anything they shouldn't be, like magic. He was walking with other officers on duty, giving direction and advice to tourists and generally Mr Helpful. Then there was an announcement and all the street lights were dimmed and all the torches were lit.

We couldn't see Sandy from where we were, but I knew that he'd be in him place out on the edge of the procession, making sure the crowds wedged into the narrow streets gave the vikings enough room to get through. I wondered if he'd ever taken part in it, dressed up as a viking. He'd have been a pretty small viking as he wasn't much more than five eight and was what could be best be called wiry. He didn't look like he'd have any more luck than I would in growing a massive beard like most of the huge, hairy wannabe norsemen currently singing loudly around us. Did you have to put your name down for it or were people picked at random? I'd have to ask him in the morning I decided.

Singing and blowing horns as they made their way through the streets meant everything moved pretty slowly, although it seemed to be planned to be like that and there didn't seem to be anybody complaining about delays. So me and Nightingale went with it. The amount of fire burning all arounds meant that it wasn't too cold to be standing about for a change. The route doubled back on itself a couple of times, making sure it passed all the old buildings in the town centre, but eventually everybody made their way to the King George V playing fields at the edge of Lerwick. The crowds that had kept pace with the front of the parade started to drop back and line up around the fence at the edge of the playing fields.

Nightingale gave me a look that suggested he wasn't sure what was happening or whether this should be happening. I didn't either, but I was saved from having to admit it by Sandy appearing next to us.

"Only Jarl Squads past this point," Sandy said, as he started directing people to spread out along the fence line. "Everybody else watches from here. Photographers for the Lerwick times, please make your way to the area by the sports pitches."

There were some grumbles this time, mostly I guessed from tourists who'd expected to be able to get up close to this last bit of it, but on the whole everybody seemed to know this was how it happened. I could see a fire crew on standby at the edge of the field, standing around their appliance, probably getting the best view of anybody who wasn't actually part of Jarl squads who had the torches.

Once the Jarl Squads were all inside the playing field, Sandy and a couple of other officers made sure the the gate was pulled shut. Not locked, just in case something went wrong and they needed to send in an ambulance or something, but as a reminder that people were to wait outside.

With Sandy at gate, me and Nightingale went to find a spot where we could see what was going on. Not that I was sure what we could do about it if Trolhoulland started something inside the playing fields, it wasn't like we could get in without drawing a load of attention to ourselves. The burning of the longship started with the most important group called the Guizer Jarls formed a circle around the boat. It was pretty impressive. I mean nine hundred massive blokes dressed as vikings each hurling a flaming cricket bat sized lump of wood onto a proper carved dragon headed longship wasn't likely to be anything else. They might do it every year, but it really gave you a feeling of seeing something that hadn't been around for a thousand years.

Having to keep a look out for Trolhoulland did spoil it a bit, and part of me was glad that he'd not shown up and spoiled things. Okay it would mean we had even less idea what he might be planning, but somehow it seemed worth it to watch it. I wasn't sure Nightingale saw it that way, and there was something stoney faced about him as he watched.

Eventually all the Jarls had thrown their torches and the ship had gone from burning brightly to being a red glow in the middle of the grass. People had started to drift away, back to the pubs and parties and out of the cold and now increasingly damp night. Sandy left once the crowd had halved; he was on making sure drunk people didn't cause trouble or fall in sea duty.

Nightingale continued to watch the burning ship like he somehow expected Trolhoulland to jump from it and cause chaos. He didn't. Nothing happened at all apart from it starting to rain.

"Come on, Sir," I said eventually. "I don't think Trolhoulland is going to show up. There's not much left to show up for." Nearly everybody had left Recreation area and gone in search of somewhere that was dry and had beer. Personally I thought it would have been great to have joined them. I didn't think Nightingale would go for it and he was starting to cough and shiver more now that we were just stood around in the damp and cold.

"Then why did Trolhoulland choose this time of year?" Nightingale said, "There has to be something. Something we've missed."

"I don't think we're going to find it out here," I said. "Why don't we got back to the B&B, get a hot drink and work out what to do?"

I actually got a smile for that. "I believe that might be for the best, Peter."

I called the station to make sure Perez wasn't expecting us back in for a debriefing or something. It turned out he wasn't, so we headed back thought the noisy and bright streets of Lerwick to Sea View.

"Peter, before we discuss the case there is something else I need to speak with you about," Nightingale said once we were in his room and couldn't be overheard.

Now that didn't sound good at all. I suspected that it was going to be about me not following instructions earlier at the autopsy. It would be a sucky way to end the evening, but there was no point delaying it, so I said, "Yeah, sure."

"Don't look so worried. I'm feeling much better than I was," he said. There was something more hesitant in his voice when he spoke again. "I've been thinking about Constable Wilson today. You have spent more time with him both on and off duty than I, and I would like your honest opinion of him."

