Black cathedral by L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims

Author:L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims [L. H. Maynard & M. P. N. Sims]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SF
ISBN: 9780843961997
Published: 2008-12-08T08:00:00+00:00

Jane switched off the phone and threw it down on the bed just as Kirby emerged from the en suite bathroom wrapped in a white fluffy towel, her dark hair hanging in wet ringlets about her face.

‘Problems?’ Kirby said, pointing at the phone.

‘You heard?’

‘It was hard not to.’ She sat on the edge of the bed, grabbed another towel and rubbed her dripping hair. ‘So, do you want to talk about it?’

‘I wouldn’t bore you.’

‘You won’t. Honestly.’ Despite her youth there was a sensible maturity about Kirby that Jane had always liked.

‘It’s just my mother being…well, mother. She’s looking after the girls for me and never misses an opportunity to tell me what a terrible parent I am.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Kirby said.

‘Not according to her. I take it you heard about David and me?’

‘Was it supposed to be a secret? Hard to keep, secrets, when you’re surrounded by psychics. Actually, Raj told me. Don’t ask me how he knew though.’ Kirby smiled sympathetically. ‘It’s a shame. I always thought you and David were rock solid.’

‘We were…once.’

‘What happened?’ Kirby continued towel drying her hair but was wholly focused on Jane.

‘The job happened.’

Kirby reached across to the dressing table, picked up her hair dryer and started blasting her curls. ‘Did I ever tell you about Malcolm?’ she said over the noise of the dryer.

Jane shook her head.

‘We were together for about five years. I didn’t tell him about the job at first. For ages he thought I worked in the Civil Service—which I suppose was true in a way. It was only after we’d been together for quite a while—a few months, I think—that I told him what I actually did.’

‘How did he take it?’ Kirby had never opened up about her private life before.

‘He was fascinated. He wanted to know all about it; what cases I was working on—all the details. Looking back on it now, I think his interest bordered on the unhealthy. It became something of an obsession for him. He started spending hours on the Internet, researching psychic phenomena and all the related mumbo jumbo. I suppose he was trying to find out what made me tick.’ She switched off the dryer and ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing out the curls. ‘The turning point came when I was sent to investigate that house in Bradford. Do you remember the one? The Lockhart family?’

Jane nodded. She had a photographic and retentive memory, and could list all the cases, certainly the recent ones, without reference to any notes.

‘If you remember, they had the teenage daughter—a troubled soul—and there was an awful lot of poltergeist activity. Things moving from room to room, clothes ripped to shreds, all manner of noises and smells. Well, everything was fine until we started getting similar activity at home. Malcolm was a keen golfer and he got home one evening to find that a couple of his clubs had been taken from his bag, twisted into pretzels and dumped on the bed.

‘He was angry at first, but gradually, as more and more things happened, he started to get freaked out by it.

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