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‘Lynne and I have even talked about taking it to the next level,’ he said, taking the tie from his drawer.
‘Marriage?’ she asked, eyes wide.
‘Bloody hell, Stace, we’ve only been going out a couple of months. No, I want her to come over more, spend a few nights, just when she wants to, have the run of the house and treat it like her own. I wanna ask her but I can’t find the spare key.’
‘Get another cut,’ Stacey said logically.
He shook his head. ‘Nah, can’t have spare keys floating about. Might need to change the locks if we can’t find it.’
‘Penn, do you ever think that your anal retentive…’
‘Hey, leave me alone, Stirling.’
‘Huh?’
‘Stirling Moss?’
‘Nope, still not getting it.’
‘Way to make me feel old, Stace. One of the greatest racing drivers who ever lived.’
‘Oh, okay,’ she said, sitting back in her chair. ‘Come on, you know what I’m going to ask. Are you a believer in this psychic stuff or not?’
Stacey liked to believe that the boss and Bryant had similar conversations in the car.
He also sat back and twirled a pen in his fingers.
‘Keats was trying to discuss the same thing yesterday and the answer is, I dunno really. The realist in me thinks it’s a crock of you know what, but there’s a part of me that wants it to be true, that there is a mysterious realm and untapped powers. I suppose I’m waiting to be convinced. I’d like to be convinced. How about you?’
‘Actually no. I believe half of them know they’re talking rubbish and are actively deceiving people and the other half genuinely think they have a gift but they don’t.’
‘Okay, explain Nostradamus.’
‘He wrote everything in riddles,’ she countered.
‘Quatrains,’ he corrected.
‘Gobbledygook, which leaves it open to interpretation. I think events have been made to fit the vagueness of his so-called prophecies.’
‘You’re really very closed off to the possibility, eh?’
‘I think it can all be explained,’ she said, sitting forward and hitting her keyboard, bringing her screen back to life. ‘And on that note, I’m going to dig deeper on Father George Markinson and see why he moves around more often than an army wife.’
Penn followed suit and took his headphones from the drawer.
On her way into work, Stacey had resolved not to mention what had happened once they’d returned from her driving lesson, because right now she couldn’t even be sure of what she’d seen.
Shaken up at the time, she had been convinced that she’d recognised the form of Terence Birch, but as the hours had passed, her mind had rationalised it to a random stranger either casing the joint or taking a quick pee around the side of their building. The nagging doubt in her mind would disappear in time, she thought as she grabbed her list of moves for Father Markinson.
The more she looked at it, the more she realised that there was something very wrong with this picture. In some instances, he’d barely had time to unpack before being shunted off to somewhere else.
She decided to search his name connected to some of the local areas. Especially the ones where he’d been for the shortest time.
The first search got a result. She read the newspaper report in the localEcho.
‘No way,’ she said.
Penn took no notice of her outburst, but she could barely believe what she was reading.
