The Sister (64 page)

He looked at his watch. "I'm going to have to leave it there; I have to be up early."

Carla put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it as she passed him to visit the cloakroom. He called for the bill, and while he waited alone, his thoughts turned to Ryan. In the dim corner of the deserted room, the light from outside threw horizontal bars of light across the table top nearest and up the wall. In the shadows, he imagined Ryan sitting there, one eye narrowed and focused on him.

That book I never wrote, Miller. I never told you this. I had a great interest in the paranormal from an early age; meeting her only fuelled it further. One element that interested me particularly - because it was recurrent - was the part water played in sightings and hauntings. So much testimony down through the years, not provable of course, but to me it made sense. If ghosts, spirits and apparitions are residual traces of energy, fired by a tragic, or traumatic event - recorded somehow in the fabric of buildings or rocks or places - and if that energy is electrical in some way . . . I mean, we know that people can generate static electricity. We can measure its fields and detect changes in it with polygraphs, EEG and so on. We know people on rare occasions can generate enough power to spontaneously combust, although we don't know how. Water is a conductor of electricity. Could it be then that it aids the playback of whatever impulses have been recorded during extreme circumstances such as suicides or murders? I think so, and I think it goes a long way to explain why you see your apparitions most clearly in the rain. And here's another fascinating thought for you that I seem to have overlooked until now. Your friends perished on 15
th
July, St Swithun's day.

Miller shrugged at the shadowy corner. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

It marks the anniversary of the mine disaster that took place nearby in 1857. It rained so hard it flooded the workings, killing dozens of people. Your friends drowned on St Swithun's day.

"You've lost me, what's the significance?"

Local superstition has had it for years that, on that day, the ghosts from the mine return to walk among the living . . . Belief is a powerful thing, Miller. If you believe in something strongly enough, anything is possible . . .

"Ryan, that's just fairy tale stuff."

Is it? Consider the Tibetans - they've mastered a technique based entirely on the belief that they can create a thought creature. A Tulpa they call it. Other people can see these things, as well. There was a documented case, where an English woman was able to create one following the prescribed methods, but she lacked the inner spirituality to control it, she had to get help to get rid of it. Do you believe in ghosts Miller?

He laughed, "It's a bit late for me to be in denial!"

"Who were you talking to?" Carla cast her eyes about the room.

"Was I talking?" Miller drew his hand across his face and said, "Phew! Thank heavens I only had one of those beers. I've got to go."

Chapter 131

Outside Miller checked his watch. "I'll walk you to your hotel. You're only five minutes from mine. I haven't stopped talking about myself all evening. We really should have talked more about you, Carla."

"Don't worry about it," she smiled. "I want to hear more about you."

"I don't think we have time…"

"Come on, at least until we get to my hotel."

"It was July 15
th
, a Tuesday…" A voice rose within him, circumventing all barriers to it, catching him unawares. His story, rarely told, tripped off his tongue.
What are you doing, Bruce? I'm never drinking Northern Lights again!

The recollections were vivid; he brought them to life for her. "The tragedy was bad enough, but when they started pulling these old skeletons out of the water from years before…"

As they arrived outside her hotel ten minutes later, he was still talking. "I don't know what's happening to me. It's like everything converging at once, outside my control. I can't make any real sense of it." He stared up into the yellow haze that held back the darkness around the streetlight. "It's like everything has been coming to this … whatever it is. That's why I called Doctor Ryan."

"What did he think was happening to you?"

"Look, I've said too much already."

"Miller, I want to know what's happening to you."

"Strange dreams, that's all."

"You're not going to tell me?" She seemed disappointed.

He took a sharp intake of breath. His lips pressed tight together.

"Come on, Miller, answer the question."

"It's complicated," he exhaled.

"I don't care,
tell
me."

He focused on her. "I keep having nightmares where I wake up on the point of drowning and that's not all. Lately, I've found that if I concentrate hard enough, I can almost tell what people are thinking. Not with everybody, and not all the time." He told her everything that he'd told Ryan, with the exception of the Simpson dream. "Do you think I'm going crazy?" He was staring at her the way he did on the train - not seeing her - but seeing
through
her. His eyes came back into focus. He looked exhausted.

She'd been tempted to interrupt him, but she held off, not wanting to stifle the words flowing out of him. It had been like watching a self-imposed exorcism. "Holy shit . . ." She pursed her lips and whistled low.

Miller trembled.

Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to hold him.

They'd been outside her hotel for a quarter of an hour; she shivered in the dropping temperature. "Are you going to come in?" she said, and reaching for his hand pulled him up the steps.

"Carla, listen. I have an appointment tomorrow with someone who apparently holds the key to my destiny and it's so late." He left her by the entrance doors. He was ten feet away before she even thought of protesting.

He blew her a kiss. "There's nothing I want more than to come in with you, but it's going to have to wait, at least until I get back."

She called out after him, "I won't be here when you get back!"

Carla slipped into her room and dropped her handbag onto the seat of the armchair. Removing her shoes and jacket, she then wriggled out of her jeans. Semi-naked, she admired herself in the mirror, and then leaned down into her bag to pull out her voice recorder. It was no bigger than a pack of ten cigarettes. She pushed the rewind button, held it close to her ear and clicked play.

