The Case of the Haunted Cot Page 7

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Miller was watching Sophie when one of the children bellowed out a tremendous cry. What struck him was how unaffected Sophie was by the crying, at least outwardly. Considering everything that was happening, Miller expected it to upset her. She just kept staring into the park. Miller turned back to see the golden-haired girl now running over to her mother holding her grazed elbow. The girl pulled at her mother’s coat, but the mother only looked around long enough to tell her to go play. And she did, albeit reluctantly.

  ‘There are ways of talking to the dead, aren’t there?’ Sophie said.

  ‘They don’t always work, not for everyone.’

  ‘We need to find out how to save Tia. Something is keeping her there. Or someone.’

  Miller stared at her questioningly. He needed to know what had prompted this.

  ‘I think there’s someone else in the flat,’ Sophie said. ‘If we can’t communicate with Tia to make her feel better, maybe we can communicate with him, see what he wants.’

  ‘But how do you know there’s somebody else?’

  ‘I can feel another presence,’ she said, taking a deep breath. ‘And it makes sense. Why else would a baby be stuck there crying? Somebody is doing this to her.’

  ‘But why?’ Miller asked.

  ‘We won’t know why unless we contact them!’

  He needed to be careful not to question her so much she felt he no longer believed her. But he was finding it difficult not to ask questions, as all of this made so little sense to him. He remembered it also made little sense to Price and Keith. Sophie seemed to be the only person even coming close to understanding this, and she was looking to him for answers.

  ‘OK, OK,’ Miller said. ‘I might have somebody that can help.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ Miller repeated, altering the emphasis. ‘Sophie, if you want help in this area, we’re going to need —’

  ‘Please, just try it yourself. If it doesn’t work, we can bring in someone else. I just … I’d rather not include anybody else right now. Please, will you try?’

  Chapter Twelve

  Miller had been surprised enough when he’d received another text from Price, asking to meet him here, followed by the obligatory insult. What Miller was really not expecting, however, was for Price to live in a council block, not unlike the Fullwoods. Miller had assumed Price had money, or came from it. Partly because if he had so much free time to investigate paranormal activity, he must have been getting money from somewhere to pay the rent. Besides, Miller couldn’t imagine Price surviving five minutes in south London at night with his people-skills.

  Checking the text again to confirm the address, Miller followed the flats until he came to the number sixteen.

  Before knocking, Miller took a moment to look out through the large windows in the stairwell at this part of the city, illuminated by the late-morning sun. It wasn’t the kind of area that was asking to be lit up. In fact, like a few of its likely inhabitants, this grey quiet neighbourhood seemed to be hiding while the lights were on. It was so still.

  Miller hadn’t grown up in a dump like this, but in his later years he’d lived in a couple that weren’t much better.

  Wanting to put an end to this before it sent him the wrong way down memory lane, Miller knocked on the door. Three short, light raps. Probably shorter than necessary; there was more than a small part of him that hoped Price wouldn’t answer the door. And he didn’t.

  A short, late middle-aged Asian man with greying hair answered. Miller instinctively thought the man was Chinese, but he wasn’t certain.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Miller said. While it wasn’t entirely surprising, Miller hadn’t expected such a puerile prank from Price. ‘I’ve got the wrong flat. Sorry to have bothered you.’

  ‘Miller?’ the man said, speaking it slowly as if Miller was two distinct words.

  ‘Yes, how …’

  ‘Come in,’ he said, the words sounding more like a compromise than an invitation.

  The man waved Miller into the flat, and Miller obliged, largely out of curiosity. Even if the greying Asian man hadn’t answered the door, there was no way Miller would have believed Price lived here. Never would Price have decorated with so many obvious Eastern influences. Again, Miller didn’t know any Asian cultures enough to be certain where exactly the man came from, but at this moment in time it wasn’t really the point. The point was: where was Price, and why had he led Miller into this man’s house?

