As I told her what had happened to me she listened in silence.
“He tried to kill you?” she asked.
“And almost succeeded.”
“And are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you tell the police?”
“Everything. They haven’t agreed to reopen your case, but they’re going to look at it. Though of course, I told them that Lamelle admitted killing Aiden Caulfield. Trouble is, unless he admits it himself, we’re no further forward.”
“And the chances are, Roger Lamelle’s dead?”
“That’s what the police reckon.”
“To think, that I might have been able to clear my name. Even get compensation for all those years... Well, I’m no worse off I suppose. At least now you believe I’m innocent. So do you think you can come down to fetch me soon?”
A surge of anger rose up inside me. I’d just told her that I was suffering from burns to the face and experienced major trauma, and she expected me to drive down to Wales as if nothing had happened.
“Not for a while. I’ve taken painkillers and a sleeping pill. I’m smashed and I can’t drive.”
“Of course. Sorry Jack, I’m being selfish. I didn’t mean right now – they want me to stay in a bit longer anyway.”
* * * *
Much later on Stuart arrived and drove me back to town, where I brought him up to speed with everything that had been happening to me. He grunted as he pushed chips into his mouth, looking out of the window of the pub that was near to the Westgate Towers end of the High Street. I’d looked at myself in the bathroom mirror at the hospital just before leaving: one side of my face had red burn marks and my semi-shaved head was covered in white bandages. No wonder that barman had looked at me nervously, glad when we found a table away from the bar.
“Right mystery,” Stu said.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Chances are, Lamelle is dead. I mean it has to be a worse trauma than slitting your wrist, and I’ve heard that people die quickly from that kind of blood loss.”
“I heard the opposite,” Stu said, munching away slowly. “It’s supposed to be a hard game slitting the correct vein in your wrist, and if you cut the wrong ’un the blood flow in’t fast enough.”
“But he circumvented looking for veins: blood was spurting out like a tap. No, what bothers me is, why hasn’t someone found the body? He couldn’t have gone far.”
Stu forked up some peas. “Because I don’t reckon he’s dead. And he is a doctor. He’d know to apply a tourniquet to the upper arm, keep it raised until he could staunch the flow.”
“But no way could he do stitches with just one hand.”
“Now let’s think,” Stu said. “We know he didn’t go to a hospital or a GP’s practice. But there are other doctors. The kind of guys who’ve been struck off, and do shady patch-up jobs for underworld characters who don’t want anyone to know about their injuries. Gunshot wounds, especially, because hospitals are obliged to report owt like that to the police.”
“Sophisticated microsurgery is his only faint chance of reattaching the fingers he’s lost.”
“He’s past all that, Jack. As a doctor he’d also know that the most sophisticated microsurgery might not be enough to successfully reattach his fingers anyway. Besides I can’t imagine such an operation would work unless the pieces are freshly amputated. Repairing his hand is way down on his list of priorities. It’s a question of survival for him now.”
“So, these unregistered doctors. Do you know any?”
“Aye, matter of fact I do. Only one around here. And he’s not that far from here. Let’s go and see him.”
“Surely the police will already have thought of dodgy doctors?”
“Have a job finding their own arses to wipe, some of ’em. I told them what we found out, and what do they do? Fuck all. Just bleated on about needing evidence and how all we found out about him being in the same class as Megan Foster didn’t mean a thing. And, to be fair, until he kidnapped you they’d got nowt to link him to the killings. Even if they catch him, it’ll be your word against his.”
“There’s DNA left at some of the murder scenes. That should match to the blood he left in my car.”
We left the pub and Stu drove fast, and soon we were in a leafy suburban middle-class part of town.
“Are we phoning him?” I asked.
“No way. Dennis dun’t like keeping appointments, and if we gave him warning he’d be gone.”
“What sort of person is he?”
“Wait and see.”
