Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

Copyright © John Pritchard 1993

Lyrics from Ribbons © 1990 reproduced by kind permission of Eldritch Boulevard Ltd/EMI Songs Ltd

A version of the opening chapter of this novel first appeared in The Dark Side magazine under the title On Her Deathbed.

John Pritchard asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780586217696

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2016 ISBN: 9780008226909

Version: 2016-10-26

Praise

‘A good old-fashioned tale of battling evil, which turns into a roller-coaster ride to heights of gut-churning suspense and real terror’

RAMSAY CAMPBELL

‘A taut and fast-moving tale with bags of authentic detail and a slam-bang finale’

STEPHEN GALLAGHER

‘Night Sisters is one of the creepiest and most shocking novels I’ve read in a long, long, time. The writing is superb. The story is brilliantly eerie, marked by stunning shocks of violence’

RICHARD LAYMON

Dedication

TO

THE COMPANY OF BRIGHT ANGELS

(sweet dreams …)

Epigraph

Don’t be afraid now:

Just walk on in.

The Sisters of Mercy

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

PART ONE: Night Casualties

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

PART TWO: Night Watchmen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

PART THREE: Night Sisters

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

PART ONE

Night Casualties

One

They told me afterwards that when Mrs Lennox died, Jenny – who had the reputation of being the most cheerful, most patient, most loving nurse on the gerry unit – had been heard to say, quite clearly, ‘Thank Christ for that.’

You might find that a shocking sentiment; but the girls who told me it didn’t think so, and neither did I. We knew well enough what Jenny had gone through; had seen how that grim old woman had worn down her patience, and turned her bright-eyed enthusiasm into bitterness and tears. And we’d seen more. We’d seen her fear. For all her cool professionalism, she had come to dread that darkened room and its occupant at the far end of the ward. Uncomprehending, her friends and colleagues had shrugged it off: ignored the signs. Only now did we realize that Staff Nurse Jenny Thomas had been truly afraid of entering that room alone, even after its occupant had died. In fact, especially after its occupant had died.

It had been a sombre winter afternoon when the doctor was called round to certify Mrs Lennox dead. By all accounts he’d done so as quickly as possible, and left the small, malodorous room with some haste. Jenny had described the old woman to me once, and I could picture her lying there, with that waxen immobility that immediately distinguishes death from sleep. A gaunt face staring up from the pillow, its lines of age contrasting bizarrely with the jet-black of her dyed hair. Eyes still half-open; jawbone slack.

There were no relatives to inform, so at least they’d been spared that thankless duty. The problems began when Jenny refused to lay the body out.

Sister accepted that the patient had not been noted for her personal hygiene: nightdress and bedclothes were stained and stinking. The body was still damp with the patina of sweat raised by the final struggle against death. Of course it wasn’t going to be a pleasant job, but it had to be done, and besides, they needed the bed.

Still Jenny had refused.

She was reminded of the staffing situation – two trained nurses including herself (Sister was about to go off) and a completely inexperienced student, to run a twenty-bed ward. The other staff nurse was starting the drug-round; Jenny would have to do the body, and do it on her own.

A third time she’d refused. The Sister must have been quite nonplussed, getting this from an experienced nurse like Jen: a girl she knew and liked. But she had no option now but to threaten disciplinary action. And finally, reluctantly, Jen had relented, and turned back towards the room where the body of Mrs Lennox lay waiting for her ministrations.

Laying-out is standard procedure, of course. The body is washed, the limbs straightened; the orifices plugged with cotton wool. Not a nice job at the best of times, but when you’re doing it alone it can be quite unnerving. Me, I’ll find myself talking to them sometimes – explaining what I’m doing, apologizing for the indignities. I still remember that time I rolled a body over and the air trapped in its chest escaped in a long, sepulchral sigh. That was back when I was in my second year. I was shaking for hours.

So I knew how Jenny must have felt, washing that cooling corpse in the grey winter dusk; all alone in the room. At one point she’d emerged for a breather, and was talking with the student when abruptly she’d shivered and turned round sharply. The rather startled first year had asked her what was wrong, and she’d said, nothing; but I reckoned I knew otherwise. With her back turned to the body, she’d felt something – some shift in the air behind her, some coolness on the nape of her neck – that made her feel she was being watched. Maybe she was half expecting the corpse to have moved, be it ever so slightly, since she’d seen it last.

Either way, she’d returned to the job in hand; and after a while the porters arrived with their clanking tin trolley to collect the deceased. The body in the room, shrouded now and wrapped in a sheet from head to foot, was unceremoniously loaded aboard and wheeled off towards the lifts and, via them, the mortuary fridge. Jenny couldn’t have been the only person to have thought, good riddance.

Shortly afterwards, the same student nurse was sent down past Mrs Lennox’s old room to the equipment cupboard in the darkened link corridor beyond it. She’d got what she came for, and was just about to return when another nurse emerged from the ward after her.

That was her first thought, anyway, going by the uniform. But the figure was hunched, and wizened, and coming with slow, shuffling steps. In the moment before her eyes readjusted to the gloom of the corridor, she’d had the grotesque impression of a young nurse who’d aged decades overnight, worn out by the pressure of work. And then she saw the face.

Mrs Lennox’s face, framed by the stringy black hair spilling out from beneath the nurse’s cap: grinning at her.

The poor girl fainted then: it may sound like a cliché, but maybe you would have too. When she came round, the ‘nurse’ was nowhere to be seen – and, back on the ward, neither was Jenny. A search of the whole floor proved fruitless.

I don’t know at what stage the first, horrible doubts began to occur to people; but eventually someone suggested a visit to the morgue. Perhaps it was just an attempt to placate the student, who was near-hysterical in her account of the dead patient come back to life. So down they went, into the cold room: opened the compartment where Mrs Lennox had supposedly been stored, and pulled out the muffled form within. And even before they’d unwrapped the sheet from around the head, I think they must have realized who they’d find.

It was Jenny, of course, cool and naked in her shroud; her body washed and prepared in the proper manner. Someone had strangled her with their bare hands. Someone with very long and unkempt fingernails.

Mrs Lennox hasn’t been seen since. Under questioning, the certifying doctor admitted that he’d been for so long without sleep that he might have omitted to check for all the vital signs, and overlooked some spark of life still remaining. And Jenny Thomas had once told me, in wide-eyed earnest, that the woman was evil. That the woman was a witch.

One of them was right, of course. I really hope it was the doctor.

But now, sitting here in the gloom … and listening to the silence of the corridor outside … I didn’t think he had been.

Two

Maybe I was just in one of those moods.

Casualty was proving quiet tonight. The usual influx in the hour after closing time had long since slowed to a trickle, the last stragglers from the rearguard of yesterday’s business – leaving us in limbo to wait for the morning. And you can get to thinking strange thoughts at four a.m. or so, in the emptiest watch of the night, with dawn still several hours distant. I was certainly tired, and slightly edgy: this being my first Night On after returning from sick. Still out of the rhythm. But there was more to it than that.

I’d loved Jenny Thomas – really loved her. And she’d been murdered, quite wantonly, by … whom? A geriatric old woman? That I could not believe. Yet who else could have done it?

Or what else?

Silly sort of question, you might think; and only a month ago I’d have given very short shrift to any idea of a supernatural factor in my best friend’s death. Maybe in the warm light of day I still would. But now … sitting here at my desk, in my dimly-lit office; nursing a mug as I tried getting to grips with next month’s off-duty roster … my brooding mind kept coming back round to a few uncanny experiences of my own. Things like those limping footsteps I’d heard in an empty ward, back when I was doing my training. Or the sudden drop in temperature one night on Surgical, when a patient passed away.

Or the accident last week that almost killed me.

I’d just been driving over to visit a friend. She lived out in the sticks, and the town was soon behind me, sprawled like a galaxy of orange suns in the early winter night. The afterglow faded, and there was only the unlit country road, its twists and turns illuminated by my headlamps, and darkness closing quickly in behind. I’d been late, and put on a bit of speed. And as I rounded a bend, a figure had appeared in the road ahead, walking straight towards me: as dark as shadow, and as insubstantial. I remember swearing, and swerving – and then nothing until I came to on my side in a ditch: still strapped into my silent, crumpled Fiat Panda. I’d slumped there, helpless, feeling sick and numb and waiting for the pain; yet part of me had still been able to register the fresh, clean night air wafting in through my shattered window. That, and something else – something I sensed rather than felt, but which set me shivering abruptly. Because suddenly I knew I was being watched from out there in the darkness: watched by something alive, and aware of me; something inexpressibly cold. Something which paused for an endless moment, and then passed on, eventually fading altogether into the milder coolness of the night.

I’d been almost hysterical by the time they got me out: delayed shock, of course. After a night in the Obs Ward and some generous medication, I was feeling better, and almost ready to accept that explanation. I’d been dazed: not thinking straight. They reckoned there might have been some concussion – and I was lucky to get away with only that. As for what I’d seen in the headlamps – well, there was no sign of an impact, although it had seemed he would walk into me head-on. Some freak optical illusion, then. Or even a product of stress and tiredness. When did you last take a holiday, Miss Young?

So there I’d been, just resigning myself to a week off work, and putting up with the good-natured ribbing of the staff (who found it most amusing to have their own Sister as a patient – though I know they’d been pretty shaken up when the ambulance brought me in), when I got to see a copy of the local paper. My own accident featured prominently, of course – but it hadn’t been the only one that night. A number of minor collisions and near-misses had occurred across town, and those involved had all spoken of much the same cause: a shadowy figure glimpsed in the road ahead, walking directly towards the oncoming traffic. Yet no trace of anyone had been found; by the time the shaken drivers had recovered their wits, the street or road had been deserted. It was fortunate, the paper concluded, that only one serious accident had resulted from what had clearly been some kind of reckless practical joke.

I’d showed the article to Karen when she came round to do my obs. ‘Told you I wasn’t seeing things,’ I pointed out, with some satisfaction.

‘Maybe not – but you could still use a rest,’ she’d answered sweetly – and shoved a thermometer in my mouth.

Round and round my coffee went: a spiralling milky slick. The cubicles stayed empty. The phones stayed quiet. Resus was about as tidy as it was going to be.

A reckless practical joke, the paper had said; but again – somehow – I didn’t think so. I could still feel the chill – that icy presence in the night. Something cold had passed close by in the darkness, as I’d lain there trapped and trembling. I knew, instinctively, that whatever it was had definitely not been human.

What it had been, was anyone’s guess. But I also knew, with a sick little certainty, that if it had paused to investigate my car, I would not have survived the experience.

That in itself was a sobering thought – especially for someone as calm and rational as I usually am. But more, it put a whole new slant on Jenny’s death: a fresh and unsettling factor for my consideration. For if there really were such things as ghosts … and cold black shapes that walked the night, even in this day and age … then maybe dead people came back to life, too – and strangled pretty nurses.

Of course this hospital has one or two ghosts of its own, or so the stories go; and I suppose I’d enjoyed listening to those stories, and half-wanted to believe them. But it had taken this last encounter, inexplicable and frightening, to really set me thinking.

And now I’d started, it was proving very difficult to stop.

Getting on for four-thirty. Still dark outside, still silent; the town dead but dreaming in its sodium haze. But things would be stirring soon enough: lights coming on in bathrooms and kitchens, and the first commuters and early shift workers driving out on to the empty roads. It had been a quiet night so far, but, who knew, we might be able to fit in a good road smash before breakfast.

The thought drew my lips into a humourless smile, though I scarcely noticed it. Pushing the Off-duty to one side, I paused, surveying the desktop clutter – then reached for this week’s copy of Nursing Standard, and the article on management in A&E I’d been trying to take in. I picked the mag up; and put it down again. Something else was nagging at me now – reawakened, I knew, by the memories I’d been brooding on. I could always try ignoring it, of course; I’d tried before. But it never seemed to do much good.

Still clutching my cooling mug (Sister’s taste for iced coffee was a departmental in-joke), I left the office and wandered down the corridor towards reception – pausing at Utility to look in on Mike and Brenda at their stocktaking. Tonight of all nights I was glad to find them still refreshingly cheerful, even at this ungodly hour.

‘Everything okay?’

‘Couldn’t be better,’ Mike grinned. ‘We can get on with our work without bloody patients interruptin’ us all the time.’

He made a note on his clipboard and resumed his rummaging in the wall unit; the sleeves of his white nurse’s coat rolled back to the elbows, and his tie hanging slack. The casual touches somehow made him look all the more professional, but that was Mike for you. ‘So laid back he’s bloody horizontal’, as one locum medic had complained to me: one too full of his own importance to recognize that Michael Shannon was every inch the staff nurse his blue epaulettes proclaimed.

Brenda carried on with her own inventory, smiling quietly to herself. I reckoned the two of them had been making eyes at each other just before I’d appeared – which was fine by me, because Mike had been paying me quite a bit of attention of late, and I’d got the distinct impression he was shaping up to ask me out. He was a nice bloke, too – and I didn’t like the idea of him wasting his time.

‘Seen Fran?’ I asked.

‘She’s around. I told her she could give the blackboard a clean if we stayed quiet.’

‘Michael. We haven’t had anyone in for three hours, it’s already clean.’

‘Well I suggested she could chalk in the numbers, then wipe it again …’

Staff Nurse Frances Stansfield was our newest addition. She’d get used to him.

