Double Fault (29 page)

‘Everyone back. Flo's sensed movement!' Gavin yelled. ‘Get her down now, Mark. Quick. Floor's collapsing!'

He did as he was told, propelled by Gavin.

Then everything happened at once. A rapid response vehicle erupted into the yard, disgorging Jack and Bethany. Fran hurtled forward, arms outstretched, to hold them back. Zac pushed past her. She gave chase. Zac was up the makeshift steps like a monkey, grabbing Livvie. There was an ominous creak. ‘Everyone off here. Now. Go, go, go!' Gavin's voice was loud, authoritative.

Zac and Livvie first. Mark made sure of that. Someone – Gavin? – sat him down hard and slid him on his backside like a kid on a slide. Ray next. Lastly Gavin and his dog. But no sign of the other handler or of Caffy as the ancient wood and plaster that had supported them collapsed into a heap of dust and rubble.

He was on his feet before he knew it. ‘Fran? Fran?'

‘Over here.' She was, but was on all fours, as if someone had cut her off at the knees. But not a simple trip, or she'd be up by now, wouldn't she?

Dear God, not a heart attack?

Before he could reach her, before he could even waste breath on a scream, she pushed herself up from her elbows on to her hands, but no further. She let forth a stream of invective he'd not heard her use since they'd become an item. ‘Leg. Other leg. Something's snapped. Not a bone, it's just the leg won't work. Bloody hell,' she screamed, as he tried to lever her up. ‘No. Leave me be, for God's sake. Sorry!'

‘I'll get the paramedics.'

‘No, Livvie needs them more than I do.'

‘But—'

‘Don't waste time on me. Just leave me here. I'm not going anywhere. Find Caffy and whatshisname. Mark, promise me.'

‘Promise you what?' he asked, crouching beside her in the chaos, now augmented by the blues and twos of an ambulance. Of course, Fran must have had one on standby and one of the team had reacted to her fall. Whoever it was deserved a medal. ‘Ironic,' he added, trying not to let his voice shake, but not with laughter, ‘that your forward planning gets you a ride to A and E.'

She didn't find it funny. ‘No. Livvie first. And Caffy. Promise me you'll rescue Caffy.' One hand gripped his painfully.

‘There's a team on to that now,' he said reassuringly, moving so she could see. The dog, which had always been vociferous, was now dashing back to the stable, pursued by Gavin.

‘I'm not moving from here till I see them in one piece. Understood?' she barked at Ray and the paramedics. ‘I said, understood? In any case, you need the ambulance for Livvie. She is OK, isn't she?' Her grip on Mark's hand was painful.

Ray leant over them both. ‘Cold, guv. Dirty. Hungry. But her parents are sorting her out and Ermintrude's already taking them as a family to A and E. See?' The car was going back up the lane as fast as it had come down.

‘Ermintrude?'

‘Their name for the smiley FLO,' Mark explained, with an exaggeratedly toothy grin at Ray, who returned it in spades.

‘Oh, her!' she snorted. ‘Ray – time to call in the media. Get Wren to earn his corn. Oh, very well.' She submitted to the paramedics' insistence – wise kids, that was the way to deal with her! – that she was in the way where she was. She looked with loathing at a wheelchair they produced. One more quite convulsive grab of his hand. ‘I know how much you love her, Mark – go and help.'

What the hell did she mean by that? ‘Of course I love her. She's the daughter we'll never have together,' he said, and felt her fingers relax a little. ‘But just now my priority's you. I love you,' he added, as they increasingly did to end every phone call.

‘I love you too.' Did he detect a swallowed sob? Not Fran, surely. ‘Caffy,' she said firmly, at last submitting to being carted off.

Where this fresh lot of tears came from he wasn't sure, but he did as he was told, stumbling up collapsed masonry until Ray grabbed him. ‘You'll only be in the way. They told me to clear out. Gavin and that bloody dog are in charge. That poor kid. I told Fran girls shouldn't be builders. Or experts,' he added with the venom of anxiety.

‘I've got to be there, Ray. Same as Zac had to get to his daughter.'

‘And a fat lot of good that did. Brought the whole lot down in one nice, sentimental move.'

‘It's called being a parent, Ray. Which is why I need to be near Caffy. Her own parents are out of the country.' No need for complicated explanations about their relationship. ‘So she'll need me.' Already his mind was looping frantically round the problems of summoning people he hardly knew to her bedside. Funeral. Dear God.

