Harvest (34 page)

He watched his mum stare down
at him, and she rubbed her forehead and chewed her lip. “It’s very
kind of you, but I don’t know…”

“
Mum! Please! I don’t
want to go home. I want to stay at Rachel’s.”

“
I don’t know
you…”

Rachel’s mouth briefly turned
down at the corners. “It’s because I’m a kook…”

His mum looked surprised and
lost for words for a few moments. “I don’t know what Jason has told
you about what I said, but I never said those exact words.”

“
It’s okay you were only
concerned for your friend. You might not agree with my methods, but
my motives are that I care and I want to help and I can do both in
this situation. And I can do it without any spirits by just
rustling up some tea for your boy and getting some use out of my
spare room.”

She held her hands up in
surrender. “You got me. You all make perfect sense, and Jason seems
more than happy with the idea. If he’s happy then I am happy. Are
you sure it’s okay with you Rachel?”

With a fizz of excitement in
him he wrapped himself around his mum again and thanked her.

Rachel rummaged in her bag. “I
have a mobile, but I have to confess my knowledge ends at the power
button. I’m sure Jason will work it out though, so if you need to
contact me…” She leafed through her address book. “I believe this
is the number. I’m sure they make all this technology to make me
feel more senile.”

“
I have my own phone.”
Rachel looked surprised at Jason. “Mum can call me on
that.”

Jason listened as Rachel, Kelly
and Craig said goodbye to his mum and offered awkward sympathies.
“I will catch you up at the lift.” The three nodded at Jason and
headed for the lift.

His mum smiled down at him.
“You need to run along, honey. I need to get back into
granddad.”

“
I know.” He was safe,
but he had to make sure she was safe too. “Mum, there was another
murder at The Heights today. I don’t want us to live there
anymore.”

She sighed heavily. “It’s our
home… Claire and Brian are there…”

“
I know that, but the
building has changed, Claire and Brian have changed. Dad’s gone so
our home is different too. Nothing is the same.”

His mum looked into space and
after some time she looked back at him. “I know.”

That had been easier than he
had thought. “Do you like granddad’s home?”

“
Of course I do, it was
my home, remember?”

“
Let’s move in there
then.” He said brightly and shrugged to show how obvious the answer
was.

“
Okay.” She said slowly.
She thought about it and answered more firmly. “Okay, we can do
that.”

“
Thank you, mum.” He
couldn’t have stopped his Dad leaving, he couldn’t have stopped
Emily and Amy being taken, and he couldn’t stop his granddad from
dying, but just maybe he could keep his mum safe. “Promise me,
promise me one thing. Stay with granddad all night. Don’t go home.
Even when granddad …” He couldn’t say the word ‘dead’, talking
about someone you loved as dead always struck him as having some
kind of magical influence on events. “Even when granddad isn’t here
don’t go home.”

“
What?” She frowned.
“Where do you want me to go?”

“
I’m serious. Look at all
the things that have happened at The Heights, I don’t want you
going there on your own.”

She smirked and poked him.
“Hey, monkey. I’m the parent, remember.”

It was nice to see her be like
that with him, it felt normal. How he wanted things to be normal
again! “I know that.” His face went hot and he knew he had gone
red. “You are the only parent I have. That’s why I’m asking you not
to go to that place on your own.” His throat got tighter and choked
his voice and his eyes were hot, and he knew he was close to
crying. It wasn’t easy to keep himself under control as he spoke
his feelings. “You think I am being silly, but you are all I have
and I don’t want to lose you.”

Near to tears herself his mum
dropped back down to his height and pulled him close again. “I’m
sorry. Of course I won’t go home without you. I love you.”

“
I love you too.” Over
her shoulder he saw into the private room his granddad was in. His
granddad no longer looked tall, broad, proud and strong. In the
large bed and surrounded by instruments he looked small, his
illness made him bony and frail looking, and the hospital gown that
was too small for him looked like a dress. It showed too much of
his granddad’s naked body where it didn’t fit him properly. His
insides knotted up at seeing his granddad that way, angry at the
hospital for ruining how he saw his granddad in his head and angry
for his granddad, who if he was aware of his situation would be
suffering humiliation as well as a painful death. “I love you
mum.”

