No matter. Only work mattered. Work was her salvation. Not this deserted beach. Not this time.

Not Alistair.

Reluctantly she walked on-and then she paused. There was a figure coming down the sand-hills towards her.

For a moment she thought it could be Alistair and she felt a jolt of pure wild hope. Stupid hope.

Was it? She shaded her eyes. The sun had crept over the horizon now, and was a low, golden ball in the morning sky.

Who was it?

Not Alistair. No.

She walked a little further and the figure turned into a woman: a woman dressed in something that might once have been some sort of Eastern European gown but was now ripped and ragged. A bloodstained rag was tied around her wrist. The woman was walking haltingly, staggering a little on the soft sand.

Sarah stopped. Her heart rose almost into her mouth. Dear God…

‘Noa?’ Her voice was a whisper. She raised it a little. ‘Are you Noa?’

The woman didn’t respond. She kept walking towards her, each step deliberate, her eyes on Sarah’s face. One hand was held behind her back, the other was held out almost in entreaty.

She neared her. Three yards. Two.

Her hand came out from behind her ragged gown. A gun pointed straight at Sarah.

Both women stopped. The gun stayed rock-steady.

‘Come with me,’ the woman said. ‘Come with me now. Your people have killed my husband. Now you save my son or you die.’

CHAPTER TEN

THE interview with Howard took a good hour, but maybe it was worth it. Alistair and Larry had listened to Howard’s rambling story. At the end of it they had a formal statement, duly witnessed.

‘It’ll help,’ Larry said in satisfaction as they left the room. He glanced down at the name Howard had given them. ‘This is great. I know him. We’ve been after this guy for years. There’s been nothing but suspicions, but now a statement in front of an independent witness… It’s fantastic.’

‘All we have to do is find these people.’

‘Yeah.’ Larry nodded. ‘We leave at six.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s five o’clock now. Not worth going back to bed.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Who needs sleep?’

‘Obviously not us,’ Alistair agreed as they walked out to the hospital entrance together. He thought of what he intended doing right now, and sleep was way down on the list. In truth, it was so far down he couldn’t even see it.

All he could see was Sarah.

But then his thoughts were interrupted. His truck…

Alistair’s truck was parked just by the hospital entrance, and the damage was apparent the moment they stepped out through the door. Someone had smashed the rear window. A shower of broken glass covered the ground around it.

Why?

One glance and it was obvious.

Alistair’s doctor’s bag was gone. All the medical equipment he left permanently ready for emergencies had disappeared.


The cave was located in just about the last place Sarah would have thought of searching. Where anyone would have thought of searching.

For a start, the cave was north of the town, and the plane had been wrecked to the south. It was set in the cliffs back from the beach, a dry and dusty place where nothing grew. There was a cleft in the rocks and Noa waved the gun at Sarah, motioning her through.

‘Hurry.’

The woman looked distraught to the point of madness. She was still young-though older than Sarah’s twenty-nine years. Her dark hair, braided down her back, was still jet-black, though it was matted with red dust, and the braid had long ago frayed to the point where it was only just recognisable as a plait. Her dark eyes were sunk into a gaunt face, and they were ringed with the telltale shadows of exhaustion.

The hand holding the gun shook with weariness and with fear.

Sarah hadn’t spoken to her as they’d walked up the beach towards the cave. The woman seemed tense to the point of breaking. It therefore seemed sensible to simply do as she asked, with no questions.

‘Go,’ the woman said, and shoved the gun at her. There was no choice. Sarah slid through the cleft in the rock and went.

Behind the cleft was an open stretch of sand, with three walls of sheer cliff face. An overhang gave shade, and the north face sloped upward at an angle that let in the morning sun but was steep enough to stop the wind. As a shelter it was bleak, but it was adequate.

But Sarah wasn’t considering her surroundings.

On the ground before her lay a child, and one look made Sarah’s heart sink. Ignoring the gun, ignoring the woman, she got down on the ground. This was what she’d most feared.

He was tiny. Tinier than she’d expected. Five, the passport had said, but he looked even younger. Four, maybe?

He lay on a bundle of clothing in the dust, his face pressed hard into the mound of cloth. A tiny, gaunt child, as dark as his mother, his tiny frame almost skeletal.

There was good light. This was more a rock shelter than a proper cave. The morning sun glinted downward through the sloping north face of rock, illuminating the deathly shadowed face of the child lying so still that death was a distinct possibility.

