Mr Blackhouse looked up from the pattern he was making with instruments on the trolley. Honey had already decided that those instruments must be sterilized again before she would allow anybody near her with one of them. ‘Robin Potterton-Phipps,’ he said.
For an unprecedented third time, Mr Halliday showed an expression, this time combining surprise with respect. ‘The industrialist?’
‘He has sources of information in the business community,’ Honey explained. ‘I have found him useful in the past. I asked him to find out for me the names of the man or men behind the Edinburgh Piper. He sent me a note that my husband brought me when he visited me yesterday evening. It contains only two names. I had heard the names before but know nothing about their owners. Garth Rigby and Malcolm Wyper.’
Mr Blackhouse started. He dropped a pair of scissors on the floor, but quickly bent to pick it up and return it to a kidney dish. ‘Those two!’ he exclaimed. ‘Men of finance, which position seems to give them the idea that the police are their personal servants. Wyper has one of those huge houses in Ravelstone Dykes and entertains in a big way. Rigby lives out near Kirknewton. To look at, you’d think that Wyper was the country gent – hairy tweeds and heavy shoes – while Rigby, who looks like a professor, with his horn-rims, lives in the country. They’re a pair of born complainers and some idiot gave them my name. One dab of graffiti or a thrown snowball and they’re on my doorstep demanding a purge. They’ve been a thorn in my flesh for years.’
‘If we’re all in luck, you may have a chance to return the thorn where it belongs. Now,’ said Mr Halliday, ‘if that’s all . . .?’
‘Another thing, sir,’ Honey said. ‘Were we to understand that the cottage near Beauly was rented in the name of Wyper?’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ Mr Halliday said. ‘Let’s see if we can trace a connection between Mr Wyper of Dingwall and Mr Wyper of Ravelstone Dykes. The answer may lie in birth certificates, so it’s one for Edinburgh.’
‘We’ll take it on,’ said Mr Blackhouse. He looked meaningfully at Sandy.
‘Now,’ said Mr Halliday, ‘are we finished?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Honey said. ‘May I please be told what Ravitski looks like? We have at least a description?’
‘More than that,’ Halliday said. ‘I questioned him myself, the last time he was pulled in. He’s hollow-chested, rather small, with black hair slicked back, dark eyes and pointed features.’
‘Does anybody have a complete set of the photographs from the camera? I mean the whole lot, not just those of the girl.’ Sandy fished in his briefcase, produced a large envelope. From it, Honey removed one of four smaller envelopes and pored through the prints until she found one in particular. ‘I wondered why Walsh chose to take Edinburgh street scenes. Perhaps he was just familiarizing himself with the camera. But when Mr Blackhouse described the two men of finance, I remembered.’
Halliday took one look. ‘Ravitski,’ he said. ‘And with him . . .?’ He handed the photograph to Blackhouse.
‘If that’s Ravitski waiting at the crossing,’ Blackhouse said, ‘the man with him is unmistakably Wyper, complete with ginger moustache. About two paces behind them, the other man looks like Rigby. The photograph’s very sharp, it would enlarge many times without losing definition.’
‘Now we really are getting somewhere,’ Halliday said. ‘The three are walking together, there’s not a doubt about it. But if we challenge them now, they could write it off as coincidence. Lock it away in the safe. Prosecuting counsel can make great hay with it, after Ravitski has denied knowing Wyper and Rigby and vice versa.’
Mr Largs stirred. ‘You’ll have to have a care,’ he said. ‘You may not be allowed to introduce evidence that you haven’t intimated to the defence before the trial.’
Mr Halliday surprised them all with a cheerful grin. ‘We can introduce it in cross-examination,’ he said, ‘after they’ve denied it.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
Even for a patient in hospital, there were occasional intervals of peace when nobody wanted to wash her, feed her, bandage her, manipulate her joints or ask an endless series of apparently pointless questions. During those intervals, Honey closed her eyes and tested a series of possible scenarios for her next encounter with Dougal Walsh. She concluded that it was time to play on his fear of women. Femininity seemed to be a doubtful gambit. Perhaps a woman in uniform would bring together his various phobias. Happily she had already asked Sandy to bring in a complete uniform. The hospital’s telephone system was overloaded and the use of mobile phones seemed to be considered on a par with patent medicines and back-street abortion. Thinking ahead was an absolute necessity.
