OUTSIDE BERKELEY PEARS’ FLAT, BARBARA HAVERS CONSIDERED her next move. It appeared to be a nice little visit with Barry Minshall in the Holmes Street station to see what else she could scoop out of the cesspool that was his brain.
She was heading off to do just that, making her way along the corridor towards the stairs, when she heard the sound. It was something between a howl and the cry of someone in the throes of death by strangulation, and it stopped Barbara in her tracks. She waited to hear if the cry would repeat itself, and in due course it did. Throaty, desperate…It took a moment for her to realise that she was listening to a cat.
“Bloody hell,” she murmured. It had sounded exactly like…She attached the sound to the shriek that someone in the building had heard the night of Davey Benton’s murder, and when she made that leap, she realised that everything about her journey to Walden Lodge might well have been an exercise in pure futility.
The cat cried again. Barbara knew little enough about felines, but it sounded like one of those cracked-voice Siamese types. Malevolent little furballs though they were, they still had a right-
Furballs. Barbara looked towards the door behind which the cat sounded another time. Cat fur, she thought, cat hair, whatever the bloody hell it was. There’d been cat hair on Davey Benton’s body.
She went in search of the building manager. A question to one of the Moppits directed her to a ground-floor flat. She knocked on the door.
After a moment, a woman’s voice called out, “Who is it, please?” in a tone that suggested she’d opened the door more than once to an unexpected visitor.
Barbara identified herself. Several locks were disengaged and the building manager stood before her: Morag McDermott, she was called. What did the police want this time round because God only knew she’d told them everything she could think of last time they’d come seeking information about “that dreadful nasty business in the woods.”
Barbara saw she’d interrupted Morag McDermott in the midst of an afternoon snooze. Despite the time of year, she wore a thin dressing gown through which her skeletal body showed, and her hair was pancaked on one side. The unmistakable pattern of a chenille counterpane had lumped her cheeks like facial cellulite.
She added sharply, “How on earth did you get into the building? Let me see your identification at once.”
Barbara fished it out and explained the situation with the front door and the Moppits. In response to this, the building manager pulled a sticky pad from a tabletop nearby and scribbled furiously upon it. Barbara took this as invitation to enter, and she did so as Morag McDermott slapped her note onto the wall next to the door. This was already aflutter with two score similar notes. The wall resembled a prayer board in a church.
It was for her monthly report to the management firm, Morag informed Barbara as she replaced the little yellow pad in a drawer. Now, if the constable would step this way, into the sitting room…
She made it sound as if the room in question required directions to get to when in fact it was less than five feet from the front door. The flat’s floor plan was identical to that of Berkeley Pears but reversed so that it faced not the woods but the street. Its decor, however, was utterly dissimilar to the flat Barbara had been in earlier. Where Berkeley Pears would have passed a drill sergeant’s inspection, Morag was a poster child for clutter and sheer bad taste. Mostly, this was due to horses, of which there were hundreds on display, on every surface, in all sizes, and of all possible composition: from plastic to rubber. She was National Velvet gone berserk.
Barbara edged her way past a tea stand of Lippizaners poised to perform their airs above the ground. She trod the sole path available into the room, which led to a sofa burdened with perhaps a dozen equine cushions. There she deposited herself. She’d begun to perspire, and she understood why the building manager was wearing so thin a dressing gown in the middle of winter. It felt like a Jamaican summer in the flat, and it smelled as if the place hadn’t been aired since the day of Morag’s advent in the building.
Cutting to the chase was the best option for personal survival, Barbara concluded, so she went directly to the subject of the cat. She’d been about to leave the building, she said, when she’d heard the sound of an animal in distress. She wondered if Morag ought to know about that. It certainly sounded-to her admittedly unschooled ears since she’d never owned anything more than a gerbil-serious. A Siamese cat perhaps, she added helpfully. This would be in flat number 5.
