Nightmare

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Jenny?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I want you to go back to three days ago, when Uncle Marcus came to see you. Can you do that? Can you do that for me, Jenny?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘It’s five minutes before he’s due to arrive. What are you wearing?’

  ‘Blue jeans. My Versace T-shirt. The one with the angel wings on the back.’

  ‘I need you to look at your watch, Jenny. What time is it?’

  ‘Five to eight,’ said Jenny.

  ‘And he said he’d come to see you at eight o’clock?’

  ‘Yes. He phoned me before.’

  ‘And it’s Saturday?’

  ‘Yes. Saturday.’

  Nightingale frowned as he realised that Jenny had lied when she’d said that the last time she’d seen Fairchild was when he’d gone to the police station. But that didn’t make any sense at all. Why would she lie to him?

  ‘Now I want you to go forward until Marcus arrives. Did he knock at the door or ring the bell?’

  ‘He rang the bell. The intercom.’

  ‘That’s good, Jenny. Now I want you to go to the door and open it. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Jenny.

  ‘So open the door and tell me what you see.’

  ‘It’s Uncle Marcus.’

  ‘What’s he wearing, Jenny?’

  ‘A dark blue suit. A pink shirt with a white collar. A dark blue tie.’

  ‘And what happened then, Jenny? Did you let him into the house?’

  Jenny said nothing.

  ‘Jenny, can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Marcus is there, standing at the door, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, now I want you to let him in the house. Can you do that?’

  Jenny said nothing.

  ‘Jenny? Can you hear me?’

  There was no response. Barbara looked over at Nightingale and shrugged. Nightingale made a circling movement with his hand. ‘Move her forward,’ he mouthed.

  Barbara nodded and turned back to Jenny. ‘Jenny, I want you to go forward an hour, it’s now nine o’clock. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m showering.’

  ‘You’re in the shower?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And where is Uncle Marcus?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Okay, Jenny. I want you to finish showering. What do you do then?’

  ‘I go downstairs.’

  ‘Is Uncle Marcus there?’

  ‘No.’

  Barbara looked over at Nightingale. He made another circular motion with his hand and mouthed, ‘Take her back.’

  ‘Jenny, I want you to go back to eight o’clock. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny.

  ‘Look at your watch, Jenny. Tell me what time you see.’

  ‘Eight o’clock.’

  ‘That’s good. Now I want you to wait until you hear the intercom buzz.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny quietly. She lay on the sofa, breathing softly.

  Barbara looked at Nightingale, frowning. He could see that she was worried and he shared her concern. He tried to flash her a reassuring smile but he knew that he wasn’t fooling anyone. Something had happened on Saturday evening and he feared the worst.

  ‘There he is,’ said Jenny. ‘The intercom is buzzing.’

  ‘That’s good. Now open the door.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Barbara waited a few seconds. ‘Have you done that? Have you opened the door?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny.

  ‘And what do you see, Jenny?’

  ‘It’s Uncle Marcus.’

  ‘That’s good. Now tell me what he’s wearing.’

  ‘A blue suit and a dark blue tie and a pink shirt.’

  ‘Does he say anything?’

  ‘No. He’s just smiling.’

  ‘That’s good. Now let him inside the house.’

  Jenny continued to breathe softly but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Jenny, can you hear me?’

  Jenny said nothing but her chest continued to rise and fall slowly.

  ‘Jenny?’

  Nightingale stood up and went over to the sofa. He looked down at Jenny, then put a hand on Barbara’s shoulder. ‘What’s happening?’ he whispered.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Barbara. ‘That’s the problem. She should be able to tell me what she says and hears but that’s not happening.’ She reached out and stroked Jenny’s hand. ‘Can you hear me, Jenny?’

  Jenny didn’t react.

  ‘How about taking her back to before he arrives, then move her ahead half an hour?’

  Barbara nodded. ‘Okay, I can try,’ she said. She took a deep breath, then began to talk in a low hushed voice, her mouth just a few inches from Jenny’s ear. ‘Now, Jenny, I want you to go back to five minutes to eight. Can you do that for me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny.