The seedy 1950s block of flats had been built at the end of a road of semi-detached houses, and was separate and unloved, with a scrubland of grass in front. Once past the entrance vestibule, Stu and I trudged up flight after flight of stairs in the grim concrete building. After each couple of worn-stair-carpeted flights, we would pass a door with a Yale lock, and a number on it. The corridors and stairway were painted dark brown, and there was the rank odour of second-hand cooking with a hint of disinfectant and cat pee.
We stopped outside a dark green door, with number 13 on it and Stu pressed the doorbell. To the right was another flight of steps.
“Yes?” The door had opened three inches, and the face in the crack was fat, bespectacled, and wary.
“Remember me, Dennis?” Stu asked. “Stu Billingham. Journalist. You spoke to me a couple of years ago.”
“Journalist? No, I don’t remember you. I don’t like journalists.”
Dennis had a high reedy voice, and sweat had broken out on his brow, below the mostly bald pate with its fringe of lank silver hair. The chain was preventing the door being fully open.
“We want your help. We’ll pay,” Stu said.
There was a pause. The door closed an inch, we heard the chain being slid off, and it swung open completely. We followed him inside.
Dennis Hartby was a big broad man, whose breath smelt of liquor. He was wearing an ancient green jersey and shapeless brown trousers that kept slipping below his ample belly. There were several empty bottles on the table, as well as the remains of a couple of takeaways meals, the yellow rice solid on the plastic plate, the greenish sauce all but evaporated. A laptop computer was open on the table, and I got a glimpse of gyrating naked women on its screen. All around were discarded clothes and newspapers, interspersed with CDs and cardboard boxes. The room smelt of mustiness, body odour and misery.
“So what do you want?” Hartby asked, looking from one to the other of us.
“Have you treated any patients recently?” Stu asked.
“I don’t have patients.”
“But you’re a doctor?”
He shook his head. “Not anymore.”
“We need to know if you treated – or rather gave some help to – a man last night. A man who lost most of his hand – he’d have been bleeding a lot, was probably in a right bad way.”
Dennis looked uncomfortable, his eyes shifting to right and left. “Of course not. If a man lost his hand he’d obviously need to go to a hospital with proper facilities. What could I possibly do to help someone with injuries like that?”
“Stitch up the stump as best you could,” I said, surprised to see how the ex-doctor appeared to be truculent, self righteous and overly defensive. “You could have cleaned up the wound and dressed it properly, maybe given him oral antibiotics to prevent infection such as septicaemia, given him somewhere to rest and recover. If he couldn’t go to hospital he’d need someone to stop him bleeding to death – a way of buying time until he could get his injuries treated properly.”
“No. I wouldn’t dare touch somebody with injuries such as that. It would be illegal and totally irresponsible.”
“Not even if he was dying, and there was no time to get him to hospital anyway?”
“I’d give him first aid and call an ambulance. I’m sorry. I wish I could help you, but I honestly can’t.”
“So you won’t mind us taking a look round your flat?” I asked pleas
antly.
“Matter of fact I would! What right do you have to charge into my home and–”
I took no notice of him, and as Stu tried to keep him occupied, I opened every door and looked inside. A filthy kitchen, stinking of stale food, a bathroom with a foul shower curtain, and a second bedroom with just a bed with no mattress, bare unpainted walls and no carpet. I searched the flat twice. No trace of anyone.
I went back into the kitchen, forced myself to open the swing-bin lid, but there was only kitchen rubbish, no blood-soaked swabs or bandages.
Dennis looked relieved as I returned, shaking my head to Stu.
“Sorry to have troubled you Dr Hartby,” I said, as we walked to the door.
“I told you, I’m not a doctor!”
* * * *
In the car a wave of tiredness overwhelmed me. I closed my eyes.
“Get some sleep before you collapse,” Stu observed. “I’ll take you back home now.”
My mobile rang. It was Lucy.
“Jack? I wanted to say sorry about earlier.”
“It’s okay.”
