‘He must’ve had a car waiting for him in the lay-by, probably driven by the poor sap he shot,’ Josh mused.
Rebecca said, ‘D’you think he deliberately stopped Lane from killing Herry?’
‘I can’t see why he should’ve cared one way or the other.’
Josh said, ‘Boss – what about checking Lane’s known associates?’
‘In hand. But I can’t help thinking that this bloke’s a bit cleverer than Lane’s usual hang-abouts.’
‘Certainly more ruthless,’ Greg put in. Then, ‘Boss – what about telling the two you arrested about the shooting? About Lane, I mean – if it wasn’t on the script, you might get a reaction from one of them.’
‘That might be worth thinking about,’ Brigg said…
Forensic were still combing the clearing, the boat and the remains of the van, but no one was tingling with anticipation. The only good news was that the smallpox outbreak seemed to be under control, although Gibb would be maintaining the quarantine for a while yet.
Otherworld again, only more so.
I was feeling quite well established there this time, so that when the call came to go back, I was able to ignore it for a while. Or at least, that’s my impression.
But then I began to realise that the noises I was hearing belonged to
back
there
, and slowly but steadily, like a fisherman who knows his line won’t break,
back
there
reeled me back in.
‘Herry, can you hear me? Can you hear me? It’s Redd…’
Redd, my brother. Ethelred, who, unsurprisingly, had shortened his name using the latter part of it. I opened my eyes and he slowly materialised.
‘Where am I?’ As I said it, I knew – there’s only one place where your bed is surrounded by bleeping machinery and you’ve got an IV drip in your arm. ‘How did I get here?’
‘Don’t you remember?’
I shook my head – ‘Ah! That hurt…’ Redd looked round at the person beside him – Roland – then back at me... ‘What’s the last thing you can remember?’
…Couldn’t remember anything… then something came through – finding a baby, and a load of dead bodies… a hidden lab –
smallpox
– Oh
Christ
…
‘Is Sarah all right?’
He looked at Roland again, then back at me. ‘No Herry, I’m afraid she isn’t.’
‘She’s not dead.’ I said it as a statement.
‘I’m so sorry Herry, but she is.’
I slapped my hands over my eyes and howled – ‘
Oh
no
no
no
…’ After a time, Redd touched my arm… I got myself under control and slowly turned my head to him.
He said, ‘Your daughter’s all right, though.’
‘ … My daughter… Grace?’
Another nod. ‘She’s fine.’
I looked at Roland and said in an almost normal voice, ‘What happened?’
‘It was fulminant, Herry. Like that poor girl from the shop.’
‘When?’
‘Yesterday. You’ve been out for three days.’
‘Was she asking for me?’
He shook his head. ‘It was very quick. Soaring temperature, rash, coma, gone. She didn’t suffer.’
There was a silence while I tried to absorb it. Then, very calmly, I said, ‘I’d like you both to leave me alone for a little while, please. Jus’ so that I can get used to it.’
Again, they looked at each other, then Redd said, ‘We’ll do that Herry – but I’m going to look in on you in… five, ten minutes.’
‘I’m not going to top myself if that’s what you’re worried about.’
They got up, left. The door clicked behind them. Thank God I had a room to myself. Insiders’ perks.
I thought:
I’m
a
widower
.
How
very
,
very
strange
.
I
thought
I
was
going
to
be
a
divorcee
,
but
instead
,
I’m
a
widower
. ‘
Course
,
divorcees
-
they’re
two
a
penny
…
but
a
widower
,
now
that’s
class
…
And with that, I started crying. Not loudly. In fact, silently at first. I felt the water running down my face, heard a rather pathetic whimpering noise – knew it was me, of course – no one else around…
Then I was weeping openly, hoping Redd wouldn’t come back in, glad when he did. He didn’t say anything at first, just pulled out some tissues and stuffed them into my hands, then sat beside me and said quietly,
‘Let it come, Herry, just let it come.’ We’re not a particularly tactile family.
At last, it meandered to a stop.
‘Better?’ he said, and I nodded.
After a silence, he said, ‘I’d no idea that you two had got together again.’
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’
‘Ironic, but good.’
‘
Good
?’
‘Means your marriage was a success, not a failure. That’s something worth having, especially with your daughter.’
I thought about it and realised he was right, which made me weepy again for a while.
We talked. I found I needed to talk about Sarah, and how we’d got back together again. After a while, I asked him how his family was, and he said fine.
Roland poked his head round and asked if he could come in. Sure. He found a chair and sat beside Redd. I asked if I could have the IV drip out and he said he didn’t see why not.
He went on, ‘Actually, I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve asked the consultant, Jill Martins, if she’d come and have a look at you in a minute. You can ask her.’
More insiders’ perks. I asked him about the bandage round my head (I’d felt it when I’d put my hands over my eyes) and he told me it was a bullet wound.
‘Don’t you remember?’ he asked.
I went to shake my head, thought better of it. ‘No.’
He explained how the bullet had just creased my skull and I’d fallen into the river afterwards. ‘You owe your life to that woman cop – police person or whatever they are now. Another few minutes in that water and you’d have been gone.’
‘She came in after me?’
He nodded. ‘You were quite a way out, she had to swim for you.’
‘And I was unconscious?’
Another nod.
‘Why didn’t I drown?’
‘She said you were hanging on to a piece of wood. Survival instinct, I suppose.’
I asked what was happening in Newton-on-Exe and he told me how the outbreak was more or less contained. ‘We’ve had a few cases from outside – people who caught it there but lived somewhere else.’
