Prologue

NOT ONLY was the house in total darkness when he arrived, he found that none of the light switches worked, so the mains must’ve been shut off or fused at the box in the basement. Using the meagre light from his mobile phone, he bounded up the stairs to the master bedroom. He found his wife’s ravaged body lying spread-eagled on the bed. She felt cold to the touch as he tried to locate the carotid artery with trembling fingertips. Nothing, he could feel no discernible pulse. He keyed in 999 on his mobile phone and placed it on the bed. He lifted her chin to open up her airway, placed his interlocked hands on the centre of her breastbone and started to apply rhythmic pressure to her heart.

The phone asked in answer to his call with a comfortingly efficient female voice, “Which service do you require?”

“Ambulance and police, my wife has suffered a frenzied attack at home and is not breathing, no trace of pulse and is cold to the touch. I am applying CPR. My name is Timothy Smith; address 191 Carson Drive, Halifax. Please hurry, she’s six, almost seven months’ pregnant.” The voice at the end of the line was calm and comforting and she continued to ask questions and update him with information, assuring him that the emergency services requested were on their way. Timothy Smith answered all her questions automatically, keeping up the heart massage, puffing breath into her lungs and occasionally checking unsatisfactorily for his wife’s response in breathing for herself. The voice from the phone droned on, keeping their tenuous contact going while help was still on its way. He could smell the overwhelming odours, of sex, urine, blood and defecation which filled the room, until they were stifling to his senses. He could smell his own fear of loosing his wife and unborn child too; almost taste its metallic taint in his hot, dry mouth. In the dim light from the upturned mobile phone he could see that the bed was covered in wet stains and blood and was awash with the overwhelming pungency of urine. His poor wife’s heavily pregnant body was covered in bruises and bite marks. His eyes were filling up with moisture and it was difficult for him to focus his vision. His unbidden tears dripped off his cheeks and splashed onto the backs of his rhythmically working hands, pumping air in and out of her lungs and, hopefully, into her bloodstream, keeping her alive ... as well as their baby.

While he worked methodically awaiting the ambulance he thought back to the call he received on his mobile only minutes earlier, the possibly disguised, certainly male but unrecognisable voice urging him to get home to his bedroom, telling him his wife was in mortal danger. He had been in the car on his way home from work anyway, with the intention of collecting a Chinese takeaway and a bag of chips from her favourite chippie for her, an Indian curry for himself. Once he had received the call, he headed home directly, which was normally just five or six minutes away, he made it in less than three. He just hoped he was in time, because she ... they, his wife and baby now ... were his whole life.