Leaving them to it, I continued on through the department – very aware of the stillness around me, and the bleakness too: that cold hospital aura, honed by bright light reflecting off sterilized surfaces and bare polished floors. I passed the unlit Resus room, and the row of parked trolleys at the ambulance bay, before turning left into the silent reception area – unmanned at this hour, since we’re only funded for clerical staff from eight p.m. to midnight. The front office was in darkness, save for the dim, ghost-green glow of the two VDUs at the desk. Beyond the receptionists’ windows, the waiting area itself seemed over-lit and very empty, a long room filled with rows of standard-issue seating – moulded plastic chairs which, as Mike insisted on pointing out, came in the tasteful NHS colour choice of bile green, puke orange, pus yellow and brain grey. Some were still strewn with old magazines from the reading rack: creased Bellas and dog-eared Cosmos. At the far end, the night pressed cold against the closed double doors.

I was still trying to kid myself that I was just killing time as I went into the office and took a seat in front of the nearer VDU. I didn’t bother with the light; I could almost feel my face soaking up the green-screen glow. And for a long moment I just sat there, staring, as if mesmerized by the endlessly blinking cursor. Then I leaned forward and typed in a name, watching it spell itself out across the screen.

KAUFMANN, JOSEPH

The computer beeped, and flashed up a request for further information. I had it ready, knew it now by heart.

D.O.B. – 29/07/32.

ADDRESS – NFA

DATE ADMITTED – 14/06/93

The drive whirred quietly, and in another moment the patient admission data was unscrolling before me. Joseph Karol Kaufmann, age 60, no fixed address, no GP. Admitted by ambulance 21:54. Died in department 22:16.

There was other info too, and various coding references; but that was the gist. Somehow it didn’t quite convey the impact of the event. It had all seemed a routine admission to start with, to be sure. But it wasn’t. Oh no.

Ambulance Control had – given advance warning: collapse coming in, severe chest pains. I’d finished taking the details of pulse and b/p over the phone, and handed the scribbled note to Kathy Jones, who was the doctor on for that night, as we made our way to Resus. From the way she squinted at it, running her free hand back into her dark, tangled hair, I got a hint of just how tired she was; normally she never let it show.

‘Is he conscious?’

I nodded. ‘Bit delirious, apparently. Look like an MI to you?’

‘Um. Probably. We’ll get him wired up as soon as he’s in.’

The ambulance arrived a couple of minutes later, and I went out to meet it, hugging myself in the chill night air as I watched the crew unload. The man on the trolley looked wasted and gaunt, his face almost paler than the pillow. We wheeled him in through the ambulance doors, bypassing the waiting area’s walking wounded; one or two people glimpsed us, and stood up to gawp.

On into Resus, where the routine began to unfold around him with the quiet confidence of endless practice. We transferred him across to our own trolley, and Karen and I sat him up and helped him off with his coat and shirt – from the state and smell of them, the bloke was in off the streets – while Mike and Kathy set about preparing the ECG. I spoke to the ambulancemen as I worked, checking details; Karen kept talking to the patient, softly and calmly, trying to ease the panic that shone in his frantic eyes.

Helen Wright was at my elbow, less the wide-eyed student by now and anxious to help. I gave her the clothes to bag up, calling goodbye over my shoulder to the ambulance crew as they left. See you again, lads … The electrodes were already pasted to our patient’s scarred and bony chest, and Kathy was studying the readout. ‘How’re we doing?’ I asked.

I got the impression she wasn’t quite sure. But after fingering her way through the length of readout tape, and listening to his heart sounds again, she nodded to herself, and glanced across.

‘MI. We’ll make sure he’s stable, then get him upstairs to Coronary Care. Will you let them know, Rachel?’

I was already on my way over to the phone, handing my drug keys to Mike as I passed. ‘Diamorph?’ he asked, and I nodded.

‘We think you’ve had a myocardial infarction,’ Kathy was telling the patient, speaking slowly and clearly. ‘A minor heart attack. We’re going to have to admit you for …’

The man looked at her then, and that look left even Kathy lost for words. In the midst of that pale, sweating face, his eyes were glazed and staring – and the despair in them was almost frightening. Deep in his throat, he gurgled.

Here comes the vomit, I thought resignedly, and wondered if Karen would move quickly enough to avoid getting it all over herself this time. Kathy drew back prudently, and I was already reaching for the plastic bowl when I noticed something that made me hesitate … and frown.

A thin trickle of blood had started from the corner of his mouth.

My poised hand wavered. For an unreal second we were all of us still as he began bloodily to drool.

I’d seen it all before, of course. Haematemesis and haemoptysis; patients vomiting blood or coughing it up. But suddenly, as I watched that slowly lengthening dribble, strung out with saliva, I felt my stomach go cold and tight inside me. Somehow I’d known that things were about to go horribly wrong.

Kathy turned to me, still awaiting the bowl, and our patient managed one dry heave before coughing a splash of scarlet down her pristine white coat. She swore tiredly, and motioned to Karen to help her support the man as he retched again, convulsing. His mouth yawned open.

And the blood came bursting out.

It was sudden, incredible, horrifying: a niagara of gore that just came and came, dousing him, drenching Kathy and Karen, even spattering me. His body jerked, and jerked again, spraying liquid crimson halfway across the room. For a frozen moment I watched with the numb lightheadedness of sheer panic; then lunged forward, jostling with the others as we struggled to stem the flow. Infection-control procedures went out the window: there’s no point gloving-up when you’re in blood to your elbows, when it’s splashing in your face. And all to no avail; the stuff kept geysering out. Nothing we did could stop him spewing up most of his bloodstream on to our Resus room floor – a spreading crimson lake that threatened to escape under the doors. And as our frantic efforts began finally to slacken, some cold, detached part of me still found time to picture the reaction of the bored line of patients sitting outside the plaster room opposite, as that creeping bloody tide began to emerge.

So there you go. Joseph Kaufmann, vagrant; died very spectacularly in our department some eight months back. My eyes still on the readout screen, I took a sip of tepid coffee.

Just the basics were outlined here of course; his file contained the gorier detail. Kath had written up the summary: if her usual hieroglyphics were indicative of tiredness, then the scrawl she’d used on this occasion suggested a state of near-clinical shock. I knew: I’d looked through the notes often enough since. Not everything had been recorded for posterity, of course. No mention of Dr Kessler, our consultant, bursting in to demand what the fuck we were doing in there; nor of Mike skidding in the mess and spraining his knee. Nor yet of Helen, pale and shaken, finally crying it all out in the duty room, as Karen and I held her tight. One thing, however, did come over clearly: the fact that none of us knew what the hell had gone wrong.

There’d been a post-mortem, of course. It confirmed that death had resulted from massive internal haemorrhage – as if we hadn’t guessed. As to a reason for the bloodbath, the pathologist had been less forthcoming; but his findings had both puzzled and disturbed him. Not that I’ve actually seen a copy of his report to the Coroner, of course; but we get to hear these things. And maybe the tale had been distorted slightly in the telling – but the version that reached us said that friend Kaufmann had recently undergone major surgery. Abdominal and thoracic. Maybe he’d had cancer, because great chunks of his intestines had been cut away completely. Organs had been crudely trimmed and grafted. The strain on his ruined system had given him an infarct; and the whole bloody lot had gone together. Like a failed experiment. That was the rumour I heard.

Records had dutifully been checked, and backs covered; but no record had been found, either here in our hospital or anywhere else. If someone really had been attempting to broaden the frontiers of medical science, it hadn’t been on NHS time. The police had also made enquiries in the private sector – although no one could really see our meths-reeking ex-patient checking in at his local BUPA clinic. There too they drew a blank.

Back to square one.

Mike said it put him in mind of a particularly nasty backstreet abortion he’d had to deal with in his last job. I took his point, but open-heart surgery was hardly the sort of thing you practised on your kitchen table. It was Karen, in particularly ghoulish mood, who’d suggested that the animal experimentation labs had started dissecting people instead, seeing as the Great British Public was obviously more concerned about animal welfare than the human derelicts on their doorsteps.

We’d had a cynical smile over that one, and a couple more crackpot coffee-break theories besides. Resigned now to the fact that we were none of us any nearer the truth: no more than we’d been on that first awful evening, when the body had been wheeled away; leaving me standing in a room that looked as if, to coin Mike’s phrase, someone had loaded a sawn-off shotgun with spaghetti sauce, and let rip with both the barrels.

So life had gone on; until

JOHNSTON, MICHAEL arrived in our department. This was a month or two later, and too many patients had come in through the doors for us to be giving the Kaufmann case more than the occasional thought. Mr Johnston – the late Mr Johnston – had been a more urgent admission than most, having just driven a stolen car full-tilt into a brick wall.

Into Resus he’d come, bloody and wrecked and yet still raving. The ambulance crew had to help us hold him down. The team crowded round in that brightly-lit room, and once again it was all beginning to look routine. We scissored off his clothes and pulled them clear, while the doctor set about checking bones, and wounds, and reflexes: bending in close to shine his penlight in the patient’s rolling eyes.

‘What’s his name?’

One of the ambulancemen supplied it.

‘All right, Michael. Michael? can you hear me, Michael?’

But Michael was in a world of his own: a private hell of pain and panic. From his disjointed ramblings, I gathered he didn’t like doctors much. Well, he’d come to the wrong place. The doctor – it was one of the locums that night, Sayeed or someone – slipped his stethoscope back around his neck. ‘Right … I’ll need X-rays of left tib & fib, pelvis, chest, both arms … and a CT scan. That first of all, I think.’

I nodded, told Brenda to get the duty radiologist on the phone. When she answered, Sayeed conversed with her while we cleaned Johnston up as best we could and prepared him for his transfer to the CT unit on the other side of the building. He seemed quieter now; his eyes glazed over. With everything under control, I stepped outside for a moment, and found a couple of policemen hovering vulture-like in the corridor – par for the course with RTAs.

‘You won’t be able to talk to him for a while yet,’ I pointed out, a little impatiently. ‘He’ll probably be in theatre for the rest of the night.’

The taller of the two shrugged. ‘We’ll hang on for a while anyway.’

‘Joyriding, was he?’

‘Dunno. We get a report of a stolen car, and then whammo. He didn’t even slow down, according to the eyewitnesses.’

‘You’ll want to breathalyse him, presumably.’

‘At some stage.’ He glanced round. ‘Anywhere we can get coffee round here?’

‘There’s a machine round the front,’ I told him, and went on into the cubicle area to see how things were going there.

They managed to get their coffee; they never got their interview. Nor their breath sample. Michael Johnston died at ten past six that morning.

According to the CT scan, his skull was still intact, but his brain had suffered irreversible damage.

And some of it was missing.

Another post-mortem. More puzzles for the pathologists. Because Johnston too seemed to have undergone recent surgery. Brain surgery. Which came as quite a surprise, because the only medical history he’d had with us was one of drug addiction. A policeman who’d spoken to him a week or so before the accident reported that he’d seemed rational enough – yet after what had been done to his cerebral cortex, he’d have been practically a walking zombie, driving that car by sheer desperate instinct alone. There was another finding, too. Though the trephine and lobotomy seemed at one level to have been sophisticated – even audacious – there was indication once again of a certain crudity. And evidence that it had been carried out under conditions that were far from sterile.

‘Another backstreet job?’ Mike had wondered cheerfully. Me, I was just waiting for the tabloids to pick up on it all with screaming POLICE HUNT DERANGED DOCTOR headlines. And what had Johnston been muttering? Something about doctors, ‘fucking doctors … still after me. Still coming …’ Except he hadn’t called them doctors but something else – a more specialized term he could only have picked up from professionals.

Clinicians. He’d called them clinicians. A cold word. But I’d wondered why its mention made me shiver.

Three

The phone rang as I was typing in the third name.

Startled despite myself, I reached over the keyboard for it, spilled the last of my coffee, and was still swearing as I brought the receiver to my ear.

‘If I’d wanted the Scatology Department,’ Mark said mildly, ‘I’d have dialled 221.’

‘I think that’s Pathology you’re thinking of, Dr Drew,’ I pointed out with completely informal formality: still checking to see whether I’d managed to get any over my uniform. ‘And by the way, where are you?’

‘The on-call room.’

Which was just up the corridor. ‘So why didn’t you just shift your bulk round here, you lazy sod?’

He grinned: his voice was full of it. ‘It’s what the telephone was invented for. But I might stagger round in a minute, if you insist.’

‘I won’t hold my breath.’ After a pause I added: ‘You guess where I was?’

‘And what you were doing.’ Some of the banter had faded from his voice. ‘Why don’t you let them rest in peace, Rachel?’

That left me nonplussed for a moment. Then: ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You know. Always poring over the same cases. You know you couldn’t have saved them – and the police have got nowhere. So what are you looking for?’

Silently, I had to admit I wasn’t sure. Certainly the deaths had been bizarre enough to have a morbid fascination of their own – but it wasn’t just that. Something about these particular cases still gave me the strangest feeling. A dull, persistent niggle of unease: like a slow, dripping tap in the darkness of my mind.

He took it upon himself to break the lengthening silence. ‘I’ll be round in a minute. See you.’

‘See you,’ I echoed, absently, as he hung up. I’d already guessed that recent events had a lot to do with my digging now. Jenny’s baffling fate; my own close encounter. A week’s inactivity to brood. And the cases had been weird enough to start with; but now, almost despite myself, I was beginning – just beginning – to wonder who the hell was really out there.

The third death had shaken me the most; and that a week or so before Jenny’s own murder. That was a night when the drip … drip … drip … had strengthened briefly to a startling, chilly trickle.