“That’s Mandy,” Morag McDermott told her promptly. “Esther’s cat. She’s on holiday. I mean Esther, of course, not the cat. She’ll quiet soon enough when Esther’s boy comes to feed her. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
Worry for the animal was the last thing on Barbara’s mind, but she went with the flow of the conversation. She needed to get inside that flat, and she didn’t want to wait for a warrant to do it. Mandy sounded dead frantic, she told the building manager solemnly. True, she didn’t know much about felines, but she thought the situation wanted checking into. And by the way, Berkeley Pears had told her that cats weren’t allowed in the building. Had he been playing fast and loose with the truth?
“That man will say anything,” Morag replied. “Of course cats are allowed in the building. Cats, fish, and birds.”
“But not dogs?”
“He knew that before he moved in, Constable.”
Barbara nodded. Yes, well, people and their animals…It took all kinds, didn’t it? She brought Morag round to flat number 5 once again. “This cat…Mandy? She sounds…well, is there any chance the son hasn’t come round to feed her for a while? Have you seen him here? Entering or leaving?”
Morag thought about this, drawing the neck of her dressing gown more tightly closed at her throat. She admitted that she hadn’t exactly seen the son in the vicinity lately, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there. He was completely devoted to his mum. Everyone should have such a son.
Nonetheless…Barbara offered a smile she hoped was ingratiating. Perhaps they ought to have a look…? For the sake of the cat? Something could have happened to prevent the son from coming round, couldn’t it? Car crash, heart attack, kidnap by aliens…?
At least one of Barbara’s suggestions seemed to work because Morag nodded thoughtfully and said, “Yes, perhaps we ought to see…” before she went over to a corner cupboard and opened it to reveal the back of its door covered with hooks from which keys dangled.
Still attired in her dressing gown, Morag led the way to flat number 5. There was silence behind the door and for a moment Barbara thought that her ruse to get inside was going to fail. But as Morag said, “I don’t actually hear-” Mandy howled cooperatively once more. With an “Oh, my dear,” the building manager hastily unlocked the door and opened it. The cat escaped like a lag given an unexpected opportunity. She melted round the corner of the corridor, going for the stairs and doubtless heading for the freedom of the front door, which the Moppits still had propped open.
This would not do. Morag took off after her. Barbara stepped inside the flat.
The first thing she noted was the overpowering smell of urine. Cat urine, she assumed. No one had changed the poor creature’s litter for days. The windows were closed and the curtains drawn over them, which greatly exacerbated the matter. It was no wonder the cat had bolted for the outdoors. Anything to get a breath of fresh air.
Barbara closed the door despite the odour, the better to give herself warning when Morag returned and would have to insert the key in the lock another time. That done, the flat was even gloomier, so she opened the curtains and saw that flat number 5, like that of Berkeley Pears, faced the woods at the back of the property.
She turned from the window and surveyed the room. The furniture came to her straight out of the sixties: vinyl sofa and chairs, side tables once called Danish modern, coy figurines in the shape of animals with anthropomorphic expressions on their faces. Bowls of potpourri-ostensibly attempting to rid the air of the foetid odour of cat-sat on lacy antimacassars that were now being used as mats. Barbara saw those last with a rush of happiness: Kimmo Thorne’s loincloth in St. George’s Gardens. Things were definitely looking up.
She prowled round for signs of recent occupation-of deadly occupation-and she found the first of them in the kitchen: one plate, one fork, one glass in the sink.
Did you feed him something before you raped him then, you bugger? Or did you have a bit of sustenance yourself while the kid entertained you with one more magic trick which you applauded and for which you told him you had a very nice reward? Come over closer to me, Davey my lad. God, but you’re a lovely boy. Did anyone ever tell you that? No? Why not? It’s plain to see.
On a floor in the corner, the cat’s dry food spilled out of a container and a large bowl next to it was empty of water. Using a dishcloth to hold it by its edges, Barbara carried this to the sink and filled it. Wasn’t the cat’s fault, she told herself. No point in letting it suffer any longer. And suffer Mandy had done since the night of Davey Benton’s murder. There was no way in hell that the killer could have afforded to return to this place once Davey was dead, not with the street crawling with cops intent upon finding a witness.
She went from the kitchen back into the sitting room, looking for signs. He’d have raped and strangled Davey Benton somewhere in here, but the rest he would have done when he got the body into the woods.
