I passed the next five or six hours in a kind of trance, a dream state. I know that certain things happened but I didn’t then and don’t now have any sort of connection to them. Eight years before I’d thought that I could forget Carolyn Oliver. I’d thought I could change my way of working, that the fact that I’d never send another child back to a life of horror was enough to compensate for the fact that I’d sent her back to one. I’d learnt from her pain but let her go on feeling it. And she’d come back to make me pay. Now I’d killed the girl, but even after she was dead I was still paying.
I called the ambulance. While we waited I tore off my shirt and pressed it into Sharon’s stomach. Before the ambulance came Sharon drifted into unconsciousness. I screamed for a policeman and when one came I told him to wait downstairs to bring the medics right up. Make sure the way is clear, I told him. When the ambulance came, minutes that never ended, it drove us to the Royal London. I spoke to Sharon all the way, calling her name, squeezing her hand. She didn’t regain consciousness.
Sharon was rushed through Casualty and I felt helpless, cut off as I waited for news of her. As a gunshot victim myself I was a priority and got checked out quickly. There wasn’t much to see, just a long red streak along my ribs like a cigarette burn. Once I’d had it dressed and my cheek was bandaged, I drank some coffee from a machine. I sat, gripping hold of the seat of my moulded plastic chair, not thinking about anything. I suppose I was preparing myself. I kept seeing Sharon’s brave, determined face, as she tried to get over the railings. Maybe it would have been better. She might have escaped with a pair of broken legs or something. I felt the burn of the bullet and wished that it had taken a firmer hold on me.
A nurse came and told me that Sharon was being operated on. I remember the nurse’s face, that’s one thing I can see clearly. She was in her thirties, an attractive girl with the beginnings of good, solid lines around her eyes. What I remember about her, though, was that her face was doing its best to keep any sort of hope out of it. She didn’t want me to take any false measure of comfort from her, comfort that was probably only going to make me feel worse later on. She said she’d let me know how the operation went, as soon as there was news.
‘Is there someone you could call? To come and be with you?’
‘Her,’ I said. ‘Just her.’
At about two a.m. a doctor came out to see me. He was a little older than the nurse, a Sikh with small, tired eyes and a mouth that turned down at the corners. He told me that the operation to remove the bullet from Sharon’s side had gone well. The bullet itself had caused damage to Sharon’s kidneys and ruptured other internal organs but hadn’t hit the foetus she was carrying. That was as far as the good news went. Sharon had lost a lot of blood internally and he had had trouble stemming the flow. Right now she was stable but, he said, I had to prepare myself. It was almost a certainty that Sharon would lose her baby. The odds that Sharon herself would survive were better, but they weren’t great. I nodded. I found some spittle with which to speak and I asked if I could see her.
‘Yes,’ the doctor said. ‘I think you should.’
Sharon had been taken from the theatre and wheeled to a room next door to it. I went in and sat on a chair by her bed and obeyed the doctor’s injunction about touching Sharon. I did, however, speak to her, though whether she heard me or not I didn’t know. She was still unconscious, her face so white and still that it looked saintly, though I didn’t want to think of that. I thought instead of her, Sharon, willing to give her life for a baby. I felt again my arms as I caught her and wished that I could catch her again now, stop her from falling to a place I’d never be able to reach down into. I couldn’t use my arms, so I used my voice instead. I begged her not to die, not to leave me.
‘Come back to me,’ I said. ‘Please. Please. Both of you. I love you both. Hello, you. Don’t die. Just don’t die, my loves.’
The same nurse came and smiled, to tell me that I’d better leave. She asked for my phone number so that she could call me but I didn’t give it to her because I wasn’t going anywhere. She argued with me, asked what medical qualifications I had that could help Sharon, but I didn’t listen.
‘If she wakes up, fetch me,’ I said. ‘Please. Even if you think she’s not going to make it. Especially if you think that. She’s got special eyes and I want to see them again. Our child, she’ll have them, if she lives. Please come and get me straight away.’
‘There’s a room, for relatives, if you need some sleep.’
‘I’ll be in the waiting room,’ I said. ‘Where you found me before.’
I drank more coffee and, obeying a slightly sick-making but all-consuming hunger, I ate two bars of chocolate from another machine. An hour or so later I felt the seating I was perched on move. I was sitting with my head in my hands, endlessly going over what had happened. I looked up, to see Mike taking the seat next to me. His face was calm. When I’d climbed into the back of the ambulance I’d looked to the river where the policemen had run, but I hadn’t been able to see anything.
‘How is she?’ Mike asked. I shrugged. ‘Do they think she’ll be OK?’
‘They don’t know. They’re not being too upbeat.’
