‘Oh all right. I suppose you’ve done what I asked, though why the hell you had to involve the police, I don’t know.’
‘Keeps it legit, lost and found,’ said Sixsmith. ‘You wouldn’t want me accused of theft, would you?’
He invented this justification without thought, but it made her look at him with a new respect.
‘You may not be as dumb as you look,’ she said. ‘All right. Come in. But let’s make it quick. I’m busy.’
Busy at what in that outfit? wondered Sixsmith.
She led him into a long airy lounge decorated with an eye for shape and colour which without being able to say why he felt reflected her taste rather than the Hyphen’s. And her income too, he decided, taking in the quality of the furnishings. Unless teachers got a lot more money than they were always moaning about.
She left him there alone but returned too quickly for him to have a poke around. She was holding a bunch of twenties. She’d been so quick it couldn’t even have been locked up, he thought enviously. There was probably more money down the sofa in this house than he had in the whole of his apartment.
As if to show how little it meant to her, a couple of notes fluttered loose. As she stooped to pick them up her robe fell open from the waist, revealing a pair of pastry-pale, tennis-ball breasts. She straightened up, saw the direction of his eyes and said, ‘Don’t get any ideas, Mr Sixsmith. This is purely a cash transaction.’
He almost said that a man who’d recently feasted on plum duff doesn’t cross the street to eat cold cup cakes, but he didn’t, (a) because he didn’t think of it till later, and (b) because it wasn’t the mini-mammaries he was really looking at but the yellow brooch she wore at the neck of her robe. He hadn’t noticed it at first in the colourful and apparently random design, but now he recognized it as the same one she’d worn in his office, the one she boasted contained her protection against psychic attack.
He said, ‘Is your husband home, Mrs Baker?’
‘Why?’ she asked sharply.
‘Just thought we’d better have a story ready in case I bump into him.’
‘No need to worry. Gerald’s out. Probably enjoying himself in the company of his lady-love.’
A wicked smile played across her lips. Cats didn’t smile, but something about her expression put him in mind of Whitey when he got himself a mouse.
And he thought: How come the Hyphen’s still sniffing around Meg when I’ve got her love-charm in my pocket?
As if she’d caught the thought, Baker said, ‘Why did you remove the charm from the locket?’
‘I didn’t want the police playing around with it,’ he said. ‘They can be very nosey.’
‘And you gave it to Cherry?’
‘What? Oh yes. Cherry.’
‘I told her to burn it. She did that, did she?’
She was searching his face with a gaze like a laser. He filled his mind with an image of Butcher’s flame-thrower lighter incinerating the end of another cheroot and said, ‘Oh yes.’
‘Fine,’ she said, still with an edge of doubt. But her ‘business’ was clearly too urgent to be neglected further. ‘Now if you don’t mind …’
Perhaps she had a lover upstairs and she was scared he’d start without her, thought Sixsmith as he got into his car.
He drove away quickly, partly to put distance between himself and those penetrating eyes, partly because he felt a sudden urgent need to see Meg Merchison.
There were lights on in the tall terraced house but no one answered his repeated ringing. Then the door of the neighbouring house opened and a unisex head with large spectacles appeared.
‘She’s not there,’ it said.
‘Oh. Do you know where …’
‘There was an ambulance. About an hour ago. Maybe more.’
‘An ambulance? What was wrong? Where have they …’
But the head had said all it was going to say.
Sixsmith didn’t waste time trying to resummon it. Even a non-crossword-solving detective knew where ambulances went.
CHAPTER 15
Outside, the Royal Infirmary was Luton’s answer to Buckingham Palace.
Inside, it channelled visitors along a maze of corridors that could have baffled an experimental psychologist’s champion rat.
There were tests and rewards along the route. First test was to get someone to admit that Meg Merchison had been admitted. Reward was to be given directions to Ward 37.
Next test was to find a lift that wasn’t marked STAFF ONLY or full of trolleyed corpses. Reward was to be crowded in with a bunch of fruit-and-flower-bearing visitors, most of whom looked so gloomy they’d have been better off bringing myrrh.
