Free Still Bleeding (A Jack Nightingale Short Story) by Stephen Leather Page A

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    ‘Connolly? So
you’re Irish?’
    ‘Do I sound
Irish?’ asked the priest.
    ‘No,’ said
Nightingale. There was a flatness about the man’s accent, not Irish
and not English but not American either, somewhere in between.
Nightingale walked around his desk and sat down.
    ‘ There
you go then,’ said Connolly as he sat and smoothed the cassock
around his legs.
    Nightingale
tapped the card on the desk. ‘And what do you do for the Holy
See?’
    The priest
smiled amiably. ‘I’m sort of a middle man.’
    ‘But you are a
priest?’
    Connolly
gestured at the white collar around his neck. ‘I’m not wearing this
as a fashion statement,’ he said.
    Nightingale
held up the card. ‘It doesn’t say priest on this.’
    ‘No, that’s
true. Would it help if I recited the Lord’s Prayer? Would that
convince you?’
    Nightingale
smiled thinly. ‘How about you tell me what’s in Luke Chapter
Eleven, Verse Nine.’
    The priest
raised one eyebrow. ‘Are you serious? You want to test me?’
    Nightingale
said nothing.
    Connolly
sighed. ‘Fine. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to
you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to
you.’
    ‘Close enough.’
    ‘Perhaps you should also consider Deuteronomy
Chapter Six Verse Sixteen. You shall not put the Lord your God to
the test, as you tested him at Massah.’
    ‘Yeah, well I’m not testing God, am I? I’m
testing his representative, which seems fair enough. Isn’t that
what John said?’
    Connolly frowned. ‘John?’
    ‘John Chapter Four, Verse One.’
    Connolly’s frown deepened, then he nodded
slowly. ‘Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits
to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone
out into the world.’ The priest smiled. ‘You know your Bible, Mr
Nightingale. Are you by any chance a Catholic?’
    ‘I’m afraid not.’
    ‘But clearly a believer?’
    ‘I read the Bible every now and again. Do I
need to be a believer to get the job?’ He put the card down on his
desk.
    ‘It wouldn’t make any difference either way,’
said Connolly. ‘I came to you because your website makes it clear
that you have some expertise in supernatural matters.’
    ‘I’ve had my moments,’ said Nightingale.
‘What is it you want doing?’
    The priest bent down and Nightingale realized
there was a battered leather briefcase at his feet. Connolly picked
it up, opened it, and took out a newspaper. He passed it over to
Nightingale. ‘Page three,’ he said.
    The paper was the Bromley Times, and the
story was headlined ‘MIRACLE GIRL HEALS CANCER SCHOOLBOY’.
Nightingale quickly read through the story. A twelve-year-old girl
had begun to bleed from her hands and feet and from a wound in her
side. Stigmata. The wounds corresponded to the wounds of Christ on
the cross. The girl’s name was Tracey Spradbery and according to
the newspaper the Virgin Mary had appeared to her in a vision.
Living next door to Tracey and her family was a ten-year-old boy
who had leukemia. According to the boy’s parents, the disease had
gone into remission the day after he had gone around to play with
Tracey and after a week doctors had pronounced him fully cured.
    ‘Interesting,’ said Nightingale. He looked at
the date of the cutting. It had been published a month earlier.
‘This is a big story, why haven’t I seen this in the nationals? Or
on TV?’
    ‘Because as soon as that appeared in the
local paper the family shut the doors. The girl hasn’t been seen
since and they don’t allow visitors. You’ll see in the article that
no one from the Spradbery family spoke to the journalist and
there’s no photograph of Tracey.’
    ‘So she hasn’t healed anyone else?’
    ‘There’s no evidence that she healed anyone,’
said Connolly. ‘The entire story is based on an interview with the
next door family.’
    Jenny knocked on the door and brought in a
tray with two mugs of coffee. She put it on Nightingale’s