Chapter 2

Stella pulled Gina close and whispered in her ear. “Head for the door, and put the hangers on a rail as you go. Don’t look back. Just walk slowly and get out.”

“What’s going on?” Gina spun and her eyes fell on two women draped in black cloth.

Each had an arm raised in the air, a small black box grasped in their hands. Thumbs poised over a switch. They looked to each other and then grasped the cloth and uncovered their pregnant bellies.

Except they weren’t pregnant bellies.

Small blocks of silver tape were strapped to a vest that hung low over their abdomens. Wires protruded from them and slinked up their shoulders, out of sight.

“Is that…?”

“A suicide vest?” Stella whispered hoarsely.

Gina nodded, unable to tear her gaze away.

“Yes,” Stella confirmed and shook Gina until she was looking at her again as she dragged her closer to the door. “Now do what I said. Get out of here. When you get outside, call Kate—”

“Why? What are you going to do?”

“We don’t have time for this. Just do it. Call Kate and tell her to get—”

“For Allah!” A woman’s voice rang out above everything else in the shop, then a loud bang cut off the words.

Gina was forced to the ground.

Stella’s body was heavy on top of her, her hands thrown over her head.

Glass shattered, fragmented, splintered apart, and disappeared. She could hear people screaming through the ringing in her ears. Vaguely. Sort of.

Cloth and metal fell on them from what seemed like every direction.

She closed her eyes, only to realise they were already closed and she was merely scrunching them tighter. She didn’t want to see anything around her. Hearing it—or rather not hearing it—was terrifying enough.

Then everything was silent.

Except it wasn’t. She could hear everything—the cries of terror, the moans of pain, and the concussive roar of air being forced too quickly into spaces too small for it to fit made her ears throb. But everything she heard seemed far too far away for it to be real. It was like she was listening to a muted TV that was making the sounds in her head rather than her actually hearing them.

Stella’s lips were moving, but Gina couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was just movement she couldn’t make sense of.

Just like the smell that invaded her nostrils.

There was the metallic scent of iron pervading the air, almost strong enough to hide the other scents that Gina didn’t want to think about, yet couldn’t ignore. There was a rotten-egg aroma of something sulphurous that she could guess at, but she desperately wanted that guess to be wrong. The scent of explosives, residue, whatever the fuck it was that experts called it—she didn’t know and she didn’t care—filled her nose and hung heavy in the air. It had to be that. Nothing else made sense.

But above it all was an acrid, burning odour that clung to every molecule she sucked into her lungs and stuck to her tongue. She could taste it. It smelled like meat burnt on a BBQ. And the horror of that began to sink in. There was no BBQ. There was no meat. There was nothing cooking but human flesh. And Gina fought the urge to vomit, the vile burning of stomach acid inside her far more preferable to her palate than the tang of anything else around her.

For a moment—one blessed moment—everything around her went black and cold and silent. So silent that Gina wondered if she’d gone deaf. Every noise seemed to stop. All she could hear was her own heartbeat and her own laboured breath, and all she could taste was the fear and blood on her tongue. The thoughts in her head seemed so overly loud, as though she were screaming them rather than thinking. I’m so sorry, Kate.

She held her breath. I wish—

“Stay down,” Stella whispered into Gina’s ear, and the world rushed back in a cacophony of raucous screams, wails, and cracking glass. The resounding boom of falling bricks and debris seemed to echo for a split second and then disappear. It was the terrifying howl that brought Gina fully back to the present. The holler of a woman screaming, “My legs! Where are my legs? Oh my God. Oh my God! My legs!”

Gina tried to control her breathing, her voice, and her rising panic. Now was not a good time to have another panic attack. Now was not a good time to freeze. If she could hear Stella, she was still alive, and they would be fine. They had to be. “Stay down?” she whispered, and she could hear the confusion in her own voice.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know if that explosion was both of them or just one. If it wasn’t, and they think we’re all dead, then they might not detonate the second bomb.”

“Oh God.”

“Listen, we need to call for help, and we need information.”

“You don’t think someone will have already called the police?”

“I am the police, Gina. The more information I can get to the relevant people as fast as possible, the better it’s going to be for everyone.” Her words were slurred, and her hands were clumsy as they slowly moved across Gina’s body.

