Blood Harvest

5

EVI STOOD AT THE WINDOW OF HER ROOM, BREATHING deeply, waiting for the combination of paracetamol and ibuprofen to kick in. Her consulting room was three floors up and looked directly out over the hospital’s accident and emergency department. As she watched, an ambulance pulled up into the parking bay and a paramedic jumped out, followed by the ambulance driver. They opened the rear doors and began moving the wheelchair lifting gear into position.
Breathe in and out. The medication would work, it always did. It just seemed to take a little longer some days. Across the road from the hospital was a retail park. The supermarket car park was already busy. Friday morning. People were stocking up for the weekend. Evi closed her eyes for a second and then raised her head, looking out over rooftops, office blocks, away into the distance. The large northern town where she worked most days had been built along a wide valley. Moors stretched up on either side. A bird taking off from her window ledge could fly directly to the nearest peak, some four or five miles away. From there, it could look down on the moor, where Gillian Royle still spent the greater part of her days. Evi turned back to her desk. She had fifteen minutes before her next patient.
She’d already written up notes on the consultation with Gillian before taking the painkillers. Every day, she tried to stretch the time in between taking them by another five minutes. Back at her desk, she Googled the website of the Lancashire Telegraph. It didn’t take long to find the article she was looking for.
The town of Heptonclough is in shock following the fire three nights ago at a cottage in Wite Lane. Local man Stanley Hargreaves said he’d never seen a fire burn as fiercely. ‘None of us could get near it,’ he told Telegraph reporters. ‘We’d have saved the young lass if we could have.’
The story explained that the attending fire-and-rescue team were still reviewing evidence but believed the blaze could have been caused by a ring left burning on the gas hob. Bottles of oil around the cooker would have acted as accelerants. The stone cottage, one of the older buildings in Heptonclough, was some distance from the main part of the community and no one had spotted the blaze until it was far too late to contain the fire. The Telegraph article concluded:
Barry Robinson, fourteen, who was babysitting for the family, is currently recovering in Burnley General Hospital after being found unconscious in the garden by firefighters. Although suffering from the effects of smoke-inhalation, doctors expect him to make a full recovery. His parents tell us he has no recollection of discovering the fire or leaving the house.
Evi’s phone was ringing. Her next patient had arrived.