“All this has upset me so much. That’s what it’s been like for me these past weeks. And hearing that Lamelle actually told you the truth about Aiden, and now he’s probably dead and can’t corroborate it. It’s so upsetting, so awful. I know I reacted badly. I know I hurt you.”
“Sure.”
“I’m always saying hurtful things to you Jack, and I’m sorry. I don’t mean to . It’s just that I love you so much I lash out sometimes. I don’t mean it. I never mean it.”
“It’s okay.”
“They want me to stay in for another night, but tomorrow I’ll get a cab all the way home. Should be with you around tea time.”
“Great, sleep well.”
“Miss you.”
“I miss you too.”
“And Jack?”
My eyes were closing with tiredness.
“I love you. I love you, Jack.”
Stu, sitting beside me, driving and minding his own business, looked straight ahead.
She cut the connection. Just as I was about to lie back in the seat and give way to sleep, there was the ping noise, telling me I’d got a text message. It was from Caroline:
Are you okay? I went to the hospital but they told me you’d checked out. Please Jack, you mustn’t rush around until you’re completely better. You must go straight home and get some rest. Can I come and see you and just relax with you? I think about you all the time. I want to be with you xx
Without pausing to think, I texted her back.
Missing u 2. Can you come to my house in half an hour?
I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I was doing the right thing. Then pressed send, smiling to myself as I watched the flickering message sending words on the screen and the little spinning circle, then feeling a warm sense of satisfaction as message sent appeared. As I drifted into sleep I thought of the way Caroline had held my hand last night. The smell of her hair.
Once back at my house, I switched off my mobile phone and unplugged the land line. The last thing I needed was another call from Lucy.
Shortly afterwards, Caroline arrived, and as she came into my arms there was none of the hesitation, the prickly awkwardness of my first encounters with Lucy. Caroline demanded nothing, she didn’t push me.
We opened a bottle of wine and she told me all about her fiancée Geoff, how they’d been going out together for years, but they weren’t right for each other. I told her about Lucy, but I found myself defending her, unable to tell Caroline Lucy’s secret, but explaining how she’d suffered all her life.
“You still love her?” Caroline said in a low voice, sipping her wine.
I nodded. “I don’t know why. I do. It’s just there. I can’t turn my feelings off.”
“Do you want to?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
She stood up and swayed slightly. “I’m prepared to wait for you, Jack.” She put a hand up to her head. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’ve had too much to drink to drive tonight. Can I stay here?”
“Sure.”
I made up the spare bed, and wondered if she’d stay there, or wander up to my bedroom, and, if she did, would I have the strength of character to resist her advances? I like to think I would. I liked Caroline. But she was young, innocent, and, for me, there just wasn’t enough chemistry for me to want to have a lasting relationship with her.
* * * *
I didn’t go to bed, just dozed off on the sofa in the sitting room. Then, during a moment of wakefulness, something ran through my mind. I’d been thinking idly about what had happened in the past few hours, and something made me remember the visit that Stu and I had made to Dennis Hartby, the struck-off doctor. I thought back to his behaviour.
He’d been lying, I was sure of that. Lying, shifty and scared. Yet even if he had admitted that he had treated Lamelle, all we’d know is that the man had been there, it wouldn’t give any clue as to where he was now, so it hardly mattered.
Then things came clearer. I thought back over his conversation, the way, for just a few seconds, his eyes flicked backwards and forwards.
And I suddenly remembered that just once, when Stu was talking about Dr Lamelle’s injuries, Dennis’s eyes flicked upwards quickly, then down again.
Upwards.
Why did he look upwards?
I closed my eyes to try and think. Surely Dennis’s flat was on the top floor of the block. Or was it? I remembered now that there’d been another, much shorter, flight of stairs leading upwards, above Dennis’s lair.
Where did those steps lead to?
From what I could remember, the stairs leading up from Hartby’s flat were battered and uncarpeted, the corridor unpainted, as if that part of the house was derelict. There surely couldn’t be another flat up there, could there?
