Sam flung his door open. Some of the clerks had come out of their offices at the noise. Jon Hampson was one. Two secretaries stood and gawped, their arms filled with files.
‘What!’ Sam bellowed.
‘What’s eating you?’ said Jon, his eyes filled with amusement.
Sam didn’t answer. He was taking deep breaths, trying to calm down. Then he caught a view of the car park through one of the windows at the back of the office. There was a Bentley, deep red, and from the personalised plates Sam knew one thing: that Jimmy King was with Harry.
Jon saw where he was looking. ‘Maybe he wants to know why you’ve sacked your client.’
Sam sneered. ‘Yeah, just fucking maybe.’
He was about to go back into his room when Karen appeared in the corridor behind him. She cleared her throat, sounding scared. Terry McKay was downstairs.
He walked quickly along the corridor, ignoring all the faces in front of him, the people who had stuck their
heads out of their offices, peering round doorframes, and made his way downstairs. As the reception area came into view, he saw Terry sway against the counter. The receptionist was young and pretty, Harry’s idea—a distraction for the clients who didn’t like waiting. She was standing guard, making sure that Terry didn’t wander. She looked up at Sam and he could see the distaste in her eyes.
Terry had someone else with him, a woman with two missing teeth and cuts on her face. Sam had seen her at court, a prostitute and occasional thief. She had the same vacant look that Terry had, that one day she would sober up properly and wonder what she had done with her life.
He had seen many prostitutes in court, and none had looked like Julia Roberts. They all looked riddled with bad luck, worn down by substance abuse or just hard living, and they all ended up bearing the scars of their nastier clientele.
As Sam approached, Terry looked round. When he let go of the counter, he stumbled slightly. He had quickly got into that state. It had only been a few hours since Sam had last seen him.
‘Terry, go,’ Sam said urgently.
He glanced towards the woman to his left, who looked at Sam with suspicion.
‘She knows about the King boy,’ Terry said, his voice slurred, the smell of cheap sherry tumbling out as badly as every word.
Sam looked quickly at the seats in reception. He knew that the other departments wanted the criminal
department to have a different waiting area—this was the quickest way to lose wealthy divorce clients. With relief, he saw that they were empty.
‘I don’t care, Terry. I just want you to leave, now. For your own good.’
‘He wanted to strangle me,’ said the woman, her voice gravelly. It came out with a whistling lisp as her tongue found the gaps in her teeth.
Sam put his hands up, palms outwards. ‘There is nothing I can do for you. Please leave.’ His voice was getting louder.
‘He said he wanted me to die, and that he would bring me back to life, just so that I would treasure life more. Healing hands, he used to say.’
‘Terry, get out! Jimmy King is here somewhere, and, trust me, you do not want to be here if he sees you.’
Terry started to say something, a sneer on his face, when Sam saw him step back, his eyes wide, looking past Sam.
‘Too late,’ said a voice.
Sam whirled around and saw Jimmy King walking slowly down the stairs, a thick-set bald man just behind him. Jimmy looked at Sam briefly, but Sam couldn’t work out his mood. The bald man just stared at him.
Jimmy walked slowly towards Terry and then stopped just in front of him. Then he smiled, but it was cold, his lips tight and thin.
‘Good afternoon. What is your name?’
Terry pursed his lips, and Sam thought he was going to attack Jimmy, but he didn’t. Jimmy had a presence, a calmness, hostile and still.
‘You want to talk to me,’ Jimmy hissed. ‘Here I am.’
Terry swallowed. Sam looked towards the receptionist, who was sitting down again. She looked nervous now, her precious self-assurance gone.
Jimmy took a step nearer. They were now nose to nose.
‘I’m sure I heard my name. Was I wrong?’
Terry started to walk backwards, but the woman didn’t move.
‘You owe him money,’ she said defiantly. ‘Five grand.’
Jimmy looked her up and down, glanced over at Terry, and shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t think so.’
Sam stepped in.
‘Leave him alone, Mr King.’ Sam’s voice was hesitant, but his message was clear: Don’t be a bully.
Jimmy turned around to look at Sam. Then Jimmy smiled, his teeth white.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you,’ Jimmy said slowly. His smile stayed wide. ‘I’ll meet you later on, and we’ll talk about your problem.’
‘Terry, you don’t have to do this,’ Sam warned, sensing the threat. He saw the menace behind the smile.
‘I just want my fucking money,’ was Terry’s reply.
‘Meet me later, and we’ll try to sort something out.’
