by Tim Ellis
Breathing heavily and wiping her hands on a paper tissue, she signalled along the road, behind where his car had broken down.
They began walking. When they reached a new canary yellow BMW Z4, Debbie stopped and pulled a set of keys from her coat pocket.
‘This is yours?’ he asked.
She blushed. ‘Yes, a bit ostentatious, but I love fast cars, especially yellow ones. I suppose doctors get paid a lot more than police inspectors.’
He shrugged. ‘I have unreasonable costs.’
‘Maintenance?’
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I was curious about who was taking me out to dinner.’
‘You could have asked me.’
As she stepped off the pavement to reach the driver’s side of the car, the keys fell from her hands.
‘Let me,’ he said, bending to pick them up.
At that very moment, Debbie collapsed onto the road with blood gushing from the side of her head.
Crouching, he froze for what seemed like an eternity. He hadn’t heard anything apart from the usual background noise of the street. Debbie’s coat had fallen open, and he thought she would get cold. Then, something screamed past his ear and ripped into her new car. What had happened suddenly registered in his brain. Moving quickly, he dragged Debbie’s prostrate body around the side of the BMW and rested her head in his lap. She was still alive – barely. He closed her coat to keep her warm, and pressed a clean white handkerchief he had ironed especially for tonight against the bleeding head wound. Then he pulled his mobile out and phoned for an ambulance and the police.
The last time he had cried was a year ago when Caitlin had taken Phoebe away. Looking now at the broken flower in his arms, he cried again.
***
After he watched the paramedics hurriedly attach wires and tubes to Debbie in an effort to keep her alive and then put her in the back of the ambulance, he climbed in to accompany her to the hospital.
A young policeman wanted him to stay and answer more questions, but Quigg thrust his warrant card in the man’s face.
‘Sorry, Sir,’ the policeman said. ‘I suppose I’ve got everything I need.’
As the ambulance pulled away, Quigg saw the Armed Response Unit arrive in their unmarked black van.
Now, sitting outside the operating theatre, questions bombarded his mind. Was the shooting related to his investigations into Body 13? Was the bullet meant for him? He surmised that the answer to both those questions was probably yes, especially as there had been a second bullet. It was clear that Body 13 was the key to it all. But all what? This was the strangest case he had ever investigated. Who had taken the body? How had they managed to evade the numerous CCTV cameras in the hospital? Had the explosion at Mugabe Terrace been an accident? What had the fireman at Fire HQ used to obscure his face? How were Patrick Griffiths and George Sandland involved? His head hurt with the amount of questions that remained unanswered.
‘Another disaster, Quigg?’ the Chief said as he waddled along the corridor like a penguin in his dinner suit.
‘Hi, Chief.’
‘What’s going on, Quigg?’ The smell of disinfectant in the corridor was replaced by alcohol – lots of it – as Bellmarsh sat down next to him.
‘The bullet was aimed at me, but it hit Doctor Poulson instead.’
‘Is she going to make it?’
‘I don’t know; they’ve not told me anything. They just rushed her into theatre.’
‘Relatives been contacted?’
‘I have no idea. I don’t even know whether she’s got any. I didn’t know her that well.’
‘Do you think this is related to your investigation of the missing corpse?’
‘I’ve got nothing else on. So, yes, I would say it is.’
‘It’s a strange one, Quigg, that’s for sure. Still no leads?’
‘I’m collating all the evidence and waiting on forensics. We have leads, but where they’re taking us, I don’t know.’
‘Sorry to spring this on you now, Quigg, but the Chief Constable rang me and asked specifically about this case. As you know, he’s not a patient man. He wants daily reports and expects to see progress soon. You’ve got until the end of next week before I’m forced to bring someone else in charge.’
Quigg nodded. He had resigned himself to losing the case. It had escalated way beyond his control and his available resources.
‘If the Chief Constable’s expecting progress, then you’ll have to give me the manpower to achieve it. Otherwise, the lack of resources will be the first thing I mention in the report I email to him tomorrow.’