  The man himself looked filled with doubt at having allowed Miller into his home, and constantly stared at him with suspicion. Miller felt more like a trespasser with every step he took.

  He was shown through to the living room, where Price was sitting on their floor, fiddling with a large stereo system that lay in front of him. Immediately Miller recognised the stereo as the same make and model as Sophie Fullwood’s. For a horrifying second he thought Price had stolen theirs, until he noticed several scuff marks on the side of the unit that had clearly been there some time, but definitely weren’t on the Fullwoods’ stereo. Static blared from it, making it all the more familiar. At least Price didn’t have the volume quite as high as Sophie did.

  ‘Glad you could make it,’ Price said, glancing up at him.

  ‘Why are you in their home?’

  Miller subtly nodded over to the man now standing next to his wife by their sofa. The both of them were staring at what Price was doing. The wife appeared even more suspicious and frustrated than her husband. Miller had no idea how Price had managed to blag his way into their home, but it didn’t look like he would be welcome for long.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Price said. ‘They can’t understand a word of English. I needed their home for another experiment.’

  Miller wasn’t completely convinced that they, or at least the husband, didn’t understand English. After all, he’d seemed fairly confident that his words at the door would be understood.

  ‘You’re not going to trip up another child, are you?’

  Price looked up at Miller, his welcoming smile turning to one of amusement. Apparently he’d been expecting to have this conversation.

  ‘Did you see me trip that girl up?’

  ‘No, but you were talking about doing it, and then —’

  ‘And then it happened, so therefore I must be to blame, is that your reasoning? Post hoc ergo propter hoc?’

  ‘It seems the most likely scenario.’

  Price let out a weak laugh, then returned his attention to the stereo. Sitting there and fiddling with the tuning buttons, Price continued to speak to Miller without paying him any physical attention, as if Miller was only worth half his attention.

  ‘Children trip up all the time. That it happened at that moment means nothing without further evidence. It was a busy supermarket, yet did you see anybody approaching me about tripping her up? Did nobody there see it, or do you think nobody would say anything?’

  As Price said the last sentence, emphasising each word, he looked up at Miller with a stern expression, like he was imparting some crucial life lesson. Miller didn’t know what to think, but he did find himself wanting to give Price the benefit of the doubt.

  On the other side of the living room, the Asian couple were talking amongst themselves in another language. As they spoke, the wife was eyeing Price up with increasing suspicion.

  ‘Sorry,’ Miller said to them, adding in an apologetic smile just in case they didn’t understand the words.

  ‘How did you manipulate your way into this flat, anyway?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Manipulate? What kind of person do you take me for? I merely bribed them to let me set up equipment for my experiment. And then I went and set up several baby monitors in other flats.’

  ‘Wait, you bribed everybody else as well?’

  ‘Bribed!’ Price said in mock offence. ‘All of them? What kind of person do you take me for? I manipulated them.’

  The white noise per
meating the air fluctuated as Price fiddled with the tuning. Almost too scared to outright ask, Miller couldn’t help but wonder how Price had manipulated so many people into helping.

  ‘I told them I was working for a TV channel and said I was carrying out a small experiment as part of a show. I even gave them all waivers to sign. People will do anything for five minutes of fame.’

  ‘You prepared fake documents for people to sign?’

  Price pulled a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Miller.

  By signing this legally binding document, you hereby give consent for your image and property to be used on this and any related show of our choosing. This is not a guarantee that your image or property will be used, but that we have the option to do so. Please read the entirety of this legally binding document before signing. This document covers the wide variety of circumstances regarding the footage we may shoot, and how we may use said footage.

  This is a legally binding document. There are many other legally binding documents like it, but this one is mine. This legally binding document is the real legally binding document, all the other legally binding documents are just imitating, so please sign the true legally binding document. In the event of this not being a legally binding document, the exit clauses are located here, here, and over the page.

  It went on like that for the rest of the A4 page, filled completely with nonsense ramblings overusing the words legally binding document. Miller found it impossible to believe anybody could mistake this for the real thing, and he told Price.

