The Last Word

This story contains themes that may be upsetting to some readers, please be advised.

     The ‘water cooler’ moment is long dead, with the rise of social media and on demand news, yet Piers Kavanagh’s last words on his live show ‘Exposed’ were on everyone’s lips, everywhere, the following day.

     “I can see…”

     During the staged seance with Molly Burke, the latest spiritualist medium he planned to debunk on his popular show, he’d begun to look odd.

     “Are you okay?” Molly asked Piers, opposite her, their hands touching on a small studio table. He looked pale, a little blue around the lips, his studio makeup holding firm despite his profuse sweating.

     “Fine, fine…” he snapped, briefly lifting one hand to run his finger under his collar. Sweat was beading noticeably on his forehead, collecting the colour of his hair dye as it dripped down his cheek and onto the table.

     “Could we have some water for Mr Kavanagh?” Molly turned to the floor manager standing nearby who just shrugged, he only responded to Kavanagh or the director.

     “Let’s carry on, Ms Burke, shall we?” Kavanagh’s voice sounded croaky and slowly he slumped in his seat. Something was seriously wrong. 

The production team monitoring the social media feeds high-fived each other as #exposed #kavanaghdieslive began to trend; shutting down the director’s demands to stop filming and get the medic, “Don’t you dare, ratings are the best they’ve been this season.”

Molly gripped Kavanagh’s hand, “Piers, stay calm, I’ll get help,” standing but held by his tight, moist grip. Kavanagh’s eyes began to flutter, and he went rigid then began to slip sideways, tumbling to the floor. A shout for help went out from the floor crew as Molly ran around the table where she squatted down. The director ordered two of the handheld cameras to film Molly pumping Kavanagh’s chest as he gasped, “I can see…” then fell limp.

#

The talk radio station in the cab taking Molly home was full of callers discussing Kavanagh’s demise; was it a stunt, was he really dead, what did his last words mean? 

“Did you see it?” asked the driver rhetorically, “Kavanagh dropping dead like that. Bloody good TV I’ll give ‘em that,” he carried on as his passenger watched the streets of Manchester whiz past, a blur of traffic lights, street lamps, and chicken shop windows. Eventually they arrived at her modest terraced town house where she tipped him despite the ride being on the TV station’s account.

Closing the front door, Valmont, her lilac point Siamese cat, wound himself around her legs as she leaned back against her wall and exhaled, “What a night!” She didn’t bother checking her phone, knowing there’d be countless journos and producers chasing her down for comment and offers of appearances on upcoming breakfast and reality shows. 

After feeding Valmont she found a chillout playlist on Spotify, letting it play quietly in the background as she sat in the dark of her study. Molly reached for her crystal ball; a prop, nothing more, grounding her as she ran her hands over its reassuringly cold, smooth surface. She cupped the orb and breathed deeply, letting the insightful part of her mind settle, slowing the swirling of fractured images from the traumatic evening until she was left with just one single impression: a large eye, filling her crystal ball, gazing upwards at her face.

#

“What did he see?”

“Was it a white light?”

“Did Kavanagh witness God?”

“Did Burke curse him?”

The tabloid conjecture was predictably banal and Molly, fed up with constant requests for comment, had brought the shutters down on her business for the time being. She had modest residuals from her books and franchised TV shows, so could afford to ‘do a Garbo.’ Honestly, she’d dreaded appearing on Kavanagh’s shitty show and despised the cocksure bastard. Only after he’d ruined several good, honest, down-to-earth spiritualists who simply couldn’t perform like circus animals she took a stand to take him down. Molly Burke was arguably the best in the business, if you could call it that, and her reputation for contacting the dead and silencing sceptics was formidable.

Stroking Valmont’s back as he kneaded her legs, she allowed herself to drift. It never worked if you pushed it. What had he seen? 

