Текст книги "The Risk of Darkness"
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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“Come out and climb after me c can you do that?” He looked round. The woman was coming out of the cave. Short dark hair. A dark jacket. Black jeans. White, horrified face. Dark sunken eyes.
Forget who it is, concentrate, focus.
“Come on c take one step at a time, do everything I do. Do as you’re told, right?”
“OK c Jesus, help c”
“We can get up there. Don’t panic. Take a deep breath. Right, I’m going up. Follow me exactly.”
His own voice sounded confident, he thought, authoritative. She would believe he knew exactly what he was doing. He reached for the first handhold in the cliff, grasped it and swung himself up, scrabbling carefully with his feet to find a firm base.
Below him, he heard the woman’s fast, whimpering breaths.
“It’s fine. Wait. Now the next.”
It took a hundred years. It took two minutes. Once, some of the rock pulled away in his hand, almost taking him down with it, but he slid sideways and grasped another outcrop which stayed firm.
Simon reached the ledge, hauled himself carefully on to it, and then lay down on his stomach and reached out his hand to pull the woman up.
The sea had come racing on to the strip of sand, over the low rocks, into the mouth of the cave. The sky was a sullen, sulphurous grey, but for now the lightning had ceased.
“Press back against the cliff. You won’t get blown away like that.”
She managed it, weeping with fear, her hands bleeding, face ashen.
Simon waited until she was next to him, back against the cliff, pressing herself into it as if she could make it open up to admit her body.
He looked at her.
Ordinary. Neither attractive nor plain, neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. An average smallish woman with cropped hair. Ordinary.
“I’m DCI Simon Serrailler from Lafferton Police. Your name?”
She gaped at him as if he had spoken in another language.
“What’s your name?” He raised his voice above the crash and boom of a wave below.
It came out at last, her mouth moving queerly, pushed sideways as if she had had a stroke.
“Ed.”
“What kind of a name is that?”
“Edwina. Edwina Sleightholme.”
She looked at him. “What will happen?”
“You’ll be taken in for questioning in connection with the abduction of Amy Sudden.”
“Now, for Christ’s sake, now, what’s going to happen here, now?”
She crouched and bent her head. He heard her sobs of fear.
He could not see what was happening above them, nor turn to look up. Once, he thought he heard a shout, but it was swept away by the noise of the sea.
He was strangely calm. He was alone here, with the woman. But on the clifftop he had back-up, and they would have called for assistance; he had no idea how long it would take to come. When would the tide turn?
Ed Sleightholme moved suddenly, edging her body forward.
“Don’t be so bloody stupid.”
“I might as well, I might as well.”
“Why?”
Her body was shaking.
Simon waited, then said, “Nasty way to die.”
“Who’d care?”
“Haven’t the faintest idea. Are you married?”
A slight shake of her head.
“Parents alive?”
Silence. Then the slightest movement again, an inch further forward.
“Friends?”
It sickened him to imagine it. But the family and friends wouldn’t know. They never did. She might have taken and murdered these children and half a dozen more and still have had good friends, lovers, people who cared about her, simply because they did not know.
She said something.
“What?”
Again.
“I can’t hear you.”
He had thought the storm had eased and drifted inland, but now there was a bolt of lightning so close to them Simon thought it had struck the cliff only a few feet away. The thunder made him duck his head. She cowered back, pressing into the cliff again, and grabbed his arm with such strength he thought she would pull him over the cliff with her.
“It’s OK,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “We’re OK. It can’t touch us, the rocks will conduct any lightning downwards.”
He had no idea if it were true but he knew that he had sounded convincing when she loosened her grip on him.
“I didn’t c know that c”
“So long as we keep our backs in contact with the cliff. Just don’t move away from that contact for a second.”
He looked sideways and saw that she had believed him and was pressing her body backwards as if her life depended on it. She had her eyes tight shut.
