Dead Tomorrow

further along the corridor, then outside into the deserted yard and the freezing air. She looked around frantically, shouting again, ‘CAITLIN!’
    Choked with tears, she went back in and ran along the corridor into the office suite, throwing open door after door. There were just offices. Startled administration staff looked up from their work stations. She opened another door and saw a small back staircase. She sprinted up it and at the top saw a heavy fire door with the words STERILE AREA. STRICTLY NO UNAUTHORIZED ADMITTANCE across it.
    It was unlocked and she went through into what felt, and smelled like a hospital corridor. There was another door ahead, with a hand-cleansing unit, on the wall outside. Ignoring that, she opened the door and stepped in.
    It was a small intensive care ward. There were six beds, three of them occupied, one by a long-haired man in his early forties, who might have been a rock singer, another by a boy of about Caitlin’s age and the third by a woman, in her late fifties Lynn estimated. All three were intubated with endotracheal and nasogastric tubes and plumbed into a forest of drip and monitoring lines from the battery of equipment surrounding each bed.
    Three nurses, in the same white uniform as Draguta had been wearing, stared up at her with suspicion from behind the central station.
    ‘I’m looking for my daughter, Caitlin,’ she said. ‘Have any of you seen her?’
    ‘Please leave,’ one saidin broken English. ‘No admission.’
    She backed out quickly, checked for more doors, saw one and pulled it open. It was a canteen and sitting room. She ran across and checked another door, but that opened on to an empty bathroom. Then she looked at her watch again.
    Less than five minutes.
    Surely they could give her a little more time? She had to be here.
    Had to.
    She dialled Caitlin’s mobile phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Then she stumbled back down the stairs, through the office suite and out of another door. She ran along a short passageway, then pushed open another door and suddenly found herself in the vast, marble-floored entrance lobby of the spa.
    There were people all around. Three women in white towelling dressing gowns and throw-away slippers were peering at a display of jewellery in a showcase. A man, similarly attired, was signing a form at one of the reception desks. Near him a woman in an elegant coat with a silk headsquare, her wheeled suitcase beside her, appeared to be checking in.
    She swept the entire room with her eyes in just a few seconds.
    No Caitlin.
    Then the two halves of the electric front door slid open with a sharp hiss. Six solid and determined-looking police officers all wearing body armour entered.
    Sheturned and ran.

119
    ‘The far end!’ Marlene Hartmann said to Grigore. ‘Down the end of the golf course, just past the eighth tee, there’s another exit. The police won’t know about it. It takes us out on to a lane. We can keep away from the main road for several miles. I know it works. I’ll direct you.’
    She sat in the back of the brown Mercedes, hands gripping the top of the passenger seat, anxiously looking all around her, breathing heavily, cursing. Cursing the damned Beckett woman and her little bitch daughter. Cursing the police. Cursing the panicky surgeon, Sirius.
    But mostly cursing herself. Her stupidity in thinking she could get away with this. Greed. It was like gambler’s folly. Not knowing when to quit.
    In front of her, Vlad Cosmescu was silent. He was having similar thoughts. Always at the roulette table–well, almost always, anyway–he knew when to quit. To walk away. To go home.
    He should have gone home last night. Then it would have been fine. Back home to Romania. He didn’t owe this woman anything. She just used him, the way everyone used him. The same way he used them. That was how the world worked, to him. Life wasn’t about loyalty, it was about survival.
    So why was he here?
    He knew theanswer. Because this woman had a spell on him. He wanted to conquer her, wanted to sleep with her. He thought that by being brave it would attract her.
    He swore silently. For ten years he had made money and kept free of the law.
    Stupid , he thought. Just so stupid.
    The car slewed and bumped over a mound, then, to the fury of two male golfers, drove straight over a green, between the balls they were waiting to putt out. Marlene clung on as the car dipped steeply, its suspension bottoming out, her head striking