Terry looked suspicious, and looked across to his friend, who shrugged, her eyes still blazing.
Jimmy held out his hands. ‘If I give you some money, you won’t bother me any more.’ He sighed, and looked weary.
Terry nodded slowly, unsure.
Jimmy clapped his hands. ‘Good. Nine o’clock. Where will you be?’
Terry pointed towards the street. ‘In the park, at the end.’
Jimmy nodded and turned away. He looked at Sam, and from the look in his eyes Sam knew that Terry wasn’t going to get what he wanted. It was what he was going to get instead that worried him.
As Sam turned away he saw Alison at the top of the stairs. As their eyes met, she turned away.
Pete Dawson yawned as he sat back in his car seat.
He and Laura had followed Randle to an old scout hut in a rundown part of town, where Pete’s old Fiesta blended in perfectly. The door pocket was full of chocolate and crisp packets and the front seats bore the stains of spilled coffee.
‘How long do we have to wait here?’ he asked.
‘Until we are told to leave, or Mr Randle decides to go for a midnight walk.’ Laura looked around, noticed the shadows, the lack of life. ‘Can’t be too long now. I can’t see the tea-dance set liking it round here later?’
Pete sat back and closed his eyes. ‘There might be a market for that.’
Laura smiled at him. She was warming to him, there was something about his gruff honesty she liked. She recognised some of Jack in Pete.
‘Do you think he did it?’ she asked. ‘Killed Jess, I mean.’
Pete opened one eye. ‘Hoping for glory?’
‘No. I’m just curious. He doesn’t look the sort.’
‘There isn’t a sort. Get used to that idea pretty quickly.’
Laura knew all of that, but it wasn’t a good time to talk up her CV. ‘But his name keeps on coming up.’
‘It’s a small town,’ Pete replied.
Laura felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. It was a picture of Bobby in his pyjamas with a simple message underneath:
‘Goodnight mummy. x
She put the phone away and chewed on her lip. The message was from the babysitter, Martha, an old friend of Jack’s father. Jack said he had some work to do, Bobby would be asleep soon anyway, but it didn’t make her feel any better. There was no point in looking at her watch. She didn’t know when she would be back.
‘Missing the family?’ asked Pete, his voice quiet.
‘Why do male cops always assume that we would really rather be with our children?’
Pete looked away. ‘Why do female cops always think that we wouldn’t rather be with ours?’
Laura didn’t reply at first, just looked out of the window, but then said, ‘Do you have kids?’
Pete nodded. ‘Four, all under ten.’
Laura gasped. ‘That’s a handful.’
‘Don’t I look the type?’ He gave a small laugh. ‘It’s worse for my wife. I’m here, watching a clapped-out Portakabin with a grumpy cockney cop, instead of helping her out.’
‘Hardly a cockney. I’m from Pinner.’
‘Get below Luton and you all sound like the Artful Dodger.’
Laura laughed. ‘Cor blimey,’ she said, strangling the vowels.
Pete closed his eyes again. ‘What brings you to the north anyway?’
Laura thought about that. Love, she supposed. Maybe more than that. A new start, away from the baggage of her London life.
‘The usual,’ she said. ‘A man.’
He smiled. Laura was starting to see something of the old romantic in him, and was about to say so when she saw movement out of the window.
‘Look at this. We’ve got a rush.’ They both wiped the condensation away from the windscreen.
But when Laura saw who was arriving, she groaned.
‘Bad news?’ asked Pete.
‘You could say that,’ she said quietly.
I parked my car under one of the few streetlights and climbed out. The old scout hut was a grey Portakabin hidden by razor wire. The street was quiet, too quiet, and although the lights of the town centre were bright over the rooftops, the area seemed dark and derelict. I could see a woman working a street corner fifty yards away, but aside from that there was no one else around.
I’d driven quickly to get there. I knew what sort of neighbourhood I was in, and I didn’t want my registration number noted as a kerb crawler. The streetlights had thinned out and the shops dwindled into open spaces, where women with skirts up to their curls tried to look into my car as I went past.
My footsteps sounded loud as I walked across the road and my feet crunched on loose gravel. The scout hut was unlocked, and as I opened the door I was struck at how empty it looked. The floor was all scuffed and scattered with metal chairs. The walls were dirty, the
marks old, black streaks from shoes or old Sellotape markings. There were a couple of holes, maybe where boisterous young scouts had stuck a foot through. The hut looked uncared for, almost abandoned, and I wondered if I had got the wrong place. But then I heard a noise, a soft chatter, and then there was movement behind a serving hatch at the other end of the room. There were three women, all pension age, fussing around a kettle.
