by Dick Francis
‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘The operation went well. Now it’s a matter of time.’
‘What chances are we looking at?’ asked the Superintendent.
‘Reasonable,’ said Mr Pandita.
‘How reasonable?’ I asked.
‘She’s a fit young girl and obviously a fighter, otherwise she would have died in A amp; E, or even before. I give her a better than fifty-fifty chance. I don’t think there will be any brain damage.’
Brain damage!
‘Why would there be?’ I asked numbly.
‘If there was a lack of oxygen to the brain for more than a few minutes,’ he said, ‘then there would be damage. Even though her body was very short of blood for a while, her heart didn’t stop at any stage so she should be all right in that department. But her heart must have been pumping next to nothing round her so there’s always a risk.’
‘Can I see her?’ I asked.
‘Not just yet,’ he said. ‘The nursing staff are with her, making her comfortable and setting up all the monitoring equipment. Soon. But she’ll be asleep. We’ve given her a sedative to keep her blood pressure low. I’ll tell the staff you’re here and they’ll come and get you when they’re ready.’
I nodded. ‘Thank you.’
He disappeared back through the door and I sat down.
I looked again at my watch. It was only three thirty. How could time pass so slowly?
‘Where were we?’ said Superintendent Aldridge. ‘Ah, yes, did this shooting have anything to do with any of your investigations?’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I am presuming this wasn’t a random shooting,’ he said, ‘and that Miss Meer was specifically targeted by the gunman.’
‘But he would have had to wait there for ages,’ I said. ‘It was only by chance that Marina came out when she did.’
‘Assassins can wait for days or weeks to get a single opportunity if they are determined enough,’ he said.
And, I thought, if it was the same person who had attacked Marina in Ebury Street, he had had to wait for her then, too.
‘So, I ask again,’ he said, ‘do you think this has anything to do with your investigations?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied. ‘If you mean do I know who did this, then the answer’s no. If I did, I’d tell you, you can be sure of that.’
‘Do you have any suspicions?’
‘I always have suspicions,’ I said, ‘but they’re not based on anything solid. They’re not actually based on anything at all.’
‘Anything you say might be useful,’ he said.
‘Do you remember the jockey who was murdered at Cheltenham races two weeks ago?’
‘I remember that horse — Oven Cleaner — died,’ he said. ‘Now, that was a shame.’
‘Yes, well, a jockey was murdered on the same day. Then a racehorse trainer appeared to kill himself. Everyone, and especially the police, seem to think he committed suicide because he’d murdered the jockey.’
‘So?’ he said.
‘I believe the trainer was in fact murdered by the same man who killed the jockey and that it was made to look like suicide so that the police file on the jockey’s death would be conveniently closed. And I’ve been saying so loudly and often for the last ten days to anyone who’ll listen.’
‘What has any of this to do with Miss Meer being shot?’ he said.
‘Last Friday, I was warned that, if I didn’t keep my mouth shut, someone would get badly hurt. And now they have.’
CHAPTER 16
They finally allowed me in to see Marina around four.
First I had to don the regulation outfit of blue smock, with matching dishcloth hat. And I had to wear a mask over my mouth and nose. I wondered how she would know who I was, but I needn’t have worried, she was deeply asleep.
She looked so defenceless lying there, connected to the machines, with the tube still in her mouth. Her breathing was being assisted by a ventilator and the rhythmic purr as the bellows rose and fell was the only sound. A rectangular blue screen showed a bright line that peaked with the beat of her heart. Go on heart, I said to the machine, keep pumping.
I sat to one side, opposite the ventilator, and held her hand.
There were other patients in the unit but partitions rather than curtains separated the beds and these provided a fairly high degree of privacy.
I spoke to her.
I told her how much I loved her and how dreadfully sorry I was to have brought all this on her. I told her to fight, to live, and to get better. And I told her that I would get the man who had done this. And then we’d see. Maybe I’d take up gardening as a career, though one-handed gardening might be a problem.
