8.6

 The siren came first, a thin wail threading through the air, bending the silence into something taut and followed up with the scream of a bean sidth. Roisin rose and stepped back to make room, the onlookers shifting around her like a shoal of minnows around a shark until she stood at the edge of the pavement, next to the car the woman filming had got out from. It was unlocked and still running, and if Roisin had not been so law abiding, she could have just opened the door and driven away. She didn’t, but instead remained where she was, her eyes fixed on the stillness of the woman’s body. The sound grew louder, closer, until it seemed to press against the walls of the street itself, as though the day itself were being split open.

The ambulance swung into view, its lights stuttering across the wet pavement. Red and blue painted the stone steps in alternating pulses—alive, then extinguished, alive again. The rhythm was almost disrespectful; a heartbeat imposed upon a body that no longer had one. Each flash seemed to insist movement, urgency, possibility. Yet the body remained inert, untouched by the rhythm.

Two paramedics leapt out, their movements brisk, rehearsed. One carried a medical bag, the other a folded stretcher. Their boots struck the ground with heavy certainty, a sound that seemed to deny the fragility of what lay before them. They moved quickly, but not frantically; their pace was the pace of ritual, of repetition learned through countless calls like this one.

They crouched beside the woman, voices low but urgent. One pressed fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse that Roisin already knew was gone. The other tilted her head back, checking the airway, preparing to breathe life into lungs that had already surrendered. Hands moved with precision: compressions against the chest, breaths delivered through parted lips. The rhythm of their actions became a litany—press, release, inhale, exhale. Each gesture was both mechanical and strangely reverent, as if they were priests officiating at a rite of passage. Roisin felt the futility of the scene yet recognised the ritual of authority, which was almost ceremonial. The body shifted slightly under their care, but the silence remained unbroken. The sound of their breaths, the count of compressions, the rustle of clothing against stone—all of it seemed to echo in the cold air, a chorus of effort against inevitability. Around them, a small crowd had gathered. Faces pale, eyes wide, whispers threading through the night. Some turned away, unable to watch. Others leaned forward, hungry for the spectacle of life wrestled from death. Roisin felt herself suspended between them—neither participant nor bystander, but witness. She was caught in the tension between the ordinary and the extraordinary, between the procedural and the symbolic.

The paramedics continued, their rhythm steady, their voices clipped. “One, two, three, four…” The count rose and fell, a cadence that seemed to measure not only compressions but the distance between hope and resignation. Roisin thought of Paul’s words: It isn’t wings that mark the change. It’s silence that enters the bones. She felt that silence now, pressing against her, even as the paramedics fought to break it.

“There’s no need.” The older gentleman who had checked her pulse stepped forward. “Time of death was ten-fourteen.”

“Are you a doctor, sir?” The paramedic steadily squeezing the breathing bag didn’t even look up, though his tone was of inquiry, not disrespect.

“I was.” Retired now. James Handel.” He stepped forward, offering his hand. “I was too late to do anything, I’m afraid.”

“What happened?” The second paramedic looked up, scanning the faces assembled around the body. “Did anyone see what happened?”

Roisin stayed silent, several people now standing between her and the body. The man who had been holding her broken hand spoke up. She missed a step and fell all the way down.” He gestured toward the steps and both paramedics and crowd followed his lead. “It was all so fast. One minute she was at the top of the steps, and the next she was gone.” He wiped the palm of his heel across his eyes, wiping away the wetness but failing to disguise his reddened eyes.

“Were you with her, sir?” The first paramedic knelt back on his heels, his lips moving as her traced the spot where her knee shattered, her face hit the sone and her ultimate demise. An upward nod to his colleague initiated the unrolling and placing of a green sheet across the body, shielding it from view of what were now multiple cameras.

“We were acquaintances,” the man said. “We served on the Gallery board together.” He indicated the art gallery at the top of the steps. “We’d just had a meeting about a possible acquisition.”

Roisin’s ears perked. They still bought paintings, did they? She knew they had a small collection of modern masters. Perhaps they could be persuaded to host a small show.

“She was on her way to lunch with her daughter.”

“I see.” The paramedic pulled a tablet computer from his bag and fired it up. “What was her name, please?”

“Angela. Angela Fischer.”

“Would you happen to know her next of kin?”

“I think she was married.” His face fell. “Oh, God. That poor man.”

Roisin barely stopped herself from shaking her head. Poor man indeed. If this man and the woman weren’t shagging, she’d eat dry Weetabix for a month.

Her speculation was cut short by another siren, similar in tone but this one marked with the twin flashes of a police vehicle. It double parked a car’s length ahead of where she stood and the siren stopped, though the lights remained. She stepped away from it, not wanting to be questioned about what she had seen, for she could neither tell the truth, where she’d seem implausible, or lie, which was against her principles. She chose discretion, melting away to the back of the throng until she was invisible to those who’d witnessed her at the woman’s side.