The Mushroom Man dcp-2

by Stuart Pawson

  "Mr. Priest?"

  I turned towards the voice. It was the sister.

  "Mrs. Wilberforce has been taken to the I.C.U. You can see her for a few moments."

  I jumped to my feet. "How is she?" I demanded.

  The sister held up her hand to curb my haste. "I have to warn you," she said, 'that she is very ill, and is likely to remain on the critical list for some time."

  "But she'll live?" ' This way. I' 11 take you."

  She led me back through the res us room to the intensive care wards.

  We entered one and she introduced me to Annabelle's nurse, but I never heard her name. There were six beds in the room, with Annabelle in the end one.

  She was laid out flat, with just a thin sheet over her. A blue device was sticking out of her throat, with a corrugated tube leading to a ventilator machine that was doing her breathing. A thick orange tube came from under the sheet and ended in a bottle on the floor. There was a drip leading into her arm and a battery of instrumentation alongside her bed that wouldn't have looked unreasonable on the flight deck of Concorde.

  I couldn't take it all in. What had I allowed to happen to the beautiful, vivacious woman I was with a few hours ago? Last night she'd been giggling like a schoolgirl for the first time in years, and I had congratulated myself for bringing about the change in her. Now she was being kept alive by electrical impulses and motors and pumps; and I was to blame for that, too. Two years ago I had been shot by another madman. I wished it was me again this time.

  "What's happening to her?" I whispered.

  The nurse tried to tell me, but I didn't catch much of it. She used words like intubated and pneumothorax. Annabelle had a punctured lung and damage to various other organs. She'd lost most of her blood. The nurse said she was responsible solely for caring for Annabelle.

  "Please look after her," I whispered. "She means a lot to me."

  "We will," the nurse promised, assuming it was her I was addressing.

  "Can I come back later and sit with her for a while?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Thank you."

  I gazed into the gas fire until my eyes burned. When I couldn't keep them open any longer I swung my feet on to the settee and fell asleep.

  Sam Evans woke me, tapping quietly on the window. He was carrying the bottle of milk from my doorstep.

  "You look a mess," he declared. "Have a shower and put some clean clothes on, while I make coffee."

  My resistance had vanished, so I asked him to ring the hospital for me and did as I was told. In the bathroom I stripped naked and bundled everything together, for throwing in the dustbin. I was under the shower when he poked his head around the door. "She's still critical but there's no deterioration in her condition. I would say that's good news."

  "Good. Thank you, Sam."

  The clock inside me didn't know what time of day it was, so I had a big bowl of cornflakes for lunch. Surprisingly, Sam approved of my diet.

  Shortly after he went, Nigel and Sparky arrived, in different cars.

  Nigel was returning mine, but he left it out on the road. Sparky dropped his into the drive.

  "I've been thinking," he said as I let them in.

  "In that case you'd better sit down," I told him. Nigel asked if he could make coffee.

  Sparky went on: "The press are asking questions about Annabelle.

  They've found out who she is and have decided she's the latest victim of this Mushroom Man. It's only a matter of time before some kind soul earns his forty pieces of silver by telling them about your involvement, so we're swapping cars. It might throw them off the scent until the story dies. I think you ought to bugger off somewhere you can't do anything here but I don't suppose you will."

  Nigel agreed with him, but I shook my head. "I'm staying," I said.

  When they left I walked outside with them and we stood talking in the garden for several minutes. Sparky knows about gardening. He told me what to do with the perennials, but I didn't listen. Listening has always been one of my problems. The house martins were gathering on the phone wires, and a blackbird was gorging itself on the berries on next door's mountain ash. The man over the road was dismantling his barbecue.

  I nodded in his direction and said: "That marks the official end of summer."

  "It's still only August," Sparky protested. "What happened to all this global warming. It's more like November."

  "Ah," said Nigel. "That's the strange effect of global warming. We'll actually get cooler. The weather in Britain is governed by the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean. As the icecaps melt, due to the warming, the meltwater cools the seas, so we'll have cooler weather."