Simon forced himself to look away from her and to turn his mind to other places, other things c He imagined his nephew Sam at the wicket, face upturned eagerly to the bowler. The sun sifted between the poplar trees at the edge of the cricket field. There was the taste of home-brewed beer in his mouth. He went on painting the picture, animating it, making the film run, the cricket game continue. Anything to keep himself from remembering who was next to him, inches away on the narrow ledge and why and what she had almost certainly done. If he thought of that, he knew he might make a single movement to send her over the edge of the cliff.
He had seen Sam raise his bat to acknowledge the applause for his half-century, when there was a sudden noise which, after a moment, he recognised as the beep of his mobile, buried in his inside pocket.
“Simon? What the hell are you doing?” The line crackled, the voice breaking up.
Simon told Jim Chapman in half a sentence. As he spoke, he saw the woman’s back stiffen.
“Bloody lucky you’re alive.”
“Yes.”
“Right, coastguard’s been alerted and he’s just come back to say RAF 202 Squadron have scrambled a rescue helicopter. On its way.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Any injuries?”
“Nothing much c I’m restraining myself.”
“Right, well, you go on doing that, we want this one whole.”
“Too right. Anything up there?”
A fraction of a pause. Then Chapman said quickly, “You’ll get a full briefing later,” and cut off.
Simon had been close to violent criminals often enough, close to murderers and wife-beaters, handcuffed to them, his own flesh touching theirs, making his skin crawl. But this was different. He had complete authority and complete power over Edwina Sleightholme, barring the fact that she might still make a sudden bid to leap off the ledge to her death. But he did not think she would do that now. Fear was paralysing her.
He wondered how long they would be here before the helicopter arrived, and whether he could summon up the will to have a conversation with her. If it was a question of minutes, he had no need to, but if they were to be here for hours, he would have to talk, keep her going, keep her awake.
He looked at her legs, in the black jeans, her cap of dark hair falling forwards over the knees. Had she taken those children and killed them? How could this be? The profile was all wrong. This was not a woman’s crime. This should have been a man.
If she was innocent, why had she failed to stop for the patrol car, why had she tried to break her neck, and theirs, racing for this coast? What else would have made her dive down the precipitous cliff path to get away from them, except guilt and fear of arrest?
The ledge was cold and his back ached. His arms were stiff and his cut hand throbbed.
The storm was grumbling away inland now and the sky had lightened to a paler grey over the sea. It began to rain again, at first lightly, blown into their faces with the sea spray, but then hard pins of rain lashing them to the cliff. But Simon was conscious of something inside himself that he had missed, something he had once known and almost lost touch with. His tension and excitement were under control, the buzz was helping him not blurring his focus.
“I’m going to be sick.”
“Don’t lean over, lean back. Close your eyes.”
“Makes it worse.”
“Look down at the bit of rock in front of you.”
“I’m scared shitless.”
He could have pounced then, asked her how she liked it, whether she realised this was how the children had felt, but worse, a thousand times worse. He wanted to put her through it, describe them to her as he had seen them on the conference-room wall, the pictures of three bright, cheerful, hopeful young faces, to tell her how it had been for the parents, to c
He said nothing.
His phone rang again.
“RAF helicopter ETA fifteen minutes. Can you hold on?”
“Yes.”
“Want the good news?”
“What?”
“The kid’s alive.”
“Where?”
“Tied up in the car boot.”
Simon did not look at Edwina Sleightholme. He might have kicked her over the edge on to the rocks below.
“The chopper’ll take you to Scarborough hospital. We’ll get over there as soon as we have it in sight. Hang on to him.”
“Oh, don’t you worry.”
“We’ll make the arrest once the docs have discharged him.”
“Shame.”
“You’ll get your chance.”
“One thing though.”
“What?”
“Ed stands for Edwina.”
He heard a long intake of breath.
