Northern Lights (6/8)

[silver_sun]

There was no point dragging things out, but Nightingale didn't want to confront Sandy at the station and I did agree with him on that. What I didn't like was having to talk to Sandy like everything was okay, but Nightingale was right, if we asked him the sort of questions that we needed to we would, at best, be considered nuts by Sandy's colleagues. At worst we might end up with the kind of confrontation were there's enough magic flying about to flatten buildings and results in even more questions and paperwork.

So we did what we needed to do at the station, Nightingale talked to Perez about the case, while me and Sandy looked through some of the boxes of books that had come from Sholto's house. After a good amount of looking I realised that there had to be something missing from the whole map and string set up. All the places on the map had reference numbers on them and we'd assumed at first that the references had referred to books in his collection, but nothing seemed to fit. No, there had to be another book, probably something hand written as Sholto didn't seemed to have done computers any more than Nightingale did and there had been no sigh of a typewriter. If we'd not checked the house for magic I'd have been suspicious that was the reason. It seemed to be purely down to the fact that Sholto, like a lot of people well past retirement age, didn't go in for technology in any big way.

I hoped that Sholto's reference book or file or however he'd kept his information was still intact somewhere, and not as I had the horrible suspicion that it would be, burnt to a crisp along with Sholto in the land rover. Even if it has I still held out a bit of hope that somebody as organised as Sholto had been had made a back up copy somewhere. I looked at the uniforms bringing in another five boxes and wondered if I'd still be there at tea time with nothing to show for it.

It was pushing lunch time when Nightingale reappeared and informed us that we needed to head out to Quendale which was about half way between Sholto's house and where he'd burnt to death in his land rover. If it hadn't been for the fact that we were about to accuse Sandy of being... well I wasn't entirely sure what we were going to be accusing him of, I would have welcomed the chance to get away from the endless piles of local interest books. Sandy didn't seem to suspect that Nightingale had an ulterior motive and he looked grateful to leave the scrapbooks containing Sholto's carefully collated newspaper clippings to somebody else.

The weather was reasonable as we drove across country and then took the road towards Quendale. It was pretty impressive scenery down at the southern end of Shetland, all massive cliffs with waves smashing against them and breaking over jagged rocks just off shore. It was just about as remote as anywhere we'd been and I wondered if Nightingale had chosen if for such a reason. No witnesses should something magic related happen or anything else for that matter. If you dropped a body off a cliff here you'd probably never see it again, nobody would. Which was rather worrying now I'd thought it. Not that I wanted to think that Nightingale was planning on getting rid of Sandy, but there was a ruthless practicality about him that he'd probably picked a place like this just in case Sandy surprised us by hurling formae in our direction. So I wasn't surprised when we got to a very empty stretch of road and Nightingale said, "Could you stop here for a moment, please?"

"Of course," Sandy replied. "Are you feeling alright, sir?"

"Yes, thank you," Nightingale said, giving nothing way. He waited for Sandy to pull the car over to the side of the road and park in a gateway. In the field beyond we were watched by five shaggy Shetland ponies. As soon as they decided we were bringing them food they ignored us, and I decided that somewhere back down the evolutionary tree they must share an ancestor with Toby.

"Constable Wilson," Nightingale began. "There is something that I need to ask you and I want you to think very carefully about how you answer it."

"Sounds serious," Sandy said. He looked at me. "Do you know what this is about?"

I nodded. I was angry that Sandy had given us a reason to doubt him. Nightingale giving me an approving look for not blurting anything out didn't make me feel any better about it.

"It has come to my attention," Nightingale continued. "That there are a lot of unanswered questions regarding your work. A lot of unverifiable sources and anonymous witnesses."

"What are you accusing me of?" Sandy said, sounding surprised and hurt. "Fabricating evidence to secure a convection? Taking bribes to get people off the hook or frame them? I don't know what it's like in London, but we don't hold with things like that up here."

"If I believed the problem lay in that direction I would be taking my concerns to Inspector Perez," Nightingale said. He fixed Sandy with that piecing grey stare of his. "No, my suspicions about you lay in another direction entirely, one that neither you or I would want to see committed to official records."

"I...I don't know what you mean." Sandy looked away and it was painfully obvious that he did.

I didn't want to start a whole good cop, bad cop routine, but I could see he was scared and I suspected that scaring him more would be counter productive. So I said, "Look, Sandy. We're willing to listen to what you're going to say. Because even if it sounds crazy there a pretty good chance that we're going to believe you."

