The Dark Room (27 page)

‘Ooh, you’re a wicked girl. I’ve never had such a fright in my life. You just wait till I tell Dr Protheroe. I thought you’d done for yourself good and
proper.’ She beat her chest. ‘I could have had a heart attack. And why did you open your windows? Top panes only after nine o’clock, that’s the rule. What you been up
to?’

Jinx curled into a ball on the tiled floor. ‘Nothing,’ she said.

Chapter Fourteen

Tuesday, 28 June, Nightingale Clinic, Salisbury – 1.00 a.m.

THE TWO CONSTABLES
surveyed the shattered windscreen and the crushed Wolseley boot with unfeigned disgust. It was parked forlornly by the front door where Alan had
driven it when he realized that, without some very prompt action, his dislocated shoulder would require reduction under general anaesthetic at the nearest Casualty department. He had blared the
horn with all the vigour of the angels and archangels sounding the last trump, and had sobbed with relief when the night security officer had emerged to rescue him, and Veronica Gordon, using
strong hands and a steady nerve, had guided the bones back into place. Even so, it had been a close call. After fifteen minutes, the joint had been so swollen that the pain was unbearable.

‘That’s criminal,’ said one policeman, lighting the damage with his torch. ‘How many times did you say he hit it, sir?’

‘Only once,’ said Alan, cradling his left elbow in the palm of his right hand, unconvinced that the sling he was wearing was reliable. ‘I smashed the back in when I
was reversing away from him. I’m rather more interested in the fact that he had at least two swipes at me.’

‘Still, sir,’ said the other ponderously, ‘he seems to have done more damage to your car.’

‘Remind me to show you some pictures of dislocated joints thirty minutes after the event,’ he said dryly, ‘then tell me he did more damage to my car.’ He led
the way inside and into his office, padding wearily to his desk and hitching a buttock on to the edge. ‘I suppose it’s occurred to you he might still be out there.’

‘Highly unlikely, sir, not with all the activity that’s been going on.’

The police car had arrived within ten minutes of the 999 call and, following Dr Protheroe’s description of events, namely that he had glimpsed a face in his headlights and had
stopped to investigate, the policemen worked on the logical assumption that an intruder had come with the intention of burglary and the doctor had had the misfortune to get in his way. A thorough
check of all the doors and windows, however, had failed to find any signs of a break-in.

‘We can’t fault your security, sir,’ said the larger of the two constables with a perplexed frown, ‘which makes me doubt this fellow had cased the clinic very
thoroughly. If he was planning a burglary, he can’t have known how difficult it was going to be to break in. So are you sure you didn’t recognize him? Otherwise I don’t understand
why he bothered to attack you. He clearly hadn’t committed a crime at that point, not unless he entered and left by the front door, which your security officer says is impossible because
he’s been at the reception desk since ten o’clock.’

‘I’m sure. In any case I was beginning to think I’d made a mistake about seeing anyone at all until I felt the hammer brush my arm. I had no idea he was so close to
me. I certainly didn’t hear him, but, as I’d left the car engine running, that wasn’t really surprising.’

‘And you can’t think of any reason why someone would want to attack you?’

Alan shook his head. ‘Unless he knew I was a doctor and thought I had drugs in the car. I’ve been racking my brains but I can’t think of anything else.’ There
would be time enough tomorrow, he thought, to decide whether it had been Jinx’s face he had seen in the headlamps, or whether his imagination had put her there because she had been on his
mind.

‘An ex-patient, perhaps, who would recognize your car?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought so. It’s one of the first things I make clear when they arrive. We have a limited supply of drugs on the premises and they’re always
locked away in that safe over there.’ He jerked his head towards the solid Chubb in the corner. ‘They certainly know I never carry anything in my car.’

The constable lowered himself on to a chair and took a notebook from his pocket. ‘Well, let’s get some details down. You say he ran away after smashing the windscreen, so
you must have had a pretty good look at him then.’

