The Consultant's Italian Knight

by Maggie Kingsley

  He had already caught hold of her arm, clearly taking her agreement for granted, and she shook herself free with annoyance.

  ‘I don’t need—or want—you to drive me home,’ she replied. ‘My flat’s just three blocks away, and I’m perfectly capable of walking there.’

  ‘I’m sure you are but Union Grove is not three blocks away, and I’m driving you home.’

  ‘Don’t you ever take no for an answer?’ she protested, irritated beyond measure by his implacable expression. ‘I am fine—OK?—and I want to walk home, so why don’t you just go away and get on with your police work?’

  ‘Because I’m fresh out of little old ladies to harass and now I’m targeting a younger age group. Kate, are you going to come quietly,’ he continued, as she glared up at him, ‘or am I going to have to cuff you?’

  Would he? She couldn’t be one hundred per cent certain that he wouldn’t, and with ill-disguised bad grace, she hitched her shoulder bag back up onto her shoulder and strode across the road to the dusty, nondescript Volkswagen that was sitting there.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ she said, yanking open the passenger door and clambering in. ‘Haven’t you got a wife, or significant other, to go home to?’

  ‘My wife divorced me four years ago, and there is no significant other in my life.’

  ‘I…I’m sorry,’ she said awkwardly, ‘about your wife, I mean.’

  ‘I loved my work, my wife didn’t,’ he replied as he slid into the driver’s seat beside her. ‘End of story. Want to talk about why your marriage failed?’

  ‘No. ’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he replied. ‘He’s a doctor at the General, isn’t he, but his speciality is Orthopaedics rather than A and E.’

  ‘How did you…? Oh, of course,’ she continued tightly. ‘You have all my information on file, don’t you, right down to the size of shoes I take, and the make of my underwear.’

  ‘We only carry detailed dossiers of known and suspected drug dealers,’ he observed, then his eyes glinted. ‘But if you’d like to tell me the make of your underwear—purely for our file, of course…’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she said stonily, ‘and John doesn’t work at the General any more. He got another job six months ago, and can we drop this subject, please?’

  ‘It must be tough when two consultants get married,’ he observed as though she hadn’t spoken. ‘Two huge workloads, two equally large amounts of responsibility.’

  ‘John isn’t a consultant. He’s a specialist registrar.’

  ‘Ah. ’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ she demanded.

  ‘Some men have problems with a woman—even if that woman is their wife—making it to the top if they haven’t.’

  ‘John isn’t—wasn’t—that petty,’ she protested, and saw one of Mario’s eyebrows rise.

  ‘If you say so,’ he murmured.

  ‘Look, are you driving me home any time soon?’ she exclaimed. ‘Or are we just going to sit in your car while you sound off about something you know nothing about?’

  He shot her a sidelong glance, looked for a moment as though he was about to say something, then put the car into gear and drove off.

  John hadn’t been that petty, Kate told herself, as she sat in angry silence while Mario negotiated the city streets towards her home. He’d been thrilled to bits when she’d been made consultant, had even laughed when his colleagues had made jokes about who wore the trousers in their relationship.

  Except, increasingly, he hadn’t laughed, she remembered, hadn’t said anything very much at all. Had her promotion bothered him? But he’d always known it was her goal. He had married her knowing she wanted to become a consultant so it couldn’t have bothered him. It couldn’t.

  ‘This is where you live?’ Mario said, his voice showing his clear surprise, when he drew his car to a halt outside the faded façade of number 33A, Union Grove. ‘I mean, I’m sure it’s very nice,’ he added hurriedly, ‘but I pictured you living somewhere…bigger.’

  ‘Grander, you mean,’ she said dryly. ‘John and I used to have a house in Murray Terrace, but we sold it after we separated, and it didn’t take me long to discover that even half of the proceeds of a house in Murray Terrace doesn’t buy you very much in Aberdeen nowadays.’

  ‘So it seems,’ Mario murmured, but, when Kate put out her hand to open the car door, he stretched out his own hand to stay her. ‘You know, the more I think about that baluster this evening, the more I don’t like it.’

