‘And now what?’
‘Now I go back and reflect on my notes, assess the case and decide whether to investigate further.’
‘But I thought you’d agreed—’
Claire held up a hand. ‘Please be patient. I know it’s not easy.’
‘But what do I do if you don’t take the case on and—’
‘Try and remain calm. Do you have another place to go, if you prefer to stay away from home for now?’
‘I can find a place,’ Mandy said.
‘That’s good. I’ll be in touch. Good night, dear.’
And with that, Claire Baker walked back to her car, leaving Mandy very much alone again. Mandy watched her drive away. She obviously thinks I’m crazy, she thought. Maybe the woman was just a crank, after all.
Whatever the case, there was no way Mandy was going to sleep at Summer Cottage that night. ‘Let’s get out of here, Buster,’ she muttered disconsolately as she started the Kia.
There was a cosy inn in the village, but they had no rooms vacant. Next, Mandy tried a bed and breakfast she’d noticed near the solicitors’ offices, but was turned away by the surly woman there on the grounds that they didn’t allow pets.
‘Please, I can’t leave him in the car alone. He’ll pine.’
‘Not my problem.’ The woman closed the door in her face.
She tried calling Todd’s number. There was no answer, so she drove to his terraced house a little way from the pub on Main Street and rang the doorbell. He wasn’t there. Of course he wasn’t, she realised with a sinking feeling as she remembered him mentioning that upcoming job in Cornwall.
But as she was returning to her car, she noticed the Volvo estate a few yards down the street. Surely he wouldn’t have gone off by train to a photo shoot, she thought. Not with all that gear he had to lug about with him. Peering through the grimy back window of the estate, she could see the aluminium boxes piled up inside by the glow of the streetlight.
Then maybe he hadn’t gone to Cornwall after all! The job could have fallen through at the last minute. With a flash of hope, it occurred to her that she might find him at his favourite hangout, the nearby Fox and Hounds.
After making sure that Buster was safely locked inside the Kia, she ran down the street and burst inside the warm, lively pub. A young couple sat at the table nearest the fire where Todd liked to sit. Mandy went to the bar and asked the barman if Todd had been in that night. ‘Not seen him since yesterday,’ was the reply.
She walked back to the Kia, feeling lonely and frightened as it dawned on her that there was nothing for it but to spend the night in the car. ‘Looks like it’s just you and me, boy,’ she said to Buster.
Mandy drove and drove, trying to get as far away as possible from what had once been her ideal home. When the emotions became too strong for her to carry on driving, she pulled over in the leafy, whispering shadows of a rural picnic area and fell sobbing against the steering wheel.
‘Oh, Todd, where are you?’
SIXTEEN
Claire Baker drove back to Stow on the Wold much faster than she normally would, with her hands tightly clutching the wheel and her brows knitted in deep thought. Reaching the boxy, detached modern house on the edge of Stow that she’d shared with her husband Dave before his death seven years earlier, she parked the car in the leaf-strewn drive, grabbed her coat and briefcase and hurried to the front door.
She was sweating, edgy with the same profound sense of unease that had come over her from the very first moment she’d walked inside the home of her new client. It had been a terrible struggle to contain herself, to maintain an outward appearance of professional composure as the awful fear had steadily grown throughout the interview — and with it the overwhelming urge to pack up her things and run, and keep running.
When the interview had ended and she’d faced the task of exploring the property alone to confirm what she already dreaded, the fear had become amplified to near-crippling terror. That solitary walk through the rooms and passageways of Summer Cottage had taken everything she’d got, and left her literally breathless from a sensation of pervading malevolence that seemed to ooze from every crack and crevice of that old house — and still clung to her now.
Claire had never regarded herself as anything more than a moderately receptive psychic. A few times in her life, before becoming a paranormal investigator and since, she’d picked up on atmospheres, auras, energies, whatever one wished to call these things her limited talent allowed her to perceive. Never before had she sensed anything as horrifyingly powerful as the ambiance at Summer Cottage, or even imagined she could. And she never wanted to feel anything like it again.
With the front door locked behind her, she dropped her coat and briefcase on the sitting room floor and headed straight for the kitchen to pour herself a large gin. Knocking it down in nervous gulps, she went through into the spare downstairs bedroom she used as an office. The digital sound recorder was still in her pocket. She set it on the desk, turned it back on and replayed the recording of the interview with her client Mandy Freeman. She paced the room and sipped her gin as she listened, concentrating hard on every word of Mandy’s account and her replies to the questions Claire had asked her.
Now came the bit Claire most dreaded. What she hadn’t informed her client of was that she’d intended to keep the sound recorder running during her solitary twenty-minute post-interview exploration of Summer Cottage.
Hearing it again relayed in high-quality digital playback made her blood chill. The sound of her hesitant footsteps. Every creak of an opening door. Every groan and crack of a loose floorboard. Now and then, she could hear the raspy flutter of her own breathing, the occasional groan as she fought to contain her terror.
And something else picked up by the sensitive microphone. It was just the tiniest of background sounds, but it plunged Claire straight back into the moment and made the glass of gin tremble in her fingers. It was what she’d hoped she’d only imagined. Now she knew it had been real.
A low, snickering cackle. Then a guttural voice, barely audible. The words it spoke, even the tongue in which they were uttered, weren’t clear. But its intentions were. Oh, so clear.
Reeling, she had to steady herself against the desk. ‘Oh, God,’ she moaned. She pressed her hand to her heart until the sharp twinge of pain had passed.
Now she knew what she had to do. There was something here that lay far beyond her own skills as a paranormal investigator. She wouldn’t be able to help her client.
But if anyone could, it was Tabitha Lake.
Claire soon found the number in the address book. Taking deep breaths to steady her voice, she dialled, waited. Then frowned as the answerphone kicked in and a recorded message informed her that the Director of the Lake Institute was currently out of the country on a lecture tour and wouldn’t be back for three more weeks.
Damn. Claire held on for the beep, then left her message.
‘Tabitha, it’s Claire Baker. You probably won’t remember me, but I took one of your courses a few years ago. You always told me that, if I ever had a problem, to phone you. Well, I do have a problem, one that I’m simply not qualified or able to deal with on my own.’
She paused, fighting to control the panic in her voice. ‘You see, I have a client whom I believe to be in terrible danger from an entity in her home, far more than even she realises. I feel I should warn her to stay away from there and never return, but I don’t know whether it’s ethical for me to recommend such extreme measures to a client. What I do know for certain is that I’m completely out of my depth dealing with something as powerful as this. I’m really frightened, Tabitha. Please, please get in touch as soon as you can.’