Quintin Jardine - Gallery Whispers

'You've had to shoot someone before, haven't you.'

He nodded. 'Twice. The first time was the night Mario was hit.

Afterwards we never knew who actually killed the guy, whether it was Brian or me. We both hit him, more than once. The second time…

I'd rather not talk about.'

'Does the experience still affect you?'

'There's the odd bad dream. If it gets to you too badly, you'll never carry a firearm again. At my rank, I suppose in theory I don't have to.

But if I'd made that choice…' in spite of himself, he shuddered.

'We wouldn't be sitting here right now,' she said.

'Nah! I've got faith in you. You'd have popped Hawkins and Ventnor would have put his hands up and we'd have walked away.'

'Yeah,' she muttered, suddenly bitter. 'And I'd have had to go into the witness box and give evidence with him in the dock, and his brief digging up all sorts of stuff about my sex life. Better the bastard's dead. Except that…' Her voice cracked and she looked away.

He took her hand, enfolding it in his. 'When you really mean that,' he said softly, 'you really will be all right.

'You know, we're wounded soldiers, you and me, with a terrible thing in common. We've just got to make the best of it.'

'I suppose so.' She looked up at him again, and gave his hand a quick squeeze. 'Andy,' she asked, hesitantly. 'I don't fancy being alone tonight. Would it be bad for discipline if I came home with you?

Just this once, of course.'

He looked at her, and he knew that he would never really be the old Andy Martin again, however hard he tried. His disappearance had had nothing to do with his engagement to Alex, either. That man had died on a black night in another place.

'Just this once,' he replied, 'I think it would be for the best.'

Olive Mcllhenney was watching the television in the corner of the living room, but with little interest. She knew that upstairs in her daughter's bedroom, Spencer and Lauren would be glued to the small portable set, expanding their encyclopaedic knowledge of Coronation Street, but since the onset of her illness the characters had seemed flat and the storylines boring, in comparison with her own real-life drama.

Still she watched it, though, for something to do while she waited, hoping all the while that her visitor would be on time, since she felt ill-equipped for the mounting tension which she was experiencing.

When Neil had wanted to call the visit off, her insistence that she had got over her earlier setback was a little short of the truth.

She looked at the clock as the doorbell rang, and saw that her visitor was in fact a minute early. Carefully, in the slow steady way which had been forced upon her, she rose and walked out to open the door. 'Ms dark,' she said. 'Good to see you; good of you to come.'

'Call me Penelope, please,' said the woman, as she stepped inside.

'It's no problem at all. I'm free every night for the rest of this week.'

'Come on through, then.' Olive ushered her through into the lounge, pointing her at the comfortable sofa. There was a coffee table between it and her chair, and on it sat a bottle of red wine and two glasses.

'Have a glass with me,' she insisted. 'My list of pleasures is a bit curtailed, but I'm still okay for sex and drink. I insist on quality in both respects, so this is pretty decent stuff.' She smiled as she filled both glasses most of the way to the top.

'Cheers,' said Penelope dark, taking a sip. 'I'm glad to hear that you're trying to live as normal a life as you can. That's very important.

Now, what exactly did you want to talk to me about; woman to woman, as you said?'

Olive took a breath, stopping short of the point of pain. 'I need some lifestyle advice, Penelope,' she began, cautiously. 'I have every confidence in Deacey and in my treatment, but I'm under no illusions that Neil and I will ever walk up another Munro together.

'When this thing,' she tapped her chest, 'is battered into remission, what will I be able to do? What plans can I make? Can I go back to the classroom, can I have another baby if I want? How physically fit am I going to be?'

The other woman looked at her, running her hand over her ashblonde hair, playing for time as she considered her answer. 'My dear,' she began, 'I don't think you should be under any illusions here. If you get some degree of remission, for a period of years even, you will never be fit enough to teach again. As for having a child, if you ever fell pregnant, you'd be advised to terminate.

'You'll have a life, oh yes. But in all honesty I can't say that you're likely to be able to do much more than you can now.'

Olive threw back her head. 'Jesus,' she whispered. 'This is it?'

'I'm afraid so.'

'But I find this hard to take as it is.' Her fists clenched. 'I tell you this, Penelope,' she exclaimed, as if she had been goaded beyond endurance, at last, by her fate. 'If it got any worse, I could not stand it.

The idea of a slow steady decline, with Neil and the kids having to watch, with him having to do the most personal things for me… the thought of that appals me.

'I will do anything to avoid that. I tell you, if it happened, I'd climb into a nice hot bath and cut my wrists.' Her voice rose, until she broke off in a paroxysm of coughing.

'Ssh, ssh,' said her visitor, soothingly. 'Don't even think such a thing. That would be awful for them. Imagine Neil coming in and finding you: worse still, imagine if it were Spencer or Lauren. If they saw something like that it would mark them for life.'

'What else can I do?' Olive shot back, her breathing restored. 'The hospital never gives you enough drugs to off yourself. I've noticed; they're damn careful about that. But if it comes to it I'll find a way, suppose I have.to shuffle down to the Waverley Station and chuck myself in front of a train.'

Penelope dark picked up her glass and took another sip. 'There is a way,' she said, quietly, 'that would be less painful for Neil and the children; and most of all for you.'

'What's that? Neil has so much crap in the garage that I couldn't get the car in to do a hosepipe job.'

The woman on the settee shook her head. 'That's not what I meant.

Listen; I'm a doctor. Olive. If it did come to it, and you were really sure, I'd be prepared to help you.'

'How?' The word was slow and feather-soft.

'I'm about the hospital a lot. I have access to drugs; I could prescribe, or procure, something sufficiently powerful, painless and virtually instantaneous. If you could arrange for the children to stay with someone, as you've done before, and for your husband to be out one night, I could visit you.'

'But you'd get into trouble afterwards. You could go to jail, Penelope.'

'No, I'd arrange it so that it looked like you had committed suicide … which is, of course, exactly what you would have done.'

'Still,' Olive murmured. 'I don't know if I could let you do that.'

'That would be my ethical decision, not yours. All I would be doing would be offering you a better way to achieve something upon which you were already determined.

'You can spare Neil and your children from the thing you dread; you can do it humanely. I can offer you that choice. Olive. Whether you take it is up to you, but I think it's right that you should have it.'

'The trouble is, Dr dark,' said Neil Mcllhenney, as the kitchen door swung fully open, 'the law doesn't agree with you.' He stepped into the room, with Bob Skinner following behind. There was a dark bruise on the Deputy Chief Constable's forehead.

'I shouldn't apologise for setting you up like this, but I will,' the sergeant said. 'The truth is it was Olive's idea; when she heard what was at stake she insisted on doing this.'

Penelope dark looked at him, apprehensively. 'What do you mean,