And I asked her to marry me.
She didn’t reply. I told myself she was thinking it over.
A nurse came to tell me that there were some people to see me outside. Not more police, I thought. But it was Charles, and he had brought Jenny with him.
‘Hello, Sid,’ she said. She leaned forward and gave me a peck on the cheek. ‘How is she?’
Charles and I shook hands.
‘She’s doing OK — at least, I think so. The nurses seem optimistic, but I suppose they would. Certainly her colour is much better than earlier.’
‘Jenny picked me up from Paddington,’ said Charles. ‘I called her on the way up on the train and she wanted to come. You know, to give support.’
Or to gloat, I thought. But maybe that was unfair of me.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ I said. ‘Both of you.’
I looked past Charles and was astonished to see Rosie still sitting on one of the chairs opposite the lifts.
‘Rosie,’ I said, ‘why don’t you go home?’
She turned and looked at me with sunken eyes. She was clearly in no state to leave the hospital on her own. There was no sign of the Superintendent or his sidekick. What were the police thinking of, I thought, to leave her here without help?
‘Charles, Jenny, this is Rosie,’ I said. ‘Rosie works with Marina. She was there when Marina was shot. She saved her life.’
Jenny sat down next to Rosie and put her arm round her shoulder. The human contact was too much and Rosie burst into tears and sobbed, hanging on to Jenny as though her life depended on it.
‘We’ll look after Rosie,’ said Charles. ‘You go back to Marina. We’ll be here when you need us.’
He ushered me back to the unit door and almost pushed me through. It was such a comfort to have them there but I felt a little guilty at leaving them out in the corridor.
‘Sorry, just you,’ said the nurse when I asked. ‘And only then because she’s your fiancée.’
I stayed with Marina for what seemed like a long time. Every few minutes, a nurse would come to check on her and twice Mr Pandita, the surgeon, came in too.
‘She’s doing fine,’ he said on his second visit. ‘I’m more hopeful.’
‘More hopeful’ didn’t sound wonderful but a lot better than ‘less hopeful’.
‘It’s been more than two hours now since she left theatre,’ he said. ‘Her blood pressure is still low but that’s a good thing. It reduces the chance of internal bleeding. We will leave her sedated overnight and attempt to bring her out in the morning.’
‘Bring her out?’ I asked.
‘From the induced coma,’ he said. ‘Only then will we really know.’
We stood at the foot of the bed looking down at the unconscious figure.
‘I think I’ll go and get something to eat,’ I said. It was a while since I’d left my uneaten lunch on the floor of the sandwich bar, and even longer since dinner the previous night. ‘Then I’ll come back, if that’s all right?’
‘There are no visiting times on this ward. We run a twenty-four-hour service here.’ He smiled. At least I think he smiled. Due to his mask, I couldn’t see his mouth but there was a smile in his eyes.
Charles, Jenny and Rosie were still there when I came out.
&
nbsp; They had made themselves at home and were surrounded by the remains of bacon rolls and chicken mayonnaise sandwiches with salad. Empty polystyrene coffee beakers stood in a row on the bottom of an upturned waste bin that had doubled as a table.
Rosie looked much better for having had something to eat and other people to take her mind off the horrors of earlier.
‘Hello,’ said Charles, looking up from a newspaper. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘The official bulletin is “more hopeful”.’
‘That’s great,’ said Jenny.
‘I’m starving,’ I said. ‘I see that you’ve all had something but I need some food. Where’s the hospital canteen?’
Charles stood up, put all the trash in the reinstated bin, and gathered up his newspaper.
‘A policeman came and gave me these,’ he said, holding out my car keys. ‘He said to tell you that your car is in the hospital administrator’s parking space to the left of the front door.’
‘Fantastic,’ I said.
‘He also told me to tell you that he was only just in time to stop the bomb squad blowing it up.’
I laughed. The first time since…
‘He also wants you to move it as soon as possible as the hospital administrator could arrive at any time and demand his space back.’
