Left You Dead

by James, Peter

  ‘No,’ Grace replied with a smile, so absorbed back in his work that he had momentarily forgotten the nightmare this day had become. ‘He won’t.’

  44

  Tuesday 3 September

  It was over an hour after he had ended the call with Glenn Branson before the A&E consultant returned to give Roy and Cleo an update on Bruno. Adrian Burton looked more gravely serious than he had previously. Roy and Cleo were sitting together holding hands and comforting each other.

  ‘The report I have from the orthopaedic consultant who’s viewed the trauma CT scans is that Bruno has multiple fractures to his lower legs, rib cage, right hip and left shoulder. These are relatively easy fixes. He does also have, as we suspected, a ruptured spleen, and he is currently in theatre having an emergency splenectomy. That is a very straightforward process and people can make a full recovery with that, although they will be dependent on some medication on a permanent basis.’

  Grace looked at him, sensing something more was to come. He could see it in Cleo’s face, too. ‘But?’ he asked, pushing the question out there.

  Adrian Burton nodded solemnly. ‘I’m afraid there is a but, yes. Bruno’s head has suffered a massive trauma, and possibly a secondary one, consistent with hitting two hard surfaces – in my experience of such collision victims his head would have come into contact first with the vehicle’s windscreen and then with the road. He doesn’t have a fractured skull, which is a positive, but he’s not waking up, which is a concern. We’ll be doing an MRI scan after twenty-four hours.’

  ‘What is his potential brain injury, in layman’s language?’ Grace asked.

  Cleo interjected. ‘Swelling.’

  Burton nodded. ‘Because of his ruptured spleen and his dropped blood pressure, there’s been a further insult to his brain – which we call a secondary brain injury – hypoxia. The team are doing all they can to try to get Bruno’s numbers right and to extubate and stabilize him – and hopefully limit the hypoxia. He’s been given three sets of drugs – ketamine to sedate him, rocuronium, a paralysing agent, and alfentanil, an analgesic.’

  ‘So, in your opinion, doctor, what is his prognosis?’ Grace asked.

  ‘I’d be lying if I told you both it was good. It isn’t – but he’s got a strong heart and for the moment we’ve just got to hope for the best.’

  ‘And pray?’ Cleo asked.

  Burton smiled thinly. His eyes signalled, Why not?

  ‘I know you’re giving him the best care you can,’ Grace said. ‘But is there anywhere – a neurological unit in some other hospital – London, perhaps – that has any facilities you don’t have here? I don’t mind what it costs – we’ll pay for a helicopter, or anything.’

  At this moment, Grace thought, he would pay every penny he had in the world to save this boy. Even if it meant selling their house.

  Burton shook his head. ‘We’re a regional major trauma centre, we’ve got a neuro ICU, and in this acute episode he’s better off here. If you were talking about rehab in the future, then we could look at that, but we are a long way off from that at the moment. Even if there was a better facility somewhere, he is so unstable at the moment that I honestly don’t think he would survive the journey.’

  His words slammed into Roy’s stomach like a massive punch.

  Dimly, he was aware of Cleo taking his hand.

  ‘Bruno’s being moved to the ICU – I’ll come back soon and take you up to see him,’ Burton said and left the room.

  45

  Tuesday 3 September

  At 3 p.m., Jon Exton and Norman Potting returned to the Brighton custody centre to carry out their third interview with Niall Paternoster, in the presence of his solicitor.

  Seated across the table in the interview room, after completing the formalities, Exton asked, ‘Can you tell us about your movements each day last week, Niall?’

  Niall ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, thinking. ‘Yeah, Eden was at work all week and I did some taxi-driving. Early in the week I had a few airport runs from Heathrow and Gatwick, and in between those I tried to get out on my bike as much as possible and enjoy the weather. The second part of the week was quieter for me, mostly local pickups off the ranks.’

  Exton continued, ‘Did you work every evening?’

  ‘Yes, except Thursday – such a glorious evening, we had a barbecue in the garden.’

