down. She saw, very clearly even in the darkness of the unlit kitchen, that Gemma’s throat had been cut.
Chapter 45
‘We need to find him. We need to find that bastard, and we need to find him now.’
Helena was pacing up and down the hospital corridor, her face contorted with anger and frustration, streaks of Gemma O’Connor’s blood on her jacket, a dark smear on her cheek. From his seat on one of the hard plastic chairs lined up along the wall, Devon watched her, his own fury growing, but a fury directed only at himself. He’d had Danny O’Connor within his grasp, had sat and drank tea with him, for Christ’s sake. And he’d let him go. He’d let him go, and so this was his fault. What had happened to Gemma O’Connor was all down to him. He sank his head into his hands, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to obliterate the memory of the slumped body on the kitchen floor, the vivid gash across her throat, the blood … so much blood …
And yet, by some miracle, Gemma wasn’t dead. She had looked dead, so very, very dead, but when a white-faced Helena had bent to take her pulse, to check for any signs of life, she’d crouched there for several moments before suddenly whipping around and screaming at Devon.
‘She’s breathing! She’s still breathing! Ambulance, quick! Quick!’
As he’d dialled the number with shaking hands, Helena had looked frantically around the room, grabbed a tea-towel from a hook on the wall and pressed it to Gemma’s throat. That had been two hours ago. The doctor who’d come out to see them as Gemma was being rushed into theatre had muttered something about her being lucky; her neck had been slashed low down, across the thyroid, but the knife had missed the main veins and arteries.
‘Thyroid bleeds like hell, but if you have to have your throat cut, well … he didn’t get the carotids or jugulars, or her windpipe. You must have arrived within minutes of it happening. She’d have died if she’d been left to bleed out much longer. We’re about to operate, and she’s a very ill lady, but we think she’ll get through this. Lucky, as I said.’
Lucky? Devon shook his head. Gemma O’Connor was probably the unluckiest woman he’d ever met. She’d married a man who had used her, tried to frame her for his own murder. Married a man who might well turn out to be one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers, if the fears they now had turned out to be real. And – and they had no proof of this yet, he thought, but who else would have done it? – a man who had, for whatever reason, taken time out from being on the run to call in on his wife and slit her throat.
Please, Gemma, please live, he urged silently. For yourself, so you can get over this and live the life you deserve. But for us too. We need you. We need you to help us catch him.
‘He said he had a fake passport when you interviewed him, didn’t he?’
Devon jumped, and looked up to see that Helena had stopped pacing and was standing in front of him.
‘Yes … yes, he did. I don’t know what name it was in or what nationality it was though, or anything … oh shit, boss. I’m so sorry.’
She stood there for a moment, looking down at him, her face blank. Then she shook her head and sat down on the chair next to him.
‘I’m sorry too, Devon. Sorry I didn’t listen to her; sorry I didn’t believe her. We’ve all screwed up here,’ she said quietly.
‘And now he’s gone. With a fake passport, and a good one, he could be anywhere. I mean, we know he’s an IT wizard, he could probably get the very best, couldn’t he? Dark web, plenty of places to go there, and he’d know how. And if he wore some sort of disguise, even the all-ports alert wouldn’t help us … he probably went straight to Bristol airport after he attacked her and hopped on a plane. Or maybe a boat, from the docks? If it was a private one … we’ve lost him, Devon. His cousin too, most likely. But we’re going to find them, OK? We’re not giving up. We’ll find them, if it’s the last thing we ever do.’
There was a sudden fiery determination in her voice, and he smiled briefly, then sighed.