Purged

by Peter Laws

  Matt wandered up. ‘Can I get you a refill?’

  Miller stuck a finger on the papers to keep his place and looked up. A swoop of brown hair flecked with grey hung over one eyebrow. He looked mid fifties. There was a flash of recognition in his eyes. ‘Are you chatting me up?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Matt said. ‘And I imagine if I was, I’d probably be castrated round here.’

  Miller paused for a moment and then smirked. ‘Ain’t that the truth.’ He lifted his pint glass. ‘Bombardier.’

  ‘Coming up.’ Matt headed to the bar and had to cough loudly for the barmaid to pull her attention from her puzzles. She kept looking at him as she pulled both pints, eyes up and down him. Smiling and tugging at her lower lip with crooked teeth. He ordered two bags of overpriced hand-cooked crisps and headed over to the table. ‘Do you mind if I sit with you for a moment?’

  ‘Actually, I’m quite busy. Thanks for the—’

  ‘I need to talk to you about something. My name’s Matt Hunter.’

  Miller waited, assessing him. Then he suddenly bundled his papers together and turned them upside down. He placed them on the seat beside him and motioned for Matt to sit. ‘So you’re the ex-vicar.’

  Matt laughed and sat down, dragging a beer mat over and leaning back in the booth. ‘And I reckon everybody knows that I had Pop Tarts for breakfast too.’

  ‘I saw you on telly tonight.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That possession thing in London this morning.’

  ‘Ah, that.’ God, that felt like a month ago. ‘I thought it’d just be on the local news.’

  ‘Oh no … you’re national. Looks like you’ve had a pretty hectic day.’ He paused then tapped a finger to his temple. ‘Possession, eh? Some people are just nuts, don’t you think?’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Matt took a long swig of his beer. Cold fizz buzzed down his throat, making him sigh.

  ‘Nice to see you helping out the coppers, though. We need a few friends. Anyway, I know all about your wife vying for the church renovation. Big news round here.’

  ‘I heard about the missing girl.’

  His face fell a little. He ran his hand across the tabletop.

  ‘Sergeant Miller—’

  ‘Terry.’

  He nodded, ‘Terry. Let me get straight to the point. Something rather odd is going on.’

  He leant back in his chair, taking a drink.

  ‘Your missing girl, Nicola Knox.’ Matt started to rummage in his pocket. ‘I saw the photographs your colleague is handing out.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well this is going to sound weird, but I’m sure I was sent a picture of the same girl today. By email.’

  Terry stopped sipping.

  ‘This afternoon. Just as we arrived in Hobbs Hill. My family are staying for ten days in—’

  Terry waved his hand. ‘Yeah, I know that. Show me the email …’

  Matt set the Blackberry on the table and tapped it into life. ‘I thought it was some random picture from one of my students. They sometimes send me Internet—’

  Another hand wave: get to the point.

  ‘Just take a look.’ Matt held the phone at an angle so Terry could see and started scrolling up through his emails. He quickly found the one from this morning. ‘Here we go. Tell me if this isn’t her.’

  He clicked the link and pushed the screen toward Miller.

  A picture flicked up on the screen.

  Terry sighed. ‘Are you taking the piss?’

  Matt edged forward on his seat and turned the phone back to him. He frowned hard, clicked back and then onto the link again, but the same picture came back. Not a fourteen-year-old girl. No sign of the word Where? In its place was a little piece of clipart: a rainbow. And next to it, an animated Smiley Face, winking, with its thumb up.

  Terry clucked his tongue. ‘I’ve got stuff I need to get on with. Grab yourself a table over there, eh?’

  ‘Hang on, this isn’t right.’ Matt clicked on it again, just to make sure. Rainbow. Click. Rainbow. Click. Rainbow. ‘I opened this link this afternoon and it was a picture of a young girl, early teens. And it had the word Where written under her, with a question mark.’

  ‘And now it’s a rainbow.’

