‘I’ll investigate. Tell the infirmary to stand by to cut off the lifts when I give the word to the desk. Give me the phone number. And send me some back-up.’
Control read out the phone number. ‘Well, I’ll try, but . . .’
Honey had already transferred her attention to the cellphone. ‘Sandy, I hope you heard some of that. There’s trouble in the New Royal. I think Dougal Walsh has decided not to wait to be discharged into custody. I’m going inside to find out. Can you come and join me? Come to the main entrance and I’ll contact you.’
She ran for the doors, ignoring the stares of patients and visitors. Walsh would not have had easy access to his own clothes. At the main desk, a neatly dressed woman seemed to be expecting her and gave her a wave. Honey swung towards her, grabbed a sheet of paper and scribbled her own mobile number. While she wrote, she spoke. ‘Has a man gone by? In a hurry, possibly bloodstained, wearing somebody else’s coat or hospital overalls?’
‘Not that I’ve seen.’
The New Royal is not a high building. At the lifts, people with sticks and Zimmer frames were standing and grumbling, pushing buttons and asking each other why lifts were always out of service when they were wanted. ‘Keep the lifts off until I call you.’
The woman took less than a second to weigh the priorities before shaking her head. ‘There could be patients on the way to theatre, haemorrhaging in one of those lifts.’
That was true. Also Walsh might be stuck in one of those lifts along with two or three nurses. Better to let him go and pick him up again. ‘All right,’ Honey said. ‘Turn the lifts back on. Call me on that number if you see anybody go by who looks like I said.’
The engineers would want to inspect the lifts before restoring service. She could expect several minutes to go by in argument before the lifts resumed. She ran for the stairs. The single flight was a high one. It was soon clear that she was not fully recovered from her long period without real exercise. Her pace slowed as she dragged herself to the first floor; her breath was gasping.
As she neared the floor where Walsh had been nursed, she heard the lifts start again. She ground her teeth and made a horrible face. She would have been as quick and have saved herself a dreadful journey if she had waited for a lift, but few people have that much restraint. She dragged herself up the last few stairs and tried to hurry briskly but with a dignity suiting the constabulary whose uniform she wore.
A nurse was on her knees beside the young constable. She was struggling to stem the flow of blood from a wound in his neck. A stretcher party was emerging from the direction of the restarted lifts. The constable’s loose mackintosh was missing, and his shoes. His holster was open and there was no sign of his pistol. The young man looked at her. There was panic in his eyes but he was still in control of himself. ‘It wasn’t loaded,’ he whispered. ‘The bugger didn’t get any ammo for it.’ His eyes closed.
‘Did he have a knife?’
‘Scalpel.’
Honey’s mobile played a disgustingly cheerful little tune – the clog dance from La Fille mal Gardée. Reception was poor but she could make it out. ‘He just went through the hall,’ said the voice.
There was no lift waiting. A quick glance at the indicators did not offer hope of a quick response. Honey whipped out her cellphone again, switched it on and moved until the indicator showed a stronger signal. Sandy answered at the second ring.
‘He’s away,’ she said. ‘I’ll chase him. Tell somebody to send back-up. I may have made a mistake, reminding him of who gave the orders that caused the death of his girl.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. He’ll try to steal transport and go first for the nearest. That’s Malcolm Wyper in Ravelstone Dykes. I’m nearer to him than you are. You head for Kirknewton. Garth Rigby lives just to the south of there, in a very small hamlet called Sullikirk or Sollikirk, it’s difficult to read. I gather that his is the only large house. Keep in touch.’
‘Will do.’
The lifts still seemed to be responding to calls in the sequence of some programme of their own. Down would be easier than up had been. She gathered up her remaining stamina and headed for the stairs. At least down used a different set of muscles, but taking the stairs three or four at a time gave her innards a jolt every time a foot came down. The effort jumbled her thoughts and when she arrived suddenly in the long entrance hall she had still not oriented her mental map.
She was dashing for the doors when she found her way blocked by a tall but weedy young man in leathers. ‘Officer . . . I say, officer . . .’ Honey checked. Her errand might be urgent but running over the top of members of the public is frowned upon. ‘Officer, my motorbike’s been stolen.’