Sandy looked at me sitting in the back and then at Nightingale in the front passenger seat next to him. "You don't investigate stolen antiques, do you? You catch people like Trolhoulland."

Nightingale nodded gravely. "That you consider Trolhoulland to be something other than a regular thief and possible murderer is telling. So it would be best for you to tell us exactly what you know about him and this case."

Sandy still looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights and he swallowed nervously before saying, "I don't know why he's doing what he is, and I don't know for certain that I'm right about what he is. There not been one seen since the fifties."

"What is he?" Nightingale asked more insistently this time.

Sandy looked away before saying quietly, "A Sea Trow."

"Wait a minute, didn't Robbie Leask say something about those?" I said, then just what he'd said came back to me and I almost wished I hadn't remembered. I couldn't back out of saying it now, as Nightingale was watching me as a closely as he was Sandy. "He said you were touched by them. What did he mean? That you've done a deal with them?"

"No. Robbie was just repeating what Mima told him when they were children," Sandy said sounding more tired than anything now. "Mima's family had always had a way with the sea. I don't know if she made it up or if she believed it, but she told him that somewhere back in the family one of our ancestors had been a Sea Trow."

"How many years?" Nightingale asked.

"Centuries, if were true," Sandy said. "Look I still don't know what you're accusing me of or what you think I've done. Because as far as I can tell the problem is that I've not officially recorded that I believe Trolhoulland might not be human. What did you expect me to do? Instantly work out you're part of some hush-hush unit who deal with weird stuff and tell you I thought out chief suspect was something as mythical and the Loch Ness blooming monster."

He had a point. There was also something kind sweet about how even though he was stressed out he didn't swear. Yes, Sandy was definitely the type of person my Mum would refer to a nice boy.

"What I want to know is how you know about things like Trolhoulland in the first place and why you didn't discount it as folk story as most would," Nightingale said.

"I only know what Mima told me and I had no reason to doubt her." Sandy leant back in his seat and close his eyes. "I grew up with the stories, with all of it. I lived as much with Mima as with my Dad after Mum passed. He could hardly take me out on the boat with him."

I would have given him a minute right then as he was starting to sound upset. I mean who wouldn't be? He'd told me about finding her murdered little more than a year ago. Bad enough that she'd been his Gran, but it sounded like she'd been like a Mum to him as well. He must have been devastated.

Nightingale didn't seem to believe in giving people a minute and immediately asked, "And what precisely is 'all of it?' "

"That there's magic in things. In the earth, the sea and sky and that some people know how to use it." Sandy opened his eyes and unfastened his seatbelt. "She told me about the Other People, the ones who've been here as long as the islands, longer maybe. The Trowies, Selkies and Sea Trows. How to find them and talk to them."

"Your Grandmother was a witch?" Nightingale asked and I serious thought for a moment Sandy was going to lose his cool and clock him one.

"Don't talk about her like that, don't you dare," Sandy said, angry for the first time since we'd met him. He opened his door and got out the car slamming it behind him, then went to lean against the low wall over looking the cliffs.

He didn't look happy, but I doubted he was going to run off and leave his car or do anything spectacularly stupid, so I said, "Do you think he's telling the truth?"

"Even if he is it puts us in an awkward position," Nightingale replied. "The rules laid out during the formation of the modern police force are clear; there is to be no unauthorised use of magic to aid investigation or to secure convictions."

That was the first I'd heard of it, but then you could hardly put it in basic coppering 101 could you. What would it say? Keep a full chain of evidence, hitting the suspect even if he hit you first isn't on and by the way don't use Impelo to make your suspect confess. I was feeling bad for Sandy now, he didn't seem to have done anything wrong and now he was scared about what was going to happen to him now that we knew. "That wasn't in any handbook I got issued," I said. "How was he supposed to know?"

There was definitely irritation in Nightingale's voice as he replied, "I should hardly have to tell you that ignorance of the law is not a valid defence."

"So what are we going to do?" I said, not liking where this felt like it was going. "Are we really taking about destroying his career or worse, even if he's done nothing wrong? Well not apart from knowing about magic."

Nightingale looked at Sandy. He was lonely looking figure standing on the cliff top, surrounded by empty sea and sky. Nightingale sighed and turned back to me. "I may not have a choice."