However, an enquiry of the medical staff disclosed that Walsh was back on the operating table, which at least postponed the mammoth task of changing into uniform with one arm useless. Two days later the task had to be faced, despite the objections of the nursing staff in whose view the proper day-dress for a patient was nightwear. She managed to bully the youngest nurse into helping with the most difficult adjustments, dressed her hair and made up as best she could one-handed and then demanded the service of a porter with a wheelchair.
To be seen arriving by wheelchair would have lessened her authority; she walked the last few yards, rather unsteadily, and caught the ward sister at the nurse’s station. The sister pursed her lips, but a police inspector in uniform, even with one arm in a sling, seemed, in her mind, to override medical confidentiality. Honey received a detailed update on the patient’s condition.
She found Walsh reclining palely in the same bed, connected to much the same drips and monitors as on her previous visit. He seemed to have rather more bandages than before. She pulled up a chair and stowed the carrier bag that she had brought with her. There was a basket of fruit on the bedside locker. ‘How did that get here?’ she asked the bodyguard.
‘A visitor came for him.’ The man smiled suddenly. ‘He didn’t get the visitor but we thought that he might as well have the fruit. He doesn’t seem to fancy it very much.’
‘I can’t say that I’m surprised.’ She asked Walsh how he was getting on.
‘No’ well,’ he said plaintively. ‘No’ well at all. They tell me I’ll never walk again.’
It was a blatant appeal for sympathy. The bodyguard with the tape recorder and notebook looked up and winked. This time it was an older and more thickset man, one who Honey had not previously met. His bulk made the small room seem more claustrophobic than before. He was sweating slightly in the hospital heating and wearing a loose mackintosh.
Honey blessed the foresight that had prompted her to make her own enquiry. ‘That’s balls and you know it,’ she said briskly. ‘They thought at first that I’d clipped your spine but my bullet broke up and only a fragment touched your spine. Any bits that they haven’t got out now, they plan to leave. They’ll monitor them once every six months to be sure that they’re not moving into a more dangerous position.’
‘Hey!’ Walsh said. ‘I didn’t even ken that.’
‘But you’re only the patient,’ Honey explained. ‘You’ll be walking again in a few weeks and running from the police in a year.’
He deflated visibly. ‘Why did you ask, if you already knew?’
‘I wondered what you’d say and I wanted you to see that we often know more than you think. We usually learn more from what people hold back than from what they say. And thank you for your kind enquiry but my shoulder hurts like hell and they think they’ll have to operate again.’
‘Well, that’s tough,’ he said. ‘So I’m not such a bad shot after all.’ He still was not meeting her eye.
‘I still hit you almost dead centre and you nearly missed me. If you’re in any doubt we’ll have a competition some time, whenever you can manage to remain at liberty for long enough.’
He seemed to brighten. ‘You mean, a duel like?’
‘No, I do not mean a duel. I mean a target competition on the range.’
�
�That’s no’ fair. You’ve been taught.’ He looked directly at her for the first time. ‘I’ll face up to you wi’ a shive any time.’
That, Honey thought, would be the day. ‘I should warn you that I’ve had training in hand-to-hand combat as well. Tell me, why do you suppose this gentleman, or another of the same kind, is babysitting you?’
Walsh shrugged. ‘In case I talk?’
Honey looked at the bodyguard. ‘Tell him.’
The constable opened his coat and let Walsh see that he had a holster, a truncheon and other items of police weaponry about his person. ‘I’m on loan from Strathclyde,’ he said, ‘because I’d know most of the Glasgow hard men. You had a visitor yesterday afternoon while you were still asleep. Black hair but his stubble coming in ginger. Big ears and crooked teeth. Who does that suggest?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘The name Sullivan Gibbs doesn’t ring a bell?’
