A moment.

He thought about it as the blood seeped through the whiteness of the bandage, dried brown on his fingers, around his throat.

He looked at me, and I looked at him.

His hand shook as he reached out for me, hovered an inch away from my hands, the whole arm rocking with more than just cold. I don’t know if he intended the movement, or if the weight of his own fingertips became too much to bear. Skin brushed my skin,

and I jumped, giddy with the relief of it, and as the bleary-eyed would-be killer flopped against the ties that bound him to the roof of the van, I staggered back, clutching my arm, the pain now not so much a universal shrieking as a specific throbbing, the hot fire of it pulsing in time to the rhythm of my heart. I gasped, swayed against the side of the van, felt thin blood bubble through my skull, blinked tears from my eyes. My captive flopped against his bonds, then kicked out, tried to stagger upright and flopped again, shouting unheard words through the balaclava in his mouth. I waggled the gun at him and hissed, “Try me.”

He fell silent, grew still.

I smiled my giddiest smile and slid, one shaking foot at a time, out of the van.

The night nurse took a long time to answer the door.

When she did, she saw first my face, grey and smeared with blood, and her features opened in shock and sympathy. Then she saw the bandages around my shoulder and chest, and I think understood what it was, what it might be, but by then I’d caught her by the index finger and,

as Coyle fell, I grabbed him round the middle and held him up. “OK,” I whispered in my new, gentler voice. “You’re OK.”

I eased him down on to the steps, and as his eyes regained their focus he looked up into mine. “Kepler?”

“I’m going to get you blood,” I replied. “And painkillers. What’s your type?”

“You’re really doing this?”

“Blood type. Now would be a good time to declare allergies too.”

“A positive. I’m A positive.”

“OK. Stay there. If your friend in the truck starts shouting, shoot him.”

“Kepler?” he called as I skipped back up the stairs, light-limbed in my nurse’s shoes. “He is my friend, you know that?”

“Sure. I guess how you handle that one is up to you.”

The clinic was fluorescent white. I wore a uniform of unwashed blue, sensible shoes, too much lipstick, not enough coffee. I’d been watching the TV until the knock at my door. The screen showed poker, a camera pointing straight down at a green table, hands moving in and out as cards were flipped, chances lost. I let it play. A small reception area stood empty. The light of a vending machine glowed in a shadowed corner; the shutter was down across the desk. Little rooms led off either side of a corridor, within them plastic beds draped with white. I checked doors until I found the most secure, patted down my pockets, found a bunch of keys. Lady Luck smiled on me that day–the door was all bolts and levers, not a combination to be found. Three of my eleven keys fitted the locks; the door opened.

The room beyond was a paradise of nasty drugs for nasty diseases. French pharmacies; nowhere in the world can you find as many potentially toxic formulas so readily available. The painkillers weren’t hard to find–the most secure box in the room once again yielded to a heavy-duty key. The clinic’s blood supplies were a bare minimum; the packs already had their intended destinations written on, for this old gentleman who can’t make it to the hospital for his transfusion; for that young lady whose DNA turned against her before she was born. I stole a couple of pints, stuffed a plastic bag with saline, needles, sterile wipes, fresh bandages, sedatives and the long-hooked edge of a suture needle.

On the TV a player had folded, his last few chips taken by a rival. The crowd cheered, the presenter whooped as the broken contestant walked away to the swirl of golden lights. I let myself out, leaving all as I had found it.

Coyle sat where I had left him, and I was surprised.

The gun was in his lap, his head against the side of the staircase, his breathing long and ragged. He half-turned his head as I approached. “Find… what you need?” Words came hard and slow. I helped him to his feet, supporting him gingerly, my hands either side of his chest.

“Yes. Put the gun away.”

“Thought you wanted… me to shoot someone.”

“I’ve been this nurse for less than five minutes. People lose five minutes all the time. It’s late, the dead of night. She can imagine that we came, imagine that we went, imagine that she imagined it. It’s better that way.”

“You do this a lot?” he asked, tucking the gun beneath the jacket draped loosely across his shoulders.

“Not habitually. Hold this.”

He took the plastic bag I offered, out of instinct rather than choice. Offer a hand to shake, a bag to hold; do it fast enough, people don’t think. As his fingers closed about the handle, my fingers closed about his and with a deep breath I

looked up into the nurse’s eyes as she staggered and swayed.

Felt the pain pound through my body, nearly knocking me down.

Gripped the plastic bag tighter in my hand, turned and walked away.

In the clinic upstairs the TV played, the clock ticked, the lights burned, and nothing had changed between this minute and the last.

Back in the van.

I cut the man down who I’d suspended by his hands from a coat hook, and as his fingers came free, I jumped, faster than he could swing.

Coyle slumped to the floor as I spluttered dirty wool and pulled the balaclava from between my lips. My arms ached, my wrists were stung from a silent fight I’d had against my restraints. I eased Coyle on to his back, pulled the blanket over him once again, breathed, I have sedatives. I have painkillers.

Fuck your drugs, he replied, though I didn’t think he felt the bravery in his words.

I drove a few miles, parked in an empty car park behind a shuttered warehouse where the CCTV cameras would not roam, settled down to work. I slung the first bag of blood from the same hook on the ceiling to which I had been tied. Peeled back the dressing from his wound, shone a torch into the bloody mess. Entry wound only, low calibre, I could still see the crunched-up end of the bullet gleaming near the surface of the skin. In the dark Coyle’s hand grabbed my arm by the sleeve, then remembered its repulsion and slowly let go. “You… know anything about medicine?” he asked.

“Sure. Somewhere there’s someone with most of a degree I earned.”

“That doesn’t comfort me.”

I swapped the bandages, left the bullet there. “Morphine?”

“No.”

“It’s your body.”

I felt his glare at the back of my neck as I climbed into the driver’s seat.

Chapter 74

A service station on a winding motorway through the mountains.

Coyle didn’t sleep, but neither did he speak, wrapped in blankets in the back of the van.

My body didn’t carry money. Guns, knives–no cash.

I went into the service station anyway, ordered black coffee, two croque monsieurs. When I reached the bleary-eyed woman serving behind the counter, I put my coffee down, caught her by the hand. My former host swayed, dizzy and confused, and I opened the drawer of the till, grabbed a bundle of euros, pressed it into his fist.

His eyes had just about regained their focus, enough to look at me, to register my skin on his, before I jumped back.

I handed the cashier a twenty-euro note, and she seemed surprised to find her till already open, but looking into my smiling face she shook herself and asked no questions.