"Of course we have a choice," I said. The conversation felt oddly similar to the one we'd had about Simone and her sisters, well apart from the fact that Simone had been a jazz vampire and Sandy was somebody who'd made the apparently bad choice to believe the stories his Gran told him. "If all he can do is tell that magic is there or that somebody else is using it that's not the same as him doing it himself."

"True, but we need to be careful," Nightingale said and then got out of the car. "I know you thought of him as a friend, but I cannnot allow us to make the same mistake of trusting the wrong person again."

Lesley switching sides hurt, but letting that influence how we were going to deal with Sandy felt terribly wrong, but I had no idea how to get that through to Nightingale, especially as it sounded like he'd got it into his head that he was somehow protecting me by doing it. Miserable about how things were going, I followed him out of the car.

Sandy hurriedly wiped his eyes as we approached. I'd not thought it was possible to feel worse about the whole thing, but knowing that we'd managed to make a grown man cry felt like a new low. I was about to go and ask if he was okay when Nightingale started talking.

"I apologise for calling your late Grandmother a witch. I meant no disrespect, rather that she was a practitioner who had learnt her knowledge of magic outside of a formal setting."

Sandy looked at us like he really didn't want to accept the apology. "So you both went to some kind of police Hogwarts, did you? They have those in London, do they?"

I almost laughed at the face Nightingale made. Almost.

"No. Contrary to the belief of a number of individuals." He looked at me. "Our lives are neither modelled on nor dictated by a series of children books."

"So what made my Gran any different than you then?" Sandy asked, anger still there beneath the surface. "Why do you think you're so much better than her?"

Okay, time to play good cop again then. "All we're saying is that she was trained in a different way, not that any way is better. So could you tell us what sort of things she taught you or showed you?"

He nodded and then sat down on the wall. "Mima said that she'd got out of practice with a lot of what her Mother and Grandmother had shown her. She told me magic had gone to sleep for years, but that in the early Eighties she felt it waking up again and saw the Trowies out in the sheep fields, gathering the snags of wool. It was just a couple of years after that my Mother passed and I was round there most days. That was when I first saw the Trowies, saw how Mima would bring them things and talk to them."

"Did she know why magic had gone or why it came back?" Nightingale asked.

"No and when I asked she told me that was how it was. Or at least that was how she thought it was, like the cycle of seasons, that everything that happened was meant to." Sandy smiled sadly. "I don't know if that was true or not, there was a lot she didn't tell me. The magic of the land as she called was always something that had been of the women, the sea was for the men. She would have taught a daughter or granddaughter if she had either. It should have been for my Father and Grandfather to teach me of the sea. Dad never learnt, he doesn't hold with it even now. I don't think he ever believed in it. And Granddad, well he wasn't really that, but he'd not liked it, thought it was wrong somehow. I know he made Mima unhappy."

It didn't sound anything like the kind of magic Nightingale had been showing me and I wondered if it really was something different of it was that people up here, away from Newton and his Latin and Greek, had found a way of making it work for them. "So Mima taught you how to talk to Trowies, did she teach you how to do magic, like making fire or lights or something?"

"Only if you count handing me a box of matches to get her kitchen range lit. I didn't know you could, I've never seen anybody use magic to burn..." He stopped and gave us both a wide-eyed and horrified stare. "Sholto. Was that magic?"

"It was," I said. A shiver ran through me at the thought of how I'd been sucked in by it at the autopsy. "Whole super fiery end with added bonus drowning was pretty horrible."

"Peter?" Nightingale sounded worried, which was never a good sign. "Whatever do you mean? There was a strong vestigia of fire and fear present, one that it was all too easy to be overwhelmed by. What water was present beyond that which the firemen used to extinguish the blaze?"

Talking about it wasn't in my top ten of things I wanted to do, it didn't even make my top thousand, but I could hardly tell Nightingale no. Not when it might tell us more about our potential thieving, murdering Sea Trow. "It was sort of underneath the rest. The fear and fire thing was nasty, so I looked underneath it at the damp bit and it just grabbed me. I thought you knew."

"No, why ever didn't you tell me?" Nightingale said. "If I had known, I would never have left you alone in the corridor."

"DI Perez was with me, I was alright," I said. I think as soon as I was out of the room I realised I would be, but being asked at the time would have been nice. "I figured you were just angry that I'd not listen to you. I thought you knew."

