Bitter Herbs

by Natasha Cooper

  ‘Trouble with them?’

  ‘Not working. Is the child … okay?’

  ‘Child?’ demanded the doctor. ‘Good Lord! Check the car at once.’

  One man ran off before Willow could find the right words.

  ‘Not mine. In a de … de …’

  ‘De?’ said the doctor gently. ‘Can you tell me?’

  ‘Deux Chevaux,’ said Willow with an enormous effort.

  ‘It’ll be fine in that case. You only hit the steam roller. I want to have a look at you. All right?’

  Willow pushed herself into a sitting position and nodded.

  ‘Careful,’ said the doctor. ‘We don’t know what you’ve broken.’

  ‘Nothing. Must get on. Must talk to Tom.’

  ‘You’re not going anywhere except hospital, young lady,’ said the doctor with a manly chuckle. Willow pulled herself to her feet, gasping as she felt the new injuries on top of her old bruises, and looked the doctor in the eye, suddenly feeling much stronger, but still finding it hard to articulate distinctly.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong except my mouth. And shock,’ she muttered, staggering and finding it necessary to lean against the stalwart support of one of the road menders. ‘Nine o’clock appointment. Must go.’

  ‘Calm down,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ve a mobile in my car. I can ring up anyone you need. But I’m getting you to the nearest hospital for a check. You’ve been astonishingly lucky not to be injured – or trapped in the car – but shock is dangerous in itself, as you must know,’ he added in deference to her increasingly obvious intelligence. ‘Besides, you may have internal damage. An X-ray is absolutely essential.’

  She started back towards her smashed car without trying to say anything.

  ‘What is it?’ said the doctor, holding her back.

  ‘My bag.’

  While one workman went to fetch it, the other held her upright, and the doctor walked back to his dark-blue Mercedes, which he had parked ten yards behind Willow’s crumpled car. The first man extricated her handbag from the car and brought it back to her. She opened it with fingers almost as clumsy as they had been in the undertakers’ chapel. Everything she needed was still there, undamaged.

  ‘Here’s the phone,’ said the doctor. ‘What’s the number?’

  ‘Hold on,’ she said with difficulty. ‘Address book.’ She took it out of the bag, which she hung over her painful left shoulder, and found the number and the name of the governor. The doctor insisted on making the call and spoke to the governor himself, before handing the mobile telephone to Willow.

  ‘Mr Alkerton. Willow King, here. I’m sorry. I can’t get to you. I’ve had a crash. They’re making me go to a hospital.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter at all, Miss King, provided you’re all right.’

  ‘Yes. Shaken and sore.’

  ‘I’ll see you at the committee next week then, and when you feel like facing the motorway again, we can make another date.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She handed the telephone back to the doctor, before saying: ‘Oh, can I have it back?’

  ‘Just let me ring an ambulance for you, and …’

  ‘No ambulance.’

  ‘I’m afraid you must have one. I can’t spare the time to take you into wherever the nearest hospital is myself and these men can hardly take you on their steam roller.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Willow, remembering something that the doctor appeared to have forgotten. No telephone calls are allowed to be made on motorways, even on the hard shoulder, even after an accident. She congratulated herself on her returning wits and wished only that the power of easy speech had returned with them.

  ‘It’s all right. I’ll also ring the AA for you. They can tow away the car.’

  ‘No,’ said Willow, determined to break the law in order to get hold of Tom. ‘Please let me call someone. It’s important.’

  The doctor raised his eyebrows, telephoned 999 and explained to the ambulance service what had happened and exactly where on the motorway they were all standing.

  ‘Yes,’ he said into the telephone. ‘I’ll wait till your chaps get here and hand her over. Yes. We’ll wait in the car. Come along, Miss King,’ he said, making Willow jump. ‘We must sit in the car.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘You used it when you spoke to the governor of that prison,’ he reminded her gently. ‘You see, you do need help.’

  ‘I’m not losing my marbles,’ she said angrily, seizing the telephone from him and dialling the number of Tom Worth’s office.

