by Lauren Algeo
Chapter 7
The girl was sleeping in his bed. She’d barely said a word to him on the journey back to West Dulwich. Brewer had let them into the flat and she’d walked around each room, poking and prodding at things. He’d asked if she wanted a drink, or some food, but she’d declined.
‘I’m tired,’ she’d said then walked into his bedroom and closed the door behind her.
Brewer had stared dumbly after her. He had so many questions to ask.
‘I’ll be out here when you wake up,’ he’d called through the door.
Admittedly, the girl had looked exhausted. He couldn’t bring himself to call her Jewel; he’d have to find out more about her when she woke up.
Brewer paced impatiently around the living room for ten minutes before deciding to make himself useful. He walked to the high street nearest the flat and found a clothes shop. He chose a couple of jumpers, a pair of dark blue jeans, and some flat, black boots. He guessed she was about a size 6-8 in clothing but had no idea what size her feet were. In the end, he opted for a size 5 to play it safe.
He picked up some thick socks in case she needed to pad out the boots to make them fit. They could always go shopping again if they needed to. He couldn’t bear to see her walking around in the cold without any decent clothes.
Brewer hadn’t bought any women’s products since Karen had died. No women had even been inside the new flat, let alone brought toiletries in. He went to Boots and chose some girly shampoo and shower gel, in case she wanted a shower at the flat. Lastly, he bought a few sandwiches and packets of crisps to have for lunch when she woke up. She looked as though she hadn’t eaten a proper meal for a while.
Oddly for him, Brewer felt completely comfortable that he’d left a stranger alone in his flat. The maps were hanging up, and there were research notes and books lying around. He did have his rucksack and laptop with him, but the rest of his life was laid bare. She could be snooping through it as he shopped for her, even stealing from him and doing a runner, however he had a gut instinct she wasn’t. He felt a connection to her – she had escaped death by a hiker, like he had done.
She had to be mentally strong to have been able to shut it out of her mind, and Brewer knew how powerful that particular hiker was. It had been able to manipulate Rankin into shooting those people, yet this girl had evaded it. He was glad he’d managed to intervene before she’d ended up underneath the train.
Brewer headed back to the flat with his shopping. He stood inside the front door and listened, but the place was silent and his bedroom door was shut. She was still asleep.
He carried the toiletries into the bathroom and put them in the shower cubicle, next to his more masculine ones. He picked up a clean towel from the rack and walked along the hallway. He placed the folded towel, the bag of new clothes, and the boots on the floor outside his bedroom door, so the girl would see them the moment she opened it.
Brewer went through to the main room and shut the door behind him. He put the sandwiches and crisps on the breakfast bar, ready for when she awoke, then made himself a cup of coffee. He felt exhausted after a long couple of days. He collapsed into the armchair and found the TV remote tucked down the side. The news channel was still talking about the Waterloo shootings and he wondered if the girl’s death would have got a mention in any of tomorrow’s papers if he hadn’t prevented it. It was doubtful – a prostitute who committed suicide wouldn’t make any headlines.
Brewer thought he heard a sound from the hallway and he was aware of the girl moving through the flat. He stayed in the armchair; sure she would come into the room in her own time. He leant his head back and closed his eyes for a moment.
He must have dozed off because suddenly the girl was standing in front of him.
‘Hi,’ she said shyly.
He straightened up in the chair and tried to focus his bleary eyes. ‘Hello,’ he replied.
She’d clearly taken his suggestion and had a shower. Her red hair was damp on her shoulders and she’d scrubbed off the eye makeup and lipstick she’d had on earlier. She looked a lot younger without it, almost like a little girl, only the haunted look in her eyes told a different story.
The tarty clothes and heels were gone, she was wearing the jeans and one of the jumpers Brewer had bought her. He hadn’t done a bad job size wise – the jumper was a little baggy around the chest and stomach, but the jeans seemed to fit. She had on the thick socks he’d got but not the boots.
