Read Still Bleeding (A Jack Nightingale Short Story) for Free Online Page A

mouth with the back of his
hand. ‘But that’s not the point. The point is that she has the
stigmata, she can work miracles, and she’s not been baptised. That
makes her a threat to the Catholic Church. So I’m going to ask you
one last time, Nightingale. Is the Vatican your client?’
    Nightingale
said nothing.
    ‘Because if the
Vatican have hired you to find Tracey then you’ve put her life in
danger.’ He stared at Nightingale, his hand tightening around the
bottle in front of him. ‘You hear what I’m saying?’
    Nightingale
nodded slowly. ‘I hear you.’
    ‘Well?’
    Nightingale
took a deep breath and nodded slowly. ‘I need a cigarette,’ he
said.
     
    * * *
     
    ‘He was
definitely a priest?’ asked Ricky. He and Nightingale were standing
outside the pub, the collars of their coats turned up against the
winter wind. There were two other smokers on the other side of the
pub, young women with dyed blond hair and toddlers in matching
McLaren pushchairs.
    ‘He had the
cassock and everything,’ said Nightingale.
    ‘That doesn’t
mean anything,’ said Ricky. ‘They do a lot of outsourcing.’
    ‘You mean he
might have been pretending to be a priest?’
    ‘Don’t look so
outraged, Nightingale. It wasn’t that long ago that you were
claiming to be a journalist.’ He blew smoke up at the darkening
sky. ‘Have you told this Connolly where Tracey is?’
    Nightingale
shook his head.
    ‘That’s
something, at least. The problem is, if you found her, so could
anyone else.’
    ‘It wasn’t
difficult,’ said Nightingale. ‘You should have used a different
doctor.’
    ‘We didn’t have
much choice. We can’t just pop into any A&E without questions
being asked. And there’s always some NHS employee wanting to make a
few quid by tipping off a newspaper or Sky News.’ He drew on his
cigarette and blew smoke. ‘The thing is, if you found her, others
can, too.’
    Nightingale
flicked away what was left of his cigarette. ‘I need a favour.’
    ‘Yeah?’
    ‘Can I talk to
Tracey?’
     
    * * *
     
    Dr McKenzie had
finished changing Tracey’s dressing and had left the house by the
time Ricky and Nightingale got back. They had picked up Jenny from
the Audi. Ricky let himself into the house and asked Nightingale
and Jenny to wait on the doorstep while he spoke to Tracey’s
parents.
    ‘He seems
nice,’ said Jenny.
    ‘He is. Just
very protective of his niece.’
    ‘What did he
tell you?’
    ‘He said the
Vatican wants to hurt Tracey.’
    Jenny’s jaw
dropped. ‘What? Why?’
    Before
Nightingale could answer the door opened and Ricky ushered them in.
‘Before you see Tracey, there’s something I need to show you,’ he
said. He headed up the stairs and Nightingale and Jenny followed
him. Ricky opened a door and showed them a small study. There was a
desk and a computer and printer, and above it two bookshelves
filled with reference books. There was a corkboard on the wall
opposite the desk and there were several dozen newspaper cuttings
pinned on it. Paragraphs and pictures had been circled in red ink
and in the top right hand corner of the board was a map dotted with
coloured pins. ‘Once Carla told me what had happened to Tracey, I
started doing some research on stigmata. And time and time again I
discovered that within months of a stigmata case being reported one
of three things happened. More often than not the person involved
was shown to be a fake. That happens in more than ninety per cent
of cases. Sometimes the Church sends an investigator and they prove
fakery, sometimes the media exposes the fake. But it’s the
remaining ten per cent that concern me. I looked at fifty cases in
all. Of the five that weren’t proven to be fake, two died and three
have vanished.’
    ‘Vanished?’
    ‘They just
disappeared. Along with their families. Now you might assume that
they had just moved to avoid press attention, but trust me
Nightingale, I’m good at tracing people. They vanished from the
face