by Jane Adams
“And where did she work?”
Rozlyn hesitated, then said. “She cleaned for an old lady Charlie knew, lived in the same block of flats as him. And she worked in the kitchen of an old folks home. The Larks. You know it?”
“I know it. Do you think they know she’s an illegal?”
Rozlyn shrugged. “I’ve yet to have the pleasure of asking,” she said. “I’d be surprised if they asked. References might have been a problem, but I’m sure Charlie would have figured something out.”
Big Frank smiled, briefly. “I thought you rated him as a useless tick,” he said.
“Oh, that’s not changed, not entirely, anyway, but now I figure him for a resourceful tick at any rate.” More than that, Rozlyn thought. She’d actually begun to engender a grudging respect for Charlie Higgins, but she thought that was one scrap of information that Big Frank could go without.
“And these . . . people this Thompson smuggled in. Where are they from?”
“Eastern Europe, we think. Clara Buranou said she was Croatian.” Not true, she thought. Rozlyn had said she was Croatian; she had simply not denied it. “Frank, there are people on the move everywhere, could be that Thompson varies his cargo.” She remembered the little radio with the Chinese writing Mouse had told her about. “The two houses we know about, we’ve got under surveillance, but that’s about the sum of it, I’m afraid.”
Frank Parker took another large swallow of his pint. Rozlyn watched with interest. It was now a good two thirds down and she figured she had until Frank finished before her interview terminated. Frank lowered his glass and snapped his fingers. As if by magic a folded sheet of paper appeared in his hand. He held it thoughtfully, gazing at Rozlyn as though trying to figure something out. It was not a comfortable expression to be on the receiving end of.
“You know where to find this Thomas Thompson, do you?”
Rozlyn shook her head.
“Well, Inspector Priest, for the sake of his health, I suggest you find him before any of my people do. This bloke’s been running a scam on my patch and I’d have appreciated knowing about it a good bit sooner than I did, if you get my meaning?”
Rozlyn nodded. Oh, you’re sore because you didn’t get your cut, she thought. “Yes. I get your meaning.”
“Business,” Frank told her. He slid the paper across the table, no easy task as it was crowded with bottles and empty glasses.
Rozlyn left it where it lay, noting that the corner of it had landed in a little puddle of spilt beer and was slowly soaking it up. “What I don’t get,” she said, “is how this could be happening so close to home, so to speak, and you not know.” She looked up into Big Frank’s face, eyes wide and childlike in their innocence.
“Oh, you can be sure that’s also my concern,” Big Frank told her. “You’ll know when I’ve found out.”
“I’m sure I will.”
Big Frank drained his glass and Rozlyn took her cue. She reached for the paper and stood, careful not to crash the stool into those others packed so close around the table.
“Be seeing you,” she said, then remembered something else. “Oh, I meant to ask. You heard of someone by the name of Donovan?”
There was a perceptible shift of mood. The man sitting to the right of Frank stood up and another moved as though about to. Frank waved them down. He looked Rozlyn in the eye, leaning as far forward across the table as his bulk would allow. “Donovan is not a nice man,” he warned softly. “You leave well alone. Now, get off home.”
Brook would have pressed the point, Rozlyn thought, as she nodded and then turned away. Brook would have sat himself down again and refused to shift until he’d got whatever point Big Frank wanted to make explained in triplicate — or he’d have tried to. Rozlyn had learned early on that the way to deal with Frank was to at least appear to do so on his terms. That way, you got pretty much what you needed to know and you didn’t so much run the risk of winding up beaten or dead in some back alley.
Frank knew that, given the opportunity, Rozlyn would put him inside as soon as blink, but he also knew that Rozlyn was willing to play the game with Frank’s ball and some of Frank’s rules.
“See you, Frank,” Rozlyn said as though nothing untoward had passed between them.
Big Frank nodded and Rozlyn made her way back across the bar. As she reached the door she turned and glanced back. Big Frank was pouring the remainder of Rozlyn’s beer into his glass. Rozlyn laughed softly and let herself out. Waste not want not, I suppose, she thought. Now, what the hell was that all about? She tucked the mystery paper into the pocket of her coat and ran for her car.
