Read Online The Lazarus Prophecy by F. G. Cottam - Free Book Online Page B

too.’
    Charlotte sniffed and pulled a piece of tissue out of her pocket and dabbed at her nostrils, which were raw. She said, ‘That’s just bizarre. You’re a senior police officer.’
    â€˜Psychics help us from time to time. We don’t advertise the fact and the ones who believe they’re genuine don’t seek publicity. Some of my colleagues are unconvinced. I’ve always kept an open mind.’
    Charlotte reached for her tea. Jane thought she was keeping it together remarkably well but that any questions about the night’s earlier events risked provoking an episode of real trauma.Fingers trembled across the table towards the mug and gripped its handle. It wobbled on its way to her mouth but the tea didn’t spill. She slurped and gulped and Jane felt a stab of sympathy so strong for the woman it felt like a wound.
    â€˜Where are you planning to stay the night?’
    â€˜Your liaison officer booked a hotel room on my behalf.’
    â€˜Would you feel safer with a police guard?’
    â€˜It isn’t necessary. He won’t come for me again.’
    â€˜Why won’t he?’
    â€˜I don’t know, Detective Chief Inspector. I just know that he won’t.’
    â€˜I’d like you to call me Jane.’
    â€˜That might change, though, mightn’t it, if I provoke him?’
    â€˜I don’t know what you mean.’
    â€˜I mean I can’t help you, Jane. Even if I could, I’d be afraid to. Do you think that’s cowardly?’
    â€˜I think you’ve already been very brave. I think it was courageous of you to agree to talk to me at all. I’ll arrange a car to drop you at your hotel. If you need anything from the Pimlico flat I can arrange to get that to you.’
    At the mention of the flat, Charlotte grew even paler. Her eyes widened and the tiny blue veins at her temples beat against the skin. She tried to stand and the weight on her damaged ankle caused her to gasp in pain and she sat down heavily again. Jane stood and went across and opened the door and gestured for the liaison officer, waiting outside, to come back in.
    â€˜If you remember anything else, Charlotte, I’d be grateful to hear it.’
    â€˜There’s nothing else,’ Charlotte said, her voice made weak and tremulous by the rude assault of events.
    Jane nodded and left the room.
    She was very tired. She could barely focus on the bland furniture lining the long corridor, the noticeboards and heating radiators and the strip lights illuminating her way fromabove. When she got to the lift she punched the button she wanted by touch because her eyes couldn’t clarify the brightly lit display.
    She thought she had just been given an important if reluctant clue. She felt an intuitive faith in the authenticity of Charlotte Reynard’s gift. The Scholar would not come for her now and the reason was nothing to do with her talented feet or her pretty face or her estimable charity work. They had together combined only to provoke him.
    Her knowing he wouldn’t come for her informed, perversely, the very reason he wouldn’t do so. Did he admire her for her psychic power? It was something that unsettled people generally, something usually considered sinister. How did he even know about it? It was strange to regard as an attribute something thought of until recently as an element of witchcraft.
    She called Jacob Prior.
    â€˜This has to stop. I’m in bed. I’m asleep. This is basically harassment.’
    â€˜When was the last witchcraft trial in Britain?’
    â€˜During the Second World War, when a Portsmouth woman revealed the sinking of a Royal Naval warship the intelligence people were keeping secret from the public.’
    â€˜What happened?’
    â€˜She made it known to the grieving families she could communicate with the dead crewmen. HMS Barham, it was. Churchill intervened personally. She was convicted and sent to prison in