The Sister(134)

He had the unmistakable feeling someone was staring at him. For one crazy second, he thought someone stood behind him. He turned quickly. There was nobody there. His heart pounded hard in his chest and didn’t slow quite some time. He knew he should report what he’d found. Moving the box of jars off the workbench, and without really knowing why, he replaced everything as he’d found it.





He returned to the office. Something had gnawed away at him ever since he left Kennedy’s garage. Suddenly, he had a hunch. He checked the CCTV records for the cameras outside the police station. He worked all the way back to the 3rd of January and then he spotted him. The same figure they'd seen on London Bridge, dressed identically, the body posture unmistakable. His face concealed by a hood.

He’s been after Kennedy all along.





Chapter 115



5 April





The rapid decline in Ryan’s health had nibbled away at his once unshakeable belief. He felt abandoned. Determined to hold on to the last vestiges of hope, he decided to finish a task he’d begun fifteen years ago.

The archiving of his patient files.

The older ones had survived the initial exercise because of their particular interest to him. His thoughts touched on Penny. Pleasant memories bloomed, and then withered quickly as he recalled how their working relationship had turned sour.

After starting a list of files for Stella to prepare for boxing, he decided it would be easier to send them all with the exception of three. One of those files he kept under lock and key. The other two were the files of Bruce Milowski and Jackie Solomons.

Solomons had been the last of his unconventional treatments and a witness to his secret visits to Vera Flynn in those days. Over the years, he’d noticed a correlation between childhood tragedy and the development of resilience in later life. Solomons had undoubtedly fallen into that category. Losing her father at the age of four, she’d been raped and almost murdered, yet she’d gone on to thrive. At one time, he’d considered writing a book on his theories, and although it was prominent on the list of things he had to do, he never got around to it. It’s too late now.

His thoughts turned to Milowski. He’d been lined up to become the first candidate to receive Vera’s remarkable attentions, when his mother suddenly refused any further treatment of her son.

Mrs Milowski...what was her first name again? Ellen, yes that was it. She possessed an innocence that had appealed to Ryan’s fatherly nature. He’d wanted more than anything to help her son. The termination of his services had been abrupt. Stung by the recollection for a second time, Ryan moved the file squarely in front of him.





His memories were quite clear.

With Mrs Milowski’s permission, he’d hypnotised him, taking him back through the years. He’d asked him to focus on the earliest thing he could remember, something in the past that had perhaps bothered him. Ryan was astounded to learn the boy had fallen into a coal fire at the age of ten months and survived unscathed apart from a few singed hairs. It all came back to him. How, aged four, he had escaped suffocation when a tunnel he’d dug into the sand dunes on a Cornish beach collapsed and buried him. We found him because his grandfather noticed four of his fingers sticking up above the sand. At the age of seven, Ryan had seen him as a physician. Only later did he realise the first visit had related to something Bruce never told him at the time. He revealed somebody had chased him in the woods and, from then onwards, he never slept without a light on. The experience had led to his first encounter with the ‘shadows’ as he called them, but no amount of coercion could get him to reveal more. The boy just locked up, even under hypnosis.

What happened to you, Bruce? Did you make it? Or did you die without me hearing about it?

Ryan drummed his fingers on Solomons’ records, lost for a moment, indecisive. Then he put her file and Milowski’s on the spare desk, well away from those destined for microfiche.

He pushed his chair back abruptly, straightened his back and then crossed the room. Running his fingers under the lip of the bottom-most shelf, he produced a key. Going from the archive room into his office, he unlocked the top drawer of his personal filing cabinet. The file was right at the back. A plastic tab identified it simply as 'Vera Flynn’.

Ryan removed the brown paper package from its sleeve and placed it on his desk. Inside it, along with her file, was an unopened envelope, containing the last prediction; he recalled how she’d told him not to open it until the time was right.





‘But how will I know?’ he asked.

‘When the time is right, you will know.’

‘And then what?’

‘You will see.’





He unfolded the packaging and pulled her folder clear, releasing a musty odour. The paperwork had yellowed at the edges; the hand-written notes faded. From beneath them, he retrieved a discoloured buff envelope. The sellotape securing the flap had dried out and become brittle with age. Holding a corner in each hand, he debated whether to open it.

It wasn’t the time.





He drifted back through the years and examined her all over again, with the benefit of a more experienced mind.





Chapter 116



To have believed for thirty-two years that whatever it was she’d predicted would come true was a measure of Ryan’s conviction, but it faded as fast as his health declined.