She went to the bedroom, where, as she had done in the sitting room, she opened the curtains and turned back to survey the scene illuminated by the fast-fading daylight. A bed with covers and counterpane in place; side table with an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock and lamp; chest of drawers with two framed photos sitting on top.
It all looked so ordinary, save for one detail: The clothes-cupboard door hung partially open. Inside, Barbara could see a flowery dressing gown askew on a hanger. She took it out. The belt was missing.
Let me show you how to do a knot trick, he’d said, and Barbara could hear his coaxing voice. It’s the only trick that I know, Davey, and believe me, it’ll make your mates stand up and take notice when they see how easily you can escape even if they tie your hands behind your back. Here. You tie me first. See how it works? Now I’ll tie you.
Something like that, she thought. Something like that. He had done it that way. And then bent the boy over the bed. No shouting, Davey. No wiggling about. Okay. All right. Don’t panic, lad. I’ll untie your hands. But no trying to get away from me now because…God damn, you scratched me, Davey. You bloody well scratched me and now I’ll have to…I told you not to make a sound, didn’t I? Didn’t I, Davey? Didn’t I, you miserable filthy little sod?
Or maybe he had used handcuffs on the boy. Glow-in-the-dark handcuffs just like those that Barry Minshall had given Davey. Or maybe he hadn’t needed to restrain him at all or hadn’t thought to restrain him because Davey had been so much smaller than the rest of the boys and there had, after all, been no mark of restraints on his wrists, not like the others…
Which gave Barbara pause. Which made her admit how desperately she wanted this place on Wood Lane to be the answer. Which told her she was on dangerous ground, weaving place to fit circumstance in the worst kind of reckless police work, of the sort that landed innocent people in prison because the cops were just so bloody tired and so anxious to get home for supper one night in ten because their wives were complaining and their kids were misbehaving and some serious sorting needed to be done and why did you even marry me, Frank or John or Dick, if you meant to be gone day and night for months on end…
That was how it happened, and Barbara knew it. That was how cops made deadly mistakes. She returned the dressing gown to the clothes cupboard and forced her mind to stop painting pictures.
Out in the sitting room, she heard Morag’s key scratching at the lock. There was no time for anything else but a quick look at the bedsheets beneath the counterpane, catching the faint scent of lavender upon them. They offered no visible secrets to her, so she moved to the chest of drawers on the other side of the room.
And there it was: everything she needed. In one of the two photographs, a woman posed in her wedding gown with her bespectacled groom. In the other, a much older version of the same woman stood on Brighton Pier. With her was a younger man. He was bespectacled like his father.
Barbara picked this latter picture up and took it over to the window for a better look. In the sitting room, Morag’s voice called out, “Are you in here, Constable?” and Mandy gave her Siamese yowl.
In the bedroom, Barbara murmured, “Bloody hell,” at what she was looking at. Hastily, she shoved the Brighton Pier photograph into her shoulder bag. She composed herself as best she could and called out, “Sorry. Having a look round. Got reminded of my mum. She goes for this sixties stuff in a very big way.”
Complete casuistry but it couldn’t be helped. Truth was, in her present state, Mum wouldn’t know the sixties from a basket of potatoes.
“She’d run out of water,” Barbara said helpfully when she joined the building manager in the sitting room. The sound of Mandy lapping came from the kitchen. “I refilled her bowl. She’s got plenty of food, though. I think she’ll be set for a while.”
Morag gave Barbara a shrewd look, which suggested she wasn’t entirely convinced of the constable’s heartfelt concern for the cat. But she didn’t make a move to frisk Barbara’s person, so the end result was a round of farewells after which Barbara hotfooted it outside and dug round in her shoulder bag for her mobile.
It rang just as she was about to punch in the numbers for Lynley. A Scotland Yard extension was calling.
“Detective Con…Constable Havers?” Dorothea Harriman was on the other end. She sounded terrible.
“Me,” Barbara said. “Dee, what’s wrong?”
Harriman said, “Con…Detect…” And Barbara realised she was sobbing.
She said, “Dee. Dee, get a grip. For the love of God, what’s going on?”