ALISON SCOTT

The full admission summary was unfolding onscreen as Mark stuck his head round the door, then came over to sit in the chair next to mine: wearing his sterile greens like pyjamas, his white coat unbuttoned over them. I gave him a sidelong glance: he hadn’t shaved yet, but otherwise looked quite fresh – his sandy hair tidied and brown eyes clear. Then again, he, at least, had had the best part of a night’s sleep. He returned my look, eyebrows innocently raised – then followed my gaze back towards the screen. Our proximity was relaxed enough: no hidden agendas. I think he knew I rather fancied him, but he was spoken for already. A purely professional relationship, then – but we liked and trusted each other a lot. And worked together well.

Alison Jane Scott, twenty-two years old, known prostitute, self-admitted with suspected post-operative infection. Died in department 02:20.

This one had been the least messy, but in its way the most shocking of all. She’d wandered in just after midnight, looking dazed and haggard. Complaining of a high temperature, sweats; an unpleasant discharge. An examination revealed she’d recently undergone a gynae op of some kind, and it seemed she’d developed an infection.

She wasn’t wilfully unco-operative most of the time; just listless, staring back at me or Mark (he’d been on that night as well) with dull, wary eyes. But when it came to the matter of the operation itself, she’d refused point-blank even to acknowledge it had taken place. Mark had pushed her a bit, clearly suspecting an illegal abortion, but got nowhere. And I’d had the distinct impression, as she’d relentlessly stonewalled, that her silence was born of fear: that the prospect of even mentioning her op was so frightening as to be quite simply unthinkable. It was looking more and more like a backstreet job. I assumed the person who’d performed it had threatened her – terrified her into silence.

I’d been right, too. In a way.

Anyhow, at length we’d given up trying to find someone we could pin the blame on, and Mark decided to get a second opinion from the gynae registrar. While he was out of the cubicle, I rechecked her pulse, and was making conversation in a perfunctory sort of way when her hand suddenly shot out and grasped my wrist: squeezing so tight it hurt. I turned in surprise – and the look in her eyes killed my word of remonstration stone dead. Her face was ashen and gleaming with sweat: I tried to tell myself it was the fever, but those haunted, hunted eyes assured me otherwise. Worst of all was the cold intelligence in them: the fact that she knew exactly what she was saying made the words that followed all the more unnerving.

‘Tell them I must be cremated,’ she whispered. ‘As soon as possible – so there’s nothing left for them.’

Somewhat taken aback, I’d opened my mouth and shut it again, before managing: ‘Don’t be silly – maybe a few days on the gynae ward and a course of antibiotics, and you’ll be fine. Nothing to –’

‘Forget it. They’re here. They’re here already. And I can’t run any more.’ She looked at me earnestly. ‘Just leave me alone – or they’ll do for you too.’

There was a pause. ‘How do you mean?’ I asked carefully.

Her patience snapped then: there was an edge of hysteria in her tone. ‘You stupid bitch, just leave me alone! Please …’

I kept very calm. ‘Who is it you’re afraid of ?’

‘Them. The Clinicians.’ Her voice had faded to a dry whisper again. ‘Can’t you feel them?’

Clinicians. Again that word. And though I didn’t answer her question directly, it did indeed occur to me that the temperature in the cubicle had altered. It hadn’t dropped, exactly; but it had … subsided. The air felt cooler on my skin. As I stared at her, I realized it was becoming cold.

‘Clinicians: you mean doctors?’

‘I mean Clinicians. Now for fuck’s sake leave me be.’

‘All right,’ I relented, ‘I’ll just go and see how the doctor’s getting on. Back in a minute, okay?’

I found Mark writing out an X-ray request form over by the desk. ‘You know that woman in cubicle two … ?’

‘Alison Scott? The gynae reg. is coming down to take a look at her: they’ll probably want to admit …’

‘I think you should speak to the duty psychiatrist as well. She’s really coming out with some weird things.’ And even as I was speaking, I knew she wasn’t a psychie case. I just needed someone to assure me that she was.

‘Want me to talk to her again?’

I shrugged. ‘Might be an idea.’

By the time we’d got back to the cubicle, Alison Scott was dead.

We found her slumped in one corner of the cubicle, all huddled up: her face pinched and wretched with fear. All attempts to resuscitate her proved unsuccessful. The post-mortem results pointed to death from heart failure; the precise cause remained uncertain.

I turned to Mark. ‘Remember how cold that cubicle was, when we went back in? And back to normal a few minutes later?’

‘So you said,’ he came back, a little guardedly; he’d never actually admitted to feeling it himself. ‘So what?’

Not having told him about the eeriest aspect of my road-crash experience, I just shrugged. ‘Just seemed strange, that’s all.’

But he’d begun to pick up on it now. ‘So what are you suggesting? That she saw a ghost? That she was scared to death? Come on …’

‘Look, I’m not suggesting anything. Okay?’ It came out sharper than I’d intended.

He held up his palms. ‘Sorry. But that girl was suffering from the early stages of septicaemia …’

‘It doesn’t kill you that dramatically.’

‘Okay, point taken. We don’t know why she died so suddenly. But you can’t let it obsess you like this. Same goes for those other cases. Maybe there are some things we can’t explain; but we just have to carry on. I know you’ve had a rough time recently, but …’

He tailed off awkwardly, but I knew his unspoken thought was that Jenny’s death was getting to me. And so it was – but I still reckoned I was rational. We see it all in this place: all the misery and mess. But I hadn’t seen fear like those three showed before.

Something was wrong, I knew it. Out there. In our town.

Something was wrong.

But dawn was creeping up on us now, fading in through the double entrance doors; and it seemed that the hospital, an island universe through all the long hours of the night, was joined to dry land once again. A last dark thought dripped down against the stone of my scepticism; and then the mental tap was closed. I screwed it tight. It stopped.

I checked my fob-watch and managed a smile. ‘Soon be time for bed.’

He seemed to accept that the previous subject was now closed. ‘Glad to be through your first night back?’

‘You bet I am.’ I pressed the exit key, and the VDU screen cleared as data – and dark memories – returned to the disks where they’d been stored.

The night ended as quietly as it had begun. With handover completed and the early shift of day staff settling in, I stopped off in the toilets to splash cold water on my face: clearing the muzziness that was settling over me – and snapping me out of my more disturbing night thoughts. The sun was fully up now; the outside world alive and awake once more. Back to the world of dreams, Sister Young.

I studied myself for a moment, there in the mirror. Fatigue didn’t do me any favours, but I reckoned I still looked the professional I sometimes didn’t feel. You might think of Sisters as older women, with years of experience behind them, but I’m twenty-six, and Ravensfield General is my first senior post. I’ve been a Trauma or Surgical nurse ever since I qualified, and I’ve seen a lot; but actually running the place is a different proposition entirely. Sometimes it scares the shit out of you.

While I was at it, I decided I wasn’t looking too bad altogether. Maybe a little waif-like, what with my pale complexion and wide blue eyes, offset by the dark straight hair that hung to my collar; but I’d heard my smile called winsome, and I knew that I was pretty. In my own quiet way.

On to the changing room, where I divested myself of my uniform dress, tights and sensible shoes, in favour of blouse, sweater, jeans and trainers; chatting with Fran as she shrugged out of her own work clothes. She seemed to have settled in well over the last couple of weeks; a pint-sized and perky young Scouser, blessed with the essential A&E prerequisites of cool head and keen sense of humour. I reckoned she’d make a good member of the team, which was a relief: your face has to fit, in a department as close-knit as this one.

Outside in the corridor, Mark called goodbye as he went through to a meeting with Kessler; and as I left, Steve – one of the night porters who’d covered us for the shift – made a point of mentioning how good it was to see me back. I was feeling tired but happy as I walked across to the bus stop. The thoughts that had gnawed at me through the night seemed distant and insubstantial now – fading back into my subconscious beneath the bright cold morning sun.

Behind me, the buildings of Ravensfield General Hospital loomed up dour against the sky: great blocks of sixties concrete grafted on to dark Victorian brick. Row after row of windows watched me: ward-floors stacked up one on top of the other. We had beds for nearly six hundred patients here – though the cutbacks meant that some were never used. That wouldn’t have been obvious to the rather awestruck casual observer, of course – unless they passed the hospital at night, and saw that while the windows overlooking the road were brightly aglow, or showed at least the muted glimmer of night lights, the upper floors of the old north wing remained in darkness. We had several wards and a couple of theatres closed up there: slowly gathering dust behind locked doors.

I knew myself that it made for a vaguely ominous sight: that slice of shadow and silence cut into the brightly-lit evening bustle of the hospital. And of course there were staff who’d claimed to have seen ghosts up there, and heard old, shuffling footsteps in the gloom. But it was daytime now, and I was going home to sleep in a flat with sunlight pressing against the drawn curtains, and the ordered life of a quiet, leafy suburb going on around me.

Whatever vague unease still lurked within me, it could wait until dark.

Four

The next two nights were nearly as quiet. Minor injuries: cuts and cracked bones. Bread and butter stuff for us. The high point (relatively speaking) was Adrian Bell asking me out again.

That was Friday – or Saturday’s small hours. He’d been chargehand porter for the shift, and come down to keep an intimidating eye on one of our more aggressive customers. After the latter had wandered sullenly off, back into the night, I’d returned to my office to catch up on some reading; and was halfway through the accompanying cheese and pickle sandwich when Adrian stuck his head round the door.

‘Caught you.’

‘In-flight refuelling,’ I pointed out, mouth impolitely full. He made a show of nodding, his eyes amused. ‘All okay now?’

‘Fine,’ I told him gratefully. ‘Thanks for coming down.’

‘No problem.’ He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful; not quite meeting my eye. Then: ‘Listen … what are you doing next week?’

‘Oh. Well …’ I smiled, and let my own gaze drift while my mind went into fast forward. ‘I’m not sure of my Off-duty yet …’

The nursing equivalent of I’m washing my hair, and he knew it. Accepted it too, with a rueful smile of his own, and left it lying. ‘Fair enough. By the way … how’s Danny getting on?’

Our departmental porter. I pulled a face which probably spoke volumes.

His smile became a grin. ‘Not that bad, is he?’

I hesitated, feeling suddenly almost guilty. ‘Well, no he’s not. He’s all right, actually. It’s just …’

And that was it: there was nothing I could put my finger on. No aspect of his work that I could fault. He was off tonight, but he’d have handled that drunken loudmouth competently enough. A tested member of the team, now: conscientious and quiet. I just didn’t like him. For no good reason, he gave me the creeps.

Mea culpa, I suppose. Nobody’s perfect.

‘He’ll settle in soon enough,’ Adrian predicted drily: his tone suggesting he knew what I meant. ‘You get any problems, let me know.’

I nodded.

‘You know …’ he added musingly. ‘If I was to have, like, a cardiac arrest right here … you’d be duty-bound to start resuscitating me, wouldn’t you? Mouth to mouth, and …’

I grinned. ‘Oh, I’d probably have to shove an airway down your throat first – make sure your breathing wasn’t obstructed. Then cannulate a nice large vein …’

‘Mm. On second thoughts …’

‘… and zap you with a couple of hundred joules on the defib …’

‘Yes. Good job I’m feeling fine, really, innit?’ He winked. ‘I’ll see you, Rachel.’

I gave him a cheerful little wave, and listened to his slow departing footsteps; then took another bite of sandwich, and returned my attention to Burns and Their Treatment (Illustrated).

Saturday night was probably going to be busier (much busier, knowing our luck) but I was off, so it wasn’t my worry. I woke up late on the Saturday afternoon, and just slouched around in my T-shirt for a bit, enjoying the peace and quiet of having the flat to myself. Not that I begrudged Sarah her share of the place: she’s my flatmate – bright, slightly scatterbrained, works on Surgical – and good company as well as someone to split the rent with. I get on with her well enough – and in fact, with her working days and me on nights, we’re not tripping over each other that often. But there are times when you do need space to yourself, without heaps of ironing on chairs, half-cooked meals in the kitchen, or strange boyfriends wandering out of the bathroom when you least expect it.

For my own part, I’d started sleeping regularly with Wendy again. I’d thought it was all over; but now I found I was needing the company more and more. Someone to snuggle up with. Someone to hold on to in the dark. She was still in my room, lying lax on my unmade bed – an outsize rag doll, smiling brightly at the ceiling. I’d won her in a kids’ unit Christmas raffle: years ago.

The cat sidled up to rub itself against my leg as I made myself some toast and coffee. We call him Trinity, which is different, I suppose. Ignoring his wheedling on the grounds that he’d already been fed twice today, I stared out of the window at the neighbouring rooftops and back gardens. The sky was overcast: sullen with cloud. Someone was working on his shed, but other than that it was all quiet: the stillness of a winter afternoon. For no particular reason, I found myself recalling Saturday teatime when I was a kid: my dad and older brother watching the football results while mum and I made the tea and toast, cosy in the kitchen as the outside daylight cooled and faded.

A quick glance under the grill told me the bread was just as white as it had been thirty seconds ago, and I turned back to the window. The radio was chattering happily to itself in the background, and I was ignoring that too, scarcely noticing as the commercial break faded into the local news – but the lead headline put a hook through my idling attention and drew my head round sharply.

Murdered.

That word registered at once; the rest of the sentence took a moment to make sense around it.

‘… a man has been found murdered in a derelict house in …’

Our town. Suddenly I felt my thumb between my teeth.