‘She was amazing, Billy.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ll never forget what I heard her say. About me. What she was willing to do.’ I didn’t say anything. Mike stood up from the seating. ‘Can you spare five minutes?’ he asked. ‘Just five minutes. It’s OK, I’ve already told the nurse where we’re going. She’ll fetch you if, if anything happens. Please come with me.’
I stood up from the chair and Mike led me across the hospital foyer. We didn’t leave the building, though, instead walking down a corridor. Soon we were faced with a pair of double doors, a keypad mounted on the left-hand side. Mike entered a four-number sequence and pushed the doors open. I was numb. A nurse said hello like she knew Mike and when she walked forward we followed her. After less than a minute we were standing outside a small room with a large glass window to look through. I thought we’d have to wait outside but the nurse led us in. Then she left us together by the incubator.
‘There,’ Mike said.
I felt his hand on my shoulder as I looked down at the tiny form lying inside the machine, wires and tubes snaking in and out of her.
‘You saved her,’ Mike said. ‘You saved her.’
I don’t think I took my eyes off the small creature beneath me while Mike told me about those last seconds on the riverside. I hadn’t been able to think about them in the ambulance, or while waiting for Sharon. I knew someone would tell me what happened eventually. As it was, I barely listened. I knew what had happened. I could see.
‘He just put her down,’ Mike told me. ‘I ran round the corner and I was on him before he even knew. But I didn’t know what to do. If I jumped on him maybe he’d drop her and that would kill her but if I didn’t he could just do what that girl had said, throw her in the river. I couldn’t decide.’
‘So?’
‘He made the decision for me,’ Mike said. ‘He was screaming into his phone but he wasn’t getting a reply. When I came at him I slowed, but he moved. So I just took him out. I went into his legs and we both went over. He got up and tried to run. He still had hold of her, of her. He couldn’t run fast, though, and I caught up with him, but not before he’d got to the top of some stairs leading down to the water. He had the bundle in his arms and, you know what, I still hadn’t seen her. My daughter. I knew it was a she because of what the girl said on the phone, but she was just blankets. She was screaming. It was the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. I felt amazing, but I was terrified too. He was holding her over the water, telling me to get back. There was nothing I could do. I was just thinking: will I be able to save her if I dive in? It was dark, would I even be able to see her? But I didn’t have to worry.’
‘What happened?’
‘I could hear running behind me. Feet, in the square. Then banging. He could hear it too. I think he knew it was over then. His eyes found mine and we looked at each other and I didn’t have to say anything. I just kind of relaxed, my whole body sort of slumped in on itself. And then he moved back from the edge. He just put her down on the pavement, so gently that she stopped crying. Then he ran, he ran away. And I picked her up.’
‘Did they catch him?’
‘I don’t know. And I don’t care, Billy. You saved her.’
‘I think you did that.’
‘No. If you’d gone to the police it would have ended differently. They’d have stormed the house and he’d have thrown the baby in the river. She’d have told him to and he would have. She obviously had a real hold on him. When it was broken, when she wasn’t speaking to him, he seemed to change. When he put the baby down, he looked scared. Amazed. So, Billy, I want to thank you.’
‘It’s OK, Mike.’
‘And I’ll be praying for Sharon. I still can’t believe what she did. In the meantime.’
‘Yes.’
‘Billy, say hello to your goddaughter.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Why? Why not?’
‘I don’t know her name.’
‘It’s Sophia,’ Mike said. ‘It’s Sophia Alessandra.’
The night went on and towards dawn another man sat next to me. It was Ken Clay. He too put a hand on my shoulder and after asking me if I was OK he told me what I’d already figured out. He hadn’t bothered with a tail the whole way through, figuring that as a former policeman I’d spot it. But he had bugged my office. I asked him when and he told me straight away, as soon as Ally was killed. My flat and my car too. I kicked myself. Whoever had done my office had left the blinds open and I’d noticed, without taking it in. So Clay knew where I was going and had given me ten minutes’ start so that I wouldn’t see his team. When he saw me breaking into the house he’d decided not to go in mobhanded, that I was the person to deal with whatever it was that was going on inside.
‘After all, Billy, don’t forget I trained you.’
Clay had seen Mike sprinting across the square, but figured he’d simply spotted the police and was legging it out of there. It was only when he saw Sharon about to go over the balcony that he’d ordered the team in. He also said he hoped Sharon made it and then, as he stood, he smiled.
‘The bugging tape from your office.’
‘What about it?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s mysteriously vanished.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes.’ Clay sighed. ‘Don’t know how it could have happened. It would perhaps have proved that two civilians were in possession of an illegal handgun. As it is, we’re assuming that Carolyn Oliver was the gun’s owner, that she brought it to the house. That would be right wouldn’t it?’
I nodded.
‘And the fall she took, over the balcony. We’re pretty sure she jumped in an effort to evade the police. No one helped her over. I’m right there too, aren’t I? I thought so. So you’ve nothing to worry about.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘nothing at all.’