‘Duncan? Duncan! I demand you tell me what’s happened this instant!’
The bushes.
A woman.
Blood.
Duncan swallowed. Then inched his way forward, one hand on the back of Lucy’s head, keeping her face snuggled in against his neck so she couldn’t see anything. He peered in through the leaves.
Oh Christ. Oh dear, bloody Christ.
The woman lay on the dirt, between the rhododendron branches and roots, twisted, crying. Most of her clothes were gone, bits, like the cuffs of her shirt, still attached — the fabric tattered and frayed where the rest had been torn off. Blood oozed down her arms and legs, deep red gashes carved into pale skin.
She looked up, right at him. Reached out with a filthy hand. ‘Help... help me...’
Duncan screamed.
Dirty, rotten, useless, halfwit bastards.
Roberta stormed down the corridor, uniforms flattening themselves against the walls, getting the hell out of her way. Good. Tufty scuffled along behind her, trying to play the voice of reason. Aye, good luck with that.
Time for reason was past.
‘Come on, Sarge. Maybe if you had a cuppa or something? Calmed down a bit before you...’
She barged through the door to DCI Rutherford’s office, letting go of the handle so the thing banged off one of the filing cabinets. The git himself was behind his ‘look how important I am’ desk, DI Vine taking up one of the visitors’ chairs, one of Vine’s sidekicks over by the whiteboard. Case notes and photos spread out across the desk.
Everyone stared at her.
Tufty grabbed her arm, hissing in her ear. ‘Really don’t think this is a good—’
She shook him off. ‘It’s Wallace, isn’t it? He attacked that woman.’
Vine looked down his nose at her. ‘We’re in a meeting, Sergeant.’
‘Victoria Park, same place he attacked Claudia Boroditsky—’
‘You’ve got a bloody cheek bursting in here!’
‘—in the bushes with a sodding knife. Do I have to draw you a diagram before you’ll get it through your thick skulls?’
Vine stood. ‘That is ENOUGH!’
He was right, it was. Time to rearrange some teeth.
She stepped forwards, fists curling, but Tufty grabbed her again with a little eeking noise.
From the safety of his desk, DCI Rutherford held up a hand. ‘Now, now, let’s all just take a deep calming breath before we do or say something we can’t take back.’
No one moved.
‘Good.’ Rutherford pointed at the chairs. ‘Sit down, John. And Roberta, I know you mean well, but you need to walk away from this one.’
‘He raped that—’
‘We don’t know that yet. We can’t prove it.’ He lowered his hand. ‘But I can assure you DI Vine will liaise with the Divisional Rape Investigation Unit and we will find the man responsible.’
Oh yes, that was such a comfort. ‘Jack Wallace is a vicious, raping, scheming little—’
‘And given your history with the man, I would hope you’re bright enough to never get involved with him again!’ Rutherford screwed his face up for a moment. Took a deep breath. Spread his hands out on his desk. ‘Look, Roberta, it almost cost you your career last time. Leave this one to DI Vine. Walk away. That’s an order.’
It was like swallowing broken glass.
But she bared her teeth and did it anyway. ‘Yes, Boss.’
The hospital room had that throat-catching disinfectant stink: slightly smoky, laced with iodine and Jeyes Fluid. They had the blinds down, shutting out the harsh morning sun, leaving the place cloaked in gloom. The only light, other than what seeped through the blinds, came from the array of machinery hooked up to every one of the four patients in here.
The starchy sheets crackled as Roberta shifted her bum along the edge of the bed. A little whiteboard was fixed to the metal frame at the head end, just big enough to have ‘BEATRICE EDWARDS AB RHD —’ on it, a laminated sheet of paper Blu-Tacked up beneath with: ‘NIL BY MOUTH’ in thick laser-printed letters.
Roberta squeezed Beatrice’s hand, the skin cool and clammy like the recently deceased. Bandages wrapped around Beatrice’s wrists, reaching all the way up to her elbows — yellow and red stains leached out into the fabric. Defensive wounds. She’d fought back.
They’d taped a wad of gauze across the gash in her face and the dressing stood out bright white against the bruises. Her eyes, hooded and heavy, the pupils dilated like shiny black buttons.
Roberta cleared her throat. Swallowed. Tried again: ‘Are you sure, Beatrice?’
It took a while for her to respond and when she did the words were thick and slurred. ‘Was dark... So dark... Knife.’
‘How about his voice, did he threaten you? Did he say anything?’
A slow-motion blink. ‘Tired... Sleep...’
‘Did he have an accent? Anything?’
The word, ‘There!’ hissed out from somewhere over by the door, followed by, ‘There she is.’
Roberta glanced up from Beatrice’s bandaged wrist. A fat nurse in pale blue scrubs stood in the doorway, nearly filling it, fists on her hips. Nose in the air. She dwarfed her companion — a weedy uniformed PC with greasy hair Brylcreemed into a hard side parting as if he’d just fallen out of the 1950s.
The wee sod jabbed a finger at Roberta, then at his feet. He adopted the same hissing rasp. ‘You: get over here! What do you think you’re doing?’
She took out one of her Police Scotland business cards and put it in Beatrice’s hand. Closed the cold fingers around it. ‘If you remember anything, anything at all. You call me, OK?’
The weedy PC bustled up. ‘You can’t be in here! This woman’s been attacked!’
His lardy sidekick was right behind him. ‘It’s not even visiting hours! You should be ashamed of yourself.’
Roberta gave Beatrice’s hand another gentle squeeze. ‘It gets better. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but it does. There comes a time when you won’t flinch if someone touches you. When your heart doesn’t feel like you’re going to die if you hear footsteps coming up behind you. When the darkness doesn’t make you want to scream.’ She stood, leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. ‘Trust me. I know.’
The nurse folded her arms, chin up. ‘I demand you leave this ward at once!’
Roberta stuck two fingers up, blew a very wet raspberry, then sauntered from the room, pausing to grab the PC by the ear on the way, taking him with her.
He squealed like a wee piggy. ‘Ow, ow, ow!’
A disdaining sniff as his sidekick turned to watch them leave. ‘Horrible woman. How anyone could—’
The ward doors clunked shut behind them, cutting her off.
Roberta dragged the weedy PC across the corridor to the vending machines, keeping a plier-like grip on his lug. ‘You know who I am?’
His face contorted for a moment or two, then it must have dawned, because his eyes bugged. ‘DCI... I mean Detective Sergeant Steel. You— Ow!’
She gave his ear another twist for luck.
‘Ow!’
‘Let’s try that again. Do — you — know — who — I — am?’
His face creased, little hands twitching at his sides. Then finally he got it. ‘No?’
There we go.
‘Good boy. Keep it that way.’ She released his ear and patted him on the cheek. ‘Now buy me a KitKat.’
Tufty stood in front of the pool car, scuffling from foot to foot. Face all creased and fidgety.