Chapter 9 #2
Kate planned to keep herself as busy as possible for the rest of the day, inventing extra work if necessary, because that was the only way to stop herself thinking about Connor.
Worrying about the possible complications that might come from having holes drilled in your pelvis.
Worrying that he might be trying to be far too macho and avoiding taking any kind of pain relief.
As it turned out, Kate didn’t have to find any extra work. It found her, in the form of a forensic examination of a suspicious death. Lewis Blackman was back on deck and claimed he was feeling better than ever, but Kate didn’t want him overdoing things.
‘I’ll do it,’ she told him. ‘You can supervise.’
A forensic examination was far more detailed than an ordinary autopsy.
Right from the start, when the body bag was opened, photographs had to be taken and every detail recorded to appear in the paperwork.
This was quite clearly a homicide so the hands of the victim were encased in plastic bags.
When they were opened, scrapings from under the fingernails had to be collected, labelled and stored.
Every item of clothing had to be documented before being removed and it was only then that the medical examination could begin.
Wounds could be examined and photographed and then, after the body was cleaned, they could start to look for the actual cause of death.
In this case, it was a matter of determining which, out of many, of the stab wounds had been the lethal blow and it was time-consuming because the angle and depth of each injury needed to be measured.
The whole procedure took several hours and it would take at least another hour to do the paperwork involved. Lewis offered but Kate shooed him home.
‘You look tired,’ she said. ‘And it’s getting late. I was planning to do some office work for a while anyway.’
When Lewis left, the department was curiously empty.
A technician had gone on blood-testing rounds and the others must have gone for a meal break.
Not that Kate minded the solitude. It meant that she didn’t need to shut the door of her office or close the venetian blinds on the windows that looked out into the lab.
She did jump when she heard the rapid footsteps of someone approaching.
She went out of her office to see who it was and then stopped in astonishment.
‘Bella! What on earth are you doing here? I thought you would have gone home long ago.’
‘Um… I came to see you.’ Bella smiled brightly.
‘I’m kind of busy.’
‘Oh… well, I might have a look around, if that’s okay. I’ve never been down here before. What’s that machine for?’
‘It measures the oxygen level in arterial blood.’
‘Cool. And that one?’
‘It’s an X-ray for checking biopsy samples before we slice them up. Look, Bella, I really do have work to do.’
Bella glanced over her shoulder. She bit her lip. She looked at her watch. ‘Fine. I’m going…’
Except she didn’t. She loitered for another minute or two, staring around as if she was fascinated by everything she could see.
And then there was the sound of another person approaching and when the figure filled the doorframe, Kate felt the blood drain from her head, leaving her feeling faintly dizzy and rather ill.
‘Oh, Bella…’ The words were a whisper. ‘What have you done?’
Connor felt terrible.
It wasn’t his hip that was bothering him.
That felt a lot better. He’d been stood down from working today but he hadn’t gone home like he probably should have.
He’d gone and got a few hours of restless sleep in an on-call room.
Then he’d given in and taken a painkiller and had had a few hours of much better quality sleep.
Now he needed a shave and something to eat but he knew it wouldn’t make him feel good because it wasn’t anything physical that he was having trouble dealing with.
It was the fact that he’d been such a coward.
Kate had given him an easy way out and he’d taken it.
Not immediately, of course. He’d stayed there in her bedroom that night, having got dressed again, and he’d paced about, staring at the statement being made by the closed door of that en suite bathroom.
He would stay, he decided. They couldn’t leave things like this.
They needed to talk about it.
But where would he start?
How on earth could he hope to undo even part of so much damage? He’d been horrified enough that Kate had lived with an abusive father, but he’d been confident that he could handle that.
Fix her, even.
But this – the knowledge that she’d been raped… that she could only bear a man’s intimate touch by distancing herself as though she was performing an autopsy?
That had been overwhelming. He didn’t think he could have been any more shocked, but he had been when Kate had mentioned the baby.
Pregnant as the result of a rape? Unthinkable.
What had she done? Had the pregnancy terminated? Had the baby adopted? Had a miscarriage because her father had beaten her up when he’d found out about the pregnancy?
Did it actually matter?
No. What mattered was that it seemed to have been as damaging as the rape because Connor had known that, however it had been conceived, that baby had been loved.
I lost it, was all she’d said. And she’d lost so much more than that, hadn’t she?
She’d lost – or maybe she’d never discovered – the joy of sex.
She’d lost a part of her family. She might have been broken in a different way from what he had been, but the result was eerily similar.
An aversion to the kind of closeness that could bring pain in its wake.
He was better off than she was, though, wasn’t he?
At least the release and pleasure of sex was something he’d enjoyed all his adult life.
Yeah… Kate’s history was worse than his own. All the more disturbing because he could understand the space it had left her in. A walled-off space.