“It’s his wife,” she cried.
“Whose wife? What wife?” Barbara felt the fear coming upon her in a rush because there was only one wife that she could conceive of in that moment, one woman only about whom the department’s secretary might be calling her. “Has something happened to Helen Lynley? Has she lost her baby, Dee? What’s going on?”
“Shot.” Harriman keened the word. “The superintendent’s wife has been shot.”
LYNLEY SAW that St. James had come to him not in his old MG but in a panda car, driven from St. Thomas’ Hospital with lights flashing and siren blaring. He assumed this much because that was how they returned to the other side of the river, riding in the back with two grim-faced Belgravia constables in the front, the entire journey made in a matter of minutes which nonetheless felt like hours to him, all the time with traffic parting like Red Sea waters before them.
His old friend kept a hand on his arm, as if expecting Lynley to bolt from the car. He said, “They’ve got a trauma team with her. They’ve given her blood. O-negative, they said. It’s universal. But you’ll know that, won’t you. Of course you will.” St. James cleared his throat and Lynley looked at him. He thought at that moment, unnecessarily, that St. James had once loved Helen, had so many years ago intended to be her husband himself.
“Where?” Lynley’s voice was raw. “Simon, I told Deborah…I said that she was to-”
“Tommy.” St. James’s hand tightened.
“Where, then? Where?”
“In Eaton Terrace.”
“At home?”
“Helen was tired. They parked the car and unloaded their parcels at the front door. Deborah took the Bentley round to the mews. She parked it, and when she got back to the house-”
“She didn’t hear anything? See anything?”
“She was on the front step. At first, Deborah thought she’d fainted.”
Lynley raised his hand to his forehead. He pressed in on his temples as if this would allow him to understand. He said, “How could she have thought-”
“There was virtually no blood. And her coat-Helen’s coat-it was dark. Is it navy? Black?”
Both of them knew the colour was meaningless, but it was something to cling to and they had to cling to it or face the unthinkable.
“Black,” Lynley said. “It’s black.” Cashmere, hanging nearly to her ankles, and she loved to wear it with boots whose heels were so high that she laughed at herself at the end of the day when she hobbled to the sofa and fell upon it, claiming she was a mindless victim of male Italian shoe designers with fantasies of women bearing whips and chains. “Tommy, save me from myself,” she would say. “Only foot binding could be worse than this.”
Lynley looked out of the window. He saw the blur of faces and knew they’d made it as far as Westminster Bridge, where people on the pavements were caught in their own little worlds into which the sound of a siren and the sight of a panda car zooming by caused them only an instant of wondering, Who? What? And then forgetting because it didn’t affect them.
“When?” he said to St. James. “What time?”
“Half past three. They’d thought to have tea at Claridge’s, but as Helen was tired, they went home instead. They’d have it there. They bought…I don’t know…tea cakes somewhere? Pastries?”
Lynley tried to absorb this. It was four forty-five. He said, “An hour? More than an hour? How can that be?”
St. James didn’t reply at once, and Lynley turned to him and saw how drawn and gaunt he looked, far more than normal for he was a gaunt and angular man by birth. He said, “Simon, why in God’s name? More than an hour?”
“It took twenty minutes for the ambulance to get to her.”
“Christ,” Lynley whispered. “Oh God. Oh Christ.”
“And then I wouldn’t let them tell you by phone. We had to wait for a second panda car-the first officers needed to stay at the hospital…to speak to Deborah…”
“She’s there?”
“Still. Yes. Of course. So we had to wait. Tommy, I couldn’t let them phone you. I couldn’t do that to you, say that Helen…say that…”
“No. I see.” And then he said fiercely after a moment, “Tell me the rest. I want to know it all.”
“They were calling in a thoracic surgeon when I left. They haven’t said anything else.”
“Thoracic?” Lynley said. “Thoracic?”
St. James’s hand tightened on his arm once again. “It’s a chest wound,” he said.
Lynley closed his eyes, and he kept them closed for the rest of the ride, which was mercifully brief.
