The Sixth Soul (32 page)

‘Sorry to disturb you, David—’

‘What’s happening, Carol?’

‘Parker and Willis have been all over Dwyer’s place. It’s a gold mine of evidence. The babies in the basement. Dwyer’s printed off everything from the Capaneusian Bible,
both Old Testament and New. He even kept a handwritten diary, detailing the how, when and why in each of the killings.’

Rosen nodded. ‘The babies?’

‘They’ll be returned to their families within the next twenty-four hours. Victim Liaison have been to see all the families. They know Dwyer’s dead.’

‘How were they, the families?’

‘Dignified.’

Rosen looked through the glass at Sarah. When his gaze returned to Bellwood, he recognized that she was troubled by whatever she was about to tell him.

‘Carol, what is it?’

‘Harrison, he’s been in to see Baxter. He’s admitted everything.’

Rosen’s scalp tightened and his skin crawled.

‘Go on, Carol.’

‘Flint suckered him into believing he was a PSU officer. Harrison intercepted a message from Sarah on your phone. Flint set up you and Sarah with that bogus appointment at St
Thomas’s.’

Rosen considered the chain of events.

‘But he saw a picture of Flint at the team meeting before that appointment.’

‘I remember; he looked pig sick when the meeting finished,’ said Bellwood.

‘He didn’t say anything. Why?’

‘He can’t explain why, apparently.’

‘Where is Harrison?’

‘He’s in custody, being questioned.’

Silence. Bellwood looked tired but agitated and Rosen knew exactly where she was coming from.

‘Carol, you’d better get back to Dwyer’s place.’

‘We are up the wall, there’s that much evidence to gather.’

‘Thank you, Carol. This can’t have been easy for you. Keep me posted.’

Bellwood looked past him. Her expression changed, its solemnity lifting.

‘I think you’d better go back inside, David.’

Rosen followed Bellwood’s eyes.

Sarah was stirring. Her head turned on the pillow.

Rosen went in and closed the door after himself.

‘It’s all right, love,’ he said. ‘I’m back now.’

A
fter seeming to take an age to wake, Sarah opened her eyes.

In the dawn, her side room was lit by a downturned anglepoise lamp.

‘I’m thirsty,’ she said. He helped her to sit up and raised a cup of water to her lips, his eyes still stinging.

She looked lost, and he wondered how much she remembered and what she knew.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘You saved my life,’ he said.

She was quiet for a moment as a shadow crossed her face. ‘Did he—?’

‘He attacked you with a spoke.’

‘But I stuck it through his face . . .’ She was drifting back into sleep.

‘It seems he took it out and bit down on it, bending it with his teeth. But because the shaft was bent, when he turned the spoke on you, he kept missing his aim. The tip was buckled too,
so the incisions he made were superficial. You know what you gave him, love?’

‘What did I give him?’

‘You gave him a bloody good hiding.’

She smiled. ‘Yes, I did . . . But—’

‘The baby? He didn’t pierce your womb, Sarah. He went for it but he didn’t make it. The scan came back as all clear.’

He held her hand, feeling her fingers squeeze his.

‘Tell me everything,’ she said.

‘Try to sleep, we’ll speak in the morning. You’re here, the baby’s safe. That is everything.’

For several minutes, she appeared to be falling asleep again but, just as he thought she was dropping off, she opened her eyes and focussed on him.

‘What did he stick in my foot?’ she asked.

‘Sarah, sleep . . .’

‘David, talk . . .’

‘Pentothal. Fast-acting, short-term.’

‘Lucky for you,’ she said. ‘I woke up with a gun just here.’ She pointed at her temple. ‘On the floor. I saw your face and his through the smoke. Because he had a
lighted match in his hand. I smelled the fuel. I knew what he was going to do. He was going to set you on fire. I picked up the gun, aimed it at his head and pulled the trigger.’

‘What if you’d missed?’

‘What if I’d done nothing?’

‘I’d rather that you shot me than let that bastard burn me alive’

‘I know. That’s why I did it.’