  Exton said, ‘Was the barbecue a success?’

  Niall glanced at his solicitor, who frowned back. Then replied, ‘I’m not sure what you mean by a success?’

  ‘Simple,’ Exton replied. ‘Did you both enjoy it, have a nice, happy evening?’

  ‘Is this relevant?’ Rattigan asked.

  ‘It is, yes,’ Exton responded.

  Niall replied, ‘Yes, it was a success, I think, we both enjoyed it – although we did have a minor disagreement over the smoke that was coming from the meat.’

  ‘A minor disagreement? Can you tell us about that?’ Exton asked.

  Niall smiled, a little nervously. ‘Eden is a perfectionist and was giving me tips on how to cook the steaks. She was moaning that there was too much smoke. Although we had a few words it was good-natured, nothing nasty.’

  ‘OK,’ Exton said. ‘So the barbecue went well. How much had you both had to drink?’

  ‘Eden was pretty sober, she doesn’t drink much – she thinks I drink enough for the both of us. I certainly had a few and when we went to bed I was out like a light. I didn’t wake up until the next morning when she’d already left for work. A colleague was picking her up.’

  ‘So what did you do Friday?’ Exton asked.

  ‘Cleared up the barbecue and hung around the house most of the day. I biked down to the beach and had a swim, then I went to the gym. Eden got back at the usual time from work and we had a quiet evening. The rest of the weekend is what I have told you we did already, a number of times – nothing changes.’

  Norman Potting took over. ‘Thanks for that, Niall. Let’s go back to your finances, shall we?’

  Paternoster gave him a sardonic smile. ‘That’s easy. I’ve got no money, my business went bust. Eden is the one with the cash. She’s paying the mortgage and, so far, the bank haven’t come calling. I know she has her own bank account with money in that she had before we met. I’ve never asked too much about that, but I know she’s not short of a bob or two.’

  ‘So if anything happened to her, what would happen to her money?’ Potting continued.

  ‘I imagine it would come to me. We did make wills after we married and left things to each other. And I—’

  Suddenly he faltered, his voice cracking. Tears trickled down his face. ‘You don’t want to believe me, do you? You think I’ve done something to Eden and I’m covering it up. I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know what’s happened or where she is. You must believe me. I’m completely lost.’

  He buried his face in his hands.

  Potting and Exton sat still. Then Exton asked the solicitor, ‘Would your client like a short break?’

  Paternoster shook his head. ‘No, I’m fine, let’s get this over with.’

  Potting, his tone a little gentler, said, ‘Niall, we want to find out what has happened to Eden as well, that’s why we are asking all these questions. You’re telling us that apart from the occasional husband-and-wife disagreement your relationship was good. We have a number of detectives working on trying to find Eden and it’s important you tell us the truth and hold nothing back. Everything you’ve told us about what the two of you were doing last week is correct?’

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  After several more minutes of questioning, during which Niall Paternoster continued to maintain that he was completely baffled by Eden’s disappearance, Potting fell silent for a moment. ‘All right, Niall, we will be speaking to our colleagues to ascertain what they have found out from their enquiries and we will then conduct a further interview with you later today.’

  ‘Third interview with Niall Pa
ternoster terminated at 3.37 p.m.,’ Exton announced.

  As Niall Paternoster was returned to his cell, Potting and Exton joined DC Butler for a debrief. All three of them agreed they believed strongly Paternoster was lying to them, and he was hiding the truth of what had really happened.

  46

  Tuesday 3 September

  The line of twenty-odd volunteers of the Sussex Community Search Team, wearing orange-and-yellow high-viz tabards over their summer rambling gear, were stretched out to the right and left of Rodney Allbright. The majority, like himself, were well past retirement age, which gave them the freedom to be called out at a moment’s notice. Each had a whistle hung from a cord around their neck.

  Oh yes, such fun, and with such valuable purpose, Allbright thought, as he strode in his trusty hiking boots through the wet undergrowth. He loved these callouts, which happened every few weeks.