Simon glanced sideways at her shoe, a black flat slip-on with a small bit of gold chain across the front. Not a man’s shoe, just as the hands clutching her head were not man’s hands, they were slim, soft, nicely shaped hands with neatly trimmed oval, unpainted nails. The hair he could see between her fingers was shining with rain, dark as a seal’s back.
He had often looked at killers and understood what made them tick, seen violence pent up in their bodies, seen eyes wild with rage in deranged faces. Once or twice he had been puzzled. The Lafferton serial killer had been a psychopath, unable to feel empathy or emotion, self-absorbed, with a hidden agenda of his own. But this time, next to a young woman, terrified, sick, hunched down into a small slight figure against the wind and rain, this time, he was completely bewildered, lost for any explanation, any link between her and the abduction, torture, murder of young children. He could get no hold on it at all.
They heard the noise long before they could see the yellow bird emerge out of the grey mass of cloud and water. The blades churned up the air, seeming to chop it about and hurl it at them like clods of wet earth.
Sleightholme stood up suddenly.
“Get down. Stay absolutely still.”
“I’m not going in that fuckin’ thing, I’ll jump off here before that.” Her face was streaming with water, but her mouth was set, her eyes looking wildly about.
“Stay STILL.”
She lunged out without warning and grabbed at Serrailler’s shoulder and he rocked, desperately trying to steady them both. Above them, the noise of the helicopter seemed to have broken through his eardrums into his skull. She jabbed out a hand again, fingers clasped open like a claw. He caught it and wrenched her wrist back so that he saw her mouth open in pain. He needed handcuffs and had none.
Then the helicopter began to retreat, the noise muffled in the cloud bank again.
“What the fuck is going on?” he shouted.
Seconds later his phone rang. He was holding on to the woman and his hand was slippery, so that he all but dropped it.
“Yes?”
“They’ve backed off because they need to know whether there is any chance she’d be a threat to safety if she’s winched on board. Any weapon or potential weapon?”
“How do I bloody know?”
“Well, ask, dammit. Cigarette lighter, pen even c”
“Better assume so then.”
“OK. They saw a struggle c We’ve no view of you from up here. Is that correct?”
“Nothing serious. Just tell them to get us off this bloody ledge.”
“They won’t take someone who is a risk to the safety of the crew and the chopper. Can you vouch that the woman is not?”
Serrailler hesitated. He could not. Ed was a woman, small and slight, easily overpowered, but she was also furious and terrified, and without much to lose. He knew he ought not to guarantee anything, but if he didn’t, then what? There was no other way they could be brought to safety. It would be some hours yet before the tide had receded enough for them to be able to clamber down to the sand.
He clicked off his phone and turned to the woman.
“Listen. I have to guarantee that you have no weapon, and that you will not behave in a manner calculated to jeopardise anyone’s safety—mine and that of the helicopter crew. I must be bloody mad to ask for your word on that.”
“And if you don’t? If I don’t?” She looked at him and he saw a flash of malice in her eyes. It had not been there before.
“If you refuse to cooperate?”
She nodded.
“I’ll knock you out.”
She blinked.
“Or else they’ll take me and leave you.”
“They wouldn’t bloody dare.”
“Oh yes they would. That’s what the call was about. So?”
He saw her thinking furiously. Looking down over the cliff. Thinking. Looking at him. Thinking.
“OK.”
“What?”
“OK, I said.”
He hesitated. He had to go with it. Trust her. Jesus. He called Chapman.
“Can you get the pilot to talk to me?”
“Disconnect. I’ll ask.”
The rain came in a squall, battering at the side of the cliff and drenching them.
It was several minutes before the phone rang.
“Flight Sergeant Cuff, RAF 202 Squadron.”
“DCI Serrailler. I understand your concerns, Sergeant. It’ll be fine.”
“Do you take full responsibility? It’s your call, Chief Inspector.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t see any threat to my crew?”
“No.”