  ‘Yes …’ Matt looked down at the table for a moment, then fixed his eyes on Miller. ‘I’m telling you, I saw her face on here today. I have no reason to make this up. I showed it to my daughter.’

  Miller set his pint down and wiped the froth from his top lip. ‘Okay. So maybe it was a picture of another girl. Some sort of joke.’

  ‘No, I really think it was her.’

  ‘Is it possible you might be mistaken?’

  Matt sighed. ‘Well it’s possible, yeah.’

  ‘And who sent you this email?’

  ‘It came to my university inbox, which is public. But it looks like the message source was anonymous.’

  ‘I thought there wasn’t any such thing as anonymous on the Internet.’

  Matt shrugged. ‘There are sites that you can send untraceable emails from. Links that’ll sort of self-destruct. Change into something else.’

  ‘Use those a lot, do you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, defensive. ‘But I work with students. They prank and bully each other with this sort of thing all the time. The staff have to be aware of the techniques. You send a link to someone that says “I hope you get crabs soon” and then it changes to some random image before the staff can see it.’

  Miller glanced over at the old man as the fruit machine suddenly belched out a pile of coins. He called out, ‘Good work, Fred,’ then turned his eyes back to Matt. ‘Well, if it happens again, take a screenshot or something. But for now I’ve got bigger fish to fry.’

  Matt stared at the rainbow on the little screen. At the mocking little smiley face, which was no doubt laughing at what an idiot Mr Professor now looked. ‘Up at the church, PC Taylor said Nicola might want to harm herself. You think this might be suicide?’

  ‘That’s the mother’s theory and she might well be right. Nicola was anorexic … troubled. That’s common knowledge.’ He let out a long breath and looked at the wall. Through it. ‘But she could have just run away.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  Miller nodded, turned back and grabbed his pint. ‘Incidentally … how are you finding Hobbs Hill? You been converted yet?’

  Matt leant over and whispered across the drinks, ‘I notice the police station doesn’t have a cross on it.’

  ‘Damn right it doesn’t. I worked here long before the bloody Holy Ghost descended on the place. That church on the hill, it’s taking over this village. Won’t be long till this pub closes down, just like the others. I can see that happening with crystal clarity. I have dreams about it. That they’ll turn The Chequers into some sort of poncey gastro joint. Bloody tragic is what it is. And I’ll be next.’ He took a final swig of his pint. ‘Well listen, thanks for the drink but I’m heading home. Got an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Me and a bunch of the villagers are starting the search for Nicola in the morning. Not much use doing it in the dark.’

  Matt thought for a moment. ‘I could help with that, if you need an extra pair of hands.’

  Miller looked at him for a moment, and there was an unmistakeable flash of suspicion in his eyes. A tightening of the lip. After all, who was this crazy academic ranting about emails and rainbows and offering to help with the search of a girl he barely knew?

  ‘What makes you so eager?’

  ‘I’ve got daughters myself.’ Matt pushed his pint glass away. ‘I’m just saying if you need help, then—’

  ‘Seven a.m. sharp,’ Miller said finally. ‘At the station. Wear decent boots.’ He pushed himself up from the table and gathered up his papers. Matt glanced at them and spotted Nicola’s face staring out. She really did have sad eyes. Her face reminded him of those ghostly old photographs you see hanging in stately homes, only she wasn’t
wearing a Victorian night dress. She was wearing a leopard skin onesie.

  Miller caught him looking.

  ‘I really do think it was her, you know. In the email,’ Matt said, trying his level best not to sound psychotic. ‘And it did say Where? underneath.’

  ‘Well, if it did, you need to find out who the hell thought to let you know she was gone, before the yokels here even knew she was missing.’ He grabbed his jacket and said his goodbyes to the old man and the barmaid. He threw Matt a glance before heading out the door.

  Matt slumped back in the seat and tried the link one more time. That cheeky little smiley was winking at him again. ‘Oh piss off, rainbow,’ he said and flung the phone back in his pocket. He headed out to the deserted streets and noticed the lights were still on in the police station. He headed to the car park, which now had only one vehicle in it. His.

