Hope dies as I headbutt into another dead end.
Patrick discards his cigarette and motions for another. He lights up, enjoying the smoke doing its destructive dance in his lungs for a moment. ‘Here’s something. Hope Scott was different. She was connected to the centre somehow. I couldn’t quite figure out how. It’s all a bit cloudy what she was doing there.’ He stops and considers. ‘But she ends up like the rest – vanished in a puff of smoke. My journalist nose smelled something different about her case.’
‘What?’
His eyes glaze; he’s back in 1994. ‘Her comings and goings from that place didn’t follow the same pattern as the others,’ he tells me. ‘Something about Hope Scott’s relationship to that place was different.’
‘Do you know where I could find the families?’
His body stiffens. ‘Afraid not. I fell out with them. When I politely and respectfully suggested there might be aliens involved, there were some testy exchanges.’
He’s properly miffed. ‘After all I’d done. The words crank and nutcase were used. Usual story. It won’t be the first or the last time I’m labelled as either. My understanding is Amina’s gran died from old age and the rest of the family upped sticks and settled in New York. Sheryl’s family simply left. Hope’s mum was a lovely woman but she stopped coming after a while. I think the grief got too much for her.’
Patrick keeps talking. ‘Veronica’s mum came to see me once. Never saw her again after that. The family was problematic—’
That gets my attention. ‘In what way?’
He coughs. Takes out his inhaler and noisily sucks. ‘Personal family stuff which it’s inappropriate for me to share with you. I swore to her mum I’d keep it under lock and key.’ He shakes his head, expression mournful. ‘Veronica’s mother died shortly afterwards. Of a broken heart they say, when her Ronnie never came back.’
Ronnie? There’s a buzzing in my ears. I’m barely listening to the words pouring out of his mouth.
‘Did you say Ronnie?’
‘Veronica. Most people called her Ronnie.’ His tilts his chin at me. ‘Why are you so interested in all this?’
‘Why didn’t Sugar tell me that her name is also Veronica?’ I furiously muse to myself.
‘Sugar?’ Patrick snaps. ‘Do you mean Carlton McNeil, the cop?’
The air abruptly feels different between us, electric. ‘He’s my adoptive father. Can you give me the address of the Suzi Lake—？’
Patrick rises so fast he almost topples over, the stub of his cigarette goes whizzing through the air. The yellow of his cynical eyes deepens in the dark.
Standing too, I stammer, ‘What’s wrong? Do you need medical attention?’ I’m genuinely concerned for him. Maybe he’s overdone the smoking.
‘Medical attention?’ The vicious up-down stare he delivers is accompanied by a sneer. ‘You’ve got that right. I need my head seeing to if I’ve been talking to the spawn of a cop.’
Hell! I could kick myself. Patrick Walsh has spent a lifetime writing and railing against the establishment.
I try to reel it back. ‘But he’s not a police officer any more.’ My voice dies away. It’s too late. He’s armour-plated again, with the lip-curling disdain of Prickly Patrick.
The fear I thought I saw in his eyes earlier flares to life again. ‘You’re one of them, aren’t you? Come back to threaten to shut me down like you did before? Starting up again with your threats of how you’re coming to get me.’
‘Threats?’ I’m so shocked by the turn of events. ‘I would never threaten you. I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
The skin on his face falls into folds of haggard flesh. ‘Stay away from me, girl. I don’t need that type of heat in my life. Ever again.’
Patrick Walsh stumbles away from me, back to the security of the hospital ward. Threats? What is going on here? For the first time I feel the evil of danger next to me.
And the bombshell of Veronica also known as Ronnie.
Did one of the women get away?
CHAPTER 19
Veronica. Ronnie. Ronnie. Veronica. The names continue their non-stop march in my mind, like a warrior readying for war, the whole journey to Sugar’s. I know I should’ve headed home to refresh and revive myself before paying Ronnie a visit. But I couldn’t. I had to come here. That one of the women might have escaped from . . . from . . . ? That’s what I’m hoping Ronnie will tell me. It blows my mind to think that one of the women was right under my nose all this time. It doesn’t make any sense.