A split second. Then, “OK, we’re coming back in. The winchman will be on his way down. But I can’t get closer than fifteen feet in to the cliff and conditions are difficult. It may take some time. He will come on to the ledge and you will be strapped together—we can’t risk taking the prisoner separately. Any injuries?”
“Minor.”
“OK. Hang on.”
Serrailler had known it before. Once a rescue was under way, once safety was almost his, the tension increased rather than slackened. The time it took for the chopper to get close enough to the cliff to send down the winchman seemed to be far greater than the time they had already been stranded on the ledge. The helicopter hovered above, driving cold air on to them, then pulled up and away, before coming in again at a different angle, swerved, backed off. Now Serrailler and the woman were crouching and he had hold of her wrist. Her arm was limp, her expression flat and tired. The rain had plastered her short hair to her head like a cap.
“They can’t get us, can they?”
“They’ll get us.”
The helicopter came in again slightly lower, and swung round against the wind. It hovered. Steadied. Then the door slid open. The winchman stepped on to the ledge and raised his arm as he swung. The winch went slack. He bent forward and gestured. The wind blew in a wild gust and almost knocked him off his feet, and it was several more minutes before he had reached Serrailler and Sleightholme and lashed them securely together.
Minutes later, they were being hauled over the ledge into the body of the chopper. Simon remembered how large the RAF rescue helicopters were inside, with room enough for a dozen stretcher cases as well as paramedics and crew. It was noisy, and the tilting and swaying unnerving.
Edwina Sleightholme slumped, head down, staring at the floor.
The winchman was back and the doors were closed and secured.
“We’re taking you to the hospital. You’ll meet up with DCS Chapman there. ETA four minutes.”
“Thanks. God, I mean it.”
“No probs. Wondered if we’d get close enough for a minute. Let’s see your hand.”
“I’m fine.”
They both looked at the woman, sitting hunched forwards. Simon shook his head, then, in a moment of revulsion, turned away from Sleightholme, to stare out of the helicopter window at the churning sea and sky.
Thirteen
“I’m fine,” Cat Deerbon said, “I’m fine. I ought to be able to see off a young thug like that c”
Sister Noakes took the cup of tea from her before Cat’s shaking hand sent it on to the floor.
Something had happened as she had stepped through the doors of Imogen House into the nighttime quietness. The muscles and bones inside her legs felt as if they had dissolved, and she had been saved by one of the nurses as she had started to crumple. Now, she sat in Penny Noakes’s room, feeling a fool.
“What’s wrong with me for goodness’ sake? I’ve coped with a hell of a lot worse than that.”
“Funny thing, shock.”
“I’m tough.”
“Aren’t we all? Then out of the blue, we’re felled by something small. Happens to me. Death after death, all the difficult ones, young people, pain we can’t control, someone’s fear c and I’m very calm. I get home and there’s a dead mouse on the mat and I’m in tears. Try this tea again.”
Cat’s hand was steadier.
“What did the police say?”
Cat shrugged. One random youth on the Dulcie estate who had snatched her mobile, kicked out at her and run? She could hear Simon’s patient sigh.
“How’s Lizzie Jameson?” she said, setting down her cup.
Sister Noakes looked up. The desk lamp cast a shadow on to her face, but Cat was swift to catch the fleeting expression.
“It’s a bugger,” Cat said. “I’ll go along and see her in a moment. Is Max there?”
“He is. He goes into the garden a lot c walks around c sits on the bench. He’ll need a lot of support when it’s over, Cat.”
“And he isn’t an easy man to help. Very stubborn, very proud.”
“He’s angry.”
“So am I. This is the first case I’ve seen, and I’m angry because it was preventable. Every case of variant CJD was preventable, they came about because of greed c greedy bloody farmers.”
“The farmers weren’t to know.”
“Don’t be so forgiving, I can’t handle forgiveness at the moment.” She got up. “I don’t know what I’m going to say to Max either.”
“Come on, you always know. It’s your best thing.”