"You may sometimes drive me to distraction, and I am quite aware that you believe some of my methods to be rather more ruthless than you would like, but I am not as callous as you apparently believe me to be," he said, plainly unhappy about the fact I'd not told him. "When have I ever given you a reason to think such a thing?"

Only about a million times since the Skygarden. I knew that was unfair, well I did since he'd admitted that he wasn't dealing with stuff any better than I was. "I don't think I really was thinking at the time," I said going with the easy get out answer. "And afterwards we were so busy I didn't get time."

"I don't have any idea what you are talking about, but whatever is going on is serious, isn't it?" Sandy asked, then frowned. "That sounded awful, Mr Sholto has already lost his life, and it made that sound like it didn't matter. I didn't mean it like that."

"Please don't tell me you knew him," Nightingale said. "You realise you'll be off the case if you do."

"I didn't, but he was still a person who met a terrible end, I shouldn't have made him sound unimportant." Sandy went back to leaning on the wall and looking out at the sea. "I didn't know magic could be used for anything like that. I thought it was something harmless. Mima never told me about anything like this."

We all stood around for a minute or two feeling rather awkward about things. Okay, maybe that was just me. Sandy seemed lost and Nightingale looked like he planning something. So after a few more moments of awkwardness, followed by the realisation that it was actually bloody freezing standing on a cliff top, I said, "I don't suppose we could talk in the car instead?"

Nightingale nodded, and then coughed. His cough had got a lot better, but it hadn't gone yet. I knew it was ridiculous to expect that the antibiotics would get rid of it in three days, but I knew I wouldn't stop worrying about him until it properly stopped. Not that I'd tell him that. We were as bad as each other, I decided for worrying in silence and somehow expecting each other to be mind readers. I doubted either of us would really change, I just hoped we got used to each other enough to know when we were being complete idiots about something and talk before we screwed things up.

"Do you know anything about Sea Trows? or the nature of their abilities?" Nightingale once we were back in Sandy's car.

"Not much, nothing more than what you'd read in any folk stories book you could pick up at the library. They were supposed to me part of the same race as the Trowies once, but they had a falling out over something, stories vary, but mostly it seems to have been because the Sea Trows were more like humans. Some of them took human husbands or wives, but those stories get mixed up with those about Selkies."

"For those not up on their mythical creatures of Shetland," I said, "What are Selkies?"

"They are people with the ability to change into a seal or a seal with the ability to change into a person. It depends on how you look at it. The have a magic seal skin they use to transform and if they stay in either form for more than a year without changing they stay that way," Sandy said. He thought for a moment then added, "I've never seen one. Although unless you see one changing you apparently can't tell, so maybe I have and not know it. They don't have any powers other than being able to change, or none that I've heard of."

"So we can rule out Selkies from our list of what Trolhoulland might be?" I said.

"It would appear so," Nightingale said. "Do you know who would know more about Sea Trows? Or anybody who would be willing to talk to us on the subject?"

"I don't know if they'd talk to you or Peter," he said, not sounding entirely sure if what he was about to suggest was a good idea or not. "But they will talk to me, as long as I bring them their gifts."

"Who are they and what form of gift do they require?" Nightingale asked, sounding rather dubious about the whole thing.

"The Trowies. I don't know the ones from South Mainland as well as those on Bressay, but if Trolhoulland is a Sea Trow they will want to help." Sandy clipped his seatbelt back into place. "The gift is meat, bread and milk."

Bread and salt didn't sound to bad. "What kind of meat?" I asked, hoping the reply wouldn't be something along the lines of killing a sheep or something.

"They seem quite partial to corned beef for some reason," Sandy said. "That and Spam. I think it's because it keeps well and they know how get the tin open."

After all the tension I laughed. Apparently it wasn't just supernatural population of London that was moving with the times.

So after a brief stop at a village shop to get a pint of milk, a can of corned beef and a packet of bread rolls, we went looking for Trowies. Trowies or Trows as some people called them were sort of like trolls, Sandy explained as we walked across an empty field, heading for a what looked like a half collapse wall.

I'd met a troll. Well sort of, it had mostly been Nightingale who'd done the talking to the guy who lived under a bridge and who the rest of the world probably thought was one of London's many rough sleepers. What I couldn't see here was anywhere that a troll could live. Neither could Nightingale, and as Sandy walked on ahead of us, he said quietly, "Stay alert."