At the hospital, two panda cars stood at the top of the sloping entrance to Accident and Emergency, and two of the uniformed constables who belonged to them were just coming out as Lynley and St. James entered. He saw Deborah at once, seated on one of the blue steel chairs with a box of tissues on her knees and a middle-aged man in a crumpled mackintosh talking to her, notebook in hand. Belgravia CID, Lynley thought. He didn’t know the man, but he knew the routine.
Two other uniforms stood nearby, affording the detective privacy. Apparently, they knew St. James by sight-as they would, since he’d already been at the hospital earlier-so they let both of them approach the interview that was going on.
Deborah looked up. Her eyes were red. Her nose looked sore. A pile of sodden tissues lay on the floor next to her feet. She said, “Oh, Tommy…,” and he could see her try to pull herself together.
He didn’t want to think. He couldn’t think. He looked at her and felt like wood.
The Belgravia man stood. “Superintendent Lynley?”
Lynley nodded.
“She’s in the operating theatre, Tommy,” Deborah said.
Lynley nodded again. All he could do was nod. He wanted to shake her, he wanted to rattle the teeth in her head. His brain shouted that it was not her fault, how could it be this poor woman’s fault, but he needed to blame, he wanted to blame, and there was no one else, not yet, not here, not now…
He said, “Tell me.”
Her eyes filled.
The detective-somewhere Lynley heard him say his name was Fire…Terence Fire, but that couldn’t be right because what sort of name was Fire, after all?-said that the case was well in hand, he was not to worry, all stops were being pulled out because the entire station knew not only what had happened but who she was, who the victim-
“Don’t call her that,” Lynley said.
“We’ll be in close contact,” Terence Fire said. And then, “Sir…If I may…I am so terribly-”
“Yes,” Lynley said.
The detective left them. The constables remained.
Lynley turned to Deborah as St. James sat next to her. “What happened?” he asked her.
“She asked would I park the Bentley. She’d been driving, but it was cold and she’d got tired.”
“You’d done too much. If you hadn’t done too much…those God damn bloody christening clothes…”
A snaking tear spilled over the rim of Deborah’s eye. She brushed it away. She said, “We stopped and unloaded the parcels. She asked me to take care parking the car because…You know how Tommy loves his car, she said. If we put a scratch on it, he’ll have us both for dinner. Watch the left side of the garage, she said. So I took care. I’d never driven…You see, it’s so big and it took me more than one try to get it into the garage…But not five minutes, Tommy, not that even. And I assumed she’d go straight into the house or ring the bell for Denton-”
“He’s gone to New York,” Lynley said, unnecessarily. “He isn’t there, Deborah.”
“She didn’t tell me. I didn’t know. And I didn’t think…Tommy, it’s Belgravia, it’s safe, it’s-”
“No where is God damn safe.” His voice sounded savage. He saw St. James stir. His old friend raised a hand: a warning, a request. He didn’t know nor did he care. There was only Helen. He said, “I’m in the middle of an investigation. Multiple murders. A single killer. Where in the name of heaven did you get the idea any place on earth is safe?”
Deborah took the question like a blow. St. James said his name, but she stopped him with a movement of her head. She said, “I parked the car. I walked back along the mews.”
“You didn’t hear-”
“I didn’t hear a sound. I came round the corner back into Eaton Terrace and what I saw was the shopping bags. They were spread on the ground, and then I saw her. She was crumpled…I thought she’d fainted, Tommy. There was no one there, no one nearby, not a single soul. I thought she’d fainted.”
“I told you to be sure no one-”
“I know,” she said, “I know. I know. But what was I meant to make of that? I thought of flu, someone sneezing in her face, Tommy being a fuss pot husband because I didn’t understand, don’t you see that, Tommy? How would I know because this is Helen we’re talking about and this is Belgravia where it’s supposed to be…and a gun, why would I ever think of a gun?”
She began to weep in earnest then, and St. James told her that she’d said enough. But Lynley knew she never could have said enough to explain how his wife, how the woman he loved…
He said, “What then?”