‘… multiple stab wounds. A post-mortem examination …’

Now there was a rarity – even for a place as big and rough as this one’s getting. We were promised coverage of a scheduled press conference in the next bulletin, and the reporter passed on to other matters – but he left me well behind, still worrying his words – running them through my mind again, and then again. Of course I knew that most murders happen within a family, or circle of acquaintances: the chances were this was just some private, vicious settling of scores. Over and done with. The idea of some maniac walking around – catching people alone and slaughtering them for the hell of it – flitted quickly through my head, but without conviction. That sort of thing might happen in films, or even America; but not here. No: the slightly sick disquiet I suddenly felt came from memories of mutilation I’d seen myself. Not the rough and random mutilation of the car-smash, though, nor even the crude carving of a knife or broken bottle. Rather the precise and pitiless intervention of surgical steel – and outcomes in terms of a heart burst open, a brain top-sliced; a uterus scarred and sterile. Over the past year, someone with detailed medical knowledge had done all that, and maybe more – and maybe he was a maniac, at that. Or maybe something worse.

Much worse. I sensed where my thoughts were going, and almost shook my head to clear it. Pack it in, I told myself flatly: no more nightmares. It was daylight, after all, and the real world was all around me. And there was evil enough in some of the human beings out there, without me having to invent spectres of my own …

Murdered …

I became aware of a sharp reek in my nostrils then: the toast had burned black, and was starting to smoulder.

With Sarah away for the weekend, I had an uninterrupted, empty evening in front of the TV, and an early night. But Sunday was a better day: brighter; clearer. I knew it was a day to visit Jenny.

I took the first bus of the afternoon, travelling across town to the Milston Road cemetery through streets that were quiet and all but empty, apart from the occasional car or someone walking his dog. Getting off by the corner shop just down the road, which really did seem to be open all hours, I bought a modest bunch of flowers (their selection wasn’t that great) before walking slowly on to the open iron gates, and through them into the sunlit silence of the graveyard.

It was an ideal afternoon, fine and crisp; the twigs and branches of denuded trees standing out sharply against the clean, cold blue of the sky. The lawns were tidy as ever; the whole layout of the place spoke of restfulness and calm. I walked past the ordered plots without hurrying, making the most of the atmosphere … the peace … and enjoying the refreshing keenness of the air. But perhaps there was a certain reluctance too that made me tarry: a lurking unwillingness to reach the place I was heading for, and face its reality once again.

At length I got there none the less – the youngest corner of the cemetery, where the long, narrow mounds of earth had yet to be concealed by slabs and headstones. In a way they seemed the better marker: the natural brown of turned soil, offsetting the vivid splash of colour here and there where someone had placed fresh flowers. Much more moving than the ornate monuments of stone and marble all around me. But I knew how it was: how the earth had to be left to settle before the headstone could be erected. And settle meant subside, as the rotting coffin lid finally caved in, and dark earth slithered through to engulf its occupant’s remains.

So how could I picture that happening to Jenny, whom I’d last seen six weeks ago, vivaciously alive, her blue eyes shining – surely not the same person who now lay, cold and still, six feet beneath the mound I’d paused before?

Still not quite believing it, I crouched and laid my flowers on the bare earth.

Silence. No voices or traffic; not even birds. I quite wanted to pray, but my mind just wouldn’t focus. I just sat on my heels there, my coat brushing the dirt, and felt the hot, stinging wetness force its way into my eyes and nostrils. I couldn’t keep it back. I didn’t try.

After I’d finished, I sniffed, and wiped my cheeks, and blew my nose; and felt a little better. More time passed. Finally I gave a small sigh, and rose to my feet; walked over to a nearby bench and sat down.

I knew there were some things about her death I would never fully come to terms with. The shocking senselessness of it; the unanswered questions. But as I sat there, soaking up the atmosphere of calm and stillness around me, I reckoned I was slowly learning to live with it. The cry had done me good, cleared away a lot of pent-up grief and confusion. I still didn’t know why she’d died – but the turmoil inside me had faded now, leaving a sort of resigned acceptance. I did know that I’d loved her very much – and that was a memory I could treasure, and always carry with me.

Letting my gaze ease off across the cemetery, I found myself musing that she probably wouldn’t have wanted a burial – not a free-thinking, practical girl like Jenny. A clean cremation with minimal ceremony would have been much more her scene. I think the church service and the more permanent resting place had been for her mum’s benefit: she’d wanted it that way. It had been a nice service, though. I’d cried then, too.

Still, there were worse places to be remembered. My eyes kept roving over the neatly regimented headstones – picking out the bright patch of a fresh floral tribute here and there; pausing briefly on the occasional fellow-mourner among the graves. Coming to rest on the tramp standing beneath a yew tree some fifty yards along the roadway.

Watching me.

I blinked; frowned slightly. I couldn’t make out his face, not clearly, but I was sure he was watching me. He stood motionless, hands buried in the pockets of an old gabardine coat. His hair was long, and straggling. I got the impression that, if the wind changed, I would smell him from here.

His appearance wasn’t unusual, of course: over the past two years the number of homeless in the town had increased quite markedly, with people being attracted down here by empty promises of work. We had our share of squatters, and people who slept in doorways; and related problems like alcoholism and addiction too. We certainly dealt with the members of this underclass in Casualty often enough – not least the late Messrs Kaufmann and Johnston. What really made me angry was the truth behind Karen’s black joke about human experimentation: the fact that people didn’t seem to give a damn.

I hoped that I did: I certainly felt the shortcomings of the society in which I lived so comfortably, and felt them keenly. But ideals are easy; the acid test is how you relate to the individual vagrant, and all his dirt.

He was beginning to make me nervous.

I looked away, back towards Jenny’s grave; then across to the other side of the cemetery, contemplating the view with a show of interest.

After a minute or two, I looked back. He was still there. He hadn’t moved at all.

When I looked away this time, it was to see if anyone else was nearby – and close enough to lend moral support, if need be. But this part of the cemetery was deserted. Of course there were one or two other people around, but they were occupied with their own grief: heedless for a time of the wider world’s concerns.

The atmosphere had gone: the peace was sullied. And though loath to break off my communion with Jenny, I suddenly felt a pressing urge to get away, well clear of this empty place, and back where there were people round me. Rising to my feet, I glanced his way again. No reaction. I turned my back on him, and started walking towards the gates, with a briskness of stride that I hoped was suggestive of irritation rather than flight.

I got about ten yards before giving in to the temptation to look behind me. I had to see if he was following.

He wasn’t. He’d disappeared.

I stopped, and glanced round quickly. No sign of him, which I found vaguely unsettling – although there was the odd clump of bushes around that could easily provide cover, and he might even have gone to ground amid the headstones. The fact that he was no longer there was hardly a reassurance; the reverse, if anything. It’s like when you discover a large spider lurking motionless in your bedroom (if you’re an arachnophobe like me, anyway): so long as you can see it, you know where you are; but then your attention wanders, and when you glance back at the wall, it’s not there any more, and you’ve no idea where it’s gone to. But it’s around somewhere: and you’ve got to sleep in here tonight.

I hastily resumed my walk towards the gates. Reaching them, I turned back one more time. But the graveyard was as empty and unthreatening as it had been when I arrived, and the tattered man was nowhere to be seen.

I kept on walking, thoughtfully: a bit uncomfortable with my reaction, now that he was gone. Knowing bloody well I’d reacted like that before – and would do so again.

Take that time the other week.

It had been something of a fraught night. With the clock unhurriedly edging towards midnight-thirty, the department already reeked of sour alcohol; there were people just wandering around. Patients, relatives, a stray policeman. There was shouting and laughter; voices drunkenly amplified. Someone had just puked on the floor in cubicle six. Kathy was keeping amazingly calm, considering.

Most of the noise stemmed from a bunch of off-duty squaddies waiting in reception while one of their mates got his hand stitched. They were all in scruffy civvies, but there was still a depressing uniformity in their cropped scalps and loud, livid faces. They were uniformly pissed, as well.

It had been hard enough to concentrate with just that row going on; we didn’t need chatting up as well. Eventually Mike (whom no one tried to chat up) managed to usher them out along with their patched-up friend, ignoring shouts of ‘you Mick poufter’ and similar valedictions. I’d caught Brenda’s eye, and we’d shared a heartfelt sigh of relief.

Mike came back, muttering something about the bloody IRA never being around when they were needed.

Five minutes later, there was a dog in the department.

Bren almost dropped the tetanus set she’d been preparing as the Alsatian stuck its nose around the utility room door before padding off down the corridor. I was trying to keep order in the cubicles, and turned at the sound of her surprised little gasp – looking in through the opposite doorway. I saw, swore, and went after it – but someone down at reception was already shouting ‘Carl! Heel!’, and the dog – it was an awfully big dog – was disappearing back in that direction even as I reached the main corridor. Determinedly I followed.

By the time I got there it was back with its owner, sitting at his feet as he stroked its dirty fur. The man was slouched in one of the chairs – they were mostly empty now – and looked me challengingly in the face as I came through. And I stared irritably back at him, taking in the state of his clothes – the patched, faded flak jacket; his stubble beard, and unwashed hair, drawn back into a ponytail. I guessed he was one of the Travellers.

We’d been having problems with the Travellers of late.

Or the hippies, as some called them; or gyppos, or worse. It seemed they came and went with the seasons; wandering in and pitching camp; being evicted and moving on. Quite a crowd had decided to winter in our town this time around; people were starting to complain.

‘Look, if you can’t keep that dog under control, you’ll have to leave,’ I told him, tightly.

He shrugged, didn’t reply. His eyes hadn’t left my face.

‘Can I help you?’ I went on: quite formally, but with no politeness at all.

‘You’re really welcoming tonight,’ he muttered.

‘We’re busy: have you got a problem or … ?’

I felt his gaze drop to my throat, and the crucifix I wore there.

‘You a Christian?’ he asked suddenly.

I blinked, and almost said None of your business; then nodded.

‘You could have fooled me,’ he said evenly.

That stung.

For a moment I was really tempted to say Well sod you, mate – even if not in so many words. I was in the wrong, and knew it, and buggered if I was going to admit it. So it took quite a struggle before I was able to draw breath, manage a smile, and murmur, ‘Sorry.’

He held up one hand, palm outward, revealing an oozing gash. ‘Did this on some barbed wire.’

I nodded. ‘Looks nasty.’ I picked up a casualty card from the front desk and came back. After a moment’s hesitation – I knew he’d noticed – I sat down beside him.

‘Don’t smell very nice, do I?’ he said drily, and glanced across.

I met his gaze. ‘You were right: it shouldn’t make any difference, should it?’

But it had, of course. And still I hadn’t bloody learned.

The Sunday bus service being what it is, I decided I’d walk at least part of the way home. I knew a few shortcuts, and it was still light enough to take them – though the sun was getting lower and colder all the while. From Milston Road I took the footbridge over the ringway, and on through the Stoneham Estate towards the town centre; scenting a foretaste of dusk frost on the air, along with the cooking smells of Sunday tea that wafted out from warm bright kitchens. I missed the bus at the corner of Clarke Street and had to cut across through Lamborn. That’s one of the older parts of town: a lot of the houses are empty, boarded up. But I was halfway down Stone Road before it dawned on me that yesterday’s murder had happened here – in one of these derelict buildings I was passing. The realization brought me up short.

I don’t think it was fear I felt, even though the shadows were lengthening on the street. Rather, it was a macabre curiosity. The news reports on last night’s TV had taken every opportunity to emphasize the gruesome nature of the killing: apparently the poor bloke had been cut to pieces. I tried to remember if they’d actually mentioned which of the empty houses the remains had been discovered in – number eighteen I decided, after a moment – and here it was just coming up on the left. I stopped again.

It was getting chilly. There was no one on the street. I knew I should be pushing on for home, not hanging around; especially when I was lingering in the fresh footsteps of a murderer. But the house exerted its own grim fascination. Two storeys high, with slates missing from the roof and windows blocked off with chipboard: one empty slum in half a terrace of them. I stood there before it, scanning its impassive façade; trying, almost despite myself, to visualize the darkened rooms within – and what had happened there.

And then the front door swung gratingly open, and I almost jumped out of my shoes.

A uniformed policeman, buttoned up in his anorak, appeared in the doorway. The surge of adrenaline had left me feeling sick and giddy, and I could only stand there getting my breath back as he eyed me with some disdain. Obviously he’d been detailed to keep the place secure until the forensics and scene-of-crime teams had finished; and to discourage the morbidly curious, like me. The cold must have driven him indoors from his exposed position on the front step; he’d probably been having a cup of tea in the back or something.

‘Would you mind moving on, miss? Nothing to see here.’

Actually it was Bill Roberts, who was regularly up at our department on some business or other: last week it had been an argumentative drunk. He hadn’t recognized me, and was putting on his most patronizing voice-of-authority tone. I couldn’t help smiling, in the circumstances.

After a moment, recognition dawned, and he relaxed, grinning apologetically. ‘Afternoon, Rachel – sorry, didn’t recognize you in civvies.’

I’d heard it suggested, rather unkindly, that he wouldn’t recognize a thief if the man walked past him wearing a mask and carrying a sack with SWAG written on it. But he was a decent enough bloke, when he wasn’t throwing his weight around, and I could at least try and find out what he knew.

‘They finished in there yet?’

He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Might have. Shit, but the guy was in a mess …’

‘So I heard.’

‘You haven’t heard the half of it.’ He paused then, clearly wondering whether he should say more. I raised my eyebrows in mild enquiry; and after a moment he decided that this was one professional to another, and continued.

‘You remember that RTA, beginning of November?’

I knew which road traffic accident he meant: I was still trying to forget it. I nodded.

‘Well this was worse.’

Must have been bad. ‘How do you mean?’ I asked, interested.