The women stopped when they heard the door shut. I shouted out, ‘Hello.’
One of the women put her head through the serving hatch. The other two appeared in the doorway and looked blankly at me. I wanted to say that surely they must have known I was coming, but they didn’t look the laughing type.
I waved. ‘Hello there. I’m Jack Garrett.’
As I spoke, Eric appeared behind them.
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ he said, walking slowly into the room. The three women watched me until he turned around to them and said, ‘This is the reporter I was telling you about.’
The three women looked suspicious, but they came forward and shook my hand.
‘Why do you want to write about us?’ one asked.
‘Because it’s an interesting story.’
‘You’re not going to make fun, are you?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I’m not. I just want to know more about you all. What you do and how you do it.’
‘Do you believe in spirits?’ asked another.
I wasn’t sure what answer I was supposed to give. ‘Well, no, not really. I mean, I’m not sure.’
All three women looked at each other and raised their eyebrows.
‘I’m Lily,’ said the woman who had just spoken, and then she pointed to the other two. ‘This is Bessie and Maggie.’
The other two nodded smiles, and then Lily said, ‘That is one way we work.’
‘I’m not sure I understand,’ I said.
All three women shook their heads, smiling.
‘That’s one way in which we can do it,’ said Bessie, her voice stronger, more challenging than Lily’s. They all looked formidable, but Bessie was the biggest of the three, her face round under her short hair, the grey hidden by chestnut streaks. ‘It’s called trance-channelling.’
I tried to hide my disappointment. The meeting had already descended into hocus-pocus. I glanced at Eric, but I saw that he wasn’t really listening.
Bessie folded her arms defensively. ‘A spirit entity can only communicate by entering the human form, and to receive the messages, the person has to be in a trance.’
‘What, you speak to ghosts?’
Bessie shook her head. ‘No. It’s more physical than that. An entity. Spirit guide. Shaman. Call it what you will, but some of us receive messages from someone in the spirit world.’
‘So what Eric paints is what the spirit world tells him to paint?’ I asked. I struggled to contain my frustration. Eric looked over when I spoke, and I guessed that he sensed my feelings.
And what’s wrong with that?’ asked Bessie, and then she leaned forward. ‘Do you know better?’
‘Why did you come here?’ asked Maggie, her voice quieter, revealing more wariness.
I looked at Eric. ‘I was shown paintings that appeared to predict future events.’ I thought of a way to dress it up, but there wasn’t one, so I added, ‘If that is true, then it is one hell of a story.’
‘Do you believe Eric predicts the future?’ It was Maggie again.
I thought about my answer, but then decided that I might get more out of the group if I was honest.
‘No, I don’t believe he dreams the future, because that would suggest that the future is pre-ordained, and it isn’t.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I don’t, I suppose, but it doesn’t make sense. The future happens because unforeseeable events collide. If it was any other way, it would mean that someone was controlling everything, like some kind of…’
‘God?’
I sighed. ‘I’m not sure I meant that. But it just doesn’t fit with what I know.’
‘Do you think Eric is a liar?’ asked Bessie.
I looked at Eric, and I thought about our first meeting. He was a little strange, lonely maybe, but he seemed genuine.
‘No,’ I said quietly, ‘I don’t think he tells lies.’
‘And he told you that his paintings were old paintings?’ continued Bessie. ‘That they weren’t new ones pretending to be old ones?’
I nodded. They were probing my doubts, and Eric was coming out of it best.
‘But how many paintings has he done that haven’t predicted anything?’ I asked. ‘It could just be a coincidence. Probability says that, now and again, there will be a match. It’s pure chance. Take an earthquake. I could paint one tonight, and there is a good chance there’ll be one within a year.’ I smiled in apology. ‘I’m not saying I have the answers. If I did, I wouldn’t be here. But I am finding it hard to believe.’ I turned to Maggie. ‘How long have you known that your dreams were important?’
‘Since I was a teenager,’ Maggie answered. ‘But I was much older before I realised what they were.’
‘Do you think it was a puberty thing?’ I asked. ‘Something to do with heightened senses?’
Maggie nodded slowly. I detected embarrassment, but she answered me anyway. ‘Teenage years are strange, full of intense feelings, and in our dreams too, but not many of us think anything about it.’
‘When did you realise your dreams were coming true?’
