The floor rose towards her.

  She pushed it back.

  Her head was spinning, trying to detach itself, to free itself from this agony. She clung to a gown hanging from a peg, held on to it grimly with all the strength that remained to her and somehow, she didn't know how, but somehow she rode this beast out until it sank back into its lair, the flame flickered, receded, went out.

  Susan staggered to her feet, feeling giddy as hell. Going to faint. Not going to faint.

  A rack of gowns came towards her and she pushed herself away. Head between legs to stop fainting, she remembered, and she tried to do it but the baby was in the way. She took several more deep breaths, which helped. She was going to be all right, she was getting stronger again.

  She grabbed a gown, pulled it on, tied the tapes, then pushed her feet into a pair of white clogs. They were too big but it didn't matter. She took a mask out of a dispenser, pulled it over her nose and mouth, fumbled with the tapes. Then, from another dispenser, she took a hat that was like an elasticised J-cloth, and dragged it over her hair.

  She looked in the mirror, and a sickly-looking nurse stared back. Good. Throwing a nervous glance at the door, she checked through the jackets that were hanging up, patting them for bulges. In the breast pocket of the fourth she found what she was looking for: a cellular phone.

  The power button lit up when she pressed it, and there was a reassuring beep. And the door opened."

  Susan froze.

  Two men in suits came in, doctors, she presumed. They were deep in conversation; one gave her a cursory nod, the other didn't even glance at her. She slipped out past them into the corridor, and as she did so she saw a group of people walking towards the room from which she had fled.

  She turned and hurried away in the opposite direction, her feet slipping around clumsily inside the cloggs. There was a fire EXIT sign ahead, down at the far end. She broke into a stumbling run, reached the door, pushed down the bar. It opened.

  She was outside.

  It was daylight, and a light drizzle was falling. She was at the back of the clinic somewhere, in a service area. Steam rose from a vent in a low, one-storey building ahead that looked like an annex.

  There were windows above her, and Susan pressed herself hard against the wall so that she couldn't be seen from them. Then, holding up the phone, she tried to dial 911. But her fingers were shaking too much, and the wrong digits appeared on the display. She lost valuable seconds finding the Clear button, wiping the display and redialling.

  As she was about to hit the Send button, out of the corner of her eyes she saw someone emerge from a door at the far side of the courtyard. It was a nurse in uniform. She looked across at Susan, smiled, then took something from her pocket, and Susan relaxed as she saw what it was: cigarettes. The nurse lit up.

  Susan turned and walked away, trying to look nonchalant, as if she'd just finished a cigarette herself, and skirted around the side of the building, trying to remember, from all her previous visits to Casey, the geography around here. The terrain. There was the long driveway down to the main road, a quarter of a mile or so. No other road, just the shrubbery of the canyon, and miles of arid scrubland beyond.

  She pulled at the two-inch base of the aerial, trying to extend it, but the top was broken and it wouldn't come out any further; then she pressed the Send button, brought the phone to her ear, and moments later heard the voice of the emergency operator.

  "Police," Susan said. "Quickly, please."

  There were shouts right behind her, and she turned in alarm to see two men sprinting towards her. A third person, this one dressed in surgical scrubs, burst out of a door behind them, and stared venomously straight at her, before racing after the others, towards her.

  Susan kicked her feet out of the clogs and stumbled into a run. After only a few paces, the pain started coming at her again, but she ignored it, increasing her speed, trampling through a flower-bed, then tripping, stubbing her toe and almost losing her balance as she blundered through a low hedge and into a rockery. Somehow she kept on her feet, put on more speed, sprinting now in spite of her huge burden, running as fast as she'd ever run in her life across prickly grass that was damp and slippery from the drizzle.

  Then she reached the tarmac of the driveway, and the footing was better. A faint voice somewhere was saying, "Hello? Hello? Hello, caller, are you all right?" For a moment she couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

  She turned her head to look behind her. The two men in suits and the one in surgical scrubs were only yards away and gaining on her. Then she yelled, breathlessly, into the receiver, "Please - help me, I'm, I'm at -Palisades Cypress Clinic, Orange County. Please - come - they - murder my baby."

