SEVEN

There's too much blood in the strange dream world where nothing is the way it should be. Too much blood, noise, and confusion. It starts in her own house, in her own kitchen, and it doesn't abate. Not in the ambulance, not in the hospital. There are questions, there are people and confusion and panic, and there is blood. It's dry on her hands now, cracking and flaking with every movement, and that scares her, because once she's taken into a small, windowless side room, it's only the blood on her hands that seems in any way real, and once that's gone...

Grace isn't sure she quite understands what's happening, only that it seems to be bad. Very bad, maybe, from the look on some of the tight, pale faces that surrounded her before she was ushered away on her own. They won't let her see Boyd, despite the way she tries – over and over again – to explain that he needs her, that he won't relax until he sees for himself that she's all right, that she has somehow escaped… whatever terrible thing has happened to him. It's as if she's speaking a completely foreign language, however. Maybe she is, because the hard-faced young uniformed police officer who stays in the room with her doesn't seem to understand a single word she says. Or perhaps he understands but simply doesn't care.

She's not sure how long she's left waiting before the door opens and a short, square-shouldered man in a dark grey suit joins them. Closing the door behind him, he produces a warrant card and announces, "Doctor Foley, I'm DI Poole from Finchley CID."

"How's Boyd?" she demands, the question far more important to her than anything else.

Poole regards her with steady impassivity. "He's lost a lot of blood, but he's alive. The doctors say he's stable."

The relief is so intense that had she been standing, Grace is sure she would have staggered. As it is, she swallows hard and says, "Oh, thank God…"

"I need to ask you some questions," he says, sitting down uninvited on an adjacent chair. His eyes are a dark steel-grey like his suit, and she doesn't think they miss much. "You were very confused when the ambulance arrived, apparently. The paramedic I spoke to said you were unable to tell them exactly how DSI Boyd sustained his injury."

"We were in the kitchen," she tells him, the tranquil scene quite clear in her mind, "he was cooking dinner… I think we might have had an argument…"

"I see," Poole says. He glances briefly at the silent young man still standing in the corner of the room, then looks back at her. His voice is quiet, his manner very far from aggressive. "I think, Doctor, that it might be for the best if you didn't say anything more at this point."

"Why?" she asks, more bewildered than concerned by the calm warning. A movement right on the peripheral edge of her vision catches her eye, and she turns her head, somehow not surprised to see that Linda has joined them. "What's she doing here?"

The two police officers exchange another glance, even more meaningful than the first. It's Linda who laughs, though, Linda who says, "Oh, Gracie-Grace, you really have got yourself into serious trouble this time, haven't you? They know what you did, Gracie. They know what you did."

"I want to see Boyd." The words tumble out fast and loud, almost surprising her. "Please, I need to see him…"

"That's not going to be possible; not tonight, at least," Poole says, but though his voice is firm, it's still very calm, very professional.

A quiet tap on the door heralds the arrival of another man, taller and slimmer than Poole, but also dressed in a smart business suit. He doesn't look at her as he says, "Sir…? Can I have a word…?"

Poole doesn't give a direct answer, he simply nods, stands up and leaves the room without a backward glance. Left staring at the closed door, Grace turns her head to challenge Linda, but now there's nothing but empty space where she was standing.

-oOo-

It's not Poole who opens the door next, it's Spencer. Grace stares at him, caught between relief and confusion as he produces his warrant card and bluntly orders the still-silent young uniformed officer to leave. As he departs, Eve appears, stepping in behind Spencer and closing the door quietly, shutting out the rest of the world. There's an odd tension in the room from the first moment, as if no-one's quite sure what to say. Grace looks from one colleague to the other, trying to read what's behind the matching carefully composed expressions. A sudden, icy touch of visceral fear makes her demand, "Boyd…?"

"He's okay," Eve reassures her, sitting down next to her, briefly patting her arm before continuing, "it's a deep puncture, and he's lost a fair amount of blood, but he'll be absolutely fine. The blade nicked his liver – just slightly – but they've decided that for now there's absolutely no need to do anything but watch and wait. They're keeping him in for tonight at least just to be on the safe side."

"They won't let me see him."

Spencer is still standing, and he doesn't seem keen, or able, to meet her eye. Sounding gruff, he asks, "What happened, Grace? Boyd's giving CID some bollocks about it being some kind of freak accident. Self-inflicted, he says. He's claiming he slipped on some cooking oil he'd spilled, and that he somehow managed to fall onto the knife."

"They know what you did, Gracie…" Linda's gloating voice whispers in her ear, making her flinch. "They know what you did…"

"Spence," Eve cautions.

"They're not buying it any more than I am," Spencer continues regardless. He shakes his head. "I've been a copper for a long, long time, Grace, and I've never, ever seen that kind of accidental injury."

Eve is frowning, and her voice holds more than a touch of concern. "Spence, we agreed…"

"We need to know what happened," he growls back at her, momentarily every bit as curt and obstinate as Boyd himself.

"Why?" Eve challenges him immediately. "What difference will it make?"

Spencer's expression settles into something between surprise and outrage. "Are you crazy?"

