Dead Man's Grip

able to go back to work?’
    ‘Yes, but not immediately and no heavy lifting. And – this is
very important – you will need to take a rest at some point during the day. We’ll have to keep a careful eye on you for the rest of the pregnancy.’
    ‘Could this happen again?’ Grace asked.
    ‘To be truthful, in 50 per cent of cases, no. But that means in 50 per cent of cases, yes. I run a three strikes and you’re out rule here. If there’s a second bleed, I will insist on further reductions to your fiancée’s workload, and depending on how the percreta condition develops, I may require Cleo to be hospitalized for the rest of her term. It’s not only the baby that is at risk in this situation.’ He turned to Cleo. ‘You are too.’
    ‘To what extent?’ Grace asked.
    ‘Placenta percreta can be life-threatening to the mother,’ the consultant said. He turned back to Cleo again. ‘If there is a third bleed, there is no doubt about it. You’ll have to spend the rest of your pregnancy in hospital.’
    ‘What about damage to our baby?’ Grace questioned.
    The consultant shook his head. ‘Not at this stage. What’s happened is that a part of the placenta is not working so well. The placenta is an organ, just like a kidney or a lung. The baby can lose some placenta without a problem. But if it loses too much it won’t grow well. And then, in extreme cases, yes, he or she can die.’
    Grace squeezed Cleo’s hand again and kissed her on the forehead, terrible thoughts churning inside him. He felt sick with fear. Bloody statistics. Percentages. Fifty per cent was crap odds. Cleo was so strong, so positive. They’d get through this. DC Nick Nicholl had been through something similar last year with his wife and the baby had ended up strong and healthy.
    ‘It’s going to be fine, darling,’ he said, but his mouth felt dry.
    Cleo nodded and managed a thin, wintry smile.
    Grace glanced at his watch, then turned to the doctors. ‘Could we have a few minutes together? I have to get to a meeting.’
    ‘Of course.’
    The doctors left the room.
    Roy nuzzled his face against Cleo’s and laid his hand gently on her midriff. Fear spiralled through him and he had a terrible sense
of inadequacy. He could do something about criminals, but it seemed at this moment that he couldn’t do a damned thing for the woman he loved or their unborn baby. Things were totally out of his hands.
    ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘I love you so much.’
    He felt her hand stroking his cheek. ‘I love you, too,’ she replied. ‘You’re soaking wet. Is it still raining?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Did you see the car? The Alfa?’
    ‘I had a brief look. I’m not sure if it’s practical.’ He stopped himself short of saying with a baby .
    He held her hand and kissed the engagement ring on her finger. It gave him a strange feeling every time he saw it, a feeling of utter joy, yet always tinged with foreboding. There was still one big obstacle in the way of their actually getting married: the minefield of formalities that had to be gone through before his wife, Sandy, missing for ten years now, could be declared legally dead.
    He was being scrupulously careful to tick every box in the process. On the instructions of the registrar, he had recently had notices placed in the local Sussex newspapers and the national press, requesting Sandy, or anyone who might have seen her in the past ten years, to contact him. So far, no one had.
    A fellow officer and friend, and his wife, were both sure they had seen Sandy in Munich, while on holiday there the previous summer, but despite alerting his German police contacts and travelling over there himself, nothing more had come of it, and he was increasingly certain that his friend and his wife were mistaken. Nevertheless, he had declared this to the registrar, who had requested that he also place notices in the appropriate German newspapers, which he had now done.
    He’d had to swear an affidavit listing all the people he had made enquiries with, including the last person who had seen Sandy alive. That had been a colleague at the medical centre where she worked part-time, who had seen her leaving the office at 1 p.m. on the day she vanished. He’d had to include information about all police enquiries and which of her work colleagues and friends he had
contacted. He’d also had to swear that he had searched the house after she had gone and had found nothing missing, other than her handbag and her