St. James said, “Tommy…”
Deborah said, “No. Simon. Please.” And then to Lynley, “She was on the top step and her door key was in her hand. I tried to rouse her. I thought she’d fainted because there was no blood, Tommy. There was no blood. Not like what you would think if someone is…I’d never seen…I didn’t know…But then she moaned and I could tell something was terribly wrong. I phoned triple nine and then I cradled her to keep her warm and that’s when…On my hand, there was blood. I thought I’d cut myself at first and I looked for where and how but I saw it wasn’t me and I thought the baby, but her legs, Helen’s legs…I mean, there was no blood where one would think…And this was a different sort of blood anyway, it looked different because I know, you see, Tommy…”
Even in his own despair, Lynley felt hers, and that was what finally got through to him. She would know what the blood of a miscarriage looked like. She’d suffered how many…? He didn’t know. He sat, not next to Deborah and her husband, but across, on the chair that Terence Fire had been using.
He said, “You thought she’d lost the baby.”
“At first. But then I finally saw the blood on her coat. High up, here.” She indicated a spot beneath her left breast. “I phoned triple nine again and I said, There’s blood, there’s blood. Hurry. But the police got there first.”
“Twenty minutes,” Lynley said. “Twenty God damn minutes.”
“I phoned three times,” Deborah told him. “Where are they, I asked. She’s bleeding. She’s bleeding. But I still didn’t know she’d been shot, you see. Tommy, if I’d known…If I’d told them that…Because I didn’t think, not in Belgravia…Tommy, who would shoot someone in Belgravia?”
Lovely wife, Superintendent. The sodding profile in The Source. Complete with photographs of the smiling superintendent of police and his charming wife. Titled bloke, he was, not your garden variety sort of cop at all.
Lynley rose blindly. He would find him. He would find him.
St. James said, “Tommy, no. Let the Belgravia police…” And only then did Lynley realise he’d said it aloud.
“I can’t,” he said.
“You must. You’re needed here. She’ll come out of theatre. They’ll want to speak to you. She’s going to need you.”
Lynley headed in the direction of the door but this, apparently, was why the uniformed constables had been hanging about. They stopped him, saying, “It’s in hand, sir. It’s top priority. It’s well in hand,” and by that time St. James had reached his side as well.
He said, “Come with me, Tommy. We won’t leave you,” and the kindness in his voice felt like a crushing weight on Lynley’s chest.
He gasped for breath, for something to cling to. He said, “My God. I’ve got to phone her parents, Simon. How am I going to tell them what’s happened?”
BARBARA FOUND that she couldn’t bring herself to leave even as she told herself she wasn’t needed and probably wasn’t wanted either. People milled about everywhere, each one of them in a personal hell of waiting.
Helen Lynley’s parents, the earl and countess of whatever because Barbara couldn’t remember if she’d ever heard the title so many generations in their family, were huddled in misery and they looked frail, more than seventy years old and unprepared to face what they were facing now.
Helen’s sister Penelope rushing in from Cambridge with her husband at her side, tried to comfort them after herself crying out, “How is she? Mum, my God, how is she? Where’s Cybil? Is Daphne on her way?”
They all were, all four of Helen’s sisters, including Iris on her way from America.
And Lynley’s mother was tearing up from Cornwall with her younger son, while his sister hurried down from Yorkshire.
Family, Barbara thought. She was neither needed nor wanted here. But she could not bring herself to leave.
Others had come and gone: Winston Nkata, John Stewart, other members of the team, uniformed constables and plainclothes officers whom Lynley had worked with through the years. Cops were checking in from stations in every borough in town. Everyone save Hillier had seemed to put in an appearance during the course of the night.
Barbara herself had arrived after the worst sort of journey from North London. Her car had refused to start at first up on Wood Lane, and she’d flooded its engine in a panic trying to get the bloody thing running. She’d sworn at the car. She’d vowed to reduce the Mini to rubble. She’d strangled the steering wheel. She’d phoned for help. She’d finally got the engine to sputter into life, and she’d sat on the horn trying to clear traffic out of the way.
She’d got to the hospital just after word had been given to Lynley about Helen’s condition. She’d seen the surgeon come to fetch him and she’d watched as he’d received the news. It’s killing him, she’d thought.
