sing the momentum she'd gained straightening up from her crouch, Lindsay pushed off from the ground and veered out of the way of the bat, stumbling backward as her assailant continued toward her, drawn forward by the follow-through of that first vicious swipe. Her feet scrabbled against the asphalt of the car park, the grip of leather sandals puny in comparison with her attacker's trainers. She could make out only the vague outline of a medium-sized frame with a head sleek as a seal, but that was enough to see that already the shoulders were tensing to lift the bat in a second backswing, aimed straight at her head.

With no time even to think, Lindsay acted on pure instinct. As he swung the bat from above his left shoulder, she leapt forward and to the side, so that she undercut the arc of the blow. Then, hitting the ground running, suddenly she was past him, sprinting for the street with a turn of speed she had no idea she possessed. Faster than she'd ever run along the beach at Half Moon Bay, she headed across the car park at the angle that would bring her to the street most quickly.

Her blood thudding in her ears and her own breathing sounding loud as a steam engine to her heightened senses, Lindsay pounded the asphalt, aiming for the light. So obsessed was she with reaching the relative safety of a street with traffic and other human beings that she completely failed to register the low wall that bordered Watergaw's unit until it was too late. Like a badly prepared showjumper, she tried to adjust her stride to take the wall, but mistimed it completely.

The sandal on her trailing leg caught the top of the foot-high wall, catapulting Lindsay into a scrappy somersault. She flew over the pavement, landing in an awkward sprawl a yard into the road. White light bathed her as a taxi's brakes screeched in a screaming swerve, bringing it to a juddering halt in a stutter of diesel engine mere inches from where she lay groaning in the road.

The taxi driver jumped out and ran round to the front of the cab, his "What the fuck?" strangled at birth when Lindsay lifted a face that was a Janus mask - half blood, half green-tinged flesh. "Jesus Christ," he gasped instead.

Lindsay pushed herself on to her knees, then, using the cab's radiator as a prop, to her feet. Casting a desperate glance behind her that seemed surprisingly agonizing, she stuttered, "A bloke. With a baseball bat. Chasing me."

"I can't see nobody, love," the cabbie said. "Whoever he was, he must have legged it when he saw you flying through the air with the greatest of ease. He's gone, love. You're all right." He reached out a hand. "Well, when I say all right... maybe we should get you to hospital."

Lindsay shook her head. Again pain shot along her jaw. But she couldn't work out why. She must have scraped her face on the asphalt when she hit the ground. Bruises and a nasty graze, that's what it would be. "I'm just a bit bruised. Nothing broken. I'll be fine," she said, her voice clear with the disengaged calm of deep shock.

The cabbie put a firm arm round her shoulder. "Hospital, love. You can't see what I can see. You must have hit a bit of broken glass in the road. Look, you can see it shining there. A broken milk bottle, it looks like. Whatever, that face of yours is gonna need more than an Elastoplast, believe me."

Lindsay frowned, bewildered. What was he talking about? She put her hand up to the side of her neck that seemed to be causing her most pain. There was something warm and wet all over her jawline. Along the bone, it didn't feel like skin. It felt like raw meat. And it hurt. As she took her hand away and saw it was covered in blood, she started to shake. It began as a slight quiver, but by the time the cabbie had virtually carried her into the back of his taxi, she was shaking from top-to-toe like someone on the edge of hypothermia, her teeth chattering and her hands twitching.

All the way to the Royal Free's casualty department, the cabbie talked reassuringly to her. He talked about his wife and his two teenage daughters, about their forthcoming holiday in Turkey, about his hobby, angling, and how it wasn't a hardship to work nights on account of the rubbish they put on the telly. And all Lindsay could think about was how near she'd come to something far worse than whatever it was that had happened to her.

By the time they reached the hospital, the worst of the shakes were behind her, and she could just about manage to climb out of the taxi unaided. The cabbie took a clean, soft handkerchief out of a satchel on the floor by the driver's seat and folded it into a long pad. "You just hold that against it," he said, sounding nervous as he demonstrated what he meant. "It'll stop the flow of blood." Numb now, she did as she was told. He helped her out and led her into the reception area, where a man who looked less healthy than she felt started to take her details. When she turned to thank her rescuer, he was gone.