‘Blackmail, eh, Quigg? After all I’ve done for you?’
Quigg made a show of scratching his head. ‘Remind me again what it is you’ve done for me, Chief?’
‘I need DS Jones, but I’ll let you have Martin. That’s the best I can do.’
‘When I’m asked by the Chief Constable to explain what went wrong, Sir, you know I’ll be forced to describe in graphic detail how you prioritised paperwork over catching criminals.’
‘All right - you can have Walsh as well, but I hope no one goes off sick with this damned pig flu.’
‘Thanks, Sir. I’m sure the Chief Constable might see some progress now.’
The Chief stood up to go. ‘Well, he’d better, Quigg. I’d hate to think I was giving you all those man-hours for nothing.’ He smiled and a gleam came into his eyes. ‘With Martin and Walsh on your team, you have no excuses anymore. I’ll let the Chief Constable know that you’ve got more than enough resources to achieve both progress and a successful resolution to the case.’
‘Thanks, Chief.’
‘You’re welcome, Quigg. I’m sorry about Doctor Poulson; I hope she pulls through.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to go.’ He started off along the corridor then stopped and said over his shoulder, ‘Don’t stay here all night, Quigg; you’ve got a case to solve tomorrow.’
‘See you in the morning, Chief.’
Quigg checked his watch. It was nine fifteen. Debbie had been in the theatre half an hour. He wished someone would tell him how she was doing and how long she would be in there. The Chief was right: if he was going to make progress on this case, he needed all his faculties. With DCs Pete Martin and Heather Walsh on the team, he could move things along a bit. Duffy was fine for making phone calls, taking notes and driving -mmm, maybe not the driving - but he couldn’t trust her to follow up leads on her own; she didn’t have the experience. If he’d become a target, he’d have to watch himself now. Maybe he should sign out a covert bullet-proof vest from the stores. It wouldn’t have done him much good tonight, though, if they’d gone for a head shot.
A nurse rushed out through the theatre swing doors, but before he could ask her anything, she had gone. At least Debbie was one of their own. They’d look after her: make sure she got the best treatment, the specialists, the gold service. He recalled the jagged wound in her head, the torrents of dark red blood when he’d lifted the sodden handkerchief and the slivers of white skull protruding through her skin and hair. If whoever was doing this thought he would be frightened off by the attack, they’d better think again. Now he’d find the bastards or die in the attempt. Now they’d made it personal.
Chapter Five
It was two thirty on Thursday morning before Debbie came out of the theatre. He followed the gurney as two nurses wheeled her to the Intensive Care Unit. When he asked the doctor how she was doing, he said they didn’t find a bullet and she was as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Quigg thought that strangling was probably too good for him.
He sat next to Debbie’s bed and held her hand. A bandage had been wrapped around the top of her head like a conical hat. She had a breathing tube in her mouth, which was attached to a machine, and a bag of blood and some other liquid was being emptied into the back of her other hand, one drop at a time.
‘You should speak to her,’ a heavy-built nurse with a multitude of dou
ble chins, and a name badge that stated Staff Nurse Lillian Robertson RGN, said to him. ‘It could help her.’
‘Can she hear me?’
‘We don’t know whether it helps or not, but it can’t do any harm, now, can it? Think of her as being lost, struggling to find her way out of a dark place. What she needs now is someone strong to guide her out of the darkness.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll do my best.’
Lillian put her hand on his shoulder. ‘That’s all anyone can ask.’
He waited until Nurse Robertson had left the room. ‘I liked you from the moment I met you,’ Quigg began. He was seriously embarrassed and hoped the armed police guard outside the door couldn’t hear him. ‘Your brown eyes were smiling at me, and I thought how good it would be to take you out for a meal, to talk with you about something other than dead bodies. It took me five months…’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Well, of course, you know that. But what you didn’t know was that all I had in my wallet was forty pounds tonight. And something else you didn’t know…’
A thin man with a shock of white hair and a rubber-tipped walking stick slid into the room, but stopped when he saw Quigg. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’
‘More to the point,’ Quigg said standing up, ‘who are you?’