“Hm.”
In the corridor, Cat felt the extraordinary atmosphere of the hospice, the tremendous, packed stillness, the feeling of being out of time. It was never like this in any hospital, there was always clatter, voices and footsteps, a sense of urgency. Here, that was absent. Here, nothing mattered except the individual patients being nursed, kept pain-free and comfortable, what they wanted to say listened to carefully. “At the still point of the turning world,”Cat always thought when she came here.
She opened the door of Lizzie’s room.
And in that split second, time stopped. Max Jameson was standing beside the bed, holding his wife’s hand between both his own, staring down, his face stark with disbelief and a sort of horror. The nurse on the opposite side of Lizzie glanced up at Cat and everything was clear from the expression in her eyes. There was the most profound silence and stillness. The room was a tableau, the people motionless, the dead woman’s eyes still open, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Then the picture fractured and splintered into a thousand pieces whose sharp edges cut the silence as Max Jameson let out a sound Cat had heard only a few times in her life, a howl that mingled pain and grief, rage and fear. And then he hurled himself past Cat, pushing her as he ran, out of the room, down the corridor towards the hall, his cry trailing behind him like blood spilling out on to the floor.
Cat went to the bed, and drew her hand gently down over Lizzie Jameson’s eyes. Already there was the look she knew so well, the strange, deep and distant look of the dead, sleeping with an absorption that took them far beyond reach. But, freed from the struggles and the fear, Lizzie was beautiful again and already years younger; it was as if, at the moment of death, time began counting backwards.
“Poor girl.”
“Hard for them both.”
“It was cruel.”
“I fear for him, Dr Deerbon. I’ve been watching him today. He’s been like a hot spring boiling up inside, just about keeping the lid on for her.”
“I’ll go and see him.” Cat lifted Lizzie’s hands and folded them gently on top of each other. “But not tonight.” She turned towards the door. “I’m bushed.”
It was all she could do to stay focused enough to drive safely, and she opened the car windows and switched on the late-night news.
“Police in North Yorkshire have arrested a thirty-eight-year-old woman in connection with the abduction of a six-year-old girl, Amy Sudden, from near her home in the village of Gathering Bridge. The woman was taken to Scarborough hospital from where the detective in charge of the case, DCS Jim Chapman of the North Riding force, spoke to reporters.”
Cat turned on to the bypass. There was very little traffic, and she could slow down without causing annoyance.
The strong Yorkshire voice came over, speaking in the usual, robotic official way. “I would like to confirm that, this afternoon, officers from the North Riding force pursued a car travelling towards the coast and that a six-year-old girl was discovered in the boot of that car, when it came to a halt on scrubland above the cliffs some miles north of Scarborough. The girl was taken by ambulance to Scarborough hospital where she has undergone a medical examination. Although suffering from shock and dehydration, she has no serious injuries and should be allowed home in a couple of days. I can also confirm that police pursued and subsequently arrested the driver of the car and that tonight a thirty-eight-year-old woman has been taken into custody. That is all I can say for the moment.”
“Superintendent, can you comment on reports that charges may also be brought in connection with the disappearance of two young boys, one in the North Riding force area, and one from the south of England?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t say any more for the time being.”
“Can you confirm that a senior officer from another force is with you in connection with these other two cases of presumed abduction?”
“I can’t, no.”
Cat switched off the radio, and headed for home.
Lights were still on in the farmhouse but the kitchen was empty. From upstairs came her elder son’s voice wailing loudly.
“I didn’t know it would, I’m sorry, Daddy, I didn’t know c”
Cat dropped her bag and headed up.
“What’s going on?”
Chris, Sam and Felix were in the bathroom. Felix was in the bath.
“Mummy, it wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t, I didn’t know it—”
“Sam, shut up. Stop whining. The more you go on the crosser it makes me, so shut up.”
It was rare for Chris to speak so sharply to the children.
“What happened?”
