Seaweed in the Soup Read Online Free

shy, he hung up when I asked him,” Bill replied. “Call display says he was Tudor Collins. He lives at 515 Collins Lane.”
    â€œDoes Collins have form?”
    â€œNo, Silas. Mr. Collins is a fine upstanding citizen. The Collinses have been in Victoria since the beginning of time. They used to own that porcelain shop on Broughton Street.”
    â€œAnything else you can tell me about him?”
    Bill laughed. “Isn’t that enough?”
    I put my phone away. Footsteps became audible above the heavy buzz of sandflies where Constable Ricketts was coming down the stairs to the beach. When he noticed me, he turned away and began to retrace his steps. I said, “Hold it, Ricketts.”
    He turned, one hand on the balustrade, looking down. “Sir?” he said nervously.
    â€œHave you made the notes that Chief Tapp asked for?”
    â€œYes, Sergeant.”
    â€œYou told Chief Tapp that you thought the women you were chasing would head north. Why north?”
    â€œI dunno,” he said, his voice slow and abstracted, as if his thoughts were focussed somewhere else. “It was just a guess.”
    â€œI wonder if perhaps you’d noticed something. Footprints in the sand, a broken branch?”
    Shaking his head, Ricketts came down the stairs.
    I said, “Tell me again about that bird or whatever it was that you saw earlier.”
    Ricketts frowned. He didn’t look me in the eye. He seemed slightly embarrassed. Seconds passed before he said, “It’s strange. I don’t know how to explain this without sounding foolish. I was alone in the woods. There had been no sign of the women and I was just standing quietly, waiting and listening. Suddenly I had a strange feeling that I wasn’t alone, that somebody or something was watching me. When I turned around, I saw a vague shape for a moment before it vanished. Since then I’ve been thinking, maybe I didn’t see anything. It might have been nerves, I might have just imagined it all.”
    â€œDo you think you could find the same place again?”
    â€œI expect so, Sergeant. It’s only a few hundred yards from here.”
    â€œOkay, let’s go. I’d like to have a look for myself.”
    We started walking. Olive-green seaweed with yellowish tips mantled the offshore rocks. A wedge of majestic white swans bobbed up and down in the waves. Leaves of decaying sea lettuce littered the beach like scraps of crumpled parchment. I said, “Describe the two women that you and Bradley saw on Echo Bay Road.”
    Ricketts looked at me sideways, but continued to evade my eyes. “They were a couple of Indian girls. Dark or sallow skin, there was nothing remarkable about either of them. They had the same skin pigmentation as you, Sergeant, if you don’t mind me saying so. They were just like the people I see hanging around the Native Friendship Centre. About 18 years old. Maybe 20. Nice looking girls, a little overweight. They might have been sisters or cousins. One of ’em was wearing a funny T-shirt. It said, Jesus loves you, everybody else thinks you’re an asshole. ”
    I began to think about ravens and Tricksters.
    Ricketts had recovered from his earlier shock. Smiling absently, he led me away from the shore along a ravine studded with small trees and stunted shrubs. We began to ascend an incline where the brush thinned and the floor of the ravine became a loose scree of pebbly soil covered with leaf mould and scattered patches of lichen-covered rock. Towards the top, the incline steepened precipitously; our feet began to slide. After a struggle, we reached rimrock.
    Ricketts and I grabbed overhanging branches and we rested for a moment before Ricketts reached over the rim and used his free hand to part a clump of tall grass. Gazing across the rim, he said hesitantly, “I don’t see it now, but I know that the big rock where I saw something strange is close by.”
    I