The Dark Room

by Minette Walters

  Fergus was leaning against Protheroe’s Wolseley when the doctor emerged into the warm late afternoon and approached across the gravel. He gave a perfunctory nod towards the older man and ran a hand over the bonnet. ‘I thought it might be yours,’ he said. ‘I noticed it when I visited Jinx the other day. Do you want to sell it?’

  Alan shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. We’ve been together too long to part so easily.’ He put the key into the lock. ‘Have you seen Jinx, or are you on your way in?’

  ‘Just waiting. She’s wandering about the garden somewhere. Miles has gone looking for her. Did Kennedy give you a roasting then?’

  ‘Is that what he’s employed to do?’

  ‘It depends on Dad’s mood. I told him you were pretty high-handed with me on Saturday, so I thought maybe he’d ordered his Rottweiler in to remind you who foots the bill. I also told him I reckoned you had the hots for Jinxy.’ He peered at Alan out of the corner of his eye, judging his reaction. ‘Dad was bloody cross about it, so I’m not surprised he sent Kennedy over.’

  Alan gave a snort of amusement. ‘I doubt you have the bottle to tell your father anything, Fergus.’ He pulled the car door open. ‘As a matter of interest, how did you know Kennedy was here?’

  ‘I saw him leave.’ He yawned. ‘Miles wants to meet you. I promised I’d keep you here till he got back.’

  ‘Another time perhaps.’

  ‘No, now.’ Fergus caught at his arm. ‘We want to know what’s going on. Does Jinx remember something?’

  ‘I suggest you ask her.’ Alan looked down at the restraining hand. ‘You’re welcome to come and talk to me any time you like, just so long as you make an appointment first. But at the moment’ – he placed his hand over the young man’s and prised it off his arm – ‘I’ve more important things to do.’ He smiled amiably and eased in behind the wheel. ‘It’s been nice meeting you again, Fergus. Give my best wishes to your mother and brother.’ He shut the door and gunned the Wolseley into life, before spinning the wheel and roaring away down the drive.

  When Sister Gordon did her rounds at nine o’clock that evening, she found Jinx standing by her window watching the remnants of the day burn to crimson embers. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ Jinx said without turning round, knowing by instinct who her visitor was. ‘If I could stand and look on this for ever, then I would have eternal happiness. Do you imagine that’s what Heaven is?’

  ‘I guess it depends on how static you want your Heaven to be. Presumably you’ve watched this develop from a simple sunset into glorious fire, so at which point would you have stopped it to produce your moment of eternal happiness? I think I would always be wondering if the moment afterwards had been more beautiful than the one I was stuck with, and that would turn the experience into a hell of frustration.’

  Jinx laughed quietly. ‘So there is no Heaven?’

  ‘Not for me. Bliss is only bliss when you come upon it unexpectedly. If it lasted for ever it would be unbearable.’ She smiled. ‘Everything all right?’

  Jinx turned away from the window. ‘Exactly the same as it was half an hour ago, and the half-hour before that. Are you going to tell me now why it’s so important to keep checking on me?’

  ‘Perhaps the doctor’s worried that you’ve been overexerting yourself. You put the fear of God into me this afternoon with that wretched walk. It was too far and too long.’

  ‘It wasn’t, you know,’ said Jinx idly. ‘I spent most of the time hiding.’ She smiled at the other woman’s surprise. ‘I saw my brother coming and dived for cover in one of the outside sheds.’ She glanced back towards the window. ‘Dr Protheroe told me he was expecting a visit from my father,’ Jinx lied easily. ‘So do you know if Adam ever came? I thought he might pop in afterwards to visit me.’

  ‘I believe his solicitor came,’ she said, plumping up the pillows and smoothing the sheets, ‘but I don’t think your father did.’

  Jinx pressed her forehead against the glass. ‘Why hasn’t Dr Protheroe been to see me?’

  ‘He’s taken himself off for a few hours’ R and R. Poor fellow,’ she said fondly, wishing as she often did that she hadn’t saddled herself with Mr Gordon. ‘He has a lot on his mind one way and another, and no one to share his problems with.’

