He left a pause long enough that Hannah was wondering if he was going to answer at all. She nodded and finished getting out of the car, finding that the rain had eased off to a downpour.
‘I don’t …’
She bent her head slightly and looked down into the car, the rain pitter-pattering on the vehicle’s roof.
Sturgess turned to her. ‘I’ve seen a lot of weird stuff in this job. I could tell you some stories.’
‘I’d like to hear them.’ Hannah blushed at the way that sounded.
Sturgess opened his glove compartment and took out a bottle of pills. ‘Yeah, maybe. You’ll have to excuse me – I think I’ve got one of my headaches coming on.’
CHAPTER 25
Vera Woodward awoke with a start.
The room was dark, and although it wasn’t silent, it was filled with a sound she had come to expect after thirty-two years of mostly happy marriage. She turned and looked at Declan, who was snoring away contentedly, wrapped in the cloak of deep sleep. She had friends who had been driven to distraction by their partners’ snoring. They’d tried all manner of earplugs on themselves, and chin straps, mouth guards and vibrating pillows on their partners in the vain hope of getting a decent night’s sleep.
Vera had just got used to it. In fact, she sort of liked it. It meant she knew where he was. Vera was one of life’s great worriers. If she had her way, their two girls would sleep in the same room too, then she’d know where they were as well. She and Declan had been told they could never have children – and then their two miracles had arrived. People who thought happiness and worry didn’t go hand in hand had never been parents.
One of the rare serious rows she and Declan had had in those thirty-two years was when he’d forced her to take the baby monitor out of the girls’ room when they were six. They were fourteen now, and last year Declan had caught her looking on the internet at those teddy bears you could hide cameras in. He laughed that laugh he had and told her for the hundred thousandth time that she worried too much. She’d forced a smile and kept her thoughts to herself. Their family had a lot more to worry about than he could ever understand.
She heard the slightest of noises. So slight it might have been entirely in her imagination. She glanced at the clock on the dresser – 3.34 a.m. She had to be up in less than four hours to do the school run and drop Jupiter to the vet to get his booster shots before she went to work. She should turn over and close her eyes, but she knew it would eat away at her. Her accursed mind would leap to wild speculations, it’d itch and poke away at her subconscious, and tired as she was, sleep would not come.
With a shake of the head at her own neuroses, she lifted herself carefully to a sitting position on the edge of the bed and wiggled her feet into her fluffy pink pussycat slippers. Secretly, she loathed them, but they had been a Christmas present from the girls. She had even left them down in the kitchen a couple of times in the hope that Jupiter might regress to his shoe-chewing phase, but it appeared she had been too successful in training him out of it.
As she stood, Declan stirred beside her and spoke in his sleep.
‘Mwaff meh, fabricated half-inch pipe.’
Vera smiled. She was married to a man who dreamed of plumbing supplies.
She made her way past the girls’ room and then, cracking under the weight of her own anxieties, doubled back and peeked in to see them both sound asleep: Keira, as ever, a tangle of limbs with the bedding kicked off; Siobhan so neat and tidy it looked as if she were faking sleep.
Vera headed downstairs. Any noise would almost certainly have come from Jupiter, otherwise he would be barking at it. Perhaps he’d got into the bin again. She reached the bottom of the stairs and quickened her pace when she heard a whine from the kitchen. She hoped the big softie hadn’t been eating inedible objects again.
She opened the door and froze. The first thing to catch her eye was Jupiter’s terrified expression as he tried to squeeze himself into the corner by the sink. Then she followed his gaze. Standing in her kitchen was something that could not be. Nine feet tall, stooped, the sight of its blood-red eyes and slobbering jaws sent a jolt of terror through her. It was standing unnaturally still and quiet, yet its eyes were screaming for blood.
Its foul stench hit her nostrils as she started instinctively to circle her left hand in the air and form the words. Then her hand stopped moving, held in the air against her will. She and the beast now stood in a frozen tableau. All she could move were her eyes, which only now scanned the rest of the room.
