The Gospel Makers Read Online Free PDF Page A

hear them?’
    ‘I most certainly would. You go through, and I’ll bring the cocoa.’
    The little front room was cosy with the fire glowing, the lamp on, and the television flickering silently in the corner. Mrs Paxton came in with the tray and set it on the low table by the fire.
    ‘I’m ready for this,’ Nina commented, picking up her mug. ‘You’ll be glad to hear I didn’t drink anything while I was there, though I had difficulty making them take no for an answer.’
    Her mother’s eyes widened. ‘You’re never saying there was something in the drinks?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Nina said slowly. ‘I thought I was just being paranoid, but now I’m not so sure. There could have been some kind of relaxant, to make us more receptive. Quite a few of them looked a bit woozy by the end of the evening.’
    Beneath her mother’s concerned exclamation, the words love, trust, salvation still lingered in her mind, though less stridently now she was back in familiar surroundings.
    ‘Anyway,’ she said firmly, setting down her mug, ‘see what you think.’ She switched on the recorder, and they sat in silence through Adam’s opening speech. Then, as the gentle American voice filled the room, Nina tensed, waiting for the sense of oneness she had experienced in that crowded room.
    It did not come. The words that had stirred her before now sounded hollow and empty, mere rhetoric. She was filled with a sense of betrayal, not helped by her mother’s reaction as the recording ended.
    ‘Well, what’s so special about that, I’d like to know? All that about spoiling the planet — it’s what we hear every day. And why get everyone there, build up their expectations, and then not even tell them what he was on about? A con, that’s what I call it. If it had been me, I’d have walked out.’
    Nina smiled painfully, doubting that. Had she been there, her mother would have been as spellbound as everyone else, but it was useless trying to explain.
    And she’d been right — neither Adam nor Bellringer had used the actual words that had haunted her. So where had they come from? Had there been a subliminal message flashing on the screen, something so swift only the subconscious could register it? Was that what had held them in thrall?
    She shuddered involuntarily. It had all seemed so innocuous, and yet …
    She’d have a word with the DCI on Monday, she decided. In the meantime she’d try to put it out of her mind and enjoy her weekend.
    *
    Mattie Hendrix skirted a crowd of drunks on the corner of Gloucester Circus and turned into Station Road. Farther along, it degenerated into one of Shillingham’s least desirable areas, some of the town’s meanest streets lying behind its eastern frontage.
    Thankfully, Mattie lived only a short way from the Circus and on the west side of the road, in a one-room flat above the Co-op. It was a good twenty minutes’ walk from the school, slightly less from Victoria Drive. There were buses, of course, but she took them only if it was raining or she happened to be late. Every penny must be saved towards her future — her future, and that of the world.
    She turned the key in her front door, letting herself into the tiny linoleum-floored hallway at the bottom of the steep staircase. It had been a shock to see the girls there tonight — she still wasn’t sure how to tackle it. She knew she was expected to spread the word among the pupils at Ashbourne, but that was yet another area in which she had failed. Her faith was deep and vital to her, but she was no evangelist and that was a lack in her.
    The stairs ended in the one-room flat. Mattie went to draw the thin curtains, glancing longingly at the black bars of the electric fire. Perhaps if she lit it for just ten minutes, to take the chill off the room, that wouldn’t be too extravagant.
    She switched it on and made herself a cup of tea in the curtained alcove she thought of as the kitchen. It had been a good turn-out tonight and Adam