Harvest (7 page)

“
Well, how about another
time?” he persisted. “From the perspective of a person living in
the block with the duties you have at the station and what it’s
like with this on your doorstep? Nothing about the case
specifically, and I wouldn’t do anything with it until after you’ve
read through whatever I have written.”

She seemed to be in
pained thought for a moment and looked at him awkwardly, her
decision apparently made more difficult by the urgent pings of her
waiting microwave meal. “Oh, okay.
But some other time
– I
have a frozen curry calling me!” She smiled humbly
and closed the door on him without saying goodbye.

Chapter
Six

Rachel rested on her recliner
within the cosy half-light of her lounge and used her remote
control to flick through the television channels. She munched on
cheese and crackers with a glass of sherry at her side while she
searched for something to watch. The kitten perched on her leg,
leaning over to the table and lapped from a glass of water. The
cold light from the television flickered and broke into the corners
of the room where the standard lamp didn’t reach.

She thought of her phone, and
didn’t know why. She wondered at the randomness of the thought
until it rang abruptly.

Startled, she dropped
part of her cracker on to her chest
.
Rachel pulled the kitten close to her so she didn’t tip it
from her lap as she reached for the handset. The kitten crawled up
her and began picking at the cracker from under her chin, oblivious
to the difficulty Rachel had in guiding the phone cable around the
animal so she could get the phone to her ear.

“
Hello?” she said. Before
the person could speak she was distracted by the sound of ruffled
paper from beside her chair, and strained over the arm of the chair
to investigate. A pile of newspapers that had been stacked there
had tumbled onto their side and she was greeted with the headline
that had been within the middle of the pile: “CHILD MISSING FROM
BED.”

“
Hello, you don’t know me
but my name is Claire Chambers...” the voice on the phone
started.

Rachel pulled the paper up on
to her lap and scanned the page, seeing the woman’s name in print
before her.

“
The little girl’s
mother?”

There was a hesitation as
Claire adjusted to her name being recognised. “Yes... That’s
right.”

“
I’m so very sorry to
read about all that’s happened.” Rachel winced at the banality of
her words. She could hear Claire swallow.

“
The
spiritualist church you attend recommended I talk with you. No one
has come forward with anything, no one saw anything. It’s been
nearly three weeks. I don’t know what made me call.
It’s just we are so desperate
. I don’t know what
you can do, or even
what
you do. We
were... I
was just wondering...”

Rachel looked about her room,
squinting briefly into the gloom at the television as her programme
came back on. She knew what Claire wanted to know. “Don’t worry,
dear. I could come and see you tomorrow if you like. However, you
must understand in this circumstance I won’t undertake any attempt
at contact and I don’t give certainties. I can come and see what I
can feel, see if I can offer any other insight around what has
happened. It won’t help you with the police though, as I am sure
you know; all I can give you is a little faith and hope. If that’s
enough for you then I will gladly visit you.”

Claire gushed gratefully and
began to arrange a time to go and see her the next day. Rachel
turned the folded paper over to see the bottom of the front page
and the cat licked her cheek for more crumbs. Rachel gave a sad
smile at the school picture of the happy-looking girl presented on
the page. Although she couldn’t see it in the thick shadows of the
room, Rachel’s thoughts focussed on the framed birth certificate on
the mantelpiece and the darkness closed in around her in a great
swell at the thought of the aged piece of paper.

Rachel’s eyes travelled up the
body of the east tower that grew from the ground before her.
Looking at the top drained her sense of balance and a brief glance
to the summit was all she could manage without her vision swimming.
The sun blazed from behind the building, melting the rigid horizon
of the roof and casting the face of the building into shadow. She
looked back down sharply and blinked away the disorientation before
taking the steps up to the main door above the abandoned arcade of
shops at the tower’s base.

Rachel had been to this
building once before, but she hadn’t got past the front door that
day. She had been turned away by a disconnected voice over the
intercom – told not to come back. The rejection was still a fresh
knife wound. All Rachel had wanted to do was tell her that she was
here for her if she had need of her, but she had wanted nothing
from Rachel.

She slipped her bifocals on and
studied the entry system closely before she typed in the flat
number for Claire Chambers and introduced herself to the crackling
voice that responded. The voice cut out and the door buzzed, Rachel
pushed but it refused to open. She pressed for Claire’s flat,
“Sorry, me and technology, I can’t get it to open.”

The intercom gave a muffled
reply, apologising for the problem. “You just wait there and I’ll
come and get you, you’ll never find the flat anyway. I’ll be down
in a second.”

Rachel looked about her. The
thick shadow of the building reached across the small grassy area
surrounding the flats and across the road, blanketing the houses
beyond in a dark shroud. She turned back to the glass of the door
and was startled by a set of eyes staring back at her. Greying
eyes, tinged with yellow, but soft and watery like melting ice. The
skin around them hung pink and sagging. The man’s hair was thick
with grease and scruffily side-parted; his beard was short and
greying, the bristly curls matted with saliva slug-trails
glistening around withered lips that grimaced around yellow and
black teeth. His breath clouded the glass between them; breath she
was sure would be foul and made her glad of the barrier. His long
coat hung from multiple layers of clothing, a heavy burden in spite
of the summer warmth that made him look bigger than he probably
was.

Rachel smiled at him as gently
and as genuinely as she could and pointed to the handle. “Could you
let me in?” she mouthed hopefully.

He stared back at her. Not even
following the direction of her pointing finger. “Go away...” he
barked, bowing his head forward and glaring up at her with menace
in his eyes. She half-expected him to growl and bare his teeth like
a wild dog. His eyes were rich with a hatred she didn’t understand.
Rachel was routed by his threatening glare and retreated a few
steps.

