Nathan and the girls moved into the living room with their noisy dancing. She sighed as she looked at her faint reflection in the kitchen window. It was still sunny at the front of the house and at the bottom of the garden, but the kitchen was a dark room.
Once the girls were in bed, Lexie sat down with Nathan and told him about finding the key and Patrick’s notebook.
‘It always made more sense that it would be about Patrick’s work, but what he uncovered, that’s terrible.’ Nathan shook his head in disbelief. ‘And I thought I’d had an exciting day.’
‘You’re not mad at me?’
‘You sent evidence to the police. That’s where it belongs. I guess that’s what Patrick would have done.’
Lexie rested her head against Nathan’s chest, feeling more relieved than she had for some time, but she couldn’t forget Dominique’s words.
24
Nathan’s phone woke them and he stumbled around the bedroom trying to find it. Lexie rolled over and squinted at the clock. Three-thirty. Who the hell rang at that time? Nathan wandered out to the lounge for a short, mumbled conversation.
‘Who was it?’ she asked when he came back into the bedroom.
‘Security. The alarm has gone off at the factory. I’ll have to go and check.’ He dressed and leaned over to kiss her. ‘I’ll be about an hour.’
Lexie found it hard to get back to sleep. She dozed, her dreams a mix of Miriam and Janice Dance, and Evelyn and Patrick. Through it all were Dominique’s words. “Live your life. You have too much to lose.”
She woke with a start, her heart pounding. Fiona was poking her cheek none too gently.
‘Mummy, there’s no krispies left.’
Her head was muddled with worry, bad dreams, and too little sleep. ‘I bought a new packet.’
‘Ruth spilled them.’
Lexie groaned.
‘Is Daddy with you?’
‘No.’
It was daylight. Nathan should have been back hours ago. Seven-twenty. Damn, she’d overslept.
She pulled on some clothes. First she’d sort out breakfast and then ring Nathan.
Tilly stood on a chair, leaning over the toaster.
‘What are you doing?’ said Lexie.
‘Making toast.’ Tilly seemed to manage this “isn’t it obvious” tone so easily these days.
‘Where did the krispies get spilled?’
‘On the floor,’ said Tilly. ‘Max ate them.’
Max’s tail thudded against Lexie’s leg. He looked up at her, recognising his name.
‘They’re no good for you,’ said Lexie. His look said that might be so, but if it was on the floor, it was his.
Lexie spread the toast with Marmite and poured milk for the children. After that she rang Nathan, but he didn’t answer.
She rushed the girls through breakfast and tried Nathan a couple more times. He should be answering even if he’d had to go to the police station because of a break-in.
Lexie dropped the girls off and rang Nathan again while she waited for Helen. Still no answer. As Helen came out of the school, Lexie’s phone rang.
‘Ross.’
‘I’m so sorry, Lexie. I don’t know how to say this.’
Her heart plummeted. Spit it out, why don’t you. ‘What’s happened?’
‘When the men turned up for work this morning, they found Nathan. He’d been beaten up and was unconscious.’
‘How is he?’ Her legs wouldn’t hold her up and she leaned against her car. She was shaking so much, the phone jiggled against her ear.
Ross wasn’t sure. The doctors wouldn’t give him any information. He started to give her the hospital ward details but she passed the phone to Helen. She couldn’t take it in.
‘Get in my car,’ said Helen, when she finished the call. ‘You’re in no fit state to drive.’
Lexie couldn’t pull a coherent thought together as she sat in the passenger seat. At the hospital, she followed Helen down corridors until they stopped at a reception desk and Helen spoke to a nurse.
Other people came and went, some spoke to them but she couldn’t make out the words. Finally they took her to see Nathan. The beeping machines and wires overwhelmed her. She barely recognised Nathan, his face swollen and battered, and his chest heavily bandaged. She remembered Max’s elderly owner and couldn’t stop herself from crying.
Helen pulled over a chair and pressed her shoulder. ‘Sit down here.’ She still had Lexie’s phone. ‘I’ll ring your parents.’
