Doubting Thomas

by Adam Grinter

  I grunted an agreement. Even with all our technology and the information at our fingertips, finding one specific man in a world population of seven billion was going to be almost as impossible as back in William’s day.

  William switched the conversation from himself onto me.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “Well,” I started, “we went to the hospital and found his records. You were right it wasn’t a stroke. There was nothing wrong with him medically.”

  “The hospital, of course.” William said softly. “It never occurred to us to do that. But that’s why you’re the detectives and we’re just the normal people.”

  I ignored his comment and flattery and continued.

  “We met Father Hernandez and his wife. They told us their story and we have no rational explanation for what happened.”

  “So, you agree God spoke through him?” William asked.

  “No.” I answered emphatically. “I don’t know what happened to him. You wanted me to be sceptical so that’s what I’m being. You say God, if I believe that, I will skew everything to confirm it and that’s not how this works. I follow the trail till I reach the end.”

  “Very good.” William said, sounding slightly chastised. “What’s the next step on the trail?”

  “We don’t know yet, but sleep sounds good.” I said trying to lighten the mood.

  “Of course. Keep me informed. Sleep well Thomas.”

  “Good night William.” I said as I hung up.

  #

  I met Maria for breakfast for a third day and we sat quietly while we refuelled and collected our thoughts from the previous evening and decide on the best plan of action going forwards.

  I spoke first.

  “We know when, and we know gender. So that’s something right?” Trying to sound upbeat but not really feeling it.

  “I think we know more than that.” Maria teased.

  “Why?” I asked reasonably.

  “I was thinking about it last night and the only other clue we have is the language.” I looked slightly confused at her comment. “He spoke English.”

  “OK.” I reluctantly agreed. “That gives us United Kingdom, America, New Zealand and Australia.”

  “A couple others as well.” Maria conceded. “But yes.”

  As I thought about what she’d said I realised we were cutting out more than half the world from our search. It now didn’t seem as daunting.

  “What do we do now?” Maria asked.

  “We search.” I replied.

  “What are we looking for?” She asked not unreasonably.

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure we’ll know it when we find it.”

  #

  We moved into the hotel’s lobby, attached our laptops to the Wi-Fi and started googling. We sat separately in order to give each other space to work. We didn’t want to contaminate the other’s thought processes. At this point in an investigation there are no bad ideas. Searching separately allowed each of us to chase down leads as we saw fit. In the hope they would lead us to the one.

  With so little information to go on assumptions had to be made. The one I made meant I thought I was looking for a birth. Someone who was not there before the priest had his ‘episode’, was announced and then there after the priest had been ‘released’. It seemed logical, it seemed right, it was somewhere to start.

  There are over three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand births daily around the world. In English speaking countries there are nearly fourteen-thousand. If we play the percentages of fifty-one percent male that meant I was looking for one in just over seven thousand.

  The odds were daunting; but the haystack was getting smaller.

  I stared at the computer screen, I clicked links, I read articles that jumbled into one. I felt like I was back looking for a job. On this occasion, though, I was happy in my search. This time I was confident I would find something.

  After three fruitless hours clicking down rabbit holes in the world wide web I was flagging. I looked across at Maria and could see she was in a similar position. I waved to her and mimed eating she smiled and nodded readily. We both closed our laptops and went to get something to eat.

  The disappointment on both our faces as we snacked told us neither of us had found anything of interest. We didn’t discuss what we had been looking for. The small talk, however, told both of us, we were losing heart.

  “Anything?”

  “No.”

  “You?”

  “Nothing.”

  We trudged back to our places in the lobby and resumed our searches.

  After another hour of fruitless searching I was starting to lose focus again. The excitement of raiding the hospital, finding the priest, hearing his story and then hearing about William’s role in it all had allowed the adrenaline to carry me to this point. It was now wearing off.

  I was about to give up for the day when I remembered my job search again and decided, just like then, to give myself another five minutes. I felt like I’d searched through so many birth announcements, so many boys coming into the world. A search word came to me that I hadn’t looked for before. I felt I was pre-judging the outcome so I’d shied away from it. Now with nothing to lose I typed the date and ‘miracle’ into the search bar.

  The laptop chuntered away, as it always did. The screen went blank. The tiny blue spinning circle told me it was working. The screen started to fill with information.

  One result returned. I clicked the link. Another newspaper article.

  The Miracle of John Street

  This past Sunday a pregnant homeless girl was struck by a vehicle on John Street and killed. The baby she was carrying was delivered by c-section at Victoria Cottage Hospital.

  “We attended a road traffic accident where one female very sadly lost their life. But, the hospital managed to save the beautiful baby boy that she’d been carrying.” One of the paramedics told The Times & Star.

  “We don’t know how the baby survived but he did and he’s doing great. He’s our little miracle child.” A nurse from Victoria Cottage Hospital told us.

  The police confirmed that a nineteen year old female was killed in a road traffic accident, but have withheld her name until the family have been notified.

