S. Bolton - Dead Scared

‘Do you want to rest for a while?’

The two women had reached a wooden seat beneath a rose arbour. Evi put the brake on her chair and her companion, fellow psychiatrist and Cambridge alumna Megan Prince, sat beside her. When Evi had felt the need of someone to talk to about the events of the past year, Megan, who’d been just two years ahead of her at university, had been the obvious choice; known and trusted but not too close a friend. Evi had been seeing Megan weekly for three months. She wasn’t feeling a huge improvement but, as she knew better than most, these things took time.

As always, Megan smelled of patchouli and Marlboro Lights, a fragrance from her student days that she seemed unable to leave behind.

‘I think I broke in here one night,’ said Evi, looking round at the perfect formation of beds, box hedges and grassed walkways. After a day of weak winter sun, frost still gleamed on the thin branches around them and the thorns looked as sharp as steel. ‘With cannabis and cider.’

‘On your own?’

‘Almost certainly not.’ Evi smiled. ‘But names and faces escape me.’

‘Cider and cannabis can do that.’

Silence fell as both women looked at the six-foot-high brick wall around the garden that Evi wouldn’t have a hope of climbing now.

‘Did you call the police?’ asked Megan quickly, as though anxious to get the conversation back on track. ‘On Friday night, I mean.’

Evi turned back. There was no point dwelling on the past, but avoiding it wasn’t always easy because Megan looked as skinny and as young and dishevelled as she had in the old days. ‘From a locked bedroom,’ she replied. ‘Of course, by the time they arrived there was no sign of him.’

Megan drew the lapels of her jacket a little closer round her neck and clenched her jaw, as though trying not to shudder. She still never wore enough clothes in cold weather. ‘Him?’ she asked.

Evi shrugged. She had no idea whether the masked figure in her garden had been male or female.

‘The police came pretty quickly?’ Megan asked.

‘Yes. Some uniformed constables arrived first, then a detective sergeant a few minutes later.’ Directly in front of her a robin had landed on the stem of a rose bush. It paused and seemed to look directly at her.

‘Did they take it seriously?’

The robin took flight and Evi looked back up again. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

Megan glanced down for a second and squirmed, as though the seat were cold, or damp. ‘What did they find?’ she asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Evi. ‘No sign of a break-in. No footprints in the garden. No recent fingerprints inside other than mine.’

A moment of silence, then the moment stretched. When Evi was in the counsellor’s chair, she waited the silences out.

‘There’s something you want to say, isn’t there?’ said Megan.

‘You won’t like me for doing so.’

‘Go for it.’

Evi braced herself. ‘Is there any possibility someone could have accessed the notes you’ve made during our sessions?’ she asked.

Megan tucked a loose coil of hair behind one ear. Then, ‘You think someone has hacked into my records?’ she asked. ‘And then that someone broke into your house and used his inside knowledge to scare you witless?’

Evi pulled her face into an apologetic smile. ‘Doesn’t sound too likely, does it?’ she admitted. ‘But those pranks just seemed so personal. I haven’t discussed what happened last year with anyone but you. No one but you would know I have a phobia about fir cones. Do you remember we talked about it in one of our early sessions?’

‘It’s not just unlikely, it’s impossible,’ said Megan. ‘Our systems at the practice are completely secure. They have to be, to protect all our patients’ confidentiality. Even my colleagues couldn’t access my files without my passwords and most of them, frankly, have trouble switching their computers on in the morning.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Evi. ‘I was on edge and then scared on Friday night. It just felt like someone had got inside my head.’

‘A bone man,’ said Megan, her forehead creased with frown lines. ‘But from what you’ve told me, the bone men were more like bonfire-night Guys. Built around a frame stuffed with rubbish and wearing clothes. They weren’t skeletal. You’re sure the figure in the tree was meant to be a bone man?’

Evi felt some of the tension draining out of her. ‘You’re right,’ she said, after a few seconds. ‘There were people, in that place I told you about, who dressed as skeletons but they weren’t the bone men. The skeletons carried the bone men to the fire.’

Megan’s thin, pencilled eyebrows disappeared into the coils of her fringe.

‘It was an odd town,’ said Evi.

‘Remind me to give it a miss next time I’m walking the Pennines.’

Neither spoke for a moment.

‘Rag week can’t be very far away,’ said Megan. ‘Dressing up seems pretty much compulsory then. And fir cones are very common this time of year.’

‘True,’ said Evi. ‘But it doesn’t alter the fact that someone was in my house.’

‘You mean the fir cones on the table? What did the police say about that?’

‘They didn’t think it was too sinister,’ said Evi. ‘But they advised I get the locks changed. Which I have done. The university’s maintenance department did it yesterday.’

The two women fell quiet for a moment, as Megan looked at her scarlet fingernails and Evi watched a dried leaf fall from the stem of a rose bush.

‘Are you thinking about Harry as much?’ asked Megan.

As if she ever stopped thinking about Harry. He was there, in her head, like an unspoken awareness of her own self. Didn’t mean she wanted to talk about him. And the college porter would be locking the garden gates soon.

‘Are you still worried about the suicides?’ asked Megan. ‘Did you talk to CID again?’

Evi felt her eyes drop to the ground. She couldn’t tell Megan about the undercover investigation she’d instigated. About the girl she’d installed in her faculty. So now she was hiding things from her counsellor. She shook her head.

‘CID believe the suicides are exactly that,’ she said. ‘Suicides. There’s no evidence of coercion or third party involvement. They’ve respectfully suggested I concentrate on being accessible to vulnerable members of the university community and leave them to policing Cambridgeshire.’

‘Well, I guess we never hesitate to tell the police how to do their jobs when we see fit,’ replied Megan with a smile. Then the smile faded. ‘Wasn’t there a spate of suicides when we were here?’ she asked. ‘Or was that before your time?’

Evi thought for a moment and then shook her head. ‘From what I can gather, the suicide rate here has been bang on normal until five years ago,’ she said. She looked at her watch again. ‘Time’s up,’ she said. ‘Is Nick around this afternoon, do you know?’

‘I think he got called to the hospital. Do you want me to leave him a message?’

‘It’s OK. I’ll call him at home.’

The two women left the walled garden and made their way the short distance down the street to the GPs’ surgery where Megan was based two days a week.

As they turned the corner, Evi saw that an expensive-looking Japanese saloon was blocking her own car in. When he spotted them coming, the driver, a man she knew she’d seen before, got out. He was tall, late thirties, with short dark hair, square jaw and a muscular build. His dark suit looked expensive and fitted him well. Evi watched his dark eyes focus on Meg immediately behind her. As a slow, confident smile softened his jawline, she turned to see Meg smiling back at him.