Lexie heard her voice as a murmur in the background. ‘What did they say?’ she asked when Helen sat next to her.
‘Your mum is ringing your father now. They’ll be here as soon as they can.’
‘No, the doctors. What did they say about Nathan?’
‘We haven’t seen them yet. The doctor will be here shortly to talk to us.’
Lexie gently touched the bruises on Nathan’s face. She longed to run her fingers through his hair but the bandages covered most of it.
Hours might have passed, or minutes, she wasn’t sure. When the doctor stood in front of her, she was relieved he was older than her, hair greying a little at his temples. He must have been a doctor for long enough to have seen other people as sick as Nathan. He’d have experience. Nathan would recover. He had to.
She stood while the doctor talked, although her legs shook and the room swayed. At some point during the conversation she grasped Helen’s arm. When the doctor left, Helen gently nudged her back onto the chair.
‘I’ll get you a drink. Will you be okay for a minute or two?’
Lexie couldn’t make her voice work and simply nodded.
‘I’ll be right back.’
She stroked Nathan’s face again. ‘I’m so sorry. If this is my fault, I never meant it. I love you so much, please don’t leave me. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ She wished she’d told him this more often and hoped he could hear her.
Helen touched her shoulder lightly, and she took the hot drink Helen gave her. ‘I bought a bottle of water as well while I was down there.’
‘What did the doctor say?’ Lexie took a sip of her drink, glad of its warmth. She didn’t think she’d ever feel warm again. ‘I’m not sure I got it all.’
‘Nathan has some fractured ribs and other bruising and cuts, but it’s his head injury they’re most worried about. There’s some swelling in the brain, so they’ve put him in an induced coma.’
‘That’s why he’s like this?’
‘Yes. It protects the brain. The doctor did explain why, but I didn’t understand all of it. I think it’s to let the brain rest and then the swelling is more likely to decrease.’
‘Did he say…? What are Nathan’s chances?’
‘He said Nathan was fit and healthy, apart from this obviously.’ Helen’s voice tailed away and she was quiet for a moment. ‘He said if they can help him through this initial period, they can hopefully improve the outcome.’
Nathan was an outcome! She’d talked like that in performance interviews with her staff. Goals and outcomes. This must be her fault.
‘Do you think this has anything to do with what we found?’ asked Lexie.
‘I’ve thought about little else since we’ve been here, but I don’t see how it can be. We haven’t told anyone. I didn’t even mention it to Gareth and that’s not like me. And it was only yesterday afternoon. The parcel won’t have reached your dad yet.’
Lexie rubbed her eyes impatiently. She wanted to believe Helen and what she said made sense. How could anyone know what they’d found. It could simply be a break-in that went horribly wrong. Nothing mattered except for Nathan.
Her parents arrived. As they hugged her she couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.
‘I’ve spoken to the doctor,’ said her father. ‘He reckons the odds are good for Nathan. We’ll find whoever did this.’
He sounded so competent. He must have seen these things more often than he wanted. Lexie knew he was talkin
g to help her, but she wasn’t sure if it was working. Helen stood and murmured that she’d pick up the children and give them something to eat.
More time passed, and then her mother said they should go. Lexie didn’t want to leave Nathan, but her mother was firm. Tilly and the twins also needed her, and she wouldn’t do herself or Nathan any good if she didn’t have some rest. When they walked to her parents’ car she was surprised it was evening.
‘What time is it?’
‘Seven.’ Her mother unlocked the car door. ‘Your father will stay with Nathan for a while longer.’
‘I left the car at school this morning.’
‘Gareth and Helen brought it here. I gave Helen the keys out of your bag and she dropped them back in when they left the car here.’
Lexie gazed at her mother. ‘I don’t remember any of that.’
‘I wouldn’t expect you to. Get in the car and we’ll pick up the girls from Helen’s.’
