Sins of the Fathers by Patricia Hall Page B

heavily bandaged. An inch to the left and the bullet which had creased her skull would probably have killed her, the nurse had told her the day before. Emma had been lucky, but perhaps not lucky enough. The bullet wound in her back had required major surgery and her life still hung on a thread. Val guessed that the gunman supposed her dead when he left her bleeding on the floor. Judging by the way he had pumped her sister’sbody full of bullets, there seemed little doubt as to his intention to kill the whole family. Emma’s survival was some sort of miracle, although Val doubted that she would see it that way if she ever regained consciousness.
    She took the chair by the bed and gazed sightlessly at the floor. The child hovering between life and death had only deepened the pall which the original shooting had caused throughout CID and although she had perfected a stoic face for the rest of the world, she was not immune. The usual motives for murder – lust, greed, revenge, sudden anger – she could at least comprehend. Parents who turned their rage on their children she could not. Emma’s mother and father should be sitting here, holding her hand and willing her to live, she thought angrily, not a police officer she would not recognise if she ever did open her eyes again. It was the ultimate betrayal.
    She glanced at her watch. She was late for the start of her shift at police HQ but she was reluctant to move on. The silent, immobile child in the hospital bed pulled her back to the ward at every opportunity and she knew that her anxieties were not only for Emma herself. If the child recovered she guessed that the physical damage would eventually heal and be forgotten. What brought the tears pricking at her eyes was the utter isolation of this survivor and the knowledge that the damage that inflicted would last forever. She shook her head irritably and squared her shoulders to try to settle her emotions, when she became aware of another presence by the bedside. She jerked herself back to reality to find a tall, elegant Asian woman in a black trouser suit and a silky scarf around her shoulders looking at her speculatively. She put down her briefcase on the floor and pulled up a chair from the next bed and sat down next to Val.
    ‘Are you a member of Emma’s family?’ the woman asked with a smile which faded as Val Ridley explained who she was and how CID could find no trace of family for Emma.
    ‘I’m from social services,’ the woman said. ‘Razia Qureshi. I was going to call the police later this morning to check out Emma’s exact situation. If there are no relatives on hand we’ll have to make an emergency care order and take over parental responsibility for her. The hospital will need consent for further treatment of a child. Strictly speaking they shouldn’t have operated on her at all without consent, but no one bothers too much when it’s a life or death situation. The doctors do what they have to do.’
    Razia Qureshi nodded slightly to herself, as if confirming her own judgement, and ran a hand across her immaculate dark hair.
    ‘I feel very bad about this,’ she confided, her face sombre now. ‘We should have seen it coming.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Val asked, astonished.
    ‘I didn’t hear about the shooting until last evening, when my boss rang me at home. I’d been away for a few days. He wanted me to talk to the police straight away but I thought I would come and see Emma first.’ She spoke with very little accent but what there was betrayed her Yorkshire birth.
    ‘You knew about the family?’ Val asked, her voice hardening. ‘Social services knew about them?’
    ‘I knew about them, personally,’ Razia said, glancing down at the floor, uncomfortable with the admission. ‘It was about six months ago and we had an anonymous complaint from someone in Staveley, some neighbour, she said, worried about the little boy. She thought the father was hitting him.’
    ‘And was he?’ Val asked