"You're crazy…" – not a whispering voice so much as a sudden vivid memory. Boyd, simultaneously angry, offended and bemused. Boyd, standing by the cooker in her kitchen staring at her as she accused him of –

The sob that's torn from her is loud and guttural, not a gentle sound at all. Too much emotion, too many memories… Grace doesn't notice Eve putting a comforting arm around her, it's just suddenly there. Like the stark knowledge of what happened… what she did…

Panic. Nausea. Fear. Regret.

So many things, so much wild desperation. Grace can see her arm swinging down as Boyd's comes up, can hear that awful, gut-wrenching noise as the kitchen knife slams home into unguarded flesh. She wants to scream, she wants to vomit…

"Grace…" A hard, determined male voice, pulling her back from the very edge of madness. "Grace."

She stares at Spencer for a single moment, and then focuses on Eve, struggling to form coherent words. She manages a choked, "It was me, wasn't it…? I did it; I stabbed him… I stabbed Boyd…"

Neither of her colleagues offers a reply, but the look they give each other tells her everything.

-oOo-

"I don't know what really happened tonight," Poole says, his tone hard and unforgiving, "and thanks to the imaginative statement Boyd has given us, I don't suppose I ever will, but, please, do me the honour of assuming that I'm nowhere near stupid enough to buy some ridiculous cock and bull story about him slipping over while he had a knife in his hand."

It's Spencer, the same rank and only a fraction younger, who shrugs in response. "Take it up with him."

Poole's derisive snort is backed up by his words: "I'm not that stupid, either. I'm well-aware of your guv'nor's reputation, Jordan."

Grace is barely keeping up with the conversation. Not much in the room seems real, aside from Eve's warm, supportive arm that's still wrapped around her. She looks up, "It was Linda."

Poole frowns. "Linda…?"

"She's confused," Eve says quickly. "It's been a very traumatic evening."

He doesn't look convinced. "Wait a – "

"We're going to take her home," Spencer cuts in. "If you need to talk to her again, you can do it tomorrow. She's one of us, for God's sake – she's not going to do a bloody disappearing act, now is she?"

"I want to see Boyd," Grace says yet again. "Why won't anyone listen to me?"

"Tomorrow," Eve promises. "I'll drive you here myself if necessary."

The anger is growing inside her once more, a dangerous, relentless force that pushes its way towards the surface without thought or mercy. "Don't patronise me, Eve! All of you – stop patronising me. I want to see Boyd, and I want to see him now."

"Well, it's not possible," Poole barks at her, his voice much harder and sharper than she's so far heard it. "They've drugged him up to the eyeballs and taken him off to the high dependency unit for the night. That was quite some 'accident' he managed to have for himself, Doctor."

"They know what you did…"

-oOo-

"Grace," Eve says, not releasing her arm as they follow Spencer through the front door and into the house, "the SOCOs won't have cleaned up, you know that. Let Spence go and take a look before…"

"I'm not a child, Eve," she says, too weary and too traumatised to summon any trace of real anger, "and you're not helping me by treating me like one. I'm quite prepared to face the truth – and to deal with the consequences of my actions."

"Grace – "

"No," she says, jerking her arm free. With a still-protesting Eve trailing behind her, Grace follows Spencer into the small kitchen at the back of the house. An odd, calm sense of resolution has taken hold of her, and it gives her the strength she needs to deal with the sight of Boyd's suit jacket still draped over the back of one of the two chairs set at the little kitchen table. It feels like just minutes, not hours, since she was watching him cook dinner in his efficient, methodical way. There are still pans on the hob, their contents presumably long since congealed into something cold, unidentifiable, and unpalatable.

And there is blood.

Dried smears and splashes and footprints on the floor, streaks on the fronts of the units – she remembers him making a final desperate attempt to get back to his feet as the paramedics arrived – a partial handprint here, finger-marks there. Detritus left by the paramedics and the SOCOs; foreign debris adding to the cluttered misery of the scene of the kind of brutal but familiar domestic tragedy that they've all seen too often before.

Grace observes the whole thing through a tight veneer of professionalism, as if she's calmly reviewing the sort of clinical, high-detail crime scene photographs that cross her desk almost every working day. All the little clues she's used to looking for are there in front of her. Everything that tells her – tells all of them – that what happened here in this small, ordinary room was a senseless, spontaneous thing. A circumstantial thing, neither planned nor imagined.

Spencer mutters something under his breath that Grace doesn't quite catch. It sounds short, vehement. She understands. He may twist and sulk and storm in Boyd's towering shadow, but there's not much she doesn't know about the complicated mechanics of the long and complex relationship between Spencer and his mentor, including how much brusque, unspoken affection there is between the two men. They're far more alike than either would admit, the tough, world-weary old lion and his would-be successor.

"I'm sorry." The apology seems nonsensical, delivered in the face of the gory evidence all around them, but she means it wholeheartedly. "I didn't ask him to lie for me."

"We didn't think for a moment that you did," Eve says, the warning look she shoots at Spencer very clear. When she speaks again, her voice is thick with emotion. "Oh, Grace… how did this happen?"

"Linda," she says. In her mind, at least, no other explanation is needed.

-oOo-

cont…