“Need your…phone. Mine’s in my bag, and I’m…not sure where…dropped it somewhere.”

“Back pocket of my jeans.”

“Right.” Stella moved her hands across her hip.

She shifted slowly to give Stella enough space to slip her hand behind her back and pull the phone from her pocket. Her abdominal muscles complained at trying to hold her weight up off the ground…and Stella’s. “Who are you going to call? Kate?”

“No. Detective Inspector Timmons.”

“Your boss?”

Stella nodded, and her eyelids fluttered.

Gina bit her lip. Something was wrong with Stella. Something was very wrong. “But I don’t have his number,” she whispered, hoping the words would somehow help Stella focus.

“S’okay…know it.” Stella placed the handset on Gina’s chest before freezing again. “Passcode?”

“2601.” Gina could hear the tiny chirp as Stella pressed the numbers and unlocked her phone.

Gina’s hearing was starting to return to something approaching normal. Or maybe she was just getting used to the incessant ringing and everything sounding like she was listening to it through water.

“DI Timmons, it’s Goodwin…Major incident…sir, Ann Summers, Ki-King’s Lynn. H-high Street…bomb. Multiple…multip casualties…”

Gina lifted her head and looked at something other than Stella for the first time. She wished she hadn’t.

Both of the women were gone.

As was everything she remembered of the shop.

Racks and rails of clothes were shredded. A glass display shelf beside the counter had shattered, and hundreds of chocolate penises littered the floor. Red ribbons tied the squeaky cellophane closed. Shards of plastic and twisted hunks of metal created a gory avant-garde sculpture park the likes of which would haunt her dreams for the rest of her life.

Screams drowned out whatever Stella was saying into the handset on her chest, and Gina tried not to think about the scene around her. Gina wanted to be at home. No, she wanted to be at Kate’s. She wanted to be with Kate. And Sammy and Merlin, Kate’s adopted border collie. Oh God, Sammy! What else was she going to put the child through? Gina wanted to be wrapping presents and hiding them before she got home from school. Even wading through the mountain of paperwork on her desk would be nice. She wanted to be anywhere but here, lying on the floor at Ann Summers, wishing she’d bought Kate’s gift online.

“Yes, sir…still in the shop. Haven’t heard anything more to suggest the other bomber is still—”

“She’s gone too,” Gina said quietly.

Stella looked at her, clearly trying to focus on Gina’s face. One pupil was blown. Gina didn’t know how Stella was still conscious. “You sure?” Her words were even more slurred.

Gina nodded, and Stella shifted off Gina’s body and flopped onto her back. The movement was clearly the last straw for Stella. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she dropped Gina’s phone.

Gina turned onto her side, and quickly grabbed the phone as she placed two fingers against Stella’s neck. Her pulse was strong and steady; at least that was a good sign.

“Hello? Goodwin? What the fuck’s going on?”

“Mr Timmons, this is Gina. Stella’s injured. She’s passed out. We need…” Gina looked around as she ran her spare hand over the back of Stella’s head.

Everywhere she looked there was carnage, destruction like she had never imagined before. The screams of the women had faded into the background, and Gina could no longer tell where one stopped for breath and another began, as they blended together in a macabre choir of agonised screeches. And Gina waited, expecting the panic to take over, expecting her body and mind to shut down. But it didn’t. The images—every vile, horror-inducing image—registered instead. Every fragment of it branded itself into her brain.

There was a woman slumped against a wall, perhaps fifteen feet away, trying to sit up. She lifted her legs to leverage their weight against that of her body, but the attempt failed. So she tried again. And failed. Again. Each failure caused her to slump further to the ground. But she continued to try.

Gina knew she’d fail. She was always going to fail because there simply wasn’t enough weight in her legs to leverage her body anymore. Instead of knees and calves, and feet, there were ragged wounds of muscle, sinew, and bone pumping blood into a pool around her. Each time she raised the stumps they squirted a river of red across broken glass and twisted hunks of metal. But with each attempt, the distance of the spray lessened significantly. Logic and far too many movies and TV shows told Gina that meant the poor woman was bleeding to death, and there was nothing she could do to help her. Nothing. But Gina’s mind simply couldn’t comprehend it. She couldn’t accept that something like this could happen in real life. It just…couldn’t.

