Read The Stone Gallows for Free Online

showed that I was completely sober at the time of the accident, and nobody thought to test Coombes. The reports of a smell of alcohol raised a few eyebrows, but the fire brigade had managed to destroy most of my clothing cutting me free from the wreckage, and nothing was ever proved. The police did what they did best when the news was bad but the inquiry was inconclusive: closed ranks.
    It was decided that due to the lack of evidence, it would be wrong to hold any individual party accountable. The accident was the culmination of a series of events that could not have been prevented.
    The press screamed blue murder, but the book was closed. After extensive rehabilitation, I was free to return to work.
    I tried. I really did.

Prologue 2
August 2008
    1.
    The woman walked quickly along the corridor, her heels clicking quietly on the tiled floor. In one hand was a clipboard, and she studied the papers on it with a frown that suggested to anybody who was interested that she was terribly busy and could not be disturbed.
    Not that there were many people who were interested. It was the middle of the night and the hospital was quiet. Most of the patients were asleep, and those that weren’t, drowsy. Staff drifted from one place to the next like somnambulists, usually alone, sometimes in pairs. Some looked at the woman, but the confidence of her stride, and the laminated identification badge that hung from the pocket of her white coat, implied that she had every right to be there. It was a big hospital, too big to question the presence of one unfamiliar face among hundreds.
    She had deliberated for a long time over her appearance. Her hair, dyed chestnut brown especially for the occasion, was scraped into a severe bun. A pair of glasses balanced on the tip of her nose, the frames absurdly large for her face. On her feet was a pair of stiletto heels, their height concealed underneath a pair of trousers that were so long that the hems brushed the floor. The time spent in preparation had been worth it; if anybody saw her – really saw her – the description provided to the police would be of a tall, short-sighted woman with brown hair of in-determinate length.
    She stopped briefly when she came to a junction in the corridor, tilting her head down so that she could read the sign over the rims of her too-large glasses. The hospital was a maze. Satisfied she was heading in the right direction, she moved off again. It was two minutes past three in the morning.
    2.
    Ellen Drysdale looked at her watch; four minutes past three. Two hundred and sixty-six minutes before she could go home. Twenty-one thousand, nine hundred and sixty seconds before she could slide between a set of cool, clean sheets and close her eyes.
    She was a pretty girl with dark blonde hair that had been yanked behind her head in a clump. Her eyes were red from lack of sleep, and her fingertips were swollen and raw from where she had bitten the nails down to the quick. Night-shift did not agree with her.
    Yawning, she tried to focus on the folder in front of her. It was hard to believe that a ten-bedded unit could develop so much paperwork. Care-plans, risk assessments and reviews. Memos to be filed, but only after all staff had signed to confirm they had read them; the trust directors did not believe in taking chances. In the past twelve months there had been ninety-four separate court actions raised against employees, all for abuse, misconduct or negligence. Of those, seventy-three had been dismissed. Twenty had been settled out of court. One had resulted in a spectacular loss in which the trust was forced to pay over two million pounds to the parents of a child who had suffered irreversible brain damage after an asthma attack. The child collapsed in the street after being discharged from Accident and Emergency with borderline symptoms. The junior doctor who had signed the discharge slip was now training to be an estate agent.
    Correction, ninety-five