‘Thanks for the clothes,’ she said, looking awkward. ‘You didn’t have to.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s fine. I didn’t want you getting cold.’
There was a long pause.
Brewer got up from the armchair and walked to the kitchen, putting the TV on mute as he passed.
‘I got you some food. Do you want anything to drink?’
‘Tea, please,’ she replied, eyeing his now-cold mug on the coffee table.
He glanced at the clock and saw he’d been dozing for half an hour before she had come in. The girl perched on the sofa and stared at the map on the wall while he made her tea, and himself a fresh cup of coffee. He was embarrassed to watch her studying it, although she made no comment.
‘Milk? Sugar?’ he asked when the kettle boiled.
‘Both,’ she replied, still looking at the map.
He handed her a steaming mug and put the sandwiches and crisps on the table in front of them. She didn’t waste any time with politeness and tore open the nearest sandwich packet. She took a few large bites then swallowed some tea, not seeming to care that it was still scalding hot. Brewer sat in his armchair and picked up a BLT sandwich. He was ravenous too and followed her lead.
They ate in silence for a few minutes. She demolished two sandwiches and half a packet of crisps before she came up for air and sat back. She curled her feet up underneath her on the sofa, regarding him with her hooded eyes, while popping crisps into her mouth. He put down his half-eaten sandwich and looked back at her evenly; it was time to talk.
‘So what is your name?’ he asked.
‘Jewel,’ she replied defiantly.
‘Your real name?’ he pressed.
She gave an exasperated sigh, typical of a moody teenager. ‘My real name is Georgie. Well Georgina… Duncan, but I prefer Georgie.’
‘It’s nice to meet you, Georgie. I’m Scott Brewer,’ he told her again, in case she’d forgotten since the earlier drama.
‘You live here by yourself.’
He wasn’t sure if that was a question or an observation.
‘Yes,’ he replied, reluctant to give details of his personal life just yet. ‘How old are you, Georgie?’
‘I’m eighteen,’ she said haughtily. ‘How old are you?’
She had a lot of attitude for someone so small.
‘I’m forty two.’
There was another pause, the silence broken only by Georgie crunching the last of her crisps.
‘Do you know what happened to you today?’ Brewer asked gently.
He thought he saw a flicker of fear in her eyes but it was gone in an instant. She took her time before she replied.
‘I don’t really understand what happened, no. But I do know it was something bad. That awful voice in my head.’ She gave a small shudder.
‘Georgie, you experienced something today that I went through a couple of years ago. You encountered a hiker.’
She looked confused. ‘I thought that’s what you’d called it earlier. What’s a hiker?’
Brewer took a sip of his tea, his mouth suddenly dry. This was the explanation he’d wanted to tell someone for years, only he felt nervous. Would she ridicule his theories?
He looked at her brown eyes again and saw she was waiting expectantly. No, she wouldn’t mock him. She had learnt first hand what a hiker could do. Aside from Rankin, she was the only person he’d actually talked to afterwards, and the only one he had managed to save.
‘What were you doing in the station earlier?’ he asked.
> Georgie was thrown by the question – she’d been waiting to hear answers.
‘I, uh… I was going to get the tube into central London,’ she said without any conviction.
‘What do you really think you would have done if I hadn’t grabbed you?’
A red flush crept up her cheeks and her eyes flashed angrily. ‘Ok, I would have jumped! I would’ve stepped off the platform, straight in front of that train and ended it all. Does that make you happy? I would have fucking committed suicide!’
He gave her a moment to calm down after her outburst.
‘That’s right, you would have. Only it wasn’t your will to do that, you were under the influence of a hiker.’
‘The voice I’d been hearing?’ she nodded, thinking about how it had goaded her.
‘That voice was the hiker,’ he told her. ‘It wanted to make you jump in front of that train, and it manipulated you into doing it. It got inside your mind and tried to control you.’
‘Why?’ she asked simply.