When she remembered how Helen and Gareth had helped Evelyn after the fire, Lexie couldn’t stop the tears trickling down her cheek. She’d done small things for Evelyn, but none of that made any difference in the end. Patrick and Evelyn were dead.
She told the girls that Daddy had an accident and was in hospital. They wanted to see him, and she told them it would be a few days before the doctors would let little girls in, but then they could go and visit. She didn’t think it was a good idea they saw Nathan as he looked now. The machines made everything even scarier.
Lexie didn’t think she’d sleep but she needed to be alone. She cuddled Nathan’s pillow, smelling his scent on the fabric. It consoled and frightened her. What if he didn’t improve? What if the very worst she could imagine actually happened? Eventually, her exhaustion won out, and she dropped into a fitful sleep. She woke and dozed several times, dreams of Nathan soothing and upsetting her. Each time she woke she’d reach out to feel his side of the bed and each time it was cold. She couldn’t cope with just memories. She needed him.
It was still dark when she woke, her head clear of dreams and drowsiness. She looked at the clock. Three-thirty. Exactly the time the phone had rung the previous night. If she knew then what would happen, she would never have let him leave. That was stupid as she couldn’t have known.
She wandered into the kitchen and ran some water into a glass. She opened the back door and stared out at the shadows in the garden. Had Nathan been scared during the attack? He must have fought hard to have received such bad injuries? Please, Nathan, be okay.
Someone touched her shoulder lightly and she jumped.
‘It’s just me,’ said her mother.
‘Hope I didn’t wake you,’ muttered Lexie.
‘No. I doubt any of us have slept much, except for the girls. I looked in on them a while ago.’
They sat at the table. Lexie wasn’t sure if they talked; she certainly didn’t, and if her mother said anything she didn’t seem to expect an answer. Sometime later her father came in and joined them.
So much of what happened yesterday felt like a dream or had just passed her by. Conversations. People coming into the room, looking at Nathan, checking the machines, writing things down on clipboards. Helen sitting with her. Her parents.
How strange that she’d woken at exactly the same time as the previous morning.
‘Has anyone talked to you about the security call for the factory?’ She stared at her father.
He looked startled at her question.
‘No, but I can find out.’
She sank back into murky thoughts, trying to make sense of their futility. ‘Could you ask Ross? Or the security company?’
For a moment he looked as though he might ask more, but then he nodded.
Lexie went back to bed, she didn’t think she’d sleep, but she didn’t want to answer any questions. She wanted to believe it was a robbery, but she had an awful feeling it was more than that.
She slept fitfully, and when she heard the girls’ chatter and her mother’s voice, she dragged herself out of bed. In the hallway she stopped and took a few deep breaths; she had to act as normally as she could for the children.
‘You told us that story before, about when you were young.’ Tilly’s voice was clear.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jean. ‘I forgot I’d told you.’
‘’S’all right. Mummy says the same things all the time. She says, “Don’t be so silly,” and, “Oh, grow up.”’
‘She says that to you?’ asked Jean.
‘No, Daddy.’
Lexie covered her mouth with her hand to stop herself from crying out loud. She hurried back to the bedroom and threw herself on the bed, unable to stop the tears from coming again. She’d said such things to Nathan when he clowned around with her. She said it when he told silly jokes or pulled funny faces. So often she’d rolled her eyes, or shaken her head, and said the things that Tilly had repeated, sometimes as a joke, but not always. She’d never say it again if it meant Nathan would wake up from this coma. She would laugh at every silly joke and never tell him to grow up again.
She washed her face and dragged a comb through her hair and made it to the kitchen a short time before they needed to leave with the girls.
‘Can we see Daddy today?’ asked Tilly.
‘Probably not today,’ said Lexie. ‘Perhaps at the weekend.’
‘Okay. Can we go to Rachel’s after school?’
‘I expect so. Auntie Helen will probably pick you up from school.’
Somehow she got through the morning rituals. She didn’t know how she’d have coped without her mother there to help. In the background, her father took on the light-hearted role with Tilly and the twins that Nathan would have played.