“Sam thought marker pen made good tattoos on Felix and I can’t get the bloody stuff off.”
Cat sat on the laundry bin and began to laugh.
“The funny side of it escapes me. Felix, stop squirming.”
“You’ll get nowhere scrubbing like that, Chris, it’ll just have to wear off. Sam, you should know better. Gosh, is it that late? Where’s Hannah?”
“Asleep. This is boys’ trouble.”
Chris looked at Cat for the first time. “Hey.”
“Hey. Glass of wine would be nice.”
“Christ, what a pack of mongrels in here.”
“Whereas outside it’s more your baying wolves.”
“What happened?”
“Tell you later.”
Cat scooped her younger son out of the bath.
“His fingers have gone wrinkly,” Sam said. “Like aliens’.”
“How do you know?”
“I know everything about aliens.”
“Maybe because you are one.”
He let out a gleeful shriek.
Twenty minutes later, children asleep, Cat went in search of the glass of wine that had never materialised. Chris was lying on the kitchen sofa.
“Asleep?”
“Yes.” She nudged him. “Move your legs.”
Chris opened his eyes. “It can’t go on,” he said. “And I want a whisky.”
Cat knew better than to take umbrage. Moods like this had become quite common. She thought she knew how to handle them.
“I’m absolutely pissed off.”
“Sam just didn’t think. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Not Sam, though he’s too old to be so stupid, he should start thinking occasionally. But not that, bloody everything. I had a pig of a day, I had three emergencies, I had a mountain of paperwork, I had that meeting with the Primary Health Care Trust which you should have been at, I come home expecting you to be back within the hour and you’re gone half the night. Anyway, I’ve told the PHCT neither of us will be joining the night-call rota and that goes for half the GPs in our area, more than half, they can pay through the nose for agency doctors, serve them right.”
“You did what?Chris, you may not be prepared to go on doing nights now the new contract is on us– that’s up to you—but I think you’re wrong. Why should our patients suffer, so you and your chums can score political points?”
“Patients are not going to suffer.”
“Well, I’m going to carry on doing nights on call the same as I always have.”
“Anyway, where were you?”
“Don’t dothat to me, just ignoring what I say and changing the subject, it’s so bloody arrogant. I’ll make it clear to the PHCT tomorrow that whatever you said applies to you, not to me.”
“Thus slicing the practice down the middle. How supportive.”
“Oh, don’t be childish.” She got up. The wine, which she had drunk too quickly, had hit her like a hammer, making her sway with exhaustion. “I need to sleep.”
“You still haven’t said where you were.”
“I was having my mobile nicked and being knocked to the ground in a passageway on the Dulcie estate, after which the paramedics found the patient I’d gone to see dead in his lavatory. Then I went to the hospice where Lizzie Jameson had just died and Max went roaring off into the night. Then I came home. On the way I heard that North Riding Police have arrested someone—a womanfor God’s sake. She’d abducted a little girl, and she might be the David Angus person as well c too much for one night.”
Upstairs, she sat down on the edge of the bed and began to sob. Seconds later, Chris was beside her.
“God, I am so sorry c I’m a pig.”
“Yes.”
“We don’t need this.” He put his arms round her. “Neither of us needs this. Just think if we didn’t have to.”
“Please,” Cat said, “please don’t start about Australia. I really, really couldn’t take it.”
“Well, something has to happen, Cat. A big change.”
“Oh God.”
“Listen, get a babysitter for Saturday. I want us to go out. I want to talk properly. Can you?”
“I don’t want to spoil a nice dinner talking about Australia,” Cat mumbled. “I’m too tired to get undressed.”
“Yes, look at you c look at us. You come in from being mugged on some poxy housing estate, I’ve been fighting bureaucracy instead of treating patients, then fighting my children because I’m tired and frustrated c What is this? What are we doing here?”
