The Witness: A Novel (8 page)

“I saw his eyes,” she said in a pinched voice. “They were cold.” She coughed and then swallowed. “I didn’t think a psychiatrist would have cold eyes.” She touched her neck gingerly. “I didn’t see the syringe at first. I wasn’t looking at his hands until he moved. Then the policeman knocked it out of his hand.”

A shiver went down Sinclair’s spine. Had Scott intended to have her killed before she gave her statement to police? If so, he had nearly succeeded. He stepped outside. He asked Dr. Patel if Jenny could be given the oral sedative when the investigation in her room was complete. In
spite of her less troubled demeanor, he wanted her to receive something strong enough to help her sleep. The doctor concurred.

When the Scenes-of-Crime Officers arrived, Sinclair accompanied them into her room. They were clad in white overalls, and the bulges from the clothes they wore underneath made them look to Jenny like white inner tubes in varying degrees of inflation. The one with the round face, who most resembled the Michelin man, approached the bed. “If you’ll permit me,” he said. The bedside rail was then dusted for fingerprints, although she couldn’t remember the strangler touching it, and the hospital blanket was removed from the top of her bed.

The photographer was there. “With your permission, Miss,” he said, and she realized that he wanted to take pictures of her neck. Very gently he positioned her chin. She covered her scarred cheek with her hand and closed her eyes against the camera’s prying one.

She heard Mr. Sinclair’s voice. “They’ll want to examine your fingernails, Jenny.” She didn’t know why—she hadn’t clawed at her attacker. She should have, but she hadn’t thought of it. She had wanted only to pull his hand away from her throat. She lowered her hand from her cheek and watched while scrapings were taken and each nail was carefully trimmed.

The syringe had been collected and bagged. With a nod to Sinclair, the forensic officers withdrew. Sinclair then spoke to her. “Much as I’d like to,” he said, “I can’t stay. I’d like you to take the medicine the doctor has for you. I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

Her chest was tight, and she was weak with exhaustion. She looked down and started to cry. “I wish I’d never come here! I’m in a hospital in a foreign country. I’m not safe anywhere. I should never have let my guard down. I shouldn’t have hoped.”

He watched the tears roll over the adhesive strips on her cheek and down her neck, dampening the hospital gown she wore. It was a cry for help. Not a commitment to testify but perhaps his response to the one could lead to the other. “I’ll have PC Sullivan sit with you until you fall asleep.” He summoned the young constable, then stopped by the nurses’ station to report that they could give Jenny the sedative the doctor had prescribed. He also asked for a description of the real hospital psychiatrist and told the SOCOs to check his office. Then, while the nurses were away from their post, he rang the D/S. “Sir,” he said, “there’s been an attack on our witness.”

“Is she alive?” Graves asked sharply.

“She survived, yes, and we have the assailant in custody, but we need to move her straightaway.”

“Witness Protection should handle it,” Graves said.

“Sir, we can’t wait for their careful planning. She’s a soft target as long as she’s in hospital. We have an obligation to remove her ASAP. A duty of care.”

“A hotel then.”

“A hotel will require a larger team and be less covert. She needs
to drop off the radar screen. A flat has just been vacated in my block. I don’t know if it’ll suit, but I’ll find out in the morning. We still need access to her.”

“Colin, that’s amateurish,” Graves objected. “It’s not the way we do it.”

“Sir, I know it’s irregular, but it’s an emergency, and it’s temporary,” Sinclair argued.

“Then place her in a safe house with a WPC and a panic button.”

“She needs medical assistance. She’s still too badly injured to look after herself.”

“Then get her a nurse!”

“Sir, I’ll not ask civilians to place themselves at risk. Don’t we have anyone who’s been a paramedic? I want round-the-clock protection. Just three men to start—the fewer officers involved, the less chance of discovery.”

“You mean, three per shift—two teams with changeover every twelve hours is standard.”

“Sir, I want one small, stable team. She’s in a bad way. She can’t handle anything more.”

“Colin, we can’t ask for a twenty-four hour commitment from our men.”

“If you’ll excuse me, sir—we bloody well can, on a short-term basis at least. Are you willing to lose this witness? Scott will never confess, and without Miss Jeffries’ testimony, we can’t link any forensic evidence to him. The more control we have over her, the better it is for us. And sir—I want these officers to be armed.”