‘When and where?’
‘From just outside, within the last half hour. I came here to visit . . .’
Honey was, for the moment, enormously uninterested in which patient he might have been visiting. ‘Come with me. We’ll follow it up.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Honey jogged to her car at a pace unsuited to the dignity of her uniform. She could hear the young man thumping along behind her. Dusk was beginning to steal away the daylight. She seemed to be recovering her breath and strength. ‘Your bike,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It’s fast?’
‘Very.’
It would be. ‘Tank full?’
‘Yes.’
Honey scrambled into the Range Rover, opened radio communication and identified herself to Control. ‘Leaving NRI,’ she said. ‘Subject may be heading for Ravelstone Dykes. DCI Laird is on the way there. Or subject may be heading for Kirknewton, which is where I’m going. What about the back-up I asked for?’
‘One car was diverted to the infirmary but came on a traffic accident and had to take charge.’
‘Then get me somebody else. Divert them to . . .’ The Sat Nav had woken up and Honey’s fingers were working independently. She brought up Kirknewton, identified Garth Rigby’s house and read out the co-ordinates. ‘And make it quick.’
‘I’ll try.’
Honey was ready to scream but with a member of the public sitting beside her she was constrained. She spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Do more than try. Succeed.’
‘Inspector Laird,’ Control said tearfully, ‘I am doing my best but this is not my proper job and I’ve only done it as a holiday stand-in before. Somebody brought the infection first into the control room and it spread from there. Everyone’s off with the flu. The supervisor has just given in to it. Mrs Wharton and two other ladies who used to do this job are coming out of retirement to take over and I’m just filling the gap until they get here as best I can but with everybody shouting at me . . .’
Time was ticking away while she argued with this person. ‘Is there anybody else there?’
‘Nobody who knows the job any better than I do.’
‘Keep trying,’ Honey said. ‘Subject may be armed and almost certainly intends violence. Broadcast a warning. Divert cars.’ She switched off. Sometimes in indignant but otherwise idle moments she had dreamed of reducing Control to tears, but now that she had done so there was little satisfaction in it.
She switched on her cellphone again and pressed it into the hands-free holder. The Range Rover’s engine fired at the first touch of the starter. She backed out and pulled into the traffic lane. The young man cleared his throat nervously. ‘You don’t need me, do you?’
‘I do,’ Honey said grimly. ‘First because you can identify your bike from a distance. Secondly because I may need a witness.’ Thirdly, she thought grimly, because I may want somebody to tell my husband that I died bravely, thinking of him.
Happily, she had possessed herself of a blue light that attached to the vehicle’s roof magnetically. With this in place and flashing, she was able to carve her way through the traffic. Using her horn instead of a klaxon she thrust and bullied her way. Her mouth was dry but she had to fight her bladder. She sent up a fervent hope that Sandy would catch their quarry at Ravelstone Dykes and
then she followed it with a postscript cancelling the first prayer. If somebody were to meet the infuriated Dougal Walsh, especially armed with a scalpel, she would prefer that it was anybody other than Sandy. Even herself.
The suburban sprawl of Edinburgh spreads along the radial roads, the A-70 not least. The Pentland Hills began to rise on her left. The traffic was patchy but frighteningly dense at times. Now and again she was forced to slow or even to stop, but by thrusting onward she could usually force a quick passage, the vehicles on either side seeming to pull apart, blurred by her speed. As the daylight faded the flashing blue light seemed to gain authority.
They were near the turning for Kirknewton when Sandy came on the phone. ‘Too late,’ he said. ‘Walsh has been and gone.’
‘And . . . the householder?’
‘Don’t ask. Walsh left a scalpel here, by the way.’
‘Follow me when you can and divert any back-up to follow.’
‘Will do. But I have to wait for the first back-up to arrive. I’ve called for an ambulance.’
‘Come when you can,’ Honey said. To her passenger she added, ‘He’ll be coming here, probably on your bike. Watch out for it. What’s your name, by the way?’
‘I’m Warren Hart.’
‘Watch for your bike, Warren, but stay well out of harm’s way. I had no business dragging a civilian along with me on an errand like this.’