‘See if you can make contact through the stable wall, then. I daren't risk more people where it's collapsed in case more goes. Sorry, Mark. It's where Gavin is, after all – he'll maybe have time to keep you briefed but don't bank on it.'

‘Of course. Sorry. The stable it is.'

Ray pushed him through the cordon, but he stopped on the threshold. What he feared most, he supposed, was silence the far side of the wall. Or screams. Moans, maybe, assuming he'd have heard them. The dog was silent, staring intently at the wall. Gavin was probing gently, a millimetre at a time. He both widened and lengthened his little hole. Mark didn't ask any questions. Just prayed. The dog and Gavin froze: they must have heard something. Actually, yes, he'd felt movement.

Ray came bustling in: ‘Gavin, there's been another slip. Lots of bricks and stuff. But it's good news. The rubble came outwards. We can see them now – Simon reckons he's broken a rib or two, but he insists he's fine. Caffy's trapped by her ankles, but says the boots saved her. She wants to wriggle free but we said not to till you'd taken a look. Do you want to come and supervise?' As an afterthought, he looked at Mark, and then sharply away, embarrassed.

‘She saved my life,' Mark told him. ‘Caffy. Saved it at a time when my own daughter had given up on me.' He'd wanted to do something in return. ‘I need to be there,' he pleaded with both of them.

Ray sighed. ‘She didn't strike me as a woman who'd want heroics, any more than your Fran. Once you know she's safe, do you want a lift to the hospital to pick up Fran? I reckon Caffy and Simon will need the meat wagon when it gets back – cuts, Mark, cuts! – we all have to share transport now, which means longer waits. Oh, there's a motorbike paramedic waiting to triage them, but no wheels to A and E. But we've got a couple of cars you can – bloody hell, now what?'

The noise penetrated even Mark's cloth ears. Cheering even from the case-hardened men and women who'd seen practically everything but still believed in justice and law and order. But try as he might, he couldn't be as excited as they were by the news that Ed Chatfield had arrested Ross Thwaite. Better still, they'd got his accomplice at the house they'd been tailing him to. It was icing on the cake for Wren, now plumping his feathers and standing tall, ready to face TV crews in the lane approaching the site.

‘OK. Let me just talk to Caffy: Fran'll be worried sick about her,' he said. ‘Then I'll take you up on your offer.'

Simon was being hauled clear by Gavin and reunited with Flo. He was obviously in pain, and Gavin's bear hug looked very tender – clearly they were partners in both senses. Why hadn't it dawned on him till then? Because they'd been as professional and discreet as he and Fran had been when they'd officially worked together, that's why.

But Caffy was still stuck. In other circumstances it would have been comical, like someone who'd buried her feet on a beach and was waiting for a wash of sea to set them free.

When she saw him peering down she stuck out a hand like an old-fashioned traffic cop. ‘Don't even think of coming down. What with Fran's leg and my foot, we've got to have one of us in one piece for this here wedding.'

‘Your ankle – it's as bad as that?'

‘It's not as good as I thought it was – there's no way I can get it out of the boot, and equally no way I can get the boot out of this lot. I'll just have to be patient and wait for someone to make the place safe and then get digging. It'll need shoring up there and there, I'd have thought, Gavin?' she added, over his shoulder. ‘Unless you can risk taking out a bit of the stable wall and letting all this rubble simply respond to gravity? That wouldn't take nearly so long.'

Gavin squatted beside him. ‘I'm going to lower a foil blanket. We need to keep you warm. But if that foot's as bad as you say, it may need surgery, so no nice hot tea and bikkies. OK with that?'

‘More than OK,' she declared, swathing herself.

‘Pity Livvie can't see you like that,' Mark said. ‘She'd think you looked like a fairy.'

‘You're sure she's OK? Good. What about the guy they think kidnapped her?'

‘Taken in for questioning.'

‘Oh, Fran'll enjoy that. She won't? Mark, what haven't you told me? Is she OK? She isn't, is she? My God, what's—'

‘It looks like a torn muscle or snapped tendon. But they've carted her off to A and E.'

‘So what the hell are you doing here?'

He managed a wry smile she soon shared: ‘Acting under her orders. Would I dare do otherwise?'

‘Who would? Ah! They've started on the stable wall. Watch for the landslip. Don't worry – the rope's got me safe. See?'