Distracted by the beast, she had sensed him too late. The man – short, round and bald – sat at the far end of her kitchen table. He smiled at her.
‘We both know I can’t hold you long,’ he said in a calm voice, his accent American. ‘At least, not while I’m holding him too.’ He nodded at the beast. ‘I do suggest you listen, or else’ – he glanced at the Were – ‘I will have to let him go.’
The beast’s red eyes turned towards the man. Vera could feel the hatred.
Her mind was racing. She was outmatched, no question, but above all else, she must …
‘You need to protect your family. I want to give you that opportunity. To do that, though, we must talk.’ He spoke in the reasonable tone of a man advising her on mortgage options. ‘If we fight, I’ll win, and it will be … unfortunate. I wish to prevent that. Do we understand each other?’
She couldn’t move, but perhaps he saw compliance in her eyes. He released his hold and her body sagged.
‘Thank you for your cooperation.’
‘What the hell?’ she started. ‘You can’t— There are rules!’
He rubbed his fingers casually across his cheek. ‘Not for me.’
She looked up at the beast again. ‘This abomination should not exist. Under the Accord—’
‘Yes, yes. We do not have time. We must move quickly if we are to avoid a messy outcome.’ The man pointed across the table at her. ‘I need you, or I need one of the two upstairs—’
‘They’re adopted!’
He gave her a wan smile. ‘No, they aren’t.’ He nodded at the Were. ‘You know what he is, and therefore we know what you – all of you – are.’
She ran her tongue over her dry lips. If she could buy some time or …
The man leaned back. ‘This is a lovely home.’ He held up a framed picture. It was the one from the mantelpiece in the front room. ‘And you have a lovely family. Give yourself up to us, without a fight, and they shall be spared.’
‘Why would I trust you?’
‘Because,’ he said, ‘as you mentioned, I am, let’s say, breaking with tradition. That means I don’t want attention brought to what I’m doing. It will complicate things for me.’
‘You’re …’ Realization hit her and Vera’s eyes widened. ‘You’re making, aren’t you?’
‘I am trying to save a child’s life.’
‘Oh please!’
A momentary annoyance flashed in the man’s eyes. ‘If you come quietly, then it won’t look suspicious. But if you fight, you will lose, and it will be loud. At that point, I might as well take the two fledglings, and he’ – he nodded to the Were – ‘can have his fun with the nothing you married.’
Vera could taste the bile at the back of her throat. ‘That word …’
‘I don’t care for your opinions. Do we have a deal?’
Vera tried to think. Tried to find an angle where she knew none existed.
The man calmly slid a pair of shackles across the table. She had never seen them before, but she knew what they were. The markings on their sides showed they were more than just metal. They had featured in the stories her grandmother had told, the ones that had first made her such a bad sleeper.
With tears on her cheeks, Vera stepped forward and picked up the restraints. As she clicked first one and then the other around her wrists, a terrible emptiness enveloped her. A part of her that had always been there was suddenly gone, as if one of her senses had been shut off.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘And now you will write a note, explaining why you are running away. Let’s make it an affair.’
He moved his finger, and a pad and pen slid themselves across the table.
Vera rubbed her cheek with the sleeve of her nightdress. This man did not deserve her tears. She took a deep breath and started writing.
‘I strongly suggest you resist the urge to attempt to be clever.’
Her lip curled with disgust as she looked at him. She nodded in the direction of the beast, still watching her with those burning-red eyes. ‘Does he know what he is?’
‘He knows why he is. That is more than enough.’
‘Someone will stop you. There are systems in place to stop men like you.’
He yawned. ‘Enough with the amateur dramatics, please. You have never met a man like me.’
She finished the note and scrawled her name beneath it, then she tossed the pen down on the table and attempted to straighten her back. ‘There are always men like you.’
