He had, on the occasion of Gibbons’s promotion to detective sergeant a few years ago, presented his friend with a monogrammed leather cover for his notebooks. It was no doubt now in the possession of the forensics laboratory, but the thought that gave Bethancourt pause was whether the cover would ever be fit to be used again. He had a very vivid picture in his mind of Gibbons lying bleeding in a Walworth street, and he knew from Carmichael that he had been found facedown in the rain. Now that he thought of it, it seemed very unlikely that the leather would have survived the experience, at least not in any shape to resume its former duties.
Outside, both the rain and the wind had picked up. It was as
nasty a November morning as Bethancourt could remember, and he promptly abandoned the idea of walking Cerberus across St. James Park and instead sought out a taxi to take him to New Bond Street and Smythson’s, where he could order a new leather cover.
Gibbons cracked open one eye to confirm that it was indeed sunlight coming through the window, and then closed his lid again immediately. He felt some relief that apparently the long night was over, but he wasn’t much looking forward to another day.
He was unspeakably tired, but rest seemed out of the question. The constant pain made it difficult to sleep, and when he did manage to drop off, he was invariably awakened by someone checking his blood pressure, or temperature, or whatever other bits of him they were monitoring. He was beginning to feel that if only he could get a solid night’s sleep, he would really be quite all right.
There was someone in the room with him now, moving about very quietly, from which he deduced that it was probably his mother, settling herself in to wait till he woke up. He decided nothing much would be gained for either of them by his advancing this moment; there was not much to talk about between parent and child when the child in question had been shot, felt quite horrible, and was in hospital running a fever, and the long silences were beginning to get on Gibbons’s nerves. At the same time, he took comfort from his parents’ presence and had not been able to summon the fortitude to tell them that he would be all right and they should go home. Quite irrationally, he wanted them here, even if their hovering got on his nerves, and that made him feel guilty.
So he lay quietly, trying to rest despite the pain, listening to the sound of his mother turning the pages of a magazine. She was not much of a reader—his father was the one for that—but she liked to look through a magazine occasionally. Since her arrival, he thought glumly, she had probably been through every magazine ever published twice over. This, too, made him feel guilty, and he sighed.
Some time had passed when he was roused by the unexpected sound of a dog’s nails clicking on the linoleum floor. That this
heralded Bethancourt’s arrival was obvious, but Gibbons felt immediately disoriented, believing the day must be much further advanced than he had thought, as his friend was seldom out and about before late morning. Yet, when he opened his eyes, the clock on the wall proclaimed it to be only 9:15.
“There, you’re awake,” said his mother, closing the magazine in her lap at once.
“Oh, dear,” said Bethancourt, halting just inside the doorway. “Did I wake him? Sorry, old man. I thought they’d have you up at dawn in this place.”
“They did,” grunted Gibbons, cautiously moving. “They’re always waking me up.”
“Here,” said his mother, “let me put the bed up for you.”
Behind his glasses, Bethancourt’s hazel eyes were full of concern as he watched the agonizing process of Gibbons shifting to a sitting position in the bed.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” gasped Gibbons as he made a last adjustment.
“I’m sure it’s bad enough,” replied Bethancourt. “I’m awfully sorry you’ve come in for this, Jack.”
“So am I,” retorted Gibbons.
He laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes for a moment, needing to recover from his efforts. Bethancourt had brought a coffee in with him, and the smell was driving Gibbons wild, both attracting and repelling him at the same time. He swallowed uneasily past the tube in his throat.
“So what brings you out so early?” he asked at last, opening his eyes again.
“Your guv’nor,” answered Bethancourt, who had settled himself in a second chair. “He rang me at dawn, apparently thinking I would be up and ready for anything by that time.”
Gibbons smiled, though his mother—to whom the idea of sleeping past seven was entirely alien—looked a little puzzled. It suddenly occurred to him to wonder what his parents were making of Bethancourt. They had met before, of course, but they had never spent much time alone together before this.
“What did the chief inspector want then?” he asked.
Bethancourt looked rather pleased. “He wanted me to read a report of a conversation you had with Chris O’Leary on the night you were shot. He has an idea that I might be better at reconstructing your thought process than he is himself.”
“Does he now?” Gibbons’s eyebrows shot up. “Is there some reason he doesn’t think I would be equally good at it? It’s my bloody thought process after all.”
“I don’t know,” answered Bethancourt cheerfully. “I wondered the same thing.”
“He’s probably trying to spare you any stress,” put in his mother practically. “He’s really very concerned about you, you know.”
Her expression, if not her tone, showed clearly that Carmichael was not alone in this. Gibbons narrowed his eyes at her.
“There’s nothing you’re not telling me, is there?” he demanded.
She just sighed and shook her head, so he transferred the glare to Bethancourt.
“Don’t look at me,” said his friend. “I told you what I found out—you have peritonitis and will be feeling poorly until the antibiotics manage to knock it out of you.”
“I was feeling plenty poorly before,” muttered Gibbons.
“This is a different sort of poorly,” explained Bethancourt.
“You are very ill indeed,” interrupted his mother. “They still expect you to make a full recovery, but it will take some time.”
Gibbons didn’t want it to take time, he wanted to feel better at once. Most of all, he wanted the pain to go away. It startled him to realize that he could no longer remember a painless existence. He knew quite well the pain had not always been there, and could remember going about his business without such an encumbrance, but the actual sensation of being without pain no longer seemed to be stored in his brain.
The door opened and Nurse Pipp appeared, smiling brightly. “Good morning, everyone,” she said.
Bethancourt and his mother returned murmured salutations while the nurse moved briskly into the room, her eyes immediately seeking out the monitors.