He did see – the expression on her face as she tried to use her leg. But Gavin clearly had a system, and he was in the way.

‘Mark – go to Fran. And tell her I'll be in the next A and E cubicle before she can say crutch. Go!' Her cheeriness didn't deceive him; she didn't want an audience for what promised to be a very painful manoeuvre. All their bloody stoicism: she and Fran might have been mother and daughter for all they liked letting their guard down.

‘You're sure?'

‘Sure. Fran needs you: go!'

He went.

Every other time he'd had to collect Fran from A and E, she'd been furious that he'd left her there so long. She'd been demanding clothes or shoes she could wear over her injured limb. Most of all, her freedom.

This time, on the hard narrow bed, she didn't stir. For a moment – and he forced back the bile brought up by his terror – he thought she was dead, she lay so still. Flat on her back; hands clasped lightly on her chest; feet supported by three or four pillows – apart from the angle of her legs, trousers rolled to the knees, she might have been a figure on an Elizabethan tomb. Except, he told himself with a rueful, affectionate smile, carved figures didn't snore. He looked down at her, ready to take her hand, but unwilling to wake her. If anyone could sleep in the chaos of a busy A and E, they must be very tired indeed. Or as Caffy would say, he or she must be very tired indeed.

He found a chair and sat beside her, ready to wait.

She opened an eye. ‘Caffy?'

‘Will be joining you soon. Her leg got in the way when the wall collapsed. Just her leg. She wouldn't let me rescue her because she thought three of us hobbling round on our wedding day would be a bit too much.'

‘Seven weeks on Saturday. We've both got time to shed the sticks – again. They think I tore a muscle. Nothing much.'

He looked: judging from the size of her calf, it was rather more than nothing much. However, if it was just enough to keep her away from work till she'd caught up on some sleep he'd be grateful.

‘They gave me some painkillers in triage. They seem to have made me a bit sleepy.'

‘A bit! You were sending your pigs to market for five minutes at least after I arrived. Ah, a medic.'

He stood back to await fireworks as a brisk young woman with hair scraped back in an Essex facelift ponytail approached. He got a worryingly docile fiancée nodding sagely and obediently, even when the words
five days' complete rest
were uttered. ‘Yes, a muscle tear. Just here, I'd say? Yes?'

Fran yelped obligingly.

‘Could be worse. Could be a tendon. Could be a ligament.'

‘Treatment?' Fran sounded humble.

‘RICE, Mrs Harman,' the doctor said, as if to a child. ‘Rest, ice, compression, elevation. A nurse will strap it up in a moment. Ice it the moment you get home. Keep it above heart height. Complete inactivity bar just a few very gentle ankle exercises every hour.'

Mark asked grimly, ‘And if she doesn't? If she goes into work?'

‘Simples,' the young woman declared in an irritating Russian meerkat advert voice. ‘It'll take much longer to get better. Five days' total rest, Mrs Harman. The nurse will make you a follow-up appointment next Monday – then we'll see if you're ready for physio. Meanwhile, use the crutches we'll organize for you all the time. Repeat, both crutches, all the time. The more heroics, the less progress.'

‘Thank you, doctor,' he and Fran said as one. She didn't mention the ones left lying somewhere in her office.

He shot her a suspicious look the moment they were alone again. ‘Am I to believe a single word you said?'

‘Those were the first words I was planning to say to Sean Murray tomorrow morning. Doesn't look as if I'll get the chance, now. It won't even be light duties for a bit, will it?'

‘Not unless you plan to run your departments from the elegance of that chaise longue we've always loved and never quite got round to using. Actually, if there was anything truly vital, you could Skype. Either that or this time the mountain will simply have to come to Mohammed.'

‘I'll worry about that in the morning. Hello, that isn't Caffy, is it?'

Mark waved.

An obliging nurse changed course and steered her wheelchair towards them, promising to tell his colleagues where she was. Somehow they managed a three-way hug.

‘Your foot. I let you get hurt!' Fran exclaimed.

‘Not you. Gavin said it was Zac trying to reach Livvie that precipitated the collapse. And that you were trying to stop him. Actually, those nice paramedics think I couldn't move it not because anything was broken but because it was just so compressed by the weight of the rubble. Of course they'll want to scan it, but the paramedics said I needed a lot of ice, a bit of compression and a bit of rest. I shall dance at the wedding, never fear. Will you?'