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‘No!’ screamed Catherine. ‘It’s not true.’

‘Remember how he hesitated – how he wouldn’t kill me?’ Susan said. Her dark hair seemed to have become a shimmering red in the pale light. ‘He loved me too much. Even dead, he still loved me.’

‘It’s true,’ said Hopkinson, joining the attack. ‘He turned on you when you ordered him to kill Susan.’

‘He loved her more than he loved you,’ I said, just loud enough for her to hear.

We were closing from three sides, Hopkinson, the Doctor and I. Catherine did not know which way to turn. The gun wavered between the three of us, crossing Susan each time it oscillated. We were playing a very dangerous game – one that we lost as Catherine Harries snapped. The gun unerringly came to rest pointed at Susan’s stomach. Catherine screamed an unintelligible stream of words as her finger tensed on the trigger.

She took a step backwards as she prepared to fire. The movement brought her foot into contact with the severed arm. As Catherine’s foot touched the dead fingers, the white bone and bloody tendons that were all that remained of the hand fastened vicelike on her ankle. A reflex. She looked disbelievingly down at her brother’s dismembered arm and screamed and screamed and screamed. Then an explosion tore the air as she blasted chunks of flesh and clothing from the arm with Wallace’s gun.

Hopkinson and I both leaped at Catherine Harries. She swung the gun, catching me on the shoulder. I fell, almost fainting with the pain, to the carpet. Looking up I could see Hopkinson grappling with Catherine in a wild dance of death while the Doctor attempted to wrest the gun from her hand. Fitz had crossed the room and flung himself in front of Susan, protecting her with his body.

Then there was a single shot.

For a long moment the three of them stood there. Catherine looked up at Hopkinson’s eyes; he gazed down at her face. The Doctor’s gaze was fixed on her, and the expression on his face was tragic. Then she stepped back. There was blood on Hopkinson’s shirt, his jacket, his hands. Catherine held the crimson-splattered gun. She looked down at the spreading stain on her dress. I don’t know who was more surprised at her wound – Catherine or Hopkinson. Only the Doctor seemed to have been expecting it.

She fell to the ground like a floating leaf. The Doctor bent down over her body. After a while he looked over at me and shook his head.

‘He tried to save her…’ murmured Catherine, staring up at the ceiling, or beyond. ‘He wanted to save her.’

‘No,’ the Doctor said reassuringly, ‘he was trying to save you from yourself.’

Catherine’s face seemed to glow. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he did love me. He did love me after all.’

Something went out of Catherine Harries then. Nothing changed in her gaze, her position or her expression, but we all knew that she died after she said those words.

* * *

THE ACCOUNT OF JOHN HOPKINSON (24)

Susan was still very shaky and she clung to my shoulder for support. I put my arm around her waist to help her stand. Did she respond? I wanted to think so, but then I have always been incurably romantic.

‘We wanted to stop her,’ I murmured, looking down again at Catherine’s inert form, as much to myself as to Stratford or Susan. ‘She tried to kill us all.’ Susan held my arm tighter.

‘It was she who pulled the trigger,’ the Doctor said quietly just behind us.

‘I know,’ Susan whispered, not wanting Stratford to hear.

Ian Stratford straightened up from his brief examination of Catherine Harries’s body, the blood from her side seeping and sinking into the carpet. ‘She committed suicide after killing the others.’ he said briskly. ‘Her brother’s death in a tragic accident unhinged her.’

‘Is that what you will say in your report?’ Kreiner asked him.

‘Yes. It’s about all I can say really.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Thank you.’

I looked down at Catherine again – so still, so pale, so peaceful. And the charred mess of her brother.

‘This dead butcher and his fiendlike queen,