“Armed officers? Is that necessary?”

“Sir, Scott is determined and desperate. I believe his methods will escalate.”

“Recruiting’s down on the specialist units. Don’t know if I can get support from them, but a smaller team may be an easier sell. Anything else?”

“A young PC here—Sullivan—was on the spot tonight. If he’s firearms qualified, he should be considered.”

“What’s your timeline?”

“Forty-eight hours, if I can convince the doctor to discharge her.”

“We’ll need to brief the team tomorrow then,” Graves concluded. “Give us a bell in the morning.” He put the phone down.

Sinclair breathed a sigh of relief. He had seen to Jenny’s immediate safety. He notified Bridges of the incident then rang Andrews at home and told him to meet him at Paddington Green. He hadn’t even left the hospital when the SOCOs called him back. They’d found a man unconscious in the psychiatrist’s office who matched the description given by the nurses. Sinclair headed downstairs at the double.

T
hursday night stretched into Friday morning. Marcus Bates, the hospital assailant, required medical treatment, causing the preliminary interview to be delayed. When Sinclair saw him, however, he didn’t think that Bates’ pale face and nervous manner were the result of his injury. Cecil Scott was the only man Sinclair knew who wanted Jenny dead, and this man, Bates, had failed in his effort to please his employer. An attempted killer in pain with a cast like Jenny’s—to Sinclair’s eyes it was a welcome sight. Mr. Bates’ request for a brief was not.

He pressed his thumb and forefinger against his forehead in a futile attempt to settle his thoughts. The attack on Jenny in hospital changed everything. He had known from the outset that Scott had the money to go after her. Bates was proof that Scott had the intent.

He snatched only a few hours’ sleep before accompanying Graves and uniformed police to Scott’s flat. No one responded well to an early morning arrest, but Sinclair was still surprised that Scott’s breeding did not moderate his outrage. He cursed at the intrusion and at the officers watching him dress, not heeding their courteous warnings to watch his language. He cursed Sinclair when he recognised him and threatened legal action against all of them. When the handcuffs were applied, Sinclair saw his own grim satisfaction reflected on Graves’ face.

The detectives on the cases of the six murdered women—and there were scores of them—had a wealth of forensic data, but contrary to the popular view of crime solving, scientific evidence didn’t generally break a case. It took old-fashioned policing: thorough, painstaking, often tedious work. Yet despite their best efforts, they had been unable to locate any witnesses or find a common thread amongst the victims. Deposition sites had varied, and there were no CCTV cameras in the areas where the bodies had been found. Appeals to the public had yielded nothing of use. Jenny’s identification of Scott had been the breakthrough they’d needed to breathe new life into their investigations, and they had been elated. Copies of her initial statement had them all champing at the bit, but they had been ordered to temper their eagerness. Impatience could tip off the very individual they planned to arrest. Now that Scott was in police custody, there would be plenty of time to gather supporting
evidence of his guilt in the other crimes.

He rang the lease agent as early as he dared and was informed that the flat wasn’t ready for occupancy, having not been refitted after the departure of the last tenant. He pulled rank and made a late morning appointment to tour the premises anyway.

When he arrived at the hospital, he was glad to see that the additional men he had requested were already by the stairwell and the lift. The armed PCs outside Jenny’s room stood as he approached. They were smiling broadly. “Congratulations, sir!”

Sinclair raised his eyebrows.

“The news got round,” one of them reported, “about the arrest. Well done.”

Those highs didn’t come often enough in policing, so Sinclair accepted the compliment, recognising as he did so the part that Jenny had played in it. “The young woman you’re protecting did all the work,” he replied. “I hope you know—and will pass it on to the next shift—that the danger to her has not diminished. I’m counting on you. More important,
she’s
counting on you.”

He went in. He was surprised to see Sullivan still with her, but even more surprised—shocked, even—by her appearance. She looked as frail and weak as she had in intensive care.

Sullivan rose to his feet immediately, his hat in his hands, his dark eyes sober, his dark hair dishevelled. “She had a bad night, sir,” he said. “The sedative didn’t work very effectively. I didn’t like to leave her alone.”