Alan plucked a Kleenex from a box on his desk and dabbed at his face, which was still bleeding from where tiny shards of glass had embedded themselves in his skin. ‘Not really.
I was having a hell of a job trying to find reverse with my right hand, so I was concentrating on that.’

‘Will you describe him for me, please?’

‘He was a bit shorter than I am – say about five ten or eleven. I suppose you’d describe him as medium build – he certainly wasn’t fat – and he
was dressed in black.’

The policeman waited for him to continue, pencil poised over notebook on knee. When he didn’t, he looked up. ‘A slightly fuller description would be more helpful, sir.
For example, what skin colour was he?’

‘I don’t know. I think he was wearing a ski-mask. All I saw was a man dressed in black from head to toe wielding a sledgehammer.’

‘Fair enough. Then perhaps you could give me some details of his dress. What was he wearing on his top?’

Alan shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’ He saw impatience in the constable’s eyes. ‘Look,’ he said with a flash of anger, ‘it’s very
dark. I get out of my car and the next thing I know some bastard is trying to make mincemeat out of me. Frankly, taking in the minutiae of his dress is the last thing on my mind.’

The policeman waited a moment. ‘Except that you must have taken in a few more details when you were back in the car and he was running away.’

‘It happened very fast. All I can tell you is that he was dressed in black.’

‘It’s not much to go on, sir.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ said Alan testily.

There was a short silence. ‘Yet you’re very sure it was a man. Why? Did he say something to you?’

‘No.’

‘Could it have been a woman?’

‘Maybe, but I don’t believe it was. Everything about him – body shape, strength, aggression – told me it was a man.’

‘You wouldn’t be so convinced if you saw some of the women we deal with, sir,’ said the constable with heavy humour. ‘There’s no such thing as a weaker
sex these days.’

Alan took a deep breath. ‘Look, would it be a problem if we left all this till tomorrow? I’m pretty tired and my shoulder’s giving me hell.’

The constables exchanged glances. ‘I can’t see why not,’ said the one who had remained standing. ‘The place seems secure enough and, without a good
description, there’s not much we can do tonight anyway. We’ll have one of the plainclothes lads come and talk to you tomorrow. Meanwhile, sir, you might make a list of where
you’ve been today and who you’ve spoken to.’ He gave a courteous nod. ‘It was a good bet that anyone coming back after midnight was more likely to be a doctor than a visitor
or patient. So for what it’s worth, I think your theory about drugs is the most likely explanation.’

Alan stopped at the nurses’ room on his way to bed. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

Veronica Gordon, the only occupant, looked at his bloodied face. ‘Are you trying to play the martyr?’ she demanded. ‘Is that why you won’t let me do something
about those cuts?’

‘You’re too ham-fisted, woman,’ he growled. ‘I’d rather do them myself, quietly and gently, in my own time. Any problems?’

‘Good lord, no,’ she said tartly. ‘Why would there be problems when a house full of insecure drunks and drug addicts get woken in the middle of the night by
security officers and policemen tramping about the gravel and shining torches through their windows? For your information, Amy and I are being run off our feet. She is currently responding to the
three bells that rang just before you came in.’ A light began flashing on the board at her elbow. ‘There’s another one. They’re all too nosy for their own good. They want to
know what’s going on.’

‘What about Jinx Kingsley? Are you still running the half-hourly checks?’

She swung the night register round for him to look at. ‘Fast asleep, and has been since ten o’clock. Matter of fact, she’s the only one who hasn’t given us
any trouble. Amy checked her just before you started blaring your horn but it’s not recorded because we haven’t had time, not with all the hoo-ha going on. I’ve popped my head in
once since then, but she’s out like a light. Do you want us to go on with it?’

‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Just in case. It makes me feel easier, knowing where she is.’