Brewer gave a rueful laugh at the question. ‘I’ve been trying to answer that for the last couple of years. I’ll make you a deal, Georgie. I’ll tell you everything I know, everything I’ve experienced, and you can try and answer that for me. But I want to hear about you in return.’
‘Why?’ she asked again.
‘Because I want to help you,’ he replied.
She thought about his proposition. ‘Ok,’ she said finally. ‘Deal.’
Brewer told her about his life, about Karen’s death from a brain tumour, and how he’d been in a dark place afterwards. That he’d been a prime target for a hiker.
She listened, wide-eyed, as he told her about the hiker’s plan to have him drive his car to a busy motorway and cause a devastating crash. He was a little embarrassed to explain how Karen had saved him – he’d never believed in life after death before that day – but Georgie readily accepted it.
She leaned forward with interest as he detailed how he’d given up his home, his job, even his friends, to start a life pursuing hikers. To dedicate his time to finding out everything he could about them, and learn how to stop them.
She seemed most captivated to hear about that awful day in Leeds, when he hadn’t been able to stop the young girl jumping to her death from the roof.
‘That would’ve happened to me,’ she whispered, half to herself.
Georgie had been chewing her nails throughout story time and Brewer noticed they were coated in chipped, black nail varnish and bitten down to the quick.
He stood up from the chair and wandered over to the map, partly to show Georgie, and partly to stretch his stiffening back. Grappling with her when she’d been possessed by the hiker had really taken it out of him. There was a dull ache beginning to creep along his biceps and shoulder blades.
‘This map is my record of all the hikers I’ve encountered so far,’ he told her. ‘Starting with the first pin in London for the hiker you had the pleasure of meeting today.’
Georgie hauled herself off the sofa and walked over for a closer look. She whistled low under her breath, as she took in the amount of pins close up.
‘So, let me guess, blue for male and red for female?’ She rolled her eyes at him.
‘It’s a system that works,’ he shrugged defensively.
‘What’s this green one?’ She was peering at the pin stuck in the far southwest of England.
The only green pin on the map… the child hiker. Brewer felt a stab of fear in his stomach at the memory of it. She wasn’t ready to hear about that yet.
‘That’s a story for another day,’ he told her in a tone that implied not to push him on it.
‘Spoil sport,’ she muttered.
She flicked her hair over her shoulder, giving him a faint whiff of the shampoo he’d bought for her, and flounced back over to the sofa.
‘Do you want another drink?’ he asked her.
‘Got anything stronger than tea?’
Brewer nodded and got a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels from a cupboard in the kitchen. He put ice in two small glasses and poured out a strong measure in each. He needed a stiff drink as much as she did.
He put the glasses and bottle on the coffee table next to the empty sandwich and crisp packets. Georgie picked up one of the glasses of JD but didn’t take a sip. Instead, she clinked the ice gently against the edge of the glass, looking thoughtful.
‘So hikers just randomly commit mass murder and follow it with a suicide? That’s mental. Do they get sick pleasure from it; is that why?’
Brewer had wondered when she’d ask about how they chose their acts of violence. He sat back down in the armchair opposite her.
‘Pleasure’s partly why,’ he nodded. ‘I think the suicide is a way for them to wind down after a killing spree.’
‘Sick,’ she replied disgusted.
‘Anyway, the large-scale murders aren’t random acts. They’re premeditated.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, the hiker always has a target they want to kill,’ he said. ‘They use a larger scale tragedy to mask who that target actually was. The other people who die are just collateral damage.’
He waited for this bombshell to sink in. He could almost see her mind working as she processed the information. Georgie seemed to be a very bright girl, from what he could tell so far; she just had a serious attitude problem. Georgie took a swallow of her drink and grimaced at the taste. Her face had paled considerably.
‘And how do hikers choose these targets?’ she asked in a hoarse voice.
He leaned forward to divulge what he’d discovered over the years. ‘They are hired,’ he told her.
Her eyes widened in surprise but she kept her mouth shut.
