Nicci French - Secret Smile

'Said he'd come for me.'

'What's he done to you?'

I felt him gently touching my face, stroking my hair, unfastening my shirt, assessing the damage.

'You're bleeding.'

I just groaned. He was looking around.

'There's blood on the… What the fuck did that bastard do to you? I'm calling the police. And an ambulance.'

'No,' I said, half raising myself and flinching at the pain it caused me. 'Don't… It's not…'

'What are you talking about?' Don said, almost angrily. 'I'm sorry, Miranda. I'm not listening to you.' I heard three little bleeps as he punched the numbers into his mobile phone. I sank back almost sobbing, partly with the pain, partly at the thought of what was to come.

I wasn't there when the police examined the room, when they dabbed at the blood on the wall and picked hairs off the carpet and put the knife in a plastic bag. I was grateful for that. It would be like the death of Troy all over again. I might have found it hard to retain control. Don told me about all that later. He had wanted to come with me in the ambulance, but a policeman told me he ought to stay and help to identify objects at the scene. What was mine, what was his and what was 'foreign'. Much, much later Don told me that he had been – in the midst of his distress – rather interested to see the scene-of-crime procedures with all their special gloves and tweezers and scalpels, plastic bags and labels, flash photography. He'd been rather excited to be on the inside of the tape that was shutting the crime scene off from the outside world.

Meanwhile I had been taken away in an ambulance with a female police officer for company. She was like a free pass that took me to the front of the queue. I was led through a waiting area full of people who, whatever their injuries, were inordinately interested in me – a young woman being led by two nurses and a uniformed police officer. What could have happened to me? They would probably have to wait hours. Within two minutes I was being examined by a young doctor and a nurse. A minute later he stepped aside when a consultant in a white coat and a spotted tie arrived. I felt nervous, as you do with doctors.

He examined my face and the inside of my mouth.

'What were you struck with?' he said.

'A wall,' I said.

'Do you know who did this?' he asked.

I nodded. He turned to the police officer.

'You'll need to photograph this. The neck as well.'

'He's on his way,' said the WPC.

'We'll be taking an X-ray, but the cheekbone is probably fractured.'

I gave a cry because as he said it he had given a dab on my cheek with his finger, as if to test his theory. He shone a light into my eyes and into my ears. He held up his finger and asked me to look at the point as he moved it around.

'Were you sexually assaulted?' he asked.

'No.'

Even so, he asked me to take off my clothes so that he could examine me. The female police officer said that she was called Amy O'Brien and did I mind if she were present for the examination. I shook my head. As I took my clothes off, she said that she would need them for evidence. Was that all right?

'What am I going to wear?'

'We'll get you a nightie,' the doctor said.

'Your, erm… you know…' said Amy.

'My boyfriend.'

'Could he bring you some clothes?'

'I guess so.'

I was X-rayed and I was photographed and then I was taken to a private room with a vase without flowers and a window without a view. The doctor said they wanted to keep me under observation for a night. Amy said that they would like to take a statement. They said they could wait if I didn't feel well enough, but the sooner I could manage it the better. I said I could do it immediately. Things were happening so quickly. Within the hour a detective knocked on my door, took his jacket off and removed a sheaf of paper from his bag. He was called Seb Brett and he looked pale, as if he were kept in the dark. He pulled a small table alongside my bed and started to take dictation.

Now things became slow. It was like being back at school. He took my name, my address and my date of birth. He laced his fingers together and pulled them back sharply in that unpleasant way that makes the joints crackle like dry sticks of wood.

'Now,' he said. 'From the beginning.'

There was no pressure of time, no shortage of paper. I gave him the story in every detail: Brendan ringing at the door, forcing his way inside, grabbing the back of my head and slamming my face into the wall, pulling the knife from somewhere and pushing it against my throat, my pleading, his smile and telling me that this was the end, then the sound of the door, Brendan jumping up in alarm, running, I couldn't see where. It had only taken a few minutes, but it took a couple of hours and fourteen pages to make the statement. At the end I was exhausted, but Detective Brett asked me to read it through and sign at the end of each page. My words seemed different in Seb Brett's rounded, precise handwriting. They were all mine, but he had selected particular phrases and made alterations. It wasn't inaccurate, but it sounded a bit like something translated by a computer into another language and then back into English by another computer. I found it difficult to concentrate, so this was a slow process as well. Halfway through there was a knock at the door. I felt a spasm of something not good. It was Rob Pryor.

'Miranda,' he said. 'I just heard. I came straight over. How are you?'

'Shaken,' I said.

'I'm not surprised.' He walked over to the bed and picked up the pages I'd finished with. 'Do you mind?'

I looked across at Brett, who just gave a shrug. So I said I didn't mind. This was even worse. I read the pages with Rob reading the earlier pages beside me. I kept losing my place, so he quickly caught up with me. Each time I signed a page, he would take it from me and read it with a tut-tutting sound that I found infuriating. I signed the last page and passed it over to Pryor, but he gave it straight back.

'You need to sign it immediately where the text ends,' he said. 'Just here.'

'Why?'

'So some wicked policeman can't add a bit at the end saying "I woke up and it was all a dream", and you would have signed it off.'

I signed my name hard against the last word, which was 'police'.

'How did you get here so quickly?' I asked.

'Mr Block is being questioned. He rang me.'

'But what are you doing here?'

'As you very well know, I've been involved with him previously, so it seemed like a good idea to have continuity…'

'But you're making it sound like he's your client.'

'Not at all,' he replied brusquely.

I turned to Brett.

'Is this legal?' I said. 'Pryor is a friend of Brendan's.'

Brett looked quizzical. Pryor walked across and they had a whispered conversation that I couldn't quite hear. It went on for several minutes with puzzled looks from Brett. At the end of it he nodded and looked at me.

'DI Pryor has asked if he can have a quick word with you. Is that all right?'

'What about?'

'It'll only take a minute,' Pryor said.

'I don't believe this,' I said, looking at Brett. 'Do you realize who this man is? This is like letting Brendan's lawyer come in and nobble me when everything has just happened. I just can't… I've just been attacked.'

'I was telling Seb about your previous connection with Mr Block.'

'So?'

Pryor walked across and sat by my bed. It was like having Brendan himself there. His proximity made me want to gag. He looked at me closely. I held his gaze.

'It looks nasty, Miranda,' he said. 'It must hurt.'

I didn't reply.

'What time did the attack happen?' he said.

'You've read the statement.'

'Your boyfriend made the call at – what was it? – five past seven this evening.'