  ‘DCI Worth, please,’ she said indistinctly when the call was answered. There was a pause and a variety of clicks before the voice said:

  ‘DCI Worth is not available.’

  ‘Hell!’ she said, tears of shock, frustration and anger flooding into her eyes. ‘I must speak to him.’

  The doctor took the telephone out of her hands.

  ‘I am a doctor. Miss King has just been involved in a serious car accident. It is imperative that she speaks to this man. Is he merely unavailable or not in the building?’

  The confidence – or perhaps the maleness – of his voice had an immediate effect and two seconds later he was talking to Tom. Willow heard only the doctor’s side of their brief conversation before he gave her back the telephone.

  ‘Will, is it true?’ His voice was urgently distressed in a way that warmed her. She wished that she were alone so that she could tell him so.

  ‘Yes. Brake failure. Tom, listen. Did you get the photographs?’

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No. Tell me: did you get the prints?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said with some impatience. ‘I’ve got a forensic colleague looking at them. Why?’

  ‘Whoever did it, sabotaged my brakes. I’m sure. Will you get someone to look at the car? The doctor wants to call the AA, but he mustn’t.’ Her voice was rising in her anxiety to make Tom understand. ‘They’ll mess up the fingerprints.’

  ‘All right, Willow. Don’t worry about that. But tell me how you are.’

  Willow became aware of the two workmen staring at her with a mixture of fascination and fear, as though she were a rottweiler on the rampage, and the doctor as though she were a tedious, hypochondriacal patient.

  ‘Tom, swear you’ll do it?’ She could not be certain that his gentle voice and apparent obedience might not be designed merely to stop her making a fuss in front of other people.

  ‘Yes, all right,’ he said again. ‘Calm down, Will. Is that doctor still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, put him on. I’ll deal with it. Don’t worry about the AA.’

  A siren sounded in the distance.

  ‘Here’s the ambulance, Tom. Promise you’ll get it looked at?’

  ‘I promise.’ He seemed to understand her fear for he added: ‘I’ve a mate I was at Hendon with who’s quite near you now; he’ll see to it. Don’t worry. When you get to the hospital ring me again.’

  Willow handed the telephone back to the doctor, saying:

  ‘Sorry and thanks. He wants to talk to you.’ She dug into her wallet while the doctor was talking to Tom and, when they had finished, she held out a five-pound note. ‘Here. Take it.’

  ‘You seem to me to be a most dangerous young woman,’ the doctor said, completely ignoring the money, which Willow eventually put back in her bag. ‘I’m inclined to come with you and make sure you do actually stay in that ambulance.’

  ‘I can’t do anything else,’ said Willow, gesturing to the wreckage of her car.

  He smiled, looking more natural than he had done until that moment, and nodded at her.

  ‘True. I wish I could hear the whole story, but …’

  ‘But you can’t wait,’ said Willow, silently adding: Thank heavens.

  The ambulance pulled up then and a uniformed woman sprang out and came running towards them. The doctor started to explain what had happened, while Willow spoke painfully to the workman who was still standing
beside her, holding her up whenever her legs threatened to tremble uncontrollably.

  ‘I must look under the bonnet,’ she said, not convinced that Tom would be able to get his friend to the scene before the local police had the car removed, even if he had taken her seriously. That she would not be able to find the fingerprints without equipment was horribly frustrating. She did not have enough skills to deal with what was happening to her once-frivolous investigation and she felt too weak to cope with the consequences.

  ‘Okay, love, but it’s all squashed up in there.’ He led her carefully towards the wreckage of her car.

  ‘Now, now,’ said the ambulance service paramedic from behind them. ‘You can’t go wandering about on a motorway. You’re in shock and it’s dangerous.’

  ‘Don’t stop me. You don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, love. What’s your name?’

  ‘King,’ said Willow, desperate. ‘I must look.’

  Strong hands took her camera from her, shut the lens cap and put the camera back in her shoulder bag. A firm arm surrounded her back and she was urged towards the ambulance. At the back double doors were opened and some metal steps let down.