‘Debbie is my daughter.’
Quigg extended his hand and the man took it in a firm grip. ‘I’m sorry, Sir. I’m Detective Inspector Quigg. Debbie and I were on our way out for a meal when it happened.’
‘I’m a bit confused, Inspector. Someone from the hospital rang me earlier. They said Debbie had been in an accident – what accident? What exactly happened?’
Quigg offered Mr Poulson his seat and moved to the end of the bed. ‘I was on my way to pick your daughter up for dinner when I broke down. I rang Debbie to tell her and she came to pick me up. After we’d moved my car to a side road, we walked to her car. She dropped her keys and, when I bent to pick them up, she was shot.’
‘Shot? Nobody said anything about her being shot.’ He turned to look at his daughter, saw the bandage and turned back to face Quigg. ‘In the head?’
Quigg watched Debbie’s chest rising and falling under the blanket, rather than at the accusing eyes of her father. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Oh, my God!’ He pushed himself up, leaned over his daughter and kissed her forehead. Tears fell onto her face, which he wiped away with the sleeve of his coat. ‘I served in the Falklands War; I know how bad a head wound can be.’
‘Have you spoken to a doctor, Mr Poulson?’
‘No. I was directed up here from the reception and just looked in the rooms until I found her.’
‘I’ll go and see if I can find someone to come and speak to you, tell you what they’ve done, what her chances are and so forth.’
‘If she wasn’t meant to be there, then she took the bullet that was meant for you, didn’t she?’
‘Probably, Mr Poulson, but we’ve put an armed guard outside, just in case.’
Quigg walked out of the room and went to the nurse’s station. He was glad to distance himself from the guilt he felt under Mr Poulson’s scrutiny.
Staff Nurse Lillian Robertson looked up from her notes and charts. ‘How can I help?’ she asked.
‘Mr Poulson has arrived. He’d like to speak to someone about his daughter.’
‘I’ll get the doctor,’ Lillian said and picked up the phone.
Quigg wandered back to Debbie’s room. ‘The doctor is coming to speak to you, Mr Poulson. I’ll go now; I have to get some sleep before I try to find out who did this to your daughter. I’ll come back to see her later today, if that’s alright with you?’
Mr Poulson nodded.
Quigg picked up his coat and left. It was three thirty on Thursday morning.
***
Quigg arrived at the station a couple of minutes before eight thirty - half an hour before he was officially due to start and at least an hour before he would normally appear. After two hours of sleep, he had left the house at ten past seven and caught the tube from Upton Park to Hammersmith, direct on the Hammersmith and City Line. The crush of sweaty bodies reminded him why he preferred to drive.
In his office, the first thing he did was to look in the Yellow Pages. He phoned the first garage in Hammersmith that had a large advert. His reasoning was that if they could afford a big advert, then they didn’t need to rip him off. He gave them his mobile number and arranged for a mechanic to visit his sick car and then phone him with a diagnosis and, of course, how much it was going to cost to resuscitate the damned thing. He knew it would eat a big hole in next month’s wages, but what choice did he have?
That done, it had occurred to him on the train this morning that now Martin and Walsh were in his team he needed an incident room to collate the evidence. His office was far too small and the squad room was too busy. He went back into the corridor and began opening doors, looking in rooms and ignoring the strange looks from people who were in the rooms or arriving to occupy them. Most of the doors he opened led to offices, but there was one seminar room - a cleaning cupboard, and what appeared to be a storage room for old tables, desks, chairs and other discarded furniture - that no one had bothered to dispose of. He flicked the light switch and squeezed inside; it was layered in dust and smelled musty. Moving some tables, he made space for a desk and four chairs. Next, he spotted a mobile whiteboard, which was no longer mobile, stuffed behind a stack of chairs. He positioned the board to one side of the desk against a pile of tables. As a visual person, he liked to connect up his thinking by creating a mind map of the case he was working on. Standing back with his hands in his pockets, he surveyed the new incident room through the legs of a chair as if he had created a work of art. He smiled with the satisfaction of a tortured artist.