  Jinx wrapped her arms about her thin body to stop the shivering. Did he have Leo and Meg on his mind? And was it Kennedy who’d told him?

  Sister Gordon frowned. ‘You’ve been at that window too long, you silly girl. Quickly now, into your dressing gown and into bed. No sense catching pneumonia on top of everything else.’ She clicked her tongue sharply as she opened the dressing gown and slipped it over Jinx’s shoulders. ‘You were lucky that young couple arrived when they did on the night of your accident or you’d have started pneumonia then.’

  ‘It was certainly convenient,’ said Jinx impassively.

  Tuesday, 28 June, Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 12.05 a.m.

  The Wolseley swung through the clinic’s gates, its headlamps scything a white arc across the lawn. It was after midnight and Alan slowed to a crawl to avoid waking the patients with the crunch of wheels on gravel. He felt no relief about coming home, no sense of welcome at his journey’s end, only a growing resentment that this was all there was. The temporary euphoria that a bottle of expensive Rioja over a meal of langoustines in garlic butter had given him had evaporated during his careful drive home to leave only frustrated depression. What the hell was he doing with his life? Where was the satisfaction in ministering to a clutch of rich bastards with over-inflated egos and no self-control? Why hadn’t Jinx told him Meg and Leo were dead? And why couldn’t he get the damn woman out of his mind?

  He drummed an angry hand on the wheel, only to wrench it in alarm as the lights picked out the white flash of a face, inches from the nearside wing, disembodied against the blackness of the trees bordering the drive. Shit! SH-I-IT! His heart set up a sturdy gallop as he slammed his foot on the brake and brought the crawling car to an almost instantaneous halt. Half-hourly checks, he’d said, and she was out here dodging bloody cars.

  ‘Jinx,’ he called, fumbling open the door and hauling himself out and upright with a hand on the car roof. ‘Are you all right?’

  Silence.

  ‘Look, I saw you.’ God help him if he’d hit her. He used the red light thrown by his rear lamps to scan the grass verge behind the car, but there was no huddled body there. ‘I know you can hear me,’ he went on, staring into the trees, searching for her. He walked round to lean against the passenger door. Sooner or later she would have to move and he’d see the flash of the white face again. ‘I think you’re a fraud, Jinx. The amnesia’s crap and I don’t believe for one second that you tried to kill yourself. It was a set-up, pure and simple, designed to get your father on your side, and it sure as hell worked, even if you probably did yourself rather more damage than you intended. So are you going to tell me what it’s all about?’ He waited. ‘I should warn you I’m feeling pretty bloody ratty at the moment, and my mood isn’t improved by hanging around in my own sodding drive because one of my patients wants to play silly buggers. But don’t expect me to give up tamely and leave you here. You move one muscle, girl, and I’ll catch you. So are you going to show yourself or are we going to wait this out till daylight? Your choice.’

  There was a blur of movement, so quick and so close that he was completely overwhelmed by it. He lurched to one side but pain exploded in his shoulder as the solid metal head of a sledgehammer tore his arm from its socket. He ducked away from another arcing blow and scrambled round the bonnet of the car towards the open door of the driver’s seat. With an instinct born of desperation, he threw himself behind the wheel and slammed the door. But as he reached across his chest to force the gear clumsily into reverse, the sledgehammer burst through the windscreen towards his face.

  Amy Staunton looked at her watch. ‘What’s Dr Protheroe want half-hourly checks for anyway?’ she grumbled. ‘The girl’s been fast asleep since ten o�
��clock.’

  ‘Ours not to question why,’ said Veronica Gordon. ‘Ours just to do or die. Finish your tea. I can’t see five minutes making much difference here or there.’

  He didn’t know if it was sweat or blood that was pouring down his face. As the car accelerated backwards, he only knew that he was in agony. With a sense of unreality he watched the figure – a man – vanish into the darkness before the Wolseley’s back-end piled into a solid oak tree. What the hell was going on?