‘Well, this guy had been all split open too – only not torn this time, but cut, all neat and clean. That’s what makes it worse, it was so cold-blooded: sort of clinical …’

Clinical. The word lodged and grew cold inside my head; I felt my stomach shift uneasily. My gaze strayed to the open doorway behind him – a gaping entrance into blackness. The blinded windows stared down at us, and were they really so unseeing? Abruptly I found myself struggling to suppress a shiver.

It must have shown in my face, for he looked at me quizzically. ‘Hey, you okay? Sorry, I thought you Casualty nurses were used to this sort of thing.’

Used to what? I thought dully; my skin still recalling the chill of Alison Scott’s cubicle. I could still see the fear in her fixed, dilated stare as well. And smell the sickly sweetness of her post-operative infection …

Cutting. Cold. Clinicians.

I grimaced, and glanced away.

The nearby streetlamp came on: sputtering pink that steadied to a deepening rosy glow. I looked at my watch, and was about to make my excuses when a car turned into the street and drove up to park at the kerb close by me. The man who got out wore plain clothes but was obviously another police officer, and this time it was he who recognized me first.

‘Hi, Sis – how are things?’

Joe Davies, indeed: I’d last seen him a couple of months back, when he was still in uniform. About the same age as his colleague (about the same age as me, come to that), he was cooler, sharper, with straight fair hair, and pale restless eyes behind designer specs. On the beat, he’d always been careless of the finer details of uniform dress: you could count on noticing a button undone here, a scuffed toecap there. Now he was plainclothes, this tendency had been allowed to develop further, so that, though he wore a suit, his shirt was unironed, and his tie hung slack beneath an open collar.

His question had been rhetorical: without waiting for an answer, he turned to Roberts. ‘All quiet?’

The PC grunted.

I gave Davies a quizzical look. ‘Thought I heard you were with the vice unit these days.’ He grinned. ‘You heard right.’

I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I nodded towards the house. ‘So?’

For a moment he was reticent, as Roberts had been before him. But I knew he’d come round. When it comes down to it, everyone trusts a nurse.

He shrugged. ‘It’ll be in the papers soon enough, I suppose. The dear departed was a pimp, and probably into drug pushing too. We’d been watching him for quite a while. Bit of a bastard, by all accounts.’

I felt a sudden warm tingle of relief go through me. After a moment my mind caught up, and realized why. ‘And you reckon this was just a sort of gangland thing – drug pushers falling out?’

Again he shrugged. ‘Who knows? Maybe it was more personal – he used to beat his girls up regular: I think you had one come in to you not long back, but she wouldn’t press charges. Maybe one of them had a big brother with a nasty temper …’

‘Very nasty,’ Roberts put in, with feeling.

‘Anyway,’ Davies continued, ignoring the comment, ‘we’ll probably know more once we get the results of the p-m. The official one, I mean.’

I hesitated. ‘There was an unofficial one?’

‘Yes. Oh yes.’ He gave me a chilling little smile. ‘It happened right upstairs. Every organ cut out of him, and not a knife-stroke out of place. The best pathologist in the business couldn’t have sliced him up better.’

‘Oh,’ I said faintly, and relief died like a candle in the cold.

Of course they would go on looking, for vicious drug dealers, or violent people pushed too far; but now I knew they’d be wasting their time. Something way beyond the imagination of your ordinary copper had come to this dark and mouldy house – and murdered once again.

Another drip against the stone. Cold water. Or colder blood …

And Davies, as he turned towards the house, couldn’t resist adding one final grisly detail. ‘When the Home Office guy did his preliminary examination up there in the bedroom, he reckoned there was a possibility the poor sod was still alive when whoever it was began cutting. Still alive, and still conscious …’

He nodded a farewell and went on into the dark doorway. Roberts smiled, half-apologetically. ‘I shouldn’t let it worry you too much, Rachel. Probably just dealers settling scores …’

‘I know: don’t have nightmares, right?’ I couldn’t help the edge of sarcasm in my voice, but he didn’t seem to notice.

‘All the same …’ He glanced up at the cold, colourless sky. ‘I’d be getting along if I was you. Soon be dark. Safe home, eh?’

‘Yeah. Thanks.’ I watched him re-enter the house, closing the door behind him; then turned and continued along Stone Road. And though I was glad, very glad, to get to be able to put some distance between myself and number eighteen, having to turn my back on that grim, befouled place didn’t make me feel better at all.

After a minute, I began to walk a little faster.

Five

Monday night it was back to business.

I’d prepared for it in the usual way: late night on the Sunday, and as much sleep as I could get during Monday. It had been another bright day, and oblivion hadn’t come easy – not with the sounds of everyday life filtering through the curtains along with the sunlight. I was lucky this was a fairly quiet street, with only the occasional car and a few kids playing. Oh yes, and the sodding ice-cream van rolling up at three o’clock playing Greensleeves in a peal of loud, distorted chimes.

It was well dark by the time I caught the bus up to the hospital: several other night-shift workers were already aboard, or got on with me, and most of them I knew. I swapped anecdotes with Janice, a nurse from Theatres; and cheerfully endured the jokes of Ken, a security man at one of the sites on the neighbouring industrial estate. But some of my attention was inescapably caught by the sight of the hospital itself, looming darkly into view against the dimness of the sky. Like a black fortress in the night, with many windows dark, or dimly-curtained, but others watchfully ablaze. I’ve always loved the life of Nights, the wakefulness in a sleeping world – the atmosphere of a place that’s never sleeping; merely sedated. But a hospital at night has its eerie side too; its sinister shadows. It was that aspect that struck me most forcibly now.

It wasn’t even that I was thinking particularly about the murders and mysteries of the past few days, and weeks, and months. Routine’s the great comforter; and the prospect of a busy night in Casualty was enough to clear the excess mental baggage from anyone’s mind. I knew I still had fears lurking there below the surface; but real life went on. It had to.

The bus pulled in across the forecourt from our department’s brightly-lit canopy, and I disembarked. At least there weren’t any ambulances parked askew outside the doors, blue lights still pulsing, so I hoped I wouldn’t be pitched straight in.

I changed into my uniform in the locker room: fastening the close-fitting navy dress up to the collar; unzipping the cuffs and rolling the sleeves back to my elbows. I was still trying to fix my cap on with one hairgrip too few when Judith, one of my counterparts on Days, came in and joined me at the mirror.

‘Rachel. It’s good to have you back.’

Sister Parsons – Judith, but never Judy. Despite her silver-grey hair she was still in her forties; and her vivid blue eyes were those of someone younger still. A northerner with a brisk – some would say brusque – manner, and I knew some of the students didn’t get on with her: but that was their loss, for she was everything that they aspired to be: competent, calm and compassionate. I reckoned she mothered me sometimes, but I didn’t mind. Sometimes I needed it.

‘Busy shift?’ I asked, through a mouthful of protruding hairgrips.

‘Not too bad. One RTA in for observation; a few cuts and bruises. One OD – a bottle of paracetamol and maybe half a bottle of vodka. And she didn’t look a day over sixteen, poor girl.’

I grimaced. ‘Bet the wash-out was fun. She okay?’

‘We hope so. The Medical team admitted her, anyway.’

‘Let’s hope it stays quiet.’ I finished adjusting my cap and stepped back to admire the result; then turned and grinned at her.

‘You’re settling back into the routine, then?’ Her own smile was fond. ‘But then you’ve always been able to adapt. Some people your age would find being on permanent nights just impossible to adjust to. But you love it, don’t you?’

It was true: as I said, the atmosphere grows on you. Maybe most women my age would prefer the more ordered social life of a day job; but not having a partner or any family commitments made this option just as easy for me. Unsocial hours make for good rates of pay; and besides, the social life in this town is practically non-existent anyway.

I adjusted the fob-watch pinned over my breast, and she glanced down at hers. ‘Parker’s doing handover tonight …’ – I placed the face, nodded – ‘Apparently she still remembers you telling her to get her hair off her collar on her first night down here …’

I remembered it too: she’d seemed quite nonplussed, getting that attitude off a girl only three years older than she was. ‘It was rather a heavy shift,’ I pointed out, defensively.

Judith’s smile widened. ‘Well it did the trick, anyway. And niggles aside, she’s turning into a damned good Casualty nurse. She’s got another block of nights coming up next month; you can really start polishing her up then.’

I nodded again – and realized how good it felt, being treated as a fellow-professional by the nurse I most respected; sharing together in the development of our staff. She was right, Staff Nurse Joanna Parker was going to go far. I hoped I’d be able to bring out the best in her along the way.

Nice to be back, Judith.

Karen came in at that point, already in uniform apart from her cap and belt. We all said our hellos, and Judith left us to finish getting ready, as the clock eased round to the start of one more working night.

The department was still fairly busy, and Joanna had perched herself on the doctors’ desk by Cubicles to give report; I was sure Judith wouldn’t have approved, but she was behind a curtain helping with somebody’s dressing. Me, I didn’t mind. I’d done the same often enough.

‘Right,’ she said, glancing down her page of notes; her stethoscope still slung around her neck. ‘One RTA in Short Stay for overnight obs; Darren Allen, age 24, query concussion. Bloke with a gashed leg in Cubicle Four …’ And so on down the list: those patients in their various stages of treatment, and those who’d been clerked-in but had yet to see the doctor. The last couple of hours seemed to have been heavier than Judith had let on, but Joanna seemed to have come through it all cheerfully enough. No tinge of tiredness in her fresh, freckle-dusted face, and her voice was bright and lively.

She was wearing her mousy hair well off her collar, too.

‘… Query pneumothorax in Six, Mrs Jean Fowler, 51 …’ And Mike and a couple of students stepped aside to let the Medical Houseman get at the X-ray viewing box, slapping the black film up under the clip. The white, eerie glow lit up the image, outlining the shadowy lungs. One was obviously distorted. One more bed filled; or were they full up already, and phoning around? From the grimness on the doctor’s face as he studied the X-ray, I guessed it might well be the latter.

That might make for some fun later on, if they started backing up into here.

I looked back to Joanna as she finished. A routine workload, then; nothing dramatic. Nothing life-threatening. Mike, Karen and the rest had taken down what notes they’d needed, and began dispersing with a general murmur of thanks. I thanked her too – with a compliment that brought a pleased little smile – and went to get the drug keys off Judith. ‘I’ll leave things in your capable hands, then,’ she said as she handed them over; then gave an exaggerated sigh, and smiled afresh. ‘Right: time to see if Jack read the instructions right, or if he’s burned his supper again. At least the traffic should be better than it was this afternoon …’

We said goodbye; and as she went on down towards the changing room, her parting shot was Have a nice night.

She really meant it, too – which just goes to show how worthless good wishes sometimes are.

We had a fairly steady throughput of patients – all walking wounded – to start with; but by half-past midnight things had quietened down considerably – so much so that I reckoned we could take our staggered meal-breaks up in the canteen (sometimes when it’s busy we have to send someone up with a trolley, and we eat off our knees down here in the duty room). It was getting on for one when my turn came round. I unclipped the bunch of ward keys – the true symbol of authority – from the safety pin on my lapel and passed them to Mike, and Karen and I went up together. I was still carrying the departmental bleep, tucked away under my cardi: any crises and I’d be right down again.

Half of the canteen was in darkness; the rest was bright, and fairly busy, with nurses filtering down from the various wards, and a huddle of porters round one of the window tables. Despite the mediocrity of the food, the place always gave me a strangely upbeat feel: an island of light at the very heart of the dark and dormant hospital. Karen and I loaded up our trays and joined the queue; I was first past the till, and nodded towards the table by the Coke machine, where Anne O’Brien from ENT was already tucking in.

She looked up, smiling, as we joined her. ‘Hiya. Quiet tonight?’

‘Apart from the twenty-eight-car pile-up,’ I said airily. ‘We’re putting a brave face on it.’

Karen unclipped her belt with a grateful little sigh, tucking the ends into the pockets of her dress. ‘How’s the curry?’ she asked, studying her plate without enthusiasm.

‘About two spoonfuls short of critical mass.’ Annie wrinkled her nose in a mischievous grin, and set about raking up another forkful. She was halfway through eating it when her eyes suddenly widened, and she leaned forward with a (slightly muffled) exclamation of interest. ‘Hey, is that the ring, then?’

Karen glanced down at the gold circle with its small, bright diamond, fastened to her dress with the clip of her fob-watch so as to leave her hands clear for work. Her smile was tinged with the hint of a blush.

‘Yeah. He gave it to me tonight – just before I came in to work. Can’t wait to wear it proper …’

Staff Nurse Karen Kane: three years younger than me, and very much in love. It wasn’t surprising, she was attractive enough, in a bright-eyed, slightly nervous-looking way. She’d been seeing Steve, her bloke, for nearly a year now, and he’d finally popped the question a week ago. Not surprisingly she was over the moon about that – though she hadn’t let such distractions affect her professionalism, and remained as clear-headed and competent as ever. A good nurse and a good friend, and I enjoyed working with her on both counts. I didn’t get the chance as often as I’d have liked, because she was normally on Days, with stints of Nights according to the department’s internal rota. But with the purchase of a house now looming, she’d been working extra nights in anticipation of the mortgage.

‘Named the day yet?’ Anne asked; but before Karen could answer, the bleep on my belt went off with a rapid staccato of pips, and we all tensed. Cardiac arrest group alert: with a forkful of chips poised halfway to my mouth I waited for the voice-over.

The message came crackling over the channel a moment later: ‘Cardiac arrest, Coronary Care … .’ It repeated four times, but we were already relaxing, the instinctive surge of adrenaline thinning out. Not one of ours, not this time … One of the porters at the window table had got the call too, on the cardiac bleep, and left at a sprint, ready to assist upstairs.