“Well, you’re not doing too badly, all things considered,” she said, smiling down at Gibbons and gently taking hold of his wrist to check the pulse. “How do you feel?”
Gibbons had given up trying to pretend he was all right. “Pretty rotten,” he answered. “I feel awfully weak.”
“That’s only to be expected,” she answered, folding back the covers and bending to listen to his abdomen with a stethoscope. “That infection will have you feeling as weak as a baby for a bit yet.” She frowned, concentrating and shifting the stethoscope a bit. “I think I’m beginning to hear some bowel sounds,” she said with satisfaction, straightening. “That’s very good, very good indeed.”
Gibbons felt a warm glow, as if he had accomplished something, though in fact he had no control over the functioning of his bowels. He grinned up at Nurse Pipp like a schoolboy at a teacher who has given him a gold star.
She continued checking him over while his mother listened anxiously and Bethancourt excused himself lest his presence prove an embarrassment. Gibbons submitted to her ministrations more or less gracefully, largely because his mother was present.
“Oh,” said Nurse Pipp as she was tucking the blanket in around him, “I almost forgot—there’s something for you out at the nurses’ station. I meant to bring it in with me.”
“What is it?” asked Gibbons.
“Well, I don’t know, do I?” replied Nurse Pipp. “That nice chief inspector of yours came by and handed it to the night nurse last night while you were asleep.”
“Carmichael?” said Gibbons, surprised. “He was here?”
“So Julie said.” Nurse Pipp stepped back and cast an expert eye over him. “I’m going to have to get you up later, you know,” she warned.
Gibbons could not suppress a grimace. “I can’t see,” he said, “what difference it makes if I’m sitting up in bed or sitting in a chair.”
“It makes a world of difference to your circulation,” she told him. “Don’t forget, you’ve had a serious operation.”
“I’m hardly likely to forget,” snapped Gibbons miserably. “It hurts like bloody hell.”
“Jack,” chided his mother. “You shouldn’t use such language to Nurse Pipp. She’s only got your best interests in mind.”
Gibbons gritted his teeth. “Sorry,” he managed.
“It’s all right,” said Nurse Pipp, smiling to show that it really was. “I’ve heard worse in my time—and you can hardly expect people to be on their best behavior when they’re in hospital. Now, you ring if you want anything, and I’ll send an orderly in with that envelope.”
Gibbons, who knew from recent experience that the orderly might show up in the next five minutes or the next five hours, cast a desperate glance at his mother. But she was smiling up at Nurse Pipp and did not see him.
Happily Bethancourt must have been waiting just outside, because he poked his head back in almost as soon as Nurse Pipp was gone, smiling tentatively and saying, “All settled again?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Gibbons impatiently. “Carmichael left an envelope for me last night—can you run after her and find it?”
“Righto,” said Bethancourt, and disappeared again.
Gibbons leaned back against his pillows, enervated by this little effort. His mother frowned at him.
“You should rest,” she said gently. “I don’t see why you can’t leave other people to do their jobs. You’re just like your father.”
Gibbons ignored this. “Where is Dad?” he asked.
“He didn’t have a good night, so I let him sleep in,” his mother replied.
A smile touched Gibbons’s lips because that was so like his mother, always taking care of everyone, making sure they all were fed and rested and set up as best she could see to it. Sadly, he reflected, none of that seemed to be doing him much good in the present case. His father, he was sure, was suffering from being the only one available for his mother to take care of.
He sighed, turned his head more comfortably on the pillow, and dropped into a doze.
He woke again, as he nearly always did now, because of the pain. Once on the threshold of consciousness, the combination of the sharp ache in his belly and a general malaise prevented him from drifting back off and so, like a hippopotamus heaving itself out of
the muddy shallows, his mind struggled back to reality and his hospital room.
His mother had resumed her perusal of her magazine, although he could tell she was not really taking any of it in, and Bethancourt had returned and was comfortably ensconced in the second chair, long legs negligently crossed while he paged through some papers, a thoughtful expression on his face. Cerberus alone seemed to realize Gibbons was awake again, lifting his head to look at the patient in an inquiring manner.
The movement caught Bethancourt’s attention and he, too, looked up, smiling when he saw Gibbons’s eyes were open.
“Back among us, are you?” he said.
His mother also smiled. “Did you have a nice sleep, dear?” she asked.
Gibbons merely grunted in reply, but Bethancourt, with customary aplomb, smoothed over the moment by saying, “I winkled your envelope out of Nurse Pipp—here it is.”
He rose to hand Gibbons a manila envelope, sealed and stamped with the Scotland Yard crest. Gibbons eyed it hungrily.
“Open it for me, will you?” he asked, knowing his fingers would fumble it.
Bethancourt efficiently ripped the envelope open and handed it to his friend, relaxing back into his chair while he watched Gibbons pull out the papers within and then blink rapidly to focus on them.
“It seems to be O’Leary’s report,” he said in a moment.
“Ah,” said Bethancourt. “Then Carmichael was only hedging his bets when he gave a copy to me. You have a go at it now, and then we can brainstorm.”
Gibbons was not sure his brain was currently capable of brainstorming, but nothing could have stopped him from reading the report. His mother, he noted, had her lips firmly pressed together and a doubtful look in her eye, an expression he translated as meaning that she was unsure as to whether this exercise would be good or bad for her newly wounded son. Before she could make up her mind, he began to read, thereby settling the question, or so he hoped.
His hopes were justified when he heard her sigh and say, “I’ll leave you two to work it out, then.”
“There’s no need for you to go,” said Bethancourt quickly. “If any of this was classified police business, Carmichael would never have let me see it. You might have some thoughts of your own.”