Jason ran to the lift just as
it arrived for the others, satisfied he was out of sight of his mum
he cried openly with relief at his mum and him being safe, and
sorrow for his granddad, his mum and himself. Not caring at being
seen as a child. Because he had seen his granddad become a child
once and he knew there was no shame in it, especially when the
world had made him grow up too fast.

Chapter
Twenty Seven

Kelly glanced over her shoulder
at Craig and Jason trailing behind her and Rachel in the corridor
of the Royal Free. The boy had stopped crying during the journey
from the Whittington and Craig was now speaking softly to him.
Craig was good with Jason, he was caring but he didn’t wade in with
the smothering sympathy that Rachel gave the boy, he offered a
quiet strength and reassurance and was more likely to cajole him
with a joke or a nudge to tease out a smile.

Rachel caught onto Kelly’s
direction of attention. “I think we did quite well getting young
Jason out of harms way. It feels good knowing we can at least keep
him safe from whatever is happening.”

“
It does feel good. I just
wish I understood what we were keeping him safe from.” Kelly tossed
her hands up in the air in a gesture of despair.

“
So do I, dear. In time.
But judging by Jason’s description I won’t be wishing that to be
any time soon.”

Kelly’s mood joined Rachel’s
grave tone. “No. I guess not.”

“
Now that we are nearly
there I feel very awkward.”

“
I think it’s me that
should feel awkward; I’m here to heavy someone I don’t know, to
leave someone else I don’t know, alone.”

“
Yes, quite. Thank you
again. But what I meant was that I am afraid that my relationship
with Cat is complicated. Even with her being in a coma I find it
difficult being around her. I am ashamed to say, that we parted on
bad terms.”

Kelly glanced at Rachel
expecting an explanation but it didn’t come. “You are here now. I’m
sure if Cat knows that you are here it will go some way to bridge
the gap between you after whatever happened.”

“
You don’t know Cat…” As
they turned the corner Rachel stepped close to the wall and jerked
Kelly after her, and discretely pointed down the corridor. “That’s
him. At Cat’s room. Dreadful man. He troubles me.”

Kelly recognised Mr Malik from
The Heights, he wasn’t an easy man to miss with his drab grey
clothes only fitting him where his shirt buttoned tight to his
neck, and his trousers were belted to his waist, the rest of the
material hung and flapped around his rakish frame. He was standing
and staring through the large wall of windows into Cat’s room. She
had seen him plenty of times in the lift and lobby, fetching
shopping or going about his day with his wife. “I know him. If you
take everyone in to your friend’s room I will talk with him.” He
struck her as a pleasant man, nothing out of the ordinary, harmless
enough.

Craig and Jason caught them up
and Rachel whispered for them both to follow her through to Cat’s
room. Rachel closed the door behind them. Malik broke his stare to
watch the newcomers enter, he ignored Rachel’s curt nod in his
direction and returned to his transfixed gaze in at Cat.

Kelly waited a few moments
before walking up to him and stood her ground a good arms length
out of reach from him. “Mr Malik?” He didn’t respond and she
shifted uncomfortably where she stood. “It is Mr Malik, isn’t
it?”

He turned his head slowly in
her direction like a planet’s surface rotating its features into
the sun. His face was as skeletal as she had remembered it but it
shone with an unhealthy clamminess, while his eyes were slimy and
yellowed like raw eggs that might run from their sockets. He looked
sickly, diseased. He breathed a slow hiss. “I know you…” he spoke
as if he was wrestling with control of his memory.

“
Kelly Mason. PC Mason. I
live in The Heights. We have met before. In passing.” She offered
him a guarded smile from a place between diplomatic openness and
formal authority. He made no sign of acknowledgment. “I have been
asked to speak to you.” Without the weight of her uniform behind
her approach she felt like she was on weak ground, bringing back
memories of questioning Rachel the first time they had met back at
the Chambers. “I have been asked to speak to you about the amount
of time you have been spending here.”

