He’s not going to come with me.

She felt more frightened than ever.

When she was with Henry, she felt as if she could do anything, go anywhere. Live forever. My head knows we’re in trouble, but my body needs educating. Like a dumb old dog It doesn’t understand.

But I barely know him. Am I investing too much, in a relationship that barely got started? Could I have expected anything more?

Hell, yes, she thought.

If there were people on Venus, did they feel the same as I do when it started there?

“I have to get to Jack,” she said. “It’s all I care about.” And it was true; she could feel the pull to her child, like a cable attached to her chest, dragging her, a primeval force.

“I understand.”

“But you won’t help me.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“I thought you cared about us.” Christ, that sounds weak.

“You know I do,” Henry said. “Jesus.” He turned away, his shoulder muscles hunching with the tension. “It’s what I want. To be with you.”

One last try. “Then come with me!”

“I can’t. I have to go find a way to stop this. I’m sorry.”

She held his gaze for one, two seconds.

Then he turned away, and ran towards the city centre.

A helicopter flapped over her, silhouetted against the sun, so she couldn’t see if it was here to help the people, or to watch them die.

16

In support of the general evacuation of the eastern city that had been ordered, Morag Decker was assigned to assist at the Queensbury Hospital, off the Holyrood Road.

The area immediately around Arthur’s Seat remained chaotic and uncontrolled, because of the suddenness and scale of the devastation, the collapse of the roads, the inability of the emergency people to penetrate.

The wounded and dead still lay as if dropped from some other planet onto these quiet Edinburgh streets.

But here she was, a police constable, running past the casualties, making for the hospital as fast as she could manage.

She knew the drill, the work that ought to be done here: Attach a waterproof numbered disc or label to the remains. Each body or part of a body must be numbered. Mark the position of the remains with a similarly numbered peg or stake. Use yellow wax crayon on hard surfaces. Place the remains in a body bag and label with the same number. If during this procedure items or body parts fall from the remains they should not be replaced but put into a separate container and labelled to indicate the probable association with that body number…

She wanted nothing in the world so much as to go off duty, to go home, to shower away all the shit she’d been put through already today. That wasn’t an option right now.

She reached the hospital.

The car park was crammed There was a queue of buses, cars, taxis, ambulances both ways at every exit. There seemed to be patients wandering everywhere: some complaining, some apparently enjoying the break from hospital routine, some actually pushing their drip bottles on portable stands. At the exits, hospital staff were chasing their patients, trying to get their details before they became lost in the crowds. A policeman was trying to ensure a one-way traffic flow through the grounds, but the system wasn’t working.

A cry went up when an ambulance, reversing, knocked over a wheeled stretcher. Fortunately the stretcher was empty.

She heard the hospital managers conferring with each other, and the consultants and senior nurses. Where the hell were they going to put all these patients? The Health Service had gotten very sleek and efficient, it seemed, but it didn’t have an ounce of spare capacity…

She found a senior police officer, a superintendent, trying to bring some order to the chaos; she told Morag to help out with room clearing.

Morag went into the hospital.

Away from the reception areas, the building had already mostly been cleared. The National Health: bulk-bought green paint on the walls, echoing corridors, metal-framed beds, the all-pervasive stink of disinfectant — as a child Decker had had an unhappy time in hospital, an extended stay to treat a badly fractured leg. Being here brought all of that back. Especially the smell.

But still, in here she was away from people for a time, the car horns and shouts of the exit areas were receding to a background wash of noise, and the loudest sound was the click of her heels on the polished floor.

She could feel herself starting to unwind, just a little. Was that wrong?

The doors to the wards were closed. When she looked along the corridors she could see pillows propped up against each of the doors, their fat cotton bellies protruding from the door frames. The pillows were a mark that the rooms had been cleared. It was standard procedure. You couldn’t go back into one of these rooms without knocking over the pillow, and you couldn’t prop it up again from inside the room. Fail-safe, supposedly.

She heard something from inside one “cleared” ward. A low mumbling.

She kicked the pillow out of the way, opened the door and went inside.

Bright sunlight streamed into the room, dazzling off the polished floor. There was a row of beds, roughly abandoned, sheets and blankets pulled aside and crumpled. She searched, quickly. Medical charts, clothes lockers, a trolley with medication.

The whimpering was coming from under one of the beds.

Morag went over and looked under the bed. There was an old woman huddled there, in a thick flannel nightdress. Bright, rheumy eyes stared out of the dark at Morag. “Who are you?”

“It’s all right, dear. You need to come out now.”

The woman clutched bird-like arms to her chest.

Morag straightened up and checked the name on the medical card fixed to the bed. “Mrs Docherty, is it? I’m the police. It’s safe to come out now.”

Those rheumy eyes turned again, distrustful. “The police?”

“Yes.” She showed Mrs Docherty her warrant card.

“I didn’t hear the all-clear.”

Morag made herself smile. “How’s your hearing, Mrs Docherty?”

“Not what it was…” Mrs Docherty reached out a thin hand.

It took some time and care to get Mrs Docherty out and on her feet.

Together they began to shuffle to the door. Mrs Docherty wouldn’t go anywhere without her handbag.

“That’s what we had to do in the war. Stay under the bed.”

“I know. You did the right thing.”

Mrs Docherty’s hair was a tangle of white, her body a sagging sack, pulled down by gravity; she could barely walk. But, Morag noted absently, she had good, high cheekbones. A beauty, in her day.

She thought of the people she’d walked past in the street, before coming here, in the end, to assist this old lady. Which of those others might have been a better choice to spend her time on? Which a better investment, for the human race? Was there some lost Einstein, someone who might have figured out the truth of this disaster? Or even somebody who might have been able to go on and help someone else in turn?

Someone, in short, she admitted to herself, who was of more use than this old dear…

But even if that was so, who was she, Morag, to choose? What did useful mean? To a husband or daughter or grandchild, this old lady might be the most valuable person in the world.

So she held Mrs Docherty’s arm as they made their slow, difficult way along the corridors.

“…I rather enjoyed the war,” Mrs Docherty was saying. “Old Winnie. Bit of a lad, we always thought. One of us. Of course I was only a girl…”

They reached the exit, and Morag handed her over to a nurse.

The traffic lights were either out altogether, or scrambled. The pain in Ted’s chest, as he tried to control the car at speeds of no more than a few miles an hour, was blinding.

Jack sat in the front seat beside him, belted in, clutching his box of books and toys. The boy was silent, Jack thought. Too silent. But there was nothing he could do about that for now; the lad was going to see a lot more nasty stuff before they were done with all this.