Chapters (78)
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Prologue
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- Forty
- Forty-One
- Forty-Two
- Forty-Three
- Forty-Four
- Forty-Five
- Forty-Six
- Forty-Seven
- Forty-Eight
- Forty-Nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-One
- Fifty-Two
- Fifty-Three
- Fifty-Four
- Fifty-Five
- Fifty-Six
- Fifty-Seven
- Fifty-Eight
- Fifty-Nine
- Sixty
- Sixty-One
- Sixty-Two
- Sixty-Three
- Sixty-Four
- Sixty-Five
- Sixty-Six
- Sixty-Seven
- Sixty-Eight
- Sixty-Nine
- Seventy
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
- Also by Nicci French
- About the Publisher
The woman pulled a face.
“He had a few minutes, just him and her. It was . . .”
She stopped herself.
“It’s all right,” said Jude. “I’m a doctor. I’ve seen this sort of thing.”
“No, you haven’t.”
There was a silence. The woman clearly wasn’t going to elaborate on what she’d seen.
“I thought they’d send a helicopter,” said Jude. “It could land on the marshes.”
The woman seemed about to say something but then she just looked at Erika and then at Jude. Jude recognized the expression and what the woman wasn’t saying. There was no need for a helicopter. There was no point in rushing Danny to hospital. Jude knew those times from when she had worked in casualty as a junior doctor. You work on a case of cardiac arrest for ten minutes, then twenty, then forty, beyond a moment when there’s any real hope of recovery. She may not have seen what the paramedic had seen but she’d attended a scene where the patient was losing blood faster than it could be transfused. At the end, when it was finally called, everyone around the table looked like they’d been bathing in blood.
“Have they arrested him?” Jude asked.
The woman looked puzzled, as if she didn’t know there was someone who needed to be arrested, or had forgotten it.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You get a kind of tunnel vision. But there were a load of police here when I arrived. They seemed to be with someone in a room off to the side. It was all a bit chaotic.” She looked back at Erika, who was staring in front of her, her lips pale and her face chalky. “Are you all right? Are you feeling dizzy?”
Erika shook her head slowly. The paramedic stood up. She looked at Jude.
“You might want to keep an eye on her for a few minutes. I’d better be getting back inside.”
But before she could even move, a cluster of green-clad figures started to emerge from the house. As they got closer, Jude saw the dark-brown splashes on their uniforms. Brown, Jude thought to herself, not red. It didn’t look the way you expected. There was no sense of urgency about them, just exhaustion. They weren’t speaking and they weren’t even looking at each other. One of them, a tall, strongly built man, shook his head slowly.
Sixty-Seven
On the Monday, Jude went back to work. Her foot, still swollen up to twice its normal size and a virulent purple-blue, was strapped; her left hand was wrapped in a bandage and sending out pulses of pain. She wore clothes borrowed from her new housemates since most of hers were still at Nat’s.