It wasn’t until after he’d gone that Veronica was struck by the inappropriateness of what he’d said. She intended to mention it to Amy Staunton, but it went out of
her mind when the demands of another bell sent her off down the corridor. Had it not, and if Amy had been encouraged to tell her that Jinx was fully dressed, she, like Sergeant Fraser, often
wondered afterwards how different the end result might have been.

Jinx’s waxen cheeks lost their last vestiges of colour when Alan Protheroe entered her room before breakfast the following morning, his left arm supported in a sling and his
face scarred with tiny cuts and scratches. ‘Did Adam do that?’

He was visibly taken aback. Whatever reaction he’d expected from her, it certainly hadn’t been that. ‘Why would your father want to break my windscreen?’

‘He wouldn’t,’ she said rapidly. ‘Forget I said it. It was silly. Is that what happened? Is that why the police were here last night?’

He smiled. ‘There now, and I was reliably informed you slept through the whole thing.’

‘I did.’

‘Then how do you know the police were here?’

‘Matthew told me. He came in half an hour ago.’

God damn bloody Matthew! He seemed to spend more time in this room than he did in his own. ‘Did he say what it was all about?’

Jinx shook her head. ‘He’s on a trawl to see if anybody else knows.’

She was a great liar because she understood the importance of being plausible. ‘I see.’ He perched on the end of the bed. ‘And you couldn’t tell him because
you don’t know.’

She held his gaze for a moment before looking away. ‘That’s right.’

‘The police think it was an intruder after drugs.’ He examined her exhausted face. ‘For someone who slept through it all, you don’t look very
rested.’

She forced a cheerful smile. ‘It’s my skinhead look. It doesn’t do me any more favours than it does your average convict. But it’s not really designed to, is
it? Hair is the original fashion accessory.’

‘Are you cold?’ he asked her. ‘You’re shivering.’

‘It’s nerves.’

‘Why are you nervous of me, Jinx?’

‘I’m not.’

‘Then what
are
you nervous of?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember.’

He grinned broadly. ‘I had a dream about you last night. I dreamt I was lying on my back on a cliff edge when a hand came up, grabbed my ankle, and started to pull me towards
the brink. As I was sliding over, I looked down and saw your face staring up at me, and you were smiling.’

She frowned. ‘Is that supposed to mean something?’

‘Yes,’ he said, standing up. ‘It means you were pulling my leg.’

It was a Detective Constable Hadden of the Wiltshire police who took up where the two uniformed policemen had left off the previous night. He was a bluff middle-aged man who was
there to pay lip-service to police procedure but without any obvious intention of pursuing the matter further. Rather to Alan’s annoyance, he arrived with the newspaper which put paid, for
the moment anyway, to Alan’s attempts to substantiate what Simon Harris had told him over the telephone.

‘Frankly, sir,’ confided DC Hadden, pushing his ample bottom into the sculptured recesses of the leather sofa, ‘I’m inclined to go along with the junkie
theory, unless you’ve remembered anything overnight that points to something more concrete. You see our dilemma. We’d have more success looking for a needle in a haystack than scouring
the countryside for this man you’ve described. It would be different if you could give us a name or if he’d stolen something – there’d be a slim chance of tracing him
through the goods – but as it is’ – he shook his head – ‘needle-in-haystack stuff, sir. I’m sure you understand the problem.’

‘Then this list I made of the people I spoke to yesterday was a complete waste of time,’ Alan snapped irritably. ‘I could have had another half-hour in bed, which
would have done me rather more good than attempting to assist the police in an inquiry they aren’t even interested in.’ He snatched the list from the coffee table and prepared to roll
it into a ball.

‘Now I didn’t say that, sir,’ said Hadden, holding out his hand for the piece of paper. ‘We will, of course, look at any information you give us but the
report of last night’s incident emphasizes very strongly that you did not believe the attack was personal. Perhaps you’ve reconsidered?’

Alan shook his head. ‘What I said was, I can’t think of anyone who would want to have done it, but I did make the point that the man took another swing at me even after
I’d shut myself in the car. If drugs were what he was after, why didn’t he give up then?’