Once in shelter, she reached into her pocket for paper and phone, switching on the interior light so she could read the message Big Frank had given her. The phone bleeped into life, then sounded a cheerful message to tell her she’d missed a call. She studied the number. No name attached, so no one she had in her speed dial list. Not a number she recognised either, though whoever it was seemed to have tried to reach her twice.
Figuring that if it was anything important, they’d ring back, she turned her attention to the sheet of lined paper, now stained at the corner with Big Frank’s beer.
“Addresses?” The other houses. Had to be. Mouse said he thought Thompson owned four or five properties in all and here were two more. They were across town, quite a way from Big Frank’s patch. Briefly, Rozlyn wondered where he’d got the information from; then decided she probably wouldn’t like the answer. For this operation to have been kept from the boss man for so long — and she got the impression that Thompson had been operating for a while — there’d have to have been someone inside Frank’s organisation giving him cover . . . and taking a cut.
Rozlyn didn’t give much for their chances now. She recalled what Frank had said about Rozlyn knowing when Frank had found out how Thompson had kept his secret. No doubt there’d be another body in the canal sometime in the near future. Assisted suicide was rumoured to be one of Frank’s specialties. Rozlyn shuddered. If even Frank considered Donovan a dangerous man, what the hell was he actually like? It was not a pleasant thought.
She returned to her more immediate concern.
“Well, Mr Thomas Thompson — and who the hell would call their kid that? It has to be a made-up name. I mean, come on! Anyway, whatever your name is, you’d better pray I’m the one that finds you first and not our beer-drinking friend back there.”
CHAPTER 18
Home before nine, entering an empty house, no lights, no heat — she’d forgotten to set the timer again. In the hall the red glow of the answerphone light told her she had a message. It solved the mystery of the missed calls.
“Rozlyn, this is Jenny, I’m at the General Hospital. It’s your Mouse Man. Someone tried very hard to kill him and he’s asking for you.”
She added the ward number and the fact that she’d tried her mobile. Rozlyn retrieved her keys from the blue dish and left home a scant two minutes after walking in.
* * *
Rozlyn hated hospitals. She stepped reluctantly from the dark into the brightly lit world of medics and sickness and squeaky floors. That smell of death and disinfectant. Rozlyn had hated hospitals since she had watched her parents die in one. She had been just sixteen years old.
Mouse was propped in a clean white bed. His hands lay trembling on the coverlet, twitching like the whiskers of his pets. A tube ran into his left arm from a bag supported by a drip stand. Mouse, it seemed, was blood group O positive. The right side of his face was almost black with bruising and the one visible eye was swollen closed.
“What the hell happened?”
Jenny shrugged, then got up and came over to Rozlyn, leading her away from the bed. “He’s asked for you but he keeps drifting in and out of consciousness. Someone came to his house, wrecked the place and beat him to a pulp. Somehow, he managed to crawl out into the street and a passer-by, chap walking his dog, found him and called an ambulance. Other than that, we don’t know much.”
<
br /> “Who the hell would want to hurt Mouse? How bad is he?”
“Broken ribs, internal bleeding and he’s lost an eye. They thought at first he might have a ruptured liver. There was talk of him bleeding out, but they’ve managed to stabilise and they hope he’ll pull through.” She smiled, trying to reassure. “He’s made it this far. He’s tougher than he looks.”
Rozlyn nodded, looking at the Mouse Man. He’d always struck Rozlyn as being as fragile and vulnerable as one of his small charges. Short and skinny, he gave no impression of durability. Rozlyn hoped that this appearance would indeed prove to be deceptive. “When did they bring him in?”
“About four this afternoon. They took him straight into theatre. He was asking for you then,” she chuckled, “but they thought he wanted a vicar.”
Rozlyn laughed. “Oh boy.” She glanced at her watch. It was close to ten. “Had he been lying there for long?”
