Night Sisters

‘So who the hell is she?’ I insisted. ‘Look, I won’t tell anyone, I promise … but she could have killed me and two of my friends tonight; I just need to know why.’

‘She wants me to come with her,’ was her indirect answer. She rolled her head on the pillow, staring out of the window at the promise of day; then turned her shadowed, haunted eyes towards me once again. ‘And I want to. I really do. But I’m so scared.’

That left me speechless for a moment. Then: ‘Come with her … where? I mean, doesn’t she want to harm you, then?’

She shook her head. ‘She says she wants to save me, and I believe her. I have to. But if they find out …’

‘Who? Who would she be saving you from?’

But the last of the colour had gone from her face now, faded down to the bone, and she shook her head. ‘Look, forget I said that, all right? Please?’ The quaver in her voice confirmed it: she was scared all right. She was terrified. Despite her plea, I was about to pursue the point, when a sudden recollection shut me up. Alison Scott had been terrified too: scared into silence by something that later killed her right downstairs in my department. Scared of the Clinicians …

And the word was suddenly on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say it aloud, see what reaction it got. I moistened my lips … and didn’t speak. Perhaps because I didn’t want to trouble her further; perhaps because I was afraid of her reply. It was so much easier to believe that this was all some squalid vendetta between vice gangs, and nothing more. People capable of hideous cruelty, to be sure; but people none the less.

‘All right,’ I told her. ‘I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to. But that woman … She’s ill. You’d be crazy to go with her …’

Angela said nothing; I was suddenly afraid she’d clammed up on me completely. But then she murmured: ‘Oh, she’s ill all right. At least … I hope she is.’

I waited, not quite understanding. The WPC would be back in a moment, if those weren’t already her returning footsteps.

‘Because she thinks she’s an angel,’ the girl continued dully – and looked me right in the eye. ‘She thinks she’s the Angel of Death.’

Not surprisingly, I found it hard to get to sleep when I got home; just lay there, snuggled up beneath the duvet and staring at the ceiling. For all the familiarity of my surroundings … despite the sunshine outside, and Sarah on a day off and quietly knitting in the living room … the gnawing unease just would not go away. A new thought had entered my head on the bus home – and plummeted straight to my stomach, where it rested now like a cold lump of lead.