"I didn't even pay the fare," she said vaguely to the receptionist, who looked blankly at her and said, "GP?"

Unable to bear the complication of explaining that she lived in America, Lindsay gave the name of the woman who had been her doctor seven years before, when she'd lived with Cordelia in Highbury. It seemed to satisfy the receptionist. It clearly wasn't his job to care why she was giving an address in west London and a GP in north London. Telling her to take a seat, the receptionist turned back to stare at his computer screen.

Feeling more disorientated than jet lag had ever left her, Lindsay walked slowly toward a bank of pay phones on the far wall. Her legs felt out of her control, as if her knees had been replaced with some flexible rubbery solid which left her out of touch with her feet. Every step was tentative, in case the place where her knees used to be suddenly rebelled and deposited her in a crumpled, helpless heap on the floor. But she made it to the phone without incident.

By some miracle, she still had her backpack. Awkward fingers fumbled some change out of her wallet, and she punched in Helen's number. It rang five or six times without reply, then the answering machine clicked in. Lindsay leaned against the wall and waited for Helen to stop giving her instructions. She couldn't understand why no one was picking up the phone. She knew it was late, but there was an extension in the bedroom, right next to Helen's bed. They couldn't sleep through this, could they?

The machine beeped and Lindsay said, "Helen? Kirsten? Is anybody there? Can you pick up? It's Lindsay? Hello?..." She waited for a moment, but no one answered. She sighed. "Bit of a problem. Um... I'm at the Royal Free. In casualty. Had a bit of an accident. Nothing to worry about, but if you get this message, can you come? I'll... I'll speak to you later," she ended up, unable to think straight.

She replaced the receiver and wobbled over to the nearest vacant chair. She slumped into it and looked around vaguely. There seemed to be a lot of people here, considering it was nearly one in the morning They mostly looked stunned with pain or indifference, especially those who were only accompanying someone more obviously damaged. Lindsay closed her eyes and sighed. Where could Helen and Kirsten be? Helen hadn't said anything about plans for the evening, and she'd have been too desperate to hear Lindsay's report on her mission to consider going out on the spur of the moment. She couldn't believe they'd turned off the phones and gone to bed either. Helen's eagerness to hear that Stella and Guy had been stitched up would never have allowed her to go to sleep. Besides, Helen would be conscious of the possibility that things might go wrong. She wouldn't leave Lindsay hanging on the telephone needing help.

It was a mystery, but right then it seemed to Lindsay about as intractable as Penny Varnavides' murder. Before she could worry about it too much, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She opened her eyes to see a nurse's uniform containing a stocky redhead who looked about twelve years old. "I'm the triage nurse," she chirped cheerily in a harsh Belfast brogue. "If you'd like to come through to a cubicle, I can assess your injuries there."

Lindsay got to her feet and followed the nurse past the reception desk and into a curtained cubicle. "Up we get," the nurse said, helping her on to an examination table and gently removing hand and handkerchief pad from Lindsay's now throbbing jaw. "My, we have been in the wars, haven't we? That's some mess you've got yourself into there. Never mind, we'll soon have you cleaned up and good as new." Lindsay could see why the woman had become a nurse; with that degree of insensitive exuberance, she wouldn't dare work with the able-bodied and expect to live.

The next hour was a blur. No, she hadn't lost consciousness. No, her shoulder and knee didn't hurt any more than she'd expect from grazed skin. Yes, she could see how many fingers the doctor was holding up. No, she wasn't allergic to penicillin. Eventually, a soft-voiced Asian man with cool, gentle hands cleaned up her face, stitched the long cut that sliced up the line of her jaw, reassured her that the scar would be virtually invisible, and fetched her a cup of tea. As she struggled to swallow it without losing half out of the side of her mouth that felt numb, Lindsay heard a familiar voice.