“Maybe. It began to rain at about half three. When they found him, Mouse was soaked through. The guy with the dog thought he’d been mugged but the police officers that arrived just after the ambulance crew noticed the open door and took a look. When they saw the blood in the hall, they realised he’d been attacked inside and think he might have interrupted a thief. I think that’s the way it’s gone down on the initial report. The place has been sealed and secured, but SOCO can’t get there ’til tomorrow, they’re stretched.”
Rozlyn nodded. “Any idea when he’ll wake up?” If he’ll wake up.
Jenny shook her head. “No, but they think he’ll be OK. The Houseman’s still around somewhere. I told him you’d be here; he might be able to tell you more. I’ve supposedly got someone from uniform coming to sit with him. God knows when they’ll get here.”
If they get here. An old man, little better than a down and out, who’d been processed as a victim of an aggravated burglary wasn’t going to be a priority when it came to expenditure of police time, at least, until he either died — in which case it would be elevated to murder — or he could tell them something about his assailant.
Rozlyn nodded. “You get off home,” she said. “I’ll stay awhile.”
“Right you are, but look, there’s not much you can do here. You’d be better grabbing some sleep. I only called you out because I knew you’d never speak to me again if I hadn’t.” She grinned. “At least he’s a bit cleaner.”
“Yeah, right. He was attacked because he’d refused to take a bath. Anywhere I can get some coffee?”
“There’s a café on the ground floor and a machine at the end of that corridor,” Jenny pointed. ”Both equally vile.”
“Thanks. OK, I’ll see you in the morning.”
She nodded, snatched her coat from the back of the chair and made her exit. Rozlyn drew a deep and what she hoped would be a calming breath, then sat down in the chair that Jenny’s coat had vacated. “God, Mouse, what the hell have they done to you?” The side of his face was pulped and swollen and Rozlyn wondered if anything was broken. His nose was so inflamed and bloated that there was barely room for the tubes feeding him oxygen. His lips, split and puffy, drooled a faint trace of pink spittle.
Rozlyn leaned back in the chair and tried not to remember that other time. The crash she’d avoided because she’d been late getting to her grandparents’ house and her parents, due somewhere else, had left without her. Had she made them late? Had they been rushing because of her and taken a risk, despite the poor visibility in the pouring rain, maybe driven that bit too fast?
Rozlyn would never know. They’d both been taken to the same hospital, placed in different wards. She’d drifted from one to the other all night long, trying to work it so that her time at each bedside was roughly equal as though they might be offended should she show any kind of favouritism.
Then it was just her dad, her mom passing at the dawn of that first terrible morning. Her dad had lingered for two more days until Rozlyn, her body aching with tension and grief and lack of sleep, had almost wished it could be over so that she could let go and rest.
That had been a random thought. One among many, but the guilt that had smothered her because of that casual emotion had haunted her since her father died. Somewhere in her consciousness, Rozlyn was aware that she had tried to make recompense for that momentary lapse ever since.
As she watched, Mouse moved. A mere twitch of the hands that then extrapolated to the rest of his body and he whimpered in his sleep, a wordless, despairing sound that had Rozlyn leaning towards him and touching his hands. Stilling them.
“Hey, Mouse Man. It’s OK. Nothing’s going to hurt you now.”
He was dreaming, Rozlyn realised. Maybe seeing in his nightmare what had hurt him so much in real life.
“Who did this to you? Was it this Donovan fella no one wants to talk about? Or someone sent by our Mr Thompson?”
Mouse relaxed and Rozlyn leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. First Charlie and now Mouse. Individuals for whom life was a big enough challenge without someone sticking the boot in. Or in Charlie’s case, something far more deadly.
Had they wanted Mouse dead? No, Rozlyn thought, not dead. They’d just wanted him to talk. What did they think he knew that they had to beat him for, and with such brutality? What could someone like Mouse Man possibly know or have that would trigger such a frenzied attack?