  She didn't see the sleeping policeman that tripped her. She just felt an agonised jarring in her foot and then she was flying forward, helplessly, and flung her arms around her baby as she smacked face down on to the tarmac, the phone skittering out of her hand.

  She could hear the footsteps of the men behind her and, near crazed with panic, she scrambled forward, grabbed the phone and somehow got back on her feet all in one motion. The men were yards away now, at full sprint, the one in surgical scrubs out in front was going to catch her. She heard him calling out to her, his familiar, smooth, urbane voice. "Susan, stop, you must stop!" ;

  As Miles Van Rhoe reached her, grabbing at her shoulder, she lashed out wildly with her arm at his face and, to her shock, the aerial of the cellular phone plunged into his right eye.

  Everything seemed to go into slow motion, as if she was seeing a video in freeze-frame. Blood gouted out around her fingers, which were still gripping the phone. Van Rhoe's surgical face mask fell away to reveal his mouth hideously twisted. Then his body began to fold in on itself, sinking to the ground. The cellular phone, grotesquely wedged in his eye socket, slipped from Susan's grip.

  Whimpering with terror, she tried to turn but, as if she were in a nightmare, her feet would not move. She lashed out with her left fist at a second man who was trying to grab her, and punched him on the jaw. He snatched at her gown and she punched him again, sank her teeth into his wrist then twisted free. Now her legs were working - but he had her gown once more. She pulled with such force that she ripped free of it, stumbled forward and broke into a run again. There was a line of trees ahead, and then the road beyond that. She could see the road.

  It wasn't far.

  It really wasn't far.

  She didn't look left or right, she just ran straight out through the white pillars, flailing her arms, screaming for help, the image of Miles Van Rhoe sinking to the ground, with the cellular phone sticking out of his eye and blood trickling down his face, blinding her to almost everything else. The road was empty. Without pausing, she turned left and started running downhill. She could hear the footsteps inches behind her; a hand grabbed her shoulder; she found another spurt of speed; the hand grabbed her shoulder again.

  She could hear a siren.

  A glint of metal appeared ahead.

  Then the most beautiful sight she had ever seen: a police patrol car rounded the bend in front of her. It screeched to a halt and before the policeman even had a chance to open his door, Susan was there, at his window, and he was smiling at her, a tubby man, with great chubby cheeks.

  It felt as if a huge lever had been pulled inside her, and everything started to shut down. She clutched the window frame as the door swung open, and then he was holding her, had his big comforting arms wrapped round her.

  And now the pain was coming again.

  She looked into the policeman's eyes. "Please help me," she whispered. "Don't let them take me back in there."

  And then the pain erupted. She doubled up, closed her eyes and just heard the voices. They sounded faint, so faint, they could be miles away, she didn't care, she was safe now, the baby was safe, they were both safe, she was with the police and she just had to deal with this pain, that's all, her baby was safe, just the pain to deal with now.

  One voice said, "I'm sorry, Officer, this patient's sister died last night and she's flipped."

  Another voice said, "She has a delusional personality. She's imagining we're going to take her baby away and use it for some kind of devil worship."

  Then the first voice, said, calmly, "She's dangerously sick - the poor young woman has a gangrenous cyst, which is giving her peritonitis, and this is causing her to hallucinate. If we don't operate immediately we are going to lose her."

  Then a third voice, kindly but firm, said, "Lady, you hear that? Can you hear me? Can you hear what I'm saying to you? You're not at all well, and you've cut your hand. These kind people are going to take you back inside now. This is the best place for you to be, you just relax now, OK? If you have to be sick, this is the best place in the whole of Orange County! They're gonna take good care of you. Real good care of you and your baby!"

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  "John? I appreciate you returning the call," Dick Corrigan said. "It's -" There was a long pause. John waited, impatiently. "It's - John, I don't - know how to put this -" he broke down in tears.