  Sparky gave him the scowl he usually reserves for burglars who swear blind that they were drunk and were convinced that the penthouse they were stripping really was their own squat. "Are you 'having us on?" he said.

  I was shivering when I went back inside. Nigel had given me an envelope containing stuff from the bloodstained jacket I'd left in the City nick. It was my wallet and some loose change. And the ticket stubs and programme for the concert. I opened the programme and read from the translation of the ancient verse:

  O Fortune, variable as the Moon. Always dost thou wax and wane.

  My mind flashed to the new moon I'd seen the previous Tuesday as I drove away from Annabelle's, but this time I had no defence against the bad memories it invoked.

  I sat all that night in the corner of the intensive care unit. A different armed policeman was on duty outside the door. Two patients had moved out, another was brought in. I watched the ventilator rising and falling, and the green blips moving across the ECG screen. The nurses had an office area in the middle of the room. They were constantly checking their charges, moving quietly and efficiently. They read dials, made notes, felt brows and changed drips. I could understand why intensive care nursing was so satisfying.

  When I wasn't in anybody's way I held Annabelle's hand and tried to talk to her. I whispered in her ear that she had to get better. She just lay there, as if in the deepest sleep, breathing with the rhythm of the machinery. Her face was pale, with dark smudges under her eyes, but she still looked hauntingly beautiful, like some aristocratic lady who'd fallen under a spell.

  I heard voices outside the door and looked up. Through the porthole window I could see Nigel remonstrating with the armed policeman and showing him his ID card. I went out to them.

  "What's happening?" I said.

  "Sorry, Mr. Priest," said the uniformed PC, "I didn't know who he was."

  "That's OK. Nigel?"

  "Morning, boss. How is she?"

  "No change. It's a bit early for you, isn't it?"

  "It certainly is. I didn't know it was light at this hour.

  Unfortunately the press have found out about you. It's all over the Sunday papers. They've been camped outside Dave's all night, but now they're here, at the hospital. We've come to get you out, when you're ready."

  "Thanks, just give me a minute." I had a word with the nurse and a last look at Annabelle. I squeezed her hand and told her I'd be back later.

  Nigel radioed Dave, telling him to bring the car to the entrance. The other uniformed policeman walked out with us. The press were gathered in the foyer, like jackals at a kill, waiting for any scraps that they could make a meal out of. Nigel and the PC positioned themselves on either side of me and we headed purposefully towards the door.

  Cameras flashed. A whizz-kid newshound with eyes in his backside and a huge video camera hiding his face cleared a path for us without once looking where he was going. Several microphones were poked towards me, their owners firing questions simultaneously:

  "Was this another Mushroom Man shooting?"

  "Are you and Annabelle lovers?"

  Nigel tried to parry the questions. "You've been given a statement," he told them. "We've nothing to add."

  "Is it true you didn't see anything, Inspector?"

  "Are you expecting him to strike again?"

>   A tired hack at the back of the group shouted: "Apart from that, what did you think of the concert?"

  I clenched my fists and swung towards him, but the big PC's fingers clamped around my arm and propelled me through the door.

  They trotted after us towards the car, their sound men running behind like poodles on leads. Sparky hadn't unlocked the passenger door so I couldn't get in. My car doesn't run to centralised locking.

  A microphone was thrust under my nose. "Do you love Annabelle?" the girl holding it asked. She was about nineteen and had an editor to please.

  I could imagine the exclusive that would be claimed if I gave the wrong answer. Sparky leaned over to lift the catch and I pulled the door open. As I climbed in she poked the mike into the side of my face and repeated the question: "Do you love Annabelle?"

  I turned so my lips were touching the microphone and said: "No."

  I slammed the door. If you tell a lie, might as well make it a whopper. That was the biggest I'd ever tell.

  Our press office prepared a statement to get them off my back: we were just good friends; she was still on the critical list; and yes, the shooting was being investigated by the Mushroom Man team. When they realised there was no more, they drifted off. The headlines weren't very flattering: "Top cop never saw a thing," they said.

