She shivered. It was the beginning of the second week in April, but the days were cool and wet and the nights still very cold. The heating in her flat continued to play up. Sitting for so long by the window, with only a light dressing gown over her Marks and Spencer’s pyjamas, she was thoroughly chilled, although she’d only just noticed her discomfort because she was so preoccupied. With Marlena, and the rest of them, and with her own fractured state, both physically and mentally.
She switched on the small electric fire she’d bought the last time the heating had broken down, carried her mug of tea over to the sleeping area and put it down on the bedside table while she pulled on jeans, thick socks, a T-shirt, a shirt over it, and a warm sweater.
Even before her face had been wrecked, Michelle had come to the conclusion that the only thing she had left in life was the job. In Dorset she’d been a detective constable, but after the divorce there was no way she could face working alongside the husband who’d abandoned her. She’d never have taken the job in Traffic, but it was all that was on offer at the time. Plus it was the Met, and she’d been promised it wouldn’t be long before an opportunity would present itself for her to return to CID. That was two years ago, and here she was, still stuck in the department she loathed. Even a switch to mainstream uniform would do. Anything but Traffic.
And then Vogel had started delving into her affairs, doubting her explanation as to why she had pulled a sickie. Checking her out as if he wasn’t sure what she might have done or might be capable of. She knew then that not only would her hope of a transfer be destroyed but with it any hope she had of rebuilding her life.
And so she’d lied to him. Lying to the Sunday Club crowd had been one thing. She hadn’t thought that it would matter. She hadn’t known that there was someone out there determined to hurt them. She hadn’t considered for one moment that she too might become a victim. At that stage it had still been possible that Marlena’s accident was just that, that the earlier incidents had been childish pranks. With each new incident, even the abduction and killing of the two dogs, she’d tried to tell herself that this was just a chain of random, unconnected events, the sort of thing that could only happen in a place the size of London.
Michelle had lied to Vogel and to Sunday Club for reasons, deeply personal reasons, that had nothing to do with the frightening chain of events unfolding around her. She’d lied because of the lengths to which her longing for a child had driven her.
She and Phil had been about to adopt a child when he dropped the bombshell that he was leaving her. The adoption authorities had immediately withdrawn their support. Michelle had pleaded with them, pointing out that single-parent adoptions were no longer uncommon. Their response had been that her new status as a single parent wasn’t the problem. It was the turmoil surrounding her marriage break-up that was the issue.
In desperation she’d turned to the Internet, researching every possible avenue to getting a child. That was how she’d learned about a ground-breaking operation, still largely experimental, that might make it possible for her to give birth: a womb transplant. Her own doctor had advised that, in her case, such an operation would not only be exceedingly unlikely to succeed, or certainly not to the extent that would allow her to safely carry a child to full term, but, with particular regard to the effect of the hysterectomy that had been forced upon her, would also be highly dangerous. He’d refused to forward her for any such treatment under the National Health Service. Refusing to admit defeat, she had sought out a Harley Street consultant who was an expert in the field. Though she had no idea how she would finance such a major medical procedure, she’d been determined to find a way. However, the Harley Street man had delivered the same prognosis, advising her that no reputable doctor would be prepared to undertake such an operation on a woman with her medical history.
So Michelle had gone back to the Internet and found a dodgy Indian surgeon who was as famous for his lack of scruples as for his undoubted brilliance. He’d originally trained in London but had been struck off the UK medical register following a high-profile case that had resulted in the death of a patient. Since then, the surgeon’s maverick approach had led to him being banned from practising not only in Britain but throughout most of Europe, and many other parts of the world. Apparently he was motivated not so much by financial gain as a sincere belief that the type of operation he was performing, while still in its infancy at the moment and therefore subject to a degree of trial and error, would ultimately revolutionize obstetric surgery. In his eyes, that justified the use of human guinea pigs. Even the manner in which he acquired the wombs that he used in his transplant operations had come, rather chillingly, under scrutiny. Michelle knew all this, and yet she was prepared to take the risk. He was, after all, her only hope.
Aside from the obvious danger she would be exposing herself to if she allowed him to operate on her, a risk which she considered to be her business and no one else’s, there was the question of legality. As a serving police officer, she was jeopardizing her career as well as her life. She hadn’t cared though. The moment she’d learned that the surgeon had travelled incognito to Switzerland where he was preparing to examine potential patients, she had dropped everything and jumped on a plane to Zurich. So far as her bosses were concerned, she was absent through illness. So far as her friends were concerned, she was on a training course.
Ironically, it had all been for nothing. Even that notorious renegade of the medical profession had refused to operate on Michelle. Then, after her meeting with him, she had returned to her Zurich hotel room, switched on her phone, and found a series of voicemails from her friends about the attack on Marlena. From that point on the horrors just kept on coming: the abduction and killing of the two little dogs, Vogel’s suspicions about her, the attack that had left her face in ruins, and finally Marlena’s murder.
Now there could be no doubt that the Sunday Clubbers were being viciously targeted. Most likely by one of their own.
Until last night, Michelle had been convinced that Alfonso was the culprit. Guilty as charged. Vogel was a meticulous man, Michelle reminded herself for the umpteenth time. He did not make mistakes. And he certainly didn’t make mistakes in a murder inquiry.
Oblivious to Vogel’s doubts about the case, she found she was beginning to harbour doubts of her own. In an effort to shrug them off, she took another sip of her tea, then lay down, fully clothed, on her unmade bed. In spite of her anxiety she drifted off to sleep. It was a fretful, restless sleep, but when she woke she was surprised to see bright wintery sunshine streaming through the east-facing window above her kitchen sink. Her digital alarm clock told her that it was now 8.05 a.m.
Her first impulse was to reach for the phone to call Vogel. Then she changed her mind. How could she discuss the case with him, share her doubts with him, when he continued to harbour suspicions about her? Nor could she tell him the one thing that would lay those suspicions to rest: the truth. Even now, there was no way she could bring herself to reveal the details of her trip to Zurich. Aside from the dubious legality of what she had planned, it was all too intimate, too personal, too likely to invoke pity.