"I told you, soft lad, we're the nearest she's got to family, that's why she phoned us to come and get her. How else do you think we knew to come here?" Helen announced. A man's voice mumbled something in response. "Cubicle three? Right, come on, girls."

"Girls?" thought Lindsay, vaguely wondering who else Helen had in tow. She didn't have to wonder for long. The curtain parted and Lindsay had her second shock in the space of a couple of hours. "Sophie?" she said, not entirely certain whether she was hallucinating. "Is it really you?"

Sophie crossed the cubicle in two strides and gripped Lindsay's shoulders, her expression a mixture of relief and affectionate exasperation. "What am I going to do with you? I turn my back for five minutes, and look at you!"

Lindsay felt her eyes film over with tears. "This is a nice surprise," she said, her voice shaky. "You'll have to forgive me if I don't kiss you just yet."

Sophie crouched down and stared intently at her lover's battered face. "Whoever stitched you did a good job. You'll not have much of a scar."

Lindsay dropped her head so it rested on Sophie's shoulder. "I'm so pleased to see you." she said. "How come you're here?"

"I managed to get away from work a few days early. The house-sitter was delirious to swap her parents for Mutton this soon. Changing the flight was slightly more difficult. But I missed you, and besides, I didn't like the idea of you chasing a killer on your own. Looks as if I was right to be worried, doesn't it?"

"I don't think it was anything to do with Penny," Lindsay sighed. "Can we get out of here now? You know how much I like hospitals."

"Sure," Sophie said, gently stroking Lindsay's head.

"Oh, my God, look at the state of you. This is all my fault! What happened? Was it Guy or was it Stella?" Helen demanded, unable to contain herself a moment longer.

"Later, Helen," Sophie said. She kissed the top of Lindsay's head and tenderly extricated herself from her lover's embrace. "Go and find someone in authority, tell them we're taking her home."

Before Helen could leave, a white-coated doctor whom Lindsay had a dim recollection of seeing earlier appeared at Kirsten's shoulder. "What's going on here?" he demanded. "This patient has had a head injury. The last thing she needs is crowds of people around her. I could hear the shouting half-way down the corridor." Helen had the grace to look embarrassed.

"Doctor," Sophie said. "The very person I wanted to see. We're taking Ms. Gordon home now."

"Oh no, you're not," he said obstinately. "Ms. Gordon is my patient, and we're keeping her in overnight for observation. It's standard procedure in cases of head trauma."

Sophie ran a hand through her silver curls. "I'm a doctor myself. I know what the symptoms of concussion look like, I know the procedures. I'm prepared to take responsibility for her." She pulled her wallet out of the back pocket of her jeans and gave him a card that announced she was Dr. Sophie Hartley, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist of the Grafton Clinic, San Francisco. He looked slightly dazed as he read it, then looked at this tall woman wearing a T-shirt that read "Netheads do IT better." Sophie grinned disarmingly. "So, we'll be leaving shortly," she said with all the authority of half a dozen years as a consultant.

"But I've managed to get her a bed," the hospital doctor protested. "Have you any idea how hard that is these days?"

"Looking at the patient, I'm sure you've done a really good job," Sophie said, reassuring without patronizing. "Look at it this way - now you know there's a bed available for one of your other patients."

He muttered something under his breath, then said, "On your head be it."

Within ten minutes, Lindsay and Sophie were settled in the back of Helen's car, with Kirsten driving so Helen could turn round in her seat and demand information "So what happened?" she asked again.

"Helen," Sophie, warned. "Not now."

"No, it's okay," Lindsay said. Either Sophie's arrival or the hospital tea seemed to have revived her. Apart from the ache in her shoulder and leg, and twinges penetrating the local anaesthetic in her face, she felt almost alert. "My brain seems to have reconnected with the rest of me."

"See?" Helen said triumphantly. "Call yourself a doctor, Hartley?"

Sophie smiled. "You have your medical adviser's permission to tell her to shut up any time you want," she told Lindsay, pulling her closer. "To be honest, I'm curious myself. Helen met me at Heathrow and told me you were working alone at her office, where nothing bad could possibly happen. The next thing I know is you look like Mike Tyson's speed bag."