  ‘Most people only read the first paragraph of documents they have to sign, if that much. The rest they might briefly scan over for any keywords. People have a natural instinct to believe what they’ve already been told, and to trust that they’ve been told everything they need to know. I think mainly it’s because we’re all inherently lazy.’

  Miller held out the paper for Price to take back, but he was too focused on the stereo, so Miller put it in his pocket.

  ‘That’s not actually Sophie’s stereo, is it?’ Miller said. Suddenly those scuff marks didn’t strike him as definitive proof. Maybe they were made while moving the stereo and weren’t really anywhere near as old as they appeared.

  ‘I found it cheap online.’

  ‘And the point in all of this?’ Miller asked, also wondering why Price had bothered bringing him here.

  ‘I’m hoping you’ll figure it out.’

  Which Miller took to mean he’d been asked here so Price could show off his intelligence, so he could feel superior. Miller might have left there and then, except with no idea what Price was up to, in a non-English speaking couple’s home, Miller really didn’t want to go while Price might take advantage of them. Unfortunately he couldn’t really say much to the couple, and it was clear Price wasn’t going to tell him anything else, leaving Miller standing there in silence as Price continued to tune the radio.

  ‘Aha!’ Price shouted, making the couple stare at him in confusion. The stereo erupted into life, of a sort. The static was still present, and loud, but there was something else behind it. At first Miller worried he was hearing the baby crying again, the way he’d heard it in the recording before. But no, this was a deeper voice. Price fine-tuned it further, and the voice became clear enough to make out its words.

  ‘Orange. Orange. Orange. Orange.’

  It was somebody repeating the word, not one recorded word being repeated. The gaps between the word varied in length, and the word itself was occasionally spoken slightly differently, such as the emphasis changing to a different syllable. This was somebody trying to keep themselves entertained while performing a monotonous task.

  ‘Orange. Orange. Orange. Orange.’

  ‘What’s orange?’ asked Miller.

  ‘Data.’

  ‘Data regarding what?’

  ‘Orange. Orange. Orange. Ora —’

  ‘Let’s see.’

  Price reached to the side of the stereo, out of Miller’s view, and pulled back a large, folded over, sheet of paper. He unfolded it and placed it down where both he and Miller could see it. There were a series of squares on the sheet, creating a rectangle. Some of the squares were coloured in, but none in the same colour. So ordinary were the shapes and what they made, that it took Miller a moment to realise what this was. It was the flat complex, the one they were standing in.

  ‘So I take it Mr orange here is calling from the flat coloured in orange,’ Miller said.

  ‘Your powers of colour deduction are unrivalled.’

  ‘So which block is this flat?’

  ‘The black.’

  According to Price’s rudimentary diagram, the orange flat was directly below this one.

  ‘Not particularly surprising; all the data corresponds so far,’ Price said.

  ‘And what is that, exactly?’

  ‘Purple, red, orange and blue are the only colours I’ve caught. Notice anything?’

  ‘They’re all close to the black.’

  ‘No pink, no brown, no yellow,’ said Price, ‘oh, and no ghosts. And since this block was built roughly the same time as where the Fullwoods live … are you getting there yet?’

  Miller nodded. Catching movement out the corner of his eyes, Miller noticed the wife was now prodding her husband and pointing to Price, speaking to him in their native language, but in — what sounded to Miller, at least — a stern tone. Whatever she was trying to get her husband to say to them, Miller doubted it was offering tea. The last thing Miller wanted was to outstay his welcome, especially if it ended in a call to the police.

  ‘None of this proves anything,’ Miller said.

  ‘It proves the sounds must be coming from one of the surrounding flats. Any farther than that, and the signal just doesn’t make it.’

  ‘And what about the possibility of it coming from the other side?’ Miller asked. He didn’t expect a serious reply.