Final test was to attract the attention of an ill-tempered ward sister who was tearing a strip off a nurse.
‘It’s your job to keep them out, not let them in. This is a hospital, for God’s sake, not a five star hotel! You got that, Nurse?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ said the nurse meekly.
‘Then remember it.’
With a look of loathing at Sixsmith, the sister hurried away.
The nurse turned round. Only now did Joe recognize Beryl Boddington.
He said, ‘Hi. Miss Boddington. Beryl … Look, excuse me, I need to talk to Sister …’
She blocked his way and said, ‘I shouldn’t bother. She’s busy.’
‘Not too busy to chew your head off,’ said Joe. ‘Look, maybe you can help.’
‘That’s what we’re here for. If you can help somebody as you pass along … or drive along, eh, Mr Sixsmith?’
So she had seen him. Shoot.
He said, ‘Look, I’m sorry.’
‘No need. If you wait here, Sister’ll be back sooner or later.’
She turned to go and he grabbed her arm. It felt firm and muscular. She turned and fixed him with an unblinking gaze. He let go of her arm.
He said, ‘You’ve got a friend of mine in here. Merchison, Meg Merchison.’
Her expression became a professional blank.
‘That’s right. If you care to wait for Sister …”
‘What’s wrong with her, for God’s sake?’ he exclaimed. ‘Or is there some law round here against anyone telling anyone anything?’
The professional blank dissolved under the jet of his emotion.
‘Look,’ she said in a lowered voice, ‘I don’t think anyone knows what’s wrong. She’s got severe abdominal pains and that’s all I can tell you. I’m sorry.’
‘Like appendix?’ he said hopefully.
‘You a doctor as well as a detective?’ she said. ‘No, not like appendix. These pains seem to move around, now here, now there. And they come and go. About forty minutes ago they stopped completely, and I was silly enough to let someone in to see her … he was so insistent, so concerned. Then suddenly it all started up again worse than ever. She screamed, Sister came in and found this fellow there … that’s what she was bawling me out over. So I daren’t let anyone else near.’
Sixsmith groaned. The times fitted with his arrival at Baker’s house and his interruption of her ‘urgent business’. Beryl took his groan as evidence of straightforward emotional distress and urged him through a nearby door.
‘Sit in here for a bit,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can get you a cup of tea. And I’ll check what’s happening.’
He found himself in a small waiting-room full of jolly signs telling you what awful things smoking, drinking, eating, and having sex could do to your health. There was one other occupant, Gerald the Hyphen.
He had his elbows on his knees and his head clutched between his hands. He didn’t look up as Sixsmith sat beside him.
‘I’m a friend of Meg’s,’ said Joe. After the previous night he didn’t feel fraudulent at making such a claim.
The Hyphen looked at him questioningly as though hoping he might be the bearer of good news, but what he saw in Sixsmith’s face clearly answered his question.
‘What happened?’ demanded Joe urgently. ‘W
as it something she ate? Or drank?’
His mind was still seeking a simple solution.
Collister-Cook shook his head.
‘We were just sitting talking,’ he said desperately. ‘Then she doubled up and started screaming. Oh God. It was terrible.’
‘It must have been,’ said Sixsmith. ‘But what did they say when you got her here? They must have some idea.’
The Hyphen shook his head helplessly.
‘Nothing. I saw her for a while. She seemed to be better. Then it started again worse than before. I think she’s going to die.’
There were tears streaming down his face as though some bottomless pool had been tapped.
He loves her, thought Joe. Nothing to do with charms or philtres or any of that stuff. He just loves her.
Which meant that matchbox in his pocket meant nothing.
Or meant something other than what Gwen Baker had told him.
And before his eyes again flashed those tiny pale breasts and the yellow brooch pinned on the open robe.
He stood up and went out.
Beryl was coming towards him with two cups of tea.
‘I brought one for him as well,’ she said.
‘Never mind that,’ said Joe impatiently, taking them from her and setting them on the floor. ‘What’s the news.’
