Out of the Dark Read Free Page A

right then. And don’t worry too much about the child. He was still alive when they put him in the ambulance.’
    ‘Oh, God!’
    Trish was still conscious of her own lack of clothes and the clumsy great boots, but the need to get her protégée into someone else’s hands was too urgent to waste time dressing. The T-shirt and coat would have to do. And she could probably drive such a short distance in the ridiculous boots. She helped the driver fetch her handbag from the car and lock the doors before they set off towards the car park that preserved Trish’s soft-top Audi from the attentions of the local car thieves and graffiti artists.
    She kept thinking about them as she urged the woman on towards the car park. It could have been no more than a reaction to the police officer’s prejudice about her neighbourhood, but for the first time Trish felt uncomfortably aware of loitering figures at each road junction. Some were black, some white, but they were all youngish men. Most of them looked either shifty or aggressive. She kept her eyes down and walked as quickly as her boots and companion would let her.
    Later, driving to the hospital, she thought the grim streets had never looked more desolate; high, flat-fronted buildings with blank windows made them seem like chasms. Under one of the railway bridges, splattered with pigeon shit and strewn with rubbish, she saw the sad lumps of two rough sleepers. They were guarded by a scrawny mongrel, whose eyes flashed as the headlights hit home.
    By the time she was helping the driver through the puddles towards the Accident and Emergency entrance to the hospital, Trish could feel a huge blister on her right heel. She delivered her burden to the receptionist, who took the few details the driver could provide, including
her name: Sarah Middlewich. The receptionist told her she’d be seen by the triage nurse as soon as possible. Trish couldn’t stop herself asking for news of the boy.
    ‘Are you a relative?’
    Trish explained.
    ‘Well, I can’t tell you anything, but if you’d just wait there, next to your friend, I’ll find someone who can.’
    Sarah Middlewich clutched Trish’s arm as she sat down, gasping that she’d left her mobile in her car.
    ‘That’s OK. You’re not allowed to use them in hospitals anyway. There are payphones over there. Have you got any change?’
    Tears poured out of the woman’s eyes again. ‘I need to ring Charles. He’ll be worrying.’
    ‘Your husband?’
    ‘Yes. Look at the time. He’ll be so worried.’
    She looked so out of it that Trish tried to be gentle as she pointed to the bank of public phones about six feet away. When Sarah reached them, Trish let herself slump back in her chair, shutting her eyes.
    ‘This is the lady who was asking about the boy,’ said the receptionist, making Trish pay attention. There was yet another angry-looking police officer in front of her.
    ‘I’m Constable Hill,’ he said. ‘And you are?’
    ‘Trish Maguire.’
    His eyes sparkled and his unsmiling lips stretched into a tight band across his teeth. She couldn’t imagine what he was thinking to make him look so accusing, or why he was peering so beadily into her face. She leaned back. ‘I think you’d better come along with me,’ he told her.
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Just come. You wanted to know about the boy. I’ll show you.’
    Feeling as though she might be about to wake up in her chair with her mind buzzing after a nightmare, Trish accompanied Constable Hill to a large, dimly lit room full
of machines, people in pale-blue scrubs, and an atmosphere of pumping excitement.
    Between the blue backs, Trish saw the boy lying flat. His head was taped down and tubes sprouted from various parts of his body.
    ‘Get her out of here,’ said a tall man with a stethoscope around his neck.
    ‘This is Trish Maguire,’ said her policeman with an extraordinary mixture of satisfaction and portentousness in his voice.
    They all stopped what they were doing