  The door handle of number twelve rattled and the door was pushed half-open as the black nurse looked into the pitch darkness inside. She heard something and, with a start of fear, she felt about for the light switch. ‘Are you all right, love?’ She flooded the room with light, glanced at the bed where Jinx was threshing her sheets into a tumbled mess, then looked towards the french windows where the curtains flapped in the breeze. Tut-tutting impatiently, she crossed the room to close and lock the windows, then went to the bed and placed a gentle hand on the woman’s forehead.

  As though galvanized by an electric shock, Jinx sat bolt upright in the bed, mouth sucking frenziedly for air. She couldn’t breathe . . . Dear God, she couldn’t breathe . . . She clutched at her throat in a vain attempt to dislodge whatever was blocking her airway. But it was earth, filthy acrid earth . . . and it was killing her . . . NO-O-O! She flung herself off the bed and burst through the bathroom door, wrenching at the cold water tap in the basin and ducking her head under the icy water. She drew in breath on a gasp of shock and let the sweet, sweet water wash the taste of death away.

  ‘Oh, good God, girl,’ screeched the nurse, ‘what’s got into you? You being sick? What you been taking? What you doing with your clothes on? You was fast asleep last time I checked.’

  Jinx slumped to the floor and stared at her from red-rimmed eyes. ‘It was a dream, Amy,’ she whispered. ‘Only a dream.’

  ‘Ooh, you’re a wicked girl. I’ve never had such a fright in my life. You just wait till I tell Dr Protheroe. I thought you’d done for yourself good and proper.’ She beat her chest. ‘I could have had a heart attack. And why did you open your windows? Top panes only after nine o’clock, that’s the rule. What you been up to?’

  Jinx curled into a ball on the tiled floor. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tuesday, 28 June, Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 1.00 a.m.

  THE TWO CONSTABLES surveyed the shattered windscreen and the crushed Wolseley boot with unfeigned disgust. It was parked forlornly by the front door where Alan had driven it when he realized that, without some very prompt action, his dislocated shoulder would require reduction under general anaesthetic at the nearest Casualty department. He had blared the horn with all the vigour of the angels and archangels sounding the last trump, and had sobbed with relief when the night security officer had emerged to rescue him, and Veronica Gordon, using strong hands and a steady nerve, had guided the bones back into place. Even so, it had been a close call. After fifteen minutes, the joint had been so swollen that the pain was unbearable.

  ‘That’s criminal,’ said one policeman, lighting the damage with his torch. ‘How many times did you say he hit it, sir?’

  ‘Only once,’ said Alan, cradling his left elbow in the palm of his right hand, unconvinced that the sling he was wearing was reliable. ‘I smashed the back in when I was reversing away from him. I’m rather more interested in the fact that he had at least two swipes at me.’

  ‘Still, sir,’ said the other ponderously, ‘he seems to have done more damage to your car.’

  ‘Remind me to show you some pictures of dislocated joints thirty minutes after the event,’ he said dryly, ‘then tell me he did more damage to my car.’ He led the way inside and into his office, padding wearily to his desk and hitching a buttock on to the edge. ‘I suppose it’s occurred to you he might still be out there.’

  ‘Highly unlikely, sir, not with all the activity that’s been going on.’

  The police car had arrived within ten minutes of the 999 call and, following Dr Protheroe’s description of events, namely that he had glimpsed a face in his headlights and had stopped to investigate, the policemen worked on the logical assumption that an intruder had come with the intention of burglary and the doctor had had the misfortune to get in his way. A thorough check of all the doors and windows, however, had failed to find any signs of a break-in.

  ‘We can’t fault your security, sir,’ said the larger of the two constables with a perplexed frown, ‘which makes me doubt this fellow had cased the clinic very thoroughly. If he was planning a burglary, he can’t have known how difficult it was going to be to break in. So are you sure you didn’t recognize him? Otherwise I don’t understand why he bothered to attack you. He clearly hadn’t committed a crime at that point, not unless he entered and left by the front door, which your security officer says is impossible because he’s been at the reception desk since ten o’clock.’

  ‘I’m sure. In any case I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake about seeing anyone at all until I felt the hammer brush my arm. I had no idea he was so close to me. I certainly didn’t hear him, but, as I’d left the car engine running, that wasn’t really surprising.’