  John felt a stab of panic. "Dick, what is it? What's happened?" He looked at his watch. Ten forty. A quick calculation told him it was two forty p.m. in Los Angeles. The cushion against reality from his two pints of Dead Pig an hour or so earlier was fast wearing off.

  "John - ah - we've -" His father-in-law was fighting to control his voice. John, waited, trying to give him space. He had always liked the man, partly because he reminded him of one of his early screen idols, Henry Fonda. Dick Corrigan had the same build, the same quiet dignity, and John felt genuinely sad that success had never happened for him.

  "I'm afraid something real bad's happened, John. I - I - oh God..." Dick Corrigan began to sob.

  John went cold. Oh, Christ, what the hell was it? Nothing to Susan, please not, please don't let anything have happened to her. "Dick, what? What's happened?" he asked, urgently.

  "I - I'm sorry, this is -" There was another long silence. "Casey -" Dick said, getting her name out with difficulty. "Casey's died."

  It took a moment to sink in. The room seemed to darken around him. "Casey?" It was the last thing he had expected to hear. "Oh, God," John said. "I'm sorry, Dick, I'm really sorry." But inwardly, although shocked, he felt an enormous sense of relief- that it wasn't bad news about Susan. He tried to mask this in his voice. "What happened?"

  There was another long silence. Then Dick Corrigan said, "Susan killed her."

  John almost dropped the cordless phone. There was a terrifying baldness in the statement that sent a slick of goosebumps coursing up his spine. "What? What did you say, Dick? What do you mean?"

  "It - was her air line. Susan - did something - a connector - she separated a connector - I - oh, God, John, what's happening?"

  He was sobbing again.

  A maelstrom of thoughts swirled through John's head. The V6m Bank owned the clinic. Was this something to do with Mr. Sarotzini? Some trick? "Susan was in England. She couldn't -"

  His father-in-law composed himself. "John, I wasn't straight with you -last night when you rang. I told you Susan wasn't here. Well, she was here. She - ah - she'd begged me and Gayle not to -"

  "She's with you? Susan's with you? She's in LA?" John paced restlessly around the room. He sat on the edge of the kitchen table, stood up again, crossed the room, leant against the sink, then turned, stared at the window, at his stricken, ghostly reflection. "You say she's with you?"

  Through his father-in-law's grief, John thought he detected a sudden edginess to his voice. "She's - she's at the clinic right now. They - they're being good about it, John. They understand that she's having some kind of a breakdown."

  "Breakdown?" John could hear his mother-in-law saying something in the background.

  "She arrived here last night in a - real bad state. I - Gayle and I -" He fell silent again. "John - look, here's Gayle. She'll tell you."

  John heard the scraping sound of the receiver being manhandled, then his mother-in-law's voice. She sounded deeply distressed, but less distraught than her husband. "Hello, John," she said. "What's going on? Please tell us what's going on."

  "Gayle, I'm sorry about Casey, I'm desperately sorry."

  There was another silence. Then, stiffly, she said, "Thank you. You can imagine how we're feeling."

  John fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. "Gayle, did I hear Dick right? Susan disconnected Casey's air-line?"

  "She killed her sister. I can't believe she did this, John, she loved Casey, she loved her more than -" She drew breath, as if struggling for self-control.

  John waited some moments, then said, "Have you spoken to Susan?"

  "She's unconscious."

  "Where?"

  "In the clinic. Seems that there might be complications. I had to sign a consent form - allowing them to operate. They're going to have to do an emergency Caesarean."

  John tried to make sense of what he was hearing. "She's still in the clinic? What - about -"

  "The police?"

  "Yes?"

  John sensed the same edginess in her voice that he had noticed in her husband's. "The clinic are being very good about it, John. They - the director had a talk with us. They don't want a scandal - I guess - I guess any more than we do."

  A moment ago his mother-in-law had asked him what was going on; he was beginning to feel it was his turn now to ask that same question. Susan had gone to LA and had killed Casey? No way, no way in hell would Susan have harmed Casey. This was all wrong, seriously wrong.