A sickening feeling of falling backwards heralded the first stage of awareness and she let go, allowing herself to be consumed by the sensation, repressing the instinct to snap back, instead giving herself to the sliding weightlessness. Then she was there. It wasn’t a place of walls or floors or ceilings, nothing so earthly; it was a swirling impression of images and voices weaving as colours and textures, a cacophony of voices talking over each other; some crying or pleading, others loud and forceful, occasionally a person appeared, talking with clarity and purpose. 

“I can see…”

Molly watched a shadowy figure drift in and out of focus, its mouth moving whilst all else was still. Would it listen and respond to her? “What can you see?”

The figure grew more solid, more defined, the mouth moving rapidly, so much so she could see its lips and teeth and tongue working, but there was no voice.

“What can you see?” she asked again.

The figure’s shape began to shift, its form becoming fragmented, misty, as it drifted closer, almost touching Molly’s face with its silently yammering mouth. Molly took a sudden intake of breath as the spectral shape vanished, leaving her with an image that hit her like a gut punch, leaving her reeling.

Valmont was sat, staring perceptively, blue eyes fixed on Molly as she looked down at her shaking hands; she’d returned, shaken by what she’d witnessed. How could she describe it, the sensations of horrific violence and fear, something she always feared experiencing? Reaching for a pencil and sketch pad she began to draw, scratching away late into the night.

#

“I have something to show you,” Beside her, on a bench in Salford’s Peel Park, lounged a flamboyant man wrapped in a black cape festooned with arcane symbols, his snakeskin boots tapping the asphalt, a fedora tipped below one Kohl lined eye.

“That’s proper weird is that.” despite shedding his birth name and creating a new personal history he’d failed to lose his accent.

Molly had known Cyrus Gastrell since school when he’d been Chris Otway. A gifted grifter on the spiritualist circuit with no psychic abilities whatsoever, for a while a well-paid celebrity psychic, now barely scraping by after a calamitous appearance on ‘Exposed.’  

“What do you think it is?” Molly looked across the manicured lawns at kids riding bikes and kicking balls, going about their Saturday morning. Dog walkers passed by, glancing, and often smirking at Cyrus’ get-up.

“I couldn’t give a rats arse for Kavanagh’s eternal soul, you know that.” Cyrus handed Molly the sketch she’d brought with her. 

“I know, but now he’s dead and reaching out to me. Chris, what is this?” 

He sighed and unfolded the sheet of paper again, looking at Molly’s automatic sketch, the paper ripped in places where her urgent scratchings tore through. The drawing suggested a building, a clock tower to the right with crenelated sections to the left. Windows were spaces unfilled on the page. Everywhere else was an erratic darkness with occasional shapes that may have been animals or people or something altogether more dreadful. A menacing image hovered over the building; a downwards looking single eye.

“I saw that eye in my crystal,” Molly said in a matter-of-fact voice. “When I went under, his spirit came to me, and he was frantically trying to explain something and all I got was this. I couldn’t hear him. That’s not like me.”

Cyrus pointed at the building, “It reminds me of somewhere. Right crazy though isn’t it, him dropping dead like that? He knew you were for real, that’s why he’s contacting you.”

Molly shook her head, “Don’t know. This is the key though, this place,” she tapped the page. “The eye. What’s it stand for?” 

Cyrus looked at his watch, “Bugger, got to fly, I’ve got a job interview at Costa. Bills to pay! Molly, if I were you, I’d not bother with him. He got what he deserved.” Spinning round, Cyrus laughed, “I knew I recognised it, that’s the old Barrow Hall Safari Park, posh flats now. All the animals went to zoos.”

They exchanged air kisses, Molly watching Cyrus billow away under full sail. Barrow Hall, the place where they found the bodies of those two kiddies.

#

Kavanagh started as a journalist on a BBC North West teatime news show. Molly remembered watching his reports when she was little whilst eating her fish fingers and chips. He always seemed to be standing in the pouring rain, surrounded by flashing red and blue lights, broadcasting from accident and crime scenes. He was part of the furniture, more familiar to her than some of her own family. 

