The Dead Ground Read Online Free Page B

people can go?’ He indicated the waiting room, where every seat was occupied, some people with clean white bandages on, others bloodied and bashed-up, children chasing between the seats. The din was terrible. The unexpected snow had brought its usual quota of twisted ankles, tobogganing accidents, car skids. Coupled with the fact police were sealing every exit, the place was heaving.
    ‘I’ll get onto them. It’s unacceptable to impede our work like this.’ Saoirse glanced at Paula, who as one of ‘them’ looked awkwardly about her. Saoirse inclined her head. ‘Come on, I’ve got five minutes, if no one’s allowed in or out.’
    In her small office, she shut the door and sat at her desk. ‘Bit of a disaster, this. Management are going mad.’
    ‘Mm.’ Paula leaned against a filing cabinet, heart still hammering from the run downstairs. ‘At least in cases like these the baby usually isn’t harmed. Not on purpose, anyway. Do you have anything I can add to my profile? What do we need to look out for?’
    Saoirse’s face changed. ‘He’ll be cold, and hungry. They go downhill very fast if they’re not kept warm and fed. Do you really think they’re still here?’
    ‘No, they’ll be long gone. I’m sure we’ll lift the restrictions soon. They’re just checking the CCTV, I think.’
    ‘You think it was staff? A nurse took him, I heard.’ News travelled fast round the hospital.
    ‘I don’t know. It’s easy enough to steal a uniform, or just wear something that looks like one. I’d say it was someone who felt at home here, though. They knew the procedures, and how to get out quickly, and that they’d not be stopped.’ And it was most likely someone who desperately wanted a child, but she didn’t say this. Paula didn’t need to ask how Saoirse’s own pregnancy quest was going. She could see the answer in her friend’s drawn, set face.
    ‘I can’t believe it happened here.’ Saoirse was shaking her head. ‘It’s so busy today – how could they have got out with him?’
    ‘I don’t know. We think they just walked straight out. I mean— Oh.’ Paula stopped.
    ‘You OK?’ Saoirse was up, doctor face on. ‘You’ve gone green.’
    ‘Yeah, I just—’ Oh God, it was happening again. She gestured blindly. ‘Have you a bin, quick?’
    Saoirse snatched her small metal bin, and Paula threw up in it, a neat gob of bile landing on top of a tissue. No food in her left to come up.
    Saoirse was watching her strangely. ‘Are you sick?’
    ‘I’m OK.’ Paula wiped her mouth with shaking hands.
    ‘Has this happened before?’
    ‘A few times.’
    ‘Since everything?’
    Saoirse knew Paula had been having trouble getting over that night the previous month. She’d called in several times while Paula was recovering from the shock and bruises she’d sustained. Bringing chocolates, cheer, kindness. Saoirse did all these things properly, in her quiet way. Her mammy had reared her right.
    Saoirse was still watching, and Paula could feel it spurting up in her. Not vomit this time, but the urge to tell. ‘I saw Aidan,’ she said. ‘Upstairs. Just there now. I ran away.’
    ‘Not again . What’s with you two now?’
    ‘Nothing! We just – we had words.’ In fact the lack of words was the problem. ‘We’ve not really spoken since – you know, everything.’ Everything meaning that night in the lonely farmhouse, fireworks outside, gunshots inside. She pushed the memories away.
    ‘Why not? I thought he was helping you with that case.’
    ‘He was. But something happened with us just before, and we never really talked about it.’
    ‘You slept together?’
    Paula was embarrassed; how stupid. They were thirty, not twelve. ‘Little bit.’
    Saoirse sat down on her desk, hands in her pockets. ‘So?’
    ‘So, I’ve been boking my ring up ever since.’
    The shift in her friend’s expression was very subtle. You’d have to know her very well to notice the tightening round her mouth. ‘I