Never Somewhere Else Read Online Free PDF Page A

scowled and scuttled out into the corridor.
    ‘Well, what do you make of that, Dr Brightman?’
    Lorimer’s question was a reluctant overture to his visitor. Solly shook his head.
    ‘I doubt if he is capable of contributing very much. He’ll live in a world of his own with little sense of dates or time. He probably hears all sorts of weird things during the night. For him they won’t be weird, though, just a background noise, like bullfrogs in the tropics.’
    Lorimer gathered up his papers.
    ‘Come through to my office, will you? I’d like to talk about your involvement in the case.’
    Solly noticed that Lorimer didn’t meet his eye. It was just as well. He might not have appreciated the huge grin that spread across the psychologist’s face.
    *
    The thunder rumblesoverhead. From his vantage point high above the city the watcher looks out at the sudden flashes. Squares and angles of housing blocks are suddenly lit up, looming large and bright. Darkness again.
    The watcher edges nearer to the cold glass. What does he see? Lights of the city twinkling through the gloom. Dark masses of parkland, unshining. The faraway lights are frozen by another flash of lightning, turning black night into sudden shocking day. The watcher recoils from the naked light. Too bright. Too penetrating. He needs to retreat into the safe shell of his room.
    Elsewhere in the city other watchers stood, disturbed and fascinated by the electrical storm. Solly had pulled a chair over to his window and now sat by the long, undrawn curtain, gazing at the free light show. It exhilarated him to feel an unleashed power which had nothing to do with humankind. No forethought. No motives. No manipulation. He laughed softly, like a child, when the flashes lit up the landscape. His dark eyes gleamed with delight at every crash. The storm was directly overhead now and some car alarms had begun their persistent shrill in the distance. He would sit until the crashes grew fewer and the pounding rain quietened in the streets.
    Solly would have no trouble in slipping into sleep, happy with the interlude of the thunderstorm which had cleansed his mind of all the day’s events and the anticipation of events to come.
    Lorimer had pulled aside the green curtain after the first huge crash and flash. Light had penetrated the thin material and created a greenish glow in his room. The white lightning was naked and warm. Lorimer thought about the derelict they had brought in. He, and too many others like him, were out there now at the mercy of the elements. He had a sudden picture of soggy cardboard and heaps of rags illumined by the sheets of lightning. Poor sods, he thought, more in anger than in pity. His rage had no direction. For who was to blame for the plight of the homeless? If, like Valentine Carruthers, you had simply strayed away from the conventions of society then there was no one to blame. These things simply happened. Relationships crumbled, illusions and dreams were shattered and broken humans retreated into the safety of the outside world, sheltering as they could from the power of the elements. Like Poor Tom in
King Lear
. What was it Shakespeare had called humanity? ‘A poor bare, forked animal’? Somewhere out there Valentine would be crouching like a beast below some bushes. Safe again from other wild animals.
    Lorimer thought ofthe killer. He too was out there somewhere, untamed and powerful, like the sudden lightning. But, thought Lorimer, he could be prevented from striking again. He had to find him soon.

C HAPTER 5

    A lison Girdley walkedenergetically along the darkened street. The club had been good tonight, she thought, but she wanted to be home and into the shower to wash away all the hot stickiness. Her white trainers padded over the pavement. She could see the tenement building in the distance. Not far now. Just ahead, parked by the kerb, she could see a large pale vehicle. It looked like an ambulance. Curious, she thought. Why is it