  And no matter how much he looked to the skies, he saw no more Chinese lanterns. It appeared that all the ‘old selves’ of the Hobbs Hill faithful had finally been extinguished. Ready to become new creations at the baptism next Sunday. He thought of Nicola, out in the cold woods maybe, somewhere in the dark, shivering. Or not shivering at all, because corpses don’t. He tutted at his morbid mind and headed to the car. To take his mind off it all he tallied up the crosses he saw as he drove home, but quickly lost count.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The car climbed the lonely track to her house, twigs and branches fingering the windows with eager squeaks. Gradually he saw the tip of the crooked chimney, glowing under the moon. One loose brick seemed eager to tumble. He pulled up outside her place, crunching into ridges of dried mud.

  Tabitha Clarke lived about four miles up a winding little dirt track out of Hobbs Hill. Out of sight. Exactly how she liked it.

  It was an ancient farmhouse made of crumbling, leaning stone, with no phone line or decent plumbing. It was a place where she could paint her pictures in relative solitude. He’d seen some of her pieces in a local shop. Apparently she used to have swanky shows in London, which didn’t surprise him. That was a twisted city. Personally he didn’t care for her work. Not one bit.

  His car radio was playing ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ by James Taylor. But the melody clicked off as he killed the engine and turned off the headlights. He sat for a moment, feeling the darkness wrapping itself around the car. Pictured Nicola Knox crawling on all fours through the hard, cracked soil to greet him.

  Another tremble crept through his hand so he glared at it, willing the shivers to stop. Somehow his body obeyed. He opened up the glovebox, which contained, of all things, gloves. Black waterproof Thinsulate things he’d bought from Millets in a sale. Thick, like astronaut mitts. He yanked them on.

  ‘Won’t be long,’ he whispered as he stepped out of the car.

  Once again, he was shocked by the silence here. When you lived in Hobbs Hill long enough you expected the constant sound of the waterfall to be literally everywhere in the world. But up here, out of its range, the world was strangely bare and dry. Boring, in other words.

  She had a wooden porch with steps that groaned and creaked when he stood on them. He glanced back at the car for reassurance.

  Get on with it.

  Breath whistled in his nose. He leant forward, then knocked three times. He always did three knocks on doors, for as long as he could remember. Two never seemed enough and four was one too many.

  It took her ages to get to the door, but then he expected that. When it finally opened and light flooded onto him she just sighed and hovered in the doorway. She had a blue silk headscarf wrapped tight against the curve of her head, and he could see that round the back she was just as she said she’d be. Completely bald. How weird she looked. How alien.

  ‘Hi, Tabby.’

  ‘It’s Tabitha,’ she said, eyes blue and piercing.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You do know this is difficult for me. Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. I’m sure it’s very odd.’

  ‘Odd … yes.’

  ‘So are you going to let me in?’

  She nodded, closing her eyes as if it hurt to move her head. Then she stepped back from the door.

  When he went inside, the place smelt of some fancy incense, the type that stinks out those weirdo New Age shops he’d seen with the candles and the crystals and the idiots. The smell was strong enough to sting his nose.

  The hallway was lined with her paintings. Her usual style: naked women wrapped around trees. They weren’t even attractive women, either, just fat old heifers with folds and bulges and hidden rivers of body sweat. The pictures made his flesh crawl because fat people annoyed him almost as much as anorexics.

  She led him to the kitchen and they sat down at the heavy oak table.

  ‘Why are you wearing gloves?’ she said. ‘It’s summer, for crying out loud.’

  He said, ‘I’ve got a skin condition. The doctor told me to keep them covered.’

  She laughed at that. ‘Drink?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Well, I will.’ She’d already set two glasses out in the centre of the table. She grabbed one of them with a disappointed grunt and pretty much threw it back into the cupboard, slamming the door shut to stop it from tumbling back out. With her thumb she flicked the top off a half-bottle of vodka. The red metal cap spun, lifted and fell off onto the floor. A nifty little move.