‘I’ll drive it home now and put it in the garage,’ I said. ‘We could get something to eat there, and I could put on a clean shirt.’ It seemed like a very long time since I’d dressed to go to Harrow.
‘The policeman didn’t really want to give me the car keys but I told him I was your father-in-law.’
‘And I told him I was your wife,’ said Jenny.
That must have confused him.
My car was where it was promised and I drove the four of us back to Ebury Street. Rosie didn’t want to go home on her own and Jenny and Charles were happy to have her stay with us.
‘Hello, Mr Halley,’ said Derek at the desk. ‘Delivery for you.’
He held out an envelope to me. I just looked at it as he put it down on the marble top.
‘Did it come by taxi?’ I asked him.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘About an hour ago.’
‘You didn’t get the number of the taxi, I don’t suppose?’ I asked.
‘No, sorry.’
‘Could you identify the taxi driver?’
‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Flat number 28 have been moving today and there have been a load of people through here. Not only the removal men but the gas and electricity, to read the meters and so on.’
‘Do you have security film?’ I asked, pointing at the bank of monitors.
‘Yes, but we only have cameras in the garages and round the back. There are none in reception.’
Dead end.
I looked at the envelope. It was white, about four inches wide by nine long, with ‘SID HALLEY — BY HAND’ written in capital letters on the front, as before.
‘This is the same as I received last time,’ I said to Charles. ‘After Marina was attacked.’
‘You ought to give it to the police,’ he said. ‘Don’t touch it.’
‘The envelope’s been handled by the taxi driver and by Derek,’ I said.
‘And Bernie,’ said Derek. ‘He took it from the taxi driver.’
Bernie was another of the team of porters/security.
I used Derek’s pencil to turn the envelope over. It was stuck shut. It looked like a birthday card.
‘I’ll open it,’ I said.
I used another sheet of paper to hold the envelope down on the desk and used the pencil to slit it open. Only touching the sides I withdrew the contents. It was a card but not a birthday card. It said, ‘Get Well Soon’ on the front, along with a painting of some flowers. I used the pencil to open it.
There was some writing, again in capital letters:
‘NEXT TIME SHE’LL LOSE A HAND. THEN SHE’LL BE A CRIPPLE, JUST LIKE YOU.’
Charles drew in his breath sharply. ‘Not much doubt about that, then.’
‘What does it say?’ said Jenny, coming closer and reading it. ‘Oh!’
‘Don’t let anyone touch this. I’m going to get something to put it into for the police,’ I said.
‘Can you get fingerprints off paper?’ said Charles.
‘I’m sure you can,’ I said.
‘You can also get DNA from saliva,’ said Rosie.
I turned to her. ‘So?’
‘If someone licked that envelope to stick it shut then they will have left their DNA on it,’ she said.
I stared at her. ‘But won’t it have dried out by now?’ I asked.
‘The DNA will still be there.’
‘Could you get a profile from it?’ I asked.
‘I can get a profile from a single fruit fly you can hardly see,’ she said, smiling. ‘This would be a piece of cake.’
‘Shouldn’t you leave that to the police?’ said Jenny.
‘There’s plenty of stick for both of us,’ said Rosie. ‘I would only need a tiny bit of the envelope. And I really want to do it.’ She looked at me.
‘So do I,’ I said. ‘I’ll fetch some scissors and two plastic bags.’
Derek had stood listening to it all.
‘Like something out of Agatha Christie,’ he said. ‘Death on Ebury Street.’
‘No one’s died yet,’ I said. At least not here. But I thought of Huw Walker and Bill Burton.
We went up to my flat and I raided the refrigerator to find some food. I made a plateful of ham and mustard sandwiches and found some bananas lurking in a fruit bowl behind the kitchen television. The others kindly let me have first go but then they also tucked in with relish.
I went into my office to find Marina’s parents’ number. I tried to call them but there was no answer. I wrote down their address to give to the police, just in case.