  Ever since his retirement, over ten years ago now, from the Brighton firm of chartered accountants, Hartley Fowler, where he had spent his entire working life, he now had a new purpose as a member of the Sussex Community Search Team. A purpose he had badly needed after his wife, Maureen, with whom he’d planned so many things to enjoy in his retirement, had suddenly passed away from a massive stroke five years ago.

  Along with his fellow volunteers, supervised by two Sussex police officers, he had great satisfaction in being part of a team that was readily willing to do anything, from trying to find a runaway child or a sufferer from dementia who had wandered from his or her home and not been seen by a distraught spouse for several days, to – like now – searching for the remains of a woman who was, according to the briefing, missing, presumed murdered.

  So far, in four years of being a member of this team, he himself had not found anything. It had always been another member, somewhere along the long line that stretched out either side of him, who had stumbled across an item of clothing or a rucksack concealed in the undergrowth or what looked like a shallow grave or, on one occasion, a frightened missing child halfway up a tree.

  He glanced at his watch: 4.32 p.m. Sunset today was around 7.30 p.m. They had about three hours before the light failed sufficiently for the search to be abandoned for the night, to be resumed in the morning. Somewhere in the distance he heard the sound of two dogs barking.

  He strode on, maintaining the prescribed gap between himself and his colleagues on either side, passing a variety of trees on this damp September afternoon. Beneath the peak of his golfing cap, his eyes were focused on the dense undergrowth of mostly heather and bracken, looking for any sign at all of something other than the natural flora and fauna of the forest.

  He had always loved trees and there were numerous fine specimens here of sweet chestnut, hazel, alder, silver birch and Scots pine. Trees had always been of particular interest to him and to Maureen. Their longevity had fascinated both of them. He was passing some now that had been around a century and more before he had been born, and would, unless they were coppiced, doubtless be around for further centuries long after he’d gone.

  He and Maureen had planned several of their rambling holidays around sites of ancient yew trees. The year before she died, they had visited the fabled Fortingall Yew in Perthshire, Scotland. It was estimated to be over 2,000 years old and some people reckoned it might be as old as 3,000 years, way preceding the birth of Christ. A couple of years earlier, they had visited an even more ancient specimen in Defynnog in Wales, which some experts dated at over 5,000 years old.

  Yews held a particular fascination for him. Historically, in the past millennium, they tended to be planted in churchyards, because their leaves were poisonous to cattle and churches were the only gardens protected by walls or rails. And they were planted for a reason – they were the best wood for making longbows, the standard weapon for British soldiers in the centuries before firearms had made them redundant.

  Maureen had often urged him to apply for the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? because, she ribbed him, he was a mine of useless information, much of it involving trees.

  But there was something else about these majestic structures. He wasn’t a fanciful person, but like all humans with enquiring minds, he was puzzled by aspects of life. The same questions so many asked. What happened before we were born? What will happen after we die? Why are we here?

  Rodney Allbright wasn’t a man with a whimsical imagination, yet sometimes, when he walked past a particularly magnificent specimen, like the massively thick and tall chestnut he was passing now, he did wonder whether trees had an intelligence which we humans were oblivious to. Trees just existed. They didn’t need education, they didn’t need to cover their surroundings in tarmac so they could move around, they didn’t need to build structures to live in or burn fossil fuels to stay warm. They didn’t need electricity or to buy stuff wrapped in layers of packaging or a million other pollutants that messed with the ecology of the planet. Trees just – were. Tall, serene, smart? Giving back to Mother Nature nothing more and nothing less than they took from her.

  One of the last things his beloved Maureen had said to him before her stroke was, ‘You know, my love, sometimes I wish I’d just been born as a tree.’

  A flash of colour snapped him out of his reveries.

  He stopped in his tracks. Had he imagined it?

  The rest of the search line team carried on. He turned back and probed the bracken with his stick. Bloody hell. No, he hadn’t imagined it.

  A woman’s blue-and-white trainer lay on its side at the edge of what looked like a recently dug area.

  He reached for his whistle and blew it.

