Free The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill Page A

arrest once the docs have discharged him.”
    “Shame.”
    “You’ll get your chance.”
    “One thing though.”
    “What?”
    “Ed stands for Edwina.”
    He heard a long intake of breath.
    Simon glanced sideways at her shoe, a black flat slip-on with a small bit of gold chain across the front. Not a man’s shoe, just as the hands clutching her head were not man’s hands, they were slim, soft, nicely shaped hands with neatly trimmed oval, unpainted nails. The hair he could see between her fingers was shining with rain, dark as a seal’s back.
    He had often looked at killers and understood what made them tick, seen violence pent up in their bodies, seen eyes wild with rage in deranged faces. Once or twice he had been puzzled. The Lafferton serial killer had been a psychopath, unable to feel empathy or emotion, self-absorbed, with a hidden agenda of his own. But this time, next to a young woman, terrified, sick, hunched down into a small slight figure against the wind and rain, this time, he was completely bewildered, lost for any explanation, any link between her and the abduction, torture, murder of young children. He could get no hold on it at all.
    They heard the noise long before they could see the yellow bird emerge out of the grey mass of cloud and water. The blades churned up the air, seeming to chop it about and hurl it at them like clods of wet earth.
    Sleightholme stood up suddenly.
    “Get down. Stay absolutely still.”
    “I’m not going in that fuckin’ thing, I’ll jump off here before that.” Her face was streaming with water, but her mouth was set, her eyes looking wildly about.
    “Stay STILL.”
    She lunged out without warning and grabbed atSerrailler’s shoulder and he rocked, desperately trying to steady them both. Above them, the noise of the helicopter seemed to have broken through his eardrums into his skull. She jabbed out a hand again, fingers clasped open like a claw. He caught it and wrenched her wrist back so that he saw her mouth open in pain. He needed handcuffs and had none.
    Then the helicopter began to retreat, the noise muffled in the cloud bank again.
    “What the fuck is going on?” he shouted.
    Seconds later his phone rang. He was holding on to the woman and his hand was slippery, so that he all but dropped it.
    “Yes?”
    “They’ve backed off because they need to know whether there is any chance she’d be a threat to safety if she’s winched on board. Any weapon or potential weapon?”
    “How do I bloody know?”
    “Well, ask, dammit. Cigarette lighter, pen even …”
    “Better assume so then.”
    “OK. They saw a struggle … We’ve no view of you from up here. Is that correct?”
    “Nothing serious. Just tell them to get us off this bloody ledge.”
    “They won’t take someone who is a risk to the safety of the crew and the chopper. Can you vouch that the woman is not?”
    Serrailler hesitated. He could not. Ed was a woman, small and slight, easily overpowered, but she was also furious and terrified, and without much to lose. Heknew he ought not to guarantee anything, but if he didn’t, then what? There was no other way they could be brought to safety. It would be some hours yet before the tide had receded enough for them to be able to clamber down to the sand.
    He clicked off his phone and turned to the woman.
    “Listen. I have to guarantee that you have no weapon, and that you will not behave in a manner calculated to jeopardise anyone’s safety—mine and that of the helicopter crew. I must be bloody mad to ask for your word on that.”
    “And if you don’t? If I don’t?” She looked at him and he saw a flash of malice in her eyes. It had not been there before.
    “If you refuse to cooperate?”
    She nodded.
    “I’ll knock you out.”
    She blinked.
    “Or else they’ll take me and leave you.”
    “They wouldn’t bloody dare.”
    “Oh yes they would. That’s what the call was about. So?”
    He saw her thinking furiously. Looking down over the