  ‘That’s good. And now I want you to look at your watch. Can you tell me what time it says?’

  ‘Five minutes to eight,’ she said.

  ‘And what are you doing?’

  ‘I’m in the kitchen. Drinking wine and reading.’

  ‘What are you reading?’

  ‘A Jodi Picoult book. The new one.’

  ‘That’s good. Now listen to me very carefully. It’s five to eight now. I’m going to ask you to move ahead to half past eight. Are you able to do that for me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘That’s good. So I want you to do that now. Move forward to half past eight. Do it now.’

  Jenny sighed, and then went still.

  ‘Jenny, can you hear me?’ asked Barbara.

  There was no reaction. Barbara looked up at Nightingale. ‘It’s just not working.’

  ‘Why not? What’s the problem?’

  ‘I don’t know, Jack. It’s as if that hour just doesn’t exist for her. She can tell us what happens before he arrives, then she’s in the shower afterwards. But there’s nothing in between.’

  Nightingale nodded. ‘Okay, move her forward until after he’s gone.’

  Barbara turned back to Jenny. ‘Listen to me, Jenny. I need you to move forward to nine o’clock. Can you do that for me?’

  There was no response.

  ‘Jenny, can you hear me?’ Barbara stroked Jenny’s hand. ‘Tell me you can hear me.’ Jenny didn’t respond. ‘Jenny, can you hear me?’ Barbara repeated.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Nightingale, but Barbara ignored him.

  She patted the back of Jenny’s hand. ‘Come on, love, I need you to go back. Go back to before he came to the house. Go back to five to eight. Do it now. Come on.’

  Nightingale could hear the fear in Barbara’s voice and he knelt down by the side of the sofa. Jenny wasn’t moving and her eyes were closed.

  ‘Jenny, talk to me,’ said Barbara. ‘Can you hear me?’

  Nightingale’s stomach lurched as he realised that Jenny had stopped breathing. ‘Jenny!’ he shouted.

  ‘You mustn’t wake her, not like that,’ said Barbara, still rubbing Jenny’s hand.

  ‘She’s not breathing, Barbara!’ said Nightingale, his heart racing.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look!’ said Nightingale, pointing at Jenny’s chest.

  Barbara put a hand on Jenny’s cheek. ‘Jenny, it’s time to wake up,’ she said.

  Jenny lay completely still.

  ‘Barbara, you’re going to have to wake her up now.’

  ‘I’m trying,’ she said. ‘Nothing like this has ever happened before.’

  ‘Jenny!’ shouted Nightingale.

  Barbara seized Jenny’s shoulders and shook her. ‘Come on, Jenny, wake up!’

  Jenny’s mouth dropped open but her eyes stayed closed. Nightingale pushed Barbara to the side and pulled Jenny upright. Her head lolled to the side. He shook her hard, then
slapped her across the face but she didn’t react.

  ‘Shall I call an ambulance?’ asked Barbara, her voice trembling.

  ‘No time,’ said Nightingale. He placed his fingers against Jenny’s neck and found a pulse. Her heart was beating but she’d stopped breathing. That made no sense at all. He bent down and grabbed her around the waist, then straightened up with a grunt and carried her out of the sitting room to the stairs.

  ‘Jack, where are you going?’ screamed Barbara.

  ‘We’ve got to snap her out of this, now,’ said Nightingale. He carried Jenny upstairs, using the banister to pull himself up. The bathroom was at the back of the house, next to the spare bedroom. He rushed in, pulled open the glass door of the shower and carried her inside. He twisted the temperature control to cold and then turned the water on full, gasping as the jet of freezing water washed over them both. He twisted around so that the water sprayed over Jenny’s face. Within seconds she began coughing and spluttering, thrashing her head from side to side.

  Nightingale lowered her so that her feet were on the floor, and Jenny put out a hand against the tiled wall to steady herself. She shook her head as the freezing water poured down her face, still coughing and fighting for breath.