She had been on the brink of falling asleep in her clothes. Now Cat sat up, her brain and body charged and electric. “Why are you shouting at me? We don’t do this, Chris, we don’t shout.”
“Exactly. Exactly.”
“This can’t wait until we’re sitting across some random restaurant table. I won’t sleep now until it’s sorted. It’s not just about being on call at night.”
“No. It’s a whole lot more. I’ve been trying to get to grips with it in my head c”
“Without talking about it to me?”
“We’re never together long enough.”
“That’s rubbish.”
She felt as if she was being attacked on all sides by hideous things which danced round her in an evil, gloating dance. And then it occurred to her, sickeningly that this was what had happened to Karin McCafferty—one moment, rushing home to tell her husband that her scans were clear, her cancer gone, the next being confronted by a man who was leaving her to live with another woman in New York.
“It wasn’t even a younger woman,” she said aloud. “I don’t know why that would have made it better but it would. Only she was older. An older woman for Christ’s sake.”
Chris was staring at her blankly.
“Karin,” she said dully. “When Mike left her.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Hasn’t it?”
There was a pause, then Chris closed his eyes. “Oh dear God.” He took hold of her hands. “What this has to do with is that I am sick and tired and I am almost burned out. It is about me not wanting to do this any more. I do not want to be what I am.”
“Which is? Husband? Father?”
“Of course not husband and father. A GP. I don’t want to be a GP.”
“But you’re a doctor through and through, you’re—”
“I didn’t say ‘doctor,’ I said GP. That’s what I’ve had enough of. You still love it. I am beginning to hate it and when I don’t hate it I resent it. The job has changed, the bureaucracy gets to me c but it isn’t just that c I don’t want to do it any longer. If I carry on I’ll become a bad doctor.”
“We need a holiday, that’s all.”
“No. It isn’t all. We had a holiday and I didn’t feel any better. Look, I didn’t mean to start on this huge thing in the middle of the night when we’re both shattered.”
“What do you really want to do?”
“Retrain c well, partly. I want to go back into psychiatry.”
“I think I might cry. Or be sick.”
“Shock?”
“Relief. Not Australia, not another woman.”
“I’ve given up on Australia and what other woman would have me?” He wandered into the bathroom. “Whatwas that about a woman being arrested?”
Fourteen
“Father in Heaven, grant them comfort in their suffering. When afraid, give them courage, when afflicted grant them patience, when dejected afford them hope; and when alone assure them of the prayerful support of your holy people, through Jesus Christ Our Lord.”
The candle flames barely glimmered and the lamps made a glowing cave of the Chapel of Christ the Healer. The great cathedral spaces behind Jane Fitzroy were hollowed out of darkness. She knelt alone before the small altar on which stood a striking modern gold cross.
She loved to say the last office of the day alone here. Tonight she had come in to pray for the two patients who had died in Imogen House, and for another who would probably die in a few hours. The cathedral’s night silence seemed not hollow or empty but crammed with centuries of prayer. She could understand how people gave themselves to the monastic life.
She bent her head for another moment to commend herself to God but, as she did so, a sound made her hesitate. She thought she had heard a door brush against the stone floor as it opened. She waited. Nothing. Silence again.
She bent her head.
Footsteps came down the side aisle, someone in soft-soled shoes.
The main doors would have been closed and locked but the side door was open for her to secure when she left for the night.
She stood up. “Is someone there?”
The footsteps stopped.
“Hello?” The candle flames were steady but her own voice wavered slightly. “Can I help you?”
Nothing. She wondered whether to move forward confidently or wait. The footsteps came nearer.
“The cathedral is closed really, but if you’ve come in to pray please stay a few moments, there are things I can do before I have to leave.”
A man stood at the open gate of the chapel. He did not come in. He had a two-day stubble on both jaw and head, wore a navy reefer jacket and a red scarf. She sighed. Not a madman, not a thief, not drunk, not—she smiled as the word came to her—not unrespectable.