Her eyes closed and within moments her breathing had slowed and deepened until she was asleep. He watched her face in the second-hand light of the anglepoise lamp that was turned to the wall,
and saw in it the imprint of Hannah’s, whom he’d watched sleep hundreds of times. It was the face he’d seen when he went to check on her in the dead of night, the face he’d
seen when he’d found her in that final endless sleep.

Unlike his wife, in all the years that had passed since the death of their daughter, Rosen had never dreamed of the event, never seen nor heard her in his sleeping hours. Through good times and
bad, and the acres in between, he could never recall encountering his lost child even though, if only in his dreams, he yearned to do the one thing that had been snatched from him in the real,
cold, conscious world.

For years, he had longed to say a loving goodbye and hold Hannah before letting her go for that final time.

The light in the room was warm and the shadows were seductive.

Rosen sat at his wife’s bedside, wide awake and wishing he could sleep, and to be with his daughter just one more time.

A
fter seven days and nights, Rosen took Sarah home on an afternoon that promised a dramatic change from the overcast skies and rain that had
dominated southern England for weeks.

In the kitchen, he marvelled as she filled the kettle, drinking in the beauty of the everyday, the joy of the ordinary.

Sarah winced as she reached up into a cupboard for teabags, and he said, ‘Here, let me.’

‘Sit down!’ she said. ‘No fussing in my kitchen.’ She got on with the business of making two cups of tea.

The main window behind her gave a broad view of the sky. A weather system was moving in from the west and snow was predicted. When he’d heard the news that morning, Rosen had translated it
into the fun he could have with his child five years hence, three even, two . . .

The kettle switched itself off with a gentle snap, a small noise amplified by the calm and quiet around them.

‘Did you see that?’ asked Sarah. ‘This late in the year, this unexpected . . . Come to the window, David.’

A bank of white clouds made the sky seem, in contrast, a dense blue. The cold wind flung a cluster of dead leaves at the kitchen window, scraping it with dry fingers. An image, a recent memory
of the window of Sebastian Flint’s room at St Mark’s, invaded Rosen’s mind. He recalled the priest’s words, the sound of his voice.
‘It’s an upside-down and
back-to-front world.’

For a moment, he pictured Flint standing on the other side of the kitchen window, looking in, staring at him, impassive, deadly. He dismissed the image. He knew Flint was out there somewhere,
casting his shadow on anyone who came close. For the time being at least, Rosen sensed that Flint was done with him. But, at the bottom of his being, he feared that, one day, the priest would be
irresistibly drawn back by the darkness that drove him.

He vowed never to speak of this to another living person.

At the window, he made a futile wish: never to have to leave Sarah’s side, or even the house. If only the world outside would just roll on without him, forgetting he’d ever been in
it. One day, he knew, at least some of his wishes would finally be granted.

She pointed at the kitchen window. The first snow was spiralling down from the clouds but not yet reaching the ground, a chaotic symphony of thick ragged snowflakes.

As he moved behind her, she took both his hands and placed them on her middle. He waited and felt the pressure of their baby kicking in her womb.

‘Can you feel him?’ she asked.

‘I can,’ Rosen said. ‘I can feel him.’

The baby kicked and kicked again.

Rosen kept his hands in place and waited for their son to kick once more. Within a matter of moments, he felt the life within her stir again.

He closed his eyes to see Hannah looking up at him, their eyes locked, father and daughter. He kissed her face and whispered in her ear, a quiet blessing to the past and the love that was. Then
she was gone.

‘What was that?’ asked Sarah.

‘I just said,
Goodbye, Hannah
.’

The baby kicked and the tremor of life ran deep within his wife once more. Sarah’s hand folded across his and, as hope danced on his fingertips, he blessed the child within her and the
love that was yet to be.

I
’d like to thank Steve Melia, former police Inspector, Rao Vallabhaneni, consultant vascular surgeon, Veronica Stallwood, Peter, Rosie &
Jessica Buckman, Sara O’Keeffe and Linda & Eleanor Roberts.