* * *
They had laid Cate down close to the hearth and Osric had taken charge, ordering more light so he could clean and tend her wounds, plundering Allis’s careful stock of herbs to find what he required. Treven watched as he pounded herb with honey and made a paste to spread on those terrible wounds, gently turning Cate’s head so that he could clean the blood from her hair and skin. He met Treven’s eyes and shook his head. There was nothing he could do. Gaping through the ragged edges of her flesh and bone, Treven could distinguish blood and brain. That she still lingered was miracle enough — or cruelty? Treven could not decide. That she had lived long enough to have spoken any words, never mind Hugh’s name, struck him as extraordinary enough to have divine purpose behind it and the thought of that filled him with revulsion and with dread. She had neither spoken nor even moved since they had brought her here and Edmund admitted that she had said nothing on the journey. Treven knew in his heart that she would not last the night.
Could Hugh have inflicted these injuries? He thought not. Hugh could be violent when the rage took him and in battle Treven would as soon have him at his side as a half dozen others, however well trained and brave. But that Hugh could attack a girl he claimed to have feelings for, attack her in such a brutal and personal way, Treven doubted. Whoever had struck Cate had done so from close quarters, though, and had come at her from front and side — he could only guess which blow had landed first. It pointed, in Treven’s mind, to her knowing her assailant. Had she turned to run, the blow would have felled her from behind, or at an oblique angle, not as this had done, smashing the temple and the socket of the eye. The right-hand side of her face was practically untouched. Blood and a little bruising, but nothing more.
Kendryk caught his eye and motioned him away.
“Your thoughts, King’s Thegn?”
Treven ignored the mockery. “The blows were hard and from the front. She saw who attacked her. I cannot be sure, but my guess is the second was struck after she had hit the ground. I’ve been witness to many such actions in time of battle. One blow to bring your foe down, a second to be sure they’ll not stand again.”
“I bow to your knowledge,” Kendryk said dryly, then nodded. “You may be right, though the instrument here was blunt, the wound not made with a sword.”
“Wood or stone would do just as well. She was found in woodland, the weapon could be one of chance. The impulse of a moment.”
“You suspect her husband?”
Treven looked back at Eldred, the man still kneeling at her side, the expression on his face unreadable in the firelight, shadows passing over his features as the flames licked wood.
&n
bsp; “He knew about Hugh. What man would know and do nothing?”
“Would you have killed your wife for lying with another?”
“My wife would not.”
“But if she had?”
Treven eyed him warily, not sure where this was leading. He thought about Hild, remembered her laughter, the warmth of her skin as she lay beside him in their bed and he closed his eyes.
“I would have killed the man, as would have been my right. Sent her away . . . for a time. I might have beaten her.” He shrugged and turned away. “I loved my wife. I do not know if Eldred loved his.”
* * *
Tuesday night became Wednesday morning. The promised officer had failed to arrive and when Rozlyn called in to find out what had happened was told that there’d been trouble in town at one of the clubs and there’d been no one to spare.
“On a Tuesday? Sorry, I suppose it’s Wednesday. We don’t usually get problems until the weekend.”
Private party that got out of hand, she was told. A fight had broken out, someone glassed and another with a broken arm. Mouse took a back seat to drunken brawls.
The junior doctor came at one o’clock. He looked as exhausted as Rozlyn felt and could tell her little more than Jenny already had.
“You should go home,” he said. “Get some sleep. He’s stable and we’ll call you when he wakes.”
Reluctantly, Rozlyn had to accept that this was good sense. “Tell him I came and that I’ll be coming back.”
“Will do. Or, rather, I’ll pass the message on. My shift ends at six.”
“Think you’ll make it until then?”
The man smiled wearily. “I’m mainlining caffeine,” he joked. “He hasn’t any family?”
“Not that I know. His mother died a few years back. He still lived in the same house, but I’ve never heard him talk about other family.”
The doctor nodded. “Go home,” he said. “We’ll let you know.”
Rozlyn went, relieved to be out of the place but guilty about leaving. She stood in the car park, looking back towards the illuminated windows of the ward and slipping back in memory to that other time. Leaving her father there. Dead. She’d stood outside of the hospital then. That other place. Trying to recall her father’s face from that time only a few days before when he’d been alive and happy and so full of living there could never have been enough time to do it all. And she thought about what she’d just told the doctor about Mouse, how she’d never heard him talk of family and she knew that, should their roles have been reversed, Mouse or Jenny or even Brook would have told him just the same about Rozlyn.