Angels of Mourning. John Pritchard

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      I could feel her returning my grip: it’s a good job nurses have short nails. She moistened her lips, looking like a girl fifteen years younger than me, rather than just five. ‘Do you … believe what they say about … evil spirits and things getting out during seances?’

      ‘Um …’

       Yes.

      ‘… I think it might have happened sometimes,’ I said carefully. ‘But I don’t believe anything like that can really hurt you, Sue: not unless you let them. And the very fact that you’re worried means you don’t want that.’

      She gave her head a miserable little shake.

      ‘You’re right to think it’s dangerous,’ I went on. ‘But I think you’ve been lucky. I’d tell your friend Gill the same thing, if I were you.’ She had let her eyes drop, and I freed one of my hands to lift her chin up and meet them again. ‘It’s all right, Sue. Really. I’m glad you told me – and you’ll feel better for it. You wait.’

      She smiled damply back; and I felt a moment’s inner satisfaction at the sight. Hardly your average appraisal session – but it had achieved its objectives nonetheless.

      I tried to ignore the lingering discomfort between my shoulder blades. Damp patch. Cold spot. An awareness of what might have happened, when Sue and her friends had started to unpick the edge of darkness …

      ‘Do you … think it could have been a real vampire?’ she asked after a moment; a bit more objective now. Interested, even.

      I smiled faintly. ‘No, I don’t. I don’t believe at all in vampires, Sue. Whatever it was you picked up was just trying to scare you, that’s all.’

      ‘Well, it bloody well succeeded.’ She gave a final little shudder, and settled back. Some of the weight had lifted already, I could tell. ‘Thanks ever so much, Rachel. I really needed to talk.’

      ‘No trouble.’ I gave her hand another squeeze before letting go.

      We tied up the interview’s last loose ends; already preparing to get back to the hands-on business. But at the door she paused, with her hand on the handle, and glanced back once again.

      ‘Rachel … Could you give us a thought tonight?’

      I nodded once. ‘I will.’ And she went on out.

      A shabby Victorian nurses’ home; a high winter night. She’d need to know she wasn’t alone: that someone else’s thoughts were with her in the silence.

      I knew it was the closest she’d go to asking for a prayer.

      Time for me to re-emerge, too. Back into the fray. But not quite yet. I sat looking down at the word that I’d doodled, and imagined – though I struggled not to – a voice without a throat, speaking out of the darkness. Slurred and distorted by the distance and dead air.

      Wampir. Wampir. Wampir.

Chapter 7

      In the crisp afternoon sunlight, even the grey streets behind King’s Cross had a certain glamour about them. Patches of melting slush flashed bright reflections; the tarmac glistened. The drab pavements looked as if they’d been gilded.

      Fool’s gold, and we knew it. Both of us. Me on the Sunday afternoon soup-run, and the bloke I was talking to, who hadn’t slept in a bed since last September.

      ‘Not that I believed all that stuff,’ he insisted, taking another sparing sip. ‘A city’s a city; this one’s the biggest, that’s all. You think, there’s got to be some kind o’ work here somewhere …’ He shrugged.

      ‘Preston, you said you come from?’

      ‘Aye.’ He smiled quizzically. ‘And you: Birmingham, right?’

      I shook my head. ‘Coventry.’

      ‘Nearly right.’

      I gave him a look – and grinned.

      ‘Well we’re all in the same shit-hole now.’ He glanced around him; past the parked minibus and its straggling group of customers, to the sombre façades that hemmed us in. The two huge stations loomed above and beyond them, to the west. King’s Cross, with its vaulted canopies; and St Pancras, towering and gothic. St Pancras Cathedral, I always wanted to call it: a real pile.

      The sun hadn’t made it any warmer; hunks of dirtied, frozen snow still lingered in the gutters. I hunched my shoulders up inside my coat as the wind changed again – and almost felt guilty for the gesture when he did the same, with only his threadbare bomber jacket to keep it out.

      ‘Mind you don’t get cold now,’ he murmured, without irony. He sounded quite concerned.

      ‘Don’t worry …’ I assured him; and wondered how Nick would take it, if he knew.

      Which he didn’t, of course. After we’d argued to a standstill the other night, the subject had been left lying. But I think he reckoned he’d had the better of it – and made me see sense at last.

      So I’d volunteered to go on this afternoon’s run partly for the private satisfaction of doing what I saw fit. Partly. But there was a particular reason why I’d opted to go with the King’s Cross group, as well. A reason to do with the dream.

      It was one of the few real details I remembered: something seen smudgily through the downpour as I’d breasted the rise. St Pancras Cathedral, off to the west; like a gloomy castle rotting under the rain.

      The thought of using the landmark, and actually seeking out the waste ground, had appalled me when it first occurred; and grown increasingly fascinating thereafter. My reasoning mind had tried to shake itself free: warned of tempting fate – of tempting Razoxane. But all to no avail. My dream had picked up on something secret, I knew that much: something she wanted no one else to see.

      So perhaps if I saw … and even partly understood … it might give me some kind of leverage against her. Something I could use, if push came to shove. Which, knowing her, it would.

      I realised the others had started packing up; the ragged gathering around us was beginning to disperse. The bloke from Preston downed the last of his soup.

      ‘Listen … you ain’t got a fag, have you?’

      ‘Sorry – gave up a while back.’ Regretting it sometimes, too.

      ‘Very wise, flower. Wish I had the will.’ He gave me a worn-looking smile. ‘Thanks for the soup.’

      I nodded, and watched him wander aimlessly off. A couple of older men – much further down the road to dereliction – passed behind him, snarling at each other. Jim Stanley’s touch on my shoulder made me jump.

      ‘All aboard again, Rachel.’

      I turned my head. ‘No. ‘It’s okay: I’ll stop off round here. I’ve … got to check some train times.’

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