‘Dr Taylor, whether or not this did indeed occur, you’re a doctor. Would you recommend anyone else going back to work so soon? You’ve been through an extremely unsettling experience.’
Alex sat upright, her shoulders pulled back and her chin lifted higher. ‘It was what she said. He said the same to me.’
‘Her words could have meant anything, Dr Taylor. Her “yes” could have meant any number of things. Her post-mortem is in the morning. At this stage it’s best we await the outcome. Amy Abbott’s parents will have enough to deal with when they learn about the death of their daughter. Telling them she could have been murdered is out of the question. When I get back to the station I’ll go through the statement you gave to DC Best and I’ll check on how things are going so far. I’ll give you a call when I know. In the meantime I would like to suggest that you don’t spread any rumours regarding tonight. It won’t do Amy’s parents any good, and if I’m being frank, it won’t do you any good either’
‘Do you believe me?’ Alex felt brave enough to ask.
He stood up. He straightened his suit jacket and did up the second button. ‘You’ve had a stressful time, Dr Taylor. Maybe you’ve come back to work too soon. I’m sure your colleagues would understand if you needed more time.’ He smiled at her politely. ‘Yours is a difficult job. I’m sure it takes it out of you, seeing so much pain. Give yourself a little more time, why don’t you?’
Chapter eight
The skin on her hands had turned red, and her fingers looked heavy and swollen. She had been sitting on the shower tray, knees drawn up, arms wrapped round them, since arriving home. Her work clothes were saturated, clinging to her shaking body, and her eyes were stinging from the tears that still fell.
Over the sound of the heavy spray of water she heard the telephone ring several times and knew it was either Fiona or Caroline, because by now Caroline would indeed know what had happened in her department. She wasn’t ready to talk to them yet. They wouldn’t believe her, so what was the point? Nathan Bell had tried to stop her rushing off into the night, but Alex had been determined to get out of the place. Everywhere she looked she had seen concern and confusion in the faces of staff. Fiona Woods had given her a hard hug, but even she, after her initial concern, had rolled her eyes in exasperation as Alex tried to explain, and any confidence Alex had left just shrivelled and died.
They were best friends, not just colleagues; each had been there for the other in times of stress, and each had lent a shoulder to cry on when the need arose. They had cried together over the worst cases, particularly young deaths, drowned their sorrows and got drunk. Fiona was one of the few people who were aware of what she had gone through thirteen months ago. But it seemed that Fiona had forgotten all this. And who could blame her?
She had witnessed Alex disrupting an already extremely busy night in the department, causing huge delays for all of them. When Nathan Bell suggested calling in Caroline, Alex had flipped. Her anger had no bounds as she shouted obscenities at the walls in the staff room.
Nathan was shocked, warily backing away from her, while Fiona warded off anyone else trying to enter the room. The beetroot stain on his face, more purple than she’d seen it before, transfixed her until the sight of it repulsed her enough to run for the door
She knocked over a yucca plant and upended a tea tray during her undignified exit, leaving more mayhem and gasps of disbelief in her wake.
How, she wondered, had her life come to this? She had picked up the scattered pieces, moved on and put that stressful situation behind her. As each new month passed she had gripped her personal alarm less tightly, scanned shadows less frequently. She had met Patrick, and gradually her fear had lessened, and as the year passed she was glad she had made the decision to stay in Bath, and not bottled out and gone back to Queen Mary’s. It had become a distant memory, one she thought would never be repeated. Only here she was, thirteen months on, dealing with something a thousand times worse.
This was different. This man wouldn’t be satisfied with taking a woman against her will. He wanted the feel and taste of blood on his hands. He was out there, walking around, perhaps even now choosing his next victim, and the police were not prepared to believe he even existed. How could that be possible? Was she such an unbelievable victim? She was being ridiculed behind her back, known throughout the hospital as ‘the one’, if that anaesthetist’s remark was anything to go by. ‘The one who had lost her mind,’ Alex suspected.
She wished she had lost her mind. She wished it was a breakdown, because then there would be some chance of piecing herself back together again, of getting on with her life instead of wondering why he had let her live, why he had left her not knowing if she were raped or not. There were no physical signs found; no internal bruising or marks on her thighs, but then there would have been no resistance from her to cause them. She had been put to sleep, and had no way of stopping or of knowing what he did to her. Or was that his game plan all along? To simply have her think she was going to die, that she was going to be violated? A mind fuck. A sadist getting his kicks.
Whatever his reasons, her normal life had been stolen and replaced with something that could never resemble normality again. Each day she relived the events, reheard her pathetic attempts to reason with him. And all the while she had lain there thinking she was trapped, injured, powerless.
She, more than most women, had imagined how to react if she was ever faced with such a man – the screams she would utter, the scratches and bites she would inflict, how she would fight him off. And in the last scene she was always running, seeing a light, seeing a person ready to help, and then taking comfort, spilling tears of relief as everyone closed in around her, protecting her – and believing her.
She had been brave. A survivor. A woman who could and would do anything when faced with the unimaginable.
Not any more.
She reached for the vodka bottle and took another gulp. She was not going back to work tonight, so what was the point in staying sober? This might at least help her forget.
Chapter nine
She wore blue leather clogs and over her tracksuit she wore a surgical gown. She passed the reception area seeing no one, but was not unduly surprised. It was still the middle of the night and there was no receptionist on duty.
She had made the decision to stop drinking and return to the hospital after crawling out of the shower when the water ran cold, before courage failed her and before a decision to never return took complete control.
She made straight for the operating theatres. She wanted to take a look at them at night when there was less traffic in and out of the place, and determine that there was a way she could have been transported here that night without anyone noticing.