  ‘Miss King,’ said the doctor, holding out a small rectangular card, ‘do let me know how you get on at least.’

  Willow took it, unable to resist any of them any longer and let herself be strapped into one of the bunks inside the ambulance. The paramedic in her green boiler suit sat at Willow’s side, holding her hand and talking gently to her.

  Two hours later Willow had been X-rayed and examined, and had explained as fully as she could about the injuries she had received when she fell down the spiral staircase at Kew. The doctor listened in silence and then started to test Willow’s reflexes. When everything responded as it ought, Willow was given some painkillers for her increasingly painful mouth and head. The young casualty doctor in her long, white coat, stood in front of the bed on which Willow was lying in a crackling paper gown.

  ‘Well, you don’t seem to have damaged anything except your tongue. There’s no sign of any internal injury and everything seems to be working fine.’

  ‘I told them everything was all right,’ said Willow, still furious at the time she had had to waste and desperately worried about what might have happened to her car and its crucial evidence.

  ‘No doubt, but you could have been wrong. Now, how are you going to get back to London?’

  ‘No idea.’ Anger and helplessness chased each other through her mind until her brain began to work again. ‘The obvious is to hire a car. Is there anywhere near here that I can do that?’

  ‘Do you really feel up to driving? Wouldn’t a taxi to the station be better? There are London trains very frequently, probably about every half hour.’

  ‘I suppose it would be quicker,’ said Willow ungraciously, but feeling relieved that it was easier to talk. Then she smiled. ‘I have caused you just as much trouble as the accident caused me. Sorry to be rude. Thank you for checking my wounds.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said the doctor. ‘Now, don’t forget you’ve had a severe shock. Don’t drink any alcohol. Repeat the painkillers in four hours’time if you’ve still got the headache, and go and see your own GP in a few days if you’re at all worried or if anything still hurts badly. All right?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Willow again.

  ‘Good, then if you’d just give the receptionist the details of your doctor, we can let you go.’

  Willow had to sit on an uncomfortable, plastic-covered chair for another fifteen minutes until her mini-cab arrived, but there was a London train waiting on the station platform when she emerged from the ticket office.

  She found an empty first-class carriage and sat down in the forward-facing window seat and admitted to herself that she felt dreadful. The bruises from her fall down the spiral staircase at Kew all seemed to have been reactivated by the car crash, her headache was getting worse, her tongue felt as though it had been through a blunted mincing machine, but worst of all was the terrible weakness that seemed to have overtaken both her body and her mind.

  Whenever she shut her eyes she saw pictures of what might have happened on the motorway: her own and other people’s bodies laid out on the damp tarmac, petrol tanks on fire, one of the huge articulated lorries ploughing into the line of bodies. Each picture was more horrifying than the one before and it took an immense effort of will to remind herself that none of them was real. The bonnet of her car had been crushed, and she had been bruised and shaken, but nothing had happened to anyone else.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Twenty minutes later the train drew in to Paddington. Willow looked at her watch and decided that it must have stopped. But the second hand was bouncing merrily around and, when she looked out of the train door, she saw that the station clock confirmed that it was still only ten minutes to one.

  Gloria’s funeral was not due to take place until half-past three. Willow realised that she still had enough time to get to it and that if she were there she might be able to surprise whoever had damaged her brakes into giving him- or herself away. She hurried, wincing, to the taxi rank and asked the first available driver to take her as quickly as possible to Chesham Place.

  He got her there only fifteen minutes later and she tipped him lavishly before climbing the steep stairs up to her flat.

  ‘Good heavens! Miss King, what happened?’ asked Mrs Rusham by way of a greeting.

  Willow managed a small laugh. ‘I crashed the car,’ she said, and then had a moment’s sickening, wholly unrealistic suspicion of Mrs Rusham. Willow shook her tousled red head just as her housekeeper said:

  ‘Was it a skid? The roads looked very slippery.’

  ‘No. My brakes failed,’ said Willow, watching with considerable relief the expression of surprise and shock on Mrs Rusham’s face.

  ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

  Willow nodded.

  ‘Good. Then you ought to get straight to bed. I can heat some soup in no time at all.’

  ‘I can’t, Mrs Rusham; I have to go to the funeral. Have you pressed my new black suit? The one with the longer skirt.’

  ‘This is the first time you’ve mentioned it. Sit down in the dining room and I’ll bring you some soup and bread. While you’re eating it, I’ll deal with the suit.’

  Too tired and battered to care what she ate, Willow did as she was told and soon found herself spooning up mildly curried parsnip soup, much hungrier than she had imagined. It was only when she had finished it that she recognised – and appreciated – Mrs Rusham’s mixture of concern, censure and obedience. What more, Willow asked herself, could any woman want?

  On cue the telephone rang. Knowing that her housekeeper was busy with the iron, Willow went into the kitchen to pick up the receiver.

  ‘Hello Tom,’ she said when he asked furiously why she had not rung him from the hospital.

  ‘I forgot. But there’s nothing to worry about. I’m back and all in one piece. And it’s a bit rich for you to criticise my silence. I’ve been trying to speak to you for days. You’ve been deliberately obstructive.’

  ‘I’ve been in the middle of a hell of a case, Will. I’m sorry,’ he said peaceably. Then his voice sharpened again. ‘But sometimes you drive me completely insane with worry. What makes you think that someone deliberately sabotaged the car? What on earth have you been up to since you took the photographs at the undertakers?’

  ‘Trying to tie up the loose ends,’ she said blandly. ‘As I told you I would. I’m glad that you believe me at last.’

  ‘Who do you think damaged your car?’ he asked, making no comment on her last statement.

  ‘I don’t know for certain, although I suspect it must have been Peter Farrfield. I know it’s sexist, but I just can’t see Marilyn being capable of finding a brake cable in an engine. She didn’t even know what one had to do to claim on a motor policy. She said she’d never driven a car. The only difficulty is that I’ve no idea where Farrfi
eld could be – or even if that’s his real name. Probably not, now I come to think of it. It sounds like an invented name.’

  ‘How … ?’ Tom was beginning when he sighed. ‘No. We can’t do this on the telephone. Stay there and wait for me. Will you do that? And not let anyone else into the flat? Promise?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll do that if you come straight away, but I’ll have to leave by half-past two at the very latest.’

  He put down his receiver without any valediction and Willow made a face at hers before turning to switch on the kettle. Hearing a sound behind her she turned to see Mrs Rusham looking extremely cold.

  ‘I have pressed your suit,’ she said. ‘Is it coffee that you want?’

  ‘Please,’ said Willow, seeing that she had offended by infringing her housekeeper’s territory. ‘I’ll change now, so if you could bring it to my bedroom …’

  ‘Certainly.’ Still frowning, Mrs Rusham held open the door that led from the kitchen to the hall. Willow walked through it, trying not to feel like a schoolchild on detention.

  That and the amusement it produced helped her to relax as she undressed and washed off the effects of her car crash. By the time Mrs Rusham brought her coffee, Willow was dressed in clean underclothes and tights and was repainting her face.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling. Mrs Rusham’s rigid face did not relax and she withdrew without saying anything at all. Willow shrugged, drank some coffee and finished making up her eyes.

  She dressed in the collarless black suit Mrs Rusham had pressed, black tights and plain black leather shoes. There was a cossack-style hat she had bought a couple of years earlier, but she decided to go bare headed to the funeral.

  When Tom Worth arrived, breathless from his run up the stairs to her flat, she was sitting in the drawing room, going over her notes.

  ‘My God,’ he said when Mrs Rusham had admitted him, ‘you look as though nothing whatever had happened.’

  Willow lifted her head and smiled at him, feeling the damage inside her mouth as the muscles stretched.

  ‘To tell you the truth, I feel bloody awful.’ She stuck out her tongue to show him how badly she had bitten it. ‘But there’s no serious damage and I hate lying in bed when there’s work to be done.’