‘How soon can we get a seance together?’ she said, quietly.
What Matt said next made the others stare at him. ‘No.’
Joyce frowned. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It’s too risky. Whoever threw that cross at your house might be the same person who killed Jo.’
‘But … we made contact—’
‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I think you and Kassy need to get out of Menham.’
‘And that’s the solution to everything, is it Matthew? To run?’ Joyce held his gaze for a long moment. Like she was pulling out a file in his mind.
He looked away from her.
‘A door has been opened, and it needs to be closed.’
When he turned back, Rachel was pulling her recorder from her bedside. ‘And how do you explain this?’
Bob coughed. ‘You’re familiar with electronic voice phenomenon?’
Matt nodded, but didn’t add the fact that he often used examples of EVP as an opener to his lecture on gullibility and confirmation bias.
She clicked play, and voices of the seance filled the room. She kept playing the same part over and over. The bit with her saying, in the dark, in the dark.
‘Can’t you hear it, in the background? That little whisper?’
‘Saying what?’
‘Saying the vault, the vault, the vault,’ she said. ‘It’s Holly. Listen again.’
She played it a few more times. He heard nothing but movement in the background, maybe a casual sniff or breath in and out. It was a typical EVP, the paranormal poster child for apophenia. A random noise, being shoehorned into saying something spookily coherent. Even the Hodges didn’t seem quick to defend it.
Exasperated, Matt finally said the sentence he’d been sitting on. ‘This is madness.’
She looked at Matt for a few seconds with an expression he couldn’t quite understand: a drawing together of her eyebrows and a baffled little gasp. ‘You haven’t heard a single thing I’ve said, have you? I’ve just shared my worst moment and … you haven’t even listened.’
Bob was on his feet. ‘I think you better leave, Matt.’
‘Can’t you people see the danger? Don’t you have a duty of care?’
‘You people?’ Joyce chuckled. ‘Why do you even fear us mediums and psychics if you don’t believe?’
‘Oh, it isn’t fear, it’s—’
‘The same thing that fuelled centuries of persecution of gifted people,’ Joyce was shouting now. ‘A few hundred years ago, people like you would have thrown people like me in a river to see if they float. They’d have searched me for the Devil’s mark, wouldn’t they? Got a history of that round here, you know. But nobody seems to realise that it wasn’t the churches that did that sort of thing. The main persecutors were the scientists. The clever men. They feared people like me and wanted us gone, because we didn’t fit into their frameworks. As you no doubt want us gone.’
‘You are totally missing the point.’
Bob was already seizing Matt’s elbow and dragging him out to the corridor, while Rachel was leaning into Joyce, who was kissing her hair again.
Joyce caught his eye and mouthed the words, Go away.
‘Sorry it turned out this way,’ Bob opened the door, ‘but we’ll keep her safe.’
Matt went to say something but didn’t bother, because he realised how pointless it all was. Instead he stomped out, slamming the door shut with exasperation. He heard a clicking sound, but didn’t bother looking back. He knew it was the blinds being shut with a snap.
He found Larry halfway down the corridor, on the phone.
Larry nodded up to Rachel’s room. ‘Those cruel little shits. Throwing a little girl down there of all places.’
Matt said, ‘Did you catch Kassy?’
‘No, she slipped into the crowd. Not much of a fan of the Hodges, is she?’
‘Neither am I. They think they’re helping but they’re programming that girl and they don’t even know it. She isn’t mentally stable enough for this.’
‘I spoke to her doctor. He’s about to discharge her. She’ll be back in Barley Street within the hour …’
Matt tutted and shook his head. ‘So … what happens now?’
‘I’ll get some officers to keep an eye out over there. But, now we try a little real-world stuff,’ he said. ‘I’m going back to Jo’s house.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve had Keech go back in there, to dig a bit deeper. He just called.’
‘And?’
‘He’s found a bottle of her piss.’
‘Pardon?’
‘A plastic bottle, half-filled with urine. He just got word back that it was Jo’s. It was in her rabbit hutch.’
For the first time all morning, Matt allowed himself a laugh, because his psyche desperately craved one. ‘Well, this is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it?’
Larry wasn’t laughing. ‘Found a knitting needle too. Any ideas?’
Matt started buttoning up his jacket, slowly. Thinking. ‘Not yet … but I should like to see that bottle of urine.’
Larry sniffed as they walked to their cars. ‘You always were a weirdo.’
CHAPTER FORTY
There was something under the wiper of his car.
Matt frowned as he crossed the hospital car park. He looked up for Larry, but he’d parked up at the maternity bay, closer to the building. He’d already climbed in and was pulling away with a squeak of tyres.
He turned back to his car where a slip of paper was flapping against the screen, like a trapped fish. Yay, he thought, a parking ticket, that’s all he needed. Any other time he’d have muttered some expletive under his breath, but as he grew closer he was confused by the shape of it. It was folded many times into a long thin strip. Perhaps it was one of those adverts about making a small fortune at home, stuffing envelopes. Maybe he should read it. Preparation in case that book of his didn’t sell.
He teased it out
