against the corner of the fence.
That was what she’d seen. It must have been. She was getting so desperate she was imagining things.
Damn. She stared at it with hopeless eyes. She was so weary she was almost asleep on her feet. She hadn’t been able to sleep here. She was so confused.
She was useless.
In the yard next to Max’s store, Mariette Hardy carried her second load of washing out into her backyard and started pegging it out. There’d been so much going on today she was running way behind. Her second son had some sort of tummy bug-he’d been ill now for two days, and she was starting to worry. On top of that there’d been the shooting next door. So upsetting.
But the washing had to be done. She’d changed Donny’s sheets twice today already. If she hadn’t known Alistair was busy she’d have taken him in to see him. But she’d give Donny another night before she called for medical help, she thought. If she had enough sheets.
She started pegging and then she faltered. There was too much room on the line.
There was a sheet missing.
Where was it?
It was windy. Hadn’t she pegged it hard enough?
She put her nose over the fence into the backyard of Max’s shop. Sometimes her washing ended up there.
Nothing. All she could see was a pool of blood where Amal’s body had lain.
She winced. Ugh.
Maybe it’d blown over and they’d used it, she thought, and good luck to them if they had. A sheet wasn’t a great price to pay for a man’s life. It might have helped keep the poor man alive.
She shrugged. She wouldn’t enquire, she decided. The police had enough on their minds without worrying about one sheet, and she had enough on her mind worrying about Donny.
Mariette went back to her laundry.
Up in the hills behind the town Noa cradled her son and she wept. She’d rewrapped his wound as best she could, in torn pieces of the clean sheet, but she didn’t have the knowledge to do more. He was feverish.
His father would know what to do.
Amal.
His father was dying. Maybe he was already dead.
No. She refused to believe it. The girl-the woman with the bright red hair-what had she said?
‘We’re doctors. We’re trying to help you.’
She’d hardly been able to see them. She’d kept back-Amal hadn’t known that she’d followed, but she’d been so fearful. So fearful.
Could she believe it?
No. She could believe no one. Trust no one. Not any more.
And Amal was no longer capable of helping. There was only Noa between her son and death. Amal had done what he must and now it was her turn.
She ran her fingers through her little son’s soft curls, and with her other hand she cradled her last hope.
The cold, grim comfort of a small and ugly pistol.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SHE might be feeling useless and exhausted, but Sarah had no wish to go home. After staring at Mariette’s washing, acting on impulse, Sarah called into Max’s store.
She found him distraught. ‘If he needed the stuff so badly I would have given it to him,’ he told her, and she believed him.
And here at least she could be useful. In Sarah Max found someone he could use to debrief. She spent almost an hour with him, and by the end of it, as well as carrying home an armload of ingredients for a decent dinner, she also carried away information about Howard’s shopping habits. What he’d told her cemented her impressions. Howard was in this up to his neck.
Howard might well know who these people were. He had their passports prepared and waiting. Maybe he knew their backgrounds.
Back at the hospital, she went to search for Larry. The team were starting out at dawn to begin their sweeping search of the area, and they’d taken over the pub as accommodation, but they were using the hospital meeting room as a base.
She found Larry with Alistair. She walked in and one glance told her that Alistair was feeling as uncomfortable as she was. The atmosphere between them was dreadful-what he’d said was rolling over and over in her mind, making her sick at heart. Comparing her to Barry…
‘I’m sorry. Am…am I interrupting?’
‘No.’ They’d been sitting at the big meeting room table, used for an assortment of community health meetings, but as soon as he saw her Alistair was on his feet. ‘I was just going.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘I have work to do.’
Right. Of course. His leaving should make her feel better.
It didn’t.
Somehow, with him gone, she gave a stiff, faltering account of what she’d learned, and if Larry, who had worked with her often before, found her demeanour strange he obviously put it down to the events of the afternoon. They’d been enough to shake anyone. Sarah’s work was usually in the aftermath of crime. Not in the forefront.
‘You think this is part of some systematic scheme?’ Larry demanded, and Sarah nodded.
‘The place is set up out there to receive people, and it looks like it’s been done professionally. There was equipment for taking passport photographs. There were clothes. There were blank passport books.’
‘It makes more and more sense,’ Larry said grimly. ‘We’ve been looking at people-smuggling for a while. We’ve come across a few people who’ve used black market means to get here. They’ve all paid an absolute fortune to get here and then been dumped in the cities with nothing. All of them say they were brought initially to some remote farm that none could describe. And the worst thing is that nearly all of them are genuine refugees. They’ve taken the black market option because of panic. They had reason to panic, but if they’d been pointed to the correct authorities they would have been helped without payment. Someone’s making a fortune out of their desperation.’
He rose, purpose in his face. Sarah knew this man well. Larry was a big man, with a ruthless exterior, but inside he was as soft as putty. Sarah had seen him deal with the worst type of criminals and she knew he didn’t hold back. But when he needed to be gentle…there was a core of humanity in the man that made his pursuit of the criminal element take on a dimension not often seen in a man in such a position.
‘I need to talk to your Howard,’ he told her, and Sarah nodded.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘I’ll ask Alistair. He’s the charge doctor. It’d look better on the reports.’
She nodded.
‘Are you getting on okay with Dr Benn?’ Larry asked-almost casually. But Sarah wasn’t fooled. Larry asked nothing casually.
‘We go back a bit,’ she told him. ‘There was a relationship.’
‘Right.’ Larry’s expression cleared. He’d noticed and he’d needed an explanation. He had one now that satisfied him and he’d take it no further.
‘Can you work with the man?’
‘I already have. It’s fine. Just don’t expect us to like each other.’
‘I won’t do that.’ Larry’s eyebrows rose. Well, well, his expression said. Dr Rose with a love-life?