  I had some kip and tried eating Sunday lunch at the local pub, but I didn't enjoy it. In the evening I went back to the hospital and sat with Annabelle all night. She was just the same, and I left as dawn broke. I asked to be informed of any change in her condition, but I wasn't next of kin, so they were reluctant.

  When I drove into Heckley nick car park later in the day, I half expected Sparky to have commandeered my parking space as well as my car, but he hadn't. I used the back entrance and ran up the stairs to Gilbert's office. He was expecting me.

  "Hello, Charlie. I'll just put the kettle on," he said.

  "Not for me, Gilbert, if you don't mind. I'll be looking like a pot of tea soon."

  "Oh. Something stronger?"

  I shook my head.

  "Fair enough. So how are you then?"

  "Not bad."

  "Good. Did we tell you that we've traced Annabelle's sister and her husband? They live in Guildford. She has a brother, too, but he's somewhere in Africa."

  "He's in India," I said.

  "India?"

  "Mmm."

  It was Gilbert's turn to shake his head. "Isn't that typical of the FO?" he declared. "Scouring the wrong bloody continent."

  "Friday night," I said, 'when I met Annabelle…"

  "Yes?"

  "I've been thinking about it, racking ny brain. I believe we may have been followed."

  Gilbert's brow furrowed with interest and he sat back so hard his chair protested. "Go on," he encouraged.

  I picked up his ball pen and turned it over and over in my fingers.

  "When she came to the door she… she looked beautiful…"

  "She's a lovely lady, Charlie; one in a million. Everyone who knows her is devastated. Take your time."

  "We were talking. When I drove out of her street into the Top Road I looked in my mirror. There was a car close behind me. I hadn't seen it when I stopped at the junction, it came from nowhere. Maybe I wasn't concentrating and hadn't looked properly. I gave myself a reprimand and took more care. It followed us all the way into town.

  Now I can't help wondering if it had been waiting for us."

  Gilbert said: "Well done, Charlie. Well done." He wasn't crass enough to ask the obvious, and waited for me to volunteer the information.

  "It was a little car, possibly a Fiesta, although it could easily have been something else. Colour? Possibly one of those insipid beiges that you wonder why people buy. Sorry, Gilbert, your last Granada was a similar colour, wasn't it?"

  "They gave me a good discount. It was called cat shit If it was a Fiesta, what mark would you estimate?"

  "I'm not sure, but one of the older, more angular ones."

  Gilbert picked up the phone and dialled. "Hello, Maggie. Charlie's with me. Could someone bring the Ford colour charts up to my office, please."

  Maggie brought them herself. I stood up and she gave me a hug. She said: "Oh, Charlie, we're all so sorry. How is she?"

  I gave her an extra squeeze and told her that Annabelle was still unconscious but holding on.

  Gilbert waited until we were through before saying: "Peterson's in the building somewhere. Do you mind if he sits in on this?"

  I didn't, so he asked Maggie if she could round him up. When she left he said: "I know one thing, Charlie. You certainly have the knack of getting the best out of your WPCs. They never throw their arms around me."

  "Treat them all the same, Gilbert. That's the secret."

  "What about sexual harassment?"

  "I've learned to put up with it."

  Peterson came puffing in, complaining about the number of stairs and how cold it was in this godforsaken part of the world. He looked embarrassed when he saw me, but didn't offer any words of sympathy, for which I was grateful.

  Gilbert told him about the car and we examined the colour charts. There was coral beige, sierra beige, cordoba beige, nevada beige, Sahara beige and tuscan beige, and I only thought it might be beige. Peterson wasn't impressed by the standard of my evidence, and I offered a silent apology to all the useless witnesses I'd cursed over the years.

  He pretended I'd given him the big breakthrough he was waiting for.

  After a few transparent nods of approval he said: "What can you tell me about Mrs. Wilberforce?"

