Part 12 (1/2)

'Am I OK?'

'Yes, nothing broken.' She has a pleasant Northumberland burr. 'But you've knocked your poor face something awful. You've got a couple of beautiful black eyes but no fractures. But that's why I had to wake you. We have to do observations every few hours, just to make sure you've not had a funny turn in the night.'

'I was asleep,' I say stupidly, and then rub my face. It hurts as if I've headb.u.t.ted a window.

'Careful now,' the nurse says. 'You've got a few cuts and bruises.'

I rub my feet, feeling the grime and grit and blood. I feel disgusting. I need a pee.

'Can I have a shower?' I ask. My head feels bleary.

There is an ensuite in the corner of the room, I can see. The nurse looks down at the chart at the foot of the bed. 'Let me ask the doctor. I'm not telling you no, but I'd like to just make sure.'

She turns to go, and I catch sight of the silhouette outside the door, and it comes back to me: the conversation I heard last night. It has a nightmarish quality. Was it really true? Did I really hear what I thought I heard, or did I dream it?

'Wait,' I say. 'Wait, last night I heard the people outside-'

But she's gone already, the door flapping back behind her with a gust of food smells and sounds from the corridor. As she walks out the policewoman outside catches at her arm and I hear a burst of conversation, and see the nurse shaking her head emphatically. 'Not yet,' I hear, '... permission from the doctor ... have to wait.'

'I don't think you appreciate,' the policewoman's voice is low but her tones are clipped and clear as a newsreader's, and her words filter through the gla.s.s much more distinctly than the nurse's northern burr. 'That this is now a homicide investigation.'

'Och, no!' The nurse is shocked. 'The poor love didn't make it, then?'

'No.'

So it's true. I didn't imagine it. It wasn't some product of too much morphine and my battered head.

It's true.

I struggle up against the pillows, my heart pounding in my throat, and on the monitor to my left I see the little green line leaping with panicked jerks against the flatline.

Someone is definitely dead.

Someone is dead.

But who?

16.

'WELCOME TO TUCKETT'S wood,' the man said in a slightly bored Australian accent. He was tanned and chiselled and reminded me slightly of Tom Cruise and from the way Flo was gazing at him, her green eyes wide and her mouth slightly open, I could tell that I wasn't the only one seeing the resemblance. 'My name's Grig, and I'll be your instructor here today.'

He stopped, seeming to count heads and then said, 'Hang about, I've got six here on my booking. Someone gone AWOL?'

'Yes,' Flo said tightly. 'Someone certainly has. No prizes for guessing who I'll be imagining when I open fire.'

'So we're five then today?' the instructor said easily, not seeming to notice Flo's tense annoyance. 'Fair dos. Right, first off I have to tell you about our safety precautions ...'

He began a long speech about ear defenders, alcohol, the responsibilities of gun owners.h.i.+p and so on.

Once we'd established that, yes, we were all complete beginners, no, none of us held a shotgun licence, and yes, we were all aged over eighteen and sober, we signed a long waiver form and trooped through into the back half of the outward-bound centre, where the instructor sized us up.

'All I can say is, thank G.o.d you're none of you wearing pink feather boas and all that malarky. You wouldn't believe the trouble we have with hen parties. You,' he pointed at Flo, 'Flo, was it? Your jacket's a bit thin. You probably want something a bit thicker against the recoil.' He dug around in a chest behind him and fished out a padded Barbour. Flo made a face but put it on.

'Sorry, I have to ask,' she said as she zipped it up. 'Is your name really Grig? Is that a nickname?'

'Nah, Grig. Short for Grigory.'

'Oh, Greg,' Flo said, and laughed a little too loudly. Greg gave her a slightly odd look.

'Yeah, Grig. That's what I said. Now the thing to remember,' he continued, getting out a broken shotgun and laying it on a trestle table, 'is that a gun is a wippon designed to kill. Never forget that. Treat it with respect, and it'll treat you with respect. Mess around with it, and like as not, you'll be the one that ends up messed up. And most important of all, never, never point a gun at anyone, loaded or unloaded. And if you get a misfire, don't go looking down the barrel to see what happened. All this sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how often people don't obey simple safety precautions.

'Right. Now we're gonna run through a few basics about loading, closing and breaking the gun, and then we'll head out into the wood and try a few clays. Any questions, just shout. Now the first cartridges we'll be shooting with today ...'

We all listened in silence as he talked through the technicalities, the silliness of the car journey quite gone. I was glad to have something to concentrate on, glad to stop thinking about Clare and James, and I got the impression that the others felt the same, or at least most of them. Nina and Clare had both changed the subject when Flo had tried to start discussing the honeymoon plans. Tom had said nothing, and had spent most of the remaining car journey tapping away on his Blackberry, but I saw his quick glance up at me and Clare, and I knew that he was filing all this away.

If you write about this, I thought, I will f.u.c.king kill you, but I said nothing, just nodded as Greg said something about automatic traps.

At last the talk was done and we all followed Greg and trooped out of the hut into the spa.r.s.e pine wood, our guns broken and hooked over our arms.

'Hey, if you enjoy this, maybe you should put a shotgun on the wedding list!' Flo said to Clare, and gave her loud braying laugh. 'Shotgun wedding in the most literal sense, huh?'

Clare laughed. 'I think James'd kill me if I started messing around with the gift list now. It took the best part of a day in John Lewis to get it whittled down to what we've got now. You wouldn't believe the arguments we had just choosing a coffee maker took about two hours. Is a Heston Blumenthal endors.e.m.e.nt a plus or a minus? Do we need a milk frother? Should we get bean-to-cup, or one of those pod machines-'

'Oh bean-to-cup, surely?' Tom interrupted. 'George Clooney can say what he likes, but pods are so Noughties. They're the soda stream de nos jours. Catchy, but fundamentally pointless and inconvenient.'

'You sound exactly like James!' Clare said. 'But then bean-to-cup is all very well, but what do you do if the grinder goes? That was my argument. You're stuck with a useless machine. Whereas if you get a separate grinder-'

'True, true,' Tom said nodding. 'So what did you decide?'

'Well, I'm a tea gal, as you know. James is the coffee fiend. So I gave him the casting vote and he went for the Sage by Heston Blumenthal bean-to-cup.'

'Bruce looked at one of those last year. Hefty beast. And best part of six hundred quid from what I remember?'

'About that,' Clare agreed.

Nina caught my eye and went cross-eyed. I tried to keep my face expressionless, but my heart was with her. Six hundred pounds for a coffee machine? I like coffee, but six hundred pounds? And on a gift list too. I knew she meant nothing by it, but there was something unintentionally offensive about Clare's casual a.s.sumption that people could spend that much on her. Or would want to.

Or maybe it was James's a.s.sumption.

The thought left a bad taste in my mouth.

'Right,' Greg called as the trees thinned out into a large gra.s.sy clearing. There was a little breeze-block wall over the far side. 'Everybody hold up here. Now the kind of cartridge that we'll be using today,' Greg said, with the air of someone reciting a well-worn spiel, 'is 7.5. This is a good mid-range type of shot, suitable for pretty much all types of clay shooting, whether that's sport, skeet or trap. This,' he held up a cartridge, 'is a live 7.5 round, with the shot itself packed into the tip-' he tapped the rounded end, '-the wad in the centre, and the gunpowder and primer at this metal end here. Now, before we get going, I'm gonna show you the effects of a cartridge full of 7.5 on a human body.'

'Don't be asking for volunteers next!' Flo hooted.