The Magdalena Curse Read Online Free PDF Page A

problems much sooner than this. But at least she could establish whether there had been any bullying before Tuesday’s consultation.
     
    The first two hours of her Friday evening child-minding stint passed uneventfully. Then she heard a rumple of sound from above as though Adam had shifted and woken. She stood to go and check on him, alert to further sound, but there was none. A feeling of dread overcame her then. There was nothing obvious to provoke it. But her skin pricked into gooseflesh and her scalp itched coldly, and it took all the willpower and resolution she possessed to make her legs climb the stairs to Adam’s snug little room.
    She pushed open the door. Moonlight bathed the scene. It was monochromatic, bleeding the brightness from the pictures on the wall, making a drab shroud of the duvet cover on the bed, turning the water in his bedside carafe a gloomy tainted colour.
    He was seated upright on the bed. His mouth was stretched in a pantomimic leer. His long hair had been twisted into two careful plaits and there was a look of cunning and wariness in his eyes so dismaying on the face of a ten-year-old child that her own hand rose to cover her open mouth at the shock of it.
    He laughed. It was a snigger, vindictive, high-pitched. ‘Hello,’ he said.
    He had addressed her.
    She swallowed. She did not reply.
    His head jerked to one side as though in some mad impulse of sympathy. ‘Are you still angry with me, pretty doctor?’
    The voice coming out of the child spoke English, heavily accented. ‘Boom,’ it said. It paused. ‘The rifle I used was a Barrett Light. A Barrett Light is a sniper’s weapon. It is British. And it is the best in the world.’ Adam’s arms jerked up like someone aiming a gun and one of his eyes closed as he looked along an imaginary sight. His tongue protruded in concentration and was then slowly withdrawn as the smile returned. A finger squeezed a phantom trigger. ‘Boom,’ the voice said. ‘That was all it took, pretty doctor. The range was eight hundred metres. No distance for a Barrett Light. A routine shot. And your boyfriend’s head exploded like a pumpkin under a hammer blow.’
    ‘Adam?’
    ‘Busy,’ the voice said. ‘Unavailable.’ The child’s face contrived a lascivious wink and the body reclined on the bed and the sniper closed his eyes and rested.
    Later, when she was sure the boy slept, Elizabeth came back to the room and unravelled the plaits in his hair and combed it out. She did not want Mark Hunter to see the physical interference inflicted on his son. Then she went back downstairs and, goaded by her memories and the grief rekindled, she wept. She was still struggling for composure when she heard Hunter’s key in the lock, a few minutes after midnight.
    He took off his suit coat and unfastened his tie, then came and sat down in the chair facing hers. He had noticed straight away that something was wrong. He was sober and she was glad of the fact. Probably he had drunk reluctantly, glancing
often at his wristwatch, impatient for the time when he could respectably go home. She remembered that she’d felt a stab of pity for him, putting on his tie to go to the local pub. It was a few hours and a lifetime ago. The world had shifted since then. Her sympathies now were engaged with bigger things.
    ‘Should I go up?’
    ‘No. He’s sleeping now. He needs a long sleep, I think, or he will wake exhausted.’
    ‘Something happened?’
    ‘Another escalation.’ It was ironic, using the terminology of war to describe what had occurred. ‘How many men have you killed, Mark?’
    He looked at her for a long moment. ‘Some would argue there’s a philosophical distinction between the deaths you inflict with your own hands and those you delegate. I would not. The answer to your question is too many.’
    ‘And now you’re being punished for it, through your son.’
    ‘Except you don’t believe that, doctor.’
    ‘Shortly after I qualified, I volunteered with