Bob pulled over at a garage for petrol, filled up and walked to the kiosk to pay. Esther could see there was a large queue at the till. She had just enough time to make a quick call to Maria. She was desperate to speak with her.
She reached for her mobile and called Maria. She was diverted to voicemail. Esther sighed and left a message.
‘Hello Maria, this is Esther, Esther Hall. I’ve watched the video clip and would like to have a word. Please call me as soon as you get this message.’ She flipped the lid on her phone and slipped it into her handbag, just as Bob returned to the car.
“Who were you talking to?”
“Oh, no one, it was one of those stupid sales calls.”
“Good, as long as it wasn’t work.”
They returned home after a fruitless day of window shopping and picking up brochures. Bob was grumpy. He wanted to have come home with a deposit down on a new kitchen, but it wasn’t to be, and he knew why. It was Esther, she had work on her mind…..again.
She’d felt guilty about spoiling their first weekend together in months. He was sitting in the lounge with a face as long as a fiddle. She came in with a peace offering and handed him a glass of beer and kissed him on his receding hair line. Bob tried his best attempt at smiling, but failed. Instead he lifted his glass to signify gratitude. Esther switched on the television for him and left him alone while she prepared a light tea.
She was busying herself in the kitchen when she heard her phone ring. The phone was in her bag, which was hanging at the bottom of the stairs.
“Phone’s ringing,” she heard Bob call from the front room.
She grabbed it from her bag and saw it was Maria.
“Hi Maria, thanks for calling back, I can’t speak for long.”
They spoke in depth about what had happened during the night. The call lasted almost an hour.
Esther brought in their food and placed it on the coffee table.
”I’ve been waiting so long my sandwiches are cold,” joked Bob, but Esther didn’t smile and he knew it was to do with work and he also knew it must be something serious.
Esther had asked Maria for permission to forward the video to her consultant colleague in London. She needed Dr Peter Phelps’ opinion on what was happening with Christopher as it was out of her league. She hoped that he would want to be involved.
The first video she forwarded to him probably wouldn’t have interested him too much. It was pretty much standard Rhythmic Movement Disorder, albeit very severe. But this second clip was different, completely different.
Many children talk in their sleep. It was something she’d come across many times, but she needed advice on what was happening with Christopher, and she needed specialist advice. She was grateful to be acquainted with Phelps, even though he wasn’t always the easiest of people to get on with.
Phelps was Britain’s leading researcher in Paediatric Sleep Disorders and had been for over ten years. He’d spent his time researching sleep terrors, sleep paralysis and somnambulism but was particularly keen on advancing research on both Rhythmic Movement Disorder and sleep talking.
Esther hoped that Christopher’s case would interest Phelps enough to be involved.
Esther and Bob cleared away the dishes. She was happy for her husband to be sucked into the vortex of Saturday night, brain numbing television. He was easily drawn in by the myriad of talent, quiz and family entertainment shows which she hated.
She left him to vegetate in front of the TV while she disappeared to the study to compose an email to send to Peter Phelps.
She needn’t have worried about what to write. The video clip was enough to get his attention. It didn’t take long for Phelps to spring into action.
Chapter sixty one
Hampstead, London
10.09am
Sunday 16th October
Peter Phelps climbed out of the bath, grabbed a towel and dried off. He caught sight of himself in the full length bathroom mirror and hated what he saw.
Phelps was fifty one years old, short and round. He had an equally round balding head. He could be grumpy, evasive and short-tempered but on the other hand he had a compassionate and understanding nature. He was born in Australia and even though he moved to England when he was fifteen, he had never lost his accent.
He put on his ‘slouching around Sunday’ clothes and went downstairs to the kitchen. His wife, Jean, was sitting in the kitchen diner reading the Sunday papers and eating cereal. He kissed her and poured a glass of orange juice.
He considered himself a lucky man to have Jean. Even after twenty five years of marriage and knowing her for more than thirty, she still looked as gorgeous as the day he’d first set eyes on her. He had no idea why she was ever interested in him, but had stopped questioning it years ago and accepted that she must be mad.
He was a man with little self-esteem but one who excelled in his work.
They had not been able to have a family due to Peter being diagnosed with testicular cancer in his early twenties. He had been successfully treated, but had been left infertile.
They had adopted two boys shortly after they were married. The boys were now young men. Andrew lived with them whilst Colin was at university studying Medicine.
Because Peter couldn’t have kids of his own he’d wanted a career helping children. He always believed that children were the future and wanted to be involved with their development. At the age of twenty four he graduated as a doctor. His medical career quickly led him down the path to become a paediatric doctor which eventually introduced him to working with children with sleep disorders.
His research over the past ten years had made new discoveries into why children suffered sleep deprivation and what could be done to help them.
He joined his wife for breakfast. She passed him the newspaper while she read the entertainment section of the Sunday supplements.
Peter Phelps worked seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year and that’s the way he liked it. Jean knew that any holiday spent with her husband would include him bringing a briefcase full of non-confidential paperwork and making at least three phone calls a day.