A barrier that was far more solid than the door of that bathroom.
Kate didn’t want him to still be there when she came out and Connor could finally understand why Kate had such a need to be in control of what was around her. It was why her house was so perfect and why she kept people at such a distance.
If he was still there, he would be undermining that control and that would hardly be a good place to start, would it?
Besides, he’d needed to think.
And think he did. Long and hard. His head told him to back away.
But his heart wasn’t going to let him do that.
Funny how you could see something when it was happening to somebody else and it was only then that you recognised it was happening to you.
Kate was crippled by the fear of emotional pain that came from loving someone and losing them.
She couldn’t even go through the motions of expressing love physically because she had distanced herself from love far more than he had.
But she was missing out on the most important thing that life had to offer.
Not sex, though that was a part of it, certainly.
Kate was missing out on the joy of sharing her life. Of a loving relationship that brightened joy and dimmed sorrow. The strength that could come from being with someone who could understand. Who could give – and receive – love.
And so was he.
They could both get so much more out of life by taking that risk.
And maybe… just maybe… they could take it together.
He didn’t get a chance to get near Kate on Monday morning because he’d had such an early start for that bone-marrow collection procedure, and he’d felt far worse afterwards than he’d expected so had had no choice other than to go home for the day.
He’d come back this morning only to be told how awful he looked and, if he was limping that badly, there was no way he’d stay on his feet long enough to be able to operate safely.
So he’d slept. He’d taken the painkillers and slept well enough for the healing process to get properly under way. He might still be limping a bit but he could move.
He was moving. It was late in the day but, if he was in luck or it was meant to be, maybe Kate was working late. More slowly than he would have liked, Connor made his way down to the pathology department.
The look on Kate’s face would have frightened anybody.
This had been a bad idea, after all, but it was too late to do anything about it. Kevin Graham had followed her directions and turned up, after hours as instructed, to visit his daughter.
He was a much bigger man than Bella had anticipated and he looked nothing like she had expected. His clothes were scruffy and his face was hard, and he smelled like… like…
‘You’ve been drinking,’ Bella gasped. ‘You told me you were doing the twelve steps. That you hadn’t had anything to drink for years.’
‘Hadn’t.’ Kevin walked further into the lab, his gait only mildly unsteady. He waved a paper bag he was holding in one hand, screwed up at the top so he didn’t lose his grip on the bottle it contained. ‘Just needed a bit of, you know, Dutch courage.’
He was smiling but it didn’t do anything to make him a more appealing figure. ‘Hello, Katherine. Long time no see. How’s things?’
‘Get out,’ Kate snarled. ‘Bella, get on the phone over there and call Security.’
‘Don’t do that.’ Kevin’s eyes narrowed as he walked closer. ‘That wouldn’t be very friendly, would it? Didn’t the girl tell you that I just wanted to say I was sorry?’
Kate took a step back. ‘Sorry? What for? Murdering my mother?’
Bella’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh, my God… you’re a murderer?’ She turned to Kate. ‘I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Kate. I really didn’t know…’
‘No.’ The word was clipped. ‘But now you do.’
‘I’m sorry. Alright?’ Kevin raised his voice. ‘I’ve done my time. You have to at least let me say that I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t have to do anything.’ Kate’s voice was cold. ‘I don’t want to hear you or see you ever again. Get out of here. Get out of my life.’
Kevin swore loudly and viciously. ‘I might have known,’ he said. ‘I’m wasting my time, aren’t I? You’re not going to listen to a thing I say. You’re just like your mother. Won’t listen. Won’t do as you’re told.’
Kevin was moving again. Walking towards Kate, who was edging behind an island bench in the middle of the lab. She looked terrified.
Bella had had enough. She had caused this horrible situation and she was going to do something about it. She darted in front of Kevin.
‘Get out,’ she said. ‘You can’t stay here. You shouldn’t have come.’ Bella glared at the man. Her grandfather? No. It was unbelievable.
Kevin’s hand shot out so fast Bella didn’t see it coming.
The slap was enough to knock her off her feet and make her ears ring.
She pushed herself up. Kate was trying to reach the phone on the wall near the door.
Kevin was clearly planning to prevent her.
Bella stepped behind him but Kevin must have heard her coming because he turned and gave her a shove that sent her flying again.
‘Get out, Bella,’ Kate shouted. ‘Get help. Now.’
Connor was halfway along a deserted corridor in the basement of St Pat’s when he saw a figure hurtle through the department door and fall to the floor, uttering a cry of pure fear. Ignoring the stab of pain, Connor picked up speed until he was running.
He could see it was Bella, but that wasn’t what made him run faster.
Instinct told him that it was Kate who was in trouble somehow.
He’d put his life on the line if that’s what it would take to keep Kate safe.
He couldn’t do anything else.
Because it was in that moment of time that he realised just how much he loved her.