  I scoured the website for a follow up article telling me names or how the child was doing but there was nothing. It had been filed, printed as another page filler and forgotten about.

  I called Maria over to read the article. She smiled as she read it.

  “The dates right.” I confirmed.

  “It’s him, I know it is.” She beamed. “You’ve found him.”

  2 Chronicles

  He walked, as he always did around the edge of the yard. The other children knew not to bother him. They didn’t want to anyway. He was strange, he was weird. He made them feel uncomfortable when they were close to him.

  He was different. For a ten-year-old that’s all the reason they need.

  Their words no longer hurt him. In truth he rarely heard them. Instead listening to the words of love and encouragement his Mum whispered in his head.

  The laughter and joyful screams from the other children were a white noise. He ignored it but couldn’t totally tune it out.

  His Mum continued to tell him She loved him and how proud of him She was. How well he was doing. He smiled at Her words and thought back he loved Her too.

  He stopped at the fence and looked down. A puddle of mud sat stagnating. The rain had fallen the previous night and the ground had gladly accepted the moisture. In this one patch though, the rain had not fully drained and the dark brown mud looked inviting to him.

  ‘Go on then.’ His Mum was giving him permission.

  He sat on the edge of the indentation and put his hands in the cold, wet puddle. He liked the feeling of it between his fingers. It oozed. The noise it made was satisfying. It squelched. Even the temperature of it was a pleasant sensation.

  He squelched and oozed for a while. The ot
her children looked over at him. His behaviour just confirmed what they knew already. Splashing in mud puddles was for babies and they were much too old for that type of play now.

  He pulled out lumps of mud and piled them on the side of his little pool. When he had three piles, he patted them and started to shape them. He took his time, he took care of each pile. All the time his Mum told him what a good job he was doing and pointing out where each pile could be improved.

  He made all three piles the same size. Delicately he formed the shapes he could picture in his mind. He couldn’t tell if they were his pictures or his Mum had put them there for him. It didn’t matter either way.

  Eventually he finished his task. They didn’t look exactly like the birds in his head but they were the best he could do. They had two thin legs, a body, a head and a noticeable beak. They were close enough.

  He got up, pleased at a job well done.

  He looked down at himself, he was filthy. His Mum didn’t get angry at him She just told him he needed to go inside and get changed. He did as he was told. He left the mud hole and his little statues and wandered slowly back to the place he had called home for the last six years.

  A fly buzzed around the water and landed on the mud bird’s head. It sat there undisturbed for a minute then suddenly it spread its tiny wings and flew away.

  The mud bird shook its head, flecks of mud splattered on the ground. It looked around itself, hopped a couple of steps towards the house, spread its wings and lifted itself into the air. The mud bird’s two companions followed suit and flew after the leader. Away from this place.

  Chapter Twelve

  We’d looked up Victoria Cottage Hospital and found it in Maryport in Cumbria in the North of England. We needed to chase this lead down. We needed to go there.

  From the hotel lobby we booked flights to the UK. We packed up our stuff, leapt into the car and headed back cross country to Caracas. Our flight out of the country was at six-forty-five the following morning. We didn’t need to rush but Maria and I both felt the thrill of the chase. She drove the dusty roads faster than she needed. It just wasn’t as fast as we wanted.

  #

  We landed at Heathrow twenty-four hours later. We’d both slept on the plane, but our body clocks were way off kilter. We needed to head North so we’d be able to reach Maryport the following day.

  We had landed in the evening gloom, by the time we arrived at my car the darkness had engulfed us. We chucked our bags onto the back seat. I got in the driver’s seat, Maria stepped in beside me.

  I knew the basic geography of the UK. I needed the M4, the M25 and then the M1. We caught the tail end of the rush hour so as we hit the road North it was close to nine PM. We needed to stop for the night and try to get some rest.

  The first service station we came to I pulled the car in and parked in front of the chain hotel that occupied it. We booked into two rooms and trudged to our beds.

  Sleep came fitfully. I needed rest but my body wanted continue on, to track down our quarry. My scar throbbed, it was urging me to keep moving forwards. I tried to ignore it.

  The morning arrived and a shower refreshed me in the way a sporadic night’s sleep hadn’t. I wandered down for breakfast. Maria sat cradling a cup of coffee looking almost as tired as I felt.

  “Sleep well?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Not really. But will do.” She replied. I felt the same.

  We spent as little time over breakfast as we could. Maria loaded some fruit and pastries into her bag so we could munch them as I drove North.

  The monotony of the motorway network has a soporific quality. After the previous four days, we would need to stop regularly to wake ourselves up. We would need to stretch our legs and energise ourselves with coffee.

  The idea was to reach Maryport by mid-afternoon. Hit either the hospital or newspaper today. Get a good night’s sleep, then find our man tomorrow. I was happy with that, as was Maria. Our purpose had returned. We had a plan.