When he appeared back in the corridor, it was ten past nine. He attracted odd looks again, but this time he realised it was because he was filthy with dust. He slipped into the washroom to clean himself up.
Martin and Walsh were sitting outside his office waiting like naughty children for the headmaster to arrive. Both detectives were new to the team in comparison with the other members. Pete Martin was nearing forty and had probably reached his ceiling. He had arrived two months ago from Lewisham burglary initiative. The Chief was keen to take him on, but Quigg had heard through the grapevine that he was a lazy bastard, calling in sick regularly. Lewisham was glad to be rid of him. Heather Walsh, on the other hand, having requested a detective’s post, was transferred from Heathrow anti-terrorist unit a month ago. She was about twenty-six and appeared to be keen to get on.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he said to them. ‘I’ve been creating an incident room. ‘Where’s Duffy?’
Both shrugged, and then looked around as if feeling guilty that they didn’t know.
Quigg said, ‘Well, never…’
Before he could finish, Duffy arrived carrying a white bullet-proof vest, which she thrust at him. ‘For you, Sir. I heard about what happened last night and went to the stores to sign it out for you.’
Something lodged in his throat. He thought he was going to cry again, but instead he managed to say, ‘Thank you, Duffy - very thoughtful of you.’
Martin cleared his throat. ‘What did happen last night, Sir?’
Quigg was a quarter inch over six feet; Martin, at about five-foot eight, had to look up to him. The thing he noticed about Martin above everything else was his stained teeth and halitosis. His dark brown hair was thinning and he always looked as though he needed a shave. Some people could carry off the five o’clock shadow, but Martin merely looked like a tramp. Quigg made sure he turned his head away when Martin spoke; he didn’t want to start gagging.
‘Doctor Poulson was accompanying me to dinner when she was shot in the head. She’s in the hospital under armed guard in a critical condition. I’m fairly certain the bullet was aimed at me and hit her by mistake.’
‘If they went for a head shot, a vest wouldn’t have do
ne much good.’
‘Thank you for that nugget of gold, Martin.’
Martin’s lip curled into a sneering half-grin. ‘Do you think last night is related to your investigation into the missing body?’
‘Yes, Martin, I do.’ The more Quigg talked to Martin, the less he liked him.
Walsh raised her hand as if she were in the classroom. Quigg noticed that she had the measure of Martin’s halitosis and was sitting facing away from him. She was the same height as Martin, but considerably prettier. Although her appeal was not as obvious as Duffy’s was, her blue eyes sparkled in a petite face, which was framed by short blonde hair cut in a bob. And, whereas Martin had reached his ceiling, Walsh was moving up in the fast lane. ‘Maybe we all need bullet-proof vests, Sir?’
‘Excellent point, Walsh. I agree. After this briefing, all of you can go via the stores and sign a vest out – no exceptions.’ He imagined Duffy, with her extraordinary mammary gifts, struggling to find one that fitted, but Walsh would be all right; she was in the normal range, probably small normal.
‘Right,’ he opened the door to his office and slung the vest on the desk. ‘Let me give you all a guided tour of our new incident room. Duffy, bring all the evidence and a selection of non-permanent coloured marker pens.’
‘You asked me to phone the MOD about George Sandland, print off a list of the people who lived at Mugabe Terrace and get hold of Mr Ahmed’s bank records this morning.’
Quigg scratched his head and thought for a few moments, and then he said, ‘They can wait an hour while we bring Martin and Walsh up to date, and allocate tasks.’
Duffy shrugged. ‘OK, Sir.’
Ignoring the questioning looks from DS Jones and the other team members, Quigg led the splinter group through the squad room and along the corridor to the new incident room. Opening the door, he switched the light on and ushered them in like an estate agent showing off a property, until they were all wedged into a gap by the door.