Her eyes filled. When bad dreams had fractured her sleep, he had encouraged her to keep at it until she got a good one. When the dragon lady had swept in to take her vital signs—the night nurse whose swift, abrupt movements startled her in the dark—he had called her an old bat and insisted he was scared also. When she had cried from exhaustion and despair, he had distracted her with tea and stories about growing up with too many sisters. He was the first officer who’d talked to her about anything other than police matters.

“I kept it as light as I could, sir.”

“Well done, Sullivan.”

“I’ll just push off then.” He put his hat on. “Time to look like the real thing,” he grinned, giving Jenny a jaunty salute as he left.

“I’d be dead if it weren’t for him,” she told Sinclair, her voice flagging. “I’ve been here—two weeks? three?—and I’ve almost died twice. I wish I were somewhere else; I wish I were someone else.”

She was emotionally overwrought and physically exhausted. Dr. Adams would never agree to release her in this condition, nor would she be able to maintain focus during the next round of questioning. “Jenny, I can’t grant those wishes, but I can promise you a better day, beginning right now. Denton!”

The officer with the rugby physique answered Sinclair’s summons. “Sir?”

“I don’t want Miss Jeffries left alone,” Sinclair told him. “Take a seat and stay with her until I relieve you.” He headed to the nurses’ station to inform them that there would be no physiotherapist visits to Jenny today. If any nursing functions needed to be performed, they should be done immediately. His men were going to guarantee her a three-hour rest period. He moved one of the PCs from the stairwell to maintain the force level at Jenny’s door. “Your instructions are to bar everyone—medical personnel included—from entering this room until noon today. No exceptions.” It was probably outside the scope of his authority, but the officers on duty now were armed, and that should be sufficient for the short term. “I’ll be back at noon to deal with any malcontents.”

On his way to meet the lease agent, he rang the Yard. Graves had scheduled a briefing for five p.m., Andrews reported. “Tell Bridges to meet me at the hospital at noon,” Sinclair ordered. “Jenny’s at the end of her tether, and we need to find a way to improve her frame of mind.”

When he reached his block in Hampstead, the agent was waiting. Sinclair found the flat sufficient, and he convinced the man that cooperating with the police would be in his best interest. He was allowed to sign a month-to-month lease agreement without a deposit, and he took the keys with him. He walked downstairs to his own flat and retrieved his Bible. Perhaps some spiritual encouragement would not be out of order. He took the tube back to central London and purchased takeaway from a sandwich shop.

Bridges was waiting for him outside Jenny’s door. “The
Do Not Disturb
order is lifted,” Sinclair told the officers. He went in first. She was asleep.

“She rested, sir,” Denton said quietly.

“No upsets?”

“One, but I spoke to her, and she settled.”

She stirred and woke.

“I have some things for you.” He set the Bible down on her bed. “It’s worn, because it’s been in my family for generations. It has guided and comforted many people over the years, and I hope it will help you. Also, the hospital chaplain should stop round today.” He turned to Denton. “Tell Bridges I’m ready for him.”

Bridges came in with a teddy bear. “For you,” he said.

“He’s dressed like a policeman.”

“A London policeman,” Bridges corrected. “He’s a bobby bear.”

“Then I’ll call him Bobby,” she smiled, catching the joke. “He’ll be my personal bodyguard.” She set the bear in her lap.

“Next, we’re going to have an indoor picnic,” Sinclair told her as he spread the food on her tray. “You choose first. We have turkey, beef, and ham sandwiches, fruit, crisps, and tea.”

She was surprised at his informality. “I’d like the turkey. Do you have iced tea, or is that just an American thing?”

“All good tea is hot, don’t you know that?” Sinclair teased. When they finished their sandwiches, he served the pudding.

“It doesn’t look like pudding,” she said.

“I’ll translate,” Bridges offered. “Pudding is a general term for dessert.”

“I thought my hearing was bad, or my eyesight, or both,” she smiled.

Bridges finished in two bites. Sinclair took his time, using his considerable charm as he chatted with her. “I have good news for you, Jenny,” he said when he set his plate aside. “The man you identified as your attacker, William Cecil Crighton Scott, was arrested early this morning.” She closed her eyes for a moment in relief but showed no reaction to the name. He considered briefly making another request for her testimony but thought better of it. “I can’t thank you enough for your assistance. We do, however, have a few more questions for you, if you’re willing to help us.”