Free Dead Scared by S. J. Bolton Page A

we talked about it in one of our early sessions?’
    ‘It’s not just unlikely, it’s impossible,’ said Megan. ‘Our systems at the practice are completely secure. They have to be, to protect all our patients’ confidentiality. Even my colleagues couldn’t access my files without my passwords and most of them, frankly, have trouble switching their computers on in the morning.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Evi. ‘I was on edge and then scared on Friday night. It just felt like someone had got inside my head.’
    ‘A bone man,’ said Megan, her forehead creased with frown lines. ‘But from what you’ve told me, the bone men were more like bonfire-night Guys. Built around a frame stuffed with rubbish and wearing clothes. They weren’t skeletal. You’re sure the figure in the tree was meant to be a bone man?’
    Evi felt some of the tension draining out of her. ‘You’re right,’ she said, after a few seconds. ‘There were people, in that place I told you about, who dressed as skeletons but they weren’t the bone men. The skeletons carried the bone men to the fire.’
    Megan’s thin, pencilled eyebrows disappeared into the coils of her fringe.
    ‘It was an odd town,’ said Evi.
    ‘Remind me to give it a miss next time I’m walking the Pennines.’
    Neither spoke for a moment.
    ‘Rag week can’t be very far away,’ said Megan. ‘Dressing up seems pretty much compulsory then. And fir cones are very common this time of year.’
    ‘True,’ said Evi. ‘But it doesn’t alter the fact that someone was in my house.’
    ‘You mean the fir cones on the table? What did the police say about that?’
    ‘They didn’t think it was too sinister,’ said Evi. ‘But they advised I get the locks changed. Which I have done. The university’s maintenance department did it yesterday.’
    The two women fell quiet for a moment, as Megan looked at her scarlet fingernails and Evi watched a dried leaf fall from the stem of a rose bush.
    ‘Are you thinking about Harry as much?’ asked Megan.
    As if she ever stopped thinking about Harry. He was there, in her head, like an unspoken awareness of her own self. Didn’t mean she wanted to talk about him. And the college porter would be locking the garden gates soon.
    ‘Are you still worried about the suicides?’ asked Megan. ‘Did you talk to CID again?’
    Evi felt her eyes drop to the ground. She couldn’t tell Megan about the undercover investigation she’d instigated. About the girl she’d installed in her faculty. So now she was hiding things from her counsellor. She shook her head.
    ‘CID believe the suicides are exactly that,’ she said. ‘Suicides. There’s no evidence of coercion or third party involvement. They’ve respectfully suggested I concentrate on being accessible to vulnerable members of the university community and leave them to policing Cambridgeshire.’
    ‘Well, I guess we never hesitate to tell the police how to do their jobs when we see fit,’ replied Megan with a smile. Then the smile faded. ‘Wasn’t there a spate of suicides when we were here?’ she asked. ‘Or was that before your time?’
    Evi thought for a moment and then shook her head. ‘From what I can gather, the suicide rate here has been bang on normal until five years ago,’ she said. She looked at her watch again. ‘Time’s up,’ she said. ‘Is Nick around this afternoon, do you know?’
    ‘I think he got called to the hospital. Do you want me to leave him a message?’
    ‘It’s OK. I’ll call him at home.’
    The two women left the walled garden and made their way the short distance down the street to the GPs’ surgery where Megan was based two days a week.
    As they turned the corner, Evi saw that an expensive-looking Japanese saloon was blocking her own car in. When he spotted them coming, the driver, a man she knew she’d seen before, got out. He was tall, late thirties, with short dark hair, square jaw and a muscular build. His dark suit looked expensive