  ‘It was an accident, Mario!’ she exclaimed and he shook his head.

  ‘It’s too much of a coincidence—you treating Hamilton on Saturday night, and now this. I want you to take time off work, stay home where you’ll be safe.’

  ‘In your dreams.’

  ‘I mean it, Kate,’ he insisted. ‘A and E is too open, too exposed. You’re surrounded by knives, and scalpels, and the security system there is lousy. You’d be dead before you hit the panic button.’

  ‘Well, thanks for sharing that with me,’ she replied. ‘Mario, I can’t and won’t take time off. We’re short-staffed enough as it is without me staying home for no good reason.’

  ‘I’ve just given you a reason!’ he exclaimed, and she threw him a you-must-be-kidding glance.

  ‘All you’ve done is come up with some harebrained, completely illogical notion that somebody might want to kill me,’ she declared, ‘based, presumably, on the fact that I was one of the last people to see Hamilton alive. Why on earth would anybody want to kill me because of that?’

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again.

  ‘I still want you to take time off work.’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Capital N, capital O. And if you’re thinking of trying any more of that Italian macho blustering on me,’ she continued, seeing his brow furrow, ‘you can forget it. The answer is still no.’

  ‘OK, if you won’t take time off work, I’m coming into work with you.’

  She stared at him incredulously for a second, then rounded on him.

  ‘No—absolutely not. You’ll get in the way, get under everybody’s feet. And I thought nobody was supposed to know you are a policeman?’ she continued as he tried to interrupt. ‘You’re hardly going to be invisible if you’re stuck to me like glue, are you?’

  ‘I won’t get in your way,’ he replied. ‘In fact, I might even be able to help you. I was a doctor, remember?’

  ‘A doctor who stopped practising eight years ago,’ she pointed out. ‘You’re probably not even on the register now.’

  ‘Kate, I’m not stupid. I won’t attempt to do a cricothyroidotomy or a thoracotomy. I’ll just do the simple stuff—the cut fingers, the broken arms.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘OK, if you’re not keen on that,’ he continued, ‘how about if we tell your colleagues I’m a nurse? I’ve been overseas for years, and I’ll be in the department for a few weeks to refresh my skills. Actually, that would work better,’ he added thoughtfully, ‘because as a nurse I could assist you, be at your side constantly.’

  Be at her side constantly? As in eight hours a day, five—and sometimes six—days a week?

  ‘Mario, being an A and E nurse isn’t some sort of soft option alternative to being a doctor!’ she exclaimed. ‘It requires specialised skills—’

  ‘I know—’

  ‘You don’t,’ she interrupted angrily. ‘You were a doctor, a male doctor. I doubt if you even noticed what the A and E nurses were doing when you were working, far less how good they were. No way can you waltz in, and work alongside them, without them shouting, “Fake.”’

  ‘I’ll talk to your bosses,’ he observed, completely ignoring her, ‘see if they’ll permit it.’

  ‘Don’t you ever listen?’ she protested. ‘Mario—’

  ‘Kate, could you humour me on this, please?’ he said. ‘Let me come into work with you.’

  He wasn’t threatening to handcuff her, or using his police powers to make her stay
home. He was simply asking her. Asking her with his blue eyes fixed on her, full of concern, and it was that more than anything else which made her eventually sigh and nod.

  ‘OK—all right. But only if Admin agrees to your presence,’ she added quickly, seeing the triumph in his face, ‘and only if you accept that if you get in the way, interfere with the smooth running of my department, I’ll have the hospital security guards throw you out faster than you can say enema.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ he said, but when she got out of the car he leant over the passenger seat and grinned up at her. ‘Kate, I promise you won’t even know I’m there.’

  He had to be kidding, she thought, as she watched him drive away. She’d be all too well aware that he was there. All too aware that this annoying, interfering, oh-so-strange attractive mixture of a man was there, but she was going to have to get used to it.

  At least in the short term, she told herself, as she turned and strode up the dusty path towards her front door.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘OH, VERY nice, very cute,’ Ralph observed, his eyes brimming with laughter as they took in Mario’s white nurse’s top and matching trousers. ‘Want to take my pulse, Nurse Volante?’