She was used to it. In return, his hard work had bought them a more than modest five bedroom home in Hampstead Village, two Mercedes and a holiday home in Dorset. Not that the two of them spent much time there, he was too busy working. Jean enjoyed spending time with her sister at the holiday home in the Canford Cliffs area of Poole.
After breakfast Peter checked his email. He deleted the ever increasing spam that was filling up his inbox and filtered out the wheat from the chaff.
He saw the email from Esther. He didn’t know her very well, but had been grateful for the information she had provide over the past few years which had helped with his research. He had met her at a conference the previous year and had been impressed by her dedication to work.
He’d already received an email from her a few days earlier and watched the video clip of the young boy violently head banging during his sleep. It was something he’d seen several times during his research into Rhythmic Movement Disorder. He appreciated her sending it, but it wasn’t earth shattering. He’d filed the video on his computer in a folder called ‘rmd standard stuff’.
He opened the email and read her single line of text.
------------------------------------------------
Peter, please watch. I’ve never seen anything like it. Esther.
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Peter opened the attachment and waited for it to load.
The server was slow that morning and it was taking an age to open. He strolled to the kitchen to refill his coffee and slowly walked back with a cold slice of toast in his other hand. He put down the coffee just as the file had downloaded.
He pressed the play icon and sat back.
He watched the entire three minute video clip whilst holding the toast to his mouth. He put the toast back on the plate and played the clip again, and again, and a
gain.
Over the years he’d seen children talk in their sleep and he’d seen them make strange grunts and groans associated with Rhythmic Movement Disorder, but never had he heard a child as young as this talking in such a way during sleep.
The little boy’s voice was not only saying things that were way beyond his age, it was the tone of his voice that was so strange. Peter did not believe in reincarnation but it sounded like this boy was speaking as an adult, or if not an adult, someone at least ten years older than the child appeared to be.
He brought up Esther’s email form earlier in the week, where she had given a detailed description of the little boy and his circumstances.
The boy was Christopher Jameson, he was born on 6th September 2009. His mother had been concerned about symptoms similar to RMD for the past few weeks.
The boy’s barely a year old he thought. He grabbed his notebook and hurriedly began writing.
He replied to Esther telling her to expect a call from him first thing in the morning.
Chapter sixty two
The Saint John Fisher Health Centre
Bristol
7am
Monday 17th October
Esther Hall struggled to find the key to her office door. She was holding two box files under one arm, a dripping umbrella under the other while searching the pockets of her wet jacket. The two files fell to the ground and the contents spilled onto the floor. Esther cursed as paperwork fell on to her wet foot prints smudging the ink.
Her office door swung open and the light automatically came on.
Scooping up the paperwork, she placed it on the spare desk and cursed again.
She had got to work extra early. She’d read Peter Phelps’ reply to her email. When he said he was going to do something ‘first thing’, he really meant first thing.
At seven fifteen the phone on her desk was ringing. It was Phelps.
“Morning Esther, how are you?” asked Phelps in his harsh Australian drawl even before she had a chance to say hello.
“I’m good Peter, how about you?”
“Yeah, can’t complain, can’t complain. Listen, I would like to know more about young Christopher Jameson, what can you tell me?”
Esther told Phelps what she knew, which really wasn’t that much, since his strange sleep talking had only started on Friday night.
“Do you think the mother would say yes to seeing me?”
“I’m sure she would, she’s desperate for an answer.”
“Well, I don’t think we will have any answers for her just yet. I’ve not seen anything like this before.”
“To be honest with you Peter, it’s scary, god only knows what it must be like for the boy’s poor mother.”
“Look Esther, I’m going to think about things at my end and I would be grateful if you could set up a visit for me. I’m coming to the West Country next week and could slot in a visit to Bristol. I’m pretty flexible so I should be able to work around everyone’s timetables.”
Esther agreed and they ended the call.
Esther called Maria just after nine and told her about the conversation with Phelps. Maria was bothered that her son was attracting the attention of Britain’s top researcher into RMD, but was grateful that he was willing to meet with her.
A meeting was arranged for the following week.
Esther spoke with Phelps again just before she took lunch. He agreed to come to Bristol on Monday 24th and that they should both be present. Phelps suggested that the meeting should take place at the boy’s home and not at the surgery.
“Can you drop by her place with an actigraph monitor?” asked Phelps.
“I could do with a week’s worth of the boy’s sleep patterns before I get to meet him.”
Esther agreed and made time in her diary to visit Maria later in the day to drop off the monitor and run through what to do with it.
Chapter sixty three
Daniel Boyd’s flat
1.30pm
Monday 17th October
Daniel Boyd was on annual leave. He’d planned nothing and wasn’t really bothered about taking time off. His boss had been on his back for weeks about taking holiday. Apart from the few sick days the previous week he hadn’t had a day off since he started working in January and if he didn’t take time off soon he’d lose his holiday for the year.
Daniel’s life revolved around his job. It was a distraction from the miserable existence that was between five pm and eight am.