His top lip curdled at one side
in a grimace of distaste. “It is a free country. Is it not?” The
words rolled from his tongue with a barely concealed edge of
hostility within his silky polish drawl. He returned to staring
into the room.

The dark tone that thickened
his voice with a threatening strength convinced her that he was
capable of being a very different person to what she had previously
imagined. “Her relatives don’t remember her ever mentioning you
before, and not having seen you with her, or having anything to do
with you it struck them as odd. They are unsettled that you are
always here. The relatives want their privacy.”

She stood her ground in the
silence that followed, but he did not defer to her authority as she
imagined. He didn’t even return to face her. She floundered for
something to say, but her actions were restricted and it was clear
that Malik was not going to speak to her any further. She tried to
ignore an uncomfortable anxiety dancing at the nape of her neck. He
was odd and it unsettled her. Kelly decided that any rephrasing or
change of approach was futile in the face of being ignored. “Okay,
Mr Malik. I am not here on any official capacity at the moment, but
I will be reporting you to security and I will be making sure there
are some uniformed officers stopping in regularly so that you
observe visiting hours.” He didn’t answer but continued to stare.
She stepped into the room, shut the door behind her and began
snapping all the blinds shut against him.

“
How creepy is he?” She
hushed to the others over her shoulder as she finished making sure
the blinds were secure. “He always seemed to be a bit eccentric
before, but now he seems totally unlike how I remember him.” Facing
the others she suddenly found herself replacing one uncomfortable
scene with another. Tucked neatly into smooth undisturbed covers
was a girl in her late teens or very early twenties, who lay before
her trapped in sleep and dreams. Craig and Jason looked equally
uncomfortable.

“
Please don’t feel
awkward.” Rachel asked from a chair at Cat’s side. “It’s actually
nice to have people here with me. Cat, this is Kelly, Craig and
Jason. They all live at The Heights. The people I told you about.”
Rachel addressed the others again. “This is Cat. I’m sorry I
dragged all of you here, but at least you can see my concern. If
anything, Cat was a loner. I know I have been out of her life for a
while but… but some people don’t change, and one of the many things
Cat is, is consistent. She pushed everyone away from her after her
mother died, and if that Malik is a little heavy on the religious
side then I just can’t place her having a relationship of any kind
with him, especially one that inspires someone to stand on vigil
for her.”

“
Oh, don’t worry! I
understand your uncertainty now. But he’s not going to be easily
persuaded. At least not by me it seems. You could make a complaint.
Get the hospital to get some uniformed officers in. I would rather
not be involved in an official capacity. I want to keep my head
down for a bit after being involved with everything at the
Chambers. I can’t get over how he is acting though.”

“
Oh, the strangeness
doesn’t stop there.” There was a twinkle in Rachel’s eye as though
she relished a mystery. “I told you about the equipment in here
playing up regularly. Oh, and when I visited Cat’s flat the
devastation seemed far more than she could have made
alone…”

“
You think she was
attacked?” Kelly interjected wanting to be clear on where Rachel
was taking them.

“
Yes.” She held up a
warning finger. “But not in the sense that you will be happy with.
Have you ever heard how hurricanes can do things that seem to deny
physics, such as perforate metal with pieces of straw? Well there
were anomalies like that in Cat’s flat – picture frames pushed into
the plaster board, but largely intact, furniture that was not just
broken but pulverised. It was said that Cat had some kind of fit or
episode that resulted in her ransacking her flat. Whether it was a
physical or a mental episode the damage was beyond her
capabilities.”

Rachel allowed a few
moments for what she was saying to sink in. “I also found that Cat
had a cat.
I saw it in a photograph at her flat, and it
was identical to a cat that turned up at my flat weeks before. You
have to understand that I have been out of Cat’s life for some
time. I never knew she had a pet, and it certainly shouldn’t have
been able to find its way to me.”