  "Gayle," he said, "listen to me very carefully. You have to get Susan out of that clinic now, right now. I can't explain why over the phone and you wouldn't believe me if I tried. Just do it for Susan. Get her to any other hospital, doesn't matter which one. Will you do that, please?"

  There was another long silence, then his mother-in-law said, "John, she's in the finest clinic in California and they have the best maternity facilities of anywhere there. We have to deal with this, we can't solve anything by taking her away. We need them real bad right now."

  "Look," John said, with growing desperation, "I'm coming over on the first flight in the morning. Get her out of there now, right now. Gayle, please believe me. They're going to kill her too."

  There was a click. He stared at the phone with incredulity.

  She had hung up on him.

  Chapter Sixty

  The butcher hefted the slab of meat on the block, then raised his long-bladed knife. And Susan saw what he was going to cut. It wasn't meat at all.

  She threw herself forward, screaming, "No! That's my baby, please, please don't! Please, oh my God, pleeeease."

  The knife struck the flesh, skewering the baby on to the board beneath.

  A tiny geyser of blood bubbled up around the glinting steel, and the baby screamed, a hideous, curdling scream.

  The scream calmed into a sobbing cry. And then a gurgle. And then the gurgle changed into a choking, rattling sound.

  Susan heard the clunk-puff-clunk-puff of a ventilator. Someone was choking, gasping for air.

  Casey.

  Casey writhing on her bed.

  Susan reached out towards her, but the image was fading. Casey turned, smiled as she faded. She looked so happy, so incredibly happy.

  The image dimmed further, then dissolved into the darkness that was rising around her. Susan tried to hold on to the image, but a pain was intruding, a stinging sensation in her abdomen that was growing increasingly sharper. It was different from the pain she had had before. It was bearable, it wasn't comfortable, but it was bearable.

  And then a shiver ripped through her.

  She saw an image of Miles Van Rhoe sinking to the ground with a cellular phone sticking out of his eye socket, blood gouting from it, his mouth distorted with shock.

  She broke into a sweat of fear. Running. She had been running. Christ, how badly had she hurt him?

  And how had he found her? How had he known she was here? John. It must have been John who had told him. John must have phoned her parents and somehow gotten out of them where she was and he'd told Van Rhoe. So now Mr. Sarotzini would know she was here.

  And now through the darkness she felt the red glow of light against her eyelids. She opened her eyes and she was flat on her back staring up at a white ceiling and a sprinkler system. A face filled her line of vision, a stranger, a woman in a white gown, a nurse, with high cheekbones, a pretty face with short blonde hair, and she was smiling. Susan stared groggily at her.

  "Congratulations, Susan, you've had a little girl!"

  Susan looked at her blankly.

  "Your baby," the nurse said. "You've had a girl!"

  And Susan connected with this word baby. Baby.

  "Girl?" Susan said, confused. Bump was a boy, she was sure Bump was a boy. "Where - where is - she? Can I -?" And then she was gripped by a sudden deep anxiety as the memory returned. "Casey? How's Casey?" The flicker of a hesitation. "Casey?"

  "My sister. Where am I?"

  "You're in the Pacific Palisades Clinic."

  "My sister, Casey, how is she?" All smiles now. "Casey Corrigan?" Susan nodded.

  "In the Laguna wing? She's your sister? What a lovely girl!" Susan felt relieved. Casey Was fine, she could see it in the smile. "How are you feeling?"

  How was Van Rhoe? Had that been a dream? Why wasn't the woman saying anything about him? It must have been a dream.

  "Are you a little tender?"

  She had to think about this for a minute. Her brain was woozy, still a little confused. She felt uncomfortable lying flat, it was hurting her stomach. She told the nurse this.

  "I'm afraid you will be a little tender. I'm going to give you something for the pain."

  "My baby - I - I was having a boy."

  "A lot of women get surprised, Susan. Lots of women think they're having a boy and then they have a girl. She's a beautiful little girl."