She examined this new piece of unmannerliness and decided it could be put down to his distress.
‘They’re going to do tests,’ she said.
‘Like X-rays, you mean?’
She shook her head.
‘They’ve done X-rays. There’s nothing.’
‘Christ, you mean they’re going to open her up?’
‘Look, they’ve got to do something,’ she protested. ‘They’ve pumped her full of dope but it doesn’t seem to have any effect.’
At heart every doctor’s Mack the Knife, thought Sixsmith.
He found his hand, not obeying any conscious command from his brain, had pulled the matchbox out of his pocket.
‘Give her this,’ he said.
‘What? Look, she can’t take anything that’s not prescribed by the doctor …’
‘I don’t mean she’s got to eat it,’ said Joe in exasperation. ‘Just give it to her. Put it into her hand. Or under her pillow if she can’t hold anything. Somewhere close, preferably touching. Please.’
She looked at him like he was mad, which he agreed she was clearly entitled to do. Next time he saw himself in the mirror, he guessed he’d have much the same expression on his face. But that didn’t matter. When straws were all you had, that was what you clutched at.
She took the box and peered fearfully inside.
‘What is that?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know. Probably nothing. But it’s all I’ve got. Don’t ask questions, don’t tell anyone else, eh? Just give it to Meg. Look, I know you think I’m just an ill-mannered yob. I’m sorry. It’s nothing to do with you personally, it’s just Auntie Mirabelle keeps on producing these eligible girls. I mean, she’s crazy, who’d want an ill-mannered old yob anyway? But sometimes I get irritated with her … nothing to do with you, which is no excuse I know, only don’t let it stop you helping me now. Please.’
She closed the box and slipped it into the pocket of her uniform.
‘Your tea’s going cold,’ she said.
He picked up the cups and took them into the waiting-room.
Collister-Cook seemed to have passed through the storm of despair into a Dead Sea of hopelessness.
‘How long did you know Meg?’ he asked as he took the tea.
Sixsmith noted the tense.
‘Not long. And you?’
‘Long enough.’
‘For what?’
‘To get like this.’ He looked at his free hand as if it belonged to a stranger. ‘I’m married, you know. It’s a funny thing. While Meg was living I could never quite bring myself to leave my wife. But now that she’s dead, I shan’t stay. Crazy, eh?’
‘Sure it’s crazy. She’s not dead, that’s what’s crazy!’
The Hyphen looked at Sixsmith with calm compassion.
‘Don’t punish yourself with hope, friend. There is none. I know. I get an almost supernatural feeling about such things.’
Joe couldn’t stand any more of this. He finished his tea and made for the door.
‘I’ll see if I can get another cup,’ he said. ‘You like one?’
‘No. Not for me,’ said Collister-Cook.
Joe went out. He walked along the corridor and stood by the big window at its end. All of downtown Luton lay spread below him, like a patient on a table. Andover was down there. And Blue and Grey, Butcher and Bannerjee, Suzie Sickert and DS Chivers, all of them. And none of them seemed important. It was a good corrective viewpoint once in a while, a high window in a hospital.
‘Mr Sixsmith. Mr Sixsmith!’
He turned. Beryl was hurrying towards him, her face alight with joyful amazement.
‘It’s incredible,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I gave her that matchbox, slipped it into her hand underneath the sheet and closed her fingers round it. And thirty seconds later it was gone, the pain was gone, you could tell just by looking at her! She stopped moving, her colour came back, she sat up in bed and said she’d like a drink! It’s beyond belief! Isn’t it marvellous!’
‘Indeed it is,’ said Joe Sixsmith, a huge smile splitting his face.
It seemed perfectly natural to seize the nurse in his arms and give her a long, lingering kiss. She tasted delicious, sort of honey and coriander. And she took her time pushing him away.
‘You’ll get me fired,’ she said. ‘Are you going to tell Mr Cook?’
He liked the way she just dumped the hyphen.
‘No,’ he said. ‘You tell him. It’s you who gets to break the bad news. Only fair you should get the chance to announce the good. I’ll see you around maybe.’