One comfort was that Dougal Walsh had left his scalpel at Ravelstone Dykes. Probably he had found a knife to replace it. She would rather have faced a battleaxe than a scalpel, but that was probably down to the association of scalpels with sharpness and deep incisions.
Kirknewton was somewhere to their right but, directed by the Sat Nav, she turned left in the direction of the Pentland Regional Park and soon came within sight of Garth Rigby’s house. Mr Rigby seemed to fancy the life of a rural laird. His single-storey house did not have the high-windowed proportions of the older Scottish houses but it was spacious and spreading in a site of several landscaped acres set among fields and screened from its nearer neighbours by a small wood.
Honey let her headlights play over the front of the house and then switched them off. There was enough light left in the day to drive by, hoping that any other drivers would be showing lights. Beyond a curve in the road she saw gates on her left and a driveway leading to the front door between what seemed to be lawns dotted with specimen trees. She let the car drift to a halt against the hedge.
‘I’ll have to go to the house,’ she told her companion. ‘Do you have a mobile phone?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded surprised at the question, as if everybody had a cellphone in this day and age.
‘Give it to me.’ She took it. It was a familiar model. She keyed her own mobile number into it. ‘Stay here. If anything develops, particularly if you see your motorbike, call me. OK?’
‘Right.’
Honey left the Range Rover, closed the door softly and walked back to the gateway. Her rubber soles made little sound on the tarmac. She turned in at the gateway. Two adjacent windows, presumably of the same room, showed light behind curtains and there was a glow at the front door. She hurried silently over grass. There was a car on the hardstanding. Even in the gathering dusk it was unmistakably a Jaguar. Gravel would have necessitated a detour but the driveway was tarmac.
The front door was recessed and in deep shade. There was a shadow beside the door but Honey was fairly sure that it was not Dougal Walsh. She forced herself to approach and the shadow resolved itself into just that – a shadow. She tried the front door. To her surprise and some disquiet, it opened under her hand. Routine suggested that she should ring the bell, march in and call loudly for the householder, but that would be the best course only with back-up waiting within call. The alternative would have been to wait for help to arrive, but that help seemed to be so remote that she would end up confronting Dougal Walsh anyway – a confrontation that she would prefer not to have in growing darkness. She slipped through the door and closed it very gently behind her, making sure that she knew how to open it in a hurry.
She was in a generous but softly lit hallway, freshly and lavishly decorated with what she knew to be very expensive wallpaper, some sporting prints and a table and two chairs that were either antique or good reproductions. The carpet was of such a quality that she felt that taking off her shoes would be only proper.
A heavy flush door on her left probably lead to the room where she had seen a light. Over the pounding of her heart she could hear voices. She eased down the handle. As the crack opened, she could hear that one voice seemed to be raised in fear. The other was low, and from the cadence she thought that it was that of Walsh.
She let the door open wide enough for her to slip through. The hinges were oiled and silent.
The scene opened up as suddenly as a film clip. Honey gained an immediate overall impression, but several seconds passed while she absorbed the macabre details. Almost at her feet lay a plump woman in a dressing gown, either unconscious or dead. There was blood on her face and purple bruising was showing on her jaw. Dougal Walsh was standing in the middle of the room, leaning painfully against a chair back. Honey recognized his Glasgow tones and glottal stops. His right hand held a kitchen knife with a blade the length of a hand’s span. It was bloodied and it looked sharp.
Facing Walsh and Honey was a man who had to be Garth Rigby. From his name and other attributes, Honey had expected him to be a beefy, red-faced countryman. Instead, Rigby turned out to be a slim man of academic appearance, almost bald and, to judge by the broken spectacles on the floor, not well gifted with eyesight. The only sign of a rustic habit was the suit of checked tweed plus twos that he wore with heavy brogues. He was seated in a high-backed chair. His hands appeared to be tied together behind the chair. Numerous cuts and jabs, still leaking blood, combined to explain how he had come to knuckle down and accept domination and bonds.