Karen glanced after him, then back at me. She shrugged.

‘Anyone notice what was for pudding?’ Anne asked.

‘Fruit pie.’

‘Meaning rhubarb?’

‘Usually.’ I grimaced. ‘Among other things.’

She decided to risk it anyway, and while she was paying, the two of us moved on to speculate whether Staff Nurse Mike Shannon was likely to get off with Staff Nurse Brenda Griffiths. Karen doubted it, but on balance I reckoned they’d go well together; apart from anything else, Mike was Irish and Bren was Welsh, so there might at least be an element of Celtic solidarity there. Mike was in his thirties, energetic and cheerful, his rather boyish good looks tempered by the premature grey in his dark hair and beard. Brenda was more Karen’s age, very demure and quiet-spoken; but her smile was as spontaneous as sunshine, and it rarely failed to lift our spirits.

‘So when are we going to get you fixed up, then?’ Karen wanted to know, an impish little sparkle in her eyes. ‘No eligible young medics around? How about that Dr Wright?’

I grinned. ‘I don’t think so, somehow. He’s a nice bloke, but …’

But I’m not ready to get hitched yet, Kaz. Still too restless …

Break was over all too soon. Finishing our cigarettes (you’d be surprised how many nurses smoke), we said goodbye to Anne, picked up our bags and made our unhurried way back downstairs to the department. The waiting area was still nearly empty – just a couple of people slouched in the chairs, and a girl standing over by the drinks machine, head down as if counting her last pennies. Apart from a long brown scarf and gloves, she was dressed, rather scruffily, in black from the boots up: tight jeans, long threadbare coat and a flat-brimmed cowboy hat. The Gypsy Goth look, I decided. My cursory glance took in the fact that her dark hair was cropped close to her skull, with a single braid curling down below her collar. And even indoors, in the dark small hours of a winter’s morning, she was wearing shades.

I assumed she’d been clerked-in, but checked with Mike anyway as I retrieved my keys. He raised his eyebrows.

‘Far as I know we’ve just got two blokes waiting – a cut hand and a sprained wrist; plus the guy with Graham in Suturing now …’

I glanced down the corridor towards the suturing room. ‘What happened to him?’

‘Argument in a nightclub – Ramon’s, I think; it usually is. Some charmer smashed a glass in his face.’

‘Bad?’

‘Pretty superficial – more blood than damage. But he’ll need a good few stitches.’

And Dr Graham Hancock doing the needlework. Lucky man. Graham was one of our less charming doctors, short on patience and especially surly in the small hours. ‘Who’s helping him? Helen?’

He nodded. ‘Good practice for her: how to put up with an SHO who reckons he needs his beauty sleep.’

I smiled at that. ‘How about the sprained wrist: he been X-rayed yet?’

‘They should be about ready for him now. Shall I … ?’

‘I’ll take him round if you like.’ This from Karen, just back from locking her bag away. She still wore her blue cardigan: it was at least one size too large, giving her a slightly forlorn look.

‘If you would, thanks.’ I fastened the clinking bunch of keys back on to my lapel. ‘And I’ll go find out what our latest customer wants.’

She was sitting down when I re-entered the waiting area, holding a plastic cup of coffee in both shabby-gloved hands. I guessed she was making the most of its heat; to judge by the state of her clothes, she was currently living rough – or maybe in a squat, if she was lucky. Everything looked dirty and ill-fitting: the coat nearly ankle-length; the grey jersey beneath it reaching halfway to her knees. Even her high-laced boots were stuffed with thick socks. Her cropped, easy-clean hair – suggested much the same thing. And I could smell her from here.

Another Traveller, then. Or one more real example of the destitution which our local politicians spoke about in such airy, abstract terms.

She was contemplating the drink as I came over, and didn’t look up until I was standing in front of her and clearing my throat. Close to, her grubby face looked pale and very young – but I sensed an underlying hardness in her expression: a suggestion that this girl might be young in years but was old, old beyond measure, in experience. Bitter experience. Her eyes might have told me more, but they remained hidden; the black shades were impassive and vaguely unsettling.

‘Excuse me (miss? I left it hanging) … can I help you at all?’

For a long moment I thought she wasn’t going to reply; and, as I waited, became aware of the silence of our two other patients. I felt the tingle of their watchfulness on my back – and suddenly realized they were nervous. Two healthy, previously garrulous young lads had made sure there was a wide space between them and a solitary girl – and now sat stiff and uneasy in their chairs. In a way I didn’t blame them. It was getting hard to face down that cool, eyeless gaze, and I broke the contact briefly, my attention switching to her hands, her chewed-down gloves; the glint of silver rings against her knuckles. One of them bore a pentagram sign. Another formed the double-mask motif of the theatre – except that both the faces were skulls, one leering, one grimacing: both staring emptily up at me.

I looked back to her face.

‘I’d like to see the doctor, please,’ she said in a low, slightly hoarse voice.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘I’ve been sick … past few days. Got the runs too. Liquids is all I can keep down.’ She took a sip of coffee as if to prove the point.

‘Have you been to your GP?’

She shook her head. ‘Don’t have one. I’m just … passing through, you could say.’

I could indeed: we’d had her type in here often enough. The dog-handler had been the most recent example – and at least he’d presented with a genuine injury. Some of them came seeking shelter, however temporary; others hoped to be fobbed off with medication – free pills, if they could get them. In general, it was departmental policy to give such people short shrift; but then again, she didn’t exactly look the picture of health; and who knew what lurking medical condition we might be turning away?

Better to be safe than sued (to put it realistically). And it would keep Graham on his toes for a while longer. With that not unpleasant thought, I relaxed slightly. ‘All right. The doctor will take a look at you as soon as he can. In the meantime, can I just take a few details … ?’

I sensed her gaze follow me suspiciously to the desk as I walked over to get a caz-card. ‘Like what?’

‘Just your name, address, date of birth – that sort of thing.’ I had my pen poised, and was trying to be as conciliatory as possible. It was difficult. Someone else in need of a sympathetic face perhaps, but that was the last thing on my mind. She was giving me a chill.

‘McCain,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Carol McCain. No fixed address.’

‘Date of birth?’ I prompted hopefully.

She smiled then, albeit faintly. ‘I’m older than I look,’ was all she said.

I was back behind the desk making a Fracture Clinic appointment for our supposed ‘sprained wrist’ when her name was finally called. She rose slowly to her feet and followed Mike through towards the examination area, giving me a sidelong glance as she passed. I didn’t realize how fixedly my eyes were following her until the waiting youth muttered: ‘Getting to you, too, is she?’

I blinked. ‘Sorry; where were we … ?’ Returning my attention quickly to the clinic sheet; but he was still looking up the corridor, frowning slightly.

‘Something weird about that one,’ he said softly. ‘Something really … weird.’

I wondered if he’d tried chatting her up or something. He gave the distinct impression of someone who fancied himself, as well as anything in skirts. Perhaps her rebuff had been unexpectedly cold. Yet there wasn’t the tang of sour grapes about his attitude; rather a puzzlement that bordered on unease …

‘We do get some odd customers at this time of night,’ I allowed, neutrally. ‘You get used to it after a while.’

Famous last words.

I finished writing up his booking, and watched him walk off into the night clutching his appointment card, his forearm encased in plaster. The two patients who’d needed stitching up had also departed; a couple more minor injuries had joined the queue. It was proving to be an average-to-quiet night on the whole. I started back up the corridor, and met Graham halfway. He was looking tired, his plump face pale and slack.

‘Just another three,’ I told him mercilessly, and he cast a wistful glance towards the duty room, where the plasterman on call was just about to brew up.

‘What’ve we got in One?’ he asked with resignation.

‘Bad case of D&V, apparently: says she hasn’t been able to eat for a few days. She’s been sleeping rough …’

He gave me an exasperated look. ‘Rachel. She should see a doctor in town: sign on as a temporary resident. This is supposed to be a department for accidents and emergencies, for God’s sake …’

I shrugged. ‘Well she’s here now, and we’re hardly rushed off our feet, are we?’ He opened his mouth to protest further, and I added: ‘And besides, who’s to say it’s not something serious? Come on, Graham, you might as well take a look at her.’ So we can get rid of her as soon as possible, I almost added.

‘All right, all right.’ He yawned, and glanced at his watch; then again towards the duty room, where the first hissings of the kettle could now be clearly heard.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll leave some for you,’ I assured him. He gave me another look, as though – for some reason – unconvinced by the sweetness of my smile; then muttered something under his breath, and turned back towards the examination area.

I wandered into the duty room, where Dave, the plaster technician, was studying the dented kettle as if willing it to boil more quickly. ‘He’s in a good mood tonight,’ he observed drily.

‘Isn’t he always?’ I sat down in one of the low, shabby chairs, feeling the webbing sag beneath me. Unlacing my shoes, I slipped them off and leaned back, flexing my stockinged feet.

‘I’ve seen firemen with shorter ladders,’ he said, without appearing to look.

‘Piss off.’

He grinned at that, watching me crane forward to examine my tights. There was more to Our Dave (as we called him, to avoid confusion with one of the regular ambulancemen) than met the eye: a quirky sense of humour lurking behind that placid exterior. I was settling back in my chair again when Mike stuck his head round the door.

‘Hey, Raitch … How many Goths does it take to change a lightbulb?’

‘None, they all prefer sitting in the dark,’ I said comfortably. ‘Go away.’

‘Damn, she’s heard it before,’ Karen muttered in the background. The two of them wandered disconsolately back towards reception.

Dave nodded towards the kettle as it bubbled towards climax. ‘Want one?’

‘Please. Coffee if you’re making it.’

‘How about his lordship?’

‘I think he might appreciate it.’ And to be fair, the man had been on duty since nine o’clock the previous morning.

‘Tea, coffee?’

I wasn’t sure: it had been so long since he’d last deigned to take tea with us. ‘Hang on, I’ll go and ask him.’

I put my shoes back on and went through into Examination, a long, over-lit room fairly wallpapered with charts for instant reference: toxic substances, advice on Hep-B (‘All blood is guilty until proved innocent’), Wallace’s ubiquitous Rule of Nines for the assessment of burns … Ten trolley-beds formed a row down one side, individually curtained-off into examination cubicles. Only the one was in use at the moment, furthest from the door. I walked down past the sinks and the X-ray viewing boxes and the desk for writing up notes, glancing into each of the empty cubicles to check that all was tidy and in order; if not it would give us something to do if things stayed quiet. Thus occupied, I had almost reached the last cubicle before it registered that there was no sound of voices coming from behind its drawn curtains – and for no logical reason, I suddenly hesitated. And the silence persisted.

I could understand a few moments’ quiet to ponder a symptom; but an examination is more than anything a verbal process – the doctor’s questions, the patient’s replies. Yet the stillness was total: I couldn’t even hear any movement in there. And I realized then that my nerves had begun to tingle, as though sensing something ominous and threatening, separated from me by no more than the thickness of that plain green curtain.

My overactive imagination again, of course. More likely she’d wandered off somewhere and Graham had gone looking for her. I drew back the curtain anyway.

In that first split-second I glimpsed enough: the white-coated figure on the floor beside the trolley, the black-clad figure bending over it, and straightening as I came through; the glint of a drawn knife in the harsh light. And I’d been on the Control & Restraint courses, knew all about how to reason with a knife-wielding patient – but as those sombre shades came round all I wanted to do was turn and run. I got as far as the turn. Before I could run, or even shout for help, her fist was in my hair and dragging my head back, stretching my throat so I choked on my cry and could only gawp soundlessly as she hauled me back into the cubicle. Desperately I threshed at the end of her arm, struggling to get free, to stop the white, ripping pain in my scalp: arms bent back, both hands scrabbling at hers now, trying to pry those fingers loose. But effortlessly she drew me in. From the corner of my eye I caught the gleam of the knife, and with a last frenzied effort managed to twist half around and lash out, knocking the glasses from her face.

I glimpsed eyes that were a cold and bleached-out blue, in the instant that the bright light struck them. The pupils reacted immediately, contracting to pinpoints, and with a snarl that was partly pain she jerked her face away.

Photophobia: she couldn’t stand the light. And before I could even think to take advantage, she’d wrenched me right round by the hair and slammed me bodily against the back wall. Winded, I gasped aloud. The fingers in my hair loosened and withdrew; I felt her grasp my shoulder and turn me slowly round to face her.

And a quick, sickening punch to my midriff dropped me in a heap at her feet.

For a moment everything was just a queasy blur; my head echoed and spun, and I didn’t even have the strength to retch. Then I became aware that she was sitting on her heels beside me.

She’d put her shades back on and pushed the wide-brimmed hat to the back of her head. The knife was cradled in both hands now, as though she was doing no more than idly weigh it, testing its balance. I managed to focus on the weapon, and it was a vicious-looking switchblade: cold, clean steel, and grips that looked like they’d been carved from bone. And for all the easiness with which she handled it, the point was still angled down towards me.

‘I had questions for your doctor,’ she told me, in the same dust-dry monotone she’d used before. ‘He wouldn’t answer them. I was about to show him the error of his ways, but …’ She inclined her head, studying me thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps you will answer them for me.’

Oh shit, I thought. Aloud I managed to ask: ‘What … questions?’

‘A young girl was brought into your department this evening: she’d overdosed – tried to kill herself. What happened to her?’

I swallowed. ‘She was admitted …’

‘Which ward?’ And as I hesitated, with the instinctive reticence of someone for whom patient confidentiality was second nature, she leaned forward and hissed: ‘Don’t even dream of lying: I’ll see it in your soul.’

