Death of an Adept

"I suppose I'm concerned because up until recently, I'd never considered myself to be particularly impressionable - quite the reverse, in fact. So maybe you can appreciate how strange it seemed, suddenly to find myself having a - a visionary experience, I suppose I have to call it. It's something I never expected to happen. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it."

"What do your instincts say?"

"I'm not sure I dare trust my instincts anymore," Harry said frankly. "They've always stood me in good stead - that's part of what makes me good at what I do - but I keep asking myself, Did that really happen, or was it just my imagination playing tricks on me?"

"Which are you more inclined to believe?"

Harry allowed himself a short, mirthless laugh. "I wish I knew. Oh, I've never had any trouble accepting that there's more to reality than meets the eye. If I've learned nothing else, working with you these last couple of years, it's the fact that, as the bard says, 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

"There are, indeed," McLeod agreed.

"But up until Callanish, all my experiences with paranormal matters had been secondhand, purely supportive," Harry protested. "And I'd been willing to accept all of that on faith. Since Callanish, I can't help but wonder, Why now?"

"Well, people develop their potentials in different ways, and at different rates," McLeod ventured. "It could simply be that you're a late-bloomer. Or it could be that these talents of yours have been lying dormant until such time as they were needed."

"Implying that I'm going to need them now?" Harry retorted. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that."

McLeod chuckled, shaking his head. "All part of the game, Counsellor. Just keep reminding yourself that psychic talents are merely another aspect of human nature, and subject to development like everything else about being human."

"Right," Harry muttered. "I'll tell myself that, the next time I pick up something and it gives me a psychic bite!"

They touched down soon after at an airstrip near Conwy. Inspector Davies was waiting there to give them cordial welcome, leaning on the open door of a police Land Rover as they buttoned up the plane and came crunching across the new snow of the parking apron. Davies in person was dark and energetic, with a firm handshake, humor in his blue eyes, sharply defined features, and the spare, wide-shouldered stature that had made his forebears masters of the longbow in ages past.

"Good to meet you in person at last, Inspector McLeod." The lilting accents of the Welsh valleys sang in his pleasant tenor. "Mr. Nimmo, I hope you won't be bored coming along on our little outing."

"Nary a chance," Harry replied, with a glance at McLeod. "Working with the inspector is never boring."

Davies chuckled as his sweeping gesture invited them to pile into the Land Rover.

"So I gather. His reputation goes before him - all of it good, I hasten to add!"

McLeod took the seat beside Davies, Harry installing himself behind McLeod, both of them buckling up as the Welsh inspector started the engine.

"As you can't have missed as you came in, we've had a fair amount of snow in the last few days," Davies informed his visitors, as he set the car in gear and eased it off the parking apron. "Half of Gwynedd is under snow right now. Since the cottage your man Evans calls home is deep in the country, I thought I'd better drive you there myself. You'll see what I mean when we get there. Mr. Nimmo, there's a file folder on the seat beside you. Would you hand it up to the inspector, please? That's what we've got on your Griffith Evans."

With a muttered "Thank you," McLeod took the file Harry passed forward and opened it on his lap, adjusting his aviator spectacles with an absent gesture as he bent to inspect a booking photo of Griffith Evans. Davies said nothing as he negotiated the slip roads leading back to the highway; but as soon as they had joined the A470, tires hissing on the wet pavement, he glanced over at McLeod - now deeply immersed in perusing the rest of the contents of the file folder - then at Harry in the rearview mirror.

"You're lucky the weather held this morning," he said to Harry, making congenial small talk. "Flying can be nasty, this time of year. Now me, I'm a bit of an angler so. Never had much of a head for heights, do you see? One day I mean to venture up to Scotland and try my hand at salmon fishing. But in the meantime, our own Lake Bala gwyniad are nothing to complain about, for all they're not so large as their Scottish cousins. I think you call them Powan, elsewhere."

"I've never fished in Wales," Harry allowed, "though I did come here on holiday once, when I was a lad. Is there good fishing around here?"

"Aye, you can get the odd fighter…."