She’d got to the hospital just after word had been given to Lynley about Helen’s condition. She’d seen the surgeon come to fetch him and she’d watched as he’d received the news. It’s killing him, she’d thought.

She wanted to go to him, to say she’d bear the weight of it with him, as his friend, but she knew she didn’t have that right. Instead, she watched as Simon St. James went to him, and she waited until Simon had returned to his wife to share with her what he had learned. Lynley and Helen’s parents disappeared with the surgeon, God only knew where, and Barbara understood that she could not follow. So she crossed the room to speak to St. James. He nodded at her and she was furiously grateful that he did not exclude her or ask why she was there.

She said, “How bad is it?”

He took a moment. From his expression, she prepared herself to hear the worst.

“She was shot beneath the left breast,” he said. His wife leaned into him, her face against his shoulder as she listened along with Barbara. “The bullet evidently went through the left ventricle, the right atrium, and the right artery.”

“But there was no blood, there was almost no blood.” Deborah spoke into the jacket he was wearing, into his shoulder, shaking her head.

“How can that happen?” Barbara asked St. James.

“Her lung collapsed at once,” St. James told her, “so the blood began filling the cavity that was left in her chest.”

Deborah began to cry. Not a wail. Not an ululation of grief. Just a shaking of her body that even Barbara could see she was doing her best to control.

“They would have put a tube in her chest when they first saw the wound,” St. James told Barbara. “They would have got blood from it. A litre. Perhaps two. They would have known then that they had to go in at once.”

“That’s what the surgery was.”

“They sutured the left ventricle, did the same for the artery and the exit wound in the right ventricle.”

“The bullet? Have we got the bullet? What happened to the bullet?”

“It was under the right scapula, between the third and fourth rib. We have the bullet.”

“So if she’s repaired,” Barbara said, “that’s good news, isn’t it? Isn’t it good news, Simon?”

She saw him withdraw inside himself then, to a place she could not know or imagine. He said, “It took so long to get to her, Barbara.”

“What do you mean? So long? Why?”

He shook his head. She saw-inexplicably-that his eyes grew cloudy. She didn’t want to hear the rest, then, but they’d waded too far into these waters. Retreat was not an option.

“Has she lost the baby?” Deborah was the one to ask the question.

“Not yet.”

“Thank God for that, then,” Barbara said. “So the news is good, right?” she repeated.

St. James said to his wife, “Deborah, would you like to sit down?”

“Stop it.” She raised her head. The poor woman, Barbara saw, looked like someone with a wasting disease. She felt, Barbara realised, like she’d pulled the trigger on Helen herself.

“For a while,” St. James said, his voice so low that Barbara had to lean in to him to make out his words, “she had no oxygen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her brain was deprived of oxygen, Barbara.”

“But now,” Barbara said, insistent still. “She’s all right, yes? What about now?”

“She’s on a ventilator now. Fluids, of course. A heart monitor.”

“Good. That’s very good, yes?” It was surely excellent, she thought, reason to celebrate, terrible moment but they’d all passed through it and everything was going to sort itself out. Right? Yes. Say the word yes.

“There’s no cortical activity,” St. James said, “and that means-”

Barbara walked away. She didn’t want to hear more. Hearing more meant knowing, knowing meant feeling, and that was the last bloody God damn thing…Eyes fixed on the lino, she paced rapidly out of the hospital into the cold night air and the wind, which struck her cheeks so surprisingly that she gasped and looked up and saw them gathered. The carrion feeders. The journalists. Not dozens of them, not as she’d seen them behind the barriers at the Shand Street tunnel and at the end of Wood Lane. But enough, and she wanted to hurl herself at them.

“Constable? Constable Havers? A word?”

Barbara thought it had to be someone from inside the hospital, coming out to fetch her with a piece of news, so she turned, but it was Mitchell Corsico and he was approaching with his notebook in his hand.

She said, “You need to clear out of here. You especially. You’ve done enough.”

His brow furrowed as if he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying to him. “You can’t think…” He paused, clearly regrouping. “Constable, you can’t think this has anything to do with The Source’s story on the superintendent.”

Barbara said to him, “You know what I think. Get out of my way.”

“But how is she? Is she going to be all right?”

“Get out of my bloody way,” she snarled. “Or I won’t answer for the consequences.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

PREPARATIONS HAD TO BE MADE, AND HE SET ABOUT them with His usual care. He worked quietly. He caught Himself smiling more than once. He even hummed as He measured for the span of a grown man’s arms and when He sang, He did so quietly because it would be idiocy to take an unnecessary and stupid risk at this point. He chose tunes from who-only-knew-where, and when He finally burst into “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” He had to chuckle. For inside the van, it was indeed a fortress: a place where He would be safe from the world, but the world would never be safe from Him.

The second set of leather restraints He fixed opposite the sliding panel door of the van. He used a drill and bolts to do the job, and He tested the result with the weight of His body, hanging from them as the observer would hang, struggling and twisting as the observer would do. He was satisfied with the result of His efforts, and He went on to catalogue His supplies.

The cylinder for the stove was full. The tape was cut and hanging well within His reach. The batteries in the torch were fresh. The implements for a soul’s release were sharp and prepared for use.

The van had petrol, a full supply. The body board was perfectly pristine. The clothesline ligatures were neatly coiled. The oil was in its proper place. This would, He thought, be His crowning achievement.

Oh yes, too right. You think that, do you? Where’d you learn to be such a fool?

Fu used the back of His tongue to change the pressure against His eardrums, eliminating the maggot’s voice for a moment, that insidious planting of the seeds of doubt. He could hear the whoosh of that pressure changing: Crinkle and crack against His eardrums and the maggot was gone.

Only to return the instant He ceased the movement of His tongue. How long’re you planning to occupy space upon the planet? Was there ever on earth a more useless bit of gobshite than you? Stand there and listen when I’m talking to you. Take it like a man or get out of my sight.

Fu hastened His work. Escape was the key.

He left the van and made for safety. There was nowhere, really, where the maggot left Him in peace, but there were still distractions. Always had been and always would be. He sought them. Quickly now, quickly quickly. In the van, He used judgement, punishment, redemption, release. Elsewhere, He used more traditional tools.

Do something useful with your time, little sod.

He would, He would. Oh yes He would.

He made for the television and punched it on, raising the volume until everything else might be driven away. On the screen, He found Himself looking at a building’s entrance, figures coming and going, a female reporter’s mouth moving, and words that He could not connect to meaning because the maggot would not leave His brain.