He forced himself to snap out of his reverie and was about to say something when the staff nurse returned in a hurry, followed by a tired-looking male doctor in a green smock. The nurse shot Joel a pointed stare as she curtained off Dec’s bed and she and the doctor attended to the agitated, sobbing teenager.
Joel turned back towards the strange woman, but she was already gone.
He trotted out of the ward and spotted her a little way down the corridor. She was hanging around as though waiting for him. As he approached, he felt his heartbeat quicken and cursed himself for it.
‘Are you a relative of his?’ he asked her. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer.
She shook her head. The smile was still there, teasing him.
‘So what were you doing in there?’
‘Listening,’ she replied coolly. ‘Interesting, don’t you think?’
‘This is a police enquiry,’ he said. ‘I was taking a statement from a witness, and I’d like to know what you were doing there eavesdropping.’
‘My name’s Alex. Alex Bishop.’ She dipped a hand in the pocket of the long, elegant coat she was wearing and handed him a business card. The momentary brush of her fingers against his was like a million volts of current jolting through his body.
‘DI Joel Solomon,’ he said. Doing his best to look composed, he glanced at the card. ‘So you’re a journalist.’ He noticed the landline number at the bottom and added,
‘London got too dull? A teenager crashing his car out in the Oxfordshire sticks isn’t exactly what I’d call a scoop for a hotshot city reporter.’
‘Except it’s not just about a teenager crashing his car, is it?’ she said.
He made no reply.
‘Are you interested in vampires, officer?’
‘What did you say?’
‘You believed him, didn’t you?’
Joel blinked. ‘What makes you so sure of that?’
‘I saw the look on your face,’ she said. ‘Have you got time for a drink? I’d like to talk to you.’
‘I can’t discuss police business with you.’
‘Like vampires are official police business now?’
He looked at his watch. ‘Fact is, I’m in a rush.’
‘Shame.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe I could have helped you.’
Before he could reply, she’d turned and was already walking away. He watched her all the way to the lifts; then she was gone, without looking back.
Chapter Fifteen
The hamlet of Sonning Eye, near the Oxfordshire/Berkshire border
12.17 p.m.
Sandra Roberts threw the stick and watched as Bertie went hurtling after it down the leafy riverside path. It hit the ground and bounced, and the golden retriever jumped in the air to catch it in his jaws.
‘Bring it to Mummy,’ she called to him brightly. ‘Come on, Bertie. Good boy.’
Bertie trotted back to her, the stick in his mouth, and dropped it proudly at her feet, looking up at her with keen anticipation, tail wagging. She patted his head, picked up the stick and threw it again. This time her throw wasn’t quite as straight, and it landed in the reeds at the side of the water. Bertie went charging after it.
‘No, Bertie! Not in the water!’ Last time he’d gone for an impromptu swim, he’d been impossible to recall, had got absolutely filthy and completely saturated the back seat of the Volvo.
Christopher had not been at all pleased. But then again, not much pleased Christopher.
‘Bertie, you bloody dog! Get back here now!’
It was too late. Bertie completely ignored his mistress’s shouts as he went ploughing straight through the reeds, sending up a spray of mud and water. She huffed in exasperation as he hunted around in the shallows, rustling the long reeds as he sniffed excitedly here and there. Then he seemed to freeze, as if he’d found the stick.
Oh, good.
‘Good boy, Bertie! Fetch now; bring it to Mummy!’
And, thank God, he was responding. She could see the yellow of his fur through the reeds as he scrabbled back onto the bank. Now she was going to get the damn animal on the lead, so he couldn’t run off again. She was sure she’d stuffed the lead into her pocket, but it wasn’t there. She tried the other pocket. There it was.
She looked back at the riverbank. Bertie was up on dry land now, still half hidden in the grass. She called him again, but he didn’t respond. She sighed in irritation, went striding over the grass to grab his collar and snap the lead on.
Bertie looked up at her as she approached. He was standing over something, his soggy tail flicking back and forth as if to say, ‘Look what I found!’
Whatever it was he’d fished out of the river, it wasn’t the stick.
Sandra took a step closer, and peered down at the thing. It was grey and bloated and horrible.
It was a couple of seconds before she realised what she was looking at. She recoiled, tasting the vomit that instantly shot up her throat.
The young girl’s face stared up at her from the grass. She had no body. All that remained attached to the head was part of the left shoulder and a section of upper trunk. The throat was slashed wide open, black with congealed blood.
Sandra began to scream.
Chapter Sixteen St Aldates Police Station
12.39 p.m.
The ham and cheese baguette sat untouched on Joel’s desk. He’d peeled half the cellophane wrapping off it ten minutes ago, before realising that the hollow, gnawing feeling at the pit of his stomach wasn’t hunger. He couldn’t eat a bite.
He’d been sitting staring blankly at his lunch ever since; but what he was seeing in front of him wasn’t an uneaten sandwich. It was the pale face and dark-ringed eyes of a badly frightened young guy in a hospital ward, locked in a mental battle against himself. His brain tearing itself in two, striving yet dreading to believe the impossible.
The only thing more terrifying than the fear that you were going crazy was the fear that the nightmare was for real.
Joel knew that. He’d been through it before, and he was fighting desperately not to start feeling that way again now. It was as if he were suddenly viewing the world through a distorting lens. Reality had shifted gears, sidestepped into a parallel dimension where the normal parameters of logic and rationality had been blown away.
He was standing on the brink of the abyss, looking down.
He shoved the sandwich out of the way and snatched up his phone. Dan Cleland was Joel’s closest contact at the forensic lab. Joel asked him if there was any way they could speed up the tests on the Maddon samples.
‘That depends on what you mean by speed up.’
‘Today?’
