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He understood everything …

Chapter 80

It was worse than anything Poe had dared fear.

Flynn was lying half-naked on the treatment table. She was stony pale and wasn’t moving. A blue hygiene towel covered her midriff and groin. It was soaked with blood. Too much blood.

A purple bruise covered one side of her lifeless face. Two empty bags hung from an IV stand at the top of the treatment table. Stained tubes ran from them to the cannula taped to the back of her hand. One bag had contained blood; the other had contained a clear liquid. Possibly a sedative, possibly an anaesthetic.

Poe rushed over and pushed two fingers into Flynn’s neck. She had a pulse. It was faint and rapid but it was there. Her eyelids fluttered and she let out a small groan but didn’t wake.

Poe knew he had to check her wound but he didn’t want to look under the blue hygiene paper. He’d never be the same once he had. He knew what he’d see.

And he also knew what he wouldn’t see.

He had no choice, though – the price of being able to do the things that others wouldn’t is that sometimes you had to do the things that others couldn’t.

He heard a noise behind him.

‘Is DI Flynn alive, Poe?’

Bradshaw had followed him into the room.

‘She is, Tilly.’ He used his body to shield her view of Flynn. ‘Can I have my jacket back, please?’

Bradshaw slipped out of it and handed it to him. He laid it over Flynn’s upper torso.

‘Don’t look, Tilly.’

He didn’t wait to see if she was averting her eyes. She’d either take his advice or she wouldn’t. He lifted the blue hygiene paper and saw what he’d dreaded seeing.

Bradshaw gasped.

He turned. She was ashen, her hands clamped to her cheeks. Poe pulled Bradshaw close and hugged her.

‘Poe,’ she sobbed. ‘Where’s DI Flynn’s baby?’

Chapter 81

Instead of the maternal bump they’d grown used to, there was an eighteen-inch vertical slash. The deep wound stretched from Flynn’s navel to her groin. It was seeping but encrusted with dry blood. It had been crudely stitched together with what looked like catgut, all thick and black and awful.

Poe could see the scalpels the Curator had used to open her up and the three-inch needle he’d used to close her. A semi-professional job, competence achieved through practice. Special Agent Melody Lee was right; it was a black swan event. The motive for Rebecca and Amanda’s abductions, impossible to understand at the time, now all too obvious.

But where was Flynn’s baby?

His eyes were drawn to the bin in the corner. It was the kind found in doctors’ surgeries all over the country. Moulded plastic with a push-pedal to open the lid. Cheap and easy to clean.

The lid was smeared with blood.

Poe stopped breathing. He began shaking. His mouth turned to sand. The blood pounded in his ears, drowning out all other sound. He didn’t want to open the lid. Didn’t want to see what was inside. But if he didn’t, Bradshaw would have to.

And that was unacceptable.

The walk to the corner of the room was the worst thing he’d ever had to do. It was only seven steps but it felt like seven thousand.

He stepped on the pedal but didn’t dare look. Nothing happened. It was broken. If it were a GP’s surgery it would have to be replaced. Atkinson wasn’t bound by the same rules.

He’d have to lift the lid himself.