She spent the day in the hospital. Her mother stayed most of the day and her father popped in and out. She didn’t ask what he was doing. He would tell her when he knew anything. Helen sat with her for a while. She said not to worry about picking up the girls, and hugged Lexie before she left.
Late in the afternoon, Lexie was surprised when Miriam came into the room. They didn’t say much but Miriam stayed for a while and as she left she patted Lexie’s shoulder. Lexie’s father came to pick her up while Jean cooked dinner. As they parked outside Cherry Tree Cottage, he told her the alarm hadn’t gone off at the factory and the security company hadn’t made a call to Nathan.
Inside the cottage, Lexie pulled a chair over to the airing cupboard and dragged her laptop from under the linen. She saw the surprise on her father’s face.
‘What’s going on?’
Lexie turned on her laptop and left it on the coffee table as her mother put out plates and dishes. ‘Can we discuss it after dinner?’
He glanced at the girls and nodded.
After dinner, Lexie cuddled the girls on their bed while Jean read them a story. This numb, non-thinking haze she’d moved into was pleasant. She didn’t want to think because thinking meant she’d remember this was all her fault.
When they came downstairs, Lexie’s dad sat at the clean dining table looking as if he meant business.
‘This probably isn’t a good time,’ began Jean.
‘No, Mum; Dad’s right. I do have to tell you this. I think what happened to Nathan was because of me.’ Lexie wanted to cry; especially when she thought of Nathan lying in the hospital bed, but now wasn’t the time for such weakness.
Where to begin? She started with the fire at Evelyn’s and then Patrick and Caroline. She stumbled through the story. So much of what she’d believed now didn’t seem to be a part of it, but she told her parents anyway. Her father leaned forward, listening intently. Jean brought her a glass of water and then sat next to her, gently squeezing her hand when she stuttered or lost track of what she wanted to say.
Eventually she got to the part about Patrick’s notebook. ‘Helen and I looked at the notes and then I posted them to you at the station.’ She looked at her father. ‘I should just have left them here, but I was too scared.’
‘Wha
t did the notes say? Have you got a copy?’
Lexie pulled her laptop onto the dining table. She looked for the folder with the scanned copies of Patrick’s notebook, but it wasn’t there. She searched through her other folders, but she knew exactly where she’d saved the scans. She stared at the laptop screen.
‘There’s got to be something wrong.’ She closed the window and tried again. ‘It’s gone.’
Her father leaned over her shoulder. ‘Is it the only thing that’s gone?’
Lexie quickly looked through her files. Everything seemed to be there. ‘Hang on.’ She checked the folder she’d made for Peter Webber’s documents, but they weren’t there either.
Her father tapped away on the laptop for a few minutes. ‘I’m no computer genius, but I’ve worked with our tech guys on a few cases. If you had files on this yesterday, someone has wiped them either through a network connection or by loading a Trojan. I’ll phone my station and see about getting the original notebook. I might have to go and collect it myself.’
Lexie felt like her brain was wading through treacle. Who could have removed the files from her laptop?
‘I’ve got a copy.’
Her father stopped his musings on how to get Patrick’s notebook. ‘Another copy?’
Lexie nodded. ‘We scanned the notebook at Helen’s. I saved a copy on my flash drive so it should still be there.’
‘Don’t put it into your laptop. We’ll turn off the wireless connection as well, just to be safe, and look at the files on my tablet.’
Alistair turned off the wireless while Lexie got her flash drive. He loaded the files onto his tablet and looked through them.
‘Dominique’s got something to do with this,’ said Lexie.
Jean looked up, a shocked expression on her face. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I’ve seen her a couple of times, but she last visited…’ Lexie raised her hands in despair. ‘I don’t know when, I have no idea what day it is today.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘She came round before I found the notebook. It was first thing that morning. I’d just taken the girls to school.’
Still Death (A Lexie Wyatt murder mystery Book 1) Page 24