  ‘You learn that in London?’ he said.

  She looked at him as if he was a moron. She didn’t pick the bottle cap up, just ignored it and sloshed a few measures out for herself.

  ‘So how are you feeling, Tabitha?’

  She raised her glass. ‘I feel like someone shoved a rat down my mouth when I was sleeping and now it’s eating me from the inside out. That’s how I feel.’ She threw the vodka back down her throat and her face seemed to spasm as it went down. She poured another straight away but hung onto it for now.

  ‘How’s the chemo going?’

  ‘Smashing, thanks. They say I might have another year in me. Doctor Raglan says I might even reach the big five-oh.’ She held up her drink like it was a toast.

  He said nothing.

  ‘If this were the sixteenth century I’d be the very image of longevity.’ She followed that with a bitter chuckle then swallowed half of the vodka in one wincing gulp.

  ‘Tabitha. You asked me to come. Do you want me here or not?’

  Her tense shoulders seemed to shrivel and her voice turned softer. ‘I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t want you to come.’

  ‘Then how would you like to proceed?’

  ‘You talk like a solicitor.’

  He sat more upright and smiled. ‘Do I?’

  She tossed the rest of the liquid down her throat. He was about to tell her to slow down, but he stopped himself. If she was drunk she’d be easier to handle. Easier to catch if she somehow wriggled away.

  ‘If you want God to heal you of your cancer, you’re going to have to accept something first.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Well, you need to become a Christian, don’t you? Do that and then I’m sure he’ll consider making you better.’

  He saw a tear bulge out of her eye and roll down her cheek. ‘Christ,’ she said. ‘I’ve been reduced to this.’

  ‘You know God can use the worst of circumstances to finally get our attention.’

  ‘Oh, he’s got my attention, I’ll give him that.’ She wiped the tear away then spat dark brown phlegm into a handkerchief. She folded it neatly and slipped it into her cardigan pocket.

  ‘Do you repent of your sin?’

  She looked at him, pursing her lips. A sort of quiet desperation ticking through her features.

  ‘Do you repent of being a lesbian?’

  Another tear rolled down her cheek followed by a long silence. Somewhere in the house a clock was ticking.

  ‘Yes.’ The word finally came out in a single sob, which she stopped dead before it had fully formed. She composed he
rself. ‘If it takes the pain away.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  She closed her eyes and nodded. Another tear left a glistening trail.

  ‘Will you burn your paintings, Tabitha?’

  Her eyes flicked open. ‘Why? Why would that be necessary?’

  ‘Because they’re flesh. They’re the old you.’

  She stared at him with such distaste that he thought she might lunge for him at any second, she might even try to rub her cancer all over him. But she didn’t. Her face settled. ‘If my doctor says I’m clear I swear to you that I’ll burn the lot of them. But not before, do you understand?’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘Not before.’ She swallowed another vodka and slammed the empty glass on the table in what must have been defiance. That was at least five measures she’d had, just since he’d arrived. He could see her eyes were getting glassy and the lids hung over a little more.

  ‘Then I think we’re ready,’ he said.

  ‘So do we just pray or something? Should I kneel?’

  ‘Not quite. First we fill the bath.’ He pushed his chair back and it scraped along the wooden floor.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Your bathroom. Where is it?’

  A slurred giggle rippled through her lips. ‘And why the hell are we filling the bath?’

  ‘So I can baptise you, Tabby.’

  She let out a shriek of hollow laughter. Her eyes glistened with tears. ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Always,’ he nodded. ‘Take my hand.’

  She looked at his outstretched glove for a few seconds, then after taking a breath she slipped hers into his and stood up. He didn’t like touching a lesbian hand, not one bit. It looked slimy. He wondered what seedy little things these fingers had done but it pleased him that they’d be clean soon.

  She put the lid of the toilet down and sat on it as he knelt by the bath. Her knees pulled together, body resigned and folded in on itself. ‘I’m not getting undressed.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’