Her hands shook, and she could feel the warm, sticky blood covering the back of Stella’s head, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from the scene before her. Blood decorated the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Tissue she couldn’t identify clung to the ceiling fan—what was left of it—and above it, a hole gaped wide like a massive mouth. Slowly the rain slipped inside and kissed her face.

The woman lay still, no longer trying to sit up. No longer moaning or crying or asking where her legs were. Her eyes were open as she slumped against what was left of the wall, staring up at the hole in the ceiling. Raindrops streaked rivers through the dirt, blood, and grime that covered her face. The tears of heaven washing away the woman’s pain.

“Hello? Gina?”

Timmons’s voice was rough. Anger? Frustration? She didn’t know. She couldn’t honestly say she cared, as she turned her head, only to be confronted by a woman’s hand half-buried by wrappers of condoms. A left hand with purple nail varnish and a ring on its finger. Diamonds and sapphires. An engagement ring. A beautiful engagement ring, on an elegant-looking hand. But there was no thumb. No wrist. And nothing at all beyond.

“What do you need?” Timmons growled.

“A miracle,” she whispered.

“How do you mean?”

“There were two of them, with bombs.” She moved on autopilot, barely registering that she’d slipped Stella into the recovery position as she spoke. “There are a lot of people here.”

“Dead?”

She couldn’t stop herself glancing at the woman with her missing legs. “Oh, yes.”

“Injured?”

“Many.”

“Are you hurt?”

Was she? Physically she didn’t think so. But her soul…that was a different story. “I’m okay.”

“Look after yourself, then. We’re on our way, Gina.”

Gina sat for a moment just listening. The sounds of people crying in pain. The crunch of more broken glass beneath someone’s shoes. Sirens in the distance. Ambulance? Police? Both? How many people had died? How many were dying? There were people around her now, dying, as she sat there doing nothing.

She was alive, she was breathing, and, most importantly, she wasn’t hurt. And she wasn’t panicking. Maybe that’ll kick in later. Maybe shock explains this numbness I feel right now. Can that happen? Does shock make you feel like you’re looking at everything through someone else’s eyes?

She flexed her hands in front of her face, watching as each finger moved stiffly but obeyed commands from the brain in charge of it. Which wasn’t her brain. She was fairly sure of that. But something was controlling her body as she slowly dragged herself to her hands and knees.

Cellophane crinkled beneath her palms, creating a sound she couldn’t stop herself from focusing on. The high-pitched, almost static-like sound normally grated on her nerves, but today it felt like she’d never heard it before. Even though she knew she had. She rubbed two bits of it together to hear it again. It sounded false, fake, plastic. That’s because it is plastic, moron, she told herself, but her brain still wasn’t cooperating. It still insisted that she was a passenger along for the ride and that the body was functioning just fine without her, thank you very much.

The sensation—that distant feeling—reminded her of a film she’d watched years ago, Being John Malkovich, where people went through this tiny door into a tunnel and then found themselves inside the brain or the consciousness of the actor John Malkovich. They saw what he saw, did what he did, felt what he felt, but at first they had no control. They were simply voyeurs in his life. She felt the same way. She saw what her eyes saw, felt the glass cut into her knees through the denim of her jeans, but she had no control over anything. None.

Was this a new manifestation of her panic attacks?

To her left, a woman whimpered. Gina saw her own hand move forward, felt her legs move beneath her as she crawled towards the sound. She wouldn’t give in to another panic attack. She couldn’t. No, she didn’t have to. She was stronger now. She was the one who could be in control. Just like the character John Cusack played. The puppeteer. Eventually he learned to control the body he inhabited. He learned to make John’s body do everything he wanted, and eventually he controlled the mind too. All she had to do was the same.

She tried to focus on her breathing. If she could control pulling air into her lungs, then it was a start. Gina closed her eyes and concentrated on that one thing. Drawing air into her lungs. She put a hand to her belly and envisioned herself making that hand move by simply breathing. Once, then twice, until she shook off her daze and felt as though she were in control of her body again.

The soft moan drew her attention out of her own self again, and she moved quickly to the woman’s side. Panic, shock, someone else in her head—whatever it was, it was done with now. She was in control and she was focused. Most importantly, she was focused on helping someone else.