She wanted to go to him, to say she’d bear the weight of it with him, as his friend, but she knew she didn’t have that right. Instead, she watched as Simon St. James went to him, and she waited until Simon had returned to his wife to share with her what he had learned. Lynley and Helen’s parents disappeared with the surgeon, God only knew where, and Barbara understood that she could not follow. So she crossed the room to speak to St. James. He nodded at her and she was furiously grateful that he did not exclude her or ask why she was there.
She said, “How bad is it?”
He took a moment. From his expression, she prepared herself to hear the worst.
“She was shot beneath the left breast,” he said. His wife leaned into him, her face against his shoulder as she listened along with Barbara. “The bullet evidently went through the left ventricle, the right atrium, and the right artery.”
“But there was no blood, there was almost no blood.” Deborah spoke into the jacket he was wearing, into his shoulder, shaking her head.
“How can that happen?” Barbara asked St. James.
“Her lung collapsed at once,” St. James told her, “so the blood began filling the cavity that was left in her chest.”
Deborah began to cry. Not a wail. Not an ululation of grief. Just a shaking of her body that even Barbara could see she was doing her best to control.
“They would have put a tube in her chest when they first saw the wound,” St. James told Barbara. “They would have got blood from it. A litre. Perhaps two. They would have known then that they had to go in at once.”
“That’s what the surgery was.”
“They sutured the left ventricle, did the same for the artery and the exit wound in the right ventricle.”
“The bullet? Have we got the bullet? What happened to the bullet?”
“It was under the right scapula, between the third and fourth rib. We have the bullet.”
“So if she’s repaired,” Barbara said, “that’s good news, isn’t it? Isn’t it good news, Simon?”
She saw him withdraw inside himself then, to a place she could not know or imagine. He said, “It took so long to get to her, Barbara.”
“What do you mean? So long? Why?”
He shook his head. She saw-inexplicably-that his eyes grew cloudy. She didn’t want to hear the rest, then, but they’d waded too far into these waters. Retreat was not an option.
“Has she lost the baby?” Deborah was the one to ask the question.
“Not yet.”
“Thank God for that, then,” Barbara said. “So the news is good, right?” she repeated.
St. James said to his wife, “Deborah, would you like to sit down?”
“Stop it.” She raised her head. The poor woman, Barbara saw, looked like someone with a wasting disease. She felt, Barbara realised, like she’d pulled the trigger on Helen herself.
“For a while,” St. James said, his voice so low that Barbara had to lean in to him to make out his words, “she had no oxygen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her brain was deprived of oxygen, Barbara.”
“But now,” Barbara said, insistent still. “She’s all right, yes? What about now?”
“She’s on a ventilator now. Fluids, of course. A heart monitor.”
“Good. That’s very good, yes?” It was surely excellent, she thought, reason to celebrate, terrible moment but they’d all passed through it and everything was going to sort itself out. Right? Yes. Say the word yes.
“There’s no cortical activity,” St. James said, “and that means-”
Barbara walked away. She didn’t want to hear more. Hearing more meant knowing, knowing meant feeling, and that was the last bloody God damn thing…Eyes fixed on the lino, she paced rapidly out of the hospital into the cold night air and the wind, which struck her cheeks so surprisingly that she gasped and looked up and saw them gathered. The carrion feeders. The journalists. Not dozens of them, not as she’d seen them behind the barriers at the Shand Street tunnel and at the end of Wood Lane. But enough, and she wanted to hurl herself at them.
“Constable? Constable Havers? A word?”
Barbara thought it had to be someone from inside the hospital, coming out to fetch her with a piece of news, so she turned, but it was Mitchell Corsico and he was approaching with his notebook in his hand.
She said, “You need to clear out of here. You especially. You’ve done enough.”
His brow furrowed as if he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying to him. “You can’t think…” He paused, clearly regrouping. “Constable, you can’t think this has anything to do with The Source’s story on the superintendent.”
Barbara said to him, “You know what I think. Get out of my way.”
“But how is she? Is she going to be all right?”
“Get out of my bloody way,” she snarled. “Or I won’t answer for the consequences.”