  And as he did so, something else caught his eye. A glint of light in some brambles a short distance away. A shard of broken glass?

  47

  Tuesday 3 September

  Roy and Cleo sat beside Bruno in the ICU of the Royal Sussex County Hospital. The boy was dwarfed by the mass of technology all around him. He lay, eyes closed, breathing through a clear plastic endotracheal tube connected to a high-tech ventilator. Much of his marble-coloured face that was visible was covered in abrasions. His right cheek had a dressing on it. His normally neat blond hair was tousled and greasy. His bruised left hand had two cannulas taped to it, with lines leading up to pumps, regulating the flow from the bags above. An arterial line came out of his wrist. ECG circles were stuck around his chest, with red, yellow and green wires running from them to another monitor that beeped steadily.

  Two nurses and a registrar were all busy checking tubes and lines. The Intensive Care consultant talked Roy and Cleo through what was happening and all the monitoring equipment.

  Grace’s eyes went up to the bank of monitors on shelving above him, one with a zigzagging line on a small green screen and a row of others giving digital readouts on red screens. He raised his arm over the boy’s head and gently tidied some of his hair. ‘Hi, Bruno, it’s your dad, I’m with you. Can you hear me?’

  They were screened off from the rest of the ward by green curtains. There were constant, intermittent beeps, and the occasional whine of an alarm somewhere near. All the initial tests on Bruno had been completed, and he now lay in an induced coma. He would remain in this, Roy and Cleo had been informed, while monitoring continued.

  He looked so vulnerable, Grace thought. All his previous concerns about his son were forgotten – he was now desperately anxious for the poor little chap. Wishing there was something, anything, he could do. Wishing he could wind the clock back and, instead of dropping him at school this morning, have done something different. Maybe carried on talking with him?

  A couple of hours ago, Cleo had rung home to see if their nanny could stay late tonight with Noah. She reported that Kaitlynn said she was willing to do anything that could help. She and Jack were due to go out to dinner. But, of course, she would cancel it and stay as long as was needed – all night if that helped.

  When Roy wasn’t fretting about Bruno, he spent much of the time pacing up and down, still thinking ab
out Operation Lagoon. Thinking through Niall Paternoster’s comments and body language when he and Branson had interviewed him yesterday. Thinking about what did and did not fit with the evidence his team was uncovering. Evidence that was increasingly damning.

  A swish of curtains made both of them turn round, and they saw Mel, a staff nurse, enter the confined area, closing the curtain behind her. She gave them a breezy but sympathetic smile. ‘I’m going off shift shortly. I know how concerned you are to be at your son’s bedside, but we’re going to be keeping him in this coma for the time being. You are, of course, very welcome to stay here, but I think you’d both be much better off going home and getting a good night’s rest.’

  Cleo looked up at the displays on all the monitors to which Bruno was attached. There’d been no apparent change in his condition, so far as she could see.

  ‘If there’s any deterioration in Bruno’s condition to worry about, you’ll be called immediately,’ Mel said. ‘But, honestly, there isn’t anything for you to do here for now. I would go home and get some rest. Perhaps we’ll have better news tomorrow.’

  ‘Is that likely, do you think?’ Grace asked in a quiet voice.

  She hesitated awkwardly. ‘Are either of you familiar with the Glasgow Coma Scale?’

  Cleo nodded.

  Mel indicated with her finger for them to follow her, and they stepped out through the curtains into the ward.

  Her voice dropping to a whisper, Mel said, ‘We never know how much patients in a coma can hear. Bruno had a score of seven, which isn’t good. But,’ she added, her face brightening just a fraction, ‘we never know for sure. I’ve seen people make a complete recovery from a far worse prognosis than Bruno’s.’

  As she left, Roy turned to Cleo. ‘Remind me, what does a score of seven mean?’

  ‘It’s not great, darling,’ she said. ‘The scale relates to responsiveness to stimuli – to pain, verbalization and eye-opening. Below eight means possible severe brain damage. The highest a patient can have is fifteen.’