He was so tiny. And so dreadfully hurt. He was wearing bloodstained shorts and a T-shirt. A bandage was wound around his leg-white cloth, roughly torn. Through the cloth was the unmistakable sign of a suppurating wound.

Infection.

It had to be. Sarah thought back to the rough metal container, loose in the cargo hold. It had looked rusty and none too clean.

Regardless of the gun, regardless of the woman, she crouched in the dust in an instant. Her fingers were feeling the child’s pulse as she searched his body for more clues to what was happening to him. Somewhere above her the woman was still pointing the gun, but she ignored her. There were no threats needed to make her treat this child.

‘He needs help,’ she whispered. At least he was still alive, but that was all that could be said. The little one’s pulse was thready and weak. He was hot to touch. She could feel the fever in him. Forty? Forty-one?

‘Help him, then,’ the woman told her, and Sarah sat back on her heels and looked up at her.

‘You have good English?’

‘Yes.’

‘We must get more help than just me,’ Sarah said, trying to keep the urgency from her voice. Trying to suppress panic. How long had this infection had to take hold? ‘He needs hospital. Doctors.’

‘You are a doctor. I heard you say…when you shot my husband.’

Sarah took a deep breath. And another.

‘I didn’t shoot your husband,’ she said, trying to keep her voice even. ‘I never would. It was a mistake.’

‘My husband tried to get food. You shot him. Now you help us.’

‘I can’t,’ Sarah said, trying to keep the desperation from her voice. ‘Your son needs fluids. He needs antibiotics. He needs specialist equipment.’

‘I have equipment,’ the woman told her. She pointed to a pile near the cliff face. ‘I brought it.’

Sarah stared to where she was pointing, recognising immediately what was there. Alistair’s bag. And groceries. A pile of stuff heaped into an ancient wheelbarrow.

‘My husband is a doctor,’ the woman said, in faltering, fearful English. ‘He is a good man, but not…maybe not very wise. He said…he said he would not take the gun with him when he went to steal. He just wished to take food. And now he’s dead.’

‘He’s not dead.’

‘He’s shot. I saw him. I followed, though he told me not to. But I was so afraid. I was so fearful for his life that I left our son for a little. And I was right to be afraid. They took him away. There was so much blood I was almost ill. So much blood. Almost as much as when Azron was injured. So now my son’s fate lies in my hands and I will do what I must. I took the gun. I went into town and I found these things. I brought them here and then I saw you, walking alone. The gun will do what my husband cannot. The gun will save my son.’


‘Alistair.’

It was Max, dishevelled and out of breath. Larry and Alistair were still staring at the truck when Max pounded into the car park. ‘Do you know where-’ He stopped, recognising Larry. ‘Detective…’

‘What’s the problem?’ The police detective had turned from the smashed car to the storekeeper and his voice was professionally clipped, forcing Max to stop in his tracks and regroup. ‘Stop,’ Larry ordered. ‘Take three deep breaths and then tell us. Slow.’

And Max did. Somehow.

‘She broke into the store,’ he told them. ‘You know I sleep in the room right behind the store? I heard a window smash and she was there, in the doorway, pointing a gun straight at me. A woman. In rags. She looked awful. Scared to death. She made me pack a heap of stuff-water, biscuits, bread-and then she made me carry it all outside. She had a wheelbarrow. A bloody wheelbarrow. It’s the one Florence Trotman uses to plant her pansies in every winter. She’d emptied the whole thing out. And, Alistair, she had a heap of your stuff in it. Then she made me go into the outhouse and she barricaded the door. She said if I tried to break out in less than twenty minutes she’d be standing outside and would shoot to kill. I knew it’d be to give her time to get away but, bugger me, I wasn’t taking any chances. Not for a bit of bread and water.’

‘Twenty minutes?’ Larry snapped, and Max took another couple of deep breaths and looked just a bit sheepish.

‘Maybe thirty. Bloody woman. I wasn’t going to take any chances, and neither of us were wearing a watch.’ And then he shrugged. ‘Look, she seemed desperate. After what happened last time I wasn’t risking her not getting what she needed.’

‘What was she wearing?’ Larry asked, and as Max gave a description his face tightened into grim lines. Max’s description of the woman was graphic, and they could all imagine her desperation. Her fear. Alistair could see why Max had decided to take no chances. This was a description of a woman close to madness.