There was only one way to find out.
It was a long shot, but right now anything was worth checking up on.
I’d seen the massive amount of blood that Lamelle had lost in the seconds after the gun blew up, the spurting pulses of it. It was obvious that even if he’d managed to get to someone who could patch him up, he’d be on the point of collapse, hardly in any fit state to go anywhere, and aware that if he went to hospital he’d be arrested. What better solution than to lie low in a filthy nondescript flat, while the police searched the highways and byways, expecting to find a man in flight or a dead body?
The upstairs flat.
I tiptoed upstairs to my spare bedroom. Caroline was fast asleep, a smile on her face – she’d had most of a bottle of wine while we’d been talking. Because of the medication the hospital had given me, I hadn’t touched any alcohol, and the sleep earlier in the day had refreshed me. She was sleeping so soundly that I couldn’t bear to wake her. Besides, Dennis’s flat wasn’t far – I simply had to go round there, take a look and satisfy myself, then I’d come back before she woke up.
I left a note for Caroline, telling her that I had to go and check up on the flat that Stu and I had been to this afternoon, and hoped she wouldn’t mind me borrowing her car. That I’d be back within a couple of hours. I left her my spare front-door key. She was sharing my house, I was using her car. That seemed right somehow, natural: it was a good feeling.
Checking my watch, it said ten o’clock in the evening. Outside the night was fresh and raw, and a fine drizzle was falling. I breathed deeply, feeling the cold air fresh and sharp, clearing the muzziness of my headache. I’d taken a big torch with me and wondered briefly about a weapon, and settled for a heavy metal crowbar. But I wasn’t planning on tackling Lamelle. Best plan was just to go and look, then call the police if I found what I was hoping for. As I walked away towards Caroline’s car, I wondered if I was doing the right thing.
Caroline’s Corsa was a small fast vehicle, and after checking the map I found Dennis’s flat without difficulty and parked a short distance away. As I walked through the communal entr
ance all was silent and quiet. The door closed behind me, sealing me inside the miserable squalid building, where faded dark wallpaper nudged the cracks in the ceiling and the brown carpet was worn practically threadbare. I texted Stu to tell him where I was, and that I’d let him know if I had any luck. I’d wondered whether to ask him to come with me right now, but Stu had already done enough to help me and it was late – this was, after all, just a whim on my part, and the chances were that it would be a wild goose chase.
Climbing the stairs. The first floor, then the second and third floor. There was dingy light from above until I reached the fourth level, where the bare light bulb in the ceiling fitting didn’t work. But my torch stabbed the gloom and I reached the door to Hartby’s flat on the fifth. I waited and listened, but the flat was in darkness, no sliver of light underneath the door, no sounds of a TV or Hi Fi from within. For every door I passed, I noticed only a couple with a strip of yellow light at the bottom. Most of the tenants were obviously either tucked up in bed, or out. Hesitating outside Hartby’s door, I realised that I really didn’t want to go up that stairway to the right that I remembered from earlier today. I’d had more than enough confrontations during the past few weeks, and, frankly, the prospect of coming up against Lamelle was something I’d much rather have avoided.
And as I climbed the pokey dark stairway, my stomach churned and I had a really bad feeling. But something drove me on; I felt as if, after all the blunders I’d made so far, this was one puzzle I had to solve on my own.
I turned and faced the final flight of stairs that was virtually in pitch blackness. My torch spiked a yellow path through the gloom, and I trod slowly, counting ten steps before the turn, then another five, finally leading to another door. My foot broke through a rotten floorboard, and I fell sideways, scrabbling against the wall. But I managed to right myself, and tiptoed past the broken area. Something fast and furry scurried across my foot, and I shivered in distaste. Then I was at the top. The door in front of me was different from the others: there was no lock, and when I tried the handle it gave. I pushed it open.
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