  "Nothing," I declared. "Nothing relevant." Nothing that was any business of his. I didn't want to discuss her with him. The little I had was precious to me, not for writing in notebooks before going on to the computer, to be picked over by hard men looking for a murderer. Let them read someone else's entrails.

  The tone of my voice didn't deter him." She had no enemies that you know of? Were her views regarded as controversial within the Church?"

  "Of course not!" I snapped. "And could I remind you that she is still alive, if only just."

  Gilbert said: "Mr. Peterson, if Mr. Priest had any information that would help this enquiry, don't you think he would have offered it?"

  Peterson ignored him. "Did you know," he announced, for it wasn't a question, 'that Mrs. Wilberforce was is — considering ordination?"

  "No, I didn't," I hissed, gripping the edges of my chair.

  "Well, she is. I had a long talk with the Bishop. He suggested it to her and she said she'd think about it. Apparently her ex-husband was a hell-fire-and-brimstone man."

  I took deep breaths while he was talking. When I felt I was under control I sat back in my chair and folded my arms. "Inspector Peterson," I began, 'first of all, Mrs. Wilberforce's husband died after a long illness. He was her late husband, not her ex-husband.

  Secondly, he was a traditionalist, not a hell-fire-and-brimstone man, as you put it. And to say that Mrs. Wilberforce agreed to think about ordination is hardly the same as saying she is seriously considering it."

  "Mmm. Perhaps." He stood up to leave. There was a knock at the door and Nigel entered, carrying a piece of paper and looking smug.

  Peterson said: "This car. I don't suppose you managed a glimpse of the driver?"

  I shook my head.

  "Or the number?"

  "No."

  "Of course not. Silly question. Still, I have to ask."

  Nigel was holding the door open. Peterson was almost out when he changed his mind. "Oh, nearly forgot," he said. "Nine people have contacted various newspapers confessing to being the gunman eight Mushroom Men and one Destroying Angel. I think we can safely say that a religious nut is on the loose."

  When he'd gone, Gilbert said: "We'll have that coffee now, with a drop of lotion in it. Yes, Nigel. What can we do for you?"

  He stepped forward, face glowing with enthusiasm. "Message for Char..

  er, Mr. Priest. It reads: "Mrs. Wilberforc
e conscious and breathing without the aid of the ventilator. Taken off critical list."

  Message timed fifteen thirty-seven."

  My prayers were being answered.

  Chapter 20

  Gilbert had misjudged me when he told Peterson that I would have offered any information I had. They'd put an armed guard on Annabelle in case the attacker came back, but they were guarding the wrong person. The one vital piece of information I had withheld was that Annabelle was not the intended victim. The shot in the town hall doorway was aimed at me, not her. Annabelle had been directly behind me, her hands on my hips. She was hit because I skipped to one side as the trigger was pulled. I wasn't running away or hiding; maybe he'd come back.

  I bought chocolates and salmon-pink roses and made myself look smart. I was back in my own car, thank goodness the kids' stickers in Sparky's had been ruining my image. The hospital car park was crowded. I thought about sweet-talking my way into a parking spot inside the grounds but decided not to. It's not my style. I cruised round until a place became vacant and slotted into it, narrowly beating a taxi carrying a family of Asians. Three people were getting out of a top-of-the-range Rover a couple of spaces away. The man was wearing a camel overcoat with an astrakhan collar. The younger of the women was tall and stooped, but the other one was quite small and elderly. They walked towards the hospital as I went to collect a ticket from the machine. The driver of the taxi hadn't the right money, so I changed a pound for him.

  First of all I visited Casualty and had a word with the sister, to thank her for their efforts, and gave her the box of chocolates. She told me that Annabelle was still seriously ill, but as strong as a swan's wing. Now she was in Ward 4B, upstairs.

  I followed the signs and found the ward. Each patient was in her own little room, with open fronts on to a central corridor. I wandered along, looking in at various stages of suffering, but didn't find Annabelle. As soon as a nurse appeared I asked.