indulgence was the one thing Miles was good at. If nothing else, his father had taught him that.
ODSTOCK HOSPITAL, SALISBURY-9:00 P.M.
The emergency room doctor was barely out of medical school and nothing in his training had prepared him for this. He smiled tentatively at the woman in the cubicle. It was worse than the elephant man, he was thinking, as he took his place beside the nurse whose hand the wretched woman was clutching. Her face was so swollen that she looked barely recognizable as a human being. She had given her name as Mrs. Hale. 'You've been in the wars,' he said vacuously.
'My husband-belt-' she croaked through lips that could hardly move.
He looked at the bruising on her throat where the marks of someone's fingers were clearly visible. 'Is it just your face that's been hurt?'
She shook her head and, with a pathetic gesture of apology, raised her skirt and revealed knickers saturated with blood. 'He'-tears squeezed between her swollen lids-'cut me.'
Three hours later, a sympathetic policewoman tried to persuade her to make a statement before she was transferred to the operating room for surgery to her rectum. 'Look, Mrs. Hale, we know your husband didn't do this. We've checked and he's currently serving eighteen months in Winchester for handling stolen property. We also know you're on the game, so the chances are that the animal responsible was one of your customers. Now, we're not interested in how you make your money. We're only interested in stopping this bastard doing the same thing to some other poor girl. Will you help us?''
She shook her head.
'But he could kill next time. Do you want that on your conscience? All we need is a description.'
A faint laugh croaked in her throat. 'Do me a favor, love.'
'You've got two factured cheekbones, severe bruising of the throat and larynx, a dislocated wrist, and internal bleeding from having a hairbrush rammed up your back passage,' said the policewoman brutally. 'You're lucky to be alive. The next woman he attacks may not be so lucky.'
'Too right. It'll be yours bloody truly if I open my mouth. He swore he'd come back.' She closed her eyes. 'The hospital shouldn't have called you. I never gave them leave, and I'm not pressing no charges.'
'Will you think about it at least?'
'No point. You'll never pin it on him and I'm not running scared for the rest of my life.'
'Why won't we pin it on him?'
She gave another croak of laughter. 'Because it'll be my word against his, love, and I'm a fat old slag and he's little Lord Fauntleroy.'
THURSDAY, 23RD JUNE, THE NIGHTINGALE CLINIC-3:30 A.M
As he did every night at about this time, the security guard emerged from the front door of the Nightingale Clinic and strolled towards a bench on the moonlit lawn. It was a little treat he gave himself halfway through his shift, a quiet smoke away from the nagging lectures of the nursing staff. He wiped the seat with a large handkerchief, then lowered himself with a sigh of contentment. As he fished his cigarettes from his jacket pocket he had the distinct impression that someone was behind him. Startled, he glanced round, then lumbered awkwardly to his feet and went to investigate the trees bordering the driveway. There was no one there, but he couldn't rid himself of a sense that he was being watched.
He was a phlegmatic man, and put the experience down to the cheese he'd eaten at supper. As his wife always said, too much cheese wasn't good for anyone. But he didn't linger over his smoke that night.
Jane Kingsley was floating in dark water, eyes open, straining for the sunlight that dappled the surface above her. She wanted to swim, but the desire was all in her mind and she was too weary to make it happen. A terrible hand was upon her, pulling her down to the weeds below-insistent, persuasive, compelling. She opened her mouth to let death in...
She burst out of sleep in a threshing frenzy, sweat pouring down her back.
With shaking fingers, she switched on her bedside light and looked on things she recognized-the door to the bathroom, television in the corner, mirror against the wall, armchair, flowers-but it was a long time before the thudding of her heart slowed. She slid slowly down between the sheets again, as rigid and wide-eyed as a painted wooden doll, and tried to stem the fear that grew inside her. But it was a vain attempt because she couldn't put a name to what she was afraid of.
Two miles away, in another hospital bed, her terror had its haunting echo in the battered face of a prostitute who had supped with the devil.
A Case of Caveat Investor?
If anyone needed a reminder that investmenis can go down as well as up, they received it yesterday when Franchise Holdings (FH), the property development group, suffered a temporary drop in the value of its shares, following a rumor that Adam Kingsley, 66, founder and chairman, was about to resign. FH has been a rare success story amidst the spectacular property group failures of the nineties.
The rumor was apparently generated by a remark made by Kingsley in a BBC interview on Tuesday night. Referring to his daughter, Jane's, recent car accident, he said: 'There are always times in one's life when one asks, has it all been worth it?' But Kingsley, nicknamed the Great White Shark when he snapped up Charford Gordon Associates eight years ago, has now sunk his jaws into the BBC.
It is his policy to make private tape recordings of interviews, and he has issued a typescript of the one on Tuesday. This includes a follow-up sentence which was edited out of the broadcast. 'This is not one of those times,' he went on to say. The matter is under investigation by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission.
However, the extraordinary episode has highlighted City fears about the long-term future of Franchise Holdings. As one analyst said: 'Adam Kingsley is a master juggler. No one knows how many balls there are in the air at any one time. Frankly, it's difficult to imagine who will catch them safely when he finally leaves the