CHAPTER 26
It was only as Hannah turned the corner and the Church of Old Souls – aka the offices of The Stranger Times – came into view that she realized she didn’t have any way of getting into the building. Grace had mentioned something about giving her a key, but between one thing and another they’d never got round to it.
She’d managed a couple of hours of sleep last night before waking up in a cold sweat. In the nightmare, she had been falling off the top of the Dennard building again and again and again, each time more horrible than the last. After failing to find a way back to sleep, she had eventually got up and headed to the office. Technically, they were supposed to be sending this week’s edition to press tomorrow, and although she didn’t know much about the process, she knew it required actual articles. Whatever else happened, she was going to see to it that they were spelled correctly.
As it happened, she didn’t need a key. She was the last one to arrive. Hannah was surprised to see Reggie and Ox already sitting at their respective desks, typing away: Ox’s fingers were flying over the keyboard; Reggie was hen-pecking away with one finger from each hand. Stella was seated in the corner at the computer with the big screen, using a graphic design package to move blocks of text around some pictures. Grace was circulating with a tray, wordlessly delivering cups of tea to all and sundry. When she turned and saw Hannah standing at the door, she gave her a broad smile.
‘What’s everyone doing in so early?’ asked Hannah.
Grace moved towards her, keeping her voice low. ‘We have still got a paper to put out.’
‘Right,’ said Hannah, feeling like a shirker, even though she hadn’t really understood she was one. She lowered her voice. ‘Is everything all right with …?’ A nod of the head in Ox’s direction. ‘And …?’ A nod in the direction of Banecroft’s office.
Grace’s bracelets tinkled as she dismissed Hannah’s concerns with a wave of her hand. ‘Do not worry about it. If you will insist on being Vincent Banecroft, you cannot expect to go through life without people attempting to rip your head off. The man is permanently asking for it.’
‘He does have that way about him. Simon’s mother is apparently blaming him too.’
Grace furrowed her brow. ‘You went to see her?’
‘Oh God, no. That, ehm … DI Sturgess gave me a lift home last night.’
‘Did he?’ Grace waggled her eyebrows to an extent Hannah would not have thought possible on the human face. To be fair, in Hannah’s old crowd of Botoxed ‘friends’, facial expressions were something you picked from a catalogue and stuck with for the rest of your life.
‘Oh stop,’ said Hannah. ‘He was just being nice. And pumping me for information.’
Grace’s eyebrows did the fandango.
Hannah blushed. ‘Not like that.’
‘Fifteen per cent of people meet their future partners at work. I read that in a magazine.’
‘He arrested me.’
‘Nineteen per cent of people have used handcuffs at some point in their relationship. I read that in a slightly less God-fearing magazine.’
‘I’m going to go do some work now.’
‘Of course you are,’ said Grace with a smile. ‘Oh, not to tell you your job, my dear, but have you gone through the messages yet?’
‘Messages?’
Grace raised her fingers to make bunny ears. ‘The “Loon Line”.’
‘The what?’
‘Oh,’ said Grace. ‘With all of the toing and froing, we might have forgotten to tell you about that.’
Hannah closed her eyes. ‘Let me guess: we have a phone number that the loons can ring to give us stories?’
Hannah opened one eye to see Grace giving her a comforting smile and nodding.
Hannah sagged. ‘Of course we do.’
‘You had better get to it. The meeting is in an hour and he will ask. The man has a spectacular talent for asking questions people do not want him to.’
Hannah sat at her desk at the far end of the office, notepad and pen at the ready, and dialled the number on the Post-it note. She typed in her PIN when requested. An electronic voice spoke to her: ‘You have … eighty … seven … messages.’ She let out a groan. On the upside, at least she didn’t have to maintain a professional facial expression when the other person couldn’t see her. ‘Press one to listen to message, two to delete message, three to save message.’
Hannah pressed ‘1’.
Beep.
‘Message one,’ came the electronic voice.
‘Hello, yes. This is … It doesn’t matter who I am. I want to keep my identity secret. My next-door neighbour, he’s an alien. His address is … Oh, wait a sec … I’ll call you back.’