‘Aren’t you going to wait to see your friend? Once the doctor’s finished checking her over, she should be able to have visitors.’
Sixsmith shook his head.
‘I got things to do,’ he said. ‘Besides, two’s company. It’s him she’ll want to see.’
Also there would be explaining to do, and he had a feeling that some things were better left unexplained.
He was glad to leave the Infirmary behind, even though the usual after-impression of cold corridors, antiseptic smells and carnal decay was overlaid this time by a powerful tactile image of the warm wet softness of Nurse Boddington’s lips and the yielding softness of her full body under that starchy uniform …
He shook his head free of the thoughts. Beryl was one of Mirabelle’s anointed. He hadn’t found out yet what was wrong with her, but he’d be a mug to forget that something certainly was.
‘You know what, Whitey,’ he said. ‘I got money in my pocket, I’ve been working hard all day and most of the evening too. Time for a bit of pleasure. How about we look for a slice of the high life.’
Whitey looked at him doubtfully, then peered through the windscreen.
‘I see what you mean,’ said Joe.
His Nurse Boddington reverie must have distracted him so much he’d taken a wrong turn, for now he realized he was heading away from the centre of town where, if anywhere, the high life was surely to be found.
He glanced in his mirror, checked that the only other vehicle in sight, a small white job about twenty yards behind him, wasn’t a police car, and did a nifty and strictly illegal U-turn.
The small white car followed suit.
As he headed back into town, Joe’s mind puzzled on this. Could be a coincidence, of course. Luton drivers were notoriously creatures of impulse, going about their business with a Latin impetuosity.
On the other hand, Mr Blue and Mr Grey travelled round in a small white car …
He slowed in an attempt to get a glimpse of the inmates, but the white car slowed too and all he could make out was that there was a double silhouette …
; They were near the centre now.
He hit the gas and pulled away. Within seconds the white car was back on terms. Without signalling he turned right into the narrow lane running between the old Gaiety Theatre and the new Sikh temple.
The headlights swung after him.
‘Oh hell,’ said Sixsmith.
He reached a T-junction where the lane cut into the service road running behind the Palladian Shopping Mall. Left would take him to the High Street, right to Ondine Place.
He heard a high-pitched peep-peep-peep. It was the reversing warning of a lorry and he could see it now to his left, backing out of the loading bay behind the Starbright Freezer Store. It was either a late delivery or an early robbery. None of his business, but maybe his salvation.
He swung the wheel hard over and hit the accelerator.
It was a close thing. His wing actually brushed the tailgate of the reversing truck. But he got through and had the satisfaction of seeing the road behind him completely blocked as he burst into the High Street.
Whitey must have been holding his breath, for now he let it out in a cry of outrage in which to the finely tuned ear the words ‘Bloody maniac … not fit to be in charge of a pram …’ were clearly audible.
‘OK, so you need a drink? You think you’re the only one?’ said Sixsmith.
Thoughts of the high life were sponged from his mind. What he needed was the security of the familiar.
He found a spot on the crowded car park of the Glit and went inside.
The pub was packed and he recalled it was Golden Oldie Karaoke Nite. Whitey on his shoulder was purring like a Roller. He dearly loved a crowded pub. The sight of a cat drinking beer usually created such admiration that his ashtray would be foaming over, not to mention the crisps and pork scratchings which a generous public pushed his way also.
Sixsmith was less enthusiastic, claiming that a night with a drunk cat followed by a day with a hungover one was not his idea of happiness. But Whitey put it down to jealousy. Tonight, though, the cat was out of luck. If there was one thing the patrons of the Glit found more entertaining than an alcoholic cat it was the sight of their nearest and dearest making prats of themselves and Karaoke Nite gave full measure of that. He was already feeling grievously neglected when Dick Hull, the manager, refulgent in full Gary Glitter fig, came up to Joe and said, ‘Glad you made it, son. We’re badly in need of a bit of class. I don’t mind a laugh but they’ll be throwing things soon. Just look at that mate of yours!’
Blood Sympathy Page 15