  ‘Well, I mean, aside from your misuse of the word possibility, I don’t think much of the idea at all. I’ve just shown that this radio won’t pick up a stray baby monitor signal from more than twenty, thirty-feet max. And that was with me researching the baby monitor most likely to be picked up. And you want me to entertain the idea that it’s transcending this entire plane of existence?’

  ‘I don’t see any reason to instantly dismiss the notion.’

  ‘You can’t just accept a notion because it hasn’t been disproven yet,’ Price said. Miller could see the Asian man standing behind Price trying to find the right words to say. ‘If we did that, I’d have to take into account the possibility that unicorns and fairies are affecting the reception, as I can’t conclusively prove that they’re not. You take ideas into account when they have actual evidence, not when they don’t.’

  The Asian man started to talk the second Price stopped. Miller could only go on how he was speaking as he still had no idea what language he was speaking. His tone was uncertain when he started and progressively became angrier.

  ‘Fine I get the point. I think we should go now,’ Miller said. Price stared at him, eyebrow raised. ‘They want us to leave.’

  ‘We don’t know that for certain.’

  The Asian man pointed at the door while his voice rose further.

  ‘The evidence is piling up,’ Miller said, increasingly agitated. ‘I think your money’s run out.’

  ‘You may be right there,’ Price said, opening his wallet. ‘You haven’t got a twenty I could borrow, do you?’

  ‘I’m leaving.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  Price stood up, staring at Miller with that irritating expression of I-know-something-you-don’t-know which Miller was beginning to suspect was Price’s default expression. Using nothing more than his eyes and eyebrows, Price pointed to the stereo. Miller realised immediately what he was getting at, and he wanted nothing more than to say no and walk away. But if he didn’t help Price move the equipment, then the couple would have to put up with him for even longer.


  They took the speakers first; they were light enough to take one each, placing them in Price’s car. Then they moved Price’s paperwork, including the coloured map and the notes Miller had given him before, leaving the main stereo unit until last.

  ‘Purple, red, orange and blue,’ Price said. He was higher up than Miller, as they carefully descended the stairs holding the stereo between them, Miller walking backwards. ‘So it must be one of the four people nearest the Fullwoods.’

  ‘Well you’ve got all the notes I made, you know those people as well as I do.’

  Miller took a deep breath and had to adjust his fingers to keep himself from losing his grip.

  ‘Yes, an OAP that’s sensitive to the cold, a classic crazy cat lady —’

  ‘An older single woman with two cats does not make her crazy.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah yeah — and a single young lad newly moved in. I know them according to whoever you got the information from. All I know for certain is that you missed something.’

  ‘Like I said, it’s all there,’ Miller said. ‘And yet, none of them sound likely to have a child.’

  ‘If it was all there, I’d have figured it out by now. You missed something.’

  Now it was Price’s turn to breathe heavily and readjust his fingers. For a second the stereo leaned towards Miller, and Miller panicked and thought he was about to take its entire weight.

  ‘Not if there really is a lost baby girl in need of my help,’ Miller said, his voice soft as if it could tiptoe over Price’s arrogance without unleashing it.

  ‘You don’t believe that.’

  They reached the bottom of the stairs; Miller felt the weight even out as the stereo levelled. He was trying to concentrate on the task, but thoughts of his conversation with Sophie circled in his mind. When he looked up from his hands he saw Price studying him. He saw the moment Price realised something was wrong.

  ‘What is it, what’s happened?’ Price asked.

  ‘You had your chance to prove it wasn’t real. If this is actually happening, I can’t sit by and let it. I have to do something to help her.’

  Price slowed down, but Miller, pulling the stereo and Price along, refused to let him dictate the speed. Miller wanted to be done with this stereo and go. Next time he would just ignore Price’s text.

  ‘And what are you going to do?’ Price asked. ‘Sit down and have a chat with the baby? Ask her why she’s not moved on? Hey, maybe she didn’t want to go to Heaven with a full nappy and was waiting for her mum to change her.’