I believed her, too: the shock of that icy gaze still throbbed within me. It was fortunate that I was in a position to answer her, having browsed through the admissions ledger earlier in the evening. ‘She went to Jenner Ward: that’s Medical … second floor …’

She absorbed the information in silence for a moment; then reached slowly out with the knife and used the point to snag the silver chain of my crucifix, and lift the pendant clear of my collar. She spoke again, even more quietly than before.

‘This. Is it just a trinket … or something more?’

Again I swallowed, trying to lubricate a mouth gone bone-dry. ‘It’s what I believe in. Who I believe in …’

She nodded, and let it fall back into the hollow of my throat. ‘You’ll need to,’ she promised softly – and even her breath felt cold.

And with that she rose swiftly to her feet and was gone.

For a long moment after the curtain had flopped closed behind her, I just slumped there, eyes wide with disbelief. Then reaction set in – a sick and chilling surge that left me shivering. But despite the weakness that came with it, I began struggling to my feet.

I was halfway there when Mike stuck his head round the curtain to see how we were getting on: the shock that blanked-out his cheerful expression was so abrupt it was almost funny. ‘Rachel – what –’

My legs nearly gave way at that point and I had to clutch at the trolley for support. He moved quickly forward but I waved him away: ‘Okay. I’m okay. What about Graham … ?’

There was the sound of movement from the floor on the far side of the trolley, and a stifled groan. I leaned over. Graham was trying to sit up: his face paler than ever, and streaked with blood from a gash on his temple. I never thought I’d be so relieved to know he was still with us.

‘What happened?’ Mike was asking, even as he stooped to help the doctor up.

‘That girl – she’s a nutter, she’s got a knife.’ I paused for a gulp of air. ‘Need to fast-bleep the porters, tell them she’s after the girl on Jenner – the OD – ring the ward too. And the police …’

Karen was approaching by then, and detoured straight to the wall-mounted phone. I returned my attention to Graham, seated on the chair now, as Mike set about examining his wound; but when I glanced back at her, I saw the worried little frown creep over her features. She punched in the emergency number again.

‘I can’t get through – something’s wrong with the phone, it’s just whining …’

‘Shit! Try the one in my office.’ She hurried to do so, and I stumbled after her. I was more or less steady on my feet by the time I got there – but the expression on her face as she looked up from the phone was enough to stop me short.

‘Same again – it’s interference or something. Now I can’t get a dial tone …’ ~

‘Oh my God …’ I couldn’t believe it: not another switchboard failure, not now. And that crazy woman with a knife was on her way up to a sleeping ward – and about to arrive without warning …

Mike had come up behind me, and was about to echo my disbelief when I turned and grasped his coat. ‘Come on. We’ve got to go after her.’

He nodded, and we began to run. It was sheer instinct that prompted me to relinquish my keys, and I swung back round to toss them towards Karen; behind me, getting further away by the second, I heard Mike shouting, ‘Danny. Where’s Danny? Someone find the lazy sod!’ And then I was racing after him, down past the treatment rooms and Suturing and Minor Theatre, and on into the dimly-lit corridor that led to the lifts.

Six

In that claustrophobic tunnel, the noise of our footfalls on the linoleum floor swelled and rebounded and echoed around us, effectively masking any sound from up ahead. Maybe she’d already reached the lifts, of course, or was fast approaching them; but perhaps she’d paused, and was lying in wait for any pursuers – especially ones as reckless as us. That thought occurred to me just before we reached an angle of the corridor, where it bypassed the plant room, but I was going too fast to stop now, and with the breath rasping in my throat I couldn’t even voice a warning. Mike went round the corner first, and the adrenaline surged through me as I lost sight of him. But a moment later I’d followed suit, and had him back in view, still running, his white coat-tails flying – and beyond him a straight stretch of empty corridor, with the lift area at its end.

We ran for it, reached it, and skidded breathlessly to a halt, our eyes scanning the indicator lights. There were four lifts serving this end of the building, and two were still on our level, empty and unused. The third was out of order, which was par for the course.

The fourth was on its way up.

The indicator still showed our floor, but that was just the mechanism catching up. Even as we watched, it clicked up to the next level. Mike swore, and made for one of the waiting lifts; but I already had the door to the main stairway open, and turned to shout.

‘Stairs! Come on, it’s quicker!’

It is, too. This end of the building might be relatively modern, but the lifts are fast approaching the end of their natural, with a tendency to judder and grind and stop at floors you have no wish to visit. Whenever I’m in a hurry, I take the stairs.

So up the stairs we went: clattering, panting, grasping the banister rails to swing ourselves around the corners; passing the doors to the first floor, and going faster all the time. Reaching the second floor, we fairly burst through the fire-doors into the deserted reception area – and saw the lift we’d been racing standing empty before us. As we stood there, gasping to refill our lungs, the door slid smoothly closed again, an automatic function that seemed almost mocking.

‘Oh … sod,’ I murmured, ‘she’s up here.’

Mike walked quickly to the set of doors leading through into the central corridor, and pushed them open. The thoroughfare beyond was in semi-darkness: just doctors’ offices and storerooms, all deserted at this hour. To left and right at this end, more fire-doors sealed off the access corridors to the first two Medical wards, Harvey and Radcliffe. Likewise at the far end, for Lipscomb. And Jenner.

I moved up to follow him through; still a bit unsteady on my feet after our sprint up here. Still short of breath, too – but I struggled to keep my panting as shallow as possible as I peered into the gloom ahead of us. Where nothing stirred.

We went on down the corridor, quickly and quiet. The door to the seminar room was slightly ajar, and Mike paused and pushed it open; I watched with my heart in my mouth as he reached in to switch on the light and survey the room – but it was empty. We hurried on.

Welcome to Jenner Ward said the sign over the closed double doors that came up on our right. Through their wired glass panels I could see on down the dark passageway, dimly-lit beneath the tubular hoods of the night-lights; past bays and side-rooms asleep in shadow, to the single desk lamp at the nurses’ station. There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Warily, I pushed the doors open, and we slipped through.

With no idea of which bay our would-be suicide was in, we made straight for the desk; drawn also, instinctively, by the warm glow surrounding it, for the dreaming darkness of the ward was unsettling; unquiet. I heard ragged breathing in the gloom, and coughs and mutters; the ghostly respiration of the sick. Of course I’d worked my share of night shifts on inpatient wards and was familiar with the atmosphere. But I’d never quite got used to it, and always found it eerie. Tonight, with the prospect of a deranged intruder with a knife lurking somewhere in the shadows, the restless dark was positively scary.

We reached the station without incident, having glimpsed nothing untoward in the bays we’d passed, nor in the sluice room either. I reached over for the nursing cardex, a ringbinder of notes on all the ward’s patients, and had started leafing through it before realizing I’d forgotten her name. ‘Bloody hell … Jones … ?’

‘James,’ Mike prompted calmly, still glancing round. ‘Angela James.’ He’d obviously been browsing through our admissions register as well. I quickly found the relevant entry, and saw she’d been put in one of the side-wards, the four single-bedded rooms back near the doors. We’d already passed her by, without knowing it. I had the sudden, sinking feeling that her pursuer might not have overlooked her so easily.

We turned to retrace our steps, and one of the nurses was just emerging from the end bay, pushing a commode. She raised her eyebrows. ‘Hi … can I help you?’

I hesitated for a moment; then, trying not to make it sound too melodramatic, I said: ‘We’ve had a patient-emergency down in A&E … think she might have found her way up here. She was talking about one of your patients, Angela James, and … er … she’s got a knife.’

That took the colour out of her cheeks somewhat, but she retained her composure admirably. ‘Have you bleeped the porters?’

‘Not yet – none of our phones were working …’ And no fault of mine, but I still felt myself flush at her disbelieving look. She went over to the desk and turned the phone around towards me. ‘You’d better do it now, then.’

Smarting, I moved to do so – while Mike turned to the distinctly unimpressed-looking Staff Nurse. ‘I think we’d better check that Angela’s okay, right now,’ he suggested evenly, and the two of them set off down the corridor. I watched them go, tucking the receiver under my chin as I punched in the number. There was a crackly pause; then the dull whine of number unobtainable. Fuck, I mouthed, and tried again; frowning in disbelief as I got the same result. It seemed the phones were playing up everywhere. I slammed the receiver down – belatedly realizing there were people trying to sleep all around me – and was wondering what to do next when there came a rustle of movement from right behind me. I spun round.

The girl who stood there looked about fifteen – though she must have been older, or they’d have put her on the kids’ ward. She was wrapped in an overlarge hospital dressing-gown that made her seem even frailer than she was. Her face was pale, with dark shadows around the sunken eyes, and her fair hair hung in strings. She looked as if she was feeling really awful.

‘I’ve been sick again, nurse,’ she reported miserably; and as I stared at her, I realized who she was, who she must be.

‘Angela,’ I ventured, ‘we___er, thought you were asleep.’

She actually smiled at that – if smile was the right word for the rictus that spread across her thin features. ‘No …’ she almost whispered. ‘No, I’ll not be sleeping again. Not safe to sleep …’

I gave an understanding sort of nod. ‘Where were you? The toilet?’ I glanced down the corridor to see if Mike had re-emerged from her room yet. And as I did so, something caught my eye – a shift of shadow in the darkness of the bay beyond her. Someone was on their feet in there, and coming out. Another patient needs the loo, I found myself hoping with surprising fervour – but in vain. Because the figure who emerged was fully-dressed, in dirty black. And wearing shades.

Angela might have sensed the movement at her back; she certainly saw the horror on my face. She turned quickly – and recoiled against me with a stifled sob. And the woman who’d called herself McCain stepped fully into the corridor – her clothes still blending with the gloom, but her face as calm and pale as a cadaver’s – and extended a gloved hand towards the girl. Palm open, like an offer to a drowning man.

‘Angela. Come with me now. It’s not too late …’

Me she ignored completely, as if I wasn’t even there: although Angela was rigid against me, and my hands had instinctively gripped her shoulders. The two of them might have been alone here in this darkened ward: sharing in a secret tryst while the lesser world slept. But as I slowly eased the terrified girl backwards, away from her visitor’s slow-paced advance, I glimpsed something slip into McCain’s dangling left hand – and a moment later, with a sinister click, the blade of her knife licked out and locked.

‘Never too late to follow me,’ she breathed, her blank stare still not acknowledging my presence.

I risked a fast, frantic look down the corridor – but it was empty: no sign of Mike or the Staff Nurse, though they must surely have discovered that Angela was out of her bed by now. At any moment they’d reappear, and see, and come sprinting to my rescue; but I knew that even the very next second would be one too many.

Spinning Angela round, I grasped her wrist, and ran.

Round the corner we went, and on down the link corridor towards Radcliffe Ward, feet thudding on the carpet, dimly-glimpsed doorways and bed-bays veering madly past on either side. Just like a crash-call, I thought breathlessly; and an old nursing phrase flashed with idiot incongruity through my mind. A nurse should only run in cases of fire or haemorrhage …

Behind, McCain was coming at a walk. My fleeting look saw her stride increasing. When I next glanced back a moment later, she was running.

… haemorrhage …

We fairly crashed through the set of fire-doors separating the wards and raced on through Radcliffe. A Staff Nurse and a student were sitting at the desk, writing quietly by dusky lamplight. Both heads jerked up as we appeared, the unison so perfect it should have made me laugh. No time to explain, of course; nor to call for help, nor even shout a warning. We just kept running – Angela stumbling now, but even if she’d fallen I’d have dragged her – and the woman with the knife was at our heels. So let them call the porters. Let them find a phone that fucking worked.

Please, God. Jesus. Please.

Round the next corner and back towards the central corridor now – and suddenly there was someone in our path, shuffling across from toilets to bed-bay. A grey-faced old man in a faded dressing-gown, mobilizing laboriously with a walking frame. His head was slowly coming round, but nothing had time to register. I slowed for just a second, and swerved past him, and yanked Angela with me through the gap.

McCain hit him full on.

The two of them went down together, with a rattle of metal and a sickening thud. The sound made me wince: despite myself I slowed again, glancing round. My every nursing instinct cried out against leaving the poor guy gasping there on the floor, his rheumy eyes rolling as he fought for breath. And even as I hesitated, I saw Mike appear at the far end of the corridor, pushing past one of the stunned ward nurses, and come racing towards us. There was surely no need to keep on running; we could corner her here; restrain her. But McCain had already struggled to her knees, her knife still glinting through the gloom, and now she lifted her head and looked at me, and bared her teeth in a vixen grin.

We kept on running.

Through the next set of doors, and the next, and we were back in the Medical Unit reception area. That left us with a choice of the main stairway up or down. For a moment I could think of nothing but Mike back there, maybe tackling that mad bitch, struggling to disarm her – and then I saw that one of the lifts was open wide and waiting.

Someone must have just used it – maybe a nurse trailing back from the fag-end of Break, or returning from delivering specimens to the lab, or whatever. It didn’t matter. We ran for it, as behind us we heard the doors of Radcliffe Ward burst open.

Over the threshold, past the photoelectric beam, and I jabbed the button, any button, and held it down.

Nothing happened, of course.

Wrong button, I realized after a stupefied pause, you’re pressing for this floor, shit. And I put my thumb to the ground-floor button with all my weight behind it as Carol McCain shoved her way through the last set of doors into the reception area, and saw us.

The door began to close, so painfully slowly that for a horrible moment I thought it would fail to connect properly and automatically reopen. And McCain came running anyway, aiming to get her foot into the narrowing gap and block the beam. I shrank back against the far wall, pulling Angela with me, and the last I saw of McCain was a glimpse of her frustrated snarl as the door closed in her face.