  Barbara followed them into the bathroom and grabbed a white towel.

  Nightingale put his hands on either side of Jenny’s face and looked into her eyes. ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘What the hell are you doing, Jack?’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Soaking wet and bloody freezing,’ she said. ‘How do you think I feel?’ She saw Barbara standing at the door clutching the towel. ‘What’s going on, Barbara?’

  ‘The regression went wrong,’ she said.

  Nightingale turned off the shower and tried to help Jenny out but she shrugged him away. ‘Leave me alone,’ she snapped.

  Barbara wrapped the towel around Jenny.

  ‘Is this because I threw champagne over you?’ she asked Nightingale. ‘Is that what this is about?’

  Nightingale shook his head. Water was pouring from his soaking wet clothes and pooling around his shoes. ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  55

  Nightingale walked into the sitting room with three mugs of coffee on a tray. He put it down on the table in front of Jenny and Barbara. Jenny had taken off her wet clothes and put on a pink bathrobe. She was on the sofa with her legs curled up underneath her. Nightingale had dried himself off as best he could but he was still wet and he was shivering.

  ‘There’s another robe in the airing cupboard,’ said Jenny. She picked up her mug. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said.

  ‘You’re not okay,’ said Barbara. ‘Jenny’s right. You’ll end up with pneumonia.’

  Nightingale shivered and nodded. He headed for the stairs.

  ‘Leave your clothes on the rail in the bathroom,’ Jenny called after him. ‘It’s heated.’

  Nightingale went upstairs, took a white robe from the airing cupboard and stripped off his wet clothes in the bathroom. He patted himself down with a towel, put on the robe and hung his clothes on the towel rail to dry.

  Jenny and Barbara were sipping coffee when he got back downstairs.

  ‘Did you tell Jenny what happened?’ he asked Barbara as he sat down.

  ‘I was waiting for you,’ she said.

  ‘What happened?’ said Jenny.

  ‘What do you remember?’ asked Nightingale. He realised that the robe had ridden up his legs and he pulled it down.

  ‘Lying on the sofa. Hearing Barbara telling me to relax. Then the next thing I remember is being in the shower.’

  The robe rode up Nightingale’s thighs again. He pulled it down and then grabbed a cushion and placed it on his lap. He caught Barbara grinning at him but he ignored her. ‘Jenny, you stopped breathing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You stopped breathing. Your heart was still going but, trust me, you weren’t breathing. We tried to wake you up but you weren’t having it. That’s why I took you into the shower. I figured cold water was the only way to get a reaction.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that worked a treat.’

  ‘And you don’t remember anything before that? You don’t remember what you said to Barbara?’

  Jenny shook her head. Nightingale looked over at Barbara. She motioned with her hand for him to continue, and he understood why she didn’t want to be the one who told Jenny what had happened. He grimaced, then sipped his coffee, realising that he was playing for time; but he was all too well aware that Jenny wasn’t going to be happy with what he was about to tell her. He put down his coffee mug.

  ‘Okay, here’s the thing,’ he said. ‘You told us that Marcus Fairchild came around here on Saturday night. Two days before the books vanished.’

  Jenny’s mouth fell open in astonishment. ‘Rubbish.’ She looked over at Barbara but Barbara was nodding in agreement. ‘I already told you that I haven’t seen Uncle Marcus since he got you out of the police station.’

  ‘While you were under, Barbara asked you when you’d last seen him and you said Saturday evening. And you were quite specific that he came at eight o’clock.’

  Jenny grabbed a cushion and clutched it to her stomach. ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Where were you on Saturday evening?’ asked Nightingale.

  ‘Here,’ said Jenny. ‘But I was alone.’

  ‘Reading a Jodi Picoult book?’

  ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘Because you told us,’ said Nightingale. ‘You said you were in the kitchen drinking wine and reading a Jodi Picoult book. Wearing blue jeans and a Versace T-shirt.’

  Jenny hugged the cushion. The blood had drained from her face.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Barbara asked her.