When Sandy had got to a couple of metres from the jumble of stones, he turn and looked at us. "Could you wait there please, just until I've spoken to them? They don't get many visitors and I don't want to scare them off."

"Do what you need to do," Nightingale said, as we watched and waited to see what would happen.

I'd sort of expected something magic to happen, to feel that familiar rush as formae is created nearby, only there wasn't. Sandy took the gifts out of their plastic bag and placed them carefully at the bottom of the tumble of stones. Then he picked up a couple of the stones and banged them together three times, and then stepped back. For a couple of minutes nothing happened and I was beginning to think we were wasting our time when a Trowie finally appeared.

It looked like a troll. Not one of the huge moving rock plies of popular fantasy or the kind that lived unnoticed in London. No this looked like the little rubber trolls with sticky-up hair that you could get to put on the end of pencils. Only much, much dirtier and wearing what appeared to be a string vest made of scraps of wool and seaweed.

It inspected the gifts, nodded at Sandy and then gave a shrill whistle. Three more Trowies quickly appeared and collected the gifts, disappearing with them as fast as they'd came. Once they'd gone Sandy crouched down and spoke to the remaining Trowie. I couldn't tell what he was saying, but he pointed back to us a couple of times, so I guessed he was trying to explain why we were there and get it to speak to us.

Then Sandy stood back up and the Trowie promptly dived back into the rock and was gone. We'd tried, I supposed that had to count for something, I thought as he walked back over to us.

"We're in luck," Sandy said as he reached us. "They've got a member of the Southern Council visiting them, and she's willing to hear what we've got to say. Larn, who was on watch today, was a bit vague about why Hjalda is here, but I think they might be looking into the Sea Trow angle themselves."

Somehow I doubted that was good thing. Knowing out luck of late we'd probably stumbled into inter troll gang warfare. There wasn't much point speculating about it without any facts to back it, so we waited by the heap of stones and I tried to work out where they were getting in and out of it. I thought I'd got it figured out when another Trowie, smaller than the last, with matted grey hair hanging down to its knees and leaning on a knobby walking stick appeared from a point I'd just discounted.

She stared up at Sandy with large yellowish-green eyes that would have looked at home on a jungle cat, and then said something in what sounded like a comedy sketch show's made up version Swedish with a bit of something that might have been Welsh thrown in for good measure. Sandy listened intently, then crouched down again, before replying.

I had no idea what he was saying. I could catch a word or two here and there, like Trolhoulland and Sholto, but that was it. The impatient expression on Nighitngale's face left me in little doubt he hadn't got a clue what was being said either.
Hjalda listened to Sandy with a ferocious scowl on her face, so either what he was saying was pissing her off or maybe she thought he was mangling her language. When he stopped Hjalda launched into what I suspected was the foulest swearwords known to Trowkind, if Sandy's embarrassed expression was anything to go by. She rounded it off by giving him a jab in the leg with her walking stick and then stomping over to us.

There had been plenty of things that I'd not expected to happen in Shetland, and watching Nightingale have a staring contest with the world tiniest, dirtiest troll was definitely up there with the weirdest. I couldn't tell who looked away first, as it seemed to be a mutual thing, an acknowledgement that taking anything further than staring would probably end badly for anybody in the immediate vicinity.

Hjalda spoke to Sandy again, who after a moment translated for us. "She's not happy that I've brought outsiders into this. Especially not ones with magic like yours. But she understands that because Trolhoulland has killed a human that it can no longer be thought of as a problem only of the Trowingas. The Trow nation."

"Could you ask her if she knows where he is or what he is planning to do with the stones?" Nightingale asked.

We waited again, and then Sandy gave us what I suspected was PG rated version of what Hjalda had said. "She doesn't know where he is. When he uses magic on lands belonging to the Trowies they can tell, but when he isn't they don't know where he is.
And if she knew what he was planning to do with the stone she would um... put them where the sun doesn't shine, so to speak."

"Does she know what the stones were used for?" I asked. If we had an idea what they did then maybe we could work out what he was going to do from the stuff in Sholto's house.

Another minute or two passed before we got our translation. "They are for storing magic, but the people who used them are long gone. She said they were made by the children of the tower builders and she'd never seen them used, but they were connected to power over the land."

"What kind of power?" Nightingale asked sharply. "Are they dangerous?"