She was relieved when a young
man peered over the older man’s shoulder, frowned and appeared to
start questioning his behaviour. The old man didn’t flinch from his
posturing stand-off. Feeling her confidence return with the arrival
of the lad she stepped back towards the glass and motioned to him
that she was trying to get in.

He said something with humour
to the old man, and when that failed to move him he leaned closer
to the glass and called through it; “Have you been buzzed in?”

“
Yes,
Claire Chambers buzzed me in but it didn’t work. She’s coming down
now.” Her mention of the Chambers seemed to spur him on in getting
rid of the glaring old man. He approached the situation with humour
and when that failed he resorted to a firmness of face and probably
tone which he looked uncomfortable with. Finally the old man
stepped away but his eyes remained on Rachel.
She
avoided them and scanned the rows of letterboxes in the lobby,
knowing that Catherine’s would be one of them. Perhaps she could
leave a note? No, she had written letters before to Cat and had yet
to receive a reply.

The young man rolled his eyes
at her and pressed the buzzer. Rachel stepped back up and pushed at
it but it remained firm and rattled in its place. It refused to
budge even when the young man pulled it from inside. He dug deep
into his trouser pocket and pulled out his keys to the building, he
signalled to the letterbox and poked them through for Rachel. She
tried several keys until she found the right one and unlocked the
door and the man yanked it open for her.

“
There you go,” he
announced, stepping aside for her to enter.

Rachel smiled
appreciatively and stepped in.
As her foot crossed the
threshold she thought how odd it was that she had come here a year
ago only to be turned away, and now her “gift” had brought her
here. To anyone else it might be dismissed as coincidence, but she
lived in a different world, with different explanations.

The intercom rasped viciously
and a growl of angry static grated harshly on her ears, startling
her. Sparks flew from the metal speaker grille in an angry flare
and Rachel cowered away and stumbled against the doorframe. The
young man caught her arm, supported her into the building and
sheltered her from any other possible sparks. She thanked him and
stared back at the smoking intercom that increased her sense of
being unwelcome.

In the lift Rachel struggled to
compose herself and focus on the small talk that Claire Chambers
was making with her. Claire was talking about the building, about
tower blocks in general, giving examples of how different The
Heights were to the stereotypes of high-rise flats, selling her the
community and the views. It struck Rachel as rehearsed, something
she did with new guests to make them feel at ease, or to ease her
own discomfort with the stereotype, but her pained grin and
glistening eyes that accompanied her description of the friendly
community within the tower told a different story. Rachel didn’t
normally like colluding with the games people play. Beyond her
ability to talk to the dead and see the past she had developed a
keen psychological insight from spending so much time with people
in pain. It wasn’t a psychology you might find in a text book, it
was a mix of the otherworld intuition, keen observation and
listening and a first hand understanding of grief, pain and
hopelessness. Rachel didn’t need a text book to understand those
things. After a short while of talking with someone she could
imagine things from their perspective and quickly spot
inconsistencies in what they said or how they acted. She would sow
her conversation with musings and wonderings from her perspective,
inviting the other person to own the thoughts as their own, to
encourage them to challenge themselves, to be honest with
themselves. However, Rachel could see that Claire was desperate to
believe in the community spirit of the building, and still shaken
from the incident at the door Rachel also needed to believe it was
a safe place to be.

Catherine had demanded that
Rachel stay away from her and the building, and as much as Rachel
wanted a reunion she didn’t want it to happen in front of Claire,
Cat had so much resentment for her. If the dread of that hadn’t
been enough to unsettle her, when Claire had emerged from the lift,
the old man, Harry as she now knew he was called had retreated but
hissed a final warning in her face; “Your type aren’t welcome
here.” What did he mean? How could he know about her abilities? She
could also sense something, some presence in the air, but the
emotions the building conjured within her and the shock of her
encounter at the main door made it impossible to concentrate. She
was also distracted by the large mosaic panel that took up almost
an entire wall of the lobby. It was a crude gaudy display of rich
colours, it reminded her of the mosaics at Tottenham Court Road
Underground Station, yet there weren’t any individual pictures,
just patterns of colour that weaved in and out. She had examined it
further while she had chatted with the young man that had come to
her aide. She had seen something in the mosaic. Areas of the mosaic
where the colours deviated by subtle degrees creating a discrete
shape. When she walked to the lift with Claire she had tried to
take in the mosaic as a whole, to see the shape for what it was but
lost the image within the twists and angles of the pattern.

The lift stopped and her
thoughts, like the ghostly image within the mosaic, were lost to
concentrate more on Claire as they walked to her flat.

Rachel wiped her feet on the
mat as Claire shut the door behind them.

“
Would you like a cup of
tea?”

“
Lovely! Milk, three
sugars. Thank you.”

Claire walked over to the
kitchen.

A man’s voice greeted Rachel
from the lounge. “Sweet tooth.”

She found the man sitting on a
sofa leaning forward on his knees so he could see her more clearly
round the doorway. He looked her over warily.

“
I need all the energy
rushes I can get,” she puffed and smiled disarmingly. “You must be
Mr Chambers.” She navigated the coffee table and extended her
hand.

He stood to his full height,
which was several inches over Rachel’s, and took her hand. She was
unsure if she was meant to feel intimidated.

“
Call me
Brian.”

She let his hand go and
looked about her. The flat was bright and airy and very
clean,
almost too clean.
“It’s a lovely home you both have.” She looked to Brian as he
sat down. He didn’t say anything. He was a big man, not fat but
stocky, judging by the heavy pads she had felt on his hand, a
manual worker. He offered a smile from a fresh smooth face, he
looked to be a youthful thirty-something, but his eyes looked
switched off. They were the eyes of an old man hardened to
everything the world could throw at him and judging by his solid
posture and his strained body language he had a hardened attitude
towards her, and these niceties was just politeness.