Okay now that really wasn't what I'd expected. Nightingale didn't usually do uncertain and most of the time he didn't do second opinions either. He'd been weird with Sandy since we'd got here. I frowned. It hadn't been since we arrived, it was since we'd spent the day with Sandy at Griminsta. Sandy had had been helpful, full of information and quietly concerned about Nightingale when he'd been ill, but hadn't made a big deal of it. He was kind of like the ideal old fashioned copper. I managed to stop myself staring at Nightingale as my over-tired brain tried to make sense of it and up with the idea that maybe be fancied Sandy. Call it sleep deprivation as I'd only got about five hours sleep the previous night and today had been up since six and it was now past midnight, but made a weird kind of sense. Which just left me desperately trying to think of what the hell to say. I mean it's not every day that your hundred and fourteen year old boss asks whether a colleague fancies him.

"Well he's nice," I began. "A bit old fashioned I think about some things, but that might work in your favour. Well if you want to tell him about your thing. I mean if it's a long term thing you'd have to. " I thought about mentioning that he'd got pretty nice legs from all the cycling he used to do and still did when he found time, but it felt a bit weird going into that kind of detail. So I went with, "I'm pretty sure he's not seeing anybody. So I think you might be in with a cha..." I stopped as Nightingale was giving me a horrified look.

"I meant professionally, as if you were telling be about a suspect or a witness."

"Oh." I looked at the floor, half hoping that it would open up and spare me the embarrassment of the rest of the conversation.

"Indeed." There was something final in Nightingale's voice that, much to my relief, said 'let's never speak of this again.'

"Right. Okay, right." I still couldn't quite look at him. "Well he seems to know his job. He knows the area and he's been an officer for ten years or so. He's nice, maybe a bit lonely, but he really seems to like helping people."

Nightingale had nodded at most things, and then said, "You don't think he is too knowledgable about certain things?"

"Like what?" I doubted he meant the fact Sandy was a member of the local real ale society or knew a tonne about bicycle racing and repairs.

"I went to see Robert Leask again yesterday," Nightingale said, completely failing to answer my question. "From there I decided that I needed to take a closer look at Constable Wilson's cases. I find it hard to believe that he has happened to be in the right place at the right time so consistently throughout his career. And then there is the matter of the worryingly frequent anonymous witnesses that have given him the information that lead him to realise he needed to be in those places."

At that moment I decided that the whole Nightingale fancying Sandy thing would have been preferable to this. I couldn't believe Sandy was anything other than what he seemed. "Do you really think Sandy's is involved in something?"

"I saw how he was looking at you at Griminsta," Nightingale said changing the subject again.

Whether or not he'd intended it to come across a jealous it did. Which was plainly ridiculous as Nightingale didn't think of me like that. Honestly since what had happened with Lesley he'd been on my case about the stupidest of things, pushing me to study more and telling me to work harder. Once I had looked forwards to the practical demonstrations with him and dreaded the terminally dull books in Greek and Latin, but it had slowly got to the point where it all had come to feel the same. Did he think that I might hook up with Sandy myself? That I'd chuck in my apprenticeship and leave my family and get a transfer to Shetland? Or that I'd abandon him and the Folly without a second thought?

"There's nothing going on between me and Sandy," I said, annoyed that he could be so petty or insecure about the idea somebody might like me. He'd been as bad about Simone. Okay, maybe not a good example all things considered. "And even if it were I don't see that it's any of your business."

"If it compromises the investigation it is," he snapped back at me. "If it was a matter purely of a romantic nature I would not interfere or presume to tell you who you may or may not be with."

"Then what is it?" I said finally losing my temper with him. "Why don't you tell me what the hell I've done wrong? Because I haven't got the faintest idea what it is."

"You haven't done anything wrong," he said, sounding vaguely annoyed that I'd come to that conclusion. "Constable Wilson is another matter. I believe he is aware of magic. The chances of it being a self cultivated latent ability is vanishingly small. So that leave the questions of who trained him and how much does he know."

You know that sick feeling like the ground had just fallen away beneath your feet, but how you know it's still preferable to the how you're going to be feeling when reality finally hits? I was there and it felt like a place I'd ended up far too many times recently. "Are you sure?"

"I spent the greater part of yesterday looking for another explanation," Nightingale said. "I hadn't wished to accuse him of something baselessly. But after finding that Constable Wilson actually asked to be assigned to us rather than it purely being down to DI Perez picking his most suitable officer I can't help but have misgivings about his intentions regarding this case."

I sat down on the end of Nightingale's bed. I felt abysmally tired and I knew it was nothing to do with the late night. How had I not seen there was something going on? What was it lately with blonde coppers seeing me as an easy target? Did I have soft touch written on my head or something?

I felt the bed dip beside me, and a moment later Nightingale said, "Peter, are you alright?"

I wasn't. But there was no way I was admitting it. Why had I got such crap judgement of people, I wondered. Maybe I should just give up letting anybody get close at all. Simone, Lesley and now Sandy. I was a policeman, I was supposed to be a suspicious bastard, not a gullible fool.