  On our second stop I programmed the sat-nav for Maryport. It told us we would be there at just gone three in the afternoon. Our timing was good to visit the local paper.

  I kept time with the instructions the disembodied voice gave. We pulled into the car park at The Maryport Times & Star at just gone three-fifteen that afternoon.

  Forty-eight hours earlier we had been five-thousand miles away, the other side of the planet with no idea this place even existed.

  We walked into the cramped newsroom and looked for someone who might be able to help us. There were three wooden desks on either side of the room with a walkway down the middle. Only one of the desks was occupied.

  We approached quietly as it looked like the middle-aged man was dozing rather than working. As we reached his desk he lifted his head and asked pleasantly, “can I help you?”

  “Yes please.” I started. This was my territory now, I needed to take the lead. “We were looking for someone who might remember this story.” I took out my phone, fumbled with the apps and eventually found what I wanted. The article we had found half a world away was screen shotted. I thrust it towards him so he could see what we needed.

  He took the device from me to better read the small screen. He slowly read the article and then laughed.

  “I would’ve written that.” He said through his chuckling. “How long ago was it?” He asked genuinely interested.

  “Twenty-five years ago.” I replied, curious about his reaction.

  “Hmm.” He leant back in his chair and thought for a moment. “Yeah, vaguely remember it. One of the first stories I wrote. Happened just round the corner. I was the only one here and the flashing lights drew me round there. Wouldn’t normally report on that sort of stuff.” He lowered his voice and told us conspiratorially. “Homeless junkie run over. But we needed to fill the inches.”

  “Oh.” I replied as if I understood.

  “Different time back then. There were six of us.” He looked around the office at the five other empty desks. “Just me now. Trying to keep this thing afloat pretty much by myself. No-one wants the local paper any more. They can get it all from their phones.” He waved my phone, which he still held, under my nose. “No-one wants to advertise with us, cos no-one reads us.”

  I nodded sagely, and gently reached out for my phone. Absent-mindedly he handed it back. I tried to bring the conversation back to where I wanted it to be. “What happened to the baby?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t much care. Son of a druggie, only one outcome for him.”

  Now I understood why the paper had no staff and was losing readers, and advertisers. It wasn’t modern technology, it was old-fashioned attitudes.

  “Do you remember a name?” I tried as a closing gambit wanting to leave this bastion of nineteenth century pessimism.

  He thought for a moment, I could tell he was genuinely trying to help. However, he’d probably forgotten about the story almost as soon as he’d written it.

  “Catherine, I think.” He had dredged a memory up from the deep recesses of his mind, but he wasn’t sure if he was right so neither was I.

  “OK, thanks for your help.” I said in lieu of a good-bye.

  We walked out into the late afternoon sun. It felt like we had stepped out of darkness and back into the light.

  #

  The Waverley Hotel was an old-fashioned building situated on the corner of the main road through town and Station Street. The wooden frames around the numerous windows were painted in various shades of green. It looked bright and stood out from the understated houses that surrounded it. It would serve our purpose.

  They had two free rooms which we eagerly rented. It was now five PM and we arranged to meet at six. We had time to freshen up and that was about all.

  An hour later, cleaned and refreshed I met Maria in the bar. I ordered a pint of beer. It had seemed appealing at the time. Now it was in my hand, however, my enthusiasm for it had waned. Maria ordered a glass of wine and we moved from the bar to a
table in the corner to discuss the day to come.

  “So, we go to hospital and find out what happen to Catherine.” Maria explained simply.

  “If that was her name.” I tried to keep the negativity out of my voice. “You do know it’s not going to be as easy here as it was in Cararapa.”

  “Money opens a lot of doors.” Maria stated.

  “Yeah, but not so much over here. People don’t like bribery. People take their jobs and security of information very seriously.”

  “We’ll see.” Maria concluded.

  We ate a pleasant evening meal. I finished my pint which got better the more of it I drank. I contemplated a second and when Maria ordered a second glass of wine, I threw caution to the wind and went for it.

  We’d moved from the restaurant back to the bar and were just passing the time. Two colleagues thrust together by work.

  “Have you ever been to England before?” I asked as a way of breaking the slightly uncomfortable silence that had fallen between us.

  “No.” Maria answered. “I always want to, is why I learn language. I listen to music; Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin. I see movie stars; Charlie Chaplin, Michael Caine, James Bond. I see pictures of beautiful history; castles, Tower of London. I want see all that, it looks different to my home. Exciting.”

  “What do you think of it now?” I said with a smile.

  Maria thought for a moment trying to pick out the right words.

  “It’s cold. It’s grey. And people are strange.” We laughed, but I couldn’t disagree.

  #

  I woke the following morning to my phone ringing. I grabbed it from the bedside table and looked at the caller ID. William again. I hadn’t spoken to him for six months and now it would be twice in four days.

  “Morning William.” I said.

  “Morning Thomas.” William replied. “Where are you?”