"Watch who you're calling a bag," Lindsay said. "The short answer is that I don't really know what happened. I'd done everything I had to do at Watergaw, so I set the alarm and locked up. The security lights weren't on, so it was really dark. I was walking to my car, and I stood on some glass. I bent down to see if I could see what it was, then I heard these footsteps running behind me. I jumped up and turned round just in time to get out of the way of some maniac with a baseball bat. I managed to dodge him, but I was concentrating so hard on getting away that I didn't see the wall until it was too late." For Sophie's benefit, she added, "There's this little wall runs along the frontage of Watergaw, and I took a header over it. Unfortunately, I came down on a bit of broken glass. Hence the duelling scar."

"It sounds like you would have come off a lot worse if you'd stuck around," Kirsten commented.

"Trust a journalist to look on the bright side," Helen said. "So, did you see who it was doing the Joe Dimaggio impersonation? Was it Guy? Or even Stella?"

Lindsay sighed. "I don't think it was Stella. I couldn't see much except a silhouette, and it looked like a male body shape. I don't think he was as tall as Guy, but I couldn't swear to it. I think he was wearing a stocking over his head as well. I was giving it some thought back in the hospital. At first I couldn't work out why his head was such a neat shape, then I realised what he must have done."

"It must have been Guy," Helen said. "He knows me well enough to realise I wouldn't just lie down and die after what he's done to me. He'll have left that bitch Stella in charge of the night shoot, and he'll have come back to stake out the offices. The bastard."

"It certainly sounds a possibility," Sophie said. "But what about your murder investigation? Isn't it possible that someone connected with that has been tailing you, waiting for an opportunity to strike?"

Lindsay sighed. "It's not very likely, given that I seem to have hit a brick wall. Unless there's something in Penny's last draft to point me in a different direction, I'm stuck. I can no more prove Meredith innocent than I can show someone else is guilty. Helen's probably right. Most likely it was Guy."

"You've got to go to the police," Helen said firmly.

"No way. That's the very last thing I should do," Lindsay said wearily.

"You can't let him away with this," Kirsten chipped in as she braked for a pedestrian crossing. "He could try again, and next time he might really hurt somebody."

"It's not worth it. He didn't actually hit me. All this," she said, fluttering her fingers in the direction of her face, "was incidental. I doubt he'd even get a custodial sentence. No, the revenge I've got lined up for Guy and Stella is going to hurt them a lot more than a something or nothing charge in a magistrates' court. And to make it work, the last thing we want to be doing is explaining why I was in Watergaw's car park the wrong side of midnight."

"This sounds devious," Sophie commented.

"You haven't heard the half of it," Helen said ominously.

"And you don't want to, either," Kirsten clipped in. "I had it over dinner and then all the way to Heathrow. Believe me, Sophie, this is one case where ignorance is bliss."

"I'll tell you later, Soph. Suffice it to say, Guy turned out to be a real shyster, so I've been fitting him up good style," Lindsay said. "But I need to brief you now, Helen. If you go into my backpack, you'll find a document wallet with three printed memos in it." As Sophie passed the bag over and Helen unzipped it, Lindsay continued. "First thing in the morning, you go to your local VAT office and request an interview with an investigator. Failing that, you want the inspector who deals with Watergaw. You tell him you had been told that one of your staff had been using your computer to run their own business on the side, so you were doing a file audit. While you were in there, you found these memos in the private desks of your business partners."

Helen was skimming the documents as she listened. "Jesus!" she exploded. "This is dynamite. You don't take prisoners, do you?"

"And that was presumably written before your colleague tried to cave her head in," Sophie said drily. "Probably just as well. If she was framing him now, she'd not be satisfied with anything less than serial murder."

"Never mind all that," Lindsay said. "One important thing is that you stress that you knew nothing about all of this, and you want them hammered because you don't want your company destroyed. I know it's casting against type, but for once, play the dumb broad," she added wryly.

"Oh, God," Helen groaned. "I should have known better."

"That," said Sophie, "is what they all say."