When she decided to pass the time of day with Miller on the train, she'd not expected to find a potential story in him. As the journey and the conversation progressed, she discovered there were at least two, and as she reflected on the content of the tape, she realised Miller
himself
was a story. His reticence annoyed her; she was going to have to get closer. She hadn't had a challenge in a long time, but first she had to get to grips with the Vigilante case.

Putting the recorder down, she picked up her phone, selected a name from the menu and pressed the connect button. She knew it was late, but Michael Brady never slept before one o'clock in the morning.

"Hello, Michael, it's Carla."

"Carla? Oh, Carla
Blue!
It's been such a long time… Is it really you?"

"Yes, it's really me."
Carla Blue
. . . When the tape turned up at The News of The World, he'd been an officer in the Met and had heard through the grapevine that she'd watched it. He called her at work to talk about it. Afterwards, they had a brief fling. It didn't last . . . he outlived his usefulness, but she remained on good terms with him. She never fell out with people like him.
In her job,
you never knew when you might need them again.

"You still there?"

"Yes, I am. I was just thinking, when are you lot ever going to let me live that down?"

He chuckled down the other end of the line, "Well, how are you?"

"I'm very well and you?" She didn't allow him to answer, getting straight to the point. "Michael, I'm putting a piece together on the Vigilante murders and I'm struggling to get information. Is that something you can help with?" She held her breath.

"Oh, Carla, you're putting me on the spot here."

"Michael, I'm sorry, but I don't have anyone else I can ask. If you help me, I'll owe you one." she lowered her voice suggestively.

"Look, Carla, they're keeping this one under wraps from the press, if anything gets out . . . it could get sticky."

"Michael, all I want is to be there with a finger on the button, so when the story does break . . ."

He sighed, "I wish there was a way I could help you . . . Where are you?"

"I'm in Edinburgh."

"Do you want me to come over?" he sounded hopeful.

"Have you anything for me, information wise?"

Brady spun it out. "I might have . . ."

"Oh, come on, Michael, don't hold back on me." She paused and then said. "How are things with you and Maggie, by the way?" Met with silence, she bit her lip.

"I've got one thing, but you must promise you never heard it from me. You remember I used to work with John Kennedy at the Met?"

"Vaguely," she lied.

"Well, it turns out that the baseball bat recovered from the scene of the killings used to belong to him."

After putting the phone down, she pulled out the 'Midnight Man' cobweb map and studied it again. It helped her think outside the box, and it always seemed to work best when she was a little bit unfocused, but it wasn't working tonight.

She thought about Miller.
What are you really doing in Scotland?
She knew that he wanted her, but whatever it was he was here for, was more important. Her curiosity was aroused.
I have an appointment with destiny.

What she'd said to him about being disappointed if he turned out to be a bull-shitter was true. She'd spent half her life avoiding womanisers. She could smell them a mile off, but Miller. He was a mystery.

She poured a second glass of wine and returned to studying Midnight's movements.

When she'd first started, it was obvious the patterns centred around cities because of the road systems, but the more she thought about it, the more she realised, that when you have over seven hundred points to join up, there's a good chance the
appearance
of a pattern would form. What Miller had said somewhere along the line on the train, came back to her.

The only reason this character has avoided city centres is because they are mostly business premises protected by alarms and CCTV cameras. There are cameras that cover the streets. London has one of the highest levels of street surveillance in the world, and he likes to move around, blending in. He knows he'll be caught somewhere on a camera. He won't risk breaking into those houses or flats within city centres like
London, because they're usually owned by the very wealthy, who protect themselves and their property with sophisticated security systems, even guards . . .

There had been a number of Midnight attacks in the suburbs surrounding
London. She still had a contact in the Met, and he'd told her there was evidence to suggest he sometimes targeted individuals connected to victims of previous burglaries. Her reporter's nose caught a whiff of something. She was unsure what it was.
He put strangers together just for the fun of it.

Carla started folding the map to put it away, thinking how impossible it was to predict where he would strike next. She wondered what his motives were, recalling what Miller said on the train.
You have so many dots you could join them all together and make the face of Mickey Mouse.

She glanced at her phone.
A text from her man in the Met.
How strange.
She'd literally just thought about him, remembering a call she owed him from months back.

Off the record, they quite often helped each other, and now he'd provided her with the location of the latest confirmed activities of the Midnight man.
He's in Scotland!

Quickly unfolding the map again, she located the town. She took her coloured pencil and marked it. A shiver of excitement ran through her. It was less than ten miles from the vigilante attack, and it had occurred earlier on the same day. There were so many dots on the map, though not many in
Scotland.
Surely, that's too close for coincidence?

Something he'd discovered during the burglary might have led him to the paedophiles. He could have set an accomplice onto them, or he might have done it himself.
It could be him.

Coincidence.
Miller had said it was partly the reason he was in Scotland. Now she'd had a run of them herself. She googled the word and read several articles on the subject, but none summed it up better than the one line quote she'd read first of all.
Coincidence, if traced far enough back, becomes inevitable.