The woman’s blond-white hair was streaked with blood and shards of glass. Her lipstick was smeared, and her white jumper was quickly turning a deep claret. Blood bubbled on her lips, and her eyes looked glassy.

Gina grabbed at the first bit of fabric she could reach and pressed it against the wound in the woman’s belly. “You’re going to be all right. The ambulance is bound to be on its way by now.”

The woman pushed at her hands.

“It’s okay. I’m trying to help you. I’m sorry if this hurts, but I need to try and stop the bleeding.”

“Too late,” the woman whispered. Her breath caused the bubbles on her lips to pop and spatter blood across her cheek. “Help someone else, girlie.” Her Irish accent was thick and lilted like a lullaby as she tried to shoo Gina away.

“Not a chance. I’m here and I’m helping you, so get used to the idea.” She smiled down at the woman and saw that she was considerably older than Gina had first thought. Crinkles at the corners of her eyes spoke of the years she’d seen and laughed her way through. Middle age was well behind her, and Gina would have placed her in her late sixties, maybe even a little older. “I’m Gina. What’s your name?”

“Pat.”

“Nice to meet you, Pat. Now, hold still while I take a quick look at this wound, okay?”

Pat nodded.

Gina lifted the bloodstained satin, then Pat’s jumper, before quickly pushing them all back in place. Blood gushed from the wound the moment she relieved the pressure. Bad. Very bad.

“How’s it look?” Pat asked.

“I’ve patched up worse cuts on my nine-year-old when she jumped out of a tree.”

Pat chuckled, then moaned. “You’re not a very good liar, Gina.”

Gina snorted. “Well then, it doesn’t look great. I definitely think you need to see a doctor. Probably wants a stitch, maybe even two. Better?”

“Don’t make me laugh. It hurts.”

“Sorry.” She smiled weakly. If help—of the trained medical variety—didn’t get there soon, then it would be too late for Pat. Maybe it was already.

“You said the ambulance was coming.”

Gina kept one hand pressed against Pat’s middle and held her hand with the other. “Yes. My friend called before she…before she passed out.” She glanced over at Stella, grateful and scared that she hadn’t moved.

“Your friend’s hurt?”

Gina nodded. “But she’s a police officer. She called in the cavalry before she…before she gave in.”

“Brave.” Pat closed her eyes and grimaced, clearly fighting the pain she was in.

“Hmm. Something like that.”

“You don’t agree?”

“Oh, I think they’re brave all right. I just worry.”

“She’s your friend. Of course you do.”

“Yeah.”

Pat opened her eyes and looked at Gina. It was a piercing look, a penetrating look, one that Gina knew was looking deep into her soul. “Oh. I see. Not just a friend.”

Gina frowned. “No, Stella is just a friend. But her work partner is also my partner.”

“Sounds like fun,” Pat said and then coughed. More blood slipped from her lips and dribbled down her chin.

“Try to keep still. I’m sure help will be here any moment.”

Pat nodded and closed her eyes again.

Gina wasn’t sure what to do, but she was pretty sure that her closing her eyes and going to sleep wasn’t a good idea. At least it always seemed not to be when they died in films and on the telly. “Stay awake, Pat. You need to stay with me. Tell me why you were in here today?”

“Probably same reason as you.”

“You wanted to buy sexy lingerie for your girlfriend? Go, Pat.”

Pat chuckled and moaned again. More blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. “In that case, not the same reason. I came for something for myself.”

“Oh.”

“Recently divorced. Usual old cliché, I suppose.”

“Never too late to discover one’s inner self, Pat.” She winked.

Pat coughed again, and more blood dribbled down her chin. “I hope not.” She squeezed Gina’s hand in hers and tugged her closer. “I let too much time go by. Wasted too much. I didn’t tell the people I loved that I loved them enough. I didn’t enjoy life enough.” Her voice faltered a moment, then returned with more strength than Gina thought she would have been capable of. “Where’s my bag?”

“I don’t know. What does it look like?”

“Brown leather, shoulder bag. Big.”

Gina saw one a few feet away and stretched to grasp a handle without lifting the pressure from Pat’s stomach. “This one?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

“Here you go.”