I went back into the sitting room. Rosie was on a mission and she wanted to go off to Lincoln’s Inn Fields straight away with her bag containing its piece of envelope.
‘What’s the hurry?’ I asked. ‘It takes hours for the stuff to move in that gel anyway.’
‘Not with the machine in my lab,’ said Rosie. ‘I can get results much quicker than Marina could. The whole thing would take me less than an hour.’
I knew that Rosie was desperate to do something that, in her eyes, would compensate for what she saw as her failure to keep Marina from harm and I wasn’t going to stop her. I was also interested to know if there was DNA on the envelope and if it matched our previous sample. It wouldn’t, however, give us the answer to the puzzle.
‘Do whatever you like,’ I said. ‘I’m going to change and then I’m going back to the hospital. I’ll call the Superintendent after I’ve gone and tell him to collect the card from reception. I don’t want to spend another age being interviewed.’
‘I don’t mind going with Rosie to her lab,’ said Charles. ‘We’ll come on to the hospital after.’
‘And I’ll go with Sid,’ said Jenny.
I left the car in the garage and we took two taxis. It was a long time since I’d been in a taxi alone with Jenny.
‘Just like old times,’ I said.
‘I was thinking the same. Funny old world.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Here I am, going with you to see the woman who’s taken my place and I am desperate that she should be all right.’
‘Are you?’ I asked.
‘Of course. I liked her last Sunday. You two go well together.’
I looked out as we passed Big Ben and absentmindedly checked my watch.
‘I do want you to be happy, you know,’ she said. ‘I know we’re divorced but it doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. I just couldn’t live with you. And…’ She tailed off.
‘Yes?’ I said. ‘And what?’
She didn’t answer. I didn’t press her. I really was glad she was here and I didn’t want to have a scene.
We arrived at the entrance to St Thomas’
s and I started to get out of the cab.
Jenny put her hand on my arm, the real one. ‘I’m not sure how to put this,’ she said. ‘And obviously it’s not the reason I want her to get better but,’ she paused, ‘Marina… takes away my guilt.’
I sat back in the seat and looked at her. My dear Jenny. The girl I had once loved and ached for. The girl I thought I knew.
‘Are you getting out, guv’nor?’ asked the driver, breaking the trance.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
Jenny and I climbed out of the taxi, paid, and went into the hospital.
Dr Osborne in Casualty had said that the first three hours would be critical, but he had said that over four hours ago and Marina had survived so far. Every passing minute must surely improve her chances.
When we arrived at Intensive Care, Jenny said she would wait on the same chairs outside by the lifts, and read. I noticed that she had borrowed a book from my flat. I was surprised to see that it was an autobiography by a leading steeplechase trainer, someone I had ridden for regularly, and someone Jenny and I used to argue about.
I put on the regulation blue uniform and went in to be met by the police guard that had belatedly appeared in the unit. Yes, a nurse agreed, she could vouch for Mr Halley; he’s Miss Meer’s fiancé. Pass, friend.
Marina looked the same as when I’d left her.
I sat down as before and held her hand. It seemed natural to talk to her so I did, albeit softly.
I told her about all sorts of things. I told her about leaving my car on the pavement and how the bomb squad had been called out to check it. I told her that Charles had come up to London and how he had arrived with Jenny. I told her about Rosie and that she might be staying the night but not to worry because Charles would be there too as a chaperon. I didn’t tell her about the card and its violent message. I was pretty sure that she couldn’t hear me but I didn’t want to distress her, just in case.
‘And do you know,’ I said to her, ‘Jenny says you take away her guilt. Her guilt for leaving me. Now there’s a shock, I can tell you. I’ve never thought she felt guilty for a moment. The irony is that I had felt guilty, too, because I hadn’t given up riding when she wanted me to.’
I stroked her arm and sat there for a while in silence. For all its intensiveness, the Intensive Care Unit was a calm, quiet place with subdued lighting and almost no noise. Just the hum of the ventilator pump and the slight hiss of escaping air.