Stillness for a second. Then the lift lurched, and started to descend.

I let my breath out in a gasp that left me drained. My legs were suddenly kitten-weak, and I had to slump back against the wall to save my balance. Beside me, Angela James was weeping silently, the tears rolling down her hollow cheeks; but I sensed she still had all her wits about her – primed with adrenaline, and ready to run again.

But who the hell was she was running from?

I’d ask her later, to be sure; but right now, as the lift reached ground level, we both had other things to think about. I knew there was no way I could stop the doors opening. If necessary, if she was already waiting down here, I’d punch the button for the top floor and throw myself against her, forcing her back until the doors had closed behind us and Angela was safely on her way. What that might cost me I didn’t pause long enough to consider: I knew my hesitation would be fatal for both of us if I did.

The lift steadied itself, lined itself up; there was another pause. I thought I couldn’t get any more keyed up – but my stomach still lurched as the door slid smoothly open, and I saw –

Nobody there.

Nobody in sight, anyway. I glanced at Angela, and swallowed, and moved slowly forward to peer out.

The foyer was empty.

And even as we hesitated, unsure what to do next, I heard footsteps from down the corridor – several people, walking quickly; and voices I recognized.

They reached the lift area a moment later: Adrian, who was clearly chargehand porter for tonight, and three of his lads – including Danny from our department. His eyes widened as he saw us.

‘Rachel – we just got a call from A&E, said you’d gone off chasing some nutter with a knife …’

Well at least the phones were working again. I nodded urgently. ‘Yeah, some woman got up on to the Med floor, she must still be up there now. Have they called the police?’

They had. The Duty Nurse Manager as well. All the wards were in the process of being alerted. I nodded again, thankfully, and gestured to Angela, who was keeping close beside me, hugging herself in that outsize dressing-gown.

‘This is Angela. The girl she was after. I want to get her sat down and with a cup of tea, can someone come with us?’

It was Danny who volunteered, and the three of us went back down the corridor towards Casualty; my arm round Angela’s shoulders now, soothing her as the shock began to set in. I reckoned it would be more private round by us, rather than in the canteen or wherever. Part of my mind was still very much on what must be happening upstairs – that woman still loose, still armed and dangerous; and what had happened to Mike? But I realized that right now this girl needed all my attention, so I forced the other thoughts and fears from my mind and concentrated on her. Speaking softly. Guiding her steps.

A cup of hospital tea. I’d just been looking forward to one when all this had started. Maybe ten minutes ago. Maybe a lifetime.

Seven

‘Want to tell me about it?’

She looked warily up from the mug that steamed in both her hands. ‘About what?’

‘Who she is.’

She glanced down at her drink again, and didn’t answer.

I didn’t push it. The police were already here, and would be asking their own questions soon enough. I could hear the WPC on the phone in my office, just across from the duty room where we were sitting. One of her male colleagues was hovering in the corridor outside, his handset picking up occasional crackles of conversation on the open channel. More officers were still searching the building; the intruder had not yet been located.

Mike was sitting in with us: a much-recovered Graham had obligingly sutured the laceration in his side, and decided he didn’t have concussion. He was off sick as of now, of course – but the police would want a statement from him too, and he was nursing a coffee while he waited.

I caught his eye now, but all he could do was shrug. He’d been lucky, and he knew it. She’d slashed and kicked him brutally as she’d struggled clear: the realization of how close death had come was there to see in the paleness of his face. The two of us had been through some sticky situations together since I’d joined the night shift; I well remembered that time he’d disarmed a bottle-wielding drunk and could still make a joke of it afterwards. I’d never seen him as subdued as he was tonight.

Death had come close. But McCain had come closer. And, like me, he must have felt her coldness, the icy insanity beneath her calm exterior. I knew that this was what had really unnerved him; knew just how he was feeling.

And she was still in here with us: somewhere in this warren of echoing corridors and shadow-filled wards. Even with the police in A&E, I didn’t quite feel safe. It’s a big department, after all, divided into half a dozen areas: trolleys, cubicles, theatres … Tonight it was empty – and the bright lights only made it all look emptier, and emphasized its silence.

I sipped some more coffee. Still warm, but what the hell.

They questioned Angela first, with me still present at her request. Not that she was about to tell them anything, either: it was all shrugs and monosyllables. From the line the policeman was taking, they obviously thought she was involved in street crime of some description: drugs or prostitution. McCain was clearly acting on behalf of some pusher or pimp – perhaps she was one herself. Angela, chalk-faced, did not deny the possibility – but I knew they’d got it all wrong. I didn’t intervene, though; nor did I mention my suspicions when I came to give my own statement. What did I know about it, after all? Nothing – except that I’d looked Carol McCain in the face, and heard the things she’d said; and knew that whatever had brought her here, it was nothing so sordidly simple as drugs or sex.

When the police had finished with me, Kessler was waiting; something like this was worth dragging even a consultant out of bed for. He saw me in his office, and sat me down, and seemed quite concerned. Too restless to sit still, I was fairly hunched forward in the chair as I gave a more or less comprehensive report of what had happened. When I’d finished, he asked me if I wanted a cigarette – which, considering his views on smoking, was quite a concession. I nodded gratefully, fumbled in my bag for my packet of Players and lit up. Drawing in the smoke, I closed my eyes, and began at last to think of relaxation. When I opened them again, he was watching me levelly.

‘You’re all right to carry on?’

I nodded again, almost urgently, and he smiled: it was the answer he’d expected. Kessler was a good bloke to work for, on the whole: he knew his stuff, and wasn’t above getting his own hands dirty once in a while. And though he could be a bastard at times, abusing the staff remained his prerogative alone: he was fiercely protective of our interests whenever they were threatened from above. Or at times like this.

‘Have they … caught her yet?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘Last I heard they were still looking.’

I glanced down at my fob-watch, and saw it was nearly three a.m. Kessler was removing his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. His hand moved up to rub his forehead, below the dark, receding hairline; he was probably a lot tireder than he looked.

I breathed out shallowly, so as not to pollute the air too much.

‘Since we’re here, Rachel,’ Kessler resumed, ‘there’s something I have been meaning to discuss with you – and tonight would seem to be as appropriate a time as any.’

I shrugged, waited.

‘You remember those syringes disappearing from the utility room?’

That had been a while back. I nodded.

‘Nothing like that’s happened since, has it?’

‘Not since they reviewed the security.’

His turn to nod. ‘As I thought. But there’s renewed concern, apparently. Someone’s been scavenging round by the waste skips: they think some of the sharps buckets have been taken.’

‘They must be desperate.’ Desperate enough to filch used needles from the very bins in which they awaited incineration: the yellow plastic tubs sealed with Biohazard stickers and the legend Danger of infection. Danger of Hep-B, danger of AIDS … I grimaced at the thought.

Kessler nodded. ‘They are. You know how bad the drug situation’s getting round here; the police were up to see me just the other day, warning about addicts on the prowl for needles and syringes. Improved security or no, I want you all to keep your eyes open; make sure things are all accounted for and locked away. And we could do with less of this department being used as a public thoroughfare, too; people just wandering round …’

‘Am I to take that as a criticism?’ I asked, my tone even.

He smiled thinly. ‘It applies to all the shifts, Rachel – perhaps yours less than most. Just keep the clientele in line is what I’m saying.’

‘And if the clientele comes wading in with a knife? What are we supposed to do then?’ My temper was on a shorter fuse than I’d thought; I swallowed and glanced away for a moment, then looked back at him. ‘Sorry. But are we any nearer getting a second porter on nights; or a panic-button system?’

Kessler met my gaze. ‘You know I’m still pushing night security,’ he said quietly. ‘After tonight, I’ll be pushing all the harder. Admin’s pleading financial constraints; but I think we’re getting there.’

‘Well it won’t be too soon,’ I muttered. Oh, it was starting to get to me now, all right, as it had to Mike already: the realization that I could have died tonight. Could have died.

Kessler shrugged. ‘I couldn’t agree more. Anyway … that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.’ He paused for a moment, watching me finish my cigarette. ‘You coped admirably tonight, Rachel. It won’t be forgotten.’

I thanked him and left. Mike was hanging around by the duty room, ready to go now, but not before he’d said goodbye. I really felt like hugging him and just holding on: what we’d been through tonight had left the both of us shaken up. I think it was only the fact that I’d had Angela to worry about that had kept the real shock from setting in much earlier.

‘How is she?’ I asked, looking past him into the empty room.

‘They’ve taken her back to the ward; the WPC’s going to sit with her. Poor kid wanted to wait for you, but upstairs were anxious to have her back and under obs.’

‘I’ll look in on her before I go off,’ I said, feeling rather warm and pleased inside to know my efforts had been so appreciated: not just by Kessler but by the girl whose life I’d saved. I noticed one of the policemen then, still lingering at the far end of the corridor, and that put something of a dampener on things. ‘Oh, don’t tell me they haven’t caught her.’

‘Afraid not. Though they reckon she must have done a runner, got well away. This is just precautions.’

‘Well I hope they’re right.’ Because the place was a honeycomb of places to hide – from cleaners’ cupboards and service corridors, to the empty wards up in the north wing. And whoever the woman McCain really was, I knew she’d try for Angela again. And possibly for me.

‘Anyway …’ Mike said, interrupting my thoughts. ‘I’ll see you, Raitch.’

‘Yeah,’ I said, snapping out of it; smiling. ‘See you, Mike. God bless.’

Eight

I promised I’d just be a minute, and the Staff Nurse showed me into the side-room where Angela lay. Despite the fatigue apparent on her pale, drawn face she was still awake – struggling to raise herself as the door opened. She relaxed visibly when she recognized me, though still unable to manage a smile, and lay wearily back once more.

‘Hi,’ the policewoman in the bedside chair said. ‘You just off?’

I nodded. The night-light was still on, but the sky outside had already faded to a pre-dawn grey. I was still in uniform, apart from my cap, and wearing my long black nurse’s cloak – just the thing to encourage that unkind rumour that Night Sisters have to be back in their coffins before sun-up or they’ll crumble to dust. I approached the bed.

‘Hello again. How are you feeling?’

She made a noncommittal sound. Something told me she wasn’t going to say much at all with the policewoman there; maybe she did have criminal connections at that. I glanced at the WPC – a pretty, cheerful-looking girl with short blonde hair and a freckled nose. ‘You’ve been keeping her company, then?’

She nodded. ‘We haven’t exactly talked the night away’ – she smiled across at her charge – ‘but it’s best not to be alone on a night like this. I keep telling her to get some sleep, but she won’t listen – will you, Angela? Won’t consider a sedative or anything.’

Angela confirmed this with a silent shake of her head.

‘She’s right,’ I told her, ‘you’ll feel so much better for it.’ And as she miserably returned my gaze, I recalled what she’d said to me the last time.

I’ll never sleep again. Not safe to sleep.

‘Actually …’ the WPC said, getting to her feet and stretching, ‘if you don’t mind staying with her for a minute, I’ll just go for a wee.’

I waited till she was out of the door, then sat down on the end of Angela’s bed. ‘So how are you? Really?’

She just stared at me for a moment; then moistened her lips. ‘They didn’t catch her, did they.’ It was more a statement than a question.

‘Not yet, no. But I think they will soon. And anyway, there’ll always be someone here to look after you.’

Tiredly, she shook her head. ‘Forget it. If she wants me, you won’t be able to stop her.’

‘So who the hell is she?’ I insisted. ‘Look, I won’t tell anyone, I promise … but she could have killed me and two of my friends tonight; I just need to know why.’

‘She wants me to come with her,’ was her indirect answer. She rolled her head on the pillow, staring out of the window at the promise of day; then turned her shadowed, haunted eyes towards me once again. ‘And I want to. I really do. But I’m so scared.’

That left me speechless for a moment. Then: ‘Come with her … where? I mean, doesn’t she want to harm you, then?’

She shook her head. ‘She says she wants to save me, and I believe her. I have to. But if they find out …’

‘Who? Who would she be saving you from?’

But the last of the colour had gone from her face now, faded down to the bone, and she shook her head. ‘Look, forget I said that, all right? Please?’ The quaver in her voice confirmed it: she was scared all right. She was terrified. Despite her plea, I was about to pursue the point, when a sudden recollection shut me up. Alison Scott had been terrified too: scared into silence by something that later killed her right downstairs in my department. Scared of the Clinicians …

And the word was suddenly on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to say it aloud, see what reaction it got. I moistened my lips … and didn’t speak. Perhaps because I didn’t want to trouble her further; perhaps because I was afraid of her reply. It was so much easier to believe that this was all some squalid vendetta between vice gangs, and nothing more. People capable of hideous cruelty, to be sure; but people none the less.

‘All right,’ I told her. ‘I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to. But that woman … She’s ill. You’d be crazy to go with her …’

Angela said nothing; I was suddenly afraid she’d clammed up on me completely. But then she murmured: ‘Oh, she’s ill all right. At least … I hope she is.’

I waited, not quite understanding. The WPC would be back in a moment, if those weren’t already her returning footsteps.

‘Because she thinks she’s an angel,’ the girl continued dully – and looked me right in the eye. ‘She thinks she’s the Angel of Death.’

Not surprisingly, I found it hard to get to sleep when I got home; just lay there, snuggled up beneath the duvet and staring at the ceiling. For all the familiarity of my surroundings … despite the sunshine outside, and Sarah on a day off and quietly knitting in the living room … the gnawing unease just would not go away. A new thought had entered my head on the bus home – and plummeted straight to my stomach, where it rested now like a cold lump of lead.

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