She sat with Valmont, drowsily watching YouTube videos of Piers Kavanagh progressing from on-the-spot reporter to news anchor to having his own investigative shows. One piece of archive footage, from the mid-nineties, brought it all back; two children’s bodies dug up in the grounds of the safari park when it was being redeveloped. No-one knew who they were. The kid’s clothes, with labels cut off, suggested they’d died in the 70s, but cause of death couldn’t be determined and despite a media campaign no missing children matching the possible age and sex of the bodies were identified. The case went cold.

Reluctantly, she opened her phone and scrolled through the contacts. She’d avoided speaking to a certain person for the best part of two years, deciding to let sleeping dogs lie. With a sigh she typed, “Just wondered if we could talk? About Barrow Hall? I have a sense it’s important.” She left it there. There’d be a reply or there wouldn’t. 

A further trawl of YouTube dredged up old cine footage of Barrow Hall, a family visit sometime in the early seventies. The choppy shots showed a sunny summers day filled with lions and baboons and the occasional giraffe. Picnickers watched children playing on swings and a large roundabout she remembered as the ‘witches’ hat,’ a conical steel frame with wooden seats that span around a tall pylon. Her attention was drawn to someone’s face. Her phone pinged as she paused the playback, leaning in to see if she could get a better look. Another ping. She glanced at her phone.

“I’ve retired.” Followed by, “What do you want?”

Molly didn’t respond. She jotted down the name of the video, the channel, and the time stamp of the image she was looking at. Then she replied, “It’s about Kavanagh’s last words.” 

Valmont hopped down to the rug and stretched, wanting his dinner. A reply arrived.

“He’s dead. Leave me be.”

Molly stared at the response, anger rising, beginning to type a response then stopped, as her brain told her not to bite. Instead, she fed Valmont and put the kettle on. Hands on the kitchen worktop she began to feel disorientated, as if the room were slipping away from beneath her. Holding on to the wooden counter she sank to her knees, the world around her spinning. Valmont hissed and backed away from his bowl, back arched, eyes fixed on Molly who thought her being ambushed was in the past, a thing you learned to control. The sense of falling backwards suddenly stopped and she heard Kavanagh’s voice, “I can see…”

“What can you see?”

His voice cracked, “The children.”

#

Retired Detective Inspector Alison Murray looked around Molly’s rather ordinary front room. There was none of the usual psychic tat on display, something she felt almost vindicated her faith in Molly’s gifts. Almost.

Molly appeared carrying two mugs of coffee, “Don’t mind him, he’s a tart.”

Valmont had adopted Murray’s lap for himself. She looked a little stiff, uneasy with him, so Molly scooped him up, flung him over her shoulder and sat down.

“Thanks for coming Ali,” Molly looked intently at the woman in her neat zip through top and tailored trousers. Even her Converse shoes were spotless.

“I’ll make it quick, okay?” Murray wasn’t sure why she was there; no, that wasn’t true, she was curious and had unfinished business. “Why contact me and not the Greater Manchester Police?”

Molly sipped her coffee, rubbing her thumbs through a purring Valmont’s ears, “You stayed with the ‘Quarry’ squad, even after sentencing, because you knew there were more out there.”

“We had leads going nowhere, every kook, if you’ll excuse the term, came bothering us with visions and voices. Word got out you assisted us; you know what it was like?”

Molly did. A ring of abusers preyed on local kids and dumped bodies in the flooded Northolt quarry from the late seventies until 1990. A television producer on the regional news was arrested following an anonymous tip-off and he told the police everything; seven men and two women were imprisoned. Covertly, Molly had helped locate the bodies, essential for a robust prosecution, and would have stayed out of the picture had Kavanagh not let slip a psychic was on the case. The furore had given him his own show and nearly ended Murray’s career as opposed to Molly who found herself on talk shows and making guest appearances, successful theatre tours, authoring books, and running a lucrative private practice. 

Murray looked ready to leave, “Kavanagh’s interference put the lid on the case. It’s over.”

Molly reached over Valmont to open her laptop, showing Murray the clip on YouTube, “See that face, there?” she paused it and pointed.

“Who’s that?”