  ‘Want a one-way ticket to Men’s Surgical, Detective Sergeant Evanton?’ Mario said, closing the door of Kate’s office with slightly more force than was strictly necessary. ‘Nursing is a profession, Ralph, not a gender.’

  ‘And I bet you thought that when you were a doctor, didn’t you?’ his detective sergeant declared, and Mario’s lips twisted ruefully.

  ‘OK, all right, I didn’t,’ he admitted, ‘but these last three days at the General have been a steep learning curve.’

  They had been, too, he thought. He had not been best pleased when the administrative department of the General had only agreed to his presence in A and E as a nursing auxiliary. He had been even less pleased to discover that the vast majority of the public and staff at the General seemed to assume he must be gay if he was a male nurse, but what had really got under his skin was when Kate had taken him aside on his first morning.

  ‘I have only one thing to say to you,’ she’d said. ‘If you screw up at any point, admit it. At least then, if it’s possible to be corrected, it will be corrected right away. We’re all human, we all make mistakes, but don’t try to hide them, OK?’

  He’d been furious. Dio, he’d been livid. He was a fully qualified doctor, for heaven’s sake, even if he had stopped practising eight years ago, but he’d very quickly learned that not only was eight years a long time in the medical world, but the A and E nurses were a breed apart. They possessed an inbuilt instinct and a breadth of knowledge he could only marvel at, and as for Kate…He’d worked with a lot of consultants when he was a doctor, but he’d never worked with somebody who was quite as dedicated, or quite so good.

  ‘OK, Ralph, what have you got for me?’ he asked, pulling a chair over to Kate’s desk. ‘And make it fast. Kate says she’s the only one who uses her office but I don’t want to risk anyone walking in on us.’

  ‘So, it’s Kate now, is it?’

  ‘Ralph…’

  ‘OK—OK,’ his detective sergeant said, flipping open his notebook. ‘I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is we’ve got a lead on Hamilton’s cutter, and the forensic boys are 99.9 per cent certain that the baluster fell accidentally.’

  ‘And the bad news?’

  ‘We raided the addresses Kate gave us, and found nothing, which means either she got the addresses wrong, or—’

  ‘Somebody knows Hamilton talked, and they’ve shut those operations down,’ Mario said grimly. ‘Which means the baluster probably didn’t fall accidentally.’

  ‘Mario, forensics found no signs of any chisel marks on the stonework,’ Ralph protested, ‘or any other sign that force might have been used to dislodge it.’

  ‘So why aren’t they 100 per cent certain it wasn’t pushed?’

  ‘Because,’ Ralph said with exaggerated patience, ‘there’s an outside, million to one chance, that it might—just might—have been given a nudge to help it on its way.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Mario, a million to one chance is as good as saying it didn’t happen!’ Ralph exclaimed, seeing his boss’s face set into tight lines. ‘Look, you were following her on Monday. Did you see anything suspicious?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘And it’s been five days now since Hamilton died,’ the detective sergeant continued. ‘OK, so the agents have moved their operations elsewhere but if they’d wanted Kate dead, they would have got her by now.’

  ‘Maybe, but—’ Mario thrust his fingers through his black hair, making it look even more untidy than usual. ‘It just doesn’t feel right, Ralph. Kate knows so much, and for nobody to have made a move…I can’t help but feel they’re simply waiting for the right opportunity.’

  ‘This feeling,’ Ralph observed, his eyes glinting. ‘It couldn’t possibly be clouded by the fact that our lady doctor’s kind of cute?’

  Cute wouldn’t have been a word he would ever have used to describe Kate Kennedy, Mario thought wryly. Bloody-minded, opinionated, determined—those were the words which immediately sprang into his mind—but not cute.

  ‘Ralph, will you quit with the matchmaking,’ he declared, suddenly realising his detective sergeant was gazing slyly at him. ‘I don’t have time for a relationship.’

  ‘Too right you don’t if all you do is work, eat and sleep. Correction,’ Ralph added. ‘You don’t always remember to eat and sleep.’

  ‘You’re beginning to sound more and more like my mother,’ Mario declared, but Ralph refused to be sidetracked.