  ‘And you can’t think of any reason why someone would want to attack you?’

  Alan shook his head. ‘Unless he knew I was a doctor and thought I had drugs in the car. I’ve been racking my brains but I can’t think of anything else.’ There would be time enough tomorrow, he thought, to decide whether it had been Jinx’s face he had seen in the headlamps, or whether his imagination had put her there because she had been on his mind.

  ‘An ex-patient, perhaps, who would recognize your car?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. It’s one of the first things I make clear when they arrive. We have a limited supply of drugs on the premises and they’re always locked away in that safe over there.’ He jerked his head towards the solid Chubb in the corner. ‘They certainly know I never carry anything in my car.’

  The constable lowered himself on to a chair and took a notebook from his pocket. ‘Well, let’s get some details down. You say he ran away after smashing the windscreen, so you must have had a pretty good look at him then.’

  Alan plucked a Kleenex from a box on his desk and dabbed at his face, which was still bleeding from where tiny shards of glass had embedded themselves in his skin. ‘Not really. I was having a hell of a job trying to find reverse with my right hand, so I was concentrating on that.’

  ‘Will you describe him for me, please?’

  ‘He was a bit shorter than I am – say about five ten or eleven. I suppose you’d describe him as medium build – he certainly wasn’t fat – and he was dressed in black.’

  The policeman waited for him to continue, pencil poised over notebook on knee. When he didn’t, he looked up. ‘A slightly fuller description would be more helpful, sir. For example, what skin colour was he?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think he was wearing a ski-mask. All I saw was a man dressed in black from head to toe wielding a sledgehammer.’

  ‘Fair enough. Then perhaps you could give me some details of his dress. What was he wearing on his top?’

  Alan shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He saw impatience in the constable’s eyes. ‘Look,’ he said with a flash of anger, ‘it’s very dark. I get out of my car and the next thing I know some bastard is trying to make mincemeat out of me. Frankly, taking in the minutiae of his dress is the last thing on my mind.’

  The policeman waited a moment. ‘Except that you must have taken in a few more details when you were back in the car and he was running away.’

  ‘It happened very fast. All I can tell you is that he was dressed in black.’

  ‘It’s not much to go on, sir.’

  ‘I’m aware of that,’ said Alan testily.

  There was a short silence. ‘Yet you’re very sure it was a man. Why? Did he say something to you?’

  ‘No.’
/>   ‘Could it have been a woman?’

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t believe it was. Everything about him – body shape, strength, aggression – told me it was a man.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be so convinced if you saw some of the women we deal with, sir,’ said the constable with heavy humour. ‘There’s no such thing as a weaker sex these days.’

  Alan took a deep breath. ‘Look, would it be a problem if we left all this till tomorrow? I’m pretty tired and my shoulder’s giving me hell.’

  The constables exchanged glances. ‘I can’t see why not,’ said the one who had remained standing. ‘The place seems secure enough and, without a good description, there’s not much we can do tonight anyway. We’ll have one of the plainclothes lads come and talk to you tomorrow. Meanwhile, sir, you might make a list of where you’ve been today and who you’ve spoken to.’ He gave a courteous nod. ‘It was a good bet that anyone coming back after midnight was more likely to be a doctor than a visitor or patient. So for what it’s worth, I think your theory about drugs is the most likely explanation.’

  Alan stopped at the nurses’ room on his way to bed. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

  Veronica Gordon, the only occupant, looked at his bloodied face. ‘Are you trying to play the martyr?’ she demanded. ‘Is that why you won’t let me do something about those cuts?’

  ‘You’re too ham-fisted, woman,’ he growled. ‘I’d rather do them myself, quietly and gently, in my own time. Any problems?’

  ‘Good lord, no,’ she said tartly. ‘Why would there be problems when a house full of insecure drunks and drug addicts get woken in the middle of the night by security officers and policemen tramping about the gravel and shining torches through their windows? For your information, Amy and I are being run off our feet. She is currently responding to the three bells that rang just before you came in.’ A light began flashing on the board at her elbow. ‘There’s another one. They’re all too nosy for their own good. They want to know what’s going on.’