  Jenny shook her head. ‘No, of course I’m not okay. He’s doing this to play with my head, isn’t he?’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘That’s what I said? Really?’

  ‘Word for word,’ said Barbara. ‘You were waiting for him to come at eight.’

  ‘I have absolutely no recollection of that,’ said Jenny.

  ‘He buzzed and you opened the door,’ Nightingale continued. ‘He was wearing a dark blue suit and a pink shirt, you said. And you let him in.’

  He stopped speaking and looked across at Barbara.

  ‘Then what?’ asked Jenny quickly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ said Barbara. ‘Something went wrong when we tried to move it forward.’

  ‘What do you mean? What went wrong?’

  ‘You saw him at the door. But when we tried to find out what happened when he was in the house, you wouldn’t say anything.’

  ‘Wouldn’t or couldn’t,’ said Nightingale.

  ‘You’re scaring me now,’ said Jenny.

  Barbara put a hand on Jenny’s arm. ‘Regression doesn’t always work,’ she said. ‘Not everyone’s susceptible.’

  ‘That’s not the problem,’ said Nightingale. ‘And you know it.’

  ‘We don’t know what the problem was,’ said Barbara.

  ‘Jenny nearly died. She stopped breathing. And it happened because you tried to get her to talk about what was happening. You know what the problem was. Marcus bloody Fairchild.’

  ‘What?’ said Jenny, resting her chin on the cushion. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He did something to your head,’ said Nightingale. ‘Same as he did with my sister.’

  ‘You don’t know that for sure, Jack,’ said Barbara.

  Jenny looked at Barbara. ‘But it’s possible, is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’ve never come across anything even remotely like it,’ said Barbara.

  ‘That’s not what I’m asking, Barbara. Is it possible?’

  Barbara sighed. ‘Yes. I suppose so.’

  ‘You remembered everything that happened up to the moment you opened the door to him,’ said Nightingale. ‘Then it’s a blank. But your memo
ry starts again after he’d gone and you’re in the shower.’

  ‘Why was I in the shower?’ asked Jenny.

  Nightingale shrugged but didn’t say anything.

  ‘My God,’ said Jenny. She sat back and groaned. ‘This can’t be happening to me.’

  ‘Jenny, it’s all supposition,’ said Barbara. ‘We don’t know for sure what happened.’

  ‘We tried to move you forward half an hour, to when he was in the house,’ said Nightingale. ‘That’s when you stopped breathing.’

  ‘What are you saying, Jack?’ said Jenny. ‘What do you think happened?’

  Nightingale leaned forward. ‘You want to know what I think? I think Fairchild played the same trick on you that he did on my sister. He made her believe that she killed those kids. How? By hypnosis or black magic, I don’t know. But whatever he did to her he did to you. He came round here on Saturday night and got inside your head and removed all memory of whatever he said or did. I think that was when you told him about the basement and the books.’

  Jenny put her hands over her eyes. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘It’s the only explanation, Jenny. It’s the only thing that makes sense. And I think you told him about my sister and how Barbara had helped get to the truth. So he decided to ensure that if Barbara did the same with you, you’d die. That’s why you stopped breathing. He wanted you dead.’

  ‘That’s one hell of a leap,’ said Barbara.

  ‘What other explanation is there?’ said Nightingale. ‘You saw how Jenny reacted when she was under. She wouldn’t tell us what was happening and she stopped breathing. If we hadn’t dumped her in the shower she’d never have woken up.’

  Tears were running down Jenny’s face.

  Barbara put her arm around her. ‘It’s okay, everything’s okay now.’

  Jenny shuddered and shook her head. ‘No, it’s not okay. How can it be okay?’ She looked up at Barbara, blinking away her tears. ‘Why was I in the shower? What did he do to me, Barbara? Why did I have to shower?’

  Barbara’s mobile rang from inside her bag, which was on the floor by the side of the sofa. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, patting Jenny on the back before grabbing her bag and hurrying to the kitchen to take the call.

  Nightingale went to sit next to Jenny. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Why? It’s not your fault.’