  ‘Mario, I know how dedicated you are,’ he said. ‘Lord knows, I should after working with you for eight years, but this case…’ He cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘I know Kate has the same hair colouring, but she’s not—’

  ‘Enough, Ralph,’ Mario interrupted, his voice clipped, tight.

  ‘All I’m saying is,’ Ralph said quickly, ‘if the reason you’re giving two hundred per cent to this case is because—’

  ‘Basta, Ralph!’ Mario exclaimed, his face brooking no opposition. ‘I am here purely and simply because Kate Kennedy is the only witness we have in this case.’

  Except that wasn’t true, Mario realised, as he walked back into the treatment room in time to see Kate emerging from one of the cubicles with a wide smile on her face. A smile he found himself answering despite all his best efforts not to. A smile that was infectious, and warming, and reminded him so much of another woman’s smile, and he didn’t want to be reminded of that woman. Not now, not ever.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Kate asked, her smile faltering as she came towards him. ‘Did…?’ She glanced over her shoulder to make sure nobody was within earshot. ‘Did your sergeant bring bad news?’

  ‘Actually, he brought good news,’ Mario replied with an effort. ‘We’ve got a lead on Hamilton’s cutter.’

  ‘What’s a cutter?’ she said, clearly none the wiser.

  ‘Cutters are the men who repackage the cocaine into small quantities so it can get through customs. Drugs were originally simply packed into condoms or balloons, you see,’ he explained, seeing her continued confusion, ‘and the body-packer simply swallowed them. Now, because of improved X-ray facilities at airports, the cutters need to know how to alter the radio density of the packages.’

  ‘And they can do that?’ she said in amazement, and he nodded.

  ‘One of the favourite ways is to cover the condom or balloon with several layers of latex, then seal it with a hard wax coating to which you’ve added aluminium foil, plastic food wrap, even carbon paper.’

  She shuddered. ‘Just the thought of swallowing a mixture like that is enough to make me want to throw up.’

  ‘Me, too,’ he said, ‘but, sadly, there’s enough people prepared to do it.’

  ‘But…’ She frowned slightly. ‘How is having a lead on Duncan Hamilton�
��s cutter going to help you?’

  ‘Because the cutters work to order,’ he replied. ‘The fixer contacts the cutter to tell him what he wants. If we get the cutter, we’ll hopefully be able to persuade him to tell us who his fixer is, and that will take us one step closer to Mr Big himself.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, and he saw hope stir in her eyes. ‘Having this lead on Hamilton’s cutter…Does that mean you won’t have to keep on working here?’

  ‘Want rid of me already?’ he said, then cursed himself inwardly when a faint tinge of colour darkened her cheeks.

  In nome di Dio, but why did he keep on trying to flirt with her? It wasn’t as though she was even his type. His type were tall, leggy, placid brunettes, not rounded little auburn-haired women with attitude. OK, so her hair was beautiful, and she possessed a pair of the loveliest grey eyes he’d ever seen, plus a cleavage guaranteed to give any red blooded male a headache, but she was also argumentative and opinionated, and no way did he ever want to get involved with somebody like that. She’d drive him crazy in a month.

  ‘Kate—’

  ‘Too right, I want rid of you,’ she said tartly. ‘You’re too damned disruptive. If our female patients aren’t making eyes at you, our male ones are propositioning you.’

  And that was why he kept flirting with her, he thought, as he burst out laughing. Because she never let him get away with it. Because though she might blush, and be initially flustered, she always came back at him, and he’d never met another woman who could do that. Not even the woman whose memories he kept locked in a box labelled Do not open.

  ‘Kate, listen—’

  ‘Can I expect you in cubicle 5 any time this evening, Nurse Volante?’ Paul Simpson declared, appearing without warning beside them. ‘Or are you simply with us as an ornament?’

  ‘Sorry, Doctor,’ Mario replied meekly, but he exhaled through his teeth when Paul walked away, and Kate gazed at him sympathetically.

  ‘I’m afraid Paul has a rather unfortunate manner with the nurses,’ she began. ‘He’s a good doctor—’