He still had his wits about him, however. He recognized Honey’s entry into the room but he had enough command of himself to avoid, after one startled glance, betraying her presence. He fixed his eyes on Walsh’s and held the other’s gaze. His jaw was clamped shut, which might have been taken for reaction to the pain of his wounds but which Honey thought was stubbornness.
‘You bugger!’ Walsh said. ‘It was on your orders I had to kill the girl, yours and Wyper’s, and I’ve just given him what he had coming. It’s your turn next but I’ll make you suffer first. What do you say to that?’
Honey was in no doubt that whatever Rigby said would only trigger further violence. The man must also have sensed it. He stayed silent. Honey was moving silently forward. In her mind she was reviewing what she had been taught about disarming a man with a knife. A lesson in a gymnasium with a wooden knife was a far cry from a luxurious room and a furious killer with a knife that looked larger and sharper every moment.
She had only taken two silent paces when the phone in her pocket began to play its jolly little tune. Walsh span round, aiming his knife at her torso in a way that made her want to cringe. He backed towards his prisoner.
For years, Honey had been habituated to react to the ring of a mobile phone. Without conscious effort she found the phone in her hand. ‘My bike’s in the hedge,’ said Warren Hart’s voice.
‘He’s here,’ Honey said. It seemed to be the only message worth passing. She snapped the phone shut and dropped it into her pocket.
Walsh was standing beside Rigby, the knife at Rigby’s throat. ‘Stay where you are while I finish the business,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll come for you. After that, I’ll finish myself. She’ll be waiting for me.’ He moved the knife and made a long cut in Rigby’s face.
‘You were going to face me,’ Honey said. She forced a smile. ‘We both know that I shot better than you did and you promised to face me with a knife. Well, now’s your one chance.’
Walsh froze. Undecided, he was considering whether to kill Rigby first or to save him for afterwards. ‘What’s th
e matter?’ Honey asked him. Her voice had become very husky and she had to fight to prevent it going up into a squeak. ‘Are you afraid of one woman? I don’t even have a knife. I’m here. Come and get me.’
Walsh pushed Rigby’s head away and walked unsteadily towards her, the knife leading him. ‘Let’s see if you’re as good as you think you are,’ he said. He stumbled forward a pace and then ran at her.
Honey crossed her hands, palms down, applying the crossarm block just as she had been taught at Hendon. Those hours in the gymnasium had not been wasted. She had him in an armlock but he did not drop the knife. She turned the lock into a judo hold and threw him. He was facing her and their eyes were locked. He had fallen on the knife, which protruded from his abdomen. Their eyes were locked. ‘You’re good,’ he said hoarsely.
She heard the klaxons of the promised back-up.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Garth Rigby and Mrs Rigby survived, concussed and scarred but not seriously injured. Malcolm Wyper was more badly damaged but due largely to Sandy’s early arrival, he too survived.
When Dougal Walsh fell on to his own knife (or, to be more precise, the knife that he had purloined from Malcolm Wyper’s house) the knife had turned sideways so that Walsh lost a lot of blood but no major organs were damaged. His violent exercise, however, had partially undone the good work that the surgeons had performed on him after the shooting. After a lengthy period in surgery he was declared out of danger. He was put under permanent suicide watch, but by now his emotions had become focussed on his hatred for those who had forced him to kill Cheryl Abernethy. Prevented from further physical attacks, he made and signed a long statement. He had been the principal messenger between Ravitski, all the conspirators and the Glasgow gang leaders whom Ravitski had been in the process of welding into a nucleus of organized crime. It was said that Chief Superintendent Halliday went singing about the office for a whole day.
Part of Walsh’s resentment was reserved for Honey, who he regarded as having been his nemesis throughout. Through a solicitor provided by Legal Aid, he argued that Detective Inspector Laird had first shot him and then, later, tried to stab him fatally. This resulted in a suspension, which Honey spent with Sandy and Minka in one of the family’s Mediterranean timeshares, and a hearing at which she was supported not only by two superintendents and a chief superintendent but also by Garth Rigby. Mr Rigby, while not admitting to one word of what Dougal Walsh was alleging about him, was outspoken in his admiration for Honey’s courage in facing down an armed killer. The media had a field day.
In Loving Memory (Honey Laird Book 3) Page 20