Maggie leaned forward and took hold of my hands. They were cold and soft.
‘When I recognised them,’ she said in a soft croak. Her eyes went hard for a moment. ‘Do you remember the Moors murderers?’
I nodded. I hadn’t been born then, but the press had made them notorious, keeping them in the news for decades, endlessly recounting how they had snatched five children and murdered them, four of them buried on the barren moorland above Saddleworth, just thirty miles from Blackley.
‘I saw them,’ she said quietly. ‘I saw them a long time before their pictures appeared in the newspapers.’
‘Tell me.’
Her fingers gripped mine a little tighter.
‘I had been having violent dreams for a while. I would wake up shivering, like I had been out in the cold all night. And my head hurt, and I hurt down there,’ and Maggie nodded towards her groin, her eyes looking away briefly, the words almost whispered. ‘I would have the dreams for a few weeks, nearly every night, and then they would stop as suddenly as they had started. There would be nothing for a few months, and then they would start again, that terror, that feeling of cold, such cold. And I would wake up crying, really crying, screaming for my mother.’ She looked bashful. ‘I hadn’t been married long, and it used to worry my Len, but then the dreams would stop, and he would think it was just a woman thing.’ Her eyes were intense now. ‘But I knew something bad had happened, as sure as I know I’m looking at you, and I didn’t do anything about it. I woke up screaming, sobbing, and then they stopped, just like that.’
‘How did you feel when they stopped?’ I spoke quietly, and I felt the space between us shrink.
‘Not like I should have done,’ said Maggie. Her voice sounded sad, some of its force gone. ‘I should have been happy they’d stopped, but I wasn’t, because I knew I’d missed something.’
Maggie looked down and I saw her eyes moisten. She spoke quietly, not much above a whisper, and I had to strain to hear her. ‘It had been really bad one Christmas. Through most of December I woke up every night and ached all over my body, and when I woke up I felt ashamed, dirty. I didn’t go to work, I was just too tired.
I almost lost my job, but it was the sixties and there was plenty of work to be had. I woke up on Boxing Day with someone’s hand round my throat, gripping tight, screaming in my ear, pure hatred. And cold again. So very cold. But when I opened my eyes, all I could see was Len looking at me, scared.’
‘How can you be sure it was Hindley and Brady?’
A tear ran slowly down her cheek and meandered around the creases.
‘Because I saw them in my dreams. Her hair was down, not like that hatchet beehive she had in her police photograph, but looser, more relaxed.’ Maggie wiped the tear away. ‘He was vacant and sullen most of the time, sort of angry, but she was just full of hate, all excited, screaming in my face. In my dreams it seemed like he was there because he had just decided to do whatever he had to do, but her,’ and Maggie shuddered, ‘she was there because she liked it.’
I must have started to drop my hands, because I felt her jerk them, pulling me towards her so that I was looking right into her eyes.
‘I know what you are thinking,’ Maggie said, her voice stronger now.
‘What am I thinking?’
‘Why do people like me only dream of famous things?’
I didn’t answer.
‘Most people say that,’ she continued, ‘but I had been having dreams like that for a long time before I recognised one. Maybe I only recognise the famous ones. I had no reason to make it up, and I wouldn’t recognise the ones that weren’t in the news.’
‘Did you come forward?’
Maggie shook her head. ‘People would have laughed at me. I was scared. I wasn’t sure what was happening myself, so what could I tell anyone? It was only after Aberfan that people like us were taken more seriously.’
‘Aberfan? Why?’
I had heard all about Aberfan, when a mountain of coal slurry slid down a Welsh hillside and covered a school, back in the sixties. One hundred and sixteen children died underneath it all.
‘I dreamt it, just like a lot of other people,’ said Maggie. ‘The dreams were just dark, like smothering blackness, black peaks, moving, shifting. Then loud sounds, like the sound of aircraft, would snap me awake, and I would be struggling for breath, sobbing for my mother. I would hear children crying out, trying to get to the light, but I was pushed down, trapped, unable to move. And I could taste it, the dirt and coal, and my fingers felt raw. The dreams just got stronger and stronger, and then on that day, when the coal slid down that hill and covered that school, I cried. Everyone cried that day, but I knew I had seen it, had tasted it, had been there almost, but hadn’t been able to stop it. Can you imagine how that felt?’ She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, a small piece of white cloth embroidered with flowers that she had retrieved from the cuff of her cardigan. ‘Those were the worst dreams of all,’ she said croakily, tears masking the milky blue of a few minutes earlier.