the consultant, the dressing removed without ceremony, then the sutures, and he’d been left with the nurse who showed him how to bathe the eye; the water comforting, trickling over his cheek where she dabbed at the wound. Then they’d left him alone. He rebathed the eye. Waited; tried again. On the third try the lid parted, and he felt the stickiness of his eyelashes unmeshing. When he opened the eye he saw a strange darkness full of hints of colour – purple, and shifting green, and from the left a definite sense of sunlight. His heart raced. With both eyes closed he listened to the sounds in the hospital. In the corridor a pail was shifted by foot, the water slopping inside. He opened just the injured eye again and saw less. The light was still there, but the colours had faded. The third time there were no colours, just the light. He thought it was the window but when he stood, turning his head, the light stayed on the left side.
He crossed to the hand basin in the consulting room, gripped it and looked into the mirror above. The scarred skin was healing fast, and the red stain which had seemed so raw and angry was now dry, the dead skin peeling away. And the left eye was still tap‐water blue, but the right was bled of colour, dappled like a moon rising in the evening when the sun is still up.
‘A moon eye,’ he whispered to himself.
The chemical had attacked the cells of the iris, burning away the tendrils of the optic nerve. He’d be blind in the eye for life. The consultant thought there was little hope he’d get any sight back.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee
He breathed deeply. Until then it hadn’t been a bad day. First thing he’d briefed DCI Warren. Holt had been charged with the murder of Harvey Ellis shortly after his arrest. They’d separately interviewed his wife and daughter and built up a clear picture of the campaign of terror waged by the loan shark Joe. Holt had been pushed to the edge, and over. Sly would face the lesser charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Izzy Dereham was still being questioned but would certainly face a charge, with Sly and Holt, of attempted kidnapping and false imprisonment.
Holt had refused to talk, but Sly’s testimony – and the little Izzy Dereham had been able to tell them – confirmed the picture they had built up of the killing. When Sly had arrived on the scene that night Holt was trying to get Ellis’s body into the pick‐up. Holt had been in a state of panic, his chest was hurting, his vision blurred, his coat caked in blood. Sly got the truth out of him, holding the shaking man by the shoulders.
They’d sat in the cab of the pick‐up, Holt and Ellis, arguing it through. Ellis had said he wanted more for his family than some pathetic trip to see a bird of prey. That’s when he’d switched on the toy: ranting, demanding more money: £10,000, £20,000, just more. Holt had said no, so Ellis had got out, saying he’d walk back, warn Sarah Baker‐Sibley. Holt had snapped: confronted with this weak man, who even if he did lose his son to cancer still had a family to go home to, another son and another daughter. And what – Holt had asked Sly – had he got to go home to? The loan shark’s warning had been stark. Pay up, or someone was going to get hurt. He’d never shake them off, with their knives, the threats, haunting their lives. And there was no way out, no money saved, or to be earned. His life would be a nightmare until he died. But that didn’t make him kill. What made him kill was that Sasha’s life would be a nightmare too.
The toolbox had been on the seat, so Holt had taken the chisel and gone after him. He’d caught him, swung him round so that he lost his footing, put him down on his knees, in free fall, sobbing, pleading. If they got caught, cried Ellis, he’d go to jail, and even a short sentence was the rest of his son’s life.
It was the selfishness of that single thought which unleashed the violence: that this pathetic excuse for a man would throw away everything just because he might be in prison when his son died. And so Holt