Hjalda seemed to get what he was asking and waved her stick at Nightingale, before snapping something back at him. She didn't wait for Sandy to translate before turning and walking off back toward the pile of stones.

"Everything is dangerous in the hands of fools," Sandy translated, as he watched her go. "I don't think Hjalda liked having to admit she didn't know what was going on any more than we do."

"So that's it? We're not going to get any more help from them than that?" I asked. I'd not expected them to be able to hand Trolholland over to us, but giving us something more than vague answers that actually answered nothing at all would have been nice.

"Perhaps. Or she might call a meeting of the council and they might decided to help us," Sandy said, pulling up the hood on his coat as the rain started to fall again. "Either way there's no point standing around here. Do we actually need to go to Quendale or was that a trick to get me out of the station?"

"A necessary lie given the circumstances we find ourselves in," Nightingale said as we walked back to the car. "Hjalda spoke of being able to tell if Trolholland used magic on their land. Are you able to do the same?"

"Sorry, it's only if the person is nearby, preferably where I can see them," Sandy said, glancing round to Trowies lived. "I really can't do magic in that way, and I don't think talking to Trowies counts, it's just a language like any other. I'm rather a disappointment I imagine."

"Quite the opposite," Nightingale replied. "Had you been using unsanctioned magic I would have had no choice but to stop you."

Sandy stopped and stared at him. "How?"

There was a tight-lipped smiled on Nightingale face before he answered. "I think you have your suspicions. I suggest that we leave it at that."

I wanted it left at that too, because I had my suspicions as well and I didn't want to find out anything about Nightingale that I couldn't end up justifying to myself. Which was a lie, because I would end up justifying it, and that scared the crap out of me if I was honest. Sandy had other ideas, and said, "So how do you get to be a police sanctioned magician?"

Nightingale folded his arms. "You don't."

"By that you mean me? Because you're training Peter, aren't you?"

"I am," Nightingale conceded. "That is also the reason why I can't consider training anybody else. To take more than one apprentice is unwise. The risks are too great for all concerned."

And wasn't that the truth, I thought miserably. He could have said no to training Lesley, but I'd put him in a position where he'd felt he had no choice. Letting her experiment on her own at home would have been too risky both for her and for her family and I knew her too well to know that she wouldn't stop if we told her to. It wasn't any comfort to know that I wouldn't have listened either had our situations been reversed.

"And when you've finished training him?" Sandy asked, trying not to sound too hopeful and failing. "What then?"

There was a look of something that might have been fear crossed Nightingale's face, but it was gone before I had a chance to consider why. "That is years away, anything could happen."

"There's more to this magic stuff than Trolhoulland and what's going on here, isn't there? And I'm not going to get an answer, am I?" Sandy asked, sounding resigned to the fact.

"It's probably best that you don't," I said. All the things that had happened in London as weird, wonderful and down right awful as they were seemed a million miles away, and I didn't want Sandy to be pulled into it. I'd got Lesley involved in it and that had been a disaster all round. No, I decided, I was going to keep quiet about it unless I had no choice.

"Is what you do really so different to what we do here?" Sandy said as we reached the car. "Is it as dangerous as what Trolhoulland can do?"

"Nothing that I can show you here. Unless you wish your phone and car stereo to stop working," Nightingale said. "Magic in any other form that securely stored has the rather unfortunate side effect of damaging electrical items."

"Knowing that might have been helpful," Sandy said, frowning. "There were some weird power cuts back at the end of last year in the area around Virkie. People thought it might have been kids on the school holidays playing with the cables or something, but we never found anything. Then early in January it stopped."

About the time Trolhoulland had left for London then. Now this sounded like the kind of lead we could do with. "Were the power cuts focused in a particular part of Virkie?" I asked.

"Mainly in the south of the village," he replied. "People were worried because the airport is only about half a mile down the road. If the lights or power went out there it could have been a serious problem."

"Quite," Nightingale said and got into the car.

I could tell he was as puzzled about what Trolhoulland's plan was. Because he must have a plan, nobody went to the trouble of doing what Trolhoulland had, the library research, the trip to the other end of the country, the theft and then the murder, unless they were going to get something out of it. The question was what was it and whether he'd manage to get it already.



Part 7: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/243962.html



A/N

Yes, I know I said it wouldn't go up to more than 7 parts, but I've had to split part 6 into two sections as it as both too long and would end up meaning a long gap between postings.