‘Ah, that one. Thought so.’
‘You know Miles and Coltrane?’
He heard her laugh again. ‘Don’t sound so surprised. My grandparents loved jazz. I picked it up from then. Goodnight, Superintendent Banks. Sweet dreams.’
Some hope of that, Banks thought. Grandparents, indeed. Then before she hung up, he heard the sound of an alarm and an urgent voice over the PA system in the background. ‘Must run,’ said Dr Logan.
‘Is that Mia?’ Banks asked, but the line had gone dead.
Banks lay tossing and turning in his bed, but sleep just wouldn’t come. He found some Beethoven cello sonatas played by Jacqueline Du Pré on his old iPod and put in his earbuds, but even the music didn’t help. His mind kept jump-cutting through the events of the evening juxtaposed with wild dreams about what had happened in the bothy and at Hadfield’s house. Eventually he gave up and went downstairs to make a cup of tea and sit in the conservatory. It was almost four in the morning, dark and cold, and it wouldn’t be daylight for hours yet. This had always been his worst time of the night, when all his faculties were at their lowest ebb and the silky tendrils of depression started to slink in and twist around his thoughts and memories, wrapping them in darkness. Again and again his mind went back to the alarm and the urgent voice over the PA. Was it Mia? Was she dead? Had he and Annie brought it on her?
He considered his options. He could remain as he was, he could phone the hospital again, or he could reach for a bottle of whisky. In the end, he decided on none of these, but quickly got dressed, went out to his car and set off back to Leeds.
There was very little traffic on the roads. Even the A1 was quiet except for a few long-haul lorries and delivery vans. He passed a couple of patrol cars lurking in lay-bys, the officers either grabbing forty winks or hoping to trap some unfortunate speeder.
The city was asleep, as much as cities ever sleep. Lights came on in windows here and there as people got up early to get ready for work; vans dropped off the morning papers, and the bundles landed with a thud outside darkened newsagents; street sweepers moved at a snail’s pace along the edge of a major road. There were even a few pedestrians about, some of them clearly winding their ways back home after a long night on the town. Banks heard a couple of distant sirens, too, before he entered the city centre and found a parking spot in the street near Leeds General Infirmary.
It looked as if he had arrived just after a car crash, as the A&E was swarming with firefighters and harrowed doctors and nurses, and a bloody body was being rushed in on a stretcher. Banks bypassed the chaos and followed the signs to intensive care. The hospital was already a hive of activity, despite the early hour, and he wondered how anyone ever got any sleep. At the nurses’ station he asked for Dr Logan, but no one knew where she was. Someone suggested that she might have gone home. When he enquired after Mariela Carney, the nurse he was talking to became suspicious and asked him why he wanted to know. Banks apologised for not introducing himself immediately and brought out his warrant card. The nurse examined it closely, then asked him to follow her.
A uniformed constable sat outside the room. The poor kid looked so tired he might slip down to the floor at any moment. Banks showed his card again, and the PC did his best to sit to attention. Banks told him to relax.
‘The doctor’s in with her now,’ the PC said.
Gingerly, Banks opened the door. The lights were dim, but he could see Mia’s dark halo of hair against the white sheets, and Dr Elaine Logan checking the monitors and making notes on a clipboard.
She turned when he entered. ‘You,’ was all she said.
‘Is it OK to be in here?’ Banks whispered.
‘I don’t suppose you can do any harm,’ Dr Logan said. She rubbed her eyes. ‘And there’s no need to whisper. She can’t hear you, anyway.’
Banks sat beside the bed. ‘Is she OK?’ he asked
‘I’d hardly say that, but she’s improving,’ said the doctor. ‘She gave us all a scare earlier.’
‘Was that when we were on the phone?’
‘Yes. She suffered a myocardial infarction.’
‘A heart attack?’
‘Yes. Lack of oxygen to the heart muscle, coupled with her existing arrhythmia. Luckily she was here and — well, you heard — we were able to treat her immediately, before any serious damage was done. There may be some moderate damage to the heart, but for the moment she’s resting comfortably. Naturally, she’s receiving oxygen, and her breathing is still assisted. But what on earth are you doing here?’
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ said Banks.
‘I hope you’ve not come to me for sleeping pills.’
‘Wouldn’t think of it. No, I just wanted to... you know... I was worried.’
‘About your witness?’
‘It’s not just that.’
‘You have feelings for her?’
‘It’s not... For Christ’s sake, she’s a young woman. I’ve got a daughter not much older than her.’
Dr Logan put her hand on Banks’s arm. ‘Why don’t you sit with her for a while? It’s all right. Don’t worry. She’s hooked up to all the monitors she needs, and the slightest change in her will have us all running up here as fast as we can.’
‘Thanks, doctor. If that’s OK.’
‘I wouldn’t say it otherwise. I’ll let your man on the door know you’ll be here for a while. I have a feeling he’s been secretly yearning to go outside for a smoke.’
Banks smiled. ‘Let him go, then. But ask him to bring me back a big strong black coffee, or I’ll have him on the carpet.’
‘You’re a hard taskmaster, I can tell.’
Dr Logan left Banks alone in the room with Mia. He was aware of the slow, steady rhythm of her breathing, the beeping from the machines, the slow drip of an IV, the various tubes attached to her body. He could also hear, but only just, occasional sounds from outside: someone walking past, the clatter of a tray, a patient calling out for painkillers. The constable, smelling of smoke, came in with coffee and disappeared again.
And so the hours passed. There was a clock above the door, and Banks mostly just sat and watched Mia breathing as he listened to the second hand make its rounds minute after slow minute.
Mia opened her eyes at seven minutes past eight. It may have been a trick of the light, but Banks thought he saw, as her lids slowly lifted, a swirling mass of dark red fire deep in her eyes, as if she were returning from some distant circle of the inferno.
16
It wasn’t until after the weekend when Banks was finally allowed back to talk to Mia in Leeds General Infirmary, three days spent on paperwork and catching up with as much rest as possible. According to Dr Elaine Logan, they had carried out various tests on Mia, and though they intended to keep her under observation for a while yet, she was regarded as fit for visitors.
Anthony Randall had spent the weekend in a cell, there being no courts in session to hear a bail application. He had appeared in front of the judge on Monday and been turned down. Though the doctor was apparently of good standing in the community, Banks’s account of Randall’s visit to Mia Carney’s flat and what he and Annie had witnessed there gave the judge pause for thought, and bail was denied.
The forensic evidence against Randall in the Sarah Chen case helped, too. Only that morning had Banks got the results from Ken of the tests on the bloodstained stone they had found in the bothy: Sarah Chen’s blood and a possible match with Anthony Randall’s fingerprints. Far more damning was the DNA match between the skin under Sarah’s fingernails and Randall. So the good doctor was enjoying a little holiday at Her Majesty’s pleasure. And the rest of the forensic evidence was mounting up. Circumstantial, most of it, according to their CPS rep, but shaping up well.