Beep.
‘Message six.’
‘Hello, yes, I wish to complain about last week’s edition. The ghost of Elvis Presley cannot be haunting some madwoman’s vagina and I am appalled that you would report such utter tripe! I know it’s utter nonsense as Elvis has been living happily with me for six years now, ever since he was reincarnated as a parrot. I asked him and he assures me he has not been anywhere near that harlot’s—’
Beep.
‘Message nineteen.’
‘Right, this is your lucky day. I’m willing to do you “I had sex with the ghost of an alien” for only six grand and—’
Beep.
‘Message twenty-three.’
‘Have you been involved in an accident that wasn’t your fault?’
Beep.
‘Message twenty-eight.’
‘I had sex with a unicorn – only five gr—’
Beep.
‘Message thirty-six.’
No talking – just panting.
Beep.
‘Message forty-two.’
‘Hello, yes, I’d like to report that I met a UFO in Stalybridge last night. I was coming home from the pub, right, minding me own business, and then there’s this bright light and I wake up four hours later and I’ve been interfered with.’
There was a clicking noise and another voice, angry and female, came on the line. ‘Don’t mind any of that bollocks. You’re talking rubbish, Darren.’
‘Doreen, shut up! I’m on the phone to the nutter people.’
‘It’s all bollocks,’ she repeated. ‘He got pissed and went over to see that Sophie slag.’
‘Doreen!’
‘No, he did. He bloody did. Either she was there or he went and interfered with himself and fell asleep, the drunken—’
Beep.
Messages forty-three through to forty-eight were the same couple ringing back to continue the argument, each message being a maximum of only three minutes long. At the end of forty-seven, Darren proposed.
‘Message forty-nine.’
It took Hannah a few seconds to realize what she was listening to. She held her hand to her mouth, shocked. The message was twenty-three seconds long in total. At the beep to signal the end of the recording, she fumbled with the
buttons.
‘Message saved.’
She listened to it again, twice, and then stood up.
‘Ehm, everyone – everyone, could you all come here, please?’
She looked down the office to see Reggie and Stella looking at her. Ox, locked into his headphones, carried on typing, oblivious.
Grace came running in. ‘What now?’
‘Seriously, everybody, come over here right now.’ She pointed at Ox. ‘Reggie, get him.’
She ran over to Banecroft’s office door and pounded on it. ‘Wake up, you drunken Irish git, this is important!’
A selection of unintelligible syllables were barked from behind the door, accompanied by the sound of glass breaking.
The others gathered around Hannah’s desk in a rough semicircle.
‘What is it?’ asked Ox.
Hannah took a deep breath. ‘OK, I was going through the Loon Line messages—’
‘Oh, is that all?’
‘Shut up, Ox, I’m not finished.’
Ox looked taken aback. ‘Right, Hannah. Sorry, Hannah.’
She gave him a smile to show there was no harm done. ‘So, I was going through the messages. A lot of, well, loon stuff, but then …’ She looked around. ‘Where the hell is Banecroft? Grace?’
Grace nodded and stepped over to bang on Banecroft’s door hard enough that it shook. ‘Get out here right this instant, you—’
The door opened so quickly that Grace almost fell through it.
‘I’m coming! Good God, can a man not take a moment to put on his trousers in the name of common decency?’
‘Actually,’ said Reggie in a tremulous voice, ‘your trousers are on the wrong way round.’
Everyone bar the owner of said trousers looked down to verify this was the case.
‘Yes,’ said Banecroft, ‘but we’re all in agreement that they are in fact on, which is clearly the main thing.’
‘Whatever,’ said Hannah, pressing buttons on the unfamiliar and not terribly modern phone on her desk. ‘I’m going to put it on speaker. Everybody stay quiet.’ She shook her head while pressing a couple more buttons. ‘Right, I think this will …’
The Stranger Times Page 18