“My purse. There’s a picture.”

“You want me to get it out for you?”

Pat nodded.

Gina unzipped the large bag using her foot to keep tension and make it a little easier to open. The purse was on top, and the flap popped open easily. The picture under the plastic cover was of a very young Pat and a soldier. The picture was badly faded. The miniskirt she wore and the mod haircut spoke of the late sixties, maybe early seventies. She couldn’t be sure.

“Is this your husband?”

Pat shook her head. “No. He’s the man I should have married. My George.” She smiled and lay her head back down.

The wistful look on her face made Gina wonder about the pain she must have been in. It almost seemed like it had gone, as if whatever she was thinking about had taken it away from her.

“Why didn’t you?”

“My father. The great Paddy O’Shea.” She said his name with a sneer. Clearly not a great father-daughter relationship. “He wouldn’t let me marry an Englishman. And certainly not a soldier. Murdering bastards, that’s what he called ’em. Not his daughter, not over his dead body.” She coughed up more blood. “Not a good Catholic family like we were.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Aye. I had to marry another good Catholic boy, even if I didn’t love him and he didn’t love me.” Pat tapped the plastic. “But my George. He loved me. Wanted to run away with me, he said. Said he’d go AWOL and everything to get me away from Ireland and the troubles.”

“You refused?”

Pat nodded. “Couldn’t. Didn’t want to ruin his life.” She laughed a bitter-sounding laugh. The movement caused her to cough up more blood.

“Please be careful, Pat. You need to keep still. Where the bloody hell is that ambulance? It must be coming by now.”

Pat waved her hand in the air. “Too late for that now, Gina. Too late.” She sucked in a gurgled breath.

Gina could feel tears wetting her own cheeks.

“Now, now. Enough of that, girlie.” She smiled. “It’s okay.”

“No, it isn’t, Pat.”

“It is what it is, child. Life’s funny like that.” She tapped the picture again. “His name’s George Boyne.”

“That’s unusual.”

“There’s a letter in there for him. I always said I’d find him and give it to him.”

“Then you should definitely do that, Pat.”

Pat closed her eyes again. “No time.” She squeezed Gina’s hand. “Find him for me. Find him and give him the letter.”

“No.” Gina shook her head. “You can do that, Pat. Just as soon as the ambulance gets here, we’ll get you better, and then you can go find your George.”

Pat shook her head again. “Find him for me.” She wheezed, the Irish lilt shifting from lullaby soft to gutter harsh as she begged. “Please.” Her grasp relaxed. “He deserves to know the truth.” The strength in her arm faltered completely and fell from Gina’s wrist. “About everything.”

“Pat? What do you mean?” Gina grabbed at her hand again and shook her arm. “Pat?” She dropped her hand and slapped at her cheeks gently, trying to wake her. “Pat? Come on, now. Wake up and tell me more about this dishy soldier of yours.”

Pat didn’t move.

Gina lifted the cloth from her stomach, and the blood oozed slowly. No more gushing. No more pumping. The tension was gone from Pat’s body, and Gina realised for the first time that she was kneeling in a pool of the other woman’s blood.

Gina didn’t know how long she’d been there but she had no intention of moving. She wouldn’t leave Pat—she simply couldn’t. She’d seemed so lonely that Gina couldn’t bring herself to leave her all alone.

Instead, she stared at the picture of Pat and her soldier. How many years had she carried it with her? In her purse? Where a woman would normally keep a picture of her husband, her children…grandchildren even. Instead she’d carried his picture. Just since her divorce? Or longer? How many years had she dreamed of finding him again? Was it even something she could do? Did she want to? Was it something she should do?

Gina looked at Pat, her face relaxed in death as the pain of her injury was taken from her. Only the blood that marred her skin belied the fiction of a peaceful slumber. That and the pool of blood that surrounded them both, soaking into Gina’s clothes.

Whoever she’d been in life, Pat hadn’t deserved to die like this—terrified, in pain, and, for the most part, alone. From just the few moments they’d spent together, it had been so obvious that Pat had a wicked sense of humour and an adventurous spirit. She must have done, to be here in a sex shop at sixty or seventy or whatever.

She didn’t deserve to die like this.

No one did.