'What about the woman, this Dewberry?'
'She's co-operating, sir. We've got her for the insurance scam, and she'll admit to dropping Rosewell off at Beppe's place the night he was shot.'
'What about the priest?'
'That'l have to stay unsolved. The priest, the doctor, and Rosewell are all dead. No decent brief will let her incriminate herself
'True. Well, come on; let's get moving. I haven't got al day; I'm the only bugger in the command corridor this week.' The squat Glaswegian headed for the door, McGuire by his side. 'How's Maggie, by the way? I heard you called her in sick.'
'She's got flu, sir. She'll be off for the rest of this week, at least, I'm afraid.'
'Not to worry. Manny English is back tomorrow, a bit early, and you've just sorted her investigation for her. Tell her I was asking for her.
In fact, you and Mcl henney take the rest of the week off yourselves. The pair of you look fucking knackered. Anyone would think you'd been up all night.' v
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He sighed inwardly when he saw her; she lay on the white single bed, on a mound of pillows, staring at the ceiling, as she had done almost two days before. 'Mags?' he whispered.
She turned towards him; she was deathly pale, her eyes were hollow, her red hair was lifeless. 'Well?'
'How much do you remember?' he asked.
Her face twisted. 'All of it,' she hissed. 'Every last bloody second; being paralysed with fear, thinking I was dead, him, the beast, getting down on me. I remember al of it, and I know for sure that I always wil .'
She grinned but there was only bitterness in it. 'Kevin says I'm suffering from some sort of post-traumatic shock. He thinks it might go back to the plane crash. How gallant of you, not telling him what I did
... or what he did, either.'
The brief smile became a scowl. 'You've stuffed me too, you realise, getting me out of there. Nobody took a vaginal swab, nobody went over me for body hair; there was no forensic examination, nothing. I'l have no defence now. Have they decided what they're going to charge me with? Are they going for murder, or will they accept a plea to culpable homicide? Or is Kevin going to certify that I'm crazy? Is that what this is all about?'
He sat on the bed and tried to take her hand, but she yanked it from his grasp. 'We recovered George Rosewell's body in his flat, yesterday morning. He shot himself. We believe that he saw a police car outside his accomplice's house and realised that we were on to him.'
She gazed up at him, her fuzzy brain trying to fol ow what he was saying. 'But he didn't.' Her voice was hoarse. 'I shot him; right in the fucking face.'
'We did a residue test which proved that he fired the gun. Would you like us to do one on you? It'll be clean, I promise. He committed suicide; that's what it says on Stevie Steele's report to the fiscal, approved by the head ofCID in your absence. Accept what Kevin says.'
She resumed her examination of the ceiling. 'And suppose I do?' she said. 'And suppose you're right and my father's death is written off that way? I still don't have a career left, do I?'
'You have flu, which will turn into viral pneumonia, which will require a period of convalescence. The ACC sends his best wishes for your speedy recovery.'
'Does Willie Haggerty know?' she asked him, her eyes suddenly sharp.
'Mr Haggerty knows what I've told him. He didn't get to be an assistant chief constable by asking the wrong bloody questions.'
'You are a cunning bastard, aren't you. I suppose I should be thanking you now.'
He shook his head. 'No, you shouldn't, not now, and not ever if you don't want to. If you want to thank anyone, thank Neil. He put his arse on the line for you and he really didn't have to. He had more to lose than me. I can walk away from the police if I want, and run the Viareggio Trust with Paula. If he was disgraced, al the shit would come down on Lou and the kids, and heavy at that, because of who she is.'
'Then thank him for me.'
'No. You have to do that yourself, when you're ready. Meantime, just get over that flu. While you're doing that, I'm going to give you something to think about.'
He left the room, only to return a moment later, carrying a toddler, a young, fair-haired boy. 'This is Rums,' he told her. 'He's Ivy's wee lad.
She's dead, and he's lost his mum, only he doesn't realise it yet. He has a grandmother in Portugal, but she doesn't want to know about him . . .
not that I'd let her anywhere near him even if she did. That makes him our responsibility, yours and mine . . . because you see, Mags, he's your half-brother. Who said I couldn't give you a kid?' Mario said, bitterly, and sat the child on the bed, beside her.
If he had expected her eyes to fill with tears at the very sight of the boy, he was disappointed, for what she did was look at him with something akin to fear in her eyes. 'I don't know if I want this particular kid,' she whispered. 'If what you're saying is true, as I look at him, al I can see right now, is our father, his and mine. I don't know if I can handle that.'
'But you have a sister. Where's the difference?'
'Why do you think I don't see her?'
He lifted Rufus again, betting him up on to his shoulder. 'Well, I tell you this, Mags. I'm looking after this boy from now on. I'm going to bring him up and teach him my values and beliefs, and I'm going to 308
prove that when it comes to character, heredity counts for fuck all. But I don't have to do that real y, because you're living proof yourself.
'Paula's helping me take care of him right now, until you're ready to play your part in raising him, with me or without me, however it works out.'
She shook her head. 'I don't know, Mario; I don't know.'
'No? Well I know this. If you stay huddled up in that bed then your old man's done for you right enough, because you'l have let him take away your strength, your self-belief and your pride. If you do that, you'l no longer be the woman I love, the woman I married.'
He looked at her, and suddenly he knew once more where he had always belonged, and he knew the one last thing he had to do to bury Jorge Xavier Rose. 'God damn it,' he exclaimed, 'I'm not going to let the bastard have that satisfaction.
I'm overruling O'Mal ey, right now. So do
what you're told. Detective Superintendent; get your shapely arse out of that bed and come home with Rufus and me.'
For a long time, Maggie looked at him, and at her brother. Then at last, she sighed, and with an act of will greater than ever before in her life, she threw back the covers.
The confirmation hearing had been postponed; the senator and heri husband were there after al . Skinner and Sarah stood by the graveside as Ian Walker recited the words of committal... they had gone on the minister's house after leaving Brand at the church. Nothing had been said about Bob's angry departure, and in the presence of her childhoo friend, Babs had become the perfect hostess.
Now it was almost over, the journey which had brought him from th Far East to stand beside the coffins of his parents-in-law. Along the way, he had seen more than any of them knew, and had lost more too. He let his gaze pass over the congregation in the cemetery, unable to guess their numbers, noting the irony of the Secret Service presence.
He swept around the gathering, coming at last to Sarah ... and as he did, his head began to swim, and he was back in that grey place, the one filled with faceless, hurrying people.
As she looked at him she saw his eyes glaze over. As he looked down at her, blankly, he was swept by that strange feeling ofdeja vu, an instant certainty that he had played the scene before. And then ... in slow motion, it seemed to Sarah as she watched ... Bob Skinner pitched forward, fal ing face down, stretching out ful -length on the green carpeting of the graveside, dead to his world.