Walsh swallowed. ‘No,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Too bad. He knew yours all right. As it happens, we already wanted him for killing a tart in Cowcaddens, so we’ve got him tucked away. But he was after you all right.’
Walsh had lost what little colour remained after his surgery. He produced a twisted smile. ‘Was he bringing me fruit? Or flowers?’
‘Flowers might have been suitable. He had a hypodermic syringe hidden in a pocket with a rubber cork on the needle. The contents of the syringe have gone for analysis. We’ll let you know when the answer comes back, but it won’t come as much of a surprise to you. Just don’t expect it to be a cure for your allergies.’
‘So there you have it,’ Honey said. She let any trace of friendliness fall away and became the tough officer on duty. ‘There will be others. It’s time that you spoke up. Make it easy for yourself. Tell us who you carried messages to and where.’
Walsh sneered. ‘And what do I get in return?’
‘I can’t get you off, you know that. You’re in too deep. You’ll have to do time.’ Walsh was about to speak but Honey cut him short. ‘You know too much and they can’t trust you any more. You’re going to tell me that they could reach you in Barlinnie or Peterhead and snuff you out like treading on an earwig. But we can look after you. I could arrange for you to do your time a long way away, under another name. You can cook; your girl said so. Kitchen supervisor, then. But if you tried to scarper we’d find you, pop you into Barlinnie and let them know where you are. You needn’t shake your head at me, my lad. They made you kill your own girl. How much trust could they show you after that?’
‘They know I’m not a squealer,’ Walsh said. His voice had sunk to a whisper.
‘Anyone can be a squealer if he’s pushed hard enough, and they know it,’ Honey said. ‘You’ve done what they told you so far, but will that save you? You know too much and you’ve slipped up.’ It was time, she decided, to put some cards on the table. ‘We know a lot about the refinery site and we’re almost ready to move. When we start pulling in everybody right up to the Member of Parliament, who do you think will get the blame? If they were prepared to have the girl killed for what little she knew, how will they feel about you now?’
The mention of an unspecified politician made him blink. Honey hoped that it was enough. She had very little more ammunition in her locker. There was a long pause. ‘I’d been wondering . . .’ he said at last. ‘There’s tougher men than me waitin tae be called. I dinna care a lot, noo that she’s gone. I thought I wid but I dinnae. Stupid, in’t it? I thought she had to die so I could live and now she’s deid I dinna want tae gang on any more.
‘The way I see it, my choices are this way. I’m going to go to the jail anyway. They could probably spread money around and get me out, but I’m no’ a big enough fish to be worth it. Cheaper tae pay to hae me nobbled in Peterhead or wherever.’
Honey finished the thought for him. ‘But if you talk, you may save yourself. You’ve been carrying messages. You must know quite enough for us to hit them where it hurts. We can take most of them into custody and the rest will be too busy dashing around and trying to save themselves to be bothered about small fry like you. You must know by now that a grateful police force can do a lot to keep a valuable informant safe. Like I said, we can tuck you away under a different name and a long way away from here. You could go by ambulance to London now, this afternoon. We wouldn’t even call you as a witness unless we had to. Just give us what you know and we can root out the rest for ourselves. But if you keep your mouth shut, you go straight into Barlinnie or Saughton, and how long do you think you’ll last in there?’
He was silent for more than a minute. Then he licked his lips. ‘I’m dry,’ he said, ‘how’s about a coffee?’
‘That can be arranged,’ Honey said. She opened her carrier bag and produced an enormous thermos flask. ‘I had this fetched from my hotel,’ Honey said. ‘Just so that we can be sure nothing’s been added to it. I think you may be safe in here for the moment but too many people know that you’re here and why. Those are the people who forced you to kill your girl. Now, are you going to talk?’
He met and held her eye. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m fucking not. You want to know why? I was brought up Catholic. I believe in an afterlife, whether I wanntae believe it or no’. And if it’s true, she’s waitin fer me. But if I keep her waiting too long, some other bugger . . .’ He let his head fall back on the pillows.