He had no friends, no hobbies and did little else than mope around his flat when he wasn’t at the builders merchant.
Since he’d met Liz Mason’s father he’d been fretting over the possibility of getting caught. It was a close call. He had been standing face to face with the father of a girl, who because of Boyd, was now in a coma.
He had become paranoid about being caught for the past few months, which is why he hardly ever left his flat, but since the chance meeting the other week, Boyd’s paranoia had become worse.
He had considered seeing a doctor to get something to calm his nerves, but he was even anxious about doing that.
He lay in bed and smoked a cigarette as the thoughts of being caught, arrested, charged and finally locked away, buzzed around in his head.
He’d become too nervous to talk to anyone and only spoke when it was necessary. This made his colleagues at work very wary of him. Other than Stanley, most of them kept away from him. This was the way Boyd preferred it, but what sort of life was it? His existence certainly had no quality.
He lived only miles away from where he’d murdered Ben Walker, surely sometime soon his time would be up.
It would only take a slip of the tongue from Mossy, Seb, Greeny or any of the others who’d been there that night and the game was over.
He imagined what it would be like to be a prisoner. Perhaps it wouldn’t be all that bad. Life in prison surely couldn’t be much worse than it was for him as a free man?
Life in prison would probably be structured and perhaps he could learn a skill?
What was he thinking of? He was not going to prison, not if he had anything to do with it and that was final.
He chain lit another cigarette and felt the knot in his stomach tighten. The knot which had been there since he’d met Terry Mason.
He groaned as he got out of bed and pulled on his trousers with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He looked in the mirror and loathed what he saw. He was pathetic.
He’d hoped that having a job would improve his life. It failed to register that now he had a flat, money and a purpose to get up in the morning. He didn’t appreciate any of these things.
He made a mug of tea and turned on the television and watched a re-run of a property programme. The presenter was helping a wealthy couple buy a holiday home in Cornwall.
Cornwall was where he spent his holidays as a kid with his mother and father, back when he was happy. The programme was filmed in Newquay. He watched it longingly, remembering the beach he played on when he was young. It had been filmed in summer time and the place looked wonderful.
The programme ended and he sat watching the closing credits.
He remembered happy times in his life and those brilliant summer holidays in Cornwall. His favourite place was St Ives and when he was a little boy he wanted to grow up and be a fisherman and live near the beach. He would spend hours on Smeaton’s Pier watching the fishermen unload the day’s catch and he’d laugh as they dodged the dive bombing seagulls as they came swooping down to steal the fish.
The fishermen had an exciting life. Out to sea in all winds and weathers. The idea of what they did appealed to him.
That was a long time ago and things hadn’t quite worked out the way he’d planned. Most of his friends wanted to be train drivers or firemen and he doubted if they ended up doing what they wanted either.
What was it that Stanley had said the day they pulled into Terry Mason’s driveway? ‘It’s up to you choose your own destiny’.
Then the penny dropped. He’d made a decision. He was going to leave. Just disappear and tell no one where he was going. Not Stanley nor anyone else.
He went to his bedroom and pulled a backpack from under his bed. Inside was a plastic bag sealed with sticky tape. He ripped the bag open and emptied the contents onto his bed. A pile of five, ten and twenty pound notes where scattered on the duvet. He counted the notes and laid them neatly on his pillow. One thousand four hundred and eighty pounds.
Since he’d started work he had put aside twenty five pounds every week and this, added to money he’d acquired before he started gainful employment, amounted to what was in front of him now.
He reckoned that he had enough cash to get to Cornwall, stay in a B&B until he found a labouring job, or perhaps seasonal work in the spring, and eventually find someone to let him work on their boat. He’d even do it for free to begin with, so he could learn the trade.
The underlying reason for going to Cornwall was to get out of Bristol. Just like Carla Price, the further away the better. He couldn’t leave the country, he didn’t have a passport. Cornwall sounded ideal.
He’d made his mind up and he was leaving today. He grabbed a pile of clothes from a drawer and shoved them into the backpack with the cash. He put on a hoody, slipped on a pair of trainers, grabbed his cigarettes and lighter and pushed them into the back pocket of his jeans.
Boyd quickly looked around the flat and saw his phone on the floor. He bent down to pick it up but stopped before he could reach it. Did he really need it? No one ever called him. He kicked it under a chair, grabbed his coat and pulled the door behind him leaving the keys swinging in the lock on the inside.
He waited at the bus stop, and for the first time in years he felt excited. He had a plan and he was going to make it work.
Twenty minutes later he was at the coach station near the city centre working out which coach would get him to Cornwall. There didn’t seem to be one. Surely his plan couldn’t be over before it had even started. There were loads of other places he could go. London, Leeds, Birmingham, Cardiff and even places in Scotland. Boyd didn’t want to go anywhere other than Cornwall. He’d been to London once and didn’t like it, and the other places he knew nothing about.
The Hill - Ben’s Story (Book One).: A Paranormal Murder Mystery Thriller. (Book One). Page 24