‘A couple of years ago, I found out that people pay for hikers to kill someone,’ he said. ‘There is a powerful hiker – the Grand, he’s called – and I think he might be the first one. He’s their master. The Grand takes the money and the orders to kill, and he passes out the jobs for certain hikers to complete.’
‘So they’re assassins,’ Georgie said in awe. ‘And they’re perfect because no one can ever trace it back to them.’
‘That’s right,’ Brewer nodded. ‘They can just use the power of their minds to manipulate people into doing the dirty work for them. There can be speculation, although no one could ever prove who the specific target in these killings was.’
‘It’s like they brainwash their victims into doing what they want,’ she said.
‘Pretty much,’ Brewer replied. ‘They can physically come forward into a person and use their body if needed. Like that hiker did to you earlier.’
‘That was horrible,’ Georgie shuddered. ‘I was half-aware of what was going on, but I couldn’t control any part of my body. It was like I had been pushed to the side and someone else had hijacked the wheel.’
‘Yeah, they also bring some of their strength with them too.’ Brewer rubbed at his sore arms through his jumper.
Georgie took another sip of her JD and Brewer followed suit, grateful for the warmth that spread through him as the liquid made its way to his stomach. Georgie turned her inquisitive eyes back to him again.
‘Who did the hiker use before me?’ she asked. ‘Was there a murder near London?’
It was Brewer’s turn to be surprised. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me! Have you not seen the news since yesterday?’
‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘I was busy.’
Doing what, Brewer wondered. He reached for the TV remote and turned the sound back on. ‘You missed one hell of a show.’
He flicked through the various news channels, until he found one that was showing coverage from the shootings. Georgie watched with her mouth agape as the newsreader recounted yesterday’s events – the mass panic, the celebrity and politician’s deaths, the arrest. They concluded by saying Jeremy Rankin had been formally charged with the murders. This was news to Brewer and he felt a pang of guilt, however looking at Geo
rgie alive in front of him lessened it.
‘No fucking way,’ Georgie breathed. ‘The hiker made that bloke shoot all those people?’
‘Afraid so.=,’ Brewer nodded. ‘I went to see him in custody last night and he told me all about the voice he’d been hearing.’
Brewer went over to the bookshelf and dug out the police file on Rankin. He handed Georgie the surveillance photo from Waterloo, the one that showed Rankin with black eyes, pointing a gun at Reynolds.
‘That was when the hiker came forward,’ he pointed to Rankin. ‘And this was the target,’ he tapped his finger over Reynolds.
‘Who is he?’ Georgie asked, peering at the frozen, grainy image.
‘He’s a politician. He was a Lib Dem but he’s now part of the coalition government.’
‘Who would want a politician dead?’ she asked.
‘Any number of wealthy people,’ Brewer replied. ‘He backtracked on all the policies his party made before the election, and more importantly, he’s fronting a pledge to increase the percent of tax people pay when they earn over a certain amount. Something he swore they wouldn’t do.’
‘So he’s pissed off a lot of people,’ Georgie looked up from the photo. ‘How did you get this stuff? That’s a police file, right? And you saw the killer in prison last night.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you old bill?’
‘I used to be,’ he answered honestly. ‘Before my own hiker encounter, I was a Detective Inspector, but I’m not anymore.’
She was quiet for a moment. ‘I guess you’re all right if you hunt and kill these crazy hiker things as a job now.’
He hesitated. ‘I, uh… I don’t kill them. Not yet anyway.’
‘What?’ she asked sharply. ‘Why?’
‘They don’t exactly die easily,’ he sighed. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried.’
Chapter 8 - 20th October 2009
‘That’s just great,’ Brewer muttered, leaving the comfort of the warm train and stepping onto the windy platform.
Engine failure, the driver had just informed them, and there would be an hour’s wait for a replacement train. Brewer looked at the signs and saw they were in High Brooms – not even halfway to Reigate, where he had intended to get off. He’d wanted to check out an increase in deaths there, now he felt ready to try tracking hikers again after the incident with the girl on the roof.