Honey turned to the bodyguard. ‘From now on,’ she said, ‘he gets no visitors and no phone calls. He sends out no messages at all. Tell whoever relieves you. I’ll have it confirmed through the various channels. Is that the same basket of fruit?’
The constable smiled. ‘Sergeant brought another basket up from one of the shops in the entrance hall. The first one went to Forensics.’
‘Good. Keep it up. As far as I’m concerned they’re welcome to rub out a shit who’d kill his girl while he was seducing her, just to save his own life, but we need him for a little longer.’
‘Hey.’ Walsh said. ‘It wasna like that. I telled you.’
She took a rosy apple and left him to nurse his resentment. It might be a lever to start him talking again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Honey’s shoulder remained excruciatingly painful. Physiotherapy brought more pain without improving the condition. Days passed. More detailed X-rays at last revealed a tiny chip of bone that had lodged itself in the joint. She resisted the early attempts to coax her on to the operating table. This was taken to indicate a fear of the surgeon’s knife, which in a sense was true. In this age of the hospital superbug, what Honey was terrified of was infection by an imperfectly sterilized instrument or human hand, or even by some virus carried on her own skin. That at least was the excuse she offered both overtly to the staff and subconsciously to herself. In reality, she was in no hurry to escape from the clutches of the hospital. Her baby was safe in Perthshire. As Sandy had reported, one visitor found snooping on Mr Potterton-Phipps’s house from a covert had been interrogated and searched. He did not report that, when the man proved unable to explain himself, he had been subjected to a good kicking by the security guards. There was no recurrence.
Sandy went to visit with Minka and his father-in-law at weekends but for the rest of the week he was a faithful visitor. They found the temporary suspension of marital relations tiresome but promised each other an extra-special explosion of loving as soon as it was over.
As days became weeks, Honey caught up with her reading and watched the weather changing over the city and the hills. When the sun shone she wished that she could be out on the hills with Pippa, but in the prevailing weather she was usually content to be in shelter and warmed at the public expense. She remained deaf to the arguments of the doctors, who were anxious to get the bed back and into general use. She managed to exercise secretly while no staff were around.
Honey visited Dougal Walsh every day but he had retreated into a stubborn shell. Most days, he would ignore her presence altogether; but when he did admit
to noticing her, he might resort to a sneer or to bad language. Only occasionally would he deign to speak rationally with her, and then only on mundane topics such as the weather or the prospects of Celtic in the Scottish football cup. Honey tried threats, provocation, flattery, lures and tricks but never a word about murder or fraud would he utter. On the subject of his continued incapacitation he was plaintive, barely able to hobble as far as the toilet, or so he said. The medical staff were increasingly concerned.
Honey succumbed at last to the blandishments of her surgeon, a beardless but apparently competent youth with an accent straight out of the Yorkshire Dales. He promised that the operation would be sterile, keyhole and painless, and he lived up to his promises. She had recoiled from allowing him to operate using only a local anaesthetic. The anaesthetist, a tiny Asian lady, promised that Honey would sleep throughout. She realized suddenly that she was being wheeled back to the ward without any perceptible interruption to her conversation with the theatre nurse. It was all over. Her shoulder felt much the same for a day but the pain faded away quickly.
Honey’s recovery, however, was kept a strict secret within the hospital, confined to her surgeon, her immediate nursing staff and her physiotherapist. In the presence of Dougal Walsh she put on an act of suffering agonies from her shoulder. The two hypocrites sometimes sneered at each other and sometimes exchanged sympathy.
The three chiefs from the three forces involved continued to meet and to maintain maximum secrecy, but with so little information coming from Honey they had reverted to meeting in Edinburgh. Honey was only kept informed of progress or lack of it by Sandy, who had tired of hotels and moved back into their home. Honey had objected to his living alone where whoever had fired her car could get at him, but by happy chance one of the armed officers who had first occupied the house was temporarily homeless while his bachelor flat was being remodelled and was happy to stay on. There had been no hostile visitors. Sandy began carrying a large bundle of laundry with him whenever he visited his wife’s family home, where there were excellent facilities and a laundry maid.
In Loving Memory (Honey Laird Book 3) Page 18