There had been thirty-nine cases so far and seven deaths, he told me. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if we had a few secondary cases, but I think the worst is over.’
I said, ‘It’s only just occurred to me – did they get who was behind it?’
‘Not so far as I know. The police’ll be wanting to talk to you, you can ask them.’
The door opened and Jill Martins, the consultant, came in. We’d met before, although I didn’t know her well. She in was in her forties with greying hair: tall, spare, confident. She commiserated, asked me how I felt, poked and prodded me about.
‘When can I go home?’
She made a face. ‘We should really keep you in a few days with an injury like this–’
‘And I really want to go home.’
She looked at me. ‘I can understand that. Let’s see how you are tomorrow morning. Then, maybe in the afternoon…’
After she’d gone, I asked Roland if I could see Grace.
He hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, but you’d better not just now.’ Another pause. ‘She’s had – I suppose, still got – smallpox, but very, very mildly. It sometimes happens like that.’ Then he said, ‘You know, it might be because she’d been breast fed.’
So Sarah’s determination to be a good mother had probably saved Grace’s life. I said so, and he slowly nodded.
‘Let’s see how things are tomorrow, and perhaps we could take you to see her.’
A nurse came in to take out the drip and give me a wash. It was mildly humiliating, but I felt better for it afterwards. I had some soup off the trolley, although the nurse warned me my guts might be in turmoil for a while. Bedpans. Yippee doo. Redd came back in the evening.
When night came, I couldn’t sleep. My head was aching and they gave me paracetamol. Lying there, however, I started remembering things and gradually, the spaces filled up. I remembered agreeing to take the diamonds, the mobile phone I found giving me orders, walking through the woods with one in front and one behind. The clearing, the gunshot, the conviction I was going to die. I remembered falling in the water, but nothing else.
I thought about Sarah. I hoped they were telling me the truth and she hadn’t been asking for me and wondering where I was. Why I wasn’t with her. Cried on and off, although I tried to stop when the night nurse looked in. Wished I could do it at home.
Eventually, I must have slept.
The next morning, Jill Martins examined me again, watched while I walked up and down the room a few times. When I told her my brother would be staying with me a few days, she said I could go home.
Before I went, Roland took me to see Grace. I had to gown up.
She looked fine. There were a couple of spots round her forehead, but they were healing already. She stared back at me, frowning. I’d like to think she recognised me, although it was more likely she was wondering about the bandage on my head. Then Redd drove me home.
Brigg and Rebecca came round later in the afternoon. Brigg had called, so I knew they were coming. As soon as they were inside, Rebecca took my hand in both of hers.
‘I’m so sorry, Herry. I can’t imagine what it must be like.’
I just nodded, took them through to the sitting room and introduced them to Redd. They sat down, then Brigg looked at me.
‘As Rebecca said, we’re both very sorry for your loss, Herry.’ The first time he’d used my Christian name. ‘I’m also sorry it’s necessary to intrude so soon. Can you manage a few questions?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I want my brother to sit in.’
His eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Why?’
‘Moral support. Also, a fresh mind might help. He already knows most of it.’
Brigg’s mouth tightened. ‘I don’t think you should have –’
Redd interrupted. ‘I work for the government myself Commander, and I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act.’
Brigg took a breath. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Provided you don’t make any comments while I’m asking questions. I mean that.’
Redd nodded. Brigg went on.
‘What I want to go over with you is the sequence of events during the handover. Can you remember that?’
‘Most of it, I think.’ I told him everything I could remember. I felt curiously unemotional, uninvolved – perhaps because what happened later was worse.
That changed.
Brigg produced a tape machine and we went over it again, after playing each sequence of the recording.
That
brought it back all right – I started shaking as soon as I heard that hateful voice. However, it also brought back details I hadn’t remembered.
The way the moon lit up the wasteland, and later the river; the curious light on the skyline. And another quality of his voice.
The slight Bristolian accent came over in the tape, but so did the calm, almost reassuring quality he’d had, even though he knew he was sucking me into a trap …
The voice of the other one –
Jase
! I’d forgotten that too, and how much rougher his voice was, more brutal.
Then the moment when they shot me – no, he –
Jase
– shot me…
A splash, then nothing more.
Brigg switched off the machine. ‘A couple of things stand out,’ he said. ‘Jase was obviously expecting to shoot you – the other one actually called him over to do it.
And
yet
he
shot
Jase
before
Jase
could
kill
you
. Was that deliberate?’
I went over it in my head, listened to the tape again. At last:
‘I think he fired at exactly the same time as Jase –’
‘Yes, that comes over on the tape.’
I went on, ‘If he wanted me dead, he’d have waited for Jase to finish… wouldn’t he?’
‘You’d have thought so, yes. If that’s the case, d’you have any idea
why
?’
‘None whatsoever.’
He nodded as though he was expecting that. ‘D’you think they’re the same men who attacked you in the hospital?’
‘I’m sure of it.’
‘Was there anything –
anything
– familiar about either of them?’
I pushed my brain, but there wasn’t. He asked if I wanted to hear the tape again. No, it was the last thing I wanted to hear, but I listened, several times, trying to pick up something. I couldn’t.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘The next thing is that I think they must have had some kind of inside information: they knew my name as well as yours, they knew enough to order that you should be the courier, they knew – or guessed – that we had a bug among the diamonds. Have you any idea of how they could have got that inside information?’
‘Did I open my trap, you mean? No, I didn’t. The only people I said anything to about any of this were the SCRUB team, and then not about the bugs or the diamonds.’