Molly frowned, “It’s Lord Barrow, the owner of the safari park.”

“And?”

“Kavanagh showed me Barrow Hall, he said, ‘I can see the children.’ Two unidentified kids’ bodies were found there. There’s a link, between the ‘Quarry’ case and this, Ali. Find out what it is.”

“How? I’m retired.”

“Kavanagh knew something but didn’t have enough evidence. You’ll have colleagues, friends, somebody who can look at the files.” 

Murray gave a deep sigh, “Molly, it’s not that simple.”

“Right!” Molly evicted Valmont and grasped Murray’s hands, who, clearly surprised, tried to pull away. “You’re coming with me,” said Molly, closing her eyes.

Both women felt the sensation of sliding downwards, Molly more acquainted with the feeling than Murray who was stiff as a board. This time, Molly concentrated on Kavanagh’s face and voice, drawing him to her. This was no time to be an observer, she thought.

There came the immediate scent of beeswax, of a cool breeze carrying the heady scent of roses. Molly sensed an open doorway to a garden with the voices of children in the distance, a dark room, panelled in wood. A man stood with his hands on the shoulders of two children who were confused, afraid, looking around them with awe.

“Now, if you’re good, you’ll both get a present. What do you think of that?”

Molly sensed panic as the doors closed to the outside world and the room became dark; all she felt then was fear, and pain.

Murray gasped and let go of Molly’s hands. She was trembling, eyes wide. Valmont stared impassively at the women, then began to groom his feet. 

“Did I really see that?” Murray asked.

“What did you see?” Molly replied, exhausted. “Two children? A room in a posh house? Curtains being drawn?”

“Not just that. Their clothes. I recognised their clothes.”

#

Molly, backstage, looked up into the booth where the director and producers of ‘Exposed’ sat, resurrected for a special live edition, months since Kavanagh’s death. She knew they wanted fireworks. 

Ali Murray, on set, absently fiddled with her wedding ring, eyes on the tape markers on the studio floor where the new presenter, Jackie, had practiced her blocking. Chief Superintendent Max Hughes nervously paced, chewing gum, waiting for the instructions in his earpiece.

Jackie Roberts walked onto set, smiled, and found her spot. Hughes joined Murray, sitting, both nervously exchanging glances. 

“One minute to go live, Jackie, you ready?”

She raised her thumb. 

#

Throughout ‘Exposed’, online chatter rose to fever pitch as the former detective on the ‘Quarry’ case and the current Chief Superintendent confirmed the reopening of investigations into the bodies of two children found nearly fifty years earlier. ‘Exposed’ had been commissioned for another three seasons.

Molly sat in the green room, passive, eyes closed. The children’s bodies had been identified as two residents at a children’s home on a day trip to see the animals; the manager, long since dead, was linked to the ‘Quarry’ paedophile ring, as was Lord Barrow, in a nursing home for patients with advanced dementia. A search of the wing at the Hall, still lived in by the Barrow family, turned up a crumpled brown envelope, secreted in a writing bureau, containing snipped clothing labels produced by Ladybird for Woolworths, dating from around 1975.

Murray, arms crossed, watched the rolling coverage on a 24-hour news channel, Lord Barrow’s children vociferously defending their father. The children’s home staff who weren’t dead or too old to speak were being interviewed by police. 

Murray turned to Molly and smiled, “The staff covered up the disappearances. Nice work Piers.”

Molly shook her head, “You haven’t asked me the important question.”

Murray looked puzzled, “I don’t understand.”

“About Kavanagh? You haven’t asked how he knew about the children? He would have been very young when they disappeared. His real name was Patrick Keogh, abandoned by his mother along with his two siblings, Sinead and Seamus. Patrick, or Piers as he became, was the baby. Sinead and Seamus went on a picnic from the children’s home and never came back.”

Murray’s jaw fell open, “He told you this? What did Kavanagh want?”

“Answers, justice.”

“Proof you could speak to the dead?”

Molly smiled, “Of course, and, as always, the last word.”