Page 54 of Into the Fire

‘Jesus Christ, that wasneverpart of the deal!’Firth exploded.‘You explicitly told me that everything would be above board.’

‘And in an ideal world itwouldbe.But you know how hard it is to get British workers to do these kinds of jobs and with legal migration restricted, now you have to be creative if you want to survive.’

‘Creative?Is that what you’re calling it?’

‘It really doesn’t matter how you dress it up.It’s the reality.I don’t like it any more than you do.’

‘Like hell you don’t!How much are you skimming off?How muchactuallymakes its way to your workforce?You’re taking us for a ride, a bloody ride.Well, I won’t have it.I won’t be scammed.’

What had she been expecting?A retreat?An apology?Leyla’s response when it came was acerbic and withering.

‘Oh, wake up, Rachel.What do you think this is?How onearth do you think we can charge you fifty per cent less than our rivals?How do you think you get these specialist services so cheap?’

Rachel Firth said nothing, stunned by the ferocity of the attack.She was supposed to be the boss, the one in charge, but it didn’t feel that way.

‘Don’t pretend you didn’t know that we’d have to cut corners, that we’d have to find inventive ways of fulfilling the brief.You knew, and what’s more, you were happy about it.I didn’t see you complaining when your profits soared on the back of the hard graft and ingenuity of entrepreneurs like me.You’re only in that fancy apartment because you were happy to turn a blind eye to what we do on your behalf.You’d do well to remember that.’

Now the contractor’s tone had a distinctly menacing edge, one which Firth found distinctly unnerving.

‘Alright, alright, there’s no need to fly off the handle,’ she backtracked quickly.‘But we do need to remedy the situation fast.Get rid of the van and sort out your workforce.We can’t have illegals working at the hospital.’

‘No can do, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m not asking, I’mtelling,’ Firth continued.‘I don’t want them at the hospital.’

‘Then the job won’t get done.And you’ll have to explain to the council, to the hospital management, why you’re reneging on your contract.Won’t do much for your precious reputation, especially if the local press were to pick up on your difficulties.’

The threat was clear as day this time, leaving her boxed into a corner.

‘Well, what would you suggest then?’she demanded.‘I can’t have this copper sniffing around me or Regus.’

‘I’d suggest you letmedeal with this,’ came the cool response.‘My own way.’

The executive hesitated.She didn’t like the sound of that at all, but what choice did she have?

‘What was the copper’s name?’Leyla demanded, her voice laced with menace.

Once more, Firth hesitated, fearful of what she was getting herself into, before reluctantly replying:

‘Detective Inspector Helen Grace.’

Chapter 59

She stared out at the raging sea, her emotions in riot.

Even before the freight train cleared the crossing, Helen had known that the chase was over, the van having vanished into the night.Abandoning the hunt, her body still shaking with the shock of her near miss, Helen had sped from the scene, racing back towards the city.Her first instinct had been to head home, but somehow she couldn’t face the crushing silence of her flat tonight, where she would be assaulted by her own thoughts and fears.Eschewing that idea, she instead considered plunging into the bars and clubs in the centre, losing herself in the noise, energy and vibrancy of the late-night scene.In times gone by this would have been appealing, but the thought of all that alcohol-fuelled happiness sickened her, so instead she headed south, skirting the edge of the New Forest as she raced towards Calshot.

She had been down this lonely road before, sometimes in a professional capacity, sometimes as a speed-loving biker, bursting free of the city’s confines.Some of her visits here had been shocking and traumatic, others exhilarating and liberating, but it was neither agony nor ecstasy that she was seeking tonight.Instead, she wanted to free herself from her confines, to try and banish the insistent, nagging fears that threatened to assailher and, as she marched away from her bike across the shingle, battered by the howling wind, whipped by the vicious sea spray, she did for a moment feel part of something bigger than herself.Standing on the beach on this remote spit of land, she was able to fool herself that her issues, her problems, were trivial, insignificant next to the sheer majesty of nature.Framed by the huge sky and the vast, churning body of water, Helen seemed a tiny figure, a dot on the landscape, a curiosity.How she needed that feeling of space, of insignificance, now.

Yet try as she might to banish her woes, the same thought kept intruding.She had saved herself, she had saved her baby, rather than risking all in the pursuit of justice.Perhaps for the first time in her life, she had done the sensible thing, caution winning out.The mere thought of this hit her like the charging freight train that she had just avoided.She was physically shaking, finding it hard to breathe, the very basis of her existence seemingly under threat tonight.Dozens of times before she had encountered danger of far greater significance and not blinked.Her mind rocketed back to varied scenes of crisis – strangling her murderous assailant in a burning house, crashing through the shadowy New Forest in pursuit of a madman, plunging from the deck of a cargo ship towards inky black waters – shocked now at how little she’d cared for her own safety, how little she valued her life.Was this because of the strength of her calling?Or a marker of how little she thought of herself?Maybe it was both of these things, but either way she had never hesitated to put her body on the line to bring the guilty to justice.Now she found she could not, that suddenly there was something more important in her life.Was this the birth of maternal feelings?Was this the night when Helen discovered what it truly meant to be a mother?

It was impossible, an over-exaggeration, Helen scolding herselffor reading too much into a single incident.Maybe relenting had been the right thing to do.Perhaps if she hadn’t stopped she would have been seriously injured or even killed.And yet in her heart Helen knew this was post-rationalization, that there had been no forethought to her actions.She had acted purely on instinct, partly to save herself, but more to save the innocent child growing in her belly who had never asked to be put in danger, who’d never asked foranyof this.

This then was being a parent, a sudden and irrevocable shift in priorities, where the self had to surrender primacy to the greater good.Perhaps this shouldn’t feel unnatural or uncomfortable for Helen – she had, after all, always put others first, going beyond the call of duty to protect the innocent, the weak and the vulnerable.But it did and there was no disguising the deep disquiet she felt tonight.Rather than being the making of her, her pregnancy felt like it might be her undoing, unbalancing, confusing her, skewing a moral compass which had always been so clear.Was this it for her now?Would she spend the next nine months walking on eggshells, terrified to damage the growing child inside her?Would she retreat from the world now, retire from the fight, to nest alone until the baby came?Obviously this was a nonsense, yet what was the alternative, when she knew instinctively that she couldn’t casually, recklessly, endanger the baby’s life?

Part of Helen longed to share her burden, to appeal for help.She was sorely tempted to call Charlie, to feed off her experience of motherhood, to take advantage of their long-standing friendship to appeal for help and guidance.But how could she do that after their last conversation?Moreover, how could she admit the truth of her pregnancy to Charlie, when she couldn’t truly admit it to herself?

Staring out at the crashing waves, at the brooding swell ofthe sea, Helen knew she would have to face this alone, grapple with this burgeoning crisis by herself, as she had so many times before in her difficult and unpredictable life.Usually she met these challenges head-on, fighting fire with fire, praying that she could live with the outcome.But not this time.This was a challenge the like of which Helen had never faced before and although she would attempt to rise to it once more, in truth she had never felt so helpless, so lonely and soscaredas she did tonight.

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