"Peter?"

"I'm fine," I said, not wanting to talk about it. "I'm just tired. I should go to bed. Lots to do tomorrow if you're right."

Nightingale gave an irritated sigh. "You aren't." I was about to tell him he was wrong and beat a hasty retreat back to my room when he added rather more quietly. "Neither of us are."

"Sir?" I tried to stop all the worst case scenarios running through my mind and failed miserably. Was he feeling worse? Had he been lying before when he'd said it was just something minor? What if he was really ill? What if that was why he'd been pushing me learn more and faster? not because he was worried that there would an escalation of things between us and Faceless, but because he was worried he wouldn't be able to give me the full ten years of apprenticeship.

Nightingale got up and walked over to the window. "I had hoped to avoid having this conversation and that things would right themselves given enough time. This does not seem to be the case."

"Maybe things will be better in the morning," I said. I didn't believe it for a minute. The morning would come with it whole new set of horribleness, which would include having to ask Sandy whose side he was on.

"I failed Lesley and I fear I am failing you too," Nightingale said, still looking out the window. "I had never seen myself as a teacher, nor was I ever academically minded. Magic was a tool that enabled me to do my job. I had never believed I would take an apprentice and magic fading from the world cemented that thought. However, the night I saw you I saw such potential there that I did not want it to go to waste. The world is changing and with magic returning I thought to regain something that had been lost."

"I thought you didn't trust me any more," I said. It might not have been the best time to mention it, but if Nightingale wanted to clear the air between us then I decided that I might as well do the same.

"I think my own judgement is far more in question than yours," he replied sadly. "When Lesley came to the Folly and proved to be such an apt pupil I couldn't have been happier. I had initially been wary of taking on a second apprentice. In the past to train more than two in a lifetime was unusual, to have two simultaneously was virtually unheard of and certainly when both were in their early stages of training."

"So why?" It wasn't like I'd asked him to train Lesley as well, although I suppose I had kind of forced his hand by showing her how to do the werelight.

"The misguided belief that things could be as they once were. You and Lesley are both young, and I believed likely to train apprentices of your own one day. Had had hopes that once you had finished your apprenticeship that young Miss Kamara would be mature enough to begin training. That perhaps a school, like I had attended as a boy might once again..." He stopped, then spent a good half minute coughing, before saying. "I allowed myself to believe that Lesley was a more apt pupil and that I was gaining in skill from teaching you both."

"If it helps I think our instructors at Hendon thought the same thing," I said. "I mean she got picked for murder squad and they thought the best I could do was fill in forms for better coppers."

"That others were foolish enough to discount your abilities and potential hardly negates the fact that I failed to realise that Lesley had another master, and that in that negligence I placed you in very grave danger."

He sounded properly upset by it and I seriously wondered if I should try to give him a hug or something. I mean I'd known Lesley for far longer than he had, if anybody should have noticed something it should have been me. "I don't think it's your fault, sir," I said, deciding that standing close might be enough. "Sometimes things just happen and we've just got to get on with it. What else can you do?"

"What else indeed?" he said wearily. "That there is no alternative but to somehow carry on doesn't make such things easier bear. I cannot tell you that it becomes easier with age, rather that it all becomes wearily familiar and mundane."

It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but I supposed getting the truth had to count for something. "So what do we going to do?"

"We will talk to Constable Wilson together tomorrow," Nightingale said finally turning back from the window to face me. "And while I fear that the outcome of such a conversation will bring difficult decisions, I know that he has been your friend so I promise that I will hear him out."

"Thank you," I said, because I couldn't think of anything else to say. It didn't make me feel any better and I doubt it did Nightingale any good either.

He nodded. "Now we both need to rest. I expect to see you at breakfast at seven thirty."

"Yes, sir," I replied, knowing that the conversation had definitely ended. I still felt rotten about the whole thing and from look of him Nightingale didn't feel any better about it either. I wondered what we'd really achieved from it. In the end I decided the fact that he didn't actually think I was an idiot and that he wasn't intentionally being horrible to me was it.

It didn't help make me feel any better about had to do in the morning, and I lay in bed in the dark listening to Up Helly Aa partygoers making their way home in the was that drunk people do when they think they are being quiet, but are actually making enough noise to wake the whole street. Before finally, as the clock dimly moved on to two am the wind and rain started battering into the windows, I fell asleep.



Part 6: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/243300.html



A/N
Sorry for the massive delay. Real life sadly gets in the way of getting fun stuff like fic writing. I'm hoping to get the next part up on Sunday.

So there are some answers to why Nightingale is being so off with Peter. As to what Sandy is up to things will be revealed shortly. All will say is that not everything is what it seems.

The information about Up Helly Aa is taken from the Up